Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry Read online

  The station chairs were designed for use by armored or unarmored Marines, so they were hardened. The same could not be said for all the items surrounding them, and there wasn't much space in which to move. The simple fact was that a shuttle loaded with troops and supplies was always overcrowded.

  The troops in the cargo bay sat packed like sardines in four rows, two back-to-back down the center of the bay, and one down either side, facing inward. The rows were composed of memory plastic cocoons, but the cocoons were thin walled to either side, so that their occupants were practically shoulder to shoulder, and each row faced another, so close that the Marines' knees intertwined. Their individual weapons and rucksacks were on their knees, piled on top of each other, and each cocoon top sprouted a combat helmet, currently configured to do service as a vac helmet for the chameleon suit of the trooper inside it.

  Between a near-total inability to move their legs, the fact that the slightest movement resulted in punching a neighbor, and the fact that getting up or out required going through four layers of gear, it was no place for a claustrophobe. But at least troops in chameleon suits didn't have to worry about how to go to the bathroom. Since the suits were designed for space combat, they had all the comforts of home.

  There were armored suits scattered through the cocoons as well, and halfway down the compartment the rows of troops were abruptly broken by a mass of hydrogen cylinders. The red painted battle steel ovals, each the size of an old-fashioned natural gas tank, were piled halfway to the shuttle roof and strapped down nine ways from Sunday. The shuttle might crash, a nuclear-tipped missile might detonate at point-blank range, but nothing was going to move those cylinders. Which was the point. If they kicked loose during the maneuvers of the shuttles or their mothership, the passengers might as well give up and open their suits to vacuum, because without the hydrogen in those tanks, the shuttles would never be able to make reentry.

  Beyond the cylinders, which were placed just forward of the shuttle's center of gravity, was the rest of the armored squad and general cargo. In the case of this shuttle, putting the armored squad behind the cylinders, along with the cargo, which had a higher density than the troopers forward of the cylinders, balanced out the load. Since the ships were going to have to make a nearly "dead stick" atmospheric reentry, balance of the cargo was critical. But the whole setup made for terrific crowding.

  At least Roger didn't have to put up with the conditions in the cargo bay, but the small compartment he shared with Pahner wasn't all that much better. It offered just enough room to swing a cat . . . assuming it was a very small cat. It contained two tactical stations, wedged into the starboard side of the shuttle, forward of the cargo compartment that separated it from the cockpit. It was the most hardened part of the ship, which was one of the reasons Roger was there, and it also had umbilicals, like those in the cargo bay, to provide local power and recycling support to armor or vac suits. But the low overhead (the position was wedged in above the starboard forward thruster plenum) and the limited space to move around meant that it, also, was no place for a claustrophobe. And just to make the crowding complete, Pahner and Roger's rucksacks hung from the cramped compartment's forward bulkhead.

  Roger managed to get his knees out from under the tac station without breaking anything else and looked at the back of Pahner's helmet.

  "So," he said testily, "what do we do now?"

  "We wait, Your Highness," the company commander replied calmly. He seemed to have gotten over his anger at the prince's refusal to carry his own gear. "The waiting is supposed to be the hardest part."

  "Is it?" Roger asked. He found himself out of his depth. This was something he'd never planned for—not that he'd been given many options in planning his life—and it was something he wasn't prepared for. He was accustomed to the challenge of sports, but one reason he had embraced that sort of challenge was because no one had ever taken him seriously enough to make any others applicable to him. Now he was face to face with the greatest challenge of his life . . . and making a mistake on this ballfield would mean death.

  "It is for some," Pahner replied. "For others, the worst part is the aftermath. Counting the cost."

  He turned his own chair to face the prince, trying to decipher what was going on behind the flickering ball of the boy's faceplate.

  "There's going to be a pretty high cost to this operation," he continued, carefully not allowing his tone to change. "But that happens sometimes. There are two sides to any wargame, Your Highness, and the other side is trying to win, too."

