West of Honor

CHAPTER 2

I've a head like a concertina,

and I think I'm going to die,

and I'm here in the clink for a thunderin' drink,

and blackin' the corporal's eye…

"Picturesque," Louis said. "They sing well, don't they?"

"Shut up and walk," Deane told him. "It's bloody hot."

I didn't find it so bad. It was hot. No question about that, and undress blues were never designed for route marches on hot planets. Still, it could have been worse. We might have turned out in body armor.

There was no problem with the troops. They marched and sang like regulars, even if half of them were recruits and the rest were guardhouse cases. If any of them had ideas of running, they never showed them.

With another man's cloak underneath of my head,

and a beautiful view of the yard,

it's thirty days fine, with bread and no wine,

for Drunk and Resistin' the Guard!

Mad drunk and Resistin' the Guard!

"Curious," Louis intoned. "Half of them have never seen a guardhouse."

"I expect they'll find out soon enough," Deane replied. "Lord love us, will you look at that?"

He gestured at a row of cheap adobe houses along the river bank. There wasn't much doubt about what they sold. The girls were dressed for hot weather, and they sat in the windows and waved at the troopers going by.

"I thought Arrarat was full of Holy Joes," Louis Bonneyman marvelled. "Well, we will have no difficulty finding any troopers who run. First night, anyway."

The harbor area was just north of a wide river that fanned into a delta east of the city. The road wound just inland from the harbor; and the city formed a high bluff to our right as we marched. It seemed a long way before we arrived at the turnoff to the city gate.

There were facilities for servicing the space shuttle and some riverboat docks and warehouses, but it seemed to me there wasn't a lot of activity, and I wondered why. As far as I could remember there weren't any railroads on Arrarat, nor many highways, and I couldn't remember seeing any airfields.

After marching a kilometer inland we made a sharp right turn and followed another road up the bluff. There was a rabbit warren of crumbling houses and alleys along the bluff, followed by a clear area in front of the high city wall. Militia in drab coveralls manned a guardhouse at the city gate. Other militiamen patrolled the wall. Inside the gate was Harmony, another warren of houses and shops not much different from those outside but a little better kept up.

There was a clear area for 30 meters on each side of the main road, and beyond that was chaos. Market stalls, houses, tailor shops, electronics shops, a smithy with hand bellows and forge, a shop that wound electric motors and another that sold solar cells, a pottery with a kick wheel where a woman shaped cups from clay, a silversmith, a scissors grinder-the variety was overwhelming, and so was the contrast between the modern and the things reminiscent of Frontierland.

There were anachronisms everywhere, but I was used to them. The military services were shot through with contrasts. Part of it was the state of development out in the colonies-many of them had no industrial base, and some didn't want any to begin with. If you didn't bring it with you, you wouldn't have it. But there was another reason. CoDominium Intelligence licensed all scientific research and tried to suppress anything that could have military value. The US-Soviet alliance was in control and wasn't about to let any new discoveries upset the balance. They couldn't stop everything, but they didn't have to, so long as the Grand Senate controlled everyone's r amp;d budget and could tinker with the patent laws.

We all knew it couldn't last, but we didn't want to think about that. Back on Earth the US and Soviet governments hated each other. The only thing they hated more was the idea that someone else, like the Chinese or Japanese or United Emirates, would become strong enough to tell them what to do. The Fleet guards an uneasy peace built on an uneasy alliance.

The people of Harmony came in all races and colors, and I heard a dozen languages shouted from shop to shop. Everyone worked either outside his house or from a market stall. When we marched past, people stopped work and waved at us. One old man came out of a tailor shop and took off his broad-brimmed hat. "God bless you, soldiers," he shouted. "We love you."

"Now that's what we joined up for," Deane said. "Not to herd a bunch of losers halfway across the galaxy-"

"Twenty parsecs isn't halfway across the galaxy," I told him.

He made faces at me.

"I wonder why they're all so glad to see us?" Louis asked. "And they look hungry. How does one become so thin in an agricultural paradise?"

"Incredible," Deane said. "Louis, you really must learn to pay attention to important details. Such as reading the station roster of the garrison here."

"And when could I have done that?" Bonneyman demanded. "Falkenberg had us working 12 hours a day-"

"So you use the other 12," Deane said.

"And what, O brilliant one, didst thou learn from the station roster?" I asked.

"That the garrison commander is over 70, and he has one 63-year-old major on his staff, as well as a 62-year-old captain. That the youngest marine officer on Arrarat is over 60, and the only junior officers are militia."

"Bah. A retirement post," Bonneyman said. "So why did they ask for a regiment?"

