Empire of Man Read online

  “Ghosts!” he scoffed. “No, it’s some other tribe come to help us against these humans. Perhaps the Talna or the Boort.”

  “Nooo,” Banty Kar said dubiously. “Neither use armor. The last time I saw such a host was in the fighting for T’an K’tass.”

  “Ghosts,” the chieftain grunted again, but with a nervous edge. “All of those lands are ours, now. We took them, and we keep them. Even against these ‘human’ demons.”

  “Took them, yes,” Kar said as he started toward the walls. “Keep them? Maybe.”

  “How’s it going, Julian?” Pahner asked over the radio. Third Platoon—what remained of it—had gathered on the gatehouse rubble while Second and First pulled their dead and wounded out of the damaged bastion.

  “Oh, fair, Sir. Looks like they’re getting ready to come back.”

  “Very well.” Pahner looked around at the pitiful remnants of his company, and shook his head. “Swing around to cover our front. Third Platoon, prepare to deploy over the rubble.”

  “It is T’an K’tass!” Banty Kar cried. The Kranolta second in command gestured at the flag that had just been unfurled atop one of the armored flar-ta. “That’s the Spreading Tree!”

  “Impossible!” Far shouted, refusing to believe his eyes. “We killed them all! We destroyed their warriors, and scattered their people to the winds.”

  “But we didn’t kill their sons,” his second grated in a voice of bleached, old bone, and a groan of despair went up from the Kranolta host as another banner was unfurled and the long-lost symbol of the Fire and the Iron soared over the battlefield.

  “Nor all the sons of Voitan.”

  “Captain,” Julian called, “you might want to hold up. Something just happened with the two forces. The new one just raised some flags. I don’t know scummies real well, but I don’t think the Kranolta are all that happy to see these new guys after all.”

  “Understood,” Pahner replied. “Keep me advised,” he finished just as the Kranolta broke into a chant.

  “Do you hear that?!” T’Leen Targ demanded. “That’s the sound I’ve waited to hear most of my life: the sound of the Kranolta Death Chant!” The big, old Mardukan hefted the battle ax attached to his stump and waved it high. “Suck on this, you barbarian bastards! Voitan is back!”

  “Aye!” T’Kal Vlan shouted back. The last of the princes of T’an K’tass grunted in laughter as he listened to the mournful dirge. “It’s time for T’an K’tass to collect a debt!”

  Much of the force consisted of mercenaries, gathered from all over the lower city-states. But the core of the army were the sons and grandsons of the cities fallen before the Kranolta. Both Voitan and T’an K’tass had managed to evacuate not only noncombatants, but also funds. Those funds had been scattered in businesses ventures in multiple city-states, awaiting the day when Voitan could rise again.

  And this day, the humans had cleared the way.

  “Oh, the demons are feasting well this day!” Targ clapped his remaining true-hand to the ax in delight as he surveyed the mountainous piles of corpses. “Look at the souls these humans have sent on!”

  “And it looks as if they’re still holding out.” Vlan gestured at the smoking citadel. “I think we should hurry.” He turned to the force at his back. “Forward the Tree! Time to take back our own!”

  “Forward the Tree!” the roar came back to him. “Forward the Flame!”

  “Hammer those Kranolta bastards into atul food!” T’Leen Targ howled, waving his ax overhead.

  “Forward the Tree! Forward the Flame!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Despreaux knelt beside the prince in the dim light.

  The wounded had been gathered in a line on the ledge on the north side of the cavernous keep, and the bandaged and burnt Marines were mostly asleep, courtesy of Doc Dobrescu. Their wounds were horrible, even by modern standards. Most of the wounded seemed to be from First and Second platoon; despite the protection of their flame resistant chameleon suits, most of them looked like so many pieces of barbecued chicken, and she shook her head and turned away when she realized that the white thing sticking out of Kileti’s uniform was his ulna.

