by David Weber
A threat warning blazed in Honal’s head-up display as the pursuing missile’s homing systems went active. He glanced at the HUD’s icons, then dropped the ship down to barely a hundred meters and kicked his afterburners to full thrust. The Shadow Wolf’s turbines screamed as the stingship went hurtling down the broad avenue at the heart of the capital city of the Empire of Man, but the missile was lighter, faster, and much more modern. It closed quickly, arrowing in for the kill, and Honal waited carefully. He needed it close behind him, close enough that it couldn’t—
He hauled up, riding his afterburners through a climbing loop on a pillar of thunder. His stingship’s belly almost scraped the side of yet another skyscraper, and the semismart missile followed its target. It cut the corner to destroy the stingship, slicing across the chord of the Shadow Wolf’s flight path . . . and vanished in a sudden blossom of flame as it ran straight into the grav-tube Honal had looped inside of.
“Yes!” Honal rolled the ship and headed for Montorsi Avenue and the next target on his list. “I am Honal C’Thon Radas, Heir to the Barony of—!”
“Red Six,” Rosenberg said dryly over the com. “You’ve got another seeker on your tail. Might want to pay a little attention to that.”
“Captain Wallenstein,” the duty communications tech said in the clipped, calm voice of professional training. “We’re receiving reports of a military-grade attack on Imperial City. IBI communications and Imperial City Police are down. The Defense Headquarters is in communication with us, and the defenses around the Palace are reporting attack by stingships.”
“Contact Carrier Squadron Fourteen,” Gustav Wallenstein said, turning to look at his repeater display as the same information began to come up there. “Have them—”
“Belay that order,” a crisp voice said.
Wallenstein’s head snapped around, and his face twisted with fury as Captain Kjerulf stepped into the Moonbase Operations Room.
“What?” Wallenstein demanded, coming to his feet. “What did you just say?!”
“I said to belay that order,” Kjerulf repeated. “Nobody’s moving anywhere.”
“Minotaur, Gloria, Lancelot, and Holbein are moving,” a sensor tech said, as if to contradict the chief of staff. “Course projections indicate they’re moving to interdict the planetary orbitals.”
“Fine,” Kjerulf replied, never taking his eyes from Wallenstein. “What’s happening on Old Earth is no concern of ours.”
“The hell it’s not!” Wallenstein shouted, and looked at the guards. “Captain Kjerulf is under arrest!”
“By whose orders?” Kjerulf inquired coolly. “I’ve got you by date of rank.”
“By Admiral Greenberg’s orders,” Wallenstein sneered. “We’ve had our eye on you, Kjerulf. Sergeant, I order you to arrest this traitor!”
“Why does treason never prosper?” Kjerulf asked lightly, as the Marine guard remained at her post. “Because if it prospers, none dare call it treason. Well, Wallenstein, you’ve prospered for the last few months, but not today. Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
“Fatted Calf.”
“Yes, Sir.” The Marine drew her sidearm. “Captain Wallenstein, you are under arrest for treason against the Empire. Anything you say, etc. Let’s save the rest until we have you in a nice interrogation cell, shall we?”
“Captain,” the com tech said as a slumping Wallenstein was led out of the room, “there’s a call on his secure line from Prince Jackson. He’s asking for Admiral Greenberg.”
“Is he?” Kjerulf smiled thinly. “That particular call might be a little difficult to put through, Chief. I suppose I’d better take it, instead.”
He seated himself in the chair Wallenstein had vacated and keyed the communication circuit with a tap.
“And good morning to you, Prince Jackson,” he said cheerfully as the prince’s scowling face appeared on his com display. “What can I do for the Imperial Navy Minister this fine morning?”
“Can the crap, Kjerulf,” Adoula snarled. The data hack in the display’s lower corner indicated that it was coming from an aircar. “Get me Greenberg. And have Carrier Squadron Fourteen moved in close to Old Earth. Prince Roger’s back, and he’s trying another coup. The Empress’ Own needs Navy support.”
