The Thirteenth Man

by J. L. Doty

  Cesare stepped in close to the camera. “Charlie, you’re just a pawn in this.” Both Arthur and Winston suddenly found something of great interest on the toes of their shoes. “I wouldn’t use you so if there were any other course, but we suspect Goutain and his Syndonese followers are involved somehow. And I may have to use you badly indeed. Forgive me.” The projection ended.

  Charlie marveled that Cesare’s final words didn’t bother him more. He resented being a pawn, but he’d been raised to serve House de Maris, and he felt every bit a part of the de Maris legacy. Cesare, without a thought to the contrary, had dropped him right back into his allotted slot in the de Maris household. And until that moment Charlie hadn’t questioned that, had responded without thought to a lifetime of conditioning. He’d lay down his life for House de Maris, but he began to wonder now where this was going. With the Syndonese involved did that mean another war? Another prison camp? If not for him, then maybe for others.

  Charlie didn’t have to work hard to suddenly feel very paranoid, and it occurred to him that a healthy dose of distrust might be the best thing he could do for House de Maris. He decided to make sure he had a backup plan for everything. He’d feel a lot better if he could figure out a way to have some firepower on hand when they went to Turnlee. But it would require Lucius’s permission to bring anything more than Cesare’s flagship.

  It occurred to him there might be something he could do, and if he was sneaky enough, Lucius need never know. However, it might be wise to first have a chat with Darmczek and some of the others with whom he’d shared the chain.

  We from the chain certainly understand survival, Charlie thought, and he smiled. We can always apologize later . . . or they can assume we were sorry when we’re dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  NICE DIGS

  The weather report for the vicinity about the Almsburg Palace described a cold, late-­autumn day with a nasty windchill, and as the shuttle dropped through the outer reaches of Turnlee’s atmosphere Charlie couldn’t put aside his sense of unease. Perhaps he’d gotten a bit too paranoid of late; certainly the precautions he’d taken were extreme, provoking a raised eyebrow even from the normally reticent Roacka. And Darmczek had warned him that he was breaking the king’s law by violating Turnlee nearspace. The twins had been his only supporters in this.

  He’d had Darmczek split up the individual units of his small flotilla. They were under orders to keep their power plants operating well below that of a warship, to approach the Turnlee system independently from different directions and times, to fake up their electronic identifications and claim to be noncombatant vessels—­merchantmen, freighters, and the like—­to shut down all nonessential systems so their emission signatures matched their supposed identities, and then drift slowly into Turnlee nearspace. They could get away with that because they could generate their own fake clearance codes. His hope was that nothing would happen, in which case his ships would quietly turn around and leave the system the way they’d come. On the other hand, if something did happen, he’d have some serious firepower at his disposal.

  He’d also enlisted the aid of Taggart, captain of Defender, which had brought them all here and was in orbit around Turnlee, though he’d had to lie to Taggart and claim that Cesare was privy to, and supported, his paranoid fears; just one more complication among many. Taggart knew Charlie was lying, but if Charlie’s head rolled, Taggart could claim Charlie had misled him.

  Charlie’s plan was simple: as soon as the shuttle dropped them off it would return to Defender, pick up a squad of fifty marines in full combat armor, then return to Almsburg where it would park in an unobtrusive corner of the palace’s landing field. The marines would be kept in the cargo hold of the shuttle in stimsleep, from which they could be awakened in moments, fresh and ready to fight. That meant Charlie had some firepower on the ground, close at hand, with a response time of minutes. Looking out the window of the shuttle he breathed a long sigh. He had to agree with Darmczek: he was probably just paranoid.

  Better paranoid than dead.

