March Upcountry Read online

  He took a deep, cleansing breath, and shrugged.

  "Okay, I'm being an ass. But I'm still not going to dinner. Make an excuse," he said with a sudden boyish grin. "You're good at that."

  Eleanora shook her head in exasperation, but had to smile back. Sometimes Roger could also be disarmingly charming.

  "Very well, Your Highness. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

  She took the single step backward to open the hatch and stepped out of the cabin. And almost ran over Kostas Matsugae.

  "Good evening, Ma'am," the valet said, skipping aside despite an armful of clothing and accoutrements. He had to dodge again to avoid running into the Marine standing guard outside the door, but the Marine remained utterly expressionless and motionless. Any humor she might have felt at the frantic hopping about of the valet was quashed by iron discipline. The members of The Empress' Own were renowned for their ability to remain stone-faced and still through virtually anything. They occasionally had contests to determine who had the most endurance and stoicism. The former sergeant major of Gold Battalion held the record for endurance: ninety-three hours at attention without eating, drinking, sleeping, or going to the bathroom. It was the last, he'd admitted, which had been the hardest. He'd finally passed out from a combination of dehydration and toxin buildup.

  "Good evening, Matsugae," Eleanora replied, and fought her own urge to smile. It was hard, for the fussy little valet was so bedecked with outfits that it was almost impossible to find him under the pile. "I'm sorry to say that our Prince won't be taking dinner in the mess, so I doubt he really needs those," she continued, gesturing with her chin at the mass of clothes.

  "What? Why?" Matsugae squeaked from somewhere under the pile. "Oh, never mind. I have the casuals for after dinner, so I suppose that will do." He gave his neck a little twist, and his balding head and round face rose like a toadstool from the pile of clothing. "It's a terrible shame, though. I'd picked out a lovely sienna suit."

  "Maybe you can calm him down with some clothes." O'Casey's smile took on a tinge of resignation. "I seem to have set him off, instead."

  "Well, I can understand his being upset," the valet said with another sharp squeak. "Being sent off to the back of beyond on a pointless mission is bad enough, but to send a prince of the Blood Royal on a barge is simply the worst insult I can imagine!"

  Eleanora pursed her lips and frowned at the valet.

  "Don't go making it any worse than it already is, Matsugae. Sooner or later, Roger has to begin taking up his responsibilities as a member of the Royal Family. And sometimes that means sacrifices." Like maybe the sacrifice of enough time to get a staff to go with the "Chief," she added silently. "He doesn't need his sulks encouraged."

  "You care for him in your way, Ms. O'Casey, and I will care for him in mine," the valet snapped. "Push a child around, despise him, revile him and cast out his father, and what do you expect to get?"

  "Roger is no longer a child," she retorted angrily. "We can't coddle, bathe, and dress him like he is one."

  "No," the valet replied. "But we can give him enough space to breathe! We can make an image for him and hope he grows into it."

  "What, an image of a clotheshorse?" the chief of staff shot back. It was an old and worn argument that the valet seemed to be winning. "He's grown into that one beautifully!"

  The valet stared back at her like a fearless mouse confronting a cat.

  "Unlike some people," he sniffed with a glance at her painfully plain suit, "His Highness has an appreciation for the finer things in life. But there's more to His Highness than a 'clotheshorse.' Until some of you begin to acknowledge that fact, however, you'll get exactly what you expect."

  He glowered at her for an instant longer, then gave yet another sniff, hit the latch for the hatch with an elbow, and stepped into the cabin.

  * * *

  Roger leaned back on the bed in the tiny cabin, eyes shut and tried his best to radiate a dangerous calm. I'm twenty-two years old, he thought. I'm a Prince of the Empire. I will not cry just because Mommy is making me angry.

  He heard the blast-door of the cabin open and shut, and knew immediately who it was; the cologne that Matsugae wore was almost overpowering in the small compartment.

  "Good evening, Kostas," he said calmly. Just having the valet present was soothing. Whatever anyone else thought, Kostas always took him at his face value. When that value was below par, Kostas would tell him, but when it had merit on its own level, Kostas would acknowledge it where no one else would.