“Sorry, Prince Jackson,” Kjerulf said. “I’m afraid that, as a civilian member of the government, you’re not in my chain of command. And Admiral Greenberg is unavailable at the moment.”
“Why is he unavailable?” Adoula demanded, suddenly wary.
“I think he just got a fatal dose of bead-poisoning,” Kjerulf said calmly. “And before you trot out General Gianetto—who, unlike you Mr. Navy Minister, is theoretically in my direct line of command—you can feel free to tell him that he’s up for the next dose.”
“I’ll have your head for this, Kjerulf!”
“You’re going to find that hard going,” Kjerulf told him. “And if we lose, you’re gonna have to wait in line. Have a nice day, Your Highness.”
He hit the key and cut Adoula off.
“Right, listen up, troops,” he said, turning his command chair to face the Ops Room staff and tipping it back. “Does anyone really believe that the first coup was Prince Roger?” He looked around at the assembled expressions, and nodded. “Good. Because the fact is that Adoula led the coup, and he’s been keeping the Empress hostage ever since, right?”
“Yes, Sir,” one of the techs—a master chief with over twenty years worth of hash marks on his cuff—said. “I’m glad somebody’s finally willing to say it out loud.”
“Well, you can all make your decision right now,” Kjerulf said. “Until very recently, Adoula thought Roger was dead. He’s not. He’s back, and he’s got blood in his eye. Forget everything you’ve seen on the news programs about the Well-Dressed Prince. Bottom line, he’s a MacClintock—and a true MacClintock, what’s more. The Marines are with us. The captains of the Gloria, Minotaur, Lancelot, and Holbein are with us, and Admiral Helmut is on the way. He’s probably going to be a day late and a credit short, because we had to start the ball early. Anyone who is not willing to stand his post—and that’s probably going to mean missiles on our heads—head for Luna City, pronto. Anyone willing to stay is more than welcome.”
He looked around, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m staying,” the com tech said, turning back to her board. “Better to die like a spacer than work for that bastard Adoula.”
“Amen,” another of the petty officers said.
“Very well,” Kjerulf said as the rest of them nodded and muttered their assent. “Send a message to all Fleet Marine contingents. The codeword is: Fatted Calf.”
“I love Imperial Festival,” Siminov said as Despreaux’s float chair was wheeled into the room by the gorilla. “Bookies are busy, whores are busy, and drug sales are up fifteen percent.”
Despreaux glowered at him over her gag, then turned to look at Pedi.
“So, as you see, Ms. Karuse,” Siminov continued, “Ms. Stewart is unharmed.”
“Well, Mr. Chung sent me over to negotiate,” Pedi said, grimacing again in an attempt to smile and rubbing her horns suggestively with her fingertips. “You see, he just doesn’t have a million credits sitting around at the moment. He’s willing to offer a hundred thousand immediately, as what he calls the ‘vig,’ and pay the rest in a few days, if all goes well. In two weeks, at the outside.”
“Well, I’m sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” Siminov said. “The deal is nonnegotiable. Especially since my emissary went missing,” he added harshly. “Perhaps you should go missing, Ms. Karuse,” he suggested. “That would only— What was that?”
A distant explosion rattled the building, and Siminov and his gorilla looked at one another with perplexed expressions.
“Damn,” Pedi said mildly, glancing at her watch. “Already?”
The gang lord and his bodyguards were still trying to figure out what they’d just heard when she slapped Despreaux’s
chair, throwing it across the room, and dropped forward. All four of her hands hit the floor in front of her feet, and she kicked back with both legs.
Gorilla and his brother went flying back against the wall. They slammed into it—hard—and Pedi pushed off with her lower hands and flipped backwards. She flew through the air, landing in front of the two guards even as they began to reach into their jackets for their bead pistols. Her upper elbows slammed back to connect with their faces, and her lower hands reached down and back. Her more powerful false-hands gripped tight, picked them up by their thighs, and threw them off their feet. They landed on the backs of their skulls with bone-jarring force.
