March Upcountry

Not that there was going to be any difference of opinion about what to do in this instance.

“I believe she might be damaged,” he said, allowing no trace of his thoughts to color his tone. “That one burst of power is probably all their phase drive could stand.”

“Well . . . I suppose that makes some sense,” the chaplain said doubtfully. “What are we going to do about it?”

We are going to kill it, Delaney thought. Which would be easier to do if youwould just get your eco-freak butt back to the chapel and off my bridge!

“The data from Green Goddess indicates that the enemy’s tactical net is probably damaged,” he said aloud. He scratched his beard and thought about it. “We’ll stay at the edge of the powered missile envelope and pound her to scrap. She can’t maneuver, and we should have the better tac net.” He nodded his head in self-agreement. “Yes. That should work.”

“How much damage will we take?” the chaplain asked nervously. “Damage repair will do great harm to the environment. We must limit our use of resources in every way we can. And it will surely damage the ki of the crew.”

“Do you want the ravening imperialists to fully colonize this world?” Delaney asked rhetorically. “That ship is filled with Marines, carrying their humanocentric infestation with them to new worlds. What would you have me do? Let them go?”

“No,” the chaplain snapped, shaking his head. “They must be destroyed. The infestation must be ripped out root and branch. This fine world shall not be polluted by man!”

Fine world, indeed, the captain thought behind a smile of agreement.It’s a green hell. Killing these Marines is probably doing them a favor.

Sergeant Major Kosutic reached across the narrow compartment and tapped the prince’s chief of staff on the shoulder.

“You can undog your helmet now,” she said, suiting action to words and removing her own.

O’Casey undid the latches clumsily, and looked around the cramped compartment.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we wait a couple of hours, and hope His Evilness Who Resides in the Fire decides we get to live,” Kosutic answered, scratching the back of her neck. She set down the helmet and reached under the command station. “Aha!” she said, and pulled out a long plastic tube with a faint ripping sound.

“What is that?” O’Casey asked, looking up as she opened her pad to begin an entry.

“It’s a wiring harness cover.” Kosutic leaned forward and inserted the flexible tube into the neck of her suit. “Most of these shuttles have had them stripped out already.” She began rubbing the corrugated tube up and down her back. “Ahhh,” she gasped. “I forgot mine, by Satan.”

“Oh,” Eleanora said, suddenly noticing the itchiness of her own back. “Can I, um, borrow it?”

“Check by your left knee. I don’t mind your borrowing it, but you might as well find your own. Best back scratcher ever created.”

Eleanora found the wiring harness where the sergeant major had indicated and pulled its cover out.

“Ooooh,” she sighed after a brief try. “Boy, this is good!”

“And for telling you that deep, dark secret, known only to Old Marines,” Kosutic said, “you have to tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Like what’s eating the Prince,” Kosutic replied, propping her heels on the command station in front of her.

“Hmmm,” Eleanora said thoughtfully. “That’s a long story, and I’m not sure how much of it you’re cleared for. What you know about his father?”

“Just that he’s the Earl of New Madrid; that he’s on the watchlist, which means he doesn’t get within a planet of the Empress; and that he’s quite a bit older than the Empress.”

“Well, I’m not going to get into why he was banished from Court, but Roger not only looks like his father, he acts very much like him. New Madrid is a gorgeous man, who’s a terrible dandy. And he’s also very much involved in The Great Game.”

“Ah.” Kosutic nodded. The intrigues of the Empire had gotten deeper and deeper during the reign of Emperor Andrew, Alexandra’s father. While things had never, quite, come to the point of outright civil war, they seemed to be edging closer to it. “So is the Prince involving himself in the Game?” she asked carefully, and Eleanora sighed.

“I’m . . . not sure. He’s been in contact with some of the known conduits in his sports clubs. I mean, one of the other fellows on his polo team is a known member of New Madrid’s clique. So, maybe. But Roger hates politics with a purple passion. So . . . I’m not sure.”

“You should know.”

“Yes, I should,” the chief of staff admitted. “But it’s not the sort of thing he would confide in me. I’m an appointment of his mother’s.”

“Is he . . . conspiring against the Empress?” Kosutic asked even more carefully.

“I doubt that very much,” Eleanora said. “He seems to truly love his mother, but he might be being used as a dupe. The way he acts, the . . . frivolity. It just doesn’t make any sense. With his background, with what his father did, Roger has to realize that presenting such a front lays him open to charges of following in New Madrid’s footsteps. So half the time I’m certain he’s doing it on purpose, and the other half . . . I just don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s a double-blind,” Kosutic suggested. “He might be putting on these airs as a cover for being really, really capable?”

She was aware that she was engaging in wishful thinking, but there had to be at least a shred of light in the darkness. Otherwise, the Marines had stuck their heads into a guillotine for an enemy of all they held dear.

“I doubt it,” Eleanora said with a grim chuckle. “Roger’s just not that subtle.” She gazed down at her pad for several moments, then sighed. “And, frankly, however subtle he is or isn’t, he’s always been the odd one out in the Imperial Family.”

She tapped at the pad’s controls for several seconds, then closed it and turned her chair to face the sergeant major.

“At the expense of possible lesse majeste,” she said, “Roger can act like a real pain in the ass sometimes. No, let’s be honest—he can be a real pain in the ass. But I think it’s fair to point out that it’s not entirely his fault.”

“Ah?” Kosutic kept her face carefully expressionless, but mental ears pricked at the chief of staff’s tone. Despite the fact that Bronze Battalion was specifically charged with the task of guarding the Heir Tertiary, and despite the amount of time the Bronze Barbarians had spent in their charge’s presence (not with any particular sense of pleasure for either party), no one in the company really knew Roger at all. O’Casey obviously did, and if she was prepared to give Kosutic any insight at all into the prince, the sergeant major was more than ready to listen.

“No, it’s not,” O’Casey told her, and shook her own head with a crooked smile. “He’s a MacClintock, and everyone knows that all MacClintocks are brave, trustworthy, fearless and brilliant. They’re not, of course, but everyone knows they are, anyway, and the fact that Crown Prince John and Princess Alexandra actually live up to the stereotype—like their mother—only makes it even harder on Roger. The Crown Prince has a record as a diplomat anyone could envy, and even without her family connections, Princess Alexandra would be respected as one of the finest admirals in the Fleet. And then there’s Roger. Decades younger than the others, always on the outside, somehow . . . the classic ‘bad boy’ of the Imperial Family. The never-do-well, spoiled, pampered aristocrat.” She paused and cocked her head at the sergeant major.

“Sound familiar?” she asked with a quirky half-grin.

“Well, yes, actually,” Kosutic admitted. It wasn’t something any Marine, and especially any member of Bronze Battalion, had any business admitting to anyone, anytime, anywhere, but she admitted it anyway, and O’Casey chuckled without humor.