by Blaze Ward
Too much risk of something drifting out of alignment when a servo went wonky.
Pops had solved that by going old school. An honest-to-Creator Difference Engine, a box of gears assembled out of super-lightweight alloyed components, bulky, but actually lighter than a small jumpsail would’ve been.
Ya scrolled yer wheels on the doohickey by your right hand, and steam-age-looking teeth underneath came into alignment with the stellar age.
“Three, two, one,” Rocket Frog called the cadence. “Gone.”
Push the big red button and do the impossible.
Blink.
Back.
Gotcha.
The Rocket Frog was in lawn-dart mode right now. Straight down. Engines wide open.
And right there was the ugliest shark she had ever seen, trying to hide down in the rocks and reefs, all casual and sneaky and stuff.
Saša glanced over her right shoulder just enough to confirm that her awesome doppelgänger sister was along for the fun, and then pushed the engines to the last stop, afterburners leaving it all on the table this time.
“Weapons lock,” Neon Pink called, setting the table.
“Confirmed,” Rocket Frog answered. “Three, two, one, shoot.”
You could only pull a stunt like this with someone after you had developed a semi-telepathic link. Shared wombs were strange places.
Four thumbs detached from flight yokes in perfect harmony. They each traveled inward two centimeters to find four red buttons, rested briefly on them, and pushed extra-hard to overcome built-in friction.
Contact opened four circuits, connecting four solenoids underneath a matched pair of identical lawn-darts diving towards an ugly, triangular shark, at ludicrous and accelerating speeds.
Four Type-3 Archerfish warheads on rails fired as one. Two more Type-1’s on the centerlines between them joined the chorus, mostly because they didn’t want to be left out.
But every little bit helped.
CHAPTER LVI
DAY: 313 OF THE COMMON ERA YEAR: 13,445 VESSEL - RS:32G8Y42 – “DANCER IN DARKNESS.” FRIBOURG SYSTEM: “ST. LEGIER”. STATUS: COMBAT MODE
Vrin drew a heavy breath.
Dancer In Darkness had emerged from his jump as deep as the Entity had considered safe, and even that was lower than Vrin would have commanded, in any other circumstances.
At this altitude, the upper edges of the planet’s atmosphere brushed up against the naked metal of the hull, a rasp like occasional grains of sand on wheels.
The First Stage Exciters were critical. Even background radiation, the warm solar wind itself, might tip them over into a cascading failure right now.
Dancer In Darkness had never been so close to the edge.
“Entity Advocate,” Vrin commanded calmly. “Begin charging all banks.”
“It will be so, Director,” she replied in a tight voice that betrayed her own stress levels.
“War Advocate,” he continued. “Normally, I would authorize weapon’s fire to draw off the extra energy we will not need, but right now, that might engender return fire from someone. Even outside of range, they might be too dangerous. Lock down all weapons systems and prepare to run silent.”
“Acknowledged,” the man who had just fought the greatest battle in their lifetime responded. He toggled a number of switches as Vrin watched.
Vrin took the moment to pull the second bottle of cold tea from its holder and deployed the nipple. Otep always made sure he had two, knowing that he would hoard the first, drawing it across an entire battle slowly, before emptying the second when the excitement finally died down.
Truly, that woman understood him as no other person he had ever known. It was a pity that the Lord of Winter had forbidden them any romance.
Vrin made a note to tell her how much he appreciated her constant efforts, once they were safely away in deep space and could dock with the Energiya Module to go home.
“Warning,” a young man’s tenor voice spoke suddenly. “Enemy vessels incoming.”
It took Vrin a moment to place the sound. The Entity spoke to the general crew so infrequently.
Only when it was critical did he talk to everyone.
Vrin spun the screen until he saw the attack.
Two of the Starfighters had just emerged from a Capriole Drive-style jump, deeper inside a gravity well than any Imperial ship had ever attempted, let alone managed.
“War Advocate,” Vrin yelled madly. “Engage.”
There was time for Vrin to see Ro Malar Arga Rues press the first button on his console, and then the two tiny craft fired.
Vrin tasted time slow to almost nothing.
No. Not nothing. He had just run out.
Four beams struck like lightning bolts from the heavens above.
The First Stage Exciters caught the first beam and absorbed it, pushing the red bucket to ninety-nine point seven percent full.
The second beam arrived a step later and struck. Amazingly, the red bucket managed to go to one hundred and one point three percent.
A third beam, a beat later, and the upper grid of the First Stage Exciters collapsed. There was time to watch it rupture like a soap bubble on a calm day.
All of the energy contained in the grid flooded backwards through the housing, a white hot plasma eating the hull like a riptide chasing sand as the fourth beam struck raw metal.
Dancer In Darkness screamed in sudden pain. Mercifully, the Entity died a moment later.
Around him, Ro Kenzo Atep Vrin felt the ship explode.
And then darkness.
CHAPTER LVII
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 8, 398 KING OLAF GAME PARK, WERDER, ST. LEGIER
Vo felt safer surrounded by a score of hard men in drab street clothes. One of the teams had even produced a pocket beam pistol suited to a woman’s hand for Moirrey.
