March Upcountry

“How can you tell?” Roger asked, eyes aching from the strain of staring at the tiny screen. “I can’t tell a thing from this.”

“Bring up the data records, instead,” Pahner advised. “I’ve always said there’s no reason we couldn’t have larger screens in these things. But the command station was an afterthought in the design, and nobody’s ever changed it.”

“Well, we will!” the prince smiled as he banged the side of the recalcitrant instrument. “Oops.”

He’d forgotten the power of the armor, and he withdrew his hand carefully from the fist-sized hole driven into the side of the workstation.

Pahner spun his own chair around and typed commands on the secondary keyboard at the prince’s station. The now flickering monitor switched from a wider view of power sources in near space to a list of data.

“There’s the last known velocity and position of the DeGlopper,” the captain said. “And there’s her current probable position and velocity.” He sent a command through his toot, and a different screen came up. “And this is the Saint data.”

“So they’re alongside?” Roger asked, noting the obvious similarities in the data.

“Yep. They’ve matched course and speed with the DeGlopper. Which means they fell for Krasnitsky’s little deception hook, line, and sinker.”

Roger nodded and tried to reflect some of the Marine’s satisfaction, but it was hard. It was odd, he thought. Pahner was military, like Krasnitsky, and he knew as well as Roger that the Fleet captain and his entire crew were committing suicide to cover their escape. Somehow, the prince would have expected that to produce more emotion in the Marine. He’d always suspected that people who chose military careers had to be a little less . . . sensitive than others, but Pahner had been quick to let him know, however respectfully, whenever he stepped on one or another of the Marines’ precious traditions or attitudes. So why was Pahner so detached and clinical over what was about to happen when he himself felt a hollow void of guilt sucking at his stomach?

This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. People weren’t supposed to throw away their lives to protect him —not when even his own family had never seemed quite certain he was worth keeping. And when gallant bodyguards and military personnel offered to lay down their lives for their duty, weren’t they supposed to get something out of it besides simply dying?

The questions made him acutely uncomfortable, and so he decided not to think about them just at the moment and reached for some other topic.

“I didn’t sound all that good on the recording,” Roger said sourly.

“I think you sounded perfect, Your Highness,” Pahner said with a grin. “It certainly suckered the Saints.”

“Uh-huh,” Roger acknowledged even more sourly. Until he’d heard the edited playback of him ordering the officers to surrender which Krasnitsky had sent to the Saint cruiser, he hadn’t realized how truly childish he’d sounded. “Surrender with honor.” What poppycock.

“It worked, Your Highness,” Pahner’s voice was much colder, “and that’s all that matters. Captain Krasnitsky has them right where he wants them.”

“If there’s anyone left to detonate the charge.”

“There is,” Pahner said firmly.

“How do you know? Everybody could be dead. And unless there’s at least one officer left who knows the codes . . .”

“I know, Your Highness.” There was no doubt at all in Pahner’s reply. “How? Well, the Saint cruiser is still alongside. If it had captured one of the crew and made him talk, it would be accelerating away at top speed. It isn’t; so the plan has to be working.”

And God bless, Captain, the Marine thought quietly, allowing no trace of his inner anguish to show as he watched the data codes and thought of the men and women about to die. You’ve done your part; now we’ll do ours to make it worth something. He’s a pain in the ass, but we’ll keep him alive somehow.

* * *

“It’s not working,” O’Casey said to herself.

The sergeant major had drifted into the troop bay to buck up the troops, leaving the civilian to fend for herself. Which was ironic, because Eleanora was feeling seriously in need of bucking up herself. Of course, even the sergeant major might have gotten tired of the smell, which could help explain whose morale she’d decided to improve.

To take her mind off the situation, O’Casey had started reviewing the plan—if it was really fair to call it that. From the moment the second cruiser had been spotted, there’d been no time for anything as deliberate and orderly as formulating anything Eleanora O’Casey would have called “a plan.” Everything had been one frantic leap of improvisation after another, and she’d been sure something vital had to have been overlooked. For that matter, she still was, but she’d never had time to stop and reflect, and now she was feeling so out of sorts and woozy that her brain was scarcely in shape for critical analysis.

Unfortunately, it was the only brain she had, and despite its grumpy complaints, she insisted that it apply itself to the problem.

They’d loaded the trade goods. She’d suggested adding refined metals, as well, but Pahner had rejected the suggestion. The captain hadn’t felt that the weight-to-cost ratio would make metals worth carrying, and besides, most of the material available consisted of advanced composites, impossible for local smiths to work at the Mardukans’ technology level. And, as Pahner had pointed out, material that couldn’t be adapted to the locals’ needs would be effectively useless to them.

There’d been no great stock of “precious” metals or gems on the ship, either. A smidgen of gold was still used in some electronics contacts, but there’d been no way to get it out. Captain Pahner had ruthlessly appropriated the small store of personal jewelry, but there hadn’t been a great deal of that, either. At least what there was ought to be very attractive to a barbarian culture, even though it was little more than costume jewelry by the standards of the Empire of Man. She doubted that anyone on Marduk had ever heard of a synthetic gem!

But even if one assumed that Mardukans valued such items as highly as human cultures of comparable tech levels had valued them, there simply weren’t enough of them to even begin to meet their needs. The trade goods would be worth far more in the long run, yet Eleanora still felt she was missing something. Something important. It bothered her that she had all this incredible store of knowledge about ancient cultures and—

Knowledge.

Chief Warrant Officer Tom Bann ran the calculations for the fifteenth time. It was going to be close, closer than he liked. If everything went perfectly, they were going to have less than a thousand kilos of hydrogen when they landed. To a groundhog, that might have sounded like a lot; a pilot, on the other hand, knew that it was nothing over the distance they were traveling. The margin of error was more than that.

He glanced at the monitor and shook his head. He was a “Regiment” pilot, not one of the shuttle pilots assigned to DeGlopper, but it still hurt to watch a sacrifice like that. They were all Fleet, whether they were Marines or Navy, and Krasnitsky had sure taken the highroad. He shook his head again and looked at the number. It would really suck if it all turned out to be for nothing.

“Hello? Pilot?” He didn’t recognize the voice in his earbud at first, but then he realized it was the prince’s chief of staff.

“Yes, Ma’am? This is Warrant Bann.” He wondered what the airhead wanted at a time like this. It had better be important to interfere in a deathwatch.

“Can we still get a connection to the ship’s computers?”

Bann thought about all the things wrong with the request and wondered where to start.

“Ma’am, I don’t think—”

“This is important, Warrant Officer,” the voice in his earbud said firmly. “Vital, even.”

“What do you need?” he asked warily.