by David Weber
Roger dropped his head, holding it in his hands, his elbows on the table.
"Roger?" Despreaux said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
"It's okay," Roger gasped. "Shit."
"It doesn't look okay," she said anxiously.
"God," Roger groaned. "Oh, God. It's all there..."
"What's there?" Despreaux turned on Catrone, her expression furious. "What did you do to him?!"
"I didn't do anything to him," Catrone said, his voice now normal. "Miranda MacClintock did."
"Secret routes here, here, here, here," Roger said, updating the map of the Palace through his toot. "This one is an old subway line. The control bunker is in the basement of an old rail station!"
"This was all in your head?" Eleanora asked in an almost awed tone as she gazed into the holo.
"Yes. Which—much as I hate to even think about it—makes me wonder if they could have gottenit from Mother."
"I won't say it's impossible," Catrone replied, "but it's set to dump if the subject is under any form of duress. Even harsh questioning would do it. I happen to know that you got updated, twice, after conversations with your mother."
"That figures," Roger said. "She always was one for... harsh questions. 'Why don't you cut your hair?' 'What do you do all day on those hunting trips?'" he added in a falsetto.
"The setup is incredibly paranoid," Catrone continued. "The doctors who handle the toot updates don't even know about it. It's a hack that's arranged by the Regiment, and the only thing they know is that it's an old mod. Hell, for that matter the hack that gave me the activation codes is handled the same way. Except—" his smile was crooked "—our toots don't just dump. They still have their active-duty suicide circuits on-line in case anyone tries to sweat us for what we know about the Protocols. As for the Imperial Family and the full packet, it's just one of the traditions of the Regiment. That's all most of us who know about it at all know. And the subjects aren't aware of it at all. None of them."
"You could slip anything in," Roger said angrily.
"So maybe we are kingmakers," Catrone admitted. "I dunno. Butwe don't even know what's in it. It's just a data packet. We get the data packet from the IBI. I think they're in charge of keeping the current intelligence info side of it updated, but even they don't know what it's for."
"It's more than just a data packet," Roger said flatly. "It's like having the old biddy in your head. God, it's weird. No, not having her in your head, but the way the data's arranged..."
His voice trailed off.
"What?" Despreaux finally asked.
"Well, first of all, the data's nonextractable." Roger was looking at the tabletop, but clearly not actually seeing it as his eyes tracked back and forth. "That is, I can't just dump it out. It's in a compartmented memory segment. And there's a lot more than just the Palace data. Assassination techniques, toombie hacks, poisons—method and application of, including analyses and after-action reports. Hacking programs. Back doors to Imperial and IBI datanets. Whoever caretakers this thing for the IBI's been earning his pay updating it with current tech and passwords. And there's more in here than I thought a toot had room for."
"Is there a way in?" Kosutic asked pointedly.
"I can see several. All of them have problems, but they're all better than what we'd been—" He held up his hand and shook his head. "Hang on."
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his float chair, swinging it from side to side. The group watched him in silence, wondering what he was seeing. Then he leaned suddenly forward and opened his eyes, crossing his arms and grinning.
Despreaux felt faintly uneasy as she studied that grin. It wasn't cold, by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the contrary, in fact. It was almost... mad. Evil. Then it passed, and he laughed and looked up at them.
"Now I know what Aladdin felt like," he said, still grinning.
"What are you talking about?" Kosutic sounded as uneasy as Despreaux had felt.
"Let's take a walk," Roger replied, and led them out of the room and down a series of corridors to the back of the south end of the complex. They ended up facing a blank wall.
"We swept this," Kosutic pointed out.
"And if it had been a normal door, you would've found it." Roger drew a knife out of his pocket and rapped on the solid concrete. "Asseen, asseen, Protocol Miranda MacClintock One-Three-Niner-Beta. Open Sesame!"
He slapped the wall and then stood back.
