March to the Stars

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Harvard Mansul was lurking just outside the conference chamber when the meeting broke up.

The journalist rarely asked the prince any questions, preferring to pump the junior Marines and the Mardukan mercenaries, who were more than willing to share their stories. And, of course, he had not been invited to attend the command staff meeting, itself. But he was getting hours of video of the prince, and it was beginning to bother O'Casey.

She stepped out of the meeting room just as Mansul started to dart off after Roger, and she stuck out an arm and grabbed him before he could get away. He looked at her in some surprise, but the chief of staff had developed remarkably sinewy arms during the trek across Marduk, and he was wise enough not to resist as she dragged him back into the now empty room.

"We need to talk," she said pleasantly.

"Yes, Ma'am," the photographer said. "I'm trying to stay out of the way."

"And you're succeeding," she noted. "And I know that this is a heck of a story. But it's not necessarily one the IAS can publish when we get back."

Mansul sighed and nodded.

"I understand that. But do you know what the prince intends to do? Is he going to contact the Empress when we return? How are we going to return?"

"That's... not settled yet," O'Casey temporized. "But... You do understand why we've got to start excluding you from some meetings?"

"I understand," Mansul repeated. "But this isn't just a good story, you realize. This is history unfolding. And what history! I mean, this is the best story in a thousand years! He could play his own leading man!"

"What do you mean?" the chief of staff asked.

"Come with me," Mansul said, and took her arm. "I want to show you something."

He led her out of the door and towed her down the corridor, asking the occasional guard for directions to the prince.

They finally found him out on the battlements, conferring with the local Shin leadership. The skies, as always, were gray, but the brilliant pewter cloud glare of Marduk's powerful sun was near zenith and the day was bright—hot, and almost dry at this altitude. The prevailing wind in this area came down from the glaciers up-valley, and on some days it built up to a near-gale. Today it was running about thirty kilometers per hour, and the prince's hair had come unbound. It streamed sideways in the wind as he and the native leaders conferred, gesturing at the distant battle lines.

"There," Mansul said.

"What?"

"That's what I brought you to see," he replied. "Nobody sees it. I want you to look at the prince and tell me what you see. Take your time."

"I'm very busy, Mr. Mansul," the chief of staff said. "I don't have time for games. It's Prince Roger."

"This isn't a game, Ms. O'Casey," he said seriously. "Now look."

O'Casey looked at Roger. He was talking with the Gastan and one of the other Shin warlords, accompanied by Pahner and Kosutic, the still barely mobile Cord, a group of Vashin and Diaspran bodyguards, and Dogzard.

"I see Roger and company," she snapped. "What about it?"

"Describe him," Mansul said quietly. "As if you were writing the article."

"A tall man..." she began, and then, suddenly, stopped.

A tall man, darkly tanned by alien suns, a sword on his back and a pistol at his side, his unbound blond hair streaming in the wind. He was surrounded by a group of powerful, intelligent, capable followers who were not just willing to follow him anywhere, but already had—and would again, at a moment's notice, even knowing the impossible tasks they faced. His face was young, but with almost ancient green eyes. The eyes of a man who had already strode through a dozen hells... .

"Oh... my... God," she muttered.

"Now you understand." The journalist's whisper was an odd mix of delight and something very like awe. "This isn't just the story of a lifetime. This is the story of a century—possibly a millennium. You couldn't pry me off with a grav-jack."

"That's..." She shook her head, trying to clear the vision. "It's just Roger."

"No. It's not," the journalist said. "And, trust me, you aren't the Ms. Eleanora O'Casey I had a passing view of at the palace. You've survived, Ms. O'Casey. Sure, you were protected, but are you ready to tell me you're the same person you were before this tremendous trek?"

"No, I'm not." She sighed at last, and took one more look before she turned away. "But it's still silly. I don't care what he's become, he's still Roger."

"This is silly," Roger muttered. "I take it back. There is such a thing as too much overkill."