  The shuttle landed, they disembarked into a diamond-­clear, bitterly cold day. A band struck up a rousing chorus as Cesare’s foot touched the soil of Turnlee, though Charlie was thankful there were no speeches, if for no other reason than that the stiff collar of his dress uniform was decidedly uncomfortable, and without an overcoat the uniform did a poor job of keeping out the cold. They marched across the tarmac of the landing field to several waiting grav cars. Cesare, Theode, and Arthur were escorted each to his own limousine, each accompanied by two members of Cesare’s household guard, while a fourth limousine carried important members of the retinue. Out of habit Charlie rode with the rest of Cesare’s guard in a big grav truck equipped for troop transport. They’d be barracked somewhere in the bowels of the palace, ready to relieve the guards that shadowed Cesare, Arthur, and Theode.

  The troop transport pulled up to a side entrance near the back of the palace, and Charlie spilled out of the truck with the rest of the guard. They were met by a servant who gave them room assignments—­most of the guard were assigned to a common barracks, while NCOs and officers were given private or semi-­private rooms, depending upon rank. However, when Charlie gave the servant his name, the man frowned, hit the search key on his pad several times, and asked Charlie, “Are you sure about the spelling, sir?”

  Charlie frowned back at him and the man said, “Oh, of course you are, sir. If you’ll give me a moment, sir.” The man stepped aside, put a finger to one ear, and subvocalized into a com implant. A moment later he turned to Charlie with a smarmy smile. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. There’s been some sort of mistake. You’re not being housed with the staff. We’ll have someone down here in a moment to escort you to your suite.”

  The servant who escorted Charlie to his suite bowed and postured incessantly. And as they climbed higher and higher into the palace, and as the décor grew steadily more ornate and expensive, so grew Charlie’s discomfort.

  In the middle of a long hallway the servant opened wide double doors three meters high, and ushered Charlie into his suite. He had a study, bedroom, private toilet, and shower. Both the study and bedroom sported the luxury of an old-­fashioned hearth with a blazing wood fire that took the chill off the cold winter day. Charlie had never been quartered in the upper palace before, and the sudden change fueled his paranoia.

  He shrugged it off and decided, I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

  “Dinner will be at eight this evening, Commander Cass,” the servant said. “Dress is formal. Duke Cesare sends his regards, and asks that you join him in his apartments at the third hour.” The servant backed out of the room, leaving Charlie standing before the blazing hearth.

  Charlie looked at his watch. He had an hour before seeing Cesare. Might as well take a shower and put on a fresh uniform. He tossed his spacer’s bag on the bed and stripped down.

  The shower was lavish, plenty of hot water, no shipboard rationing. He toweled off, found a luxurious, warm robe hanging on the back of the fresher door, threw it on, wandered into the bedroom, and stopped in front of the fire to enjoy the warmth. He was thinking he might enjoy this after all, just go with it and let Winston do the worrying. He stood in front of the fire and let the warmth relax him a bit.

  Something made a sound behind him, a click and a whir, and he froze. Click, whir, tap, tap, there it was again. He tried to imagine what it might be, but his mind drew a blank. It was probably something of no consequence, something to do with grand suites in palaces, of which Charlie had little experience.

  But his training wouldn’t let him accept that. Assume the worst, Roacka seemed to whisper in his ear, and play it like yer life depended on it, boy.

  Standing there like a statue and not moving seemed to be acceptable. So with infinite patience he turned slowly about, taking several seconds to complete the motion. He didn’t have to look carefully to find
the source of the noise. He spotted a small bot on top of his spacer’s bag where he’d thrown it on the bed. It was shaped like a six-­legged spider, sharp little mechanical legs poking and prodding at the bag and the uniform he’d tossed there. His heart climbed up into his throat—­this was not benign.

  It was probably looking for a thermal signature combined with motion detection, perhaps with a hormone or DNA sniffer, which was why it had focused on the dirty clothing. It was pure luck that he’d immediately stepped in front of the fire. The heat radiating from it swamped Charlie’s own low-­level thermal image.

