Starfist: Lazarus Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

had suffered heavy casualties and were hard pressed to hold.
    Ronstedt was afraid. Had he routed Ambassador Credence's original request for Marines to the analysts in the Office of Senior Military Advisers to the President, as he properly should have, they would have sent an investigation team to Kingdom to determine the degree of need. Given an actual alien invasion, the Confederation would have assembled a major force to deal with it—after sending a diplomatic team to attempt to open communications and bring about a cessation of hostilities in an attempt to avoid military intervention. Instead, an entire Marine FIST was in danger of being wiped out and a human planet completely taken over by a previously unknown alien sentience.
    Because of him.
    The unpreparedness on the part of the Marines was completely his fault. Because he wanted to privately enjoy a minor amusement. It wouldn't take much investigation to track the routing of the presidential authorization to dispatch Marines back to him.
    Then where would Second Associate Deputy Director for State Affairs Lumrhanda Ronstedt be? At the very least, a letter of reprimand would be put in his file and he might never be promoted to First Associate Deputy Director for State Affairs. He could even be demoted! Why, he could be dismissed! If someone high enough decided a scapegoat was needed, civil—or even criminal —charges could be brought against him!
    Lumrhanda Ronstedt was afraid, he was very afraid.
    He would have prayed that nobody ever undertook an investigation of the routing of the message that sent 34th FIST to Kingdom, that nobody ever discovered that he'd exceeded his authority in the initial authorization to deploy Marines without more information than was contained in the initial ambassadorial request. But though human communities on far-flung worlds worshiped a variety of gods, he didn't believe in any of them. And since he didn't believe in any of those gods, he suspected none of them—if any of them did indeed exist—believed in him either, so praying was out of the question. Instead, he merely hoped nobody would look and find him.
    The Marines of 34th and 26th FISTs were unhappy—in their spare moments when they weren't outright angry. They were Marines , for Cthulusake, not squids! When they were traveling back to home base after a deployment, especially a major campaign like the one they'd just been on, they were supposed to spend their time cleaning and maintaining their uniforms and gear, and filling out "Replacement of Uniform and Gear" chits. Mostly, though, they were supposed to be healing their wounds, resting, eating, and exercising to regain their strength. There was supposed to be a lot of slack on the voyage back after a deployment.
    So why were they spending most of their time polishing brightwork, waxing wood, and scraping away imaginary crud and corruption from the decks of passageways and troop compartments? Why were they painting bulkheads and overheads that didn't need painting? Why were they working under bosuns mates, stripping down and reassembling everything in the troop compartments? Why were they doing all that and everything else that was properly squid work?
    Oh, the shame of it! Marines working under the supervision of squids!
    And here they'd all thought Brigadier Sturgeon was such a good commander. If he was as good as they'd thought, he'd go straight to that squid commodore, tell him Marines weren't a ship's maintenance crew, and make him stop misusing Marines!
    Corporal Claypoole put down the stripper he'd been using to clean away the thin layer of floor wax that had accumulated where the deck and bulkhead of a passageway joined—he'd just reached the airtight hatch that marked the end of the area assigned to him. Pushing himself up from all fours to sit back on his ankles, he clamped his hands over his kidneys and groaned as he twisted the kinks out of his spine. Then he leaned forward onto his hands again and levered