They were observing the Krath siege lines from the top of the western wall, trying to determine if there was anything Roger's force could add to the defense. Pahner had dragged all the senior commanders, along with the main "battle staff," up to the battlements with them for a good hard look. And it didn't look good.

"Yes," the Gastan said with a gesture of amusement. "It is a bit overwhelming, isn't it?"

It looked very much as if Kirsti had moved its entire army in toto up to the plain. From the mountains, standing beside Pedi's turom cart, that army had looked like a large ant mound; from the walls, it looked like... an immense ant mound.

The tent city at the rear measured nearly four kilometers on a side, broken into three distinct camps with regular roads and well laid out garbage and personal waste management. The latter seemed to be primarily trucked out, rather than simply dumped into the river, which struck the humans as the best field hygiene they'd come across yet. On the other hand, it was apparent that the majority of the forces weren't spending much time under canvas.

A regular siege had been laid on in front of the Shin citadel. Dozens of separate zig-zagging communications trenches led forward from the area of the Krath encampment to a much larger trench parallel to the walls. The parallel trench was covered by stout wooden palisades, and bombards fired occasionally from emplacements along the parallel. But the bombards in use were on the small side; they were still far enough from the fortress that they were barely in range; and there weren't very many of them. Coupled with their low rate of fire, their impact on the defenses was marginal... so far.

Despite the indications that the Krath were here for the long haul, they seemed quite prepared to settle things more quickly if the opportunity offered. And they obviously considered that they had the manpower to explore... more direct and straightforward alternatives to battering a way through stonework with artillery. A frontal assault—or, more precisely, another frontal assault—had obviously been tried earlier in the day, and the dead hadn't been cleared away from the base of the walls yet.

The forces arrayed against the Shin were enormous. Between the rear of the siege works and the tent city, there were blocks and blocks and blocks of infantry. So many that all most of them could do was sit on the ground, awaiting their next orders. There literally wasn't room to use more than a fraction of them against the fortress at any given time.

"There are at least two hundred thousand troops in view," Julian said, consulting his toot. "It looks like that could be another sixty thousand in Quericuf and the wing forts, and an unknown number in the tents."

"Worse than the Boman," Rastar muttered. "These bastards are organized."

"The majority of them return to the tents at night," the Gastan said. "They're as much for warmth as for cover, and they have to clean their pretty armor, don't they?"

"I suspect that they wait until they return to do their business, as well," Honal commented. "Otherwise, they'd be up to their knees in shit by now."

"If they just charged all at once, they'd overwhelm you," Pahner said, ignoring the side conversations.

"Possibly," the Gastan replied with a gesture of resignation. "And possibly not. Moving them all forward at once is... a bit of a challenge. It takes a lot of tricky coordination. And they'd have to stack themselves on top of each other to get to the top of the wall. We're the Krath's prime source for any number of raw materials, including wood, so they're having a bit of trouble finding sufficient materials for enough ladders. Then, even if they took the fortress, they'd have to manage the groups that were in it. They've taken sections of the wall before, but those Krath who seize them just mill around on top, wondering what do next until we counterattack and kill them or drive them off. They're perfectly willing to keep trying assaults on the off-chance that one may work—they've certainly got the manpower for it!—but they've also fallen back on more complicated means."

He waved at the palisaded parallel... and at the trenches zig-zagging forward from it. It was obvious that the smaller trenches had perhaps another fifty to seventy-five meters to go to reach the point at which the next parallel would be cut, that much closer to the walls.

"They've been moving the siege lines forward steadily," the Gastan said. "They won't have to get a lot closer to bring their bombards into effective range. When they do, they can pound us hard enough to cause a breach. Then they'll pour their troops through, and it will all be over."

"Not much I can add," Fain said. He'd been doing a few calculations on the back of the wall, and now he dropped his piece of charcoal and dusted his true-hands, body language distinctly disgruntled as he contemplated the figures he'd scrawled across the stone. "Each of my fellows would have to kill fourteen hundred of them. I can't guarantee anything over a thousand, unless we get more ammunition."

Pahner had been rubbing his chin in thought. Now he pulled out a piece of bisti root and cut off a sliver.

