Throne of Stars

by David Weber

  There wasn’t even much danger of Jin being noticed as “out of cover” by the IBI if that organization should happen to spot him. He was openly listed as a communications technician on the staff of the restaurant, and if the IBI used the right protocols, they might spot him as one of their own and realize they already had an agent in place. In which case he was in position to file a wholly false report on a minor money-trafficking operation, with no clue as to where the money was coming from.

  Then again, he’d been a Counterintelligence and Imperial Security operative, and the head of that division had vanished under mysterious circumstances. He’d also sent out codes telling “his” agents they were in the cold, which meant, in all probability, that the records of one Temu Jin had been electronically flushed. So as long as no one who might recognize him by sight actually saw him, he was probably clean. But Buseh Subianto—who’d been in the same department, if not in his chain of command—might just possibly have been able to do exactly that. He’d certainly recognized the video of her and her companion, Tebic.

  “Subianto is one of the really straight players,” he continued. “Apolitical as anyone in Counter-Intel can get. It’s why she’s been in her current position so long; go higher, and you’re dealing with policy, and policy means politics.”

  “She’s playing policy now,” Catrone muttered. “If she’d filed a report, we’d have Marines or IBI tac-teams swarming all over us. But that doesn’t mean she’s on our side, Roger.”

  “She was going to keep pushing,” Roger said calmly. “She’s an IBI agent, even if she doesn’t work the streets anymore, and curiosity is what they’re all about. But if I’m the Heir, then any decision she makes is policy. My estimate, based on her questions and the manner in which they were presented, was that she’d just keep her head down if she knew who I was. And I was the person handling it; I had to decide how I was going to handle it right then. It was my decision to handle it in that way.”

  “There’s another aspect to consider,” Eleanora said. “One of our big weaknesses is current intelligence. Up to date intel, especially on Adoula’s actions and movements. If we had a contact in the IBI—”

  “Too risky.” Catrone shook his head. “She might be willing to keep her head down and ignore us. For that matter, I think Roger’s probably right, that she is. But we can’t risk bringing her in, or trying to pump her for information.”

  “Agreed,” Roger said. “And if that’s settled, let’s move on. Are we agreed on the plan?”

  “Home Fleet is still the big question,” Catrone said with a frown.

  “I know,” Roger replied. “Macek and Bebi are in position, but we need a read on Kjerulf.”

  “Contacting him would tip our hand.” Catrone was shaking his head again.

  “That depends on Kjerulf,” Roger pointed out. “And we’re finding friends in the oddest places.”

  “I know him,” Marinau said suddenly. “He was my CO when I was on Tetri.” He shrugged. “I’d say he’s probably more likely to be a friend than an enemy.”

  “You can’t contact him, though,” Catrone objected. “You’re needed to arrange the rehearsals. Besides, we can be damned well certain Adoula’s keeping an eye on you.”

  “Eleanora could do it,” Roger said. “He’s stationed on Moonbase. That’s only a six-hour hop.”

  “Contacting him for a meet would be . . . difficult,” Marinau pointed out.

  “Is there some code he’d recognize as coming from you?” Roger asked. “Something that’s innocuous otherwise?”

  “Maybe.” Marinau rubbed one ear lobe. “I can think of a couple of things.”

  “Well, even after everything else I’ve done, I never thought I’d stoop to this,” Roger said, “but we’ll send out a spam message, with your code in the header. He’ll get at least one of the messages and recognize the header. I hope.”

  “I can set that up.” Catrone grimaced. “The software’s out there. Makes me sick, though.”

  “We’ve done worse, and we’ll do it again,” Roger said dryly. “I know that’s hard to believe when we’re talking about spam, but there it is. Are we in agreement otherwise?”

  “Yes,” Marinau replied. “It looks like the best we can cobble together to me. I’m still not happy about the fact that there’s no reserve to speak of, though. You want a reserve for more than just somebody to retreat on.”

