CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

"You're sure about this, Poertena?" Lieutenant Jasco asked dubiously.

The blazing fireplace made the kitchen an inferno which was normally empty, but for Matsugae and the mahout's wives who helped him with meals. Now, however, it was crowded with the sergeant major, the lieutenant, Poertena, and Denat, along with Julian and one of his fire teams. Matsugae and his current assistant continued preparing the evening meal, stepping around the Marines and Mardukans crowding the room, but it wasn't exactly easy.

"T'is is where she said, Sir."

"She's late, then," the lieutenant said.

"The time is ambiguous," Pahner said over the radio. "A `finger's breadth' on a candle. Human or Mardukan, and what kind of candle?" The captain, Roger, and O'Casey were attending the assembly through the suit cameras from Despreaux's squad.

"But it still should have been about half an hour, Sir," Jasco argued. "This is a fool's errand," he added with a glance at the armorer.

"So you think we should have dismissed it, Sir?" Kosutic asked.

"I think," the lieutenant replied as the wall behind him swung silently open, "that we should all get ready to be hit. We don't know what might be coming at us," he finished as the female menial, moving in a much less menial fashion and accompanied by a familiar face, stepped out of the secret passage.

"Shit," Kosutic said mildly, and flipped her helmet sensors to deep-sonar. The view of the "visitors' quarters" in that frequency was interesting. "Captain, we got us a honeycomb here."

Jasco looked at her very strangely, then noticed where everyone else was staring, looked over his shoulder, and jumped half out of his chameleon suit, then backed hastily over to join the other humans.

Julian wrinkled his nose and chuckled.

"Well, if it isn't the tinker!"

Kheder Bijan nodded as the female, no longer looking either meek or unintelligent, padded across the room to secure the door.

"Please pardon my deception on your approach. It was necessary to prevent your destruction."

"What do you mean?" Jasco's natural suspicions had not been particularly eased by having someone step out of a "solid" wall behind him. "Trust me, nobody would be destroying us, bucko!"

"You can be killed," Bijan replied. "You were badly hurt at Voitan. You lost, I believe, some thirty out of your total of ninety."

"Slightly off," Kosutic told him with a thin smile. "You must have had someone counting wounded they assumed would die, but we're tougher than that."

Bijan clapped his hands quietly in agreement.

"Yes, my own count showed that the numbers were off. Thank you for that explanation. Nonetheless, if you hadn't come to Marshad, you would have been destroyed on the road to Pasule. Even if Radj Hoomas had needed his entire army to accomplish it, you would have been destroyed."

"Why?" Jasco demanded. "What the hell did we do?"

"Not what we did, Sir," Julian said. "What we are. We're his ticket to power."

"Exactly." Bijan nodded at the sergeant. "You are his `ticket' to control of the Hadur. Make no mistake, Pasule is but a stepping stone. After Pasule comes Turzan and then Dram. He'll use you until you're used up."

"That's more or less what we figured," Pahner said to Kosutic and Jasco. He was using a discrete frequency to avoid having the rest of the company listening in; this was not a morale-boosting conversation. "And we can't afford the time. He has a plan, so ask him what it is."

"What's the plan?" Kosutic asked, cutting Jasco off.

"Let Kosutic take the lead, Lieutenant," Pahner coached when the lieutenant looked sharply at the noncom. "It's customary to let a lower-level person take point. That way if you decide to hang somebody out to dry, it's the Sergeant Major, not you."

"You have to have a reason to contact us," the sergeant major continued, suppressing a smile. The captain would be hard pressed to ever "hang somebody out to dry," but it certainly made a good excuse to let the grown-ups do the planning.

"You have a schedule to keep," the spy told her with a Mardukan grunt of humor. "Yes, I know even that about you. You have to reach this far distant coast within a set time frame. You can't afford to spend a year here campaigning."

"How in the hell—!" Jasco exclaimed.

"Nice piece of information," Kosutic said. "But you still haven't mentioned the plan."

"There are those who don't look with favor upon Radj Hoomas, obviously," the tinker said. "There are many such in Marshad. Perhaps even more, at least among those with power and funds, in Pasule."

"And you are what? A friend of these people? A believer?"

"Call me a friend," the spy said. "Or a humble servant."

"Uh-huh. Okay, humble servant, what's the plan of this anonymous group of people?"

"They simply wish to change the status quo," the spy said unctuously. "To create a better Marshad for all its inhabitants. And, among those in the group who are from Pasule, to save themselves from conquest by a madman."

"And why should we help them?" Kosutic asked. "Given that we might be `monarchy: like it or die' types."

"You aren't," Bijan replied calmly. "My conversation with the O'Casey made that clear. She was very interested in the ownership of land, and pleased when I told her Pasule practiced free ownership by the farmers themselves. Furthermore, you're trapped; you must destroy the House of Radj or miss your rendezvous. Nor will your part be difficult. On the day of the battle, you will simply switch your allegiance. With the aid of your lightning weapons and the forces of Pasule, the local rebels will be able to overcome Radj Hoomas' forces, most of whom will be involved in the attack on Pasule in your support."

"And what about our commanders?" Kosutic could see that the plan was as full of holes as Swiss cheese, but she also suspected that those holes were traps for the humans. "How do they survive our `switch in allegiance'?"

"There are partisans within the palace," Bijan replied easily. "Between them and your leaders' guards, the purely Radj forces can be overcome. Certainly they can secure your leaders' safety until either you arrive to relieve them or the palace is taken by the city partisans.

"However," he continued, with a hand slap of regret, "whether we can guarantee your leaders' security or not, you have little choice. If you don't assist us, you will be here a year hence, trapped, I suspect, in this horrible little backwater for the rest of your lives. Which, given that Radj intends to use you over and over again for shock troops, will probably be short ones."