"I'll tell you the truth," he told Pedi's father. "We need to take the spaceport, and from what you've said, it's not all that long a trek from here. If we took it, we could come back with all the firepower we need to clear out the Krath."

"It's a point," Roger agreed. "A couple of cluster bombs would be a treat on these guys."

"That would be... difficult," the Gastan said coldly. "I have a hard enough time convincing my people that it's worth fighting the Krath at all, especially given the reason that they sit on our doorstep. If you were to go, for whatever reason, I doubt I could continue to ensure your safety. Or that of my other human guests."

Pahner sighed, nodded, and slipped the slice of root into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds, then shrugged.

"I suspected it would be something like that. Okay, let's try a few 'old-fashioned' remedies first. If those don't work, we'll think about alternatives."

"I guess that's about our only option," Roger agreed. "On the other hand, sooner or later, we're going to have to move on the port, anyway. I truly hope taking it won't be as tough as it could turn out to be when we do get around to it, and I think we need to think about that simultaneously. Armand, you and I need to concentrate on ways to deal with the Krath. But while we get fully up to speed on the local situation and the balance of forces, Julian, you need to start massaging the data Jin gave us. We need a way into the port."

"Yes, Your Highness," the NCO said doubtfully. "If there are any of us left to take it."

Roger tried not to let his amusement show as he watched Pedi and the still limping, very slowly moving Cord jockey for precedence through the door. The Marines had already swept the other side, and even including Despreaux and Pedi, Roger was probably the most dangerous person present. But the precedence of security was everything.

"I'm sure we're all friends here, Pedi," he said, placing a hand on her back as she passed him. Then he drew his hand back and looked at it oddly. Her back had felt... lumpy. If she'd been a human, and if it had been her front, instead of her back, he would have thought he'd accidentally put his hand on a breast. But the feel had been firmer, like a large blister. Or a tumor.

Whatever it had been, Pedi shied away from the touch. Then she seemed to recover her customary poise.

"And we were sure the High Priest would never have your party attacked in his presence, Your Highness," she said. "My duty to my benan is clear. It is my responsibility to ensure the room is safe. Not the Marines'."

"And it is mine to ensure that it is safe for you, Roger." Cord's voice still wheezed alarmingly, and Roger shook his head.

"You need rest, old friend," he said. "You can't guard me if you're as weak as a day-old basik."

"Nonetheless, it is my duty," Cord said, trying unsuccessfully to conceal how heavily he was forced to lean upon his spear for support.

Roger paused in the doorway and turned to his asi. He looked up into the face that now seemed familiar, rather than alien.

"Cord, I need you for your advice more than your guarding. And I need you well. Respect my opinion in this; you need to rest still. Get your strength back. I hate to mention it, but you're not as young as you used to be, and you need more time to recover. That was a bad wound, so rest. Go to Mudh Hemh. Have a mud bath. Get some sleep. I have the Marines to cover me, and I'll come to Mudh Hemh myself, as soon as the last of these negotiations are complete."

Cord regarded him impassively for a long moment, but then made a gesture of resignation.

"It is as you say. I cannot perform my duties as I should in this condition. I'll go."

"Good!" Roger clapped him on the arm. "Recover. Build up your strength. You'll need it soon enough."

"Good morning. My name is Sergeant Adib Julian, and I will be giving the first briefing on suggested tactics for relieving the Krath problem," Julian said, looking around the room. The hall was near the center of the Shin citadel and was large enough to accommodate all of the prince's commanders and the senior Shin warlords.

The latter were an extremely mixed bag. Some of them were from groups that were in long-term close contact with the Krath, and those were fairly "civilized." They'd turned up wearing well polished armor and seemed to be following the briefing with interest. They seemed especially fascinated by the hologram of the force structure the NCO had thrown up. However, many of the other chieftains were obviously from "the back of beyond." The latter were notable for their lighter and less well maintained armor, and the wide separation the Gastan had instituted between the groups—and between some of the clans within each group, for that matter—suggested that some of them would rather beat on each other than on the Krath.