  "I try very hard not to lose," Roger said quietly. "I discovered early on that I didn't care for it a bit." The external speaker was the highest quality, but the sound still echoed oddly in the little compartment.

  "Neither do I, Your Highness," Pahner agreed, turning back to his command station. "Neither do I. There aren't any losers in The Empress' Own. And damned few in the Fleet."

  * * *

  "We just got painted, Sir." Commander Talcott's quiet tone was totally focused. "Sensors confirm that it's a Saint lidar. A Mark 46." He looked up from the tactical system. "That's standard for a Muir-class cruiser."

  "Roger," Krasnitsky said. "They'll realize their mistake in a moment. Go active and open fire as soon as you have a good lock."

  Sublieutenant Segedin had been poised for the order like a runner in the blocks, and his hand stabbed the active emissions button just as the launch alarm sounded.

  The Saint parasite cruiser was underarmed for the engagement. Although she was large for an in-system ship, she and her sisters were nothing compared to a starship.

  Since the tunnel drive was dependent on volume, not mass, starships could be made extremely large and incredibly massive. Max-hull warships were over twelve hundred meters in diameter, and all interstellar warships were plated with ChromSten collapsed matter armor. That armor normally represented a third of the total mass of a ship, but since their systems were volume dependent, it hardly mattered. They also had immense room for missiles, and the capacitors that drove their tunnel drives gave them enormous storage for their energy batteries.

  But once they were inside the TD limit, they found themselves limping along on phase drive, and phase drive was mass dependent. Which meant that starships were relatively slow and awkward to maneuver.

  That was where the parasites came in.

  Parasite cruisers and fighters could be packed into max-hull warships in terrific numbers. Once the starships entered a system, they could send out their cruisers and fighters to engage the enemy, but the cruisers were designed to be fast and nimble, rather than heavily armored, and lacked the ChromSten of starships. But this cruiser had come well within DeGlopper's engagement range and was at the mercy of the heavier ship.

  The CO of the Saint parasite quickly realized that he'd screwed up by the numbers. His initial launch started with a single missile, which had clearly been intended as a "shot across the bows," but the rest of his broadside followed swiftly. Within moments, a half-dozen missiles came scorching towards the assault ship, and the next broadside followed seconds later.

  "He's firing at his launchers' maximum cycle rate, Sir!" Segedin announced, and Krasnitsky nodded. The Saint captain was firing as rapidly as he could, using a "shoot-shoot-look" tracking system. It would take nearly four and a half minutes for the missiles to cross the distance between the two ships, which meant that at his current rate of fire, he would have shot his magazines dry before the first salvo impacted. It was exactly what Krasnitsky would have done in his place, because given the difference in the sizes and power of the two opponents, the cruiser's only chance at this point was to overwhelm and destroy the heavier ship before they closed to energy range.

  But that wasn't going to happen.

  "All right, let's delta vee," he told Segedin. "I want a max delta towards this Saint P-O-S. Take him, Tactical!"

  "Aye, Sir!"

  Radar and lidar had an iron lock on the cruiser, and despite the crippling effec
ts of Ensign Guha's sabotage, the tactical computers quickly finalized firing solutions.

  DeGlopper was a four-hundred-meter-radius sphere. She was an assault ship, which meant she had to build in room for six shuttles, but that left more than enough room for missile tubes and ample magazines, and the missiles in those magazines were larger and heavier than any parasite cruiser could carry. Now all eight of her launchers began hammering fire at the Saint, and mixed in with her more dangerous missiles were jammers and antiradiation seekers.

  It looked like a totally unfair fight, but DeGlopper's tactical net was far below par. Most of her missiles were under autonomous control, which meant the transport's computer AI couldn't adjust their flight profiles to maximum effect. And it also meant her point defense was far less effective than normal.

  "Vampires! I have multiple vampires inbound!" There was a series of thuds as the ship's automated defenses reacted to the inbound missiles. "We have auto-flares and chaff. Some of the vampires are following the decoys!"