  “Agreed, and if I could provide one, I would,” Roger said. “At least there’s the Cheyenne stingship and shuttle force. If they can get here in time. And if it runs long, we can probably call on the Sixth Fleet Marines.”

  “How’s the training on your Mardukans coming?” Catrone asked.

  “From what I hear,” Roger said with a grin, “the biggest problem is shoehorning them into the cockpits.”

  “This is pocking cramped,” Honal complained.

  The bay under the main Cheyenne facility was much larger than the one at Greenbrier . . . and even more packed with equipment. There were fifteen of the later and considerably nastier Bearkiller stingships, four Velociraptor assault shuttles, ten light hovertanks, and a series of simulators for all of them. Honal was currently stuffed into one such simulator, trying out the new seat.

  “It’s not my fault you guys are oversized,” Paul McMahon said.

  The stingship engineer had been between jobs when Rosenberg shanghaied him—hiring him off the net for “secure work at a remote location without the opportunity for outside contact.” The salary offered had been twice his normal pay rate, but when he found out who’d hired him, there’d been a near mutiny, despite the fact that Rosenberg had been his CO before he retired from the Imperial Marines. He’d only agreed to help under duress and after receiving a sworn statement that he was not a voluntary participant. Rosenberg’s recorded, legally attested statement probably wouldn’t keep him out of jail, but it might let him at least keep his head, although he wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about his prospects under any circumstances.

  Of course, the engineer might have felt even less sanguine if he’d known who he was really working for. So far as he knew, Rosenberg was simply fronting an Association operation to rescue the Empress; he had no clue that he’d actually fallen into the toils of the nefarious Traitor Prince. Rosenberg didn’t like to think about how McMahon might have reacted to that little tidbit of information.

  At the moment, however, the man’s attention was completely focused on his job, and he frowned as Honal popped the hatch and climbed out of the simulator—not without a certain degree of huffing, puffing, and grunting.

  “It wasn’t easy changing those seats, you know,” he continued as Honal shook himself vigorously, “and the panel redesign and legroom extension were even tougher, in some ways. This model was already a bit like a whole-body glove when all they wanted to put in it was humans. And forget ejecting. The motivator is not designed for your weight, and we don’t have time to redesign it. Not to mention the fact that you’d rip your legs off on the way out; they’re in what used to be the forward sensor array.”

  “Hell with my legs—I can barely move my arms,” Honal pointed out.

  “But can you fly it?” Rosenberg asked. “That’s the only thing that matters. We can’t hire pilots for this, and I’ve only got a few I’d trust for it. We’re really laying it all on the line. Can you fly it?”

  “Maybe.” Honal grimaced, lowered himself back into the simulator, and began startup procedures. “This isn’t going to be fun,” he observed.

  “Tell me about it,” Rosenberg sighed.

  “How’s the rest of the training going?” Honal asked.

  “Nominal.”

  The team moved cautiously down the corridor, every sense strainingly alert, each foot placed carefully.

  The corridor walls were blue plasteel, with what appeared to be abstract paintings every couple of meters. They’d looked at one of the paintings, and that had been enough. Within the swirling images, mouths screamed silently and demon f
aces leered. There was a distant dripping of water, and occasional unearthly howls sounded in the distance.

  Raoux held up a fist as they reached an intersection. She pointed to two of their point guards and signaled for them to check it out. The first guard rolled a sensor ball into the intersection, bouncing it off the opposite wall, and then sprang forward, covering the intersection as the rest of the team bounded past. The second point moved down the corridor—then checked as a screamer abruptly appeared, apparently out of a solid wall.

  The screamer was nearly as tall as a Mardukan, and had similar horns, but red skin and scales that were at least partially resistant to bead rifle fire. Despite that, the point engaged with a burst of low-powered beads which went downrange with a quiet crack and caught the screamer in the chest.

  Unfortunately, the screamer lived up to its name and began howling. Alarms began to shrill in the background.

  “We’re blown,” Marinau snarled. “Plan Delta!”

