Throne of Stars

by David Weber

  “It’s the Mardukan powered armor’s primary weapon,” Rastar said smugly. “The extra size of the suit adds significant power.”

  “It had better,” Fain grunted, hoisting the weapon out with all four hands. “I can barely lift this!”

  “Now you over-muscled louts know how humans feel about plasma cannon,” Roger said dryly. Then he looked around the human and Mardukan faces surrounding him.

  “The Imperial Festival is in four weeks. It’s the best chance we’re going to have on the mission, and if Catrone and his fence-sitters aren’t going to lift a lily-white finger, there’s no reason to waste time trying for some sort of fancy coordination. Send the codeword to Julian, for Festival Day. We won’t tell the Alphanes we don’t need the additional suits—better we have more than we need than come up short. Start getting all the Marines fitted to them, and as many Mardukans as we have suits for. Training in close combat in this place is going to be easy enough. We’ll plan around the details of the Palace that we know. It will have to be a surface assault; there’s no other way in. At least the exterior guards are in dress uniform to look pretty. I know the Empress’ Own’s ‘dress uniforms’ are kinetic-reactive, but however good they may be against bead fire, they’re not armor, which should let us kick the door open if we manage to hit them with the element of surprise.

  “We’ll initiate with the Vasin . . .”

  Catrone sat at his desk, looking out the window at the brown grass where three horses grazed. He wasn’t actually seeing the scene as he sat tapping the balls of his fingers together in front of him. What he did see were memories, many of them bloody.

  His communicator chimed, and he consulted his toot for the time. Bang on.

  “Hey, Tom,” Bob Rosenberg said.

  “Hey, Bob,” Tomcat replied, grinning in apparent surprise. Stay smooth, stay natural. “Long time.”

  There was a slight signal delay as the reply bounced around from satellite to satellite. Any or all of which could be, and probably were, beaming the conversation to Adoula.

  “I’m in-system for a bit. Thought you might be up for a party.” Rosenberg had taken a job as a shuttle pilot on a freighter after resigning from the Corps.

  “Absolutely,” Tomcat said. “I’ll call a couple of the boys and girls. We’ll do it up right—roast the fatted calf.”

  “Works for me,” Rosenberg replied after a slightly longer pause than signal delay alone could have accounted for. “Wednesday?”

  “Plenty of time,” Tomcat said. “Turn up whenever. Beer’s always cold and free.”

  “I’ll do about anything for free beer.” Rosenberg grinned. “See you then.”

  “Catrone is throwing a party,” New Madrid said with a frown.

  “He’s done it before,” Adoula sighed. “Twice since we assumed our rightful position.” As usual, he was up to his neck in paperwork—why couldn’t people decide things on their own?—and in no mood for New Madrid’s paranoia.

  “Not right after a trip to Imperial City, he hasn’t,” New Madrid pointed out. “He’s invited ten people, eight from the Empress’ Own Association and two from the Raider Association, of which he’s also a member. All senior NCOs except Robert Rosenberg, who was the commander of Gold Battalion’s stinger squadron.”

  “And your point is?”

  “They’re planning something,” New Madrid said angrily. “First Helmut moves—”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I was talking to Gianetto. I do that from time to time, since you’re ignoring me.”

  “I’m not ignoring you, Lazar.” Adoula was beginning to get angry himself. “I’ve considered the threat of the Empress’ Own, and I’m ignoring it.”

  “But—”

  “But what? Are they coordinating with Home Fleet? Not as far as we can see. Do they have heavy weapons? Most assuredly not. Some bead rifles, maybe a few crew-served weapons they’ve squirreled away like the paranoid little freaks they are. And what are they going to do? Attack the Palace?”

  The prince shoved back in his chair and glowered at his taller, golden-haired coconspirator exasperatedly.

  “You’re putting two and two together and getting seven,” he said. “Take Helmut’s decision to move and Catrone’s meeting. Helmut could not have gotten word to them, unless he did it by telepathy. We’ve been watching him like a hawk. Sure, we don’t know where he is now, but he hasn’t communicated with anyone in the Sol System. He hasn’t even linked to a beacon. For them to have made prior contact and coordinated any sort of planning between Sixth Fleet and Catrone after we moved, they would have required an elaborate communications chain we couldn’t possibly have missed. And there was no reason for them to have set up any sort of plan in advance. So the two events are unrelated, and without Sixth Fleet to offset Home Fleet, anything Catrone and his friends could come up with would be doomed. They have no focal point—the heirs are dead, Her Majesty is damned near dead, and will be, just as soon as the new Heir is born.”