She had insisted on taking point with Corporal Danville as they moved. He hadn’t grumbled aloud, but Vo had watched the man’s body language turn into a sulk.
For about five minutes.
Danville had brightened up considerably when he realized that she was apparently at least as good at forest craft as he was.
Vo still wasn’t sure, however, what she meant when she referred to the rest of them as watch geese.
Not that it mattered.
The deer and other creatures had vanished into the depths of the woods. Only the occasional rabbit was about, immediately bounding into cover when Vo’s team approached.
“Sir, they’ve arrived,” somebody close whispered.
Vo and most of the group had been strung out in little groups, oozing slowly along various trails in the trees, resting and waiting while Danville and Moirrey broke trail. Nobody knew what kind of security they might run into. Imperial Security troops would be better armed, but not better trained.
But a firefight in the game park would ruin everything, so they had to move like thieves in the night.
Vo nodded to the man who had spoken.
“Everyone hold here,” he said. “I’m going to check it out.”
Being in charge meant that some decisions were on his shoulders, even as skilled and independent as these men, and woman, were.
Cost of wearing that uniform, he supposed, even if he was only supposed to be an Honorary Colonel. He was still the officer these men had chosen to follow.
Up front, Moirrey, Danville, and Street were clustered at the base of a red brick wall, ancient and heavy, covered in places with ivy that looked tough, but wasn’t strong enough for a man to actually climb. Roughly five meters tall, it stretched out of sight in either direction.
They were squatted down, so Vo did the same.
“Situation?” he asked.
How many other officers would demand to have an opinion here, because they were supposed to be in charge? Not the good ones. Not the Fleet Centurion. But he had served under a few.
And nobody here was a rookie.
Street pointed to his right.
�
�Nearest gate should be roughly two hundred meters that way, sir,” he said. “Access for gardeners and rangers. One hundred percent chance it’s wired. Fifty percent chance there’s a live guard close with a radio.”
“I see,” Vo replied as a placeholder.
This was probably one of those places where everyone was better off with him not asking the obvious follow-up question.
“How do we get over the wall?” he asked instead.
Danville grinned, as if Vo had passed some test in the man’s head.
Maybe he had.
“Brick’s rough enough, Colonel,” the tiny assassin said. “I can get up and over easy enough. There’s rope somewhere on the team. That gets us all inside.”
“Is gonna be wired fer stupid, Hans,” Moirrey chirped quietly. “Is what I woulda done.”
Danville grinned huge back at her, like two teenage siblings committing rivalry.
“Gosh,” he said. “Do we know any engineers who could possibly bypass and disable dangerous security systems?”
“Very funny, watch goose,” she replied. “I’m not a rock-climber, thank-ye-very-much. How’s y’suppose I’m’a do that?”
“I’ll lift you,” Vo said quietly.
Moirrey turned on him with a look of utter surprise.
She studied him for a second, but didn’t say anything. Then she nodded with a half-shrug.
“Rights,” she muttered. “Let’s does it, then.”
She stood and the men joined her.
From a thigh pocket Vo hadn’t noticed before, she pulled a small multi-tool of some sort and a palm-sized computer.
Vo studied the woman. She was dressed today in heavy, cotton pants with thigh pouches and a sweatshirt of some sort under a light rain shell. Everything was dark, from the coal-black pants to the dark green shell to the navy blue sweatshirt.
“How?” she asked simply.
Vo responded by shifting over onto a small rise close to the brick and catching her by the belt with his left hand. He put a giant paw flat on the grass.
“Stand on my hand,” he said.
She did, somewhat awkwardly, and then held rigidly still as Vo stood up and leaned back into the wall.
“Brace yourself,” he said, letting go and feeling her lean forward to place a hand on the brick.
Vo lifted his arm slowly. Not because she weighed anything at all. She didn’t. Maybe forty-five kilograms. Not fifty.
He pushed his arm straight up over his head, rising up onto his toes to put her as high as he could.
Danville blinked in surprise at what was probably a display of raw strength he hadn’t imagined possible, and then attacked the wall himself, going up it like a spider.
Vo shared a grin with Sgt. Street. He was two meters tall in his boots. With another meter of arm in his ape-hangers. Moirrey was only a meter and a half tall, but with the high spot he had picked, that would put her right at the top to peek around.
Vo willed his muscles to iron as Moirrey worked. He could hear Moirrey and Danville whispering back and forth.
“Street,” Vo ordered. “Go get the rope Danville was talking about and round everybody up.”
The man nodded and jogged out of sight, leaving Vo standing there like a weird piece of Imperial statuary. Fortunately, Moirrey really weighed about as much as a feather.
Sgt. Street returned quickly with half a dozen others silently trailing in his wake.
At a soft whistle from above, Street tossed the coil into the air.
A few moments later, one end dropped to the ground and Moirrey’s weight suddenly vanished from Vo’s hand. He glanced up to see her scramble up and out of sight, over the wall. Danville waved down and gestured for the men to follow.
Vo went first because he could. No other reason.
Until they needed a decision made that went beyond their own comfort zone, the men of the 189th, and especially Moirrey, could operate independently quite well. He might as well join them.