  There was a small, spinning globe on top of the mechanical spider. It rotated full-­circle every two or three seconds. Again, with infinite slowness he lowered into a crouch in front of the fire, hoping to further obscure his thermal signature. He had no weapons, nothing near at hand to throw or use as a club. He had the robe he was wearing, and the warmth of the fire was becoming uncomfortable. He carefully peeled off the robe, held it close to the fire until it was starting to give off little tendrils of smoke. It should give off its own thermal signature now.

  Maintaining his crouch, he tensed, then tossed the robe into the air to one side of his position. The bot responded instantly, scurried across the room with blinding speed and leapt at the descending robe before it hit the floor. The force of the bot’s leap was such that bot and robe together slammed into the wall then dropped to the floor. The bot, tangled in the robe, thrashed about furiously as Charlie scrambled across the floor on hands and knees. He gathered up the edges of the robe, lifted it like a sack with the bot trapped inside, swung the robe around his head once and slammed the bot into the wall. Taking no chances he swung again, and again, and again, until finally sparks and smoke erupted from the dead weight trapped in the robe.

  He dropped the bundle on the floor, and as the rush of adrenaline subsided and his knees turned to rubber he sat down in the middle of the room, caring nothing for the fact that he was as naked as the day he was born.

  If they don’t get you with the first strike, Roacka seemed to whisper, don’t forget the backup plan.

  To Charlie’s right he heard a pneumatic whoosh. He scrambled on hands and knees toward the fresher door, a new spurt of adrenaline goading him on. Behind him he heard a buzzing sound, and he suffered an irrational moment of fear that something would attack his bare ass. The last few steps before the fresher door he got to his feet in a low, running crouch, slammed through the door, and sprawled to the floor in a tumble of arms and legs. He lunged to his feet, caught a glimpse of small reptilian wings rocketing toward him, stumbled toward the door, threw his shoulder into it and slammed it shut.

  A tiny reptilian head punched through the door just above Charlie, scattering splinters from the door and transmitting a bone-­jarring shock to his shoulder. The little beast’s momentum stopped halfway through the door, pinned half in, half out. Its head jerked up and down spasmodically, began spewing a stream of emerald green liquid that shot across the floor of the fresher. Charlie kept his shoulder pressed to the door until the little beast’s head slowly jerked to a stop. And only then did he relax, sliding down the door until his bare butt hit the cold floor of the fresher.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Charlie got up and knelt beside the green liquid on the floor, wondering if it was caustic, or something else equally harmful. Staring at it carefully he noticed something moving in the green ooze, and on closer inspection he could see dozens of tiny larva, all squirming and thrashing about in the slime.

  Charlie was bruised, sore in a dozen places, but the pain associated with one particular ache on his arm rose to a level above the rest. He lifted his arm, and on it found one small drop of the green ooze.

  He stumbled to his feet, and careful not to step in any of the green slime he leaned over the sink, ran water on his arm, washing away the ooze to reveal a small bite mark in the skin. The pain didn’t stop, a searing burn that grew steadily. On closer examination he saw that the bite was more of a puncture wound and something beneath the skin moved, writhing and thrashing about.

  Charlie stumbled out of the fresher, ran to the bed where he’d tossed the uniform he’d stripped off earlier, started rifling through the clothes. His hand found the hard edge of plast, and desperately he tore the plast knife loose from its sheath. He ran back into the fresher, and leaning over the sink, he slashed the knife across the puncture mark in one smooth motion. His blood flowed freely into the sink as he dropped the knife, and with his free hand squeezed the wound with all the pressure he could apply.

  The little creature that had invaded his body popped out of it like a pimple, and the searing burn suddenly disappeared, replaced by the good, clean throb of a nasty cut. The small reptile that landed in the sink was now almost the size of the tip of Charlie’s thumb. The tiny creatures he had glimpsed in the green ooze had been a fraction of that, and he realized that in just a single minute the creature had grown within him more than tenfold. He started to shake as he understood the death meant for him, for if the little reptile had spewed the slime all over him, he’d have had hundreds of the tiny things invading his body.

