Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (22 page)

A small case held ten objects about twenty-five centimeters in length and eight at their widest. At one end was an evident handle. The other was a more or less triangular, shallow-bowled blade. Molecular analysis determined that the components were exactly what they appeared to be; the handle was a flexible polymer of hitherto unknown composition, and the blade was a low grade steel. They decided the object was most likely a trowel for working dirt.

A senior medical corpsman on the
Grandar Bay
, whose hobby was the history of medicine, tentatively identified a carton of metal implements with finely serrated blades as surgical saws—they looked almost exactly like surgical saws he'd examined in a medical museum on Earth. He was more positive in his identification of a small carton of sealed gauze pads with straps extending from each end; he said they were field dressings, the kind of bandages soldiers had carried during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Containers of two different kinds of tablets required further analysis, as did a bottle of a fluid that gave off an astringent aroma.

"Four fingers and an opposable thumb," observed an engineer who examined the contents of a package that contained twenty pairs of gloves made from an unidentified but tough fabric. "That must explain why everything is packaged in units of ten."

Another small carton held forty packets that contained rolls of thread and steel slivers with an eyehole at one end. It caused some puzzlement until a seaman who embroidered for a hobby identified them as implements used to repair torn garments—he called them "sewing kits."

The engineers were excited by a small carton of steel boxes, each of which held twenty short metal sticks with one end enlarged and rough-surfaced. They determined that the sticks were magnesium matches. The construction of the boxes was ingenious; to use them, one flipped up a guard plate on one side and pressed the lever protected by the guard plate. That expelled a match in such a manner that the roughened end scraped against a strike surface and ignited it. The match then continued out of the box and could travel more than a meter before its trajectory began to rapidly deteriorate.

"This must be how they ignite their dead," the Interstellar City chief engineer said.

From a safe distance, he'd observed Skinks who were withdrawing from an assault on the Haven defenses setting their dead on fire. He'd wondered how they did it, as well as why. The magnesium matches brought him the how, not the why.

The xenobiology teams were ecstatic. Sixteen of the twenty-nine different items brought back by the raiders were clearly organic, all probably foodstuffs. They got the first clue from the fact that every one of the sixteen types of packages—whether of a clear polymer wrapping that was curiously both brittle and tough, or a metal canister—bore a label made of some paperlike material, each with a picture of something—presumably the contents—in a bowl. This picture label seemed redundant on the items packaged in the transparent polymer. The xenobiologists went to work with a will.

The dry, coppery-colored things sealed in clear polymer looked very much like fish. The different teams, in Interstellar City and aboard the
Grandar Bay
, each rehydrated one and dissected it. Fish analogs, they both determined, though their libraries held no match; the fish-things, they concluded, must be native to a planet outside the Confederation of Human Worlds.

A block of gritty white stuff easily gave up its identity. "Sodium chloride," a
Grandar Bay
tech reported.

"Yes?" Lieutenant Commander Fenischel gestured for him to go on.

"That's it, sir," the tech said. "Common table salt."

"Nothing else in it? No impurities?"

The tech shook his head. "Nope. Very well-refined."

Fenischel blinked. Animal life everywhere needed salt of some sort, but while sodium chloride was used by native life on some human-occupied worlds, it was not all that common. He dredged his memory and only came up with half a dozen other worlds where nearly pure sodium chloride was the salt essential to indigenous life.

"Get me a list of every planet where the animals use pure sodium chloride," he ordered. "Mass, diameter, orbit, mean temperature, solar type."

"Aye aye, sir." The tech headed for a library terminal to dig up the information.

Three different varieties of dried leaf, two green and one yellow, were sealed in polymer. They were tentatively classified as analogs of seaweed and leafy vegetables. The same wrapping was used on long, whitish strings that were multiply folded. The strings readily soaked up water and became soft and flexible. They resembled very long noodles.