"Paranoid and with a sense of humor," Catrone said dryly as the wall started to slide backwards into the hill. The movement revealed that the "wall" was a half meter of concrete slab, pinned to the bedrock of the mountain ridge. The plug that had filled the corridor was nearly four meters deep, yet it slid backwards smoothly, easily. Then it moved sideways, revealing a large, domed room whose walls and ceilings reflected the silver of ChromSten armoring.
Ranked against the left wall were five stingships—a model Roger didn't recognize, with short, stubby wings, and a wide body—and a pair of shuttles. Opposite them were three light skimmer tanks, and both sets of vehicles were wrapped in protective covers.
"Wait." Roger held out his hand as Catrone started to step past him. "Nitrogen atmosphere," the prince continued as lights came on and fans started to turn in the distance. "You go in there now, and you'll keel over in a second."
"That up there, too?" Catrone asked, gesturing with his chin at Roger's head.
"Yep."
"Is there one of these at each dispersal facility?" Catrone asked.
"Yep. And a bigger set at the Cheyenne facility. You were the Gold sergeant major; you know about that one, right?"
"Yes. How many others?"
"Four, five total," Roger replied. "Greenbrier, Cheyenne, Weather Mountain, Cold Mountain, and Wasatch."
"Thirty stingships?" Rosenberg asked.
"Fifty," Roger told him. "There are ten each at Weather Mountain, Cold Mountain, and Wasatch, and fifteen at Cheyenne."
"I knew it didn't look right!" Catrone snapped. "That one's designated for the Empress, and I checked it out one time. The dome's too flat!"
"That's because the entire lower section is missing," Roger said. "All the stuff in there is under the known facilities. And this isn't part of the original facility; it was a later add-on." He glanced at a readout on the side of the tunnel and nodded. "That's long enough."
"I don't recognize those." Despreaux pointed at the stingships, as they crossed the chamber towards them. "Or the tanks, for that matter."
"That's because they're antiques," Rosenberg said, running his hand lovingly over the needlelike nose of the nearest. "I've only ever seen them in air shows. They date back more than a hundred years. Densoni Shadow Wolves—forty megawatt fusion bottle, nine thousand kilos of thrust, Mach Three-Point-Five or thereabouts." He touched the leading edge of one wing and sighed. "Bastards to fly. They used more aero-lift than modern ships—let them get away from you, and they went all over the sky, then hit the ground. Hard. They called them Widow-Makers."
"Not much good against Raptors, then," Roger sighed. "I thought we'd hit the jackpot."
"Oh, I dunno." Rosenberg pursed his lips. "It'll take good pilots, and I don't have fifty of those I can get in on this and be sure of security. It'd help if they're crazy, too. But basic stingship design just hasn'tchanged a lot over the last hundred years or so. Shadow Wolves are actually faster than Raptors, and, maybe, a tad more maneuverable because of the aero-surfaces. Certainly more maneuverable at high speeds; they'll pull something like thirty gees in a bank, before damping. But they sacrifice direct lift and gravity control, and the damping only brings it down to about sixteen gees at max evolution. The big difference is modern high-density fusion plants, which equates to more brute acceleration—better grav damping—and a considerably more powerful weapons fit. And, like I said, theirout-of-control maneuvers are a bitch. No neural interfaces, either." He looked over at Roger and cocked an eyebrow. "Ammo?"
"Magazine." Roger poin
ted to the exit corridor. "And an armory. No powered armor. Soft-suits and exoskeletons."
"They didn't have the power-tech a hundred years ago that we have now," Catrone said, striding down the corridor. "Powering ChromSten armor took too much juice. Weapons?"
"Old—really old—plasma guns," Roger replied. "Forty-kilowatt range."
"That won't do it against powered armor," Kosutic said.
"And I'm not too happy about the idea of old plasma guns," Despreaux pointed out. "Not after what happened on Marduk."
