Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry Read online

  But in this case, two people whose names he didn't even know had risked an awful death to protect his life.

  It was a confusing thought.

  * * *

  Nearly two hours passed before "Captain" Pahner appeared, accompanied by Captain Krasnitsky. Pahner was in a chameleon suit, while the ship's captain was in a Fleet skin suit, with his helmet flopped back out of the way.

  Pahner nodded to the two guards, who left the cabin, closing the hatch behind them. Roger took a good look at Krasnitsky, and promptly waved him into the station chair at the small desk. While the Fleet captain collapsed into the seat, Pahner touched the stud to lock the hatch, then turned and faced the prince.

  "We have a problem, Your Highness."

  "Oh, really, Captain? I hadn't noticed." The prince's voice was muffled through the plastron of the helmet. After a moment's fumbling, he released the standard catches and dumped the helmet on his bunk. "By the way," he continued sourly, "there wouldn't happen to be a skin-suit in my size on board, would there?"

  "No, Your Highness, there wouldn't," Pahner answered stoically. "I've already checked. That detail was overlooked. As were others, apparently." He turned to the miserable-looking captain. "If you'd care to continue, Captain Krasnitsky?"

  The captain rubbed his face and sighed.

  "We were sabotaged, Your Highness. Badly."

  "Sabotaged?" the prince repeated incredulously. "By whom?"

  "Now that is the million-credit question, Your Highness," Pahner admitted. "We know the who as in 'who actually did the sabotage.' That was Ensign Amanda Guha, the ship's logistics officer."

  "What?" Roger blinked in confusion. "Why would she do that?"

  Captain Krasnitsky opened his mouth to answer, then looked at Pahner, and the Marine shrugged his shoulders and continued. "We're not positive, of course, but I believe she was a toombie."

  "A toot zombie?" Roger's eyes widened. "Here? Are there any more?" Then he shook his head at the stupidity of his own question. "We wouldn't know, would we?"

  "No, Your Highness, we wouldn't," Pahner replied with considerable restraint. "However, there are some indications that she was the sole toombie. It's vanishingly unlikely that anyone else in the Company is at risk. Everyone who is expected to have contact with you is regularly swept and has up-to-date security protocols. And everyone in the ship's company was swept before the voyage. Including Ensign Guha. But we found a device in her cabin. . . ."

  "Oh, shit," Roger said.

  "I can think of at least twenty ways the device could have made it on board," Pahner continued. "However, that's not the most pressing issue at the moment."

  "Your Highness," Captain Krasnitsky said finally, with a nodded thanks at Pahner, "Captain Pahner is correct. How they got to Guha is less important than what she did to us, I'm afraid. She managed to attach explosive devices to several of the tunnel drive plasma conduits. When they went off, we nearly lost Engineering entirely from an unvented plasma core leak. When the plasma breach was detected, the automated systems were supposed to shut off deuterium flow, but the next bead in the magazine was a worm program that she apparently dumped into the control systems. It cut out the safety interlocks, so the plasma kept venting. . . ."

  The captain stopped and wiped his face, trying to find the right words to report the disaster, but Pahner did it for him.

  "We've lost all but one fusion plant, Your Highness," the stone-faced Marine said. "Tunnel drive is off-line. Phase drive is off-line. The chief engineer got the flow shut down manually, but a plasma blast took her out right after she did it. And she was our only fully qualified engineering repair officer."

  "A physical and cyber attack." The prince sounded stunned. "Against a member of the Imperial Family?"

  "Yes, Your Highness," Pahner said with the bleak smile of the truly pissed professional. "Lovely, don't you think? And it wasn't as if they were going to stop there. We've got worm programs and viruses in every major subsystem: Navigation, Fire Control—"

  "And Environmental," Krasnitsky interrupted with a shake of his head. "Well, had. I'm pretty sure we got them all wiped out, but we've taken some heavy casualties in Engineering, and—"

  "I was 'pretty sure' there wasn't anything like them on board to begin with!" Pahner snapped angrily. "We need to be more than 'pretty sure,' Captain."