  Horrible though it was, the damage would heal. Even the severed limbs would regrow over time, and the nanites and regenerative retroviruses the Marines were pumped full of were already hard at work repairing the gross wounds. As skin grew over burns and muscles mended at impossible speeds, the limbs would start regrowing, as well.

  There was a metabolic penalty, of course. For the next several days, the wounded would be able to do nothing but eat and sleep as the nanites worked feverishly to repair the wounds and combat infections. But in time—short or long, depending mostly on the amount of damage rather than its severity—the terrible wounds would reduce themselves to nothing but scars. In time, even those scars would fade. To be replaced by new ones, undoubtedly.

  She touched the prince’s face and picked up the diagnostic tag attached to his uniform. There were only a few of those, and she was surprised Dobrescu had used it on him. Or maybe she wasn’t. There were more seriously wounded—the tag told her that immediately with its readout of his alpha rhythms, blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen—but there were none so precious.

  She touched his face again, gently.

  “He gets to you, doesn’t he?” a gravelly voice asked.

  She froze and looked up at the sergeant major.

  “You look like a rabbit in a spotlight,” Kosutic told her with a quiet chuckle. The senior NCO had propped herself up on her uninjured right arm to contemplate the squad leader with a quizzical smile.

  “I was just checking on Third Platoon’s wounded, Sergeant Major,” Despreaux said guiltily . . . and almost truthfully. That had been her rationale for the visit, but she’d realized almost immediately what she was really after.

  “Try to tell the Old Man that, girl—not me!” the sergeant major snapped, shifting her burnt and mangled left arm into a better position. Or, at least, one that was marginally less uncomfortable. “You haven’t so much as looked at any of the other wounded. You’ve just been making cow eyes at Roger.”

  “Sergeant Major—” Despreaux began.

  “Can it, I said! I know exactly what’s going on. It was obvious even back on the ship, if you had eyes. And I do.”

  “But . . . I hated him back on the ship,” the sergeant protested. “He was so . . . so. . . .”

  “Snotty?” Kosutic suggested with a chuckle that cut off abruptly. “Shit, don’t make me laugh, girl! Yeah. And you were making cow eyes at him, snotty attitude and all.”

  “I was not making cow eyes,” Despreaux insisted firmly.

  “Call it what you want, girl,” the older woman said with a grin. “I call it cow eyes.”

  Despreaux looked around almost desperately, but all the other wounded seemed to be asleep. If they weren’t, they were being incredibly disciplined in not laughing at her. Then she looked back at Kosutic.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” the sergeant major said, and chuckled again at her look of surprise. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about, Sergeant. And so far he seems to be either oblivious or beating you off with a club. I’m not sure which.”

  “Neither am I,” the squad leader admitted sadly.

  “Look,” Kosutic said, “when I’m not feeling like a pounded piece of liver, come talk to me about this. I don’t know if I can do anything, but we can talk. No reports, no notes, no counseling. Just . . . girl talk. About boy problems.”

  “Girl talk,” Despreaux repeated incredulously. She looked at the sergeant major, then down at the line of combat ribbons and the burnt and mangled arm. “You realize that that sounds . . . odd.”

  “Hey, you’ve got boy problems,” the senior NCO said, pointing at the sleeping prince with her chin. “Think of me as your older sister.”

  “Okay,” Despreaux said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “If you say so
. Girl talk.”

  “Later,” the sergeant major agreed, lying back down. “When I don’t feel like pounded liver.”

  The first thing Roger noticed was a raging thirst. Hard on the heels of the thirst, though, was a headache that put it to shame.

  He groaned and tried moving his fingers and toes. Something seemed to happen, so next he tried opening his eyes.

  Well, he thought, cataloging his sensory impressions, it was hot and close, and there was a rock roof overhead. There was also a distinct stench of flar-ta droppings, and he swore, as he gagged on the dreadful smell, that he would never complain about grumbly oil again. He’d found so many, many smells that were worse.

  Starting with burnt pork.

