Heirs of Empire

He glanced at Sandy, more worried than he cared to admit as he noted how wearily she sat. This was her company, and she’d loved the idea when he sketched it out, but her small size was working against her.

An enhanced person could move in powered-down combat armor, if its servos were unlocked. It wasn’t easy (especially for someone Sandy’s size), but the sheer grunt work could be worth it under the right circumstances. Unpowered armor had no energy signature, and it even hid any emissions from its wearer’s implants, which meant his raiders were virtually invisible.

The only real threat was optical detection, and he’d noticed that while his peers gave lip service to the importance of optical systems, they relied on more sophisticated sensors. He’d started to mention that during the critique of the last field exercise, but then he’d remembered he would be leading this one … and that the Academy didn’t give out prizes for losing.

He slithered up the ring wall, unhooked the passive scanner from his harness, poked it over the crest, and grinned at its display. Onishi and his staff were exactly where The Book said they ought to be, safely tucked away at the heart of the sensor net guarding their HQ site. But The Book hadn’t envisioned having a company of raiders barely half a klick away, well inside the sensor perimeter which should have protected Onishi’s tactical HQ and ready to decapitate his entire command structure before Tamman (who’d always wanted to be a Marine anyway, for some strange reason) led in the main force.

He slid back down beside Sandy and pressed his helmet to hers. The face behind her visor was sweat- streaked and weary, but her brown eyes were bright, and he grinned and slapped her armored shoulder.

“We got ’em, Sandy!” Their helmets conducted his voice to her without the betraying pulse of a fold-space com. “Get the troops saddled up.”

She nodded and began waving hand signals, and her support squad set up with gratifying speed, even without their armor’s “muscles.” He left them to it and reclimbed the slope to double-check the target coordinates. A standard saturation pattern would work just fine, he thought gleefully.

He glanced up. Sandy’s heavy weapons types were set, and her other people were creeping up beside him, “energy guns” ready. It was just like laser tag, he thought, prepping his implants to activate his armor. And then he energized his com for the first time in almost six hours.

“Now!” he snapped.

* * *

Mid/4 Onishi Shidehara frowned as he stepped out of his HQ van to stretch. Crown Prince or no, MacIntyre was a hot dog, and the cautious sparring being reported by the outposts wasn’t like him. It was only skirmishing, and along the most logical line of advance, at that. Mid/4 Onishi expected to kick His Imperial Highness’s ass most satisfyingly, but so far he’d seen barely ten percent of the opposition, which suggested MacIntyre meant to try something fancy. For Onishi’s money all that razzle-dazzle might look good to the instructors, but only MacIntyre’s luck had let him get away with it so long. This time he was going to have to do things the hard way, and—

Something kicked dust in front of him. In fact, dozens of somethings were falling all over his position! He just had time to feel alarm before they erupted in the brilliant flashes of “nukes” and “warp grenades,” and he went down in an astonished cloud of dust as the flash-bangs’ override pulses locked his armor and blanked out his com implant to simulate a casualty.

He whipped his head around, trapped in his inert armor, and saw his entire HQ staff falling about him. A second wave of flash-bangs deluged his position, catching most of the handful who’d escaped the first, and then a horde of armored figures came down off the ring wall shooting.

It was over in less than thirty seconds, and Mid/4 Onishi gritted his teeth as one armored figure loped over to squat beside him with a toothy grin.

“Zap!” Sean MacIntyre said insufferably.

* * *

It had taken Horus months to learn to smile again after Isis’ death, but today his grin was enormous as he entered Lawrence Jefferson’s office.

“What’s so funny?” the Lieutenant Governor asked.

“I just got back from Birhat,” Horus said, still grinning, “and you should’ve heard Colin and ’Tanni describing Dahak’s latest brainstorm!”

“Oh?” Unlike most people, Jefferson preferred an old-fashioned swivel chair, and it creaked as he leaned back. “What ‘brainstorm’?”

“Oh, it was a beaut! You know how protective he is of the kids?” Jefferson nodded; Dahak’s devotion to the imperial family was legendary. “Well, their middy cruise’s coming up in a few months, and he had the brilliant idea that they should make it aboard him.” The old man laughed, and Jefferson frowned.

“Why not? They couldn’t possibly be in safer hands, after all!”

“That was his point,” Horus agreed, “but Colin and ’Tanni won’t hear of it, and I don’t blame them.” Jefferson still looked puzzled, and Horus shook his head and hitched a hip onto the Lieutenant Governor’s desk.

“Look, Dahak’s the flagship of the Imperial Guard, right? Not even a unit of Battle Fleet at all.”

Jefferson nodded again. Colin MacIntyre had lost ninety-four percent of the Fourth Empire’s resurrected Imperial Guard Flotilla in the Zeta Trianguli Campaign. Only five ships remained, and repairing them had taken years, but they were back in service now. They were also fundamentally different from the rest of the Fifth Imperium’s planetoids, for their computers lacked the Alpha imperatives which compelled the rest of Battle Fleet to obey Mother, not the Emperor directly. Herdan the Great, the Fourth Empire’s founder, had set Battle Fleet up that way as an intentional safeguard, since Mother wouldn’t obey an emperor who’d been constitutionally removed by the Assembly of Nobles or whose actions violated the Great Charter stored in her memory. That neatly cut the legs out from under a monarch with tyranny on his mind, but the Guard was the Emperor’s personal command, and its units weren’t hardwired to obey Mother.

“All right,” Horus continued, “every midshipman makes his senior-year cruise aboard a unit of Battle Fleet, so how would it look if Colin sends his kids out in Dahak? Bad enough that their fellows might resent it, but what kind of message does it send the twins? Besides, Dahak dotes on them; he’d find it mighty hard to treat them like any other snotties!”

“I suppose that’s true.” Jefferson swung his chair gently from side to side and grinned. “One doesn’t tend to think of emperors and empresses as harassed parents. But if they’re not using Dahak, what are they doing?”

“Well, Colin was all for letting the assignments be made randomly, but Dahak can be a bit mulish.” Horus’s eyes twinkled, and Jefferson laughed. He’d been present on one occasion when the computer had been moved to intransigence, and the Emperor’s expression had been priceless.

“Anyway, they argued about it for a while and finally reached a compromise. Imperial Terra’s almost ready to commission—they’re working up her final programming now—and Dahak ‘suggested’ using her. She’ll be the newest and most powerful ship in Battle Fleet, and Dahak’s personally vetted every detail of her design. Nothing’s going to happen to them aboard her.”

“It is a bit hard to conceive of anything threatening her,” Jefferson mused. “In fact, I think that’s a very good idea. With all due respect to Their Majesties, we shouldn’t run risks with the succession.”

“That’s how Dahak brought them around in the end, and just between you and me, I’m glad he did,” Horus agreed, and Jefferson nodded slowly.

* * *

“Here.” Father Al-Hana took the data chips from his bishop and crooked his heavy eyebrows. “We’ve only got about two weeks to set this one up,” Francine Hilgemann continued, “but don’t take any chances.”