Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry Read online

  "I don't want anyone to have any doubts," Krasnitsky went on. "We might win, and we might not. Usually, I'd say we could take a single cruiser—we've got more missiles, and heavier, and we've got him licked on beam armament." He paused and stared at the deckhead for a moment. "We've got all the normal advantages of a tunnel drive ship. We aren't mass-limited; the drive only cares about our volume, so we can afford to mount ChromSten armor, which he can't. That right there is a major factor, since it will shrug off some of the missiles that get through, whereas ours will all hammer him. And we've got more internal volume, so we can absorb more of the damage that does get through.

  "The downside is, we're in sad shape. We can hardly accelerate at all, and our sensors and targeting systems are screwed. We're a damned big target, too, so it's not like they're going to miss. All the normal disadvantages of a TD ship, with a few extra thrown in. So we'll take damage, no question. Even if we win, we'll be in worse shape than we are now."

  He paused again and looked around the compartment. The Marines, combat veterans all, looked grim but determined. His own people, none of whom had actually been through a ship-to-ship action, looked a bit white, but focused. The prince's chief of staff was trying very hard to look as if she had any idea at all of what was going on. The prince, though . . . The prince was a sight. It was obvious that, whatever else he'd taken at the Academy, no-win simulations hadn't been on the program. As the briefing had gone on, his eyes had just gotten rounder and rounder. . . .

  "What about punching the assault shuttles?" Pahner asked, leaning a chin on one fist and looking so calm he appeared almost disinterested. Krasnitsky had dealt with some cool Marines in the course of his career, but the commander of the prince's bodyguard was obviously one of those rare people who simply got calmer when disaster loomed. The Fleet officer was willing to bet that the Marine's blood pressure and heartbeat were so low they were dropping off the scale.

  "I'd suggest loading them," Lieutenant Commander Talcott, DeGlopper's XO said, "but don't punch them. Putting their additional armor between the Prince and incoming fire would be good, but you'd have a helluva time making the planet without us from here."

  "Have we received any transmission from the other ship?" Eleanora asked.

  "Not yet," Krasnitsky said. "Lag. The soonest we can expect to receive a com is sometime in the next half hour, and they'll be receiving our own message about the same time. And before you ask: we're the Nebula Lines freighter Beowulf's Gift, out of Olmstead. We've had a tunnel drive failure, and we're looking for a port to await a repair ship."

  "Whether they believe it or not," snorted Lieutenant Gulyas, the Second Platoon leader. Since Marine companies were designed to operate independently, which meant their COs needed their own de facto staffs, he also wore the "hat" of intel officer.

  "Indeed," Lieutenant Commander Talcott said. "Just as much as we believe them."

  "There's no reason for them to suspect us," Captain Krasnitsky pointed out. "With our phase drive damage, we can't make any sort of acceleration, and the damage also masks our tendril signature. Frankly, we do look like a damaged freighter. They'll practically have to do a hull map to tell the difference."

  "By which time," Sublieutenant Segedin declared, "we'll have them locked up and ready to blast." The acting tactical officer seemed to be looking forward to the action. Nervous but ready, like a racehorse at the starting gate. "The good news is how long they waited to fire up. They have to be assuming we're a merchie, so they'll come calling for us to heave to or follow them to the planet. We'll play along, but not decel. The closer we get to the planet, the better."

  "We're down one missile tube," Talcott commented. "The local server was flattened by the power surges, and we're out of spares, but that leaves us seven. And all the laser mounts are online. Fire control is . . . spotty. But it should hold for a short engagement."

  "So the ship blasts the cruiser," Prince Roger said, twining a golden strand of hair around one finger. "Then what? How do we get back to Earth?"

  "Then the port submits, or we drop kinetic weapons on it, Your Highness," Pahner said flatly. "And after that, we wait for a ride home."

  "And if the carrier comes back?" Roger was surprised at how calm he sounded. He looked at the piece of hair in his hand as if in surprise, and then patted it back into place. "I mean, the cruiser had to be dropped off by a carrier, right? And a carrier has collapsed armor and even more missiles than we do. Right?"