"Don't be silly, Louis," Deane said. "Because they've run into something they can't handle with their militia and their superannuated officers, of course."

"Meaning we'll have to," I said. Only of course we didn't have a regiment, only less than 1000 marines, three junior officers, a captain with the Military Cross, and-well, and nothing, unless the local militia was capable of something. "The heroes have arrived."

"Yes. Nice isn't it?" Deane said. "I expect the women will be friendly."

"And is that all you ever think about?" Louis demanded.

"What else is there? Marching in the sun?"

A younger townsman in dark, clerical clothing stood at his table under the awning of a sidewalk cafe. He raised a hand in a gesture of blessing. There were more cheers from a group of children.

"Nice to be loved," Deane said.

Despite the way he said it, Deane meant that. It was nice to be loved. I remembered my last leave on Earth. There were a lot of places where CD officers didn't dare go without a squad of troopers. Out here the people wanted us. The paladins, I thought, and I laughed at myself because I could imagine what Deane and Louis would say if I'd said that aloud, but I wondered if they didn't think it too.

"They don't seem to have much transport," Louis remarked.

"Unless you count those." Deane pointed to a watering trough where five horses were tied. There were also two camels and an animal that looked like a clumsy combination of camel, moose, and mule, with big, splayed feet and silly antlers.

That had to be an alien beast, the first life form I was certain was native to this planet. I wondered what they called it.

There was almost no motor transport. A few pickup trucks and one old ground-effects car with no top; everything else was animal transport. There were wagons and men on horseback; two women dressed in coveralls were mounted on mules.

Bonneyman shook his head. "Looks as if they stirred up a brew from the American Wild West, Medieval Paris and threw in scenes from the Arabian Nights."

We all laughed, but Louis wasn't far wrong.

Arrarat was discovered soon after the first private exploration ships went out from Earth. It was an inhabitable planet, and although there are a number of those in the regions near Earth, they aren't all that common. A survey team was sent to find out what riches could be taken.

There weren't any. Earth crops would grow, and men could live on the planet, but no one was going to invest money in agriculture. Shipping foodstuffs through interstellar space is a simple way of going bankrupt unless there are nearby markets with valuable minerals and no agriculture. This planet had no nearby market at all.

The American Express Company owned settlement rights through discovery. AmEx sold the planet to a combine of churches. The World Federation of Churches named it Arrarat and advertised it as "a place of refuge for the unwanted of Earth." The federation began to raise money for its development, and since this was before the Bureau of Relocation began involuntary colonies, it was successful. Charity, tithes, government grants all helped, and then the church groups hit on the idea of a lottery. Winners and their families received free transportation to Arrarat; and there were plenty of people willing to trade Earth for a place where there was free land, plenty to eat, hard work, no government harassment and no pollution. The World Federation of Churches sold tens of millions of one-credit lottery tickets. They soon had enough money to charter ships and send people out.

There was plenty of room for colonists, even though the inhabitable portion of Arrarat is comparatively small. The planet's mean temperature is higher than Earth's, and the regions near the equator are far too hot for men to live in. It is too cold at the poles. The southern hemisphere is nearly all water. Even so, there is plenty of land in the north temperate zone. The delta area where Harmony was founded was chosen as the best of the lot. It's climate resembled the Mediterranean region of Earth. Rainfall was erratic, but the colony thrived.

The churches had very little money, but the planet didn't need heavy industry. Animals were shipped instead of tractors, on the theory that horses and oxen can make other horses and oxen, but tractors make only oil refineries and smog. Industry wasn't wanted; Arrarat was to be a place where each man could prune his own vineyard and sit in the shade of his fig tree. Some on the Church Federation governing board actively hated industrial technology and none loved it; and there was no need anyway. The planet could easily support far more than the half to three quarters of a million people the churches sent out as colonists.

Then disaster struck. A survey ship found thorium and other valuable metals in the asteroid belt of Arrarat's system. It wasn't a disaster for everyone, of course. American Express was happy enough, and so was Kennicott Metals after they bought mining rights; but for the church groups it was disaster enough. The miners came, and with them came trouble. The only convenient place for the miners to go for recreation was Arrarat, and the kinds of establishments asteroid miners like weren't what the Church Federation had in mind. The "Holy Joes" and the "Goddams" shouted at each other and petitioned the Grand Senate for help, while the madams and gamblers and distillers set up for business.

That wasn't the worst of it. The Church Federation petition to the CoDominium Grand Senate ended up in the CD bureaucracy, and an official in Bureau of Corrections noticed that a lot of empty ships were going from Earth to Arrarat. They came back full of refined thorium, but they went out deadhead… and BuCorrect had plenty of prisoners they didn't know what to do with. It cost money to keep them. Why not, BuCorrect reasoned, send the prisoners to Arrarat and turn them loose? Earth would be free of them. It was humane. Better yet, the churches could hardly object to setting captives free.

