March to the Stars

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For the first time in a career that had seen the term used more times than he cared to remember, Armand Pahner had just discovered what "having your back to the wall" really felt like.

It was a much more powerful metaphor, under the circumstances, than he had previously believed. But that was because it was unpleasant to literally stand with his back to a closed gate while more and more enemies closed in on the humans and their allies. The Basik's Own was being pushed back into a broad "C" around the gate, and he knew that unless they got the gate opened—somehow—they were all going to be killed.

And eaten.

That was more than enough to convince any CO that he was in for a bad day. In Pahner's case, however, it was only one minor, additional item. Armand Pahner was widely known as a man who got steadily calmer as the situation got worse. Which was undoubtedly the reason his voice was very, very calm when Sergeant Major Kosutic turned up to report in.

"And where," he asked her, "is Roger?"

The same circumstances which produced monumental calmness in the captain produced a sort of manic humor in the sergeant major, and Kosutic swept off her helmet and cocked her head at him.

"Feeling a bit tense, Captain?" she inquired, and Pahner gave her a thin smile.

"Sergeant Major," he replied quietly, "I have known you for some years. And we need every gun we can muster. So I will not kill you. If ... you tell me where Prince Roger is. Right Now."

"Up there." Kosutic pointed upward as a sound of releasing locks echoed through the gate tower. "Opening the gates."

"Great," Pahner said with the grumpiness reserved for the moments when he found himself with no option but to depend upon his rambunctious charge's talent for surviving one near-suicidal bit of mayhem or another without him. "Now if we can just break contact, we'll be home free."

Poertena winced as the breaching charge blew in another heavy wooden door. The tower's internal defenses required double charges, and the overpressure slapping at the Marine caused his suit to go momentarily rigid yet again.

There probably wasn't much of a threat left on the other side of the portal, given the hail of splinters the charge should have blasted into the room. But Momma Poertena's boy hadn't made it this far on the basis of "probably," and he wasn't about to take chances when they were this close to home. So he thumbed the tab on a concussion grenade, tossed it into the room beyond, and waited until the weapon had gone off before following it through the shattered doorway.

The room was filled with a haze of propellant residue, but two Krath were still partially functional on the far side of the room. One was hopping up and down, clutching a piece of shrapnel in his leg, and the other was just climbing back to his feet after the dual explosions. Two shotgun rounds sufficed to deal with them, then Poertena took a closer look at the room and grunted in satisfaction as he spotted the large barrels stacked against the wall.

"About pocking time. CLEAR!"

"That what we came for?" Neteri asked as he entered behind the Pinopan and swept his rifle from side to side.

"Yeah," Poertena replied. "Get some of t'em Vashin up here; we gonna need some muscle." The armorer pulled the wrench he'd reclaimed once the gate was raised out of his pack and looked at the chocks holding the barrels in place. "I hope I don' bury myself doing t'is."

Pahner stepped through the second set of gates, looked around, and nodded. At least there wasn't an immediate threat on the far side of the walls.

The area beyond the gate was open for about a hundred meters—an obvious cleared defensive zone. Beyond that, however, a solid bank of buildings stretched as far as could be seen in the gloom. Obviously, the city continued well beyond the walls.

The heavy ash-fall seemed to be easing, and a little light was starting to peek through. Both of those changes were—probably—good signs. The ash was a misery for everyone, and some additional light on the battle would be helpful.

"Okay," the captain said to Kosutic. "We're through the gates. Now all we have to do is collect our charge and get him safely back under our protection, instead of the other way around. Oh, and somehow break contact with several thousand screaming religious fanatics. Any suggestions?"

"Well," a disembodied voice said from the darkness overhead, "I think using the plasma cannon is right out." Roger hit the release on his descender harness to flip out of his head-down position and dropped the last few meters to the ground. "Morning, Captain."

"And good morning to you, Your Highness," the Marine said tightly. "Having fun?"

"Not really," the prince replied. "I seem to have gotten my asi the next best thing to killed, I lost a Marine and four Vashin, and I seem to have really pissed off the Krath. Other than that, everything is peachy."

"Yeah, well," Pahner said, after a moment. "We'll talk about it later. I doubt from the brief bit Eleanora told me that you could've done much different."

"I'm of the same opinion," Roger admitted. "But that doesn't make me any happier about it. And the fact that I keep having to shoot my way out of these situations is becoming... annoying."