  "Agreed, Captain," the captain said shortly. He stood and straightened his back. "Your Highness, with your permission, I need to get back to my ship. I have high hopes that we can make sufficient repairs to get us to a habitable planet. Although," he turned and looked at the granite-faced Pahner again, "the system we have to make for . . ."

  He let his voice trail off and shrugged, and Roger nodded, with a dazed expression.

  "Of course, Captain. You need to get back to work. Good luck. Call me if you need anything."

  He realized how fatuous the last sentence sounded even as it dropped from his lips. What the heck could he do that trained and experienced crew members couldn't? Cook? But the already exhausted captain paid no attention to the silliness of the remark. He simply bowed, and stepped past Pahner and out of the cabin.

  The hatch closed behind him, and Pahner gave the prince another bleak smile.

  "What the Captain didn't mention, Your Highness, is where we're headed."

  "Which is where?" the prince asked warily.

  "Marduk, Your Highness."

  The prince searched his memory, but found nothing. A quick check of his implanted database found the planet, but it was simply listed as a Class Three imperial planet. A toot had a fairly large memory, but much of it was taken up by the interaction protocols. The remainder was filled with data which, in Roger's case, anyway, was selected at the user's discretion. Now the entry flashed across the surface of his consciousness as figures and pictures scrolled across his vision. Most of the data was textual and symbolic, the better to crowd into the memory allocation, and he frowned thoughtfully as he scanned it. The world maintained an imperial post with what sounded like very limited landing facilities, but it wasn't even an associate member—just a place where the Empire had planted its flag.

  "It's one of ours," he stated carefully.

  "Nominally, Your Highness. Nominally," Pahner snorted. "There's a port, but no repair facilities—certainly none capable of repairing one of these assault ships. There's an automated refueling post over one of the gas giants which is owned by TexAmP, but the port is locally managed. Out on the back of beyond like it is, who knows what's actually going on?"

  Pahner consulted his own toot and frowned much more unhappily than Roger had.

  "The only intel note I have on the region is that the Saints might be active out here. On the other hand, Your Highness, out here on the frontier about half the time you turn around there's a Saint SpecOps team nosing under the tent." He smiled faintly. "Of course, they probably feel the same way about us."

  Pahner consulted his notepad, with its much greater memory, and frowned again.

  "The locals are hostile and primitive, the fauna is vicious, the mean temperature is thirty-three degrees centigrade, and it rains five times a day. The region is notorious for Dream Spice smuggling, and piracy is rampant. Of course." He shook his head. "Frankly, Your Highness, I feel like I'm taking you down Fourteenth Street at oh-three hundred on a Saturday night in August dressed in thousand-credit chips."

  Fourteenth Street had been in existence since the days when Imperial City had been the District of Columbia, the capital of the former United States, and it had never been a good place to wander. But that was the last thing on Roger's mind at this particular moment, and he rubbed his face and sighed.

  "Is there any good news?" The question had a note of a whine in it, and he kicked himself for being such a shit. Everyone else was busting their butts to save his sorry ass. The least he could do was not whine about the situation!

  Pahner's face tightened.

  "Well, you're still breathing, Your Highness. So I haven't
failed my charge yet. And I think the Captain can get the ship to Marduk, which is a blessing. At least in a military ship they can reroute the fixed control runs, although that's going to take a week or more, with most of the Company pitching in alongside the crew to do, pardon the pun, grunt work.

  "It's good news that the senior engineer was in the compartment in the middle of the night and reacted fast enough to shut down an out of control reaction. It's good news that we're on a military ship. It's good news that we only got knocked six or seven light-years off course, and not clear into Saint territory. It's good news that we're still breathing. But other than that, no. I can't think of any."

  Roger nodded. "You have an interesting definition of good news, Captain. But I see your point. What can I do to help?" he asked, carefully controlling his voice.

