IronStar (51 page)

“Erm,
thanks, I think. Kirrah. And it’s ‘Marcus’. What do we do now?”
I have two
thoughts on that
, Kirrah realized, looking at the screen.

“Introductions,
I should think. Are those wristcomps programmed, Petty Officer Thornlea? Thank
you, I’ll need at least half a dozen for the meeting tomorrow, too. And just to
get it out of the way up front, Marcus and everyone, I am bunking with that
tall sergeant out there. In fact I’d better give you a list of names for
cleared access to my quarters… no, that won’t do, it’s a school, students are
coming and going all the time. And don’t start with me about ‘secure
perimeters’, Marcus,” she added as his face began to darken. “This whole
city
is a secure perimeter. Except the part within a kay of the river that’s still
infested by those damned smartshots.”

“You mean they go passive and
then
attack? Gods! I can see why you want their launcher so bad!”

“Passive,
hell!
Marcus, the
damned things
hunt
! They auger down, I found one of their rotor wings,
just a wisp of microcarbonate film, and they lie there until they pick up a
human sig, and then they crawl or
jump
at you! We lost thirty-six
people, most of them civs, eight of them
children
! Can you see about
getting some scan tech down here? They’re using standard Kruss microcells for
power, they should show up like a beacon on NMR. And a whiff of the right
solvent will melt their little sensor heads right off. I have several samples,
it’s just a polyimide matrix. I bet they made it from medkit supplies!”

And now for the
second
thing
… Kirrah twisted and pulled the door controls, and a section of
fuselage wall pulled out with a sucking sound and an audible pop and lowered
into a ramp. At the sight of her at the top of the ramp, Irshe grinned like a
schoolboy. She grinned back.

“Irshe-
ro'tachk
! A proper
welcome, if you please, for your victorious Warmaster and our Regnum friends!”
The sound of her Talamae words whispered in Standard from the Marine
Lieutenant’s wristcomp.
Good, the language files work
… and seconds later
she, Peetha and Lieutenant Warden descended to a near-identical copy of the honor
guard the Regnum Marines had greeted her with. Out of the corner of her eye
Kirrah caught the raised-eyebrow expression on Marcus’ face as he trooped down
the ramp and between the perfectly-aligned Talamae soldiers, but she totally
missed the way PO Thornlea sat up a bit straighter at the sight on her screen.

And they
all
missed the
thoughtful expression at the other end of the video uplink, on Lucinda
Dunning’s face as she recognized Kirrah’s diplomatic quid-pro-quo, and factored
that in with the observation that she had not once heard the castaway use the
word ‘us’ or ‘we’ in the context of the Regnum Navy. The habit of Navy
discipline was clearly and firmly in place with the woman, but to Luce’s sense,
something deeper was at work.
Which was not necessarily a bad thing
, she
speculated.
If you get all the accomplishments this woman had done in half a
year, alone and virtually unequipped on a new hablet, you have to expect that
something more than a by-the-book Survey Navigator One lives under that skin.
Wonder why we didn’t spot it on her personnel profile? Seemed ordinary enough…

Kirrah stood outside the city’s
western gate between Peetha and Irshe, watching the approach of the second
shuttle on the radar feed repeating on her wristcomp. Irshe asked:

“Is the second
sky-boat
late?”

“Not late, Irshe
’jasa
, I am
just terribly impatient. Does it show?”

“Only a little, Warmaster.” His
eyes smiling, he lifted his left hand, to which her right was currently
clinging, apparently totally of its own free will. He cupped their two hands in
his right hand, and looked at her calmly.

“You know what the Regnum calls
these
sky-boats
?”
Kirrah, we’re sounding a bit manic, dearie…
“Their formal name is ‘Landing Assault Shuttles (Troop)’. If you take the first
letters of those words and make a word of them, it says ‘L.A.S.T.’. The Navy
always jokes with the Marines, tells them they’re taking the ‘last’ ride into
action, after the Navy’s done its job.”

Kirrah clamped her lips firmly as
the untranslatable pun left Irshe puzzled. She stopped a moment, and just
looked up at his eyes.