Canisters in four sizes and two shapes caused a fair amount of controversy. Some xenobiologists and other scientists insisted they were clearly a mechanism for preserving food. Others insisted that, unlike the brittle but tough polymer wrappings, the canisters couldn't be opened by hand or even tooth, and therefore couldn't be used for food preservation because the average person couldn't open them to get at the contents. Their pictured labels, therefore, had to have a different meaning. A petty officer second class on the
Grandar Bay
settled matters when he did a search of the ship's library and found that for a few centuries very similar canisters were used on Earth for food preservation and storage. He even located illustrations of the once-common instruments that were used to open the canisters.

However, that did not explain why the smallest size canister had a lid that was held on by friction. The lid could be twisted off by anyone with a grip of even modest strength. Adding to the perplexity of this canister was the contents—dried leaf—sealed in the ubiquitous polymer.

One of the largest canisters contained what analysis insisted was animal protein packed in gravy.

"If I didn't know any better," Lieutenant Commander Fenischel muttered to himself, "I'd swear this was a cross between a chicken and something else."

Another of the largest canisters revealed tubular animals resembling the eels of Earth. They were packed in some sort of gelatin.

The middle-size canisters held five different types of what had to be animal products. These were impossible to identify except that they were all cut up, sliced or diced, and presumably skinned.

So, the items identified with a fair degree of certainty were foodstuffs. It still remained to identify the leaves in the small canisters with friction lids. Those were thought to be far too fibrous to be digestible. Certainly, humans would have had a problem with them.

One other presumed foodstuff created great excitement, though nobody had a clue to its meaning other than convergent evolution. A white sack, sewn closed, lined with a less brittle polymer, contained what appeared to be grain that looked exactly like rice. Every analytic test run on it led to the same conclusion: but the grain was a variant of rice unknown to the libraries of Intersteller City or the
Grandar Bay
.

"This goes way beyond convergent evolution," Lieutenant Commander Fenischel said in awed tones.

The xenobiology team's senior chief petty officer grinned. "Well, sir, I'll tell ya.

There's been speculation for centuries that some Johnny Appleseed went through the universe a few billion years back, planting likely planets with the seeds of life. Then a few million years ago, that Johnny Appleseed or a different one came through again and planted sentient beings on some planets. Stands to reason if that's true, he had to bring the right kind of food for the sentient beings." The Chief Petty Officer beamed. He called the Johnny Appleseed theory "speculation," but he'd believed it since he was an adolescent. As far as he was concerned, this "rice" was proof positive. He'd read all the analyses. These foodstuffs were close enough to Earth norm, right down to the handedness of the amino acids, which he thought not only could a human eat with no ill effect, but thrive on. And he intended to prove that as soon as he could do some pilfering.

"So what does this prove?" Brigadier Sturgeon demanded when he was given the results concerning the items brought back from the raid. "We know the Skinks wear clothes, we've seen them. We already knew they have four fingers and opposable thumbs and that the big Skinks are a lot bigger than we are. We already know they eat food—they're animate, they have to."

"But, sir," Lieutenant Commander Fenischel, who gave the
Grandar Bay's
report, said in a pained voice, "don't you find it meaningful that their packaging is centuries behind ours, or that they use primitive—" He searched for the term. "—sewing kits to repair their clothing, or primitive bandages to cover wounds?"

Sturgeon snorted. "At their height, the ancient Meso-Americans were among the most technologically advanced people on Earth, but they never used the wheel or developed metalworking beyond gold ornaments. These creatures have weapons we haven't thought of, and a version of the Beam drive that makes ours look like an internal combustion engine. I need information that will help me keep my Marines alive and let them kill Skinks. What has engineering found out about that spare barrel that was brought back? That might help."

Fenischel looked crestfallen. "Engineering's still working on it, sir."

"When they find out something, I want to know immediately."

Scientists! Sturgeon could barely contain his irritation. Knowing what the enemy ate for dinner wouldn't help him keep his Marines alive or save Kingdom from the invaders.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jayben Spears was composing a message, perhaps the most important of his long career as a diplomat. He sat deep in thought, his head wreathed in the aromatic fumes of an Anniversario, a gift from Colonel Ramadan's private supply that the 34th FIST's acting commander had brought with him from Thorsfinni's World.