  "Good evening, Your Highness," Kostas said, already laying out one of the light gi-like chambray outfits the prince preferred to lounge in. "Will you want your hair washed this evening?"

  "No, thank you," the prince responded with unconscious politeness. "I suppose you heard I'm not taking dinner in the mess?"

  "Of course, Your Highness," the valet responded as the prince rolled upright on the bed and looked sourly around the cabin. "Pity, really. I had a beautiful suit picked out: that light sienna one that complements your hair so well."

  The prince smiled thinly. "Nice try, Kosie, but no. I'm just too frazzled to be polite at dinner." He slapped the sides of his head with both hands in frustration. "Leviathan I could take. Net-Hauling I could take, grumbly oil and all. But why, oh why, did Mother Her Regalness choose to send me on this goddamned tramp freighter?"

  "It isn't a tramp freighter, Your Highness, and you know it. We needed room for the bodyguards, and the alternative would have been to detach a Fleet carrier. Which would have been a bit much, don't you think? I will admit, though, that it's a bit . . . shabby."

  "Shabby!" The prince gave a bitter laugh. "It's so worn I'm surprised it can hold atmosphere! It's so old I bet the hull is welded! I'm surprised it's not driven by internal combustion engines or steam power! John would've gotten a carrier. Alexandra would've gotten a carrier! But not Roger! Oh, no, not 'Baby Roj!' "

  The valet finished laying out the various outfits to be chosen from in the limited space of the cabin and stood back with a resigned expression.

  "Will I be drawing a bath for Your Highness?" he asked pointedly, and Roger gritted his teeth at the tone.

  "So I should stop whining and get a grip?"

  The valet only smiled very slightly in return, and Roger shook his head.

  "I'm too worked up, Kosie." He looked around the three-meter-square space and shook his head again. "I wish there was someplace I could work out in peace on this tub."

  "There's an exercise area adjacent to the Assault Complement Quarters, Your Highness," the valet pointed out.

  "I said in peace," Roger commented dryly. He generally preferred to avoid the troops that filled the compartment. He'd never actually worked out around the Battalion, despite being its nominal commanding officer, because he'd had his fill of weird looks and sniggers behind his back in four years at the Academy. Getting the same treatment from his own bodyguards would be hard to take.

  "The majority of the ship's company is eating at the moment, Your Highness," Matsugae pointed out. "You would probably have the gym to yourself."

  The thought of a good workout was awfully attractive. Finally Roger nodded his head.

  "Okay, Matsugae. Make it so."

  * * *

  As the dessert was cleared, Captain Krasnitsky looked significantly at Ensign Guha. The mahogany-skinned young woman blushed a darker hue, and stood up, wine glass in hand.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," she said carefully, "Her Majesty the Empress. Long may she rule!"

  After the chorused "The Empress," the captain cleared his throat.

  "I'm sorry His Highness is unwell, Captain." He smiled at Captain Pahner. "Is there anything we can do? The gravity, temperature, and air pressure in his cabin are as close to Earth normal as my chief engineer can make them."

  Captain Pahner set down his almost untouched wine glass and nodded to the captain. "I'm sure His Highness will be fine." Various other phrases crossed his mind, but he carefully suppressed them.

  After the completion of this voyage, Pahner would move on to a command slot on a very similar ship. But larger. As with all COs in The Empress' Own, he was already on the promotion lists for the next grade, and at the completion of his rotation, he would take over as the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Heavy Strike Regiment. Since the 502nd was the primary ground combat unit of Seventh Fleet—the Fleet usually found in any face-off with the Saints—he could expect to see regular action, and that was good. He had no love of war, but the heat of battle was the only possible place to truly test whether a person was a Marine or not, and it would be good to be back in harness.

  With over fifty years in the service, enlisted and officer, the two commands—Empress' Own and Heavy Strike—would be as good as it got. From there on out, it would all be downhill. Either retirement, or else colonel and then brigadier. Which was as good as saying a desk job: the Empire hadn't fielded a regiment in a couple of centuries. It was a somber thought that he could see a light at the end of the tunnel and it was a grav-train.