"I'd say that it was 'annoying' for your enemies as well, Your Highness," Kosutic observed with a bark of laughter. "Except that they don't usually survive long enough to be annoyed."

"Sor Teb did," Roger admitted. "That pocker is fast. I took out the arquebusier first, and by the time I'd shifted target, Teb was behind the throne and then gone."

"It happens." Pahner shrugged. "The important point is that we've got you back, along with most of your party. We're into the gatehouse, and we've closed up our forces, too. Now all we have to do is break contact."

"Poertena's working on that," Roger said. "We need to get everyone to thisside of the gate, though. And we need to do it fast."

Pahner looked at the traffic jam of turom, Mardukan mercenaries, porters, and hangers-on in the gateway and sighed.

"I don't know about 'fast,' Your Highness. But we'll get to work on it."

"As long as the gate is cleared by..." Roger consulted his toot, "fifteen minutes from now."

"Got it," Kosutic said. "I'll extricate some of the Vashin and get them out here as security, then get the noncombatants moving."

"Do it," Pahner agreed. "In the meantime, we need to start planning what disaster we're going to have next."

Poertena took another peek through the hole in the floor and shook his head.

"Come on, You' Highness," he muttered. "Time's a'wastin'."

"We've got company," Kileti said from the demolished doorway. "There are Krath in the gate control room."

"Good t'ing we smashed t'e control, t'en, huh? T'ese gates ain't closing until somebody get a whole new set built. T'ey can drop t'e portcullis, but even t'at won't be easy, not wit' t'e way we jam it!"

"Yeah, but if they get into the second defense room, we're cut off," the rifleman pointed out.

"Yes," one of the Vashin cavalrymen standing by the barrels of oil said. "And then we go kill some more of these Krath bastards."

"Timing on t'is is tricky," Poertena said, with another glance through the hole as the sound of axes biting into wood came from the far room. "I t'ink you Vashin better get in t'e other room and keep it clear, huh?"

"Right," the Vashin NCO said, and nodded to his fellows. "Let's go collect some horns, boys."

Poertena shook his head as the four cavalrymen left the room.

"I swear, t'ose guys enjoy t'is shit." There was movement below, and he saw the Diaspran infantry reforming and beginning a slow back march into the gut of the gate tunnel, all the while keeping up a steady crackle of rifle fire. "Almost time to start t'e ball."

"Back one step, and fire!" Fain barked. His throat was raw from the combination of gun smoke, ash, and shouting, but the company was maintaining a good fire, and at least half of their steadiness was because of their confidence in the voice behind them. He wasn't about to stop now. He did turn at the polite tap on a shoulder, though.

"Good morning, Captain Fain," Roger said. "I need to adjust your orders slightly, if you don't mind."

Fain looked at the prince, then shook his head. He could tell by now when Roger was being tricky.

"Of course, Your Highness. How can the Carnan Battalion—what's left of it—be of service?"

Roger winced at the qualification.

"Has it been bad?" he asked.

"Now that we have the Krath on a limited front, it's much better," Fain said, gesturing to the gate opening his men filled. "But the street fighting was quite bloody."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Roger said quietly. "I'm getting tired of losing friends." He gazed into the smoke and ash for a heartbeat or two, then drew a sharp breath.

"We need to break contact sharpish," he said more briskly. "Sergeant Major Kosutic has gotten everyone out of the way behind you, with the exception of one rank of Vashin. I need you to coordinate a high-firepower retreat to the rear of the gate area. It's imperative that the city half of the gate tunnel be absolutely clear of all our people, including the wounded. Understood?"

Fain looked upward at the murderholes above him. He been half waiting for them to open up on his company at any moment, and he hadn't enjoyed the mental image of that eventuality which his imagination had conjured up. Now, however, the thought of descending slaughter was downright comforting.

"Understood, Your Highness," he replied, with a false-hand flick of grim amusement. "Will do."

Poertena waved in an ineffectual attempt to disperse the smoke drifting up through the hole as the Diasprans went to a higher rate of fire. That wall of lead couldn't be sustained for very long—individuals would quickly run out of ammunition, for one thing—but while it lasted, it permitted them to begin retreating, opening up the gap between them and the pressing Krath.