  The team began to move faster, but as they passed a corridor, a blast of plasma came down it, and took out the team member who’d been covering the movement element’s advance. Flamers—bigger versions of the screamers, with heavier armor that could at least partially resist the team’s heavy weapons—came down the side corridor, while more flooded in behind them. Then things like flowers started popping out of the walls, throwing liquid fire that burned their armor.

  Raoux blinked her eyes as she came out of the VR simulation, then cursed as more of the team members popped into the gray formlessness of “between” with her.

  “Well, that didn’t go too well,” Yatkin observed with truly monumental understatement.

  “No, it didn’t,” Raoux agreed dryly, shaking her head.

  “There ought to be a way we can mimic the flamers, Jo,” Kaaper mused.

  “Paint ourselves red?” Raoux said bitingly.

  “You know what I mean,” Kaaper replied as two more figures formed.

  One of them was a humanoid, tiger-striped tomcat, a bit short of two meters tall, cradling a bead rifle. The other figure was short, overweight, and young, with mussed hair and messy clothing. It was a standard Geek Mod One, the normal first-timer’s persona avatar in the Surreal Battle matrix. He wore holstered, pearl-handled bead pistols for weapons.

  “Hey, Tomcat,” Raoux greeted, and looked over at the other figure. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Sabre,” the geek said. “Can I play?”

  “Great,” Yatkin said. “Just what we need. For cannon fodder.”

  “Can I play? Huh? Huh? Can I?” Sabre bounced up and down.

  “Sure.” Kaaper waved a hand, and a screamer appeared out of the air and turned towards the capering figure.

  A bead pistol appeared, gripped in both of Sabre’s hands. Even as he continued to bounce in excitement, the pistol began spitting beads. The screamer was spun in place as beads took off both arms, then the head. The rounds continued long after the magazine should have quit firing, and the head was blown into pulp before it even hit the ground.

  “I got it!” Sabre squealed. “I got it!”

  “Hacks are not going to help!” Yatkin snarled.

  “No hacks,” the human-sized tomcat said.

  “Bullshit,” Yatkin replied.

  “No hacks,” Sabre said, and changed. Again, it was an off-the-shelf mod, one styled to look slightly like Princess Alexandra. It could be used for male or female; Alexandra had been a handsome woman and made a damned handsome man. It looked very unlike Prince Roger, though, except in the eyes. The mod kept Alexandra’s long, light brown hair, and now wore a torn, chameleon-cloth battle suit, patched with odds and ends of much less advanced textiles. Beside the bead pistols, which were now standard IMC military models, the figure carried a sword and had a huge chem-powered rifle across its back.

  “Not hacks—experience. In a hard school,” Sabre added in cold tones, and there was no trace of the excited kid anymore.

  “Have to be a pretty damned hard school,” Kaaper replied mockingly.

  “Death planet, one each,” Roger said to the VR system, and the formlessness changed. Now they were standing on a ruined parapet. Low mounds, the vine-covered ruins of a large city, stretched down the hill to a line of jungle. Rank upon rank of screamers were emerging from the jungle, and a voice spoke in the background.

  “I’m sorry . . . scriiiitch . . .” the voice said, breaking up in static. “Forget that estimate of five thousand. Make it fifteen thousand. . . .”

  A hot, moist wind carried the smell of jungle rot as the endless lines of screamers lifted their weapons and began a loud chant. They broke into a run, charging up the hill, soaking up the fire of the defenders, climbing the walls with rough ladders, swarming up the sides, pounding on the gate. Spears arced up and transfixed the firers, hands reached up and pulled them off the walls, down into the waiting spears and axes.

  Through it all, Sabre left a trail of bodies as the sword flicked in and out, taking attackers in the throat, chest, stomach. Arms fell and heads flew as he carved the howling screamers into ruin, but they came on. The wall’s other defenders died around him, leaving him practically alone against the screamer horde, and still the sword flashed and bit and killed. . . .