"A short analysis of relative combat strengths of the Krath and the Shin/Marine alliance indicates that direct assault is unlikely to be effective," Julian continued, bringing up a representative animation of a Shin/human assault. "The inability of the human forces to use their plasma weapons, coupled with a lack of powered armor, means that any direct assault, even with human, Diaspran, and Vashin support, is liable to be swallowed without a burp."

As he finished speaking, the short, holographic animation ended with the "good guys" dead on the field and the Krath flag flying over Nopet Nujam.

"Alternatives to this may be viable, however," he continued, and brought up a new animation. "The Krath have had only very limited experience with a civan charge, and have no equivalent at all of the pike wall."

In the animation, a unit of civan quickly ran down one flank of the Krath forces, causing the rest to redeploy. As they did, the animation drew back, showing a hazily outlined "blue" unit of pikemen and assegai troops, supported by conventional Shin forces, on the slopes above the Krath tent city.

"If this attack is simultaneous with an attack on the tent city by a stealthed armor unit, sufficient chaos may be created to permit a major sortie, supported by Diaspran and Marine infantry, to retake the siege lines and destroy the palisades and the majority of their bombards before they ever get them into effective action."

The "blue" troops on the slopes swept downward, butchering the surprised Krath in their path, and the animation ended with the wooden palisades of the siege lines, the tent city, and the bombard emplacements all sending up pillars of black smoke as they blazed merrily away.

"And then what?" one of the more barbaric chieftains asked, looking up from the design he'd been carving into a tabletop with a dagger. "You think they'll turn and run after a single defeat? We need to take Thirlot! We'll cut them off from food and retreat as we always have, and it's good loot, besides!"

"Thirlot is well defended," one of the lowland chieftains said, buffing his polished breastplate. "They left a good portion of their force there on the way up, and another is in Queicuf. If your scruffy band thinks it can take Thirlot, more power to it."

"Scruffy?! I'll give you scruffy!"

"Enough!" the Gastan barked, and his guards banged the floor with their ceremonial spears. "Shem Cothal, Shem Sul. Taking Thirlot was considered and rejected. Sergeant Julian?"

"We might be able to take Thirlot," Julian said, looking pointedly at the chieftain in the breastplate. His toot, taking its cue from the Gastan, flashed the name Shem Sul across his vision. "Certainly we could enter the city. With our aid, you could probably destroy the forces that the Gastan's spies indicate are in the city. Our non-plasma heavy weapons could smash the doors, our armor could open up any hole necessary to get you inside the walls, and a force of Shin and Marines could enter the city and roam almost at will."

He held the eye of the more polished barbarian until the latter made a gesture of agreement.

"What we could not do is hold it," he said then, turning to the other chieftain, Shem Cothal. "And if we can't hold it, we can't cut their supply lines. The Krath would turn their army to the rear and assault Thirlot by swarming the walls. Those walls are barely ten meters high; they could stand on each other's shoulders and come right over them. And they can march back down the road on the rations they have right here in camp—it's barely two days to Thirlot. When they got there, our force in the city would be overrun. It would certainly be forced out with severe casualties, possibly cut off and destroyed. Other plans involving putting a blocking force on the Queicuf-Thirlot road have also been rejected for the same reason. We simply don't have sufficient forces to hold anything other than Nopet Nujam against the Krath army."

"All of that is no doubt true," Shem Sul said. "But I have to agree with my colleague." He gestured at the hologram. "You're discussing a spoiling attack, nothing more."

"It's the best we can do at this time," Julian said. "And it's a spoiling attack we can replicate almost at will."

"They're not so stupid," the other chieftain said. "They'll change their dispositions. 'Tis but a tithe of them that attack at anytime. All they have to do is pull some of their other troops back, and your raiders are going to be useless."

"Then we'll change tactics," Roger said. "The point is to wear them down."

"As opposed to us being frittered away," Sul replied. "You'll take casualties on each raid, and they will win a battle of attrition. I have to agree with Shem Cothal; we have to cut their supply lines. Cut those, and their army withers on the vine. Nothing else, short of a human superweapon, will work."