  Captain Krasnitsky waited for further elaboration, but decided after a moment that that was all he was getting from the taciturn Marine. With another frozen smile he turned to Eleanora.

  "Has the rest of the staff gone ahead to Leviathan to prepare for the Prince's arrival, Ms. O'Casey?"

  Eleanora took a slightly deeper gulp of wine than was strictly polite, and looked over at Captain Pahner.

  "I am the rest of the staff," she said coldly. Which meant that there had not been anyone to send ahead as an advance party. Which meant that once they got there, she would be running her ass off trying to set up all the minor details the staff should be handling. The staff that she was apparently chief of. That mysterious, magically invisible staff.

  The captain was now well aware that he was wandering through a field of landmines. He smiled again, took a sip of wine, and turned to the engineering officer at his left to engage in casual chitchat that wasn't going to tick off a member of the Imperial Household.

  Pahner moistened his lips with his wine again and looked over at Sergeant Major Kosutic. She was chatting quietly with the ship's bosun, and caught the look and simply raised her eyebrows as if to say, "Well, what you want me to do about it?" Pahner shrugged millimetrically in reply, and turned to the ensign at his left. What could any of them do about it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pahner tossed the electronic memo pad onto the desk in the tiny office of the Assault Complement Commander.

  "I think that's about all the planning we can do without actually seeing the dirtside conditions," he told Kosutic, and the sergeant major shrugged philosophically.

  "Well, frontier planets full of rugged individualists rarely spawn assassins, anyway, Boss."

  "True enough," Pahner admitted. "But it's close enough to both Raiden-Winterhowe and the Saints to have me twitchy."

  Kosutic nodded, but she knew better than to ask most of the questions that came to mind. Instead, she fingered her earlobe, where the sun-painted skull and crossbones glittered faintly, and then glanced at the antiquated watch on her wrist.

  "I'm going to take a turn around the ship. Find out how many of the posts are asleep," she announced.

  Pahner smiled. In two tours with the Regiment, he'd never found a post other than fully alert. You just didn't make it this far if you were the type to even slouch on guard duty. But it never hurt to check.

  "Have fun," he said.

  * * *

  Ensign Guha finished sealing her ship boots and looked around the cabin. Everything was shipshape, so she picked up the black bag at her feet and touched the stud to open her cabin hatch. Somewhere in the depths of her mind a little voice was screaming. But it was a quiet voice.

  She stepped out of the cabin, turned to the right, and shouldered the ditty bag. The bag was unusually heavy. The materials within would have been detected in the security sweep of the ship which was standard operating procedure before a member of the Imperial Family took transit . . . and they had been. And then accepted. The assault ship was designed to take a full Marine complement, after all, which included all of their explosive "loadout." The six ultradense bricks, formed out of the most powerful chemical explosive known, should do the job perfectly. The thought was a pleasing one, and, of course, her own position as logistics officer gave her full access to the material. Even more pleasing. Taken all in all, she practically scintillated with pleasure.

  Her cabin was on the outer rim of the ship, along with most of the personal quarters, and she had a long trip to Engineering. But it would be a happy trip . . . despite the quiet little screams within.

  She strode down the passage, smiling pleasantly at the few souls about in the depths of ship-night. They were few and far between, but no one questioned the logistics officer. She'd been taking deep-night strolls for her whole tour, and it was put down to simple insomnia. And that was fair enough, for she did suffer from insomnia, however far from "simple" it might be on this particular night.

  She traveled the curved passages of the giant sphere, taking elevators to lower levels on a circuitous route that brought her closer and closer to Engineering. The route was designed to avoid the Marine guards scattered at strategic locations around the ship. Although their detectors wouldn't spot the demolitions unless she got very close, they would easily detect the fully charged power cell of the bead pistol in the same bag.

  The horizon of the gray painted passages shrank as she neared the center of the vast ball. Finally, she exited one last elevator.

  The passage beyond was straight for a change, the far end sealed by a blast-door. To one side of the blast-door, covering the controls, was a single Marine in the silver-and-black dress uniform of the House of MacClintock.