  Pahner and Krasnitsky shared a look, and Pahner answered.

  "Well, Your Highness, I think we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. It could just be lying low somewhere. But," he glanced at Segedin, "what about other ships in the system? Other cruisers or destroyers?"

  "Right now, we don't detect any," the acting TACO replied. "But if the cruiser hadn't lit off its drive, we never would have detected him, either. There could be a carrier or another cruiser—or a hundred little fighter bastards—out there, and we'd have no idea."

  "Okay," Pahner said, "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, too." He turned to the Marine lieutenants who were making notes on their pads. The electronic devices would convert the entire meeting to text for reading, but the notes brought out the highlights. "Get the assault boats prepped. Full loadout. When we hit orbit, we should be prepared for a hot drop on the port."

  "Are we talking an extended fight here, Sir?" Lieutenant Sawato asked. The First Platoon leader was the senior lieutenant and de facto operations officer for the company. If there was going to be an extended fight, it would be her job to ensure that the plans were in place to support it.

  "No." Pahner shook his head. "We'll call on them to surrender. If they do, we'll drop on them like a ton of lead. If they don't, we'll hit them with kinetic strikes, then drop on them like a ton of lead. We'll work up a full mission order around that in the next few hours. Take this as a warning order. "

  "Will that be strictly necessary, Major?" Eleanora asked. "I mean, you're the Bronze Battalion, not an enforcement company. It's your job to protect Prince Roger, not to retake planets from people like the Saints. If we hold the orbitals, can't we just wait for reinforcements to arrive and handle the situation on the ground?"

  Pahner looked at her woodenly for a moment.

  "Yes, Ma'am. I suppose we could," he said finally. "But, frankly, I think it's important that whoever has taken over the system understand that when you dick around with an imperial base, all it gets you is bloody and bruised. More to the immediate point, we might end up hiding on the ground. I'd prefer that base be neutralized if we do."

  "You mean if the cruiser's support ship comes back?" Roger asked.

  "Yes, Your Highness. Or if it's still around somewhere," Pahner replied shortly.

  "Will His Highness be on the assault?" Krasnitsky asked in a diffident tone.

  "Yes!" Roger said quickly, his face lighting at the thought of getting off the ship.

  "No!" Pahner and O'Casey spoke simultaneously, and it was difficult to say which sounded more emphatic. They looked at each other, then at the prince. The two of them flanked him like lions at the gate, and O'Casey leaned out over the table to fix his eye, since he was steadfastly looking across the table at Captain Krasnitsky.

  "No," she said even more firmly.

  "Why not?" Roger asked, wincing inwardly as he heard his own whining tone. "I can carry my own weight!"

  "It's too dangerous," O'Casey snapped. "The very idea is ludicrous!"

  "If we're performing an assault, Your Highness, I can't have my troops guarding you at the same time," Pahner pointed out in her support.

  "My troops," Roger said petulantly. He hated the tone, but he didn't know how else to say it. "Mine, Captain. I'm the battalion commander; you work for me." He smoothed his hair and pulled a couple of imaginary wayward strands into place, and Pahner's face turned to clenched-jawed iron.

  "Yes, Your Highness, you are." He leaned back, crossed his arms, and gazed impassively up at t
he deckhead. "What are your orders, Sir?"

  Roger had already opened his mouth to protest the next infringement on his prerogatives, and the sudden lack of resistance left him with his mouth hanging wide. He had absolutely no idea what orders he should give, nor did he want to give any. He just wished that people would start treating him like an adult and the commander of the battalion instead of an appendage only important as something to guard. But suddenly the image of a Marine, out of his chameleon suit, exposed to vacuum, sitting on his own vac suited chest, waiting to see if the ship was going to depressurize, flashed across his vision, and he knew he had to find a way out of the corner he'd painted himself into. He thought about the conversation which had been going on around him, to the point of doing a quick check of his toot. The device had been set to a one-minute memory storage, a technique that had stood him in good stead in school and on numerous social occasions, and he felt a surge of relief as he spotted an out.

