by Richard Fox
“Nothing of substance. The king’s orders remain in place,” he said.
“I’ll be glad when that painting is gone. I never liked it, always seems like the eyes are following you. You did good tonight. Imagine the trouble if the Enquirer had pics of the ball in their morning edition. Stolzoff would have a fit, and we’d have to tear apart the entire palace figuring out how they got in.”
“Did Stolzoff get the man Papadopoulos said let him in yet?” Remi asked.
“They’ve already got him in interrogation.”
****
Cosima sat in front of her vanity and unfastened her earrings. She put the lapis lazuli studs away, then glanced around to find Lana. The clink of hangers against wood came from the closet. Lana was out of eyeshot.
Cosima slipped the skin-caster disk into the earing box and snapped it shut.
“Lana, what do you know about the Battle of Jutland?” Cosima asked, her voice high enough to travel through the room.
Lana returned from the closet, already dressed for bed in silk pajamas. “Pirates captured the Argosy,” she said, “a House Wilhelminer trade ship, and took it to Jutland where they tried to ransom it back to the House. King Rasczak brokered a deal. Instead of sending a ship full of payment, he sent a ship full of soldiers in a merchantman converted for battle. They recaptured the Argosy in orbit, along with her crew.
“My cousin was on the expedition. He said the ship’s cargo, years’ worth of undelivered commissions, was dirt side in the pirates’ fortress. Prince Quinn ordered a ground assault, and that’s where most of the casualties happened, including poor Prince Quinn. They never found his body. Not unusual, as the pirates had plasma weapons. The commissions were recovered, and the pirates swore a vendetta against our planet. Now our ships travel in convoys for mutual protection.”
Cosima’s mouth screwed into a crooked line. “Lana, father always said that Sidonia is its citizens, its artists. We can always replace stuff, never people. He said the king told him that every time father had to report a loss from an accident. King Rasczak would never forgive my father if he chose an amount of marks over anyone’s life. I had to know all this because I would take over the House’s business when I was old enough.”
Cosima twisted around in her chair and rested her chin on its back. “If the expedition had the Argosy and the crew, why send soldiers into battle for…stuff?”
“I have no idea, my dear. I find it best not to worry about things you can’t control or are beyond helping.” Lana picked up a slate and swiped through pictures of bouquets. “We have an appointment in the morning with the wedding florist. Do you have a theme in mind? There are these beautiful nova blossoms from Brittany that would look wonderful.”
“Joy, flowers,” Cosima said. She didn’t accept the offered slate and climbed into bed.
Lana crossed her arms and held the slate close to her chest.
“Theresa will join us in the morning. Lots to do.” The handmaid walked away and turned down the lights before retiring to her quarters.
Cosima lay in bed staring at the ceiling. She waited until she heard the click of Lana turning off her own lights, then rolled over and opened a drawer on her nightstand. She pulled out a pair of virtual-reality glasses and her data stylus. The stylus held the data she’d snagged from Gregor Wilson, the artist who’d been working on the mural of the Battle of Jutland.
With the glasses over her eyes, she tapped the stylus against the rim. A list of files scrolled past her vision, most of them videos and single pictures. She tapped the stylus into the air and opened the longest and most recently accessed file. Titled: REMI, PAUL H. ARMOR CAM FOOTAGE.
****
The video opened to a blinding white sky. A black contrail of smoke poured from a dying fighter jet. The fighter exploded in a puff of fire, fuselage and wings bursting apart and scattering into the sky like a meteor breaking apart as it entered atmosphere. The sound of the blast reached Remi moments later.
He coughed and rolled over. He lay on a hardscrabble tan desert floor, wisps of dust playing across the ground. He slapped a palm against the side of his helmet, and a tactical feed came across his vision. The feed was almost all red with error messages.
He picked up an assault rifle from the ground and brushed sand off it. A full clip registered on his visor.
“At least something works,” he murmured.
The distant thump-thump of artillery caused him to duck out of reflex. He looked toward the sound. The adobe fortress of the pirates lay in the distance. Tracer rounds, bright red streaks from the pirates, yellow from the Sidonian forces, crisscrossed between the fortress and the deep ravine that the expedition used as a trench line.