  "To tell you the truth, Your Highness, the best thing you can do is to stay in your cabin and out of the way. All your presence would do would be to distract the crew and make my guys have to run around using up extra oxygen. So, if you'd stay put, I'd appreciate it. I'll have your meals delivered."

  "What about the gym?" Roger asked, his eyes flicking around the tiny cabin.

  "Until Environmental comes back online, none of us are going to be doing much working out, Your Highness. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work."

  Without waiting for permission, Pahner hit the hatch key and let himself out. The hatch cycled shut behind him, leaving Roger to stare at the walls that seemed smaller than ever.

  And to listen for the returning circulation of air.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Prince Roger's patience had worn thin.

  The better part of a day had passed since the crudely repaired, shuddering tunnel drive had kicked off and the in-system phase drive had cut in, and he was tired of being good. He'd been stuck in his cabin, half the time in this ill-fitting vac suit, for three weeks while the repairs proceeded and the ship limped through tunnel space toward Marduk, and the noise and vibration of the patched-up drive systems hadn't been designed to make him any happier about it.

  The TD normally emitted a smooth, almost lulling background hum, but the jury-rigged repairs had produced something that whined, shuddered, and sometimes seemed to threaten to tear the ship apart. Pahner and Captain Krasnitsky had been careful to underplay the problems on their infrequent visits to update him, but the repairs weren't much more than "5k cord and bubble gum," according to Matsugae, who'd become friendly with some of the guards. They'd held together, though, and the awful journey was almost over. All they had to do was land on Marduk and commandeer the first imperial ship back to Earth. He might even end up being able to avoid Leviathan completely. Problem solved, crisis resolved, danger past. So Roger, Prince of the House MacClintock, was not by God going to stay cooped up, incommunicado, in his stinking cabin.

  He smoothed down his hair, patted a few stray strands into place, touched the hatch control, and stepped out into the passage. The stink in the dim corridor was even worse than in the cabin, and for a moment he considered donning his helmet. But he was obviously clumsy putting it on and taking it off, and damned if he was going to give these Myrmidons a reason to laugh at his expense. He turned to one of the armored guards.

  "Take me to the bridge," he ordered in his most imperious tone. He wanted to be absolutely clear that he was done cowering in his cabin.

  * * *

  Sergeant Nimashet Despreaux cocked her head inside her helmet and regarded the prince from behind the shield of her flickering visor. The helmet system was intended to cause the eye to shift away, enhancing the effect of the chameleon camouflage they all wore. But it also made it impossible for anyone on the outside to see a Marine's expression, and, after a brief pause, she stuck her tongue out at him and turned toward the bridge. She also sent a biofeedback command to the radio control and opened a channel to Captain Pahner.

  "Captain Pahner, this is Sergeant Despreaux. His Highness is headed for the bridge," she reported flatly.

  "Roger," was the terse reply.

  It was going to be interesting to be a fly on the wall for this one.

  * * *

  They finally cycled through the double airlock system to the bridge, and Roger looked around. He'd familiarized with the Puller-class at the Academy, but he'd never actually been on the bridge of one before. The company-sized assault transports were the backbone of the Corps support groups, which meant they were under-emphasized by the Academy. An Academy graduate wanted to be posted to Line or Screen forces, where the promotions and the action were, not to an assault barge. Might as well captain a garbage scow.

  But this garbage scow had survived the crisis, and that said a lot for the captain and crew, Academy graduates or not.

  There was evidence of the damage even on the bridge. Scorch marks on the communications board indicated an overload in the maser com, and most of the front panels were missing from the control stations. Control runs were normally formed directly into the hull structure when a ship was grown, but since military ships had to assume that they would suffer combat damage, there were provisions for bypassing them with temporary systems. In this case, hastily installed relays, some of them even made out of wire, for God's sake, snaked across the floor, and the compartment was filled with the faint pulse of optic transmissions leaking from the joints.