  “That’s not necessary,” New Madrid said peevishly.

  “We’ve discussed this,” Adoula replied in a tight, icy voice. “As soon as the Heir is born—which will be as soon as possible for guaranteed survival in a neonatal care ward—she goes. Period. Now, I’m extremely busy. Do quit bothering me with ghosts. Understand?”

  “Yes,” New Madrid grated. He got up and stalked out of the office, his spine rigid. Adoula watched him leave, and then sighed and tapped an icon on his pad.

  The young man who entered was pleasant faced, well-dressed, and entirely unnoticeable. His genes could have been assembled from any mixture of nationalities, and he had slightly tanned skin, brown hair, and brown eyes.

  “Yes, Your Highness?”

  “Ensure that everything is in place to remove the Earl when his utility is at an end.”

  “It will be done, Your Highness.”

  Adoula nodded, the young man withdrew, and the prince returned his attention to his paperwork.

  Loose ends everywhere. It was maddening.

  “Hey, Bob,” Tomcat said, shaking hands as his guests arrived. “Lufrano, how’s the leg? Marinau, Jo, glad you could make it. Everybody grab a beer, then let’s head for the rec room and get seriously stinko.”

  He led them into the basement of the house, through a heavy steel door, and down a corridor. Getting hold of the amount of land the Farm had needed to do things right had meant buying it in Central Asia, where prices had not yet skyrocketed the way they had in the heartland of North America. There was, of course, a reason prices were so much lower here, but even in Central Asia, there was land, and then there was land. In this case, he’d gotten the chunk he’d bought directly from the office of the Interior for a steal, given that it had “facilities” already on it.

  The house sat on top of a command-and-control bunker for an old antiballistic missile system. “Old” in this case meant way before the Empire, but still in nearly mint condition, thanks to the dry desert air. There was a command center, bunk rooms, individual rooms for officers, kitchen, storerooms, and magazines.

  When he’d gotten the place, those spaces were all sitting empty, except for the ones which had been half-filled with the fine sand for which the region was famous. He’d spent a couple of years, working in the time available, to fix a few of them up. Now the command center was his “rec room,” a comfortable room with some float chairs and, most importantly, a bar. He used one of the bunk rooms as an indoor range. The kitchen had been fitted up to be a kitchen again, he’d fitted out a couple of bedrooms, and the storerooms—lo and behold—held stores. Lots of stores.

  People joked that he could hold off an army. He knew they were wrong. He’d have a tough time dealing with more than a platoon or so.

  And, ritually, once a week, he swept all the rooms for bugs. Just an old habit. He’d never found one.

  “Hey, Lufrano,” Rosenberg said as the rest filed into the rec room. He had a long metal wand, and he ran it over the
visitors as he talked. “Been a long time.”

  “Yep,” Lufrano Toutain, late Sergeant Major of Steel Battalion, agreed. “How’s the shipping business?”

  “Same old same old,” Rosenberg replied. He ran the entire group, then nodded. “Clear.”

  “Fatted calf,” Toutain, said in an entirely different voice, grabbing a beer. “Son of a—”

  “Empress,” Tomcat finished for him. “And a pretty impressive one. Boy’s grown both ears and a tail.”

  “Now that would take some doing,” Youngwen Marinau said, catching the brew Tomcat tossed him. Marinau had been first sergeant in Bronze Battalion for eighteen miserable months. He popped the bulb open and took a long drink, swilling it as if to wash the taste of something else out of his mouth. “He was a punk when I knew him.”

  “There’s a reason Pahner got Bravo Company,” Rosenberg pointed out. “Nobody better for bringing on a young punk. Where in the hell have they been, though? The ship never made it to Leviathan; no sign of them.”