“Vincent?” Remi whirled around. A crashed lander lay at the end of a rut of its own making. Broken wings and hunks of the craft lay in its wake. Fire rose from the blackened and shattered cockpit.
Remi ran to the crash. He stepped around the bright red remains of a soldier, nothing but a hip and ripped armor. The rear hatch of the lander was open, bent and torn free from one of two hinges that connected it to the lander.
“Vincent!” Remi tried to enter the lander, but smoke forced him away, hacking against foul air.
A woman’s voice called to him. “Remi! Over here.”
He ran to the other side of the lander where a soldier waved to him from a wash in the desert, little more than a deep cut into the surface. “Shoshana, where’s the prince?” Remi asked as he ran over. The other soldier was in full armor, bulky enough that her curves couldn’t give away her away as a woman.
“Here,” said a strained voice. Prince Vincent, his helmet in the dirt beside his knee, knelt next to two lightly armored bodies, red stains streaked over their deep gray armor. A pool of water lay behind him. “Pilots didn’t make it.” He had a gash along his jawline, blood dripping from it like a leaking pipe.
“Sir, we’ll signal an evac for you, get you back to our ship,” Remi said. He pulled a med pack from his hip and removed a cauterizer wand. He ran the red-hot tip along Vincent’s jaw, and the torn flesh pulled together and fused as it passed.
Vincent’s face twitched from the pain, but he didn’t utter a sound.
“No,” Vincent tapped the back of his gauntlet against the fuse work, “we join up with the rest of the assault. Mark this spot, we aren’t leaving any bodies on this cinder. You hurt?” he asked Remi.
Remi shifted in his armor. Sections had compressed against injuries in his shoulder and lower back. His display showed the amount of painkillers sent into his system. “Just some bruises, sir.”
Vincent looked at Shoshana.
“Bruises,” she said.
“Liars, both of you. Follow me,” Vincent said. He slipped his helmet onto his head.
The three jogged out of the ravine, Shoshana and Remi flanking their prince. They activated their gauntlet shields, and blowing dust sent ripples of static across the shields like whitecaps on waves coming in to the beach.
They ran toward the battle, Remi with a slight limp that didn’t stop him from keeping up with the other two. Tracers zipped between the two forces. Black scorch marks and the blown-out adobe façade on the pirates’ fortress became more visible as they neared.
A dry riverbed led into the Sidonian positions. They slid down the embankment and hugged the edge closest to the fortress. The defilade offered some cover, but aimed shots from the pirates snapped over their heads and speared through the loose soil.
Remi took a hit on his shield, the strike sending him stumbling into Shoshana, who managed to keep him on his feet.
“Careful, Paul,” she said. He lurched back to his spot flanking Vincent without a word, his shield up and ready.
A ring of soldiers surrounded a makeshift aid station nestled against the ravine’s wall. Medics, each with a white band and red cross painted on their armor, worked on a dozen soldiers. Their groans and screams mingled with the sound of gunfire.
A doctor waved to Vincent
. “Sir! Prince Vincent, a word.”
Vincent stopped and removed his helmet.
“Sir, we’ve got more wounded coming in, urgent surgical who won’t last another half hour unless I can get them back to the surgical bays we have in orbit,” the doctor said.
Vincent grabbed the hand of a wounded soldier on a gurney that reached to him.
“Gruber, I know you,” Vincent said to the wounded man, his chest wrapped in bloody compression bandages. “Hang on.” Vincent turned his head to the doctor. “Where are the lander ambulances? They should have been here by now.”
“The pirates have a Vulcan anti-aircraft gun on a tower. Anything flies too close and it gets cut to ribbons,” the doctor said.
“Where is Colonel Greer? Where is my brother?” Vincent asked.
“At the command center, though the ravine,” the doctor said.
Vincent clasped the hand of the wounded man and bent over him. “I’ll get you out of here, just hold on.” He pulled away and ran deeper into the ravine, Remi and Shoshana with him.