  Roger stepped over the cables littering the deck and joined the captain where he and Pahner were examining the tactical readout. The hologram of the system buckled and rippled as the crippled tactical computers struggled to keep it updated.

  "How are we doing?" he asked.

  "Well," Captain Krasnitsky answered with a grim, utterly humorless smile, "we were doing fine, Your Highness."

  As he finished speaking, the General Quarters alarm sounded. Again.

  "What's happening?" Roger asked over the wail, and Captain Pahner frowned and shook his head.

  "Unidentified warship in the system, Your Highness. They're over a day away from intercept, but we don't know what else might be lying doggo nearby."

  "What?" Roger yipped, his voice cracking in surprise. "How? But—" He stopped and tried to put on a better face. "Are they part of the sabotage? Could they be waiting for us? And who are they? Not imperial?"

  "Captain?" Pahner turned to the ship's commander.

  "Currently, who they are is unknown, Sir. Your Highness, I mean." For once, the captain wasn't flustered by the presence of royalty. The overriding necessity to fight his ship was all he had mind for, and the last three weeks of hell had burned out most of his other worries. "Our sensors are damaged, along with everything else, but it's definitely a warship from the phase drive signature. The filament structure is too deep for it to be anything else." He frowned again and thought about the rest of the questions.

  "I doubt that they're part of some deeply laid plan, Your Highness. When the tunnel drive was damaged, it threw us badly off our planned flight path. I doubt that the conspirators, whoever they were, could believe we're still alive, and if they'd made preparations to 'make sure of the job,' they would have done so in systems closer to our base course. Marduk is off our baseline by almost a full tunnel jump, almost seventeen light-years. I don't see how anyone could have anticipated our ending up here.

  "So, no, I don't think they're 'waiting for us,' but that doesn't necessarily make their presence good news. The drive and emissions signatures look kind of like a Saint parasite cruiser, but if that's so, that means the Saints have had a Line carrier in-system."

  "And that means the Saints have probably taken the system," Pahner snarled.

  The ship captain smiled thinly and sniffed, tapping the edge of the crippled tactical display. "Yes, it does."

  "So the planet is under hostile control?" Roger asked.

  "Possibly, Sir. Your Highness," Krasnitsky agreed. "Okay, probably. The orbitals, at least. They haven't necessarily taken over the port."

  "Almost certainly," Pahner concluded. "Captain, I think
we need a council. Myself and my officers, His Highness, your officers who are available. We have time?"

  "Oh, yes. Whoever this is, he waited to bring up his phase drive until we were deep enough inside the tunnel wall to be sure no merchant could make it back out without being overhauled. Which probably means our signature is changed enough from our damage that he thinks we're a merchie instead of an assault ship. But even with our accel towards the planet and his accel towards us, we have several hours to decide what we're going to do"

  "What are our choices?" Roger asked. The blinking red icon of the possible hostile cruiser held his eyes like a lodestone, and Krasnitsky smiled faintly.

  "Well, there isn't much choice, is there, Your Highness? We can't space out . . ."

  * * *

  " . . . so, we'll have to fight," Captain Krasnitsky said.

  The wardroom was crowded. Besides Krasnitsky, there were his executive officer, the acting engineer, and the acting tactical officer. On Bravo Company's side of the table there was Prince Roger, who was flanked by Eleanora O'Casey and Captain Pahner. In addition, Pahner had brought two of his three lieutenants. According to the ideal universe of The Book, there were supposed to be seven lieutenants a line company, but that happy state of affairs was rarely found in dreary reality. It was especially hard to find in The Empress' Own, which had even higher standards for its officers than its enlisted men.

  In general, the need for an executive officer and "chief of staff" for a company commander was seen as overriding the need for a platoon leader, so Third Platoon was officerless. Its platoon sergeant, who normally would have been in the meeting, was busy getting it prepared for whatever the CO decided to do, and the navigator was on the bridge, bluffing the oncoming cruiser which was looking more and more like a Saint parasite.