March Upcountry

“Sure you are. Sure.” He shook his head and leaned back as well. What a cock- up, he thought.

On the opposite side of the transom, Poertena managed to turn a laugh into a cough. He rolled his head around as if half-asleep, and coughed again. Despreaux and the Prince, he thought. Oh, t’at’s pocking funny!

“What’s so funny, Sir?” Commander Talcott asked. The XO had just returned from a survey of the ship, and the news wasn’t good. Four of DeGlopper’s eight missile launchers had taken enough damage to put them out of play for the next bout, and the dead cruiser’s fire had gouged deep wounds into the ChromSten-armored hull. Some of them threatened loaded magazines, and although the laser-pumped fusion warheads wouldn’t detonate from impact, the power systems of the missile drives would . . . and take the entire ship with them.

But at least the phase drive had suffered no further damage. In fact, it was actually in better shape than for the last encounter, so they’d have a few more gravities to play with and more time on the power. And while they’d lost launchers, they’d also used less than half the total missile inventory against their first opponent, so the next fight would be nearly even.

Except for the cruiser’s ability to dance rings around them.

“Oh, I was just thinking about our ship’s namesake,” Krasnitsky answered the question with a grim smile. “I wonder if he ever thought ‘What the heck am I doing this for?’”

* * *

Roger watched the external monitors as the giant docking hatches opened. The perfect blackness of space beckoned as the tractor moorings cut loose, and the shuttles drifted forward. As they cleared the ship’s field, DeGlopper’s artificial gravity fell away, and they were in freefall.

“I forgot to ask, Your Highness,” Pahner said tactfully. “How are you in microgravity?” He carefully avoided any mention of the excuses O’Casey had made to explain the prince’s “indisposition” the first evening aboard.

“I play null-gee handball quite a bit,” the prince said in an offhand manner as he swiveled the monitor around to watch the ship disappearing in the distance behind them. “I don’t have any problems with freefall at all.” He smiled evilly for just a moment. “Eleanora, on the other hand . . .”

“I’m gonna diiie,” the chief of staff moaned, clutching the motion sickness bag to her mouth as another wave of wracking nausea washed over her.

“I’ve got a Mo-Fix injector around here somewhere,” Kosutic said with the half-malicious chuckle of one who possessed a cast-iron stomach. Even the smell of the ejecta was survivable; it wasn’t like she hadn’t smelled it before.

“I’m allergic.” Eleanora’s voice was muffled by the plastic bag. Then she leaned back and zipped the bag shut. “Oh, Goddd. . . .”

“Oh,” Kosutic said in more sympathetic tones. She shook her head. “We’re going to be out here for a couple of days, you realize?”

“Yes,” Eleanora said miserably. “I do realize that. But I’d forgotten these shuttles don’t have artificial gravity.”

“I don’t think we can rotate, either,” the sergeant major told her. “We’re going to do a long, slow burn. I don’t think we can do that and rotate at the same time.”

“I’ll live . . . I think.” The chief of staff suddenly ripped the bag open and buried her face in the contents. “Arrggg.”

Kosutic leaned back and shook her head.

“I can see this is gonna be a great trip,” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“On a scale from one to ten,” Captain Krasnitsky muttered, “I give this trip a negative four hundred.”

He coughed and shook his head to clear the mist of blood the cough brought up. The instructions on the box were fairly clear. Now if he could just hold together long enough to enter the codes.

Finding the keys for this particular device had been tough. Talcott, who’d had one, had been cut in half on his way back from Engineering. And, of course, the third had been in the suit of the acting engineer. He’d felt awful about having to cut it off of her to get to the device, but he’d had no choice. Tactical had had the fourth, and Navigation the fifth; those two had been easy to snag after the hit on the bridge.

Somewhat to his surprise, the ship had held together. And now, the Saints, after receiving the surrender transmission and the recording of the prince ordering Krasnitsky to surrender, were practically salivating. Capturing the prince would set every member of the ship’s crew up for life, even in the austere Saint theocracy.

There was no plot here in the armory, but he didn’t need one to know what was happening. He could hear the parasite cruiser docking onto the larger ship, and the concussion as the Saint Marines forced the airlocks for boarding.

Lessee. If I have all five keys, but only one activator, I have to set a delay. Okay. Makes sense.

“Captain Delaney, this is Lieutenant Scalucci.” The Caravazan Marine paused and looked around the bridge. “We’ve taken the bridge but no prisoners. We are encountering resistance from the crew. So far, no prisoners. They’re fighting hard—some of them in powered armor—and not surrendering as I would’ve expected. We have yet to encounter the Prince’s bodyguards.” He paused and looked around again. “There’s something about this I don’t like.”

“Tell him to keep his opinions to himself!” Chaplain Panella snapped. “And find the Prince!”

Captain Delaney glanced at the chaplain, then keyed his throat mike.

“Continue the mission, Lieutenant,” he said. “Be careful of ambushes. They apparently haven’t surrendered after all, whatever their captain said.”

“It doesn’t appear that way, Sir. Scalucci, out.”

The captain turned to face the chaplain squarely.

“We’ll find the Prince, Chaplain. But losing people doing it is stupid. I wish we’d had a pinnace to send the Marines over.” An unlucky hit to the boat bay, unfortunately, had settled that. “If the Prince weren’t on board, I’d put this down as a trap!”

“But he is,” the chaplain hissed, “and there’s no way they’d risk his life playing some sort of ambush game!” He grinned like a rabid ferret. “Although, if they had any sense, they’d cut his throat themselves to keep him out of our hands. Imagine what we can do with a member of the Imperial Family of that damned ‘Empire of Man’!”

“Captain!” It was Lieutenant Scalucci. “The shuttle bays are empty! The shuttles must have already punched!”

The Saint captain’s eyes flew wide.

“Oh, pollution!” he swore.

* * *

“The Saint is matching the last known accel of the DeGlopper,” Pahner said.