  “Marduk,” Catrone answered. “I didn’t get the whole story, but they were there a long time—I can tell that. And Pahner bought it there. I took a look at what there is in the database about it.” He shook his head. “Lots of carnivores, lots of barbs. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the Prince has got about a company-plus of the barbs following him around. They’re masquerading as waiters, but they’re soldiers, you can tell. And they had some trouble with one of the carnivores they use as food. And that Roger . . .”

  He shook his head again.

  “Tell,” Marinau said. “I’d love to hear that there’s something in that pretty head besides clothes and fashion sense.”

  Catrone ran through the entire story, ending with the killing of the atul.

  “Look, I don’t shake, and I don’t run,” Catrone ended. “But that damned thing shook me. It was just a mass of claws and fangs, and Roger didn’t even blink—just took it out. Whap, slash, gone. Every move was choreographed, like he’d done it two, three thousand times. Perfect muscle memory movement. Lots of practice, and there’s only one way he could have gotten it. And fast. Just about the fastest human I’ve ever seen.”

  “So he can fight.” Marinau shrugged. “Glad he had at least some MacClintock in him after all.”

  “More than that,” Catrone said. “He’s fast. Fast enough he could have left us all standing and let us take the fall. The thing probably would have savaged one of us, and then either fed or left. He could have gotten away while it was munching, but he didn’t. He stood the ground.”

  “That’s not his job,” Rosenberg pointed out.

  “No, but he was the one with the weapon and the training,” Toutain said, nodding. “Right?”

  “Right,” Catrone said.

  “Any chance it was a setup?” Marinau asked.

  “Maybe,” Catrone conceded with a shrug. “But if so, what does that tell us about the Mardukans?”

  “What do you mean?” Rosenberg said.

  “If it was a setup, one of them took a heavy hit for him,” Catrone pointed out. “It didn’t kill him, but I bet it was touch and go. If they set it up, they did so knowing the thing could kill them. Think about it. Would you do that if Alexandra asked you to?”

  “Which one?” Marinau asked, his voice suddenly harsher with old memories and pain. He’d retired out of Princess Alexandra’s Steel Battalion less than two years before her murder.

  “Either,” Catrone said. “The point’s the same. But I don’t think it was a setup. And Despreaux was interesting, too.”

  “She usually is.” Rosenberg chuckled. “I remember when she joined the Regiment. Damn, that girl’s a looker. I’m not surprised the Prince fell for her.”

  “Yeah, but she’s trained the same way we are. Protect the primary. And all she did was get ready to back him up. What does that tell you?”

  “That she’s out of training,” Marinau said. “You said she’d implied she’d lost it.”

  “She didn’t ‘lose it’ in the classical sense,” Catrone argued. “She stood her ground, unarmed, but she knew the best person to face the thing was Roger. And she trusted him. She didn’t run, and she didn’t go into a funk, but she also didn’t move to protect the primary. She let him handle it.”

  “Just because he’s brave,” Marinau said, “and, okay, can handle a sword—which is a pretty archaic damned weapon—that doesn’t mean he’s suited to be Emperor. And that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about being a Praetorian Guard, just what we’re not supposed to be. Choosing the Emperor is not our job. And if I did have a choice, Roger wouldn’t be it.”

  “You prefer Adoula?” Catrone demanded angrily.

  “No,” Marinau admitted unhappily.

  “The point is, he didn’t do the deed. We already knew that.” Catrone said. “And he’s the legitimate heir, not this baby they’re fast-cooking. And if somebody doesn’t act, Alexandra’s going to be as dead as John and Alex.” His face worked for a moment, and then he shook his head, snarling. “You’re going to let Adoula get away with that?”

  “You’re impressed,” Rosenberg said. “I can tell that.”

  “Yeah, I’m impressed,” Catrone replied. “I didn’t know it was going to be him, just that something was fishy. And I wasn’t impressed when I met him. But . . . he’s got that MacClintock thing you know? He didn’t before—”

  “Not hardly,” Marinau muttered grumpily.

  “—but he sure as hell does now,” Catrone finished.

  “Does he want the Throne?” Joceline Raoux asked. She was a former sergeant major of the Raiders, the elite insertion commandos who skirmished with the Saint Greenpeace Corps along the borders.