  "Well, Captain, I think we should get started on drafting an operations order while the platoons prep the shuttles. We'll settle who's going to be included on the mission in the operations order." He glanced sideways at Eleanora, but she refused to meet his eye, as did the embarrassed-looking officers across the table. "Do you have anything further, Captain Krasnitsky?"

  "No, Your Highness," Krasnitsky said. "I think that's it."

  "Very well," the prince said. "Let's get to it!"

  Krasnitsky looked at Pahner, who nodded, and with that, the meeting adjourned.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Prince Roger to the bridge, please. Prince Roger to the bridge."

  The intercom announcement, backed by a ping on his implant, caught Roger at an inopportune time. He was finally being fitted for a suit of armor, and the process was not going well.

  The decision had been made, not without some heated discussion, that although Roger would not be permitted to join any assault on the port facilities, he would go down with the second wave of technical support from the ship. It was only half a victory, from his perspective, but at least Pahner had admitted that since there might still be some hostile fire, breaking out a suit of armor and fitting it to the prince was probably a good idea.

  Roger suspected that the captain's rationale was intended as much to get the Marines' charge out of his hair as anything, but it only made sense to put as much security around the Imperial Person as possible. Unfortunately, the fitting was going to be interrupted, and he felt some trepidation as he looked over at the armorer who was glaring at the intercom with his lips drawn back in a snarl.

  Since good armorers were much harder to find than good guards, and since their function was an "out of sight, out of mind" one, armorers assigned to The Empress' Own went through a far less stringent winnowing process than the guards and faced only one true criterion: extreme competence. And when there weren't enough volunteers, extremely competent armorers were sometimes "volunteered." This occasionally led to the assignment of persons who, while more or less suitable to take out in public, were not the sort with whom Roger normally dealt.

  "So what do we do now?" the prince asked, staring at a hand frozen in an alloy gauntlet. The gauntlet's interface was proving cranky, and the armorer had been deeply engrossed in the debugging process when the announcement came in.

  "Will, Yer Highness," said the slight Marine, whose name tag read Poertena, "I guess we git a pocking can opener and cot you out."

  It took Roger a moment to translate the sergeant's thick Pinopan accent. Pinopa was a world of widespread archipelagoes and tropical seas which had been settled in the first wave of slow-boat colonization by refugees from the Dragon Wars in Southeast Asia, and although the planet's official language was Standard English, the Pinopan had obviously grown up in a non-English household. Despite the accent, Roger was pretty sure he had "pocking" translated correctly. He hoped, however, that the corporal was exaggerating the rest.

  "Should I call them and tell them I'm busy?" Roger asked, unsure how they were going to get him out of the ill-fitted armor in any short period of time. Normally, it was a matter of hitting controls which opened the armor along numerous seams, but given the problems this particular suit had been evincing, the experienced armorer had locked down and tagged out most of the controls. The alternative, in which he wasn't particularly interested, was the possibility of intercepting several hundred amps of current or getting cold-cocked by a flailing fist. Now it would be necessary to reconnect all the contacts before the prince could be extracted.

  "New, Yer Highness. I'll have you out in a pocking minute. Tell them yer gonna be ten mikes, and that'll cover it. Besides, I got all this udder pocking suits they need pix." His arms swept around the Armory, where half a dozen suits were up on racks awaiting repair. "Pocking gun-bunnies alles breaking t'eir suits. Pocking passers."

  The armorer crossed the room to a disused tool chest and extracted a one-meter wrench. He dragged the mass of metal back over to the prince, who was immobilized by the armor, and looked the noble right in the eye.

  "Now, Yer Highness," the slight, dark Marine said, grinning nervously, "t'is ain't gonna hurt a bit."

  He swung the giant wrench back like a batter, and, with a grunt of effort, slammed its head into the left upper biceps of the suit with all his might.

  Roger grimaced when he realized what was about to happen, but other than an unpleasant vibration, the only effect on the suit was that the connection from the arm piece to the shoulder popped free. The collapsed molecules of the ChromSten armor barely noticed the impact, but Poertena dropped the ersatz hammer and shook his hands.

  "Pocking vibration."

  He looked at the disconnected arm in satisfaction, then picked the wrench up and maneuvered to the other side.