  He turned his head to the side and groaned again. He didn’t know what had happened to the Marine, but it been bad. Bad enough that he wasn’t too sure, right offhand, whether it was a man or a woman.

  “Plasma blast,” a voice said from his other side. Roger turned his head, slowly and carefully, and looked up into the ugly face of Doc Dobrescu. “Only the bloom from it, actually. Not that that wasn’t bad enough.” The warrant officer gazed at his other patient for a moment, then back at Roger.

  “Morning, Your Highness.”

  “My head,” Roger croaked.

  “Kinda hurts?” the medic asked cheerfully.

  “Yeah.”

  The former Raider leaned forward and administered a stim shot to the prince’s neck. In a moment, a wave of blessed relief flowed through him.

  “Ooooh.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” the medic cautioned. “We’ve got lots of wounded. And on that subject, I need you to get your ass in gear, Your Highness. I’ve got other people to attend to.”

  Roger felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him up, and looked back to discover that it belonged to Matsugae.

  “Kostas?” he asked him blearily. He listened, but there was no crash of plasma cannon or crack of bead rifles. “What happened? Did we win?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the valet said, propping him up and handing him a cup of deliciously cool water. “Welcome back.”

  An image flashed suddenly across Roger’s memory.

  “Despreaux?” he said sharply.

  “Sergeant Despreaux?” the valet asked with a puzzled expression. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?”

  Roger thought about explaining the memory of an upraised ax, but decided against it. He might also have to explain the strange, unsettled feeling that the image caused him.

  “Never mind. What’s the situation?”

  “We won, as you surmised,” the valet told him. “But things are complicated at the moment.”

  Roger looked around the fetid keep and blanched.

  “How many?” he asked, gazing at the rows of wounded.

  “Thirty-eight,” Dobrescu replied, coming by checking monitors. “That aren’t walking wounded. Twelve KIA . . . including Lieutenant Gulyas, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, God.” Roger’s eyes returned to the burn patient next to him. So many of the wounded seemed to have terrible burns. “What happened?” he repeated.

  “Plasma fire,” Dobrescu said simply. “Things got . . . a little tight.”

  “We need to get them out of here,” the prince said, waving a hand around in the stinking dimness. “This is no place to put a hospital.”

  “They’re working on it, Your Highness,” the medic told him. “We’ll have them out of here by nightfall. In the meantime, it’s the only roof we’ve got.”

  “Okay.” Roger levered himself up with help from the valet. “Make sure of it.”

  The prince stumbled across the floor to the open doorway and stopped at the view that greeted him. The interior of the citadel was a scene from some demented vision of Hell.

  The eastern bastion, Second Platoon’s redoubt, was a blackened ruin. The curtain wall on that side was still covered in Mardukan dead, and the doors and spear slits were blasted, blackened, and broken.

  The gatehouse was nothing but rubble, and half-fused, still-smoking rubble, at that. And the bailey was covered in Mardukan dead, piled five and six deep . . . where the piles weren’t even deeper. Since the gate had been the only drain for the torrential Mardukan rains, the courtyard had started to fill with water. The line of natives who were working to clear the area already waded ankle deep in the noisome mess as they bent over the dead, and it was getting deeper.

  Roger peered at the natives picking up bodies and bits of bodies in the gruesome, deepening soup.

  “Are those who I think they are?”

  “Kranolta,” Kostas confirmed.

  “They have weapons,” Roger pointed out in a croak. He took another sip of water and shook his head. “What happened?” he asked for the third time.

  “We won,” the valet repeated. “Sort of. Forces from the other city-states showed up right at the end. They hit the Kranolta from the rear, and drove them back over the wall, where they finally took the eastern bastion. By then, Captain Pahner had evacuated it anyway, and it was the only cover they could find. Between the pressure of the new forces and having them pinned down, the Marines more or less wiped them out.