“Irshe, I am afraid to hope! I am
afraid to even
think
! I lost eight crewmates, and now I get to have
one
back, and just by hoping for which one it is, it feels like I’m
choosing
one! And choosing
not the others! That’s
why I’m feeling wrong - how can
I choose just
one
? I’m losing them
all over again
and it’s
my
fault!
” In the distance, a low rumble drifted down from the clear night
sky. Her friend looked at her anguish-drawn face and held her shoulders at
arms’ length.

“Kirrah shu’
Roehl
has taken
on the
shee’thomm
of Warmaster, and has carried it better than any
before her. Surely the lives of your crewmates were in the hands of their
Source.
Aska
, it would seem a trespass to demand this new
shee’thomm
from those very Hands, uninvited.” Kirrah felt her breathing slow as his words
sank in.
Not in her hands. Not her
shee’thomm
. Not her fault. No
authority, therefore no blame. So simple to say, in Talamae
. The rumble was
growing into a low roaring sound, like all the winds on the planet gathering in
one place, coming nearer.

“Irshe
’jasa
is wiser than
his Warmaster in this. How do you counsel?”

“Watch,
aska
. Only see
what-is.”

Above and to the east, one of the
stars was moving. In another few minutes, it spiraled once around the city,
losing altitude. At a hundred meters, it pulled sharply up and four solid
purple-white columns flared down and forward. As forward speed bled away, the
craft leveled and stood on its belly thrusters, descending in a howl of hot exhaust.
The not-grass blazed and shriveled under it, the ash glowing momentarily
white-hot. Then the landing gear unfolded, and with a master’s feather-light
touch, the eighty-tonne spaceplane settled to the earth a scant fifty meters
distant. Kirrah found herself walking toward it calmly, detached, almost
floating. The door opened, and a familiar voice cut into the night:

“…
care
about the fucking
ground heat, get this door
open
!” …and a figure leapt down the
still-cycling ramp ahead of several others, and raced across the intervening
meters and Kirrah found herself wrapped arm in arm with one Lieutenant Doris
Finch, Sensor Specialist First Class, also late of the
Arvida-Yee
, also
bawling her eyes out and sniffling and blubbering and babbling, the two of them
like a couple of homesick Plebes on their first visit home.

“Being powerful is like being a
lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.” - Lady Margaret
Thatcher, 20
^th
century A.D. warrior and political leader; Great
Britain, Terra

“These are
good
,” said Doris
Finch, licking the residue of yet another cream-and-fruit pastry from her
fingers. The early sun was just reaching the inner courtyard at
Stone-in-a-River school, and a larger than usual group was gathered for
breakfast. Besides the regular staff, Doris, Marcus and two of his four ‘guest’
Marines, a little awkwardly in their Combat suits, were sampling the “indie”
food. Multiple wristcomps provided running translations in both languages.
Doris continued:

“So what you’re saying, shipmate,
is that while I was playing local god and handyman to the islanders, you were
accidentally conquering the planet?”

“A base lie, constructed from only
the finest-quality truths. You must have been studying politics during your
vacation among the Yashee islanders!”

“Vacation? Gods, Kirrah! I was
lucky to
survive
! After they pulled me out of the ocean, I was so glad
to find I could eat the local food and not be
on
the menu, I was
overjoyed to help them any small way I could. A single beamer made their life a
lot easier, and they took good care of me.
Ok
, don’t roll your eyes like
that, it
was
nice there. Warm climate, good food, great beaches.
Hellacious storms, when it chose to. I learned a lot of respect for their
seamanship. Just hopping from one of those islands to the next one in the chain
was more than I cared for, but they treated the whole two-thousand kay
archipelago like one big playground.

“Meanwhile, you were over here,
‘way out of comm range, getting these wonderful people organized and prepared
to join the rest of humanity, and just coincidentally raising their tech level
high enough to beat the drek out of any hostiles.” Doris paused to stuff
another tiny pastry in her mouth, while Kirrah shifted a little uncomfortably
under the accumulating barrage of praise.

“It wasn’t…” she started, but Doris
continued, ticking off points on her slender brown fingers:

“…to say
nothing
of
inventing artillery, building your own wet-Navy, adopting a son, becoming
guardian over a whole township, absorbing the local language and culture like a
Contact One, setting up not one but
two
major training programs, and
being elected Supreme Military Commander for the entire country.
Temporarily
,
of course. I have to hand it to you, my dear, you make
me
look like a
stranded sailor.”