"We can't use our superweapons until we've taken the port," Pahner said. "And you're correct, this is an attrition battle, with the addition of trying to break their will. At some point, we might takeThirlot, if only to burn it to the ground, but only if it helps with our objective, which isn't to beat them so much as to convince them to go away. We don't have the numbers to kill them all—our arms would fall off before we were done—so we're looking at ways to convince them victory would simply be too expensive. We'll look at other options, as well, but for the time being, we need to discuss the briefed plan."

Roger had been listening carefully, but now he sat up straight, picked up his pad, and started rotating the hologram, zooming in and out on the region around Queicuf. He zoomed in on the road just to the east of the fortress, where the valley narrowed down to the gorge of the Shin River, pinching the road bed between the valley walls and the deep, broad river.

"Julian, is this map to scale?"

"No, Your Highness. The vertical exaggeration is at one to three."

"Hmmm... fascinating..."

"What, Your Highness?" Pahner asked. He eyed the prince thoughtfully, wondering what the youngster was up to now. Whether it was practical or not, it should at least be interesting as hell, the Marine thought, because at some levels, Roger was a much more devious tactician than he himself was.

"There might just be an exploitable weakness here," the prince said, rotating the image again so that he was looking at the battlefield from ground level. "Captain Pahner, Lords of the Shin, we probably should try the briefed plan, if for no other reason than to put them a bit more on the defensive. But there might just be another way. Oh, my yes. Quite a weakness."

Cord turned back down the corridor, still leaning heavily on his spear for support, as the door closed on the prince. Pedi started to take his arm, then snatched her hand back as he jerked away.

"I am not so weak that I need your support, benan," he said harshly.

"I ask pardon, benai," she said. "I had not realized that contact with your benan was so beneath you."

"Not beneath me," Cord sighed. "Perhaps I should not snap, but..."

"But?" Pedi opened the door and checked the hallway beyond. The Gastan had placed guards along the corridor, and they nodded to her as she passed. She had known some of them for years, grown up with them. But she could feel the distance that now separated them, a gulf that was hard to define, yet as real as death itself. All that she knew was that either she had grown away from Mudh Hemh, or it was somehow rejecting her.

"But..." Cord began, then inhaled deeply, and not just from the pain of moving with his partially healed wound. "I know that I'm your benai, not your father," he growled. "But in the asi bond, the master has certain responsibilities. Although in my culture, females cannot become asi, if they had... problems, it would be the... responsibility of the master to deal with them."

"Problems?" Pedi asked archly as they came to their shared chamber. "What problems?" she asked as she opened the door and swept the room.

"Don't play with me, Pedi Karuse," Cord said firmly as he lowered himself onto the pile of cushions within. The fact that he barely managed to stifle a groan as he settled into them said a great deal about how far from recovered he truly was. "I'm in too much pain to play games. I can see your condition clearly, as can anyone with eyes. It is only the humans who are confused. I would have expected your father to be fuming by now."

"It is not my father's place to 'fume,' " she said sharply. "As benan, I am beyond the strictures of my family."

"Then it is my responsibility to investigate the situation," Cord said. "I am furious about this, you know. No true male would do this and then leave you to bear the burden."

Pedi opened her mouth, then shut it.

"It is my burden to bear," she said, after a moment. "It was my choice."

"It takes two to make such a choice," Cord pointed out, grimacing as he tried to find a comfortable position. "There is a male, somewhere, who has much explaining to do. A male who would impregnate you and then refuse to acknowledge that fact—such a male is without honor."

"It's not his fault," Pedi said. "I cannot—I will not—say more. But this is my responsibility to bear."

Cord sighed in exasperation, but made a gesture of resignation.

"As you will. I cannot imagine you lying with a male without honor. But let it be your secret, your 'cross,' as the humans would say. I shall raise any of the brood as if they were my own."

"I wouldn't hold you to that," Pedi said, getting the balm the human physician had made. "It is... It isn't your fault."