  "I used to use a hammer fer t'is." The right biceps was disconnected with another grunt of effort and another noisy clang. "But my cousin-in-law, he said, 'Ramon. Gets you a wrench, pudder-mocker.' So I gets a wrench. An' tee pudder-mocker was right." He dropped the wrench and reached up into the gap created by the detached arm piece. "Wonce you get tee arms detached, it all over but tee counting." He slid his small hand and forearm up along the prince's back. Roger could feel him fumbling for something, then there was a release of tension as the seam along the rear of the suit's carapace opened. Unfortunately, the suit bent at the shoulders, and that trapped the armorer's forearm in the gap. "Pock," was his only comment. Then—

  "Prince, can you sock it op an' push you shoulders pack?"

  * * *

  With a few more contortions, the prince found himself standing in the middle of scattered bits of powered armor. He looked down at his singlet, and chuckled. "So much for modesty."

  The armory hatch whooshed opened and a female sergeant in chameleon dress stepped in. She had a cool face with high Slavic cheekbones, and her long brown hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head. The rippling distortion of the chameleon fabric denied any impression of shape, but her quick tread and lithe movements indicated a high level of athleticism. She didn't bat an eye at the half-naked prince or the scattered armor.

  "Your Highness, Captain Pahner requests your presence on the bridge."

  "Com the Captain and tell him that it took a bit to get out of the armor," Roger said testily. "I'll be there in a minute."

  "Yes, Your Highness," the sergeant said blandly and tapped the transmitter button on her side as Roger began getting dressed in the clothes he'd chosen for these few, tense hours. He'd considered combat dress, but decided that it was just too uncomfortable and finally chosen a safari outfit made of a brushed cottonlike material. It wouldn't be appropriate for combat, but it gave a fine aura of adventure and was much more pleasant than the chameleon cloth everyone else had changed into.

  Roger watched the sergeant surreptitiously as he dressed. At first, he thought that she was wiggling her jaw to work a bit of food out of her teeth, but he eventually realized that she was having a long subvocal discussion or argument with someone
. The throat microphone was almost invisible against her long, tanned neck, and the receiver, of course, was embedded in her mastoid bone.

  Finally he was dressed, and he gave the multipocketed shirt a tug and flipped off a bit of lint.

  "Ready."

  The sergeant touched the hatch control, but stayed behind as the prince left, escorted by the two guards in the passage outside. As the hatch closed, she turned to the armorer who was reassembling the suit on a mannequin rack.

  "Poertena," she said in severe tones, "did you do the hammer thing to the Prince?"

  "Of course I didn' do tee hammer ting," the armorer said nervously. "I don' do tee hammer ting no more."

  "Then what the hell is that wrench doing on the floor?"

  "Oh, t'at. I don' do tee hammer ting, I do tee wrench ting."

  "Poertena, you start fucking around with the Prince, and Pahner will have your ass for breakfast."

  "Pock Pahner," the armorer snapped, gesturing around the compartment. "You see t'at? I got six pocking sets of pocking armor to get ready. You see Pahner helping? You see you helping? I gonna go get reamed by Pahner, or I gonna pix suits?"

  "If you need help, ask!" The sergeant's blue eyes flashed, and she crossed her arms and glared at the half-pint armorer. "We're finished loading the boats. I've got two squads sitting around with their thumbs up their butts. They can be down here in a second."

  "I don' need a buncha ham-fist clowns pocking up my suits," the armorer said petulantly. "Every time I gets help, they pock up my suits."

  "Okay," the sergeant said with a nasty smile. "Tell you what. I'll get Sergeant Julian to help you."

  "Oh, nooo," Poertena said as he realized that he'd put himself in a trap with his bitching. "Not Julian!"

  * * *

  "Hey, Troop!" Julian entered the weapons bay, walked up to the nearest trooper, who was a recent join from Sixth Fleet, put a hand on her shoulder, and grasped her hand for a firm handshake. "Glad you could make it." He gestured with his chin at the plasma rifle the trooper was preparing to disassemble. "You need some help with that there plasma thingamajig?"