The Oncoming Storm (33 page)

“Thank you,” Kat said, tartly. She swallowed her reaction as best as she could. “I just killed a destroyer to help you escape, Your Highness. Your mere presence is going to cause considerable problems for my government. I don’t have time for games.”

The princess lowered her eyes. Kat wondered, absurdly, if she really thought a gesture of submission would help her case—or if she was thinking of Kat as a man in a woman’s body. The thought made her smile. Swapping sexes permanently wasn’t common, but anyone who felt they’d been born the wrong sex could have a proper sex change. She shrugged, dismissing the thought. Under the circumstances, it hardly mattered.

“I need answers,” Kat said. She kept her voice under tight control. “Why did you come here?”

“To escape,” the princess said. Her voice became urgent. “And to warn you. They’re already preparing to attack your worlds.”

Kat studied Princess Drusilla carefully. She certainly sounded as though she was telling the truth, but . . . but it was hard to be sure. Growing up while considered to be an inferior being would have taught her how to lie and mask her reactions far more effectively than anything Kat had endured.

“I think you’d better start from the beginning,” she said. “And don’t leave anything out.”

The princess bowed her head, then began.

“My father is the Speaker,” the princess said. Even on a display screen, she was stunning. “I was his oldest daughter.”

William frowned, studying her. The princess hadn’t been crude, but she had been alarmingly seductive. He wanted to make her happy, he wanted to protect her . . . and, even though he knew it was an act, he still found it hard to resist. Making a mental note to ensure she only dealt with female crew, he watched as the recording played out.

“He wants to launch an attack against the Commonwealth while he’s still in office,” Princess Drusilla continued. “I believe he thinks such a proof of God’s favor will ensure his son can take up the role of Speaker after him. The attack fleets are already being positioned to take the offensive against your worlds.”

“And why,” the captain’s recorded image said, “did you come to us?”

William glanced at the captain. The way she sat suggested she was tense—and that she disliked the princess on sight. William wasn’t sure why, but he knew that women tended to pick up on subtle points men missed. Or maybe she just felt dowdy when compared to the princess.

“My father promised me as a reward to the admiral who conquered the Commonwealth,” Princess Drusilla said. “I protested. He told me I would be . . . rewritten to suit the admiral’s tastes in women. It would kill me, destroy my personality. I planned an escape with the help of my bodyguards and made it off world. But then they gave chase.”

The princess leaned forward, her every motion screaming earnestness. “I have copies of some of their plans,” she said. “You have to believe me. I won’t go back. I can’t.”

William could well believe it. If the Theocracy took a dim view of backsliding among new converts, he dreaded to think what they would do to the daughter of their leader if she betrayed them. And she had betrayed them, unless it was an elaborate trick. But his years of service in the Royal Navy told him it was too elaborate to be a trick. They’d have to be damn near omnipotent to pull it off successfully.

The captain tapped the table. “Doctor?”

Doctor Braham leaned forward. “I have examined the princess and her handmaidens,” she said. “The princess is not baseline human—there’s some genetic engineering and reshaping in her DNA—but she isn’t outfitted with any implants, not even a basic neural link, apart from a simple tracking implant. I think it is comparable to a prisoner tracking implant from Tyre, although it doesn’t have a stunner included. Fortunately for Princess Drusilla, the implant was apparently disabled. I have since removed it.”

“Good thinking,” the captain said.

“Her handmaidens don’t have any implants either, but they have definitely undergone some conditioning,” Doctor Braham said. “They’re very . . . obedient. Princess Drusilla is apparently their mistress, but they will obey any orders as long as they don’t conflict with any from the princess. However, they may well have other orders in their minds that might be activated at any moment. We lack the deep-scan facilities to make sure of it.”

William shivered. Conditioning—a form of brainwashing—could be used on almost anyone, unless they had implants to prevent it. The technology was the stuff of nightmares, he knew all too well; a loyal officer could be turned into a spy with only a few hours of enemy conditioning. Or worse. Someone could be turned into a slave if they encountered someone with bad intentions and no scruples. There were always lingering rumors about rings that specialized in conditioned slaves . . .