Kosutic made sure her smile was broad and toothy; Mardukans didn't show teeth except in aggression.

"You've figured all the angles, haven't you?"

"You need our help," the spy said simply, "and we need yours. It's a simple meeting of needs. No more."

"Uh-huh." The sergeant major glanced over at the female. "Is that our contact?" she asked, gesturing with her chin.

"Yes," Bijan answered. "Her family was from Voitan and has . . . different customs. She's an excellent conduit."

"Nobody notices me," the diminutive female said, standing by the door with her broom and dusting idly. "Who would notice a brainless female? Even if she heard something, how could she remember it?"

The girl grunted evilly and Kosutic smiled, then nodded at the spy.

"Stay here. We need to go talk." She jerked her head at the command group to precede her out of the kitchen's Stygian heat. They went as far as the second guardroom, where she made the "rally here" hand sign.

"Captain, you there?" she asked.

"Aye. We got it all, too," the CO said.

"Yeah," Roger chimed in. "Every goddamned bit of it."

"I want suggestions," Pahner went on. "Julian, you first."

"We need to go with the plan, Sir. At least at first. Like the guy said, right now I don't see a way around it."

"Don't worry about us," Roger said. "I don't know if Captain Pahner fully agrees, but I believe we'll be able to hold our own if most of the guards are involved in the assault."

Pahner's sigh was audible over the radio.

"I don't like it, but I more or less agree."

"We should be able to turn the tables on the ground," Jasco said, shaking his head. "But it's gonna be a helluva fight at the bridge, and then we'll be in a running battle all the way up to the palace."

"Actually, Sir," Kosutic said, thinking about the terrain, "the problem will be on this side."

"Correct," Pahner agreed. "If formed forces make it to the city, you'll be fighting every step of the way through that warren. That sort of fighting will whittle us down to nothing. If you have to fight street-to-street, we might as well surrender now."

"So you think that if the Marshad army is on the Pasule side of the river—and stays there—then the Company can relieve us?" Roger asked carefully.

"Yes," the Marine said after a moment's thought. "We'll still take some casualties. But if we can get some assurances that the Pasule forces will cover our retreat, we should be all right. However, we still face the problem of how to keep them from cross . . ." His voice trailed off. Then—"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking, Your Highness?" He asked carefully.

"Maybe. It depends on whether or not we can smuggle one of the Mardukans out of the visitors' quarters."

"Yeah," Julian and Kosutic said almost simultaneously. The two NCOs looked at each other and laughed.

"If we can get some armor for one of the Three Musketeers, I can rig a camera and radio," Julian said. "I've got the gear packed."

"I can coach him through the rigging, and Denat is fairly good with knots," Kosutic added rubbing her ear.

"What are we talking about?" Jasco asked.

The group trooped back into the stifling kitchen to confront the spies.

"We're in agreement," Kosutic said. "However, we have a few questions to ask and some requirements that must be met for us to be willing to proceed."

"Oh?" Bijan said. "And if I reject your demands?"

"We tell the king about your treason just before we tear this pathetic city to the ground," the sergeant major said quietly. "It will practically wipe us out to do it, but the `not difficult' plan you just suggested will do the same thing. So are you going to listen? Or do we start now?"

The spy looked down at her for a moment, then grunted in laughter.

"Very well, Sergeant Major Kosutic. What are your demands?

"Questions first," the NCO said. "How secret are all these passages?"

"There's only one to this building," Bijan said, "which is why we came in here, but there are a few others in strategic spots throughout the city. As far as I know, Radj Hoomas doesn't know a thing about this one . . . or about any of the others, for that matter. This one was created during the construction of this building, which predated the rise of the House of Radj."

"Then how did you know of it?" Jasco asked, deciding that he had to get at least one word in.

"I showed him," the female spy replied. "My mother's family was involved in the construction. They were masons from Voitan, and my mother knew of it from her mother."

Kosutic was sorely tempted to ask why Voitan women seemed to be the only ones on Marduk with any freedom, but decided it was a side issue. Fixing the problems of the Company came first. Although, she reflected, Roger's plan would certainly free up a few social constraints in Marshad.

"Okay," she said. "That has that covered. The reason we needed to know is that we need to smuggle one or two of our Mardukan allies out."

"Why?" Bijan demanded angrily. "This will make it much more likely that we'll be discovered! Those barbarians don't even speak the language!"

"What?" Julian snapped. "You have no barbarians in your city? No visitors whatsoever?"

"A few," Bijan admitted reluctantly. "But they're mainly from Kranolta tribes, and there are very few at the moment. They're mostly traders in hides and jungle medicines."

"Good," Kosutic said. "We have a mass of those we collected on the march, and he can take some with him as a cover. Also, before he goes, he'll need an armor apron and a helmet."

"No!" Bijan snarled. "No fighting. I don't know what your plan is, but he won't destroy all I've worked for! I'll wait for a better chance, if that's what it takes!"

"No, you won't," Kosutic told him with another toothy smile, "because if this goes wrong, I will follow you to Hell to spit on your soul. Do I make myself clear?"

They stared at one another for a long time, until, finally, the Mardukan clapped his hands reluctantly.

"Very well. One of them. I'll get appropriate armor and a helmet." He paused. "But if he gives away our preparations, on your head be it."

"He'll have a mission, which he'll divulge to you as he goes," the sergeant major said. "You will support it fully." She gestured with her head at the female spy. "And that one will be the primary control. Do you understand?"

"I'm in charge here—" Bijan started to say.

"No," Kosutic interrupted with a shake of her head. "Fate, chaos, and destruction are in charge here, spy. The faster you figure out how to ride the whirlwind, the better."