"I, however, am a male of honor," Cord said, then sighed in relief as she rubbed the salve into the inflamed wound. "I thank you for that," he told her, then shook himself and looked at her sternly. "But to return to what truly matters, I will not let your children be raised as bastards, Pedi. I will not. It will be as if they were mine."

"I understand, benai, but I can handle it," she said woodenly. "And the situation with the father is... complex. I wish that you would let me manage it in my own way."

"As you wish," he said with another sigh. "As you wish."

"I wish this didn't look so easy," Julian muttered.

"What?" O'Casey asked. "Something about this god-forsaken mess strikes you as 'easy'?"

She sat up straight on the camp stool, rubbing her back, and grinned at the sergeant. It was a very crooked grin, because both of them had been perusing their separate "slices" of the intelligence data from the IBI agent for the last couple of hours. While Julian concentrated on Marduk itself, she had been wading through the data about the coup, and she was coming to the conclusion that Julian was right about that information's reliability. And about the implications of that reliability.

There was too much data on the disk, and it was too consistent, and from too many known sources, to have been entirely generated locally. But if it had been generated by a central authority, if either the Empire or the Saints knew that Roger was alive on Marduk, the planet would have been crawling with searchers. Since it wasn't, the data was probably genuine, and the IBI agent was probably on the level. In which case, whatever happened here on Marduk, "just going home" was no longer an option.

"If you have good news, I could use some," she went on, leaning back from her own pad.

"That's just it—I don't know if it is good news," Julian said. "The problem is that this governor is either a complete and total idiot... or else subtly brilliant. And I've been working on the premise of subtly brilliant, looking for the dastardly plan."

"I haven't even looked," O'Casey admitted. "Who is the governor?"

"Ymyr Brown, Earl of Mountmarch," Julian said, then looked up sharply as O'Casey let out a rippling peal of laughter before she slapped her hand over her mouth to restrain the follow-on giggles.

"You know him?" Julian asked. She nodded, both hands over her mouth, and the sergeant's eyes glinted wickedly. "Okay, I can see from your reaction that you do know him, and that he's probably not all that great. But you have to give him a break—growing up with a name like 'Ymyr' couldn't have been all that much fun."

"You're being much too kind to him," O'Casey assured him. Another giggle slipped out, and she shook her head. "And take my word for it, whatever you're looking at is not a deeply laid plan. However stupid it seems."

"I almost wish it was," the sergeant said. "I just hate relying on the bad guys' stupidity. Even idiots have a bad habit of slipping up and doing something reasonably intelligent every so often, if only so Murphy can screw with your mind. Besides, nobody could really be this dumb."

"What did he do?" O'Casey asked, looking over his shoulder at an indecipherable schematic. After a moment, it resolved itself into a map of the port.

"Well, he set up an intelligence network in all the satraps of Krath," Julian said. He touched a control and brought up a picture of the continent, with data scrolling along the sides and political boundaries mapped in. "That much isn't dumb. But he has all these reports coming in, and he didn't want the spies just walking through his front gates. So he set up cleared lanes in the defenses!"

O'Casey grinned again, this time at his expression. Disbelief mingled with professional outrage on the sergeant's face, until he ended up looking just plain disgusted.

"That's Mountmarch all over," she said. "He's a brilliant media manipulator, and thinks his brilliance at that extends to everything. There's nothing in the world for which he doesn't have a better, and much more brilliant, plan. Of course, the reality is that the vast majority of them backfire—often badly."

"Who is he?" Julian asked. "Other than the governor of the colony, that is?"

"He used to be a power at court," O'Casey said as she leaned back. She hadn't bothered to store her files on the Earl of Mountmarch in her toot, so they'd been lost along with most of her reference works and papers when DeGlopper was destroyed. Now she delved deep into plain old, biochemical memory for as much as she could recall about the earl and frowned thoughtfully.

"That was back in Roger's grandfather's later days," she went on. "There's not much question that he really was a brilliant example of a 'spin merchant,' and the old Emperor was very fixated on public opinion. Even though he wasn't elected, he felt that the will of the people should be observed. Which is all well and good, but ruling based on opinion polls, especially ones pushed by narrow agendas, is never a great idea. It's one of the reasons that the Empress is still having so many problems. Or was, before the coup, at any rate."

