Throne of Stars (77 page)

Sheila was sitting up in bed watching a holomovie when he walked into the suite. She raised one eyebrow at the way he was dressed, but he shook his head and took off the clothes. They, too, went into the incinerator. It was a room incinerator, moreover. This was a classy place that probably normally had staff-pukes and their bosses staying in its suites. It was as secure as anything he was going to find, and there probably wasn’t anything incriminating on the clothes, anyway. But better safe than sorry.

He climbed into bed with his wife and laid an arm over her shoulder.

“How was the opera?”

“Great.”

“I don’t see how anything can be great that’s all in a foreign language.”

“That’s because you’re a barbarian.”

“Once a barbarian, always a barbarian,” Tomcat Catrone replied. “Always.”

“Catrone was as clear as he could be that he won’t help,” Roger said. “And that the senior members of the Association aren’t going to help, either. They’re sitting this one out.”

“That is so totally . . . bogus,” Kosutic said angrily.

They’d come to the warehouse to “check on resupply.” The restaurant was doing even better than Roger had hoped, almost to the point of worry. Even an interstellar freighter could carry only so much Mardukan food, and they were running through it nearly twenty-five percent faster than he’d anticipated. If he sent a ship back,
now
, for more goods, it might get back in time, but he doubted it. Fortunately, the Mardukans and their beasts could eat terrestrial food, and he’d been substituting that for the last few days. It didn’t have all the essential nutrients they needed, though. The Mardukans were suddenly on the reverse side of what the Marines had faced on Marduk, but without Marine nanites which could convert some materials to essential vitamins.

It wasn’t exactly what he would have called a “good” situation under any circumstances, but at least it gave them a convenient excuse to use the secure rooms in the underground bunker.

“The good news is that the first of our ‘machine tools’ have arrived from our friends,” Rastar said. He was handling the warehouse and restaurant while Honal worked on another project.

“Good,” Roger said. “Where?”

Rastar led them out of the meeting room and down a series of corridors to a storeroom which was stacked with large—some of them very large—plasteel boxes. Rastar keyed a code into the pad on one of them and opened it up, revealing a suit of powered armor plated in ChromSten.

“Now is when we need Julian and Poertena,” Despreaux observed unhappily.

“These’re Alphane suits,” Roger pointed out, coming over to examine the armor carefully. “They’d be as much a mystery to Julian as they are to us. But we’re going to have to get them fitted anyway.”

“And they came through on the rest of it, too,” Rastar said, making a Mardukan hand gesture which indicated amusement. He opened up one of the larger boxes and waved both left hands.

“Damn,” Roger breathed. “They did.”

This suit was much larger than the human-sized one in the first box, with four arms and a high helmet to accommodate a Mardukan’s horns. The upper portion had even been formed to
resemble
horns.

“And this.” Rastar opened up another long, narrow box.

“What in the hell is that?” Krindi Fain asked, looking down at the weapon nestled in the box.

“It’s a hovertank plasma cannon,” Despreaux said in an awed tone. “
Cruisers
carry them as antifighter weapons.”

“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.