“You
were
a stranded…”
Kirrah stopped, seeing too late the neat trap her friend was laying.
Damn,
I’m out of practice with Doris
…

“My point
exactly
! So were
you
,
my friend, and just
look
at you now!” Kirrah’s shipmate gestured
triumphantly at the approach of another uniformed Talamae courier who saluted
and waited respectfully for her Warmaster’s attention.

“Hmph. Yes, Guardswoman?”

“Apologies to intrude on
Warmaster’s breakfast, but Rash’koi
-sana'tachk
says the O’dai are
peaceful and orderly, and want to know when they can go home as promised.”

“Not until…” Kirrah paused as
Marcus’ comm beeped.

“Warden, go,” he said into the
suit’s throat-mike. A brief pause: “You’re sure? Good work, Gilman! Signal one
of the local ferries, call the duty watch at Argosy One to meet you on this
side with a Tango.” He looked across the table, and continued:

“That’s Corporal Gilman reporting.
She’s found your launcher, Kirrah. Damned thing was a smoothbore tube rigged to
an air compressor. Bet it didn’t fire over 300 meps, but nearly silent, and
deadly as hell. Whoever had it, dumped it in the lake. Apparently they didn’t
know about Regnum scanners, but it’d sunk into the bottom silt, she couldn’t
pick it up beyond a five meter circle. She had to sort through a hundred native
iron implements on the bottom, and even then if they hadn’t used a titanium
valve in a critical place, she’d’ve missed it. Some poor lizard’s in drek over
his pointy head, you ask me.

“She also found a small transmitter
relay. Based on the signals you picked up in the city, looks like the Kruss
base was getting sound and images from the smartshots, on a tightbeam relay
from their base here.”

Kirrah noticed the baffled looks
blooming on the other side of the table, and bemoaned anew the difference
between translating a language, and communicating between cultures.

“What
Warden-sana'tachk
is
saying, is that we have found the device which the O’dai used to throw
plague-of-screams seeds at the city. He also says the device is clearly of
Kruss manufacture, and
that
is going to be
very
disadvantageous
for them when this comes before a Civilium court. To say nothing of
costly
.
We also know that the Kruss were able to hear and see with their devices, as
they hunted and killed. And besides these things, we have their
nano’ire
,
which we will also hold as evidence against them.

“Guardswoman, tell Rash’koi
-sana'tachk
to tell the O’dai prisoners that they shall wait another day, then begin
walking home. I do not promise this, it is an estimate and may change if we
find more mischief. By this afternoon the lake should be back to its former
level, and they should be more comfortable tonight. And tell Rash’koi
-sana'tachk
to take himself and as many men as he can spare, off duty and get some rest.
Proceed.” The woman saluted and trotted out of the compound.

“It would seem, Kirrah Warmaster,”
said Slaetra from across the table, “…that you were not the only one to teach
technology
to your allies. Although I can see you taught more, sooner, and put it freely
into the hands of your friends.
Now
you have learned the lesson of
kaetha’sha
.
These Kruss, it would appear, have not.”

“My master-teacher is generous, I
am honored.” Kirrah bowed her head briefly, and received in return what she
could have sworn was one of Aunt Risa’s ‘Approving Nods, Grade A, Rarely
Bestowed’. Slaetra seemed to share both facial vocabulary and values with
Kirrah’s beloved aunt.

“Marcus, what’s the status of our
sanitization project? These good people still cannot return safely to most of
their homes.”

“It’s going a lot slower than I’d
like, Kirrah. The way they’ve built these city-block units is very efficient,
and it helps that the city is generally so clean and orderly. But we can only
spare two Marines, and it takes them over an hour to clear a single block, even
when they
don’t
find anything. If they have to spend twenty minutes
chasing every smartshot that’s gotten into the plumbing or inside the walls, it
can take half a day. We just don’t have the personnel. Although with that
damned launcher recovered, I can put Gilman’s sensor team to work sweeping,
after they’ve had a few hours’ sleep.”