At least they had their swords, but they still didn't have the proper shields to go with them, and without the shield wall, the superior individual training of the Pasule forces would weigh against the humans. All in all, it looked to be a bad day.
Julian was running a whetstone over the blade of his sword when his helmet radio came to life on the general frequency.
"Mornin', Marines," Roger's voice said. "I thought you should understand something before we start the ball.
"I'm not going to get into my bitches about the way I was raised. We've all got complaints about our parents, and I'm no different from anyone else in that respect. But I want you to know that no matter how angry I was the other day, I love my mother, both as my mother and as my Empress.
"What happened was that I found out why we're really here. Sure, there was an assassination attempt, and that was the final cause that put us here, on Marduk. But the reason we were on the cruise, the reason we were in an assault ship and not a carrier, had to do with a personal problem between me and my mother. One I didn't even know existed.
"So I have a few things to apologize for. I'd like to apologize for causing any of you to wonder about my loyalty. We're just going to have to get in out of the cold and let me discuss it with my mother to straighten that one out. And I want to apologize for not forcing my mother to have that talk with me before we left. We could all be in Imperial City having a beer right now, if I had. So, last, I'd like to apologize for getting you stuck in this goddamned situation with me. And I pledge, on my word as a MacClintock, to do everything in my power to get each and every one of you home."
The prince paused, and Julian looked around at the company. Every Marine sat as still as he did himself, listening. It wasn't often that you heard a member of the Imperial Family open up his heart... and it was even rarer to hear one apologize.
"Now, you've got some things to do today," Roger went on after a moment. "And I'm not going to be there with you. But we all need to go home. We all need to get our asses back to Imperial City and have that beer together. Today, in my opinion, is the first step on the road home. So let's get it done.
"Roger, out."
The new commander of the Royal Guard walked over to the humans as they began to break out of their strange stasis.
"What are you doing?" he snapped. "Why have you stopped preparing? Get moving, you stupid basik!"
Lance Corporal Moseyev was closest to the spluttering Mardukan, and the Bravo Team Leader looked up at the native coldly.
"Shut your gob, asshole." He turned to his team and gestured at the folded up plasma cannon. "Jeno, give Gronningen a hand with that." He turned back to the Mardukan commander who had been spluttering at his back, and looked the taller native in the eye. "You can move out of our way, or you can die. Your choice."
"Move," Roger said coldly.
The Mardukan guard seemed disinclined to obey, but he stepped aside at a head gesture from the king, and Roger walked forward to the parapet and looked down. The balcony was located at one of the highest points in the hilltop castle and permitted a breathtaking view of the town laid out below. He could see the company moving through the local forces gathered around the gate and heading for the bridge.
Radj Hoomas stood a short distance down the balcony's low, stone wall, watching the same deployment. There were only a few guards between him and the humans, but at least fifty lined the back of the balcony, ready to fill the hostages full of javelins at his command.
The king looked over at Roger and grunted.
"I believe you and Oget Sar came to an understanding?"
"If you mean your new guard commander, yes," Roger said without a smile. "He'll use up my troops, and I'll try my best to kill him. We understand each other perfectly."
"Such a way to talk to your host," the king said crossly, clapping his cross hands in displeasure. "You need to learn better manners before someone gets hurt."
"I always have had that problem," Roger admitted as the company deployed across the fields along the river. "I guess it's my short temper."
"Everybody stay cool," Moseyev said. "We're almost at the deploy point."
In traveling configuration, the Marine plasma cannon was a meter and a half long, a half meter square, and nearly seventy kilos in weight, which made it marginally portable for one unarmored human. Fortunately, it also had a pair of handy carrying handles at either end, so two Marines could lug it for short distances without any problems. Except, of course, for the inevitable bitching.
"God," Macek said. "This is one heavy mother."
"You'll be glad to have this heavy mother along in a few minutes," Gronningen chuckled.
"Yeah," Macek admitted. "But that don't make it any lighter."
"Okay," Moseyev said, eyeing the bridge guardhouses. "This is a good angle. Set 'er up."
The two Marines dropped the featureless oblong in the half-grown flaxsilk, and Gronningen hit an inconspicuous button. A door opened, and he flipped the key switch within and stood back as the M-109 cannon deployed like a butterfly from a chrysalis.
The surrounding matrix was a set of memory plastic parts. The first part to open was the tripod, which pushed down a small pre-tripod to hold the weapon off the ground, then deployed the main supports. Once the main tripod legs had reached their maximum extent and done a pre-level, they deployed spikes into the ground with a susurrant hiss-thump. Then the tripod elevated the gun to its full extension, and the blast shield deployed.
The shield was, arguably, the most important feature of the support module. The thermal bloom when the cannon fired was immense, and without the shield, the firer would incinerate himself. That would have been enough to endear it to any gunner, but it also acted as armor against frontal fire. Now it opened like the ruff of a basilisk lizard or a flar-ta's head shield, deploying in a rectangle to either side. It offered ample vertical coverage above and below the weapon, but most of it spread to the sides in a shape largely governed by the expansion pattern of the plasma shot.
Gronningen tapped a control on top of the weapon and sat down cross-legged behind it. He looked at the bridge where the Mardukan soldiers in both guardhouses were watching the company deploy. None of them appeared to have noticed the team's preparations.
"We're up," he announced.
"Plasma cannon's up," Moseyev relayed over the com.
"Copy," Kosutic replied. "We're in position. Take the shot."
"Why haven't they jumped yet?" Kidard Pla snarled. The Pasulian watched the wings of the fearsome weapon deploy and fingered the stone rail of the bridge nervously.
"Maybe they weren't told?" his companion suggested.
The Pasulian guards had been specially detailed to the bridge because all of them could swim. They'd been informed of the plan just before they went on duty, and now they watched their Marshad counterparts, waiting for them to abandon their posts. The plasma weapons were supposed to sweep the Pasule defenders off the bridge, but they would kill or severely wound the Marshad guards as well, unless they got themselves safely out of the way. But none of them were moving. Either they hadn't been informed that their "allies' " weapons were dangerous to them, as well, or else they were playing a game of basik. Whichever it was, Kidard Pla wasn't playing along.
"I'm going to start yelling and pointing," he said. "Then we jump."
"Sounds good to me. Hurry."
"Look!" the guard leader called. "The human lightning weapons! Everyone off the bridge!"
He took his own advice without further ado and launched himself over the low wall of the bridge and into the water. He was not sticking around to see what happened next.