Soldiers dug firing steps into the steep banks, and others worked furiously to deepen shallower areas so soldiers could run past without exposure to the pirates on the fortress walls. Men and women nodded to Vincent as he jogged past them, none so foolish as to salute and signal his importance to the watching enemy.
They found more soldiers bunched together. Only a few took sporadic shots over the ravine’s edge. A knot of knee-high satellite dishes and mingling soldiers drew Vincent like a beacon.
Vincent pushed his way through the ring of soldiers, where Remi saw Colonel Greer, his armor covered in dirt, speaking to a tall man sitting on a case of ammunition as if it were a throne—Prince Quinn.
“My lord, it is suicide to charge the walls,” Colonel Greer said. “They have plasma guns that will cut through our shields like they aren’t even there. Please, call down the armor. The tanks can take the hits and knock out the air defenses, then we can finish them off easily.”
Quinn, his helmet off and hair skewed in a wild angle, shook his head and looked at Greer with disgust. “My good colonel, we have goods, valuable goods in that palace. We can’t put them at risk just to save our skins, now can we?” Quinn’s voice rang reedy and high for such a large man.
“That is exactly what we should be doing, brother,” Vincent said.
“Ah, you lived. How nice,” Quinn said with a grin.
“Greer is right, call down the armor,” Vincent said.
“No.” Quinn crossed a leg over a knee and tapped his foot in the air, as if he were waiting too long for a drink at a bar back in Sidonia City. “Greer will lead the charge. And he’ll lead it now, before the pirates can destroy the commissioned works they took off the Argosy.”
“My lord, the casualties will be high, and we need not lose another life on this planet,” Greer said.
Quinn got to his feet with a roar and drew his saber with a flash. In less than a heartbeat, the blade’s tip hovered over Greer’s exposed throat. Greer didn’t flinch.
Remi’s hand went to his hilt, waiting for Vincent’s signal.
“Cowardice, Greer?” Quinn sneered. “I thought you had more backbone to you. Refusing a royal command, on the field of battle no less, is a capital offense.”
“I will lead them,” Vincent said.
Quinn snapped his head toward Vincent. The blade didn’t waver from Greer’s throat.
“Will you? Fair enough. I’ll signal the second wave once you make it to the walls. Get on with it,” Quinn said. He lowered his blade to a low guard.
Vincent waved Greer over, who kept his front toward Quinn as he backed away.
“Sir,” Greer whispered to Vincent as he got close, “this is suicide.”
Vincent pulled Greer away from Remi and Shoshana, keeping them away with a raised hand as he spoke with Greer in hushed tones.
Shoshana tilted her head to Remi. “What is going on? Why is Quinn doing this?”
“That’s not our concern,” Remi said.
She sidled closer to him. “Quinn’s guard isn’t here. If Vincent orders us…you’re better than Quinn with a sword. Even with his body shield we could—”
“Stop,” Remi hissed. “We aren’t some praetorian guard that intervenes when it feels the need. We protect, we defend, and we obey.”
“We charge face first into enemy bullets. That seem right to you?”
“No. But no one seems to care about our opinions,” Remi said.
Shoshana shifted from side to side. She put a hand on Remi’s arm. “Remi, you should know how I feel. If we—”
“Not now,” Remi said. “We’ll talk after this is over. Promise.”
Vincent broke away from Greer and trotted along the line. Soldiers roused to their feet, obeying the same orders that came across Remi’s display. Prepare to charge.
The prince stopped at a low berm and went to a knee. He unholstered his pulser and activated his gauntlet shield with the thumb of his pulser hand.
“You think Quinn would loan you his full-body shield for this,” Shoshana said.
Vincent took several deep breaths, then glanced over the parapet.
“The more I think about this,” Vincent said, “the less I want to do it.” He looked at Shoshana, then locked eyes with Remi. “You with me?”
“Always, my prince,” Remi said.
Vincent stepped into the center of the ravine and drew his sword. “Sidonia!” He raised the blade over his head. “Charge!”
A roar went up and down the line as soldiers pulled themselves over the top of the ravine and charged toward the fortress.