“The conditioning wasn’t perfect,” Davidson said. “Not if they weren’t able to alert the security forces that the princess was planning an escape.”

“Or they might not have known what was in the princess’s mind,” Doctor Braham said. “I think they’re also very ignorant, at least outside their specialized fields. One of them is clearly a doctor, charged with tending the princess, but she knew almost nothing about life on a starship.”

She paused. “I can’t offer any guarantees,” she added. “I simply don’t have the equipment to be sure they don’t have additional commands buried within their minds. All we can do is keep them in stasis until we return to Cadiz.”

William nodded. The crew of the Theocratic freighter had, much to their relief, already been moved into stasis and placed in storage. He had a feeling that none of them would want to go home, no matter how terrifying they found the idea of living among infidels. The Speaker would probably have them tortured to death for daring to assist in his daughter’s escape. And the bodyguards, after a brief set of scans, had joined them in stasis.

“She claims she would have been brainwashed,” Davidson said. “Is that plausible?”

“The technology to create Stepford Wives—or Husbands—exists,” Doctor Braham said flatly. “It isn’t actually that difficult to remove a person’s ability to decide which orders to follow, or have their minds automatically interpret any instruction as an irresistible order. There have even been worlds where such techniques were used regularly, particularly on companions and servants of the local rulers. Would it be used in this case?”

She sighed. “Princess Drusilla has no implants, nothing that would protect her mind,” she added. “It’s certainly possible that someone could use the technology on her.”

“We already know what the Theocracy thinks of women,” the captain growled. “It might well seem an ideal solution for them.”

William wondered, absently, if any of Tyre’s aristocracy had ever used such technology on their wives or children. It was certainly possible . . . and someone with the wealth and power of the captain’s father could have covered it up afterwards. But if it got out, it would utterly destroy the perpetrator’s family. They’d be lucky if they weren’t lynched in the streets by outraged citizens. No one took the idea of having his or her mind altered lightly.

And if the princess tells her story back home, he thought, the public will be outraged.

“We have a problem,” the captain said, tapping the table. “Is this a genuine defection or is this an elaborate trick?”

She keyed a switch, activating the holographic display. One star glowed red. “If the princess is telling the truth,” she added, “the Theocracy’s attack fleet is gathering here, preparing to surge across the border and invade. But she doesn’t know when the attack is actually planned to start, which leaves us with a dilemma. Can we believe her?”

William looked at Doctor Braham. “Can you confirm her identity?”

“No,” Doctor Braham said, shortly. “We don’t have any DNA records from her family for comparison. However, I monitored her brainwaves while she was speaking to me and she certainly believes she’s telling the truth.”

Davidson stroked his chin thoughtfully. “This does seem to be too elaborate to be a trick, Captain,” he said. “They’d have to be able to track us through hyperspace just to be sure we were in position to save Princess Drusilla from her pursuers. And hyperspace could easily have swallowed their distress call before we ever heard it. If they wanted us to intercept the destroyer and blow it to pieces, Captain, they really got quite lucky.”

He paused. “It would have made more sense to have them enter Cadiz before threatening to destroy the ship,” he added. “There were just too many things that could go wrong.”

The captain frowned. “So you believe it isn’t a trick?”

“I don’t think so,” Davidson said. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

“Captain,” Roach said, “it’s nearly three weeks from here to their homeworld. How did they manage to avoid interception for so long? And how did they even get the ship in the first place?”

“Sheer audacity, if you believe them,” Davidson said. “I debriefed the princess’s assistant extensively. He managed to get all the paperwork filed, allowing him to slip the princess and her escorts up to the freighter in spacesuits so no one knew who was travelling, then used the bodyguards to take over the ship and set off into hyperspace.”

William considered it. The story sounded plausible; starships had been hijacked by passengers before, particularly largely unarmed freighters. If the crew had been promised their lives, they might cooperate long enough to get the ship into hyperspace and headed towards the Commonwealth. Quite a few things could easily go wrong, but given what was at stake . . . he felt a sudden flash of admiration for Princess Drusilla. She’d clearly managed to turn her status as a second-class citizen into an advantage.