The BuCorrect official got a promotion, and Arrarat got over half a million criminals and convicts, most of whom had never lived outside a city. They knew nothing of farming, and they drifted to Harmony where they tried to live as best they could. The result was predictable. Harmony soon had the highest crime rate in the history of man.

The situation was intolerable for Kennicott Metals.

Miners wouldn't work without planet leave, but they didn't dare go to Harmony. Their union demanded that someone do something, and Kennicott appealed to the Grand Senate. A regiment of CoDominium marines was sent to Arrarat. They couldn't stay long; but they didn't have to. They built walls around the city of Harmony and, for good measure, built the town of Garrison adjacent to it. Then the marines put all the convicts outside the walls.

It wasn't intended to be a permanent solution. A CoDominium governor was appointed, over the objections of the World Federation of Churches. The Colonial Bureau made preparations to send a government team of judges and police and technicians and industrial development specialists so that Arrarat could support the streams of people BuCorrect had sent. Before they arrived Kennicott found an even more valuable source of thorium in a system nearer to Earth, the Arrarat mines were put into reserve, and there was no longer any reason for the CoDominium Grand Senate to be interested in Arrarat. The marine garrison pulled out, leaving a cadre to help train colonial militia to defend the walls of Harmony-Garrison.

"What are you so moody about?" Deane asked.

"Just remembering what was in the briefing they gave us. You aren't the only one who studies up," I said.

"And what have you concluded?"

"Not a lot. I wonder how the people here like living in a prison? It's got to be that way, convicts outside and citizens inside. Marvellous."

"Perhaps they have a city jail," Louis suggested. "That would be a prison within a prison."

"Fun-ny," Deane said.

We walked along in silence, listening to the tramp of the boots ahead of us, until we came to another wall. There were guards at that gate, too. We passed into the smaller city of Garrison.

"And why couldn't they have had transportation for officers?" Louis Bonneyman asked. "There are trucks here."

There weren't many, but there were more than in Harmony. Most of the vehicles were surplus military ground-effects troop carriers. There were also more wagons.

"March or die, Louis. March or die." Deane grinned.

Louis said something under his breath. "March or Die" was a slogan of the old French Foreign Legion, and the Line marines were direct descendants of the legion, with a lot of its traditions. Bonneyman couldn't stand the idea that he wasn't living up to the service's standards.

Commands rattled down the ranks of the marching men. "Look like marines, damn you!" Ogilvie shouted.

"Falkenberg's showing off," Deane said.

"About time, too," Louis told him. "The fort is just ahead."

"Sound off!" Ogilvie ordered.

We've left blood in the dirt of 25 worlds,

we've built roads on a dozen more,

and all that we have at the end of our hitch

buys a night with a second-class whore.

The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,

the orders come down from on high.

It's "On Full Kits" and "Sound Board Ships."

we're sending you where you can die.

Another legion tradition, I thought. Over every orderly room door in Line regiments is a brass plaque. It says: "YOU ARE LINE MARINES IN ORDER TO DIE, AND THE FLEET WILL SEND YOU WHERE YOU CAN DIE." An inheritance from La Legion Etrangere. The first time I saw it I thought it was dashing and romantic, but now I wondered if they meant it.

The troops marched in the slow cadence of the Line marines. It wasn't a fast pace, but we could keep it up long after quick-marching troops keeled over from exhaustion.

The lands that we take, the Senate gives back,

rather more often than not,

but the more that are killed, the less share the loot,

and we won't be back to this spot.

We'll break the hearts of your women and girls,

we may break your arse as well,

then the Line marines with their banners unfurled

will follow those banners to hell.

We know the devil, his pomps and his works,

Ah yes! We know them well!

When you've served out your hitch in the Line marines,

you can bugger the Senate of Hell!

"An opportunity we may all have," Deane said. "Rather sooner than I'd like. What do they want with us here?"

"I expect we'll find out soon enough," I shrugged.

Then we'll drink with our comrades

and throw down our packs,

We'll rest ten years on the flat of our backs,

Then it's "On Full Kits" and out of your racks,

you must build a new road through Hell!

The Fleet is our country, we sleep with a rifle,

no man ever begot a son on his rifle,

they pay us in gin and curse when we sin,

there's not one that can stand us unless we're downwind,

we're shot when we lose and turned out when we win,

But we bury our comrades wherever they fall,

and there's none that can face us though we've nothing at all.