  “But quite a few of them had withdrawn to their encampment before the city-state forces arrived. Only a handful of their original army, but enough that they could still have caused lots of problems, so Pahner arranged a cease-fire. The Kranolta that are left don’t have any interest in facing Marines or the ‘New Voitan’ forces, but they’ll fight if forced to. So the Captain and our new . . . allies agreed to let them keep their weapons and bury their dead.”

  “What a disaster,” Roger whispered, looking over his shoulder back into the keep.

  “It could have been worse, Sir.”

  “How?” Roger demanded bitterly.

  “Well,” the valet said as the rain began again, “we could have lost.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “If you hadn’t come, we would have lost.”

  Roger took a sip of wine. The vintage was excellent, but then, all of the tent’s appointments were excellent, from the finely tooled leather of its walls, to its hammered brass tables. The cushions on the floor were covered in a cloth the humans had never seen before, silky and utterly unlike the more common rough and wool-like material found in Q’Nkok. Obviously, T’Kal Vlan traveled in style.

  “Perhaps so.” The last ruler of T’an K’tass picked up a candied slice of kate fruit and nibbled it. “Yet even so, you would have destroyed the Kranolta. That’s surely worth something even in the eyes of gods of the most distant land!”

  Captain Pahner shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but it isn’t. We come from an empire so vast that the Kranolta and all the valley of the Hurtan are an unnoticeable speck. I’m glad that you’re glad, but the losses we took might mean the prince won’t make it home.” He grinned at the Mardukans. “And that would really disappoint his mother.”

  “Ah!” Roger exclaimed. “Not that! Not Mother angry! God forbid!”

  “A formidable woman, eh?” T’Kal Vlan grunted a laugh.

  “Rather,” Roger told him with a shrug. “He has a point, though. I’m sure that if I died, Mother would visit me beyond the grave to chastise me for it.”

  “So, you see,” Pahner continued, “I’m afraid I have to count this one as a straight loss.”

  “Not really, Captain,” the prince said, swirling his wine gently. “We’ve cleared the way. One way or another, we had to get to the other side of this range of hills, and none of the choices were particularly good. There’s no reason to second-guess this one. If we’d gone south, we would’ve been walking through a war, and we would undoubtedly have second-guessed ourselves then and said ‘I bet those Kranolta pussies wouldn’t have been this much trouble.’”

  “Well, I for one thank you for clearing out most of those ‘Kranolta pussies,’” T’Leen Targ said, with his own grunt of laughter. “Already, the ironworkers we brought
with us are building the furnaces. We have gathered all the surviving masters of the art and their apprentices. Soon the lifeblood of Voitan will flow once more.”

  “Aye,” T’Kal Vlan agreed. “And the sooner the better. My own treasury is flowing away like blood.”

  “You need to capitalize,” O’Casey said. The chief of staff had been quietly sipping her wine and listening to the warriors’ testosterone grunting with amusement. This, however, was her specialty.

  “Agreed,” Vlan said. “But the family has already liquidated most of its holdings to fund the expedition. Short of borrowing, at extortionate rates, I’m not sure how to raise more capital.”

  “Sell shares,” O’Casey suggested. “Offer a partial ownership of the mines. Each share has a vote on management, and each gains equity and shares in the profits, if any. It would be a long-term investment, but not a particularly risky one if you’re sufficiently capitalized. “

  “I didn’t understand all the words you just used,” Vlan said, cocking his head. “What is this ‘equity’?”

  “Oh, my.” O’Casey grinned widely. “We really must have a long conversation.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pahner told her with a shrug. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

  Roger sat up in his tent, damp with sweat and panting and looked around him. All clear. Tent walls faintly billowing in the wind that had come up. Camp gear. Eyes.

  “You should be resting, Your Highness,” said Cord faintly.

  “So should you, old snake,” Roger said. “You don’t heal as fast as we do.” He sat up on the camp cot and took a deep breath. “It just, you know, comes back.”

  “Yes, it does,” the Mardukan agreed.

  “I wonder how . . .” The prince stopped and shook his head.