She somersaulted forward, thanking the gods of the Fire Mountains for a high ceiling, and flipped across the desk. All four hands balanced her on its surface as her feet smashed into Siminov, sending him backward to slam against the wall before he could raise the bead pistol he’d pulled from a drawer. He hit with stunning force, and the pistol went flying into a corner of the office.
Pedi somersaulted again, backwards this time, and ended up back between the guards. She grabbed gorilla’s hair, tilted his head back so that his throat was extended and unguarded, and flipped the back of her horns across it with a head twist. The sharpened recurve opened it in a fountain of blood, faster than a knife, and she tossed the bleeding body aside and kicked the other guard on to his stomach. She stamped down with one foot to break his neck, then calmly reached over and locked the door.
“Roger thought you might underestimate a woman,” she said gently as she strolled back across the room.
Siminov stared at her, stunned by his abrupt encounter with his office wall and even more by the totally unanticipated carnage about him. He was still staring when she picked him up with one lower hand and threw him across the room. He made the violent acquaintance of yet another wall and oozed down it to the floor in a heap, moaning and clutching an arm which had acquired a sudden unnatural bend just below the elbow.
“He especially thought you might underestimate a pregnant one, even if she was a Mardukan,” Pedi went on genially. “And, I’ll admit, if you were dealing with one of those beaten-down Krath wusses, you might have been having a different conversation.”
She picked Despreaux up, heavy float chair and all, and used the sharpened side of her horns to cut the tape holding the human woman to the chair.
“But you’re not dealing with one of them,” she continued, walking over to where Siminov was trying to get to his feet. His eyes widened at the sight of the bloodsoaked Mardukan looming over him. “I am Pedi Dorson Acos Lefan Karuse, Daughter of the King of the Mudh Hemh Vale, called the Light of the Vales,” she ended softly, leaning down so that her face was barely two centimeters from his, “and that, my friend, is a civan of a different color, indeed.”
“You seem like a nice guy,” Rastar said, lifting the inquisitive sergeant by his body armor in one true-hand as the earbud hidden under his cavalry helmet carried him Honal’s message. He flipped his right false-hand in a gesture of apology and ripped the bead pistol off the cop’s belt with his free true-hand. “I’m very sorry to do this.”
He turned with the sergeant in front of him and pointed the pistol at the other police in the squad which had been watching the Mardukans.
“Please don’t,” he continued in excellent Imperial as hands jerked reflexively towards holsters. “I’m really quite good with one of these. Just toss them on the ground.”
“Like hell,” Peterson’s second in command said, his hand on his pistol.
“Always the hard way,” Rastar sighed, and squeezed his trigger. The bead blew the holstered weapon right out from under the corporal’s hand, and the cop bellowed in shock—not unmingled with terror—and jerked his ferociously stinging fingers up to cradle them against his breastplate.
“No!” Rastar snapped as two of the other cops started to draw their own weapons. “He’s not injured. But you have a very small area at the top of your armor where you’re vulnerable. I can kill every one of you before you draw. Trust me on this.”
“And you won’t get a chance to, anyway,” one of the Diasprans said, lowering a razor-sharp pike until it rested on one of the cop’s shoulders. The small group of police looked around . . . into a solid wall of pikes.
Two more Diasprans stepped forward and began collecting weapons. They tossed them to Rastar, who caught the flying pistols neatly as the Diasprans secured the police.
“How many guns do you need?” Peterson demanded.
“I generally use four,” Rastar said, “but larger caliber. They’re on their way.” He mounted his civan and looked at the Palace, a kilometer away. “This isn’t going to be pretty, though.”
“Two-gun mojo can’t hit the broadside of a barn,” one of the cops said angrily.
“Two-gun mojo?” Rastar asked, turning the civan.
“Firing two guns at once, you idiot,” the sergeant said. “I cannot believe this is happening!”
“Two guns?”
Rastar turned to look at the police aircar, and his hands flashed. Four expropriated bead pistols materialized in his grip as if by magic and he emptied all four magazines. It sounded as if he were firing on full automatic, but when he was done, there were four holes, none of them much larger than a single bead, punched neatly through the aircar’s side panel.