  "And some of them aren't!" Krasnitsky snapped, watching his own plot. "Sound the collision alarm!"

  Some of the Saint missiles were picked off by countermissiles and laser clusters. Others were sucked off course by active and passive decoys, and the entire first salvo was destroyed or spoofed. But one missile from the second salvo, and three missiles from the third, got through, and alarms screamed as pencils of X-ray radiation smashed into the ChromSten hull.

  "Direct hit on Missile Five," Commander Talcott reported harshly. "We've lost Number Two Graser, two countermissile launchers, and twelve laser clusters." He looked up from his displays and met Krasnitsky's eyes across the bridge. "None of the damage hit any of the shuttles or came near the magazines, Sir!"

  "Thank God," the captain whispered. "But still not good. Navigation, how long to beam range?"

  "Two minutes," the Navigator reported, and smiled evilly. She'd successfully fooled the Saint captain for hours, playing the role of a panicked merchant skipper while he reviled her parentage, knowledge, and training. Now let him suck laser!

  "Hit!" Segedin called. "At least one direct missile hit, Sir! She's streaming air!"

  "Understood," Krasnitsky replied. "How are we doing on the computers?"

  "Rotten, Sir!" Segedin snapped, euphoria vanished. "I had to shift resources to the defensive systems. Most of the birds are flying on their own at this point."

  "Well, this will be over soon," the captain said, just as another salvo of Saint missiles came streaking in. "One way or another."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Roger grabbed the arms of the command chair as another concussion rocked the shuttle like a high wind.

  "This," he remarked quietly, "is not fun."

  "Hmmm," Pahner said noncommittally. "Check your monitors in the troop bay, Sir."

  The prince found the appropriate control and tapped it, turning on the closed-circuit monitors in the troop bay. What they revealed surprised him: most of the troops were asleep, and the few who were awake were performing some sort of leisure activity.

  Two had electronic game pads out and appeared to be competing in something with one another. Others were playing cards with hard decks or, apparently, reading. One even had a hard copy book out, an old and much thumbed one from the look. Roger panned around, looking for anyone he recognized, and realized that he only knew three or four names in the entire company.

  Poertena was asleep, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. Gunnery Sergeant Jin, the dark, broad Korean platoon sergeant of Third Platoon, had a pad out and was paging slowly through something on it. Roger scrolled up the magnification on the monitors, and was surprised to see that the NCO was reading a novel. He'd somehow expected it to be a military manual, and he spun the magnification still higher, curiously, so that he could read over the sergeant's shoulder. What he got was a bit more than he'd bargained for; the sergeant was reading a fairly graphic homosexual love story. The prince snorted, then spun the monitor away and dialed back on the magnification. The sergeant's taste was the sergeant's business.

  The monitor stopped as if by its own volition on the face of the female sergeant who'd summoned him from the armor fitting. It was a face of angles, all high cheekbones and sharp chin with the exception of the lips, which were remarkably voluptuous. Not a pretty face, but arguably a beautiful one. She was looking through a pad as well, and for a reason he wasn't sure he would have cared to explain, he hunted until he found a monitor that would permit him to look over her shoulder. He panned the camera down, and felt a sudden rush of relief—although exactly why he was glad that what she was reading was the briefing on Marduk was something he didn't care to consider too deeply.

  Flipping back over to the original monitor, he zoomed in on the sergeant's chameleon suit. There it was. On the right . . . breast. Despreaux. Nice name.

  "Sergeant Despreaux," Pahner said dryly, and the prince hit the trackball and panned the monitor off the name.

  "Yes, I recognized her from when she crashed my fitting," he said hurriedly. "I was just realizing how few of these guards I know by name." He cleared his throat uncomfortably, happy, for some reason, that the captain couldn't see his face.

  "Nothing wrong with getting to know their names," Pahner said calmly. "But what you might want to catch is their attitudes," he continued, as another salvo slammed into the ship.