"Everything's going to have to be checked out," Roger said. "Most of it should be pretty good; no oxygen, so there shouldn't have been any degradation. And the guns may be old, Nimashet, but they weren't built by Adoula and his assholes. On the other hand, some of the stuff was stashed by Miranda herself, people—it's damned near six hundred years old. Most of the other bits and pieces were emplaced later."
"So somebody's been collecting the stuff," Catrone said. "The Association?"
"Sometimes," Roger said. "And others. But usually the Family took care of it directly. Which left the entire process with some kinks Miranda couldn't really allow for. There are some... time bombs in this thing. Like I say, some of this stuff was put up by Great Gran, using the IBI, and some of the Family have followed up over the years with more modern equipment. Like your Shadow Wolves," he said, looking at Rosenberg. "But I think..."
Roger frowned and looked up at the ceiling, clearly considering schedules.
"Yeah," he said after a moment. "Mother should already have done some upgrades. I wonder why—" He paused. "Oh, that's why. God, this woman was paranoid."
"What?" Despreaux said.
"Bitch!" Roger snapped.
"What!?"
"Oh, not you," Roger said quickly, soothingly. "Miranda. Mother, for that matter. There are... familial security protocols, I guess you'd call them, in here. God, no wonder some of the emperors've gone just a touch insane." He closed his eyes again and shook his head. "Imagine, for a moment, a thought coming out of nowhere..."
"Oh, Christ," Catrone said. "'Do you trust your family? Really, really trust them?"
"Bingo." Roger opened his eyes and looked around. "The protocols only opened up if the Emperor or Empress of the time fully trusted the people he or she was going to use to upgrade the facilities. And the people they were upgrading the facilities for. If they didn't trust them, from time to time they'd be... probed again. According to the timetable, Mother probably was being asked as often as monthly if she really trusted, well, me."
"And she didn't," Catrone said.
"Apparently not," Roger replied, tightly. "As if I didn't know that before."
"We pull this off, and she will," Marinau said. "Keep that in mind."
"Yeah," Roger said. "Yeah. And it wasn't just Mother, either. Grandfather's head just didn't work the way Miranda's—or Mom's—did. He didn't want to think about this kind of crap... so he didn't, and the Protocols jumped over him completely. That's why the stingships we've got here date clear back to before he took the Throne, although the ones at Cheyenne are more modern." His mouth twisted. "Probably because these were the ones I was most likely to get my hands on if it turned out Mom was right about me."
"But at least they're here," Despreaux pointed out.
"And because they are, we've got a chance," Rosenberg put in. "Maybe even a good one."
"We can't use the Cheyenne stingships," Roger pointed out. "Not in any sort of first wave; they're too far away. For that matter, they'd have to run a gauntlet even after the first attack. Especially after the first attack."
"And I've only got one other pilot I'd bring in on this," Rosenberg said.
"Pilots... aren't a problem," Roger replied evenly. "But we're going to have to get techs in to work on this stuff. It should be in good shape, but there's bound to be problems. There are spares here, as well."
"And we're gonna need more armor," Catrone said.
"Well, that's not a problem, either," Roger said. "Or modern weapons. The plasma guns here are ancient as hell, but they're fine for general antipersonnel work, and there are some heavy weapons the Mardukans can handle, for that matter. And we've got another source of supply. We've got over twenty heavy plasma and bead guns, and some armor, as well."
"Oh?" Catrone eyed him speculatively.
"Oh." Roger seemed unaware that the older man was looking at him. "But the big problem is, we're going to have to rehearse this, and this op's just gotten a lot bigger than we can squeeze into Greenbrier here. Somehow, we've got to bring everyone together in one place, and how the hell are we going to do that without opping every security flag Adoula has?"
"Tell you what," Catrone said suspiciously. "If you'll ante up your suppliers, we'll ante up how to rehearse. And where the techs are going to come from."
"Okay," Catrone said when he and Roger were back in the meeting room. Despreaux, Kosutic, and Marinau were going over weaponry, while Rosenberg was doing an in initial survey of the stingships and shuttles. "We need to get one thing out of the way."