  “Clever of them,” Cesare said, “separating us like that. We sweep my suite and Theode’s and Arthur’s, assume our guard will sweep the barracks and any rooms assigned to our staff, and no one realizes you’ve been sidetracked to a suite in the main palace.”

  As Cesare’s personal physician stitched up the cut in Charlie’s arm, Roacka examined the small bot, then the little reptile still pinned in the fresher door. “The hunter probe was just a feint.” Roacka nodded toward the little reptile. “The Finalsan flying snake, now that’s a nasty one, lad.”

  Charlie learned that the snake’s intent had been to punch its sharp beak into his torso, then spew its entire brood of young into his body, its last dying act the culmination of its breeding cycle. It might have taken an hour, but the little monsters would have completely consumed Charlie, then consumed each other until there were only a few of them left, a nice means of culling the weak from the gene pool. Charlie didn’t say anything to Cesare, but this felt more like something Gaida would cook up.

  Roacka voiced Charlie’s thoughts. “Gaida?”

  “No,” Cesare said. “I don’t think so. She’d have too much to lose, and almost nothing to gain.”

  Charlie glanced at Arthur and their eyes met; another little hint of that bargain both of them had always suspected existed. Neither of them said anything, knowing full well Cesare would deflect any inquiry on the subject.

  “I agree,” Arthur said. “This was cooked up by someone very high up in the palace structure.”

  Charlie asked, “Lucius?”

  Arthur shook his head. “No, my money would be on Adsin; this looks like something he’d try, and he is originally from Finalsa. Of course, we’ll never prove anything.”

  Cesare turned to Major Pelletier, head of his household guard. “Major, I want two bodyguards on Charlie at all times.”

  Charlie had never had to tolerate bodyguards before, and found them to be intrusive even now. That evening the two men followed him down to a reception he had to attend. At least they peeled off from him as he stepped into a room filled with the Realm’s nobility.

  He spotted Gaida, looking at him as if he’d brought a bad smell into the room, and across the floor he caught a glimpse of Del. No, he reminded himself, Delilah, the royal princess, daughter of a man who, if he really was conspiring with the Syndonese, seemed more enemy than king. And he couldn’t ignore the possibility that Lucius might have been complicit in the assassination attempt with the hunter bot and the flying snake. Charlie didn’t want to think about more lives lost in a useless little war.

  A few minutes later he found himself drink in hand, chatting with a young woman who insisted on quizzing him about the conditions in a Syndonese prison camp. She’d introduced herself, but he didn’t reme
mber her name, probably because he couldn’t take his mind off Del, and his gaze kept drifting her way.

  “Commander Cass.” Charlie turned toward the voice as a short, fat man dressed in flowing church robes descended upon him.

  Charlie bowed his head as the briefing Winston had loaded into his implants kicked in. “Archcanon Taffallo.”

  “Charles—­you don’t mind if I call you Charles—­of course not.” Taffallo hooked one of Charlie’s arms and looked at the young woman. “You don’t mind if I steal this young man, do you, my dear?”

  The young woman curtsied deeply, bowing forward, and as she did so the top of her dress opened slightly, exposing some attractive cleavage. Charlie caught Taffallo eyeing it greedily as the young woman said, “Of course not, Your Eminence.”

  Taffallo dragged Charlie away by his arm. “Now, young Charles, I wanted to ask your thoughts on the Syndonese negotiations. They say you know the Syndonese better than anyone.”

  At finally hearing solid confirmation that someone was negotiating something with the Syndonese, Charlie tried to keep a neutral look on his face. He shrugged. “I’m afraid that they are exaggerating.”

  “Oh come now, Charles. Don’t be modest. You defeated them rather handily at Solista.”

  Charlie wasn’t going to admit he knew nothing of the negotiations. Maybe Taffallo would spill something. “That was luck, Your Eminence. These negotiations require a political savvy that I don’t have. Perhaps you should ask Duke Cesare, or Lord Arthur.”