“Two guns are for humans,” he said mockingly as he reloaded from one of the officers’ expropriated ammunition pouches. Then he turned towards the Palace and drew his sword as the first explosion detonated in the background.
“Charge!”
Jakrit Kiymet keyed her communicator as an explosion rumbled in the distance.
“Gate Three,” she said, frowning at the line of trucks setting up for the Festival.
“Military shuttles and stingships detected in Imperial City air space,” the command post said tautly. “Be ready for an attack.”
“Oh, great,” she muttered, looking around. She’d been pulled from guarding Adoula Industries warehouses and made a member of the Empress’ Own. That was usually a job for Marines, but she’d known better than to ask questions when she was told to “volunteer.” Still, it didn’t take a Marine to know that defending the Palace from stingships in her current position—standing in front of the gate, armed with a bead rifle—was going to be rather difficult.
“What am I supposed to do about stingships?” she demanded in biting tones.
“You can anticipate a ground assault, as well,” the sergeant in the distant, and heavily fortified, command post said sarcastically. “The Palace stingship squadron is powering up, and the response team is getting into armor. All you have to do is stand your post until relieved.”
“Great,” she repeated, and looked over at Diem Merrill. “Stand our post until relieved.”
“Isn’t that what we do anyway?” the other guard replied with a chuckle. Then he stopped chuckling and stared. “What the . . . ?”
A line of riders mounted on—dinosaurs?—was thundering across the open ground of the Park. They appeared to be waving swords, and they were followed by a line of infantry with the biggest spears either of the guards had ever seen. And . . .
“What in the hell is that thing?” Kiymet shouted.
“I don’t know,” Merrill replied. “But I think you ought to tell them to go active!”
“Command Post, this is Gate Three!”
“And . . . time.”
Bill swung the airvan out of traffic and dropped it like a hawk at the back door of the “neighborhood association.”
Dave had opened the side door as they dropped, and Trey put two beads into each of the guards as Clovis rolled out of the vehicle under his line of fire. The entry specialist hit the ground before the airvan was all the way down, and crossed the alley at a run. He put the muzzle of his short, heavy-caliber bead gun against the lock of the door and squeezed the trigger. Metal cladding shrieked and sprayed splinters in a fan pattern as the twelve-millimeter
bead punched effortlessly through it. One bead for the deadbolt, one for the handle, and then Dave kicked the door open as he hurtled past Clovis and charged through it.
Three guards spilled out of the room just inside the entryway. Their response time was excellent, but not excellent enough, and Clovis dropped to one knee, taking down all three of them as Dave went past.
“Corridor one, clear,” he said.
Roger keyed the last of a long series of boxes and lifted the plasma cannon. He and his team were ninety seconds behind schedule.
“Show time,” he muttered as the door slid backwards, and then up.
The power-armored guard outside the Palace command post door whirled in astonishment as the solid wall of the deeply buried corridor abruptly gaped wide. His reflexes, however, were excellent, and he was already lifting his own heavy bead gun when Roger fired. The plasma blast took off the guard’s legs and sent him flipping through the air, and Roger’s second shot took out the other guard while the first was still in midair.
That left the CP door itself. The portal was heavily armored with ChromSten, but Roger had dealt with that sort of problem before. He keyed the plasma gun to bypass the safety protocols and pointed it at the door, sending out a continuous blast of plasma. The abuse risked overheating the firing chamber and blowing the gun, and probably its user, to hell. It also made the weapon useless for further firing, even if it survived. But this time, the gun held up, and the compressed metal door ended up with a body-sized hole through its center, while the corridor looked like a rainy day on the Amazon—or a normal Mardukan afternoon—as the Palace sprinkler system came to life.
Roger dropped the now useless cannon and let Kaaper take the entry while he followed at the four position. It felt odd to follow someone else in, but Catrone had been right. Roger was the only person they literally could not afford to lose if some idiot decided to play hero. But there were no lunatics inside the command post. None of them were armored, and although they had bead pistols, they knew better than to try them against armor.