  The scene changed again. It was dark, but their low-light systems showed a line of ax-wielding screamers, at least a thousand, charging a small group in a trench. Sabre spun in place, a large chemical pistol in one hand, sword in the other. Bullets caught the screamers—generally in the throat, sometimes the head—as the sword spun and took off a reaching arm, the head of an ax, a head. The trench filled with blood, most of the defenders were down, but still Sabre spun in his lethal dance.

  A throne room. A screamer king speaking to Sabre, weird intonations, and a voice like a grave. Sabre nodding and reaching back, pulling each strand of his hair into place in a ponytail. He nodded again, his hands ostentatiously away from the bead pistols on his hips, not watching the guards at his back—not really looking at the king. Eyes wide and unfocused.

  “You and what army?” he asked as the hands descended, faster than a snake, and the room vanished in blood.

  “Lots of fun,” Yatkin said after a minute.

  “Oodles and oodles,” Sabre replied.

  “Yeah, but the firing had to be a hack,” Kaaper pointed out. “Too many rounds. The old infinite-bead gun.”

  “Oh, please,” Sabre said. “Watch.” He summoned a target and drew the bead pistol at his right hip. He didn’t appear to be trying to impress them with the draw, but it simply appeared in his hand. And then he fired, rapidly, but not as rapidly as he had.

  “Not particularly hard,” Sabre said, lifting his left hand up for a moment to fire with a two-handed grip.

  “You just reloaded,” Yatkin said, wonderingly. “You’d palmed a magazine, and you reloaded on the fly. I caught it that time. Son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t talk about my mother that way,” Sabre said seriously. Then he lowered his arm and shook it, dropping a cascade of magazines onto the gray “floor.”

  “Sorry,” Yatkin replied. “Sir. But can you really . . . ?”

  “Really,” Sabre replied.

  “So . . .” the tomcat said. “He in?”

  “I dunno.” Raoux rubbed the back of her neck. “Can he handle armor?”

  “Wanna death match?” Sabre inquired with a grin.

  “No,” Raoux said, after a long pause. “No, I don’t think I want to death match.”

  “The VR training on the rest of the teams is going well,” Tomcat told Sabre. “Can’t bring in your oversized buddies very well, the sets aren’t made for them, and they don’t have toots, but their job is pretty straightforward, and they’ll have trained teams leading them. I think our opponents are going to be remarkably surprised when we go for the big push.”

  “Gotta love net-gaming,” Raoux said with a nasty smile. “And I’ve always thought Surreal Battle was the best around. How’s our support coming?”


  “Well, that’s sort of hard to know,” Tomcat said, frowning and waving a hand. “Sort of hard to know . . .”

  “What fun,” Helmut said, shaking his head. “During the Imperial Festival? Why not just put up a big sign: ‘Coup in progress!’ Security is always maxed during the Festival.”

  He sat behind the desk in his day cabin. Much as he trusted his personal command staff, this was one message he’d had no intention of viewing anywhere outside the security of his personal quarters. Now he looked across his desk at Julian with what could only be described as a glare.

  “Roger will have his reasons—good ones,” Julian replied. “I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure of that. Anyway, that’s the signal.”

  “Very well. Since Sergeant Julian is certain His Highness has good reasons for his timing, I’ll prepare to move the Fleet.” Helmut frowned as he consulted his toot and routed orders through it, then nodded. “We’re on our way to the next rendezvous point.”

  Julian blinked. Given the movement schedule Roger’s message had included, there was no need for quite that much rush. By his estimate, they had at least ten days’ leeway, but he reminded himself that interstellar astrogation was definitely not his strong suit.

  “What now, Sir?” he asked after a moment.

  “Now we ponder what we’ll find upon entering the system.”

  Helmut hopped off his station chair and walked across to the far side of his cabin, where a large section of deck had been cleared. The architect responsible for designing the admiral’s flagship had probably intended the space for an intimate chair and sofa arrangement. Now it was simply a well-worn section of rug, and its function became evident as Helmut folded his hands behind him and started striding up and down it, nodding his head in time with his strides while he considered the skeletal plan and the intelligence updates on the Sol System which had accompanied the message.