Their eyes met grimly for a moment. Then she gave herself a shake and resumed once more.

"The approach of the Imperial bureaucracy—that it's either completely untouchable, or that its function is solely to act in accordance with the will of opinion polls (which actually means at the will of skilled manipulators like Mountmarch who shape those polls)—is a tremendous drag on getting anything fixed," she said. "It's that holdover of bureaucratic and senior policy officer inertia, coupled with the iron triangle of senatorial interests, the interests of the bureaucracies, and the special interest groups and polls that combine to drive the senatorial agenda, that have made it nearly impossible for the Empress to get any real change enacted or to replace the worst of the bureaucrats with more proactive people.

"But I digress," she said, pausing to inhale, then cocked her head as Julian broke out in laughter. "What?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't think I've heard you say that much about the situation back home this entire trip."

O'Casey sighed and shook her head.

"I'm familiar with preindustrial societies, and plots and plotters seem to be the same on Earth as on Marduk. But it's modern Imperial politics that are my real forte."

"I can tell," Julian said with another chuckle. "But you were saying about Mountmarch?"

"Mountmarch," she repeated. "Well, he excelled at taking the interests that were brought to him—whatever they were, but they tended to be on the 'Saints' end of the political spectrum—and turning molehills into mountains. He knew just about everyone in the media, and no matter who paid him, or for what, before you could say 'it's for the children,' whatever was going to end the universe this time would be the number one headline on all the e-casts and mags. And suddenly, with remarkable speed, there'd be committees, and blue ribbon panels, and legislation, and opinion polls, and nongovernmental charity organizations—all of them with lists of contacts and almost identical talking points, sprouting up like mushrooms. It really was quite an industry.

"And the leaks! He had access to everyone in the upper echelons of His Majesty's Government, either because they were afraid of him, or else because they wanted him to do the same thing for them. And whenever there was a tidbit of information that worked for the interest he was pushing at the moment, it would be major news the day he got it. Then along came Alexandra.

"Roger's mother had been watching him basically push her father around for years, and she didn't care for it one bit. In general, Alexandra tends towards the socialistic and environmentalist side of the political spectrum herself, but she's also aware of the dangers to society of going too far. So when the newest item Mountmarch was pushing was over the Lorthan Cluster, she pushed back—hard."

"Lorthan?" Julian asked. "You mean the Lorthan Incident?"

"The very same," she said. "Mountmarch was given the information that a task force had been sent out to lie doggo and try to catch the Saints red-handed raiding the Lorthan colonies. They'd been insisting that it was nothing but pirates, and offering 'military assistance in our need,' but all the indications were that it was a Saint force or forces that were trying to drive humans, and their 'contamination,' off of the Lorthan habitables."

"So was it Saints, or pirates?"

"Well, officially, no one knows," O'Casey said. "The task force was the ambushee rather than the ambusher, and officially, there was no information one way or the other on whether it was Saints or pirates. Of course, a pirate fleet that could take on an Imperial task force is pretty unlikely. And then there were the two Muir-class cruisers that were captured nearly intact."

"I hadn't heard that," Julian said.

"And you still haven't. But when we get back and I get situated, I'll take you out to Charon Base and you can see them. The point is that the leak cost nearly fourteen hundred Fleet lives, and Alexandra was not pleased."

"So she pinned it on Mountmarch?"

"He was the most common facilitator of such things. Whether he did it, or someone else, she really didn't care. She used administrative actions to remove most of his titles, but as a sop she must have posted him to Marduk. The most out of the way, barren, forsaken, and useless post in the Empire. And he's under Imperial law, so if he so much as sneezed, he'd be dealing with IO and the IBI, instead of local officers and the IC Authority. He can manipulate those; he still has people who, for some godforsaken reason, think he has a clue. But the Inspectorate and the IBI are another thing entirely."