  * * *

  Private Hegazi came to attention, one hand sliding automatically towards his sidearm as the elevator opened, but he relaxed again almost immediately when he recognized the officer. He'd seen her any number of times on her perambulations of the ship, but never by Engineering.

  Guess she got bored, he thought. Or maybe I'm about to get lucky? Nonetheless, his duty was clear.

  "Ma'am," he said, remaining at attention as she neared. "This is a secure space. Please exit this secure area."

  * * *

  Ensign Guha smiled faintly as an aiming grid dropped across her vision. Her right hand, hidden inside the bag, flipped the bead gun off of safe, and triggered a five-round burst.

  The five-millimeter steel-coated, glass-cored beads were accelerated to phenomenal speeds by the electromagnets lining the barrel. The weapon's recoil was tremendous, but all five of the beads had cleared the barrel before recoil began to take effect. Ensign Guha's hand was thrown violently out of the now smoking bag, but the beads continued their flight towards the Marine guard.

  * * *

  Hegazi was fast. You had to be in the Regiment. But he also had less than an eighth of a second between the instant his instincts shrilled a warning and the impact of the first bead on his upper chest.

  The outer layer of his heavy uniform was a synthetic that simulated buff wool but was fire resistant. It wasn't ballistic resistant. The next layer, however, was kinetic reactive. As the beads struck, the polymers of the uniform reacted instantaneously, their chemical bonds shifting under the imparted energy to change the textile from soft and flexible to solid as steel. The armor had weaknesses and was vulnerable to cuts, but it was light, and well-nigh impregnable to small-arms fire.

  Yet any material has a breaking point. In the case of the Marines' uniform armor, that point was high but not infinite. The first bead shattered on the surface, the metal and glass bits flicking out in a fan to pepper the underside of the Marine's chin even as his hand reached once more for his own sidearm. The weight was coming off his feet as he started to drop to a kneeling position when the second bead hit a few centimeters above the first. This bead also shattered, but the extra energy began to splinter the molecular bonds of the resistant material.

  The third bead did the trick. Coming in on the heels of the second and slightly lower, it shattered the kinetic armor like glass, finally throwing some of its mass into the now unprotected Marine's sternum.

  * * *

  Ensign Guha wiped the blood off of the keypad and attached a device to the surface temperature scanner. She shouldn't have had the codes to enter Engineering, or the facial features, for that matter. But any system is subject to compromise, and this one was no exception. The security systems saw the IR features of the DeGlopper's chief engineer and received the correct codes timed in just the way the chief would have tapped them. She stepped through the open blast-doors and looked around, pleased but not surprised that there was no one in sight.

  The engineering spaces of the ship were huge, taking up well over one-third of the interior volume. The tunnel drive coils and the capacitors to feed them took up the majority of the space, and their keening song filled the vast compartment as they sucked in energy voraciously and distorted any concept of Einsteinian reality. The light-speed limit could be violated, but it required immense power, and the tunnel drive gobbled up internal volume almost as greedily as it did energy.

  But the field of the tunnel drive system was more or less fixed and independent of mass. Like the phase drive, there was a specific limit to the maximum volume of the field which could be generated, but the mass within that field was unimportant. Thus the huge ship carriers of the various Imperial and republican navies that battled among the stars. And thus the vast size of the interstellar fleet transports.

  But all of it depended on power. Enormous, barely controlled power.

  Ensign Guha turned to the left and followed the curving passage as the tunnel drive thumped out its keening star song.

  * * *

  Kosutic nodded at the guard on the magazine deck as she stepped back out the hatch. The guard, a newbie from First Platoon, had stopped her at the hatch and insisted that she pass the facial temperature scan and key in her code. Which was exactly what she was supposed to do, which was the reason for the sergeant major's nod of approval. However, Kosutic also made a mental note to talk to Margaretta Lai, the trooper's platoon sergeant. The trooper had clearly loosened up when she recognized the sergeant major, and she needed to learn to doubt everything and everyone. Eternal paranoia was the entire purpose of the Regiment. There was no other way to guard effectively in this day and age.