Arcturus was horrified al the idea of Dominion section's coming under the command of Edmund Duke. Though he had never met the man before, he instinctively knew he was an arrogant blowhard. As he looked at Duke's smirking face, he realized he recognized him.
He'd seen the same arrogant face on the UNN when its reporters covered the activities of the Old Families.
"Edmund Duke?" he said. "As in the Tarsonis Dukes?"
"The one and only," drawled Duke. "I hear most of your boys are rim world yokels. That the case? Only two things come from the rim worlds, boy—"
"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted Arcturus, returning his attention to his commander. "Sir, you can't be seriously considering this. You can't put Dominion section under this man's command."
"You telling me what to do with my own division, Mengsk?" asked Fole.
"No, sir," said Arcturus hurriedly, "but—"
"Just as well," carried on Fole, as though Arcturus hadn't spoken. "You're a good officer, Mengsk, and the men respect you, but I'll have you scrubbing latrines in a heartbeat if you try and tell me my business again. Are we clear?"
"Crystal, sir," said Mengsk.
"Anyway, what do you care? You're due to muster out soon, so it doesn't matter who commands them."
"I just want to make sure my men are in good hands," said Arcturus, glaring at Duke.
"Well that ain't your concern no more, Mengsk," replied Fole. "Now get out of here and make sure your men are ready for action. Mission briefing is at 19:00 and dropships are skids up at 20:00."
A spiteful wind scoured the glaciaal slopes below the Noranda Glacier vespene mine. Arcturus kept his helmeled head down against the force of it, his gaze firmly fixed on the blue ridge of snow ahead of him, beyond which lay the mine itself. The streaked sky above the ridge was squalid with scads of vapor and the emphysemic discoloration of poor emission control.
He marched alongside Edmund Duke, the man's while armor decorated with dozens of rank badges and combat citations. It seemed that for all his bluster, Duke had seen his fair share of battle. It didn't make Arcturus like him any better, but at least he wasn't going into action alongside a rookie.
A hundred marines spread out in combat formation trudged up the rugged slopes toward the ridge. Seven goliath walkers marched in support of them, but even thiese hardy machines found the terrain challenging, their gyros fighting to keep them stable on the treacherous ice and snow.
Vulture hover-cycles zipped around the flanks and Arcturus could just about hear the engine roar of the two supporting Wraith fighters over the howling winds as they circled above. The dropships that had ferried them from Camp Hastings had been forced to debus them a kilometer back, the crafts' poor aerodynamics unable to cope with me high winds and low visibility.
"Hell of a force, eh, Mengsk?" said Duke over the comms between their helmets. "You ever seen such righteous display of Confederate might?"
"It's impressive," agreed Arcturus. "It's been some lime since I've seen this amount firepower gathered in one place."
"Yeah, just wish I had me one of them siege tanks."
"The ice here is too unstable," said Arcturus. "In all likelihood we would have lost it down a crevasse before we traveled half a kilometer."
"I know that, but with one of those babies we coulda just scared thiese damn miners out like the yellowbellies you ran into at Turanga Canyon."
"You heard about that?"
"Sure did. You handled it pretty well, but you were damned lucky those miners didn't have a pair of balls between the whole lot of them."
Arcturus shook his head al Duke's simplistic reading of the engagement, but didn't reply as his fellow captain continued. "If I had my way we'd just be chasing these dirt-grubbers away at the end of a volley of Impaler fire and that'd be the end of it."
"If a trifle heavy-handed," said Arcturus.
"Heavy-handed? Who do you mink you work for, the Boy Scouts? This here's me Confederate Marine Corps, and if you're ever gonna make something of yourself, Mengsk, you're gonna need to get some ruthlessness in you."
"Is that a fact?"
"Damn straight," said Duke, slapping a heavy gauntlet on the side of his gauss rifle. "Ain't no messing with one of these babies."
"Tell me something, Edmund—You don't mind if I call you Edmund, do you? How is it that a scion of one of the Old Families ends up out here pushing miners around as a captain? With your family's influence and the amount of combat it looks like you've seen, I'd have thought they'd have made you a general by now."
Duke stopped and turned to face him, and Arcturus could see the cold anger in his eyes.
"Yeah, I do mind you calling me Edmund. And why I'm here is none of your goddamn business. We got our orders and I'm a man who obeys orders, so why don't you shut the hell up and follow yours."
Arcturus smiled as Duke stomped off toward the ridge, letting the man get a goodly distance ahead before embarking himself.
"Gee, Captain, I reckon you done annoyed the big fella," said Chuck Horner, coming alongside him. "What you say to him?"
"Nothing much," said Arcturus. "How's the section, Lieutenant?"
"They're okay," answered Horner, "de Santo's grumbling about the mission, Yancy won't shut up, Chun Leung's bitching about what this weather's doing to Mayumi, and Toby ain't said squat since we touched down, so business as usual, I guess."
Chuck Horner had served as Arcturus's unofficial second in command since me fighting on Sonyan, a position he had fulfilled admirably, eventually earning himself a commission to lieutenant.
Arcturus turned and looked behind him, the blue armored shapes of Dominion section marching a discreet distance away from the marines of Alpha Squadron. Their walks and posture were as familiar to him as his own, and he nodded to each of them as they caught up.
"What's the story, Captain?" said Yancy. "We there yet?"
"Nearly," said Arcturus, pointing to the ridge a hundred meters or so above them. "Just beyond there."
"This is some weather, huh?" said Chun Leung, holding his rifle protectively across his chest to protect it from the worst of the wind. The man's visor was fogged and the plates of his armor were stained with pollutants, yet somehow his weapon was still pristine.
"We saw worse than this on Parragos, remember?" said Yancy.
"I'm trying to forget that one," grumbled Chun Leung. "Took months to get all that grit out of Mayumi's breech."
"This gonna be more of the same?" asked Dia de Santo.
Arcturus didn't have to ask what she meant. Most of their ops in me last few years had involved securing mines or frontier exploration sites from Kel-Morian prospectors. Either that or providing heavily armed backup to local enforcers.
Riots and thousands-strong protests were flaring up throughout the Confederacy with ever more regularity, and you couldn't watch the UNN without some report coming on about a disaffected populace attacking police or marching beneath waving banners.
Of course, these were downplayed as a few malcontents, but Dominion section's experiences and Arcturus's last visit to Korhal told him that things were far worse than anyone suspected. The Confederacy was rotting from the inside out and the powers that be were holding on by their fingertips.
"More of the same?" said Arcturus, as a sudden shiver ran along the length of his spine. "You know, I rather think it won't be."
"What do you mean, Captain?" asked Yancy.
"I have a reeling that Duke isn't playing with a full deck," said Arcturus. disregarding the military protocol of not criticizing fellow officers to lower-ranked soldiers.