"I t'ink it's time to get to work," he said, as another volley of pistol shots sounded from the far room. He pulled out his wrench one last time and waited until the first Krath came into view through the hole.

"Say hello to my leetle priend!" he shouted, then swung over and down at the head of the barrel like a golfer.

Fain nodded as the first gush of fish oil fell through the holes. The Krath, who'd expected it to be hot or even boiling, were pleasantly surprised that it was neither. The slippery substance made it even harder for them to move forward over the bodies piling up in the tunnel, but as far as they were concerned, that was a more than equitable trade-off. Fain doubted they'd feel that way much longer.

"That's right," he whispered. "Just a little further... ."

Poertena rolled the third, massive barrel aside as the last of the oil gushed from it, then nodded at Neteri and pulled out a grenade.

"One, two, t'ree—"

He thumbed the tab on the grenade and dropped it through the hole. Neteri dropped his own grenade simultaneously through the hole beside it, then both of them moved on to the next pair of holes and repeated the process.

"Time to get t'e pock out of here," Poertena said, headed for the door and accelerating steadily. "T'is t'e next best t'ing to teaching t'em bridge!"

The incendiary grenades were ancient technology—a small bursting charge, surrounded by layers of white phosphorus. Simple, but effective.

The burning metal engulfed the interior of the gate, and some of it spread as far as the front rank of the Diaspran infantry. Despite the weight of their rifle fire, they had been unable to keep the fanatic Krath from staying closer to them than Roger had hoped. Unfortunately, in the words of that most ancient of inter-species military aphorisms, "Shit happens," and so a few of the humans' allies learned the hard way that the most terrible thing about white phosphorus is that there is no way to extinguish it. You have to get it off, or simply let it burn out. Water doesn't quench it; it only makes it burn hotter.

Yet what happened to the Diasprans was only very bad; what happened to the Krath was indescribable. The blazing phosphorus raised the temperature in the gate tunnel to over a thousand degrees Kelvin in a bare instant. The dozens of Mardukans who were covered in Poertena's fish oil never had a chance as it flashed into vapor and flame. The only mercy—if such a noun could possibly be applied to a moment of such transcendent horror—was that death came very swiftly, indeed.

It came less swiftly for the forces gathered around the interior side of the gate as the ravening flames licked outward. Some of those at least fifteen or twenty meters back actually survived.

The flame gouted up through the murderholes, as well, narrowly missing the last Vashin cavalryman as he scrambled down the scaling rope on the outer wall. The inside of the gate tower was like a chimney, channeling the explosion of heat and fury that set fire to all the woodwork and oil-drenched barrels in the tower's interior. Force fed from the conflagration underneath, which now included burning bodies, the flame and heat swept through the upper sections of the tower as if it were a blast furnace.

In seconds, the entire gatehouse was fully involved.

"Cut it out, you stupid beast!"

Roger jerked on the reins of his civan as it stamped nervously. He understood why the flames and the smell of burning flesh made all of the cavalry mounts uneasy, but understanding didn't make his own mount any easier to control, and he felt a sudden longing for Patty.

For virtually the entire march across the far continent, his primary mount had been a flar-ta pack beast—an elephant-sized monstrosity that resembled nothing so much as an omnivorous triceratops. His particular mount had had more than a touch of the much more dangerous wild strain that the Marines had taken to calling "capetoads." Patty had been five tons of ravening, unstoppable mean in a fight, and at times like this, when it looked like a hard slog all the way to the mountains and possible battles with barbarian tribes beyond, he missed her badly.

But there'd been No Way to fit a flar-ta onto a schooner, so for the time being, he'd just have to put up with these damned two-legged idiots, instead.

Pahner walked over and glanced up at the prince as Roger attempted to soothe the nervous civan.

"I think your plan worked, Your Highness."

"Better than I'd hoped, actually," Roger admitted, listening to the steady roar of the flames consuming the gate tower's interior. "They'll have to wait for it to cool before they can pursue us on this side of the river. Either that, or climb down the walls."

"But they'll have sent out runners on the far side," Pahner pointed out, gesturing across the barely glimpsed river. "You know there's a bridge upstream somewhere and garrisons are already being turned out."

"Then I suppose we should get headed out," Roger said, kneeing the beast around to face north, away from the inferno at the gate. He lowered his helmet visor and tightened his gauntlets.

"Time to show these religious gentlemen why you don't pock with House MacClintock."