"Remind me not to get on her bad side," Julian said. "Of course, I think that with a little training, Roger's going to be nearly as nasty. Maybe nastier. The tough part will be keeping him from killing anyone who pisses him off. But for right now, at least I can give him some good news—the local commander is an idiot, if a good manipulator of the media, and it looks like the port is going to be a cakewalk."

"Let's not get cocky," she said warningly.

"Oh, we won't," Julian said. "Two of the plasma cannon are listed as off line, but Item Number One will be to take them out anyway, just to be on the safe side. We'll send the armor in first to remove the wire, in case it's really there, then the mines. There's other bits. We'll get it right."

"And then grab a ship and go home," she said.

"To what?" Julian asked. "That's not going to be so easy."

"No," she admitted. "Everything in this download is hanging together, so I think Temu Jin is on the up and up. All the usual suspects in something like the 'attempted coup' are saying all the usual things. In fact, they're being so 'normal' that I've got the very definite feeling of either excellent information management, or pressure from behind the scenes. Although the Imperial Telegraph has called for a 'full and independent medical review of Her Majesty' with 'all due deference to the Throne.' On the other hand, they're being castigated by most of the major news outlets for 'pressuring her in her grief.' "

"As if that matters when the safety of the Empire is on the line?" Julian asked.

"Well, it does to some, or at least the polls will say so," O'Casey said with a thin smile. "Only the Commons can call for a vote of confidence on Her Majesty, and that's what it would take to force an independent medical exam, if our suspicions are correct. And we're not the only ones voicing them; there's a broad rumor that the Empress is being mind-controlled by Roger's father, with Jackson barely even mentioned. The problem is, that its being spun into a 'conspiracy theory' tying back to the death of the Emperor John and everything up to an invasion by implacable alien bugs from the Andromeda Galaxy."

"Thank goodness for the Andromeda Galaxy!" Julian laughed. "Without it, there'd be no science-fiction at all!"

"Indeed," she smiled. "Well, one wag does have it as the Andromeda System, but he's probably talking about Rigel."

"Probably," Julian agreed. "Another favorite."

"But if—when it turns out that she is being controlled, we're going to have an uphill climb to convince people that she was. In this case, something which happens to be the absolute truth is being successfully tied to every silly, paranoid fantasy floating around loose. Which means that it's undoubtably in the process of being dismissed by every 'serious-minded' person in the Empire."

She shook her head.

"I wish I could be convinced that it was just happening to work out this way, but I don't think it is. I think what we're looking at is a carefully organized defense in depth. First, the people really behind the coup are counting on 'sensible people' to reject such crazy rumors out of hand. That will undercut any effort to force an independent exam of the Empress which might prove that she's being controlled, which is bad enough. But even worse, if Roger turns back up and claims he's been framed and that his mother's being mind-controlled, it's going to be really, really hard to convince anyone that he's telling the truth.

"But at the same time, I think Jackson is deliberately setting New Madrid up as the fall guy—the 'evil manipulator' the 'good Regent' can discover and pin all the blame on if the wheels start to come off. He can hammer New Madrid under any time he has to, and look at the other advantage it gives him. New Madrid is Roger's father, whether Roger can stand him or not. So who would be a more natural 'evil manipulator' than the father of that arch traitor, Roger MacClintock? Obviously, father and son thought the whole thing up together!"

She sighed, and shook her head again.

"I'm sure he believes Roger really is dead, so the whole thing is designed to use New Madrid as a scapegoat and a diversion if he needs one. I suppose I could even argue that the fact that he thinks he may need a diversion badly enough to concoct this new story blaming it all on Roger is a sign that his control is a lot shakier than it looks from here. But even though he's setting it up for an entirely different set of reasons, it's only going to make things look even worse for Roger if Jackson 'suddenly discovers' that New Madrid has been controlling the Empress all along. And it's going to be a lot tougher for us to deal with that than it's going to be to get through Mountmarch's defenses here on Marduk."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll figure something out," Julian said. "And the good news is that if you can't, it's just as likely we'll all be dead long before the problem crops up."