“Boarding the ship wouldn’t have been easy, not if they wanted the princess alive,” Davidson added. “A skilled crew might just have managed to remain away from the destroyer for three weeks.”

“Something to check,” the captain said. She paused. “Opinions?”

Roach spoke quickly. “Captain, I don’t buy this,” he said. “We’re talking about a handful of uneducated women, from a world where women are expected to be little more than baby factories, and their bodyguards capturing a starship and traveling for three weeks without being intercepted by an immensely more competent and capable crew. And she’s someone so important we have to treat her with kid gloves. There are just too many unanswered questions for me to believe she’s what she claims to be.”

“But they don’t benefit,” Davidson mused. “If we believe her and go on the alert, they’re not going to be able to launch their attack against unprepared defenses. How do they gain the upper hand from letting us have a woman we think is their leader’s daughter?”

“Perhaps they want to make us look like aggressors,” Roach speculated. “Or perhaps they want to lure us into a trap.”

Davidson snorted. “Make us look bad in front of whom?”

He had a point, William knew. There were other interstellar powers, but none of them seemed inclined to worry overmuch about the Theocracy—or the Commonwealth, for that matter. They believed the Theocracy would either wind up hemmed in by the Commonwealth or simply collapse under its own weight. There were few low-tech worlds left for the Theocracy to conquer with a single destroyer, then occupy with a few thousand armored soldiers. Then its people would start asking if the constant state of emergency, with all production going to the military, was worth it. There would be no good answer the Theocrats could give.

But they could keep their people in ignorance for quite some time, he thought. Unless a bigger power decided to intervene.

The captain tapped the table again, harder this time. “Major?”

“The story seems plausible,” Davidson said. “And we are well aware of the possibility that it is a trick. However, I honestly don’t see how they benefit. Right now, they couldn’t ask for a better chance to clobber 7th Fleet. Why put us on the alert when it gets them nothing but the certainty of stubborn resistance?”

The captain’s face flickered, just for a second. She didn’t like what she’d been told, but why? William knew she was well aware of the danger from the Theocracy. She’d even risked her own career to send messages back to Tyre. It made no sense.

“It could be meant to cause political trouble,” Roach suggested. “Wouldn’t there be questions asked in Parliament if we went on alert?”

“There’s a difference between putting the defenses on alert and storming across the border, looking to kick ass and take names,” Davidson snapped. “They’d know the difference.”

William smiled. “Would the politicians?”

The captain cleared her throat, loudly. “They certainly don’t seem to benefit,” she agreed reluctantly. “But it could still be a trick.”

She shook her head. “We have to report it to Tyre anyway,” she said. “We’ll put a crew on the freighter, then head back to Cadiz at best possible speed. Once there, we will brief the admiral on our discovery. The attack could begin at any moment.”

William frowned. “But why haven’t they jumped already?”

Davidson leaned forward. “They could be waiting for His Majesty’s birthday,” he said. “We’d have most of our personnel down on the surface, getting rat-assed drunk, with only skeleton crews on the ships. It’s pretty much tradition by now. And if they caught us then, we’d have our trousers round our knees and our . . .”

“Thank you,” the captain said quickly. “But His Majesty’s birthday is three months away. Think what we could do with three months.”

“Get 7th Fleet ready for a fight,” William agreed. He wondered, suddenly, what would have happened if the insurgents had managed to kill the admiral and most of his commanding officers. The efficiency of the fleet would probably have doubled. “And even get some reinforcements out here.”

“They may understand Admiral Morrison very well,” Davidson grumbled. “I don’t think they’d expect him to change the habits of a lifetime.”

Captain Falcone looked torn. William understood. Speaking disrespectfully of a superior officer was a court-martial offense. But it was hard for anyone to argue that Admiral Morrison deserved respect. Whatever he’d done to earn his place on Cadiz, to buy patronage from powerful people, it hadn’t been based on a lifetime of dedicated service, skill, and efficiency.