Remi scrambled into the open. The few hundred yards between the ravine and the fortress looked as distant as Earth. He powered his shield to life and moved forward, firing bursts from his assault rifle at the pirates bobbing up and down from the top of the fortress walls.
Teams of soldiers ran ahead of him, shields raised over their heads, sappers with demolition charges more intent on crossing the distance than shooting.
The snap and whine of enemy shots sliced through the air around Remi. Missed shots smacked into the bone-dry ground with puffs of dirt.
Vincent raced past him, his sword raised high, his shield to the side. Shoshana ran on his right, her shield trembling with impacts.
Remi cursed and sprinted toward his prince, who insisted on making a target of himself with his useless sword.
A sudden tremor ripped through the ground as a mortar shell burst ahead of them. Bits of shrapnel zinged past Remi. His shield sparked as tiny shards of metal bounced off the energy shield.
Remi caught up to the pair as they skirted the newly made crater, hunks of dirt falling around them like rain. A small group of soldiers hugged the edge of the crater, embracing the cover from the oncoming fire like a newborn at its mother’s breast.
“Are you going to let me beat you to the wall?” Vincent challenged. “Get up!”
He didn’t wait for their responses. Bodies of Sidonians littered the field ahead of them. Some of the wounded crawled back, slow targets for the enemy on the walls.
A flash of green fire erupted from the base of the wall, enveloping a sapper team and leaving nothing but fused armor and blackened bones behind.
“Target the plasma gunners!” Vincent ordered. He slapped his hilt against his belt and drew his pulser. He took aimed shots at the wall, exposed and in the open. Remi and Shoshana raised their shields over Vincent, giving him enough room to aim and fire. Pirate bullets thumped against Remi’s shield. A fault line broke across it, a lightning bolt against the static of his weakening shield.
“Vincent,” Remi said, “I don’t know how long—”
Remi’s world erupted in smoke as the blast of a mortar sent him crashing to the ground. He lay there, groaning. He rolled over, a hiss of fire in the air. Smoke and a fog of diffused dirt surrounded him.
“Vincent! Shoshana!” he screamed. He tried to get to his feet and fell over. A twisted
lump of metal was imbedded in his thigh, and blood bubbled from where it seeped against the red-hot edge. He fell back and grabbed the shrapnel with his fingertips.
Remi cried in pain and pulled at the metal. It came free with a slurp, and Remi dropped it to the ground, shaking heat from his burnt fingers. Blood spurted from the wound in time with his heartbeats. His armor compressed around it, and Remi slapped a bandage over the still-bleeding wound.
His breathing shallow and labored, he crawled toward a soldier partially covered by earth rent by the mortar strike.
“No, no, no,” Remi said. It was Shoshana, limp and unresponsive to his touch. The word EXPECTANT flashed over her body on Remi’s display.
“No, don’t do this to me.” Remi reached under her helmet and pulled it free. Blonde hair, streaked through with blood, spread out under her head. Blood trickled from her mouth, ears, and nose.
“Shoshana, please. Stay with me, darling.” Remi slid her arm over his shoulder and tried to get them both to their feet.
“Remi! How is she?” Vincent emerged from the smoke. The prince put Shoshana’s other arm over his shoulder, and the two men dragged her away.
A warning cry came from the distance. Vincent looked up, then let go of Shoshana. The prince’s gauntlet shield snapped to life as a green bolt of fire found them. Remi tucked Shoshana against him and put himself between her and the incoming plasma shot. Another wave of overpressure threw them both to the ground.
Remi, his back armor steaming from the heat wave, moved off Shoshana. He padded toward Vincent’s prone body on his hands and knees.
“Vincent?”
The prince lay on his side, motionless.
Remi rolled him onto his back. The left side of Vincent’s face was ruined. White bone peeked out from beneath shredded black flesh. His left arm was gone, his shoulder a mass of cinders and bleeding tissue.
****
Cosima ripped the VR glasses from her head with a shriek and flung them across the room. They clattered in the darkness. The room was silent and still, a welcome relief from the battlefield.