He drew deeply on the fine cigar, held the smoke deep inside his lungs, then let it out slowly. He sighed and closed his eyes in pleasure. The simple things in life are the best, he reflected. Not that savoring Anniversarios was something everyone could afford, but the cost of one was a small price to pay for the delight it gave to a smoker, which lingered long after the cigar had turned to ash.

The cigar was a reward of a kind, a sort of symbol that cemented the relationship between Jayben and the Marines. He had just returned from a briefing at Brigadier Sturgeon's command post, and the brigadier had taken the ambassador completely into his confidence by revealing to him his plan for lifting the siege of Haven.

Sturgeon had done this because he knew he could trust Spears. They had been through a very hairy situation on Wanderjahr, and on that occasion Spears had proved to the Marine that he was a man who could be relied upon. Their relationship in the present crisis had only grown closer.

Sturgeon's plan was brilliant, but still, Spears was worried. An old veteran himself, Spears knew the best of plans could easily go awry. The brigadier had asked for massive reinforcements, but the situation was now so critical he could not wait for them, and besides, no response had yet been received from Fargo—nor would one come for a long time. Sturgeon's message to Corps headquarters had been blunt, but he did not know what effect it might have had on the staff back there. "General Aguinaldo will take it seriously, Jay," Sturgeon had said, "but I don't know if he can sell the commandant, and if he does, whether he'll be able to take it further up the chain of command. Anyway, I did what I could. Now it's up to him to do what he can, and it's up to me to make the best of the situation on the ground right here."

"God helps those who help themselves," Spears muttered, then smiled. "Always thought that expression a rationalization for the fact that God helps no one."

Sturgeon laughed. "As luck would have it, Providence was with us."

Now back in his office, Spears considered the day's events. Would the plan work?

The worst-case scenario was that it wouldn't and the Skinks would overrun them.

Spears did not think that would ever happen with Ted Sturgeon in charge, but he had an obligation as a diplomat to let his own superiors know the situation. If Kingdom went under, the rest of the Confederation must be warned. Jon Beerdmens, chief of the Confederation Diplomatic Corps, was Spears's direct superior, and Spears was obligated by the rules of diplomatic service protocol to address his comments to Beerdmens. But Beerdmens was an idiot! And worse, Spears knew everyone in the Diplomatic Corps considered him to be a superannuated fool given to breaking the rules and acting outrageously. Beerdmens would never pay serious attention to anything he sent him.

Well, I'm not gonna tell him anything about Sturgeon's battle plan, Spears thought, but I'll give the fat bastard both barrels, tell him if he doesn't go to the President it'll be his ass hung out to dry. A beautiful white ash had accumulated on the end of his cigar. He knocked it off and drew deeply on the Anniversario again, the tip glowing a satisfyingly bright orange. He winced. Damn! Thinking about Beerdmens was distracting him from the enjoyment of his cigar. Yes, he'd send the message, but he'd do something else too. The President had appointed him to the job, and although that was merely pro forma, she was the boss and he owed her a warning. He'd send her a separate communication, put fatso on report, because Spears knew that Beerdmens would never go to her based on anything he sent Beerdmens. That way, at least somebody with a brain would be on the case.

"Besides," Spears muttered aloud, "what the hell are they going to do to me? Send me to the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their goddamn Apostles?"

Spears sent the message to Beerdmens and then waited a full forty-eight hours before he dispatched the private message to Madam Chang-Sturdevant.

Jon Beerdmens groaned with pleasure and daintily wiped his chin with a napkin.

He raised the spoon again and slurped the glutinous concoction with a pleasure as vast as his bulk. All men have their vices, and Jon Beerdmens, Diplomatic Corps chief, had his: eating.

He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, savoring the rich flavor of the soup, crême of Greece, his favorite. When he was in town, which had become almost always, the cafeteria kept a vat of the stuff on the stove so that if he called for some, there'd be plenty of it, piping hot, just the way he liked it. These days he took his soup heavily seasoned with kymchiss, a condiment made from a fiercely aromatic garliclike herb cultivated on Soju. He'd only learned of kymchiss a few months ago when he was introduced to it at a diplomatic function. The stuff fouled the breath and burned like fire when evacuated from the system, but God, did it spice up the soup!