  * * *

  "We just lost Graser Four and Nine, and Missile Three. We're down twenty-five percent on our countermissile launchers. More on the laser clusters," Commander Talcott said. He didn't bother to add that DeGlopper had also suffered severe hull breaching, since everyone on the bridge could feel the draw of the vacuum around them. The executive officer had just turned toward the captain, when there was a crow of delight from Tactical.

  "There she blows!" the sublieutenant shouted. The Saint cruiser had come apart under the hammer of the missiles, without even having come to grips at energy weapon range.

  "Put us back on course for the planet—and shift to Evasion Able Three!" Krasnitsky snapped to the helmsman. "We're not out of the woods yet. There are still incoming missiles."

  "Yes, Sir," Segedin agreed with a triumphant grin. "But we still got her!"

  "Yes, we did," Talcott whispered so quietly that only Krasnitsky could hear. "But what about her mate?"

  The tac officer shut down the guidance channels to the remainder of the offensive missiles and shunted all the processor power they'd been using to the defenses. Then he picked up half the defensive net and waded in. Between the added processor power, the loss of the cruiser's support, and the addition of Segedin's experience, the remainder of the missiles were quickly shredded. All that was left, for the time being, was to pick up the pieces.

  * * *

  "So that's it, Your Highness," Captain Krasnitsky finished, looking up from the pad in his hand. His skin suit was sealed, and the orange vacuum warning light behind him was clearly visible. "We used less than half our missiles in this engagement, but the other cruiser has already broken orbit and is accelerating towards us. We'll drop your shuttles in two hours, and it will take us longer than that to get patched up and restore pressure again. So I would suggest that you stay where you are, Your Highness."

  "Very well, Captain," the prince said. He was aware that all the captain was seeing was the distorted ball of his powered armor's helmet-visor, and he was just as glad. He was beginning to understand why DeGlopper had to, effectively, commit suicide, but he was still uncomfortable with it.

  Pahner's company, at least, were official bodyguards for the Imperial Family, with the tradition of taking rifle beads to protect their charges; "catching the ball" as it was called. But the company's personnel had to survive—some of them, at least—if they were to accomplish their mission of keeping him alive; DeGlopper's entire crew had to die to do that. Spoiled he might be, but not even Roger MacClintock was immune to the sense of guilt that produced. Yet nothing in Krasnitsky's tone or attitude sugges
ted that he had ever even considered any other course of action. In the captain's place, Roger suspected that he might be thinking about how . . . convenient it would be if something happened to remove the prince from the equation. After all, if Roger were dead, there would be no reason for Krasnitsky's remaining crew to die to save him, now would there? Somehow, the fact that Krasnitsky and all of his people seemed totally oblivious to that glaringly logical point only made him feel guiltier.

  "I suppose we'll talk again before separation," he said after a moment, awkwardly. "Until then, good luck."

  "Thank you, Your Highness," the captain said with a tiny nod. "And good luck to you and the Company, as well. We'll try to do the DeGlopper name proud."

  The communications screen blinked out, and Roger leaned back and turned to Captain Pahner. The Marine had doffed his helmet and was scratching his head vigorously.

  "Who was DeGlopper, anyway?" the prince asked, fumbling with the controls and latches of his own helmet.

  "He was a soldier in the American States, a long time ago, Your Highness," Pahner said, cocking his head at the angle Roger had begun to recognize as a subtle sign that he'd stuck his foot in it. "There was a plaque right outside the cabin you were in, listing his medal and the citation for it. He won their equivalent of the Imperial Star. When we get back to Earth you can look up the citation."

  "Oh." Roger pulled the pin and let his hair down so that it cascaded across the back of the armor, then scratched his scalp with both hands at least as vigorously as Pahner. "We weren't in these things all that long. What makes your head itch so badly?"

  "A lot of it's psychosomatic, Your Highness," Pahner said with a snort. "Like that itch between your shoulder blades."

  "Agggh!" Roger rolled his shoulders as well as he could in the constricting armor and squirmed, trying to rub his back against the internal padding. "You would have to mention that!"