Vo was pretty sure he was at least as dangerous as most of them. Maybe not Danville and Moirrey.
Then he thought about some of his adventures in the brush on Thuringwell.
Yeah, maybe as dangerous as all of them, after all.
Beyond the wall, something changed.
Maybe it was the difference between the rough chaotic nature of the Game Park, and the more-orderly confines of the Palace grounds. Hard to explain, but the air felt different.
Heavier, perhaps.
It wasn’t just the vastly overgrown rose bush close at hand on his left, although it helped.
They were committed now.
That was it.
Up until this moment, he and the men could have stayed back. Walked away. Found a bolt hole until everything else was sorted out.
Now, they were on the grounds.
He couldn’t see a single building, but they were out there, beyond arbors and paths and orchards. The deciduous trees had gone to winter, but someone had carefully planted a whole bunch of evergreens, both stands of trees and hedges, to break things up.
It was still wild. Contained and pressured to conform, but not a simple park.
And he had invaded it with a score of men and one tiny, dangerous woman.
If something went wrong now, lives would be lost.
“Danville,” he murmured. “Find me a sheltered spot to plan out the next steps.”
The man nodded rather than answering, fading quickly up a narrow trail made of grayish-green pavers.
“What ’bouts me?” Moirrey sneered. “I coulda dun that.”
“We still have to penetrate the palace itself, Moirrey,” Vo fired back, keeping his voice above a growl by force of will. “Danville’s expendable right now. You aren’t.”
“Oh…”
Again, that blink of surprise.
He and Moirrey had never really been that close. Jackson Tawfeek was still the guy she went to get coffee with, and gossip, at least when Digger wasn’t around.
She still seemed to think of him in terms of the big, dumb killer she had first really met at Ballard.
For Vo, two lifetimes ago.
So far.
At least she was willing to open her mind, rather than her mouth.
And she had never commanded troops in the field. Never sent someone to die in enemy fire, distracting enemy gunners so a force of cavalry could slip around and take them from the side.
Never had to write letters home to families.
Vo felt ancient compared to the woman, even when she was a handful of years older.
Her miles hadn’t been nearly as hard.
Danville reappeared silently with a nod. He turned, and Vo followed, Moirrey in his wake and the rest of the men behind that.
They came out of the trees into a small space that someone had cleared, and then covered over with a solid roof and concrete floor. Just the sort of place to sit in the winter, when the rains came and you wanted to be outside, but not that much outside.
Vo watched as four of the men detached themselves automatically and took up positions watching outward from the four faces of the space.
He gestured everyone close and kneeled on one knee. Everyone joined him low.
“You men organize into teams based on skillset,” Vo began. “I want one back there at the wall, covering our retreat. One needs to scout the gate Sgt. Street pointed out in case we have to transport wounded through it in a hurry. One with a medic stays just outside the Palace when we penetrate. Horst, Danville, Street, Moirrey, and I will break into the place, locate the Emperor, and get him out. Questions?”
There were a few. Mostly technical. Many of these men had at least a decade in service, much of that as experts training younger troopers to do their job. Vo had no reservations about taking any of them into a firefight with Imperial Security, even under-gunned as they were. But that sneakiness wouldn’t last any time at all, if they weren’t sneaky enough.
Plus, they were already in five rough squads of men
, although it was interesting watching them trade members with nothing more than a quick whisper and a nod.
Again, experts.
Competent, hard men.
Vo stood.
He could have done it from his knees, but the energy had taken hold of him like an electric current.
For a moment, he was back on Thuringwell, about to charge down into the valley of death to rescue Gaucho from the bad guys.
Half a league, half a league, half a league onward…
“We are about to launch an assault on the Imperial Palace,” Vo stated his case plainly. “I will expect you to kill your fellow countrymen with no compunction whatsoever, under the orders of a foreigner pretending to be your commanding officer. Even if those men are Imperial Security.”
That got a chuckle out of them. As was intended.
“They have taken the Emperor prisoner,” Vo continued. “Your Emperor, and not mine, but I swore the same oaths as you did before this started.”
He paused to fix them with a hard glare. This was where all that bottled-up anger was going to come out. He couldn’t help it.
And didn’t care to.
“We are going to teach those bastards the difference between right and wrong,” Vo snarled in a quiet voice. “We all signed up to the colors to make the galaxy a better place, a safer place. Some people don’t understand that, don’t appreciate it. They want a place where the strong rule and the weak cower. I will not allow that. That is not how we work. Gentlemen, mount up.”
There was a moment of emptiness to the men around him. Sheer nothingness that separated them from the wider universe around the clearing.
A growl somewhere broke it. Vo wasn’t sure who it was, because the others joined it a moment later as the men of the 189th surged to their feet.
Moirrey surprised him the most, by throwing her arms as far around his waist as she could and hugging him fiercely.
By the time he got himself disentangled from the pixie, half the men had vanished, already moving to their positions for the coming assault.
“Danville, take point,” Vo ordered as the rest sorted themselves into small groups. “Shoot first.”
“Negative, sir,” the small man answered, handing his beam pistol to one of the others and drawing a long, skinny shiv from his boot.
