March Upcountry

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