  “We didn’t get into that, Jo,” Catrone admitted. “I put them off. I wasn’t going to give him an okay without a consult. But he was more focused on getting the Empress safe. That might have been a negotiating ploy—he’s got to know where our interests and loyalties lie—but that’s what we talked about. Obviously, though, if we secure the Throne, he’s the Heir.”

  “And from our reports, he’ll be Emperor almost immediately,” Rosenberg pointed out gloomily.

  “Maybe,” Catrone said. “I’m not going to believe it until I’ve seen Alexandra. She’s strong—I can’t believe she won’t get over it.”

  “I want her safe,” Toutain said suddenly, his voice hard. “And I want that bastard Adoula’s head for what he did to John and the kids. The damned kids . . .” His face worked, and he shook his head fiercely. “I want that bastard dead. I want to do him with a knife. Slow.”

  “No more than I want New Madrid,” Catrone pointed out. “I am going to take that bastard, if it’s the last thing I do. But Roger can give us more than just revenge—he can give us the Empire back. And that’s important.”

  Rosenberg looked around at the group of senior NCOs, taking a mental headcount, based upon body language. It didn’t take long.

  “Catrone, Marinau, and . . . Raoux,” he said. “Arrange to meet. Tell him we’ll back him if he’s got a real plan. And find out what it is.”

  “It won’t include what we know,” Catrone said. “It won’t even include the Miranda Protocols.”

  “How do we meet him?” Marinau asked.

  “Slipping our tethers will be harder than finding him.” Catrone shrugged. “I know I’m being monitored. But finding him won’t be hard; there’s only a couple of places he can be.”

  “Meet him, again. Get a reading on him,” Rosenberg said. “If you’re all in agreement, we’ll initiate the Miranda Protocols and gather the clans.”

  “Honal,” Roger smiled tightly, controlling his gorge through sheer force of will, “the idea is to survive flying in a light-flyer.”

  The sleek, razor-edged aircar, a Mainly Fantom, was the only sports model large enough to squeeze a Mardukan into. It was also the fastest, and reportedly the most maneuverable, light-flyer on the market.

  At the moment, Honal was
proving that both those claims were justified, weaving in and out of the Western Range at dangerously high speeds. He had his lower, less dexterous, hands on the controls, and his upper arms crossed nonchalantly. There were some tricky air currents, and Roger closed his eyes as one of them caught the flyer and brought it down towards an upthrust chunk of rock. The flyer banked, putting the passenger side down, and Roger opened his eyes a crack to see the rocks of the mountainside flashing by less than a meter from the tip of the aircar’s wing.

  The car suddenly flipped back in the other direction, banking again, and stood up on its tail. Roger crunched his stomach, feeling himself beginning to gray out, as Honal left out a bellow.

  “I love this thing!” the Mardukan shouted, rolling the car over on its back. “Look at what it can do!”

  “Honal,” Roger shook his head to clear it, “if I die, this plan goes to shit. Could we land, please?”

  “Oh, sure. But you wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing, right?”

  “You have successfully demonstrated that you can fly an aircar,” Roger said carefully. “Most successfully. Thank you. The question of whether or not you can fly a stingship still remains; they’re not the same.”

  “We’ve been working with the simulators.” Honal shrugged all four shoulders. “They’re faster than this, but a bit less maneuverable. We can fly stingships, Roger.”

  “Targeting is—”

  “The targeting system is mostly automatic.” Honal banked around another mountain, this time slower and further away from the rocks, and landed the car beside the more plebeian vehicle Roger had flown out to the site. “It’s a matter of choosing the targets. Human pilots use mainly their toots, with the manual controls primarily for backup, but obviously, we can’t do that. On the other hand—you should pardon the expression—humans only have one set of hands. We’re training to fly with the lower hands . . . and control the targeting with the upper. I’ve ‘fought’ on the net with a few humans, including some military stingship pilots. They’re good, I give you that. But one-on-one, I can take any one of them, and a couple of the rest of the team are nearly as good. Where they kick our ass is in group tactics. We’re just getting a feel for those; it’s not the same thing as riding a civan against the Boman. Go in against them wing-to-wing, and we just get shot out of the sky. The good news is that the squadron at the Palace isn’t trained in group tactics, either. But they’ve got some pretty serious ground-based air defenses, and taking those out is another thing we’re not great at, yet.”