"What?"
"No matter what, we're not going to oppose you, and we're not going to burn you," Catrone said. "But there are still some elements that don't think too highly of Prince Roger MacClintock."
"I'm not surprised," Roger said evenly. "I was my own worst enemy."
"They do, however, support Alexandra," Catrone continued, shaking his head. "Which could create a not-so-tiny problem, since when we take the Palace, you're going to be in control."
"Not if the Association is against me," Roger pointed out.
"We don't want a factional fight in the Palace itself," Catrone said tightly. "That would be the worst of all possible outcomes. But—get it straight. We're not fighting for Prince Roger; we're fighting for Empress Alexandra."
"I understand. There's just one problem."
"Your mother may not be fully functional," Catrone said. "Mentally."
"Correct." Roger considered his next words carefully. "Again," he said, "we have... reports which indicate that. The people who provided the analysis in those reports believe there will be significant impairment. Look, Tom, I don't want the Throne. What sort of lunatic would want it in a situation like this one? But from all reports, Mother isn't going to be sufficiently functional to continue as Empress."
"We don't know that," Catrone argued mulishly, his face set. "All we have are rumors and fifth-hand information. Your mother is a very strong woman."
Roger leaned back and cocked his head to the side, examining the old soldier as if he'd never seen him before.
"You love her," the prince said.
"What?" Catrone snapped, and glared at him. "What does that have to do with it? She's my Empress. I was sworn to protect her before you were a gleam in New Madrid's eye. I was Silver's battalion sergeant major when she was Heir Primus. Of course I love her! She's my Empress, you young idiot!"
"No." Roger leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, and stared Catrone in the eye. "Being in that pressure cooker taught me more than just how to swing a sword, Tomcat. It made me a pretty fair judge of human nature, too. And I mean you love her. Not as a primary, not as the Empress—as a woman. Tell me I lie."
Catrone leaned back and crossed his own arms. He looked away from Roger's modded brown eyes, then looked back.
"What if I do?" he asked. "What business is that of yours?"
"Just this." Roger leaned back in turn. "Which do you love more—her, or the Empire?" He watched the sergeant major's face for a moment, then nodded. "Ah, there's the rub, isn't it? If it comes down to a choice between Alexandra MacClintock and the Empire, can you decide?"
"That's hypothetical," Catrone argued. "And it's impossible to judge—"
"It's an important hypothetical," Roger interrupted. "Face it, if we succeed, we will be the kingmakers. And people—everyone on Old Earth, in the Navy, in the Corps, the Lords, the Commons, all of them—are going to want to know, right away, who's in char
ge." He made a cutting motion with his hand in emphasis. "Right then. Who's giving the orders. Who holds the reins. Not to mention the planetary defense control codes. My information is that Mother's in no condition to assume that responsibility. What do your sources say?"
"That she's... impaired." Catrone's face was obsidian-hard. "That they're using psychotropic drugs, toot controls, and... sexual controls to keep her in line."
"What?" Roger said very, very softly.
"They're using psychotropic—"
"No. That last part."
"That's why the Earl is involved," Catrone said, and paused, looking at the prince. "You didn't know," he said quietly after a moment.
"No." Roger's fists bunched. His arms quivered, and his face went set and hard. For the first time, Thomas Catrone felt an actual trickle of fear as he looked at the young man across the table from him.
"I did not know," Prince Roger MacClintock said.
"It's a... refinement." Catrone's own jaw worked. "Keeping Alex in line is apparently pretty hard. New Madrid figured out how." He paused and took a deep breath, getting himself under control. "It's his... style."
Roger had his head down, hands together, nose and lips resting on the ends of his fingers, as if he were praying. He was still quivering.
"If you go in now, guns blazing, Prince Roger," Catrone said softly, "we're all going to die. And it won't help your mother."
Roger nodded his head, ever so slightly.
"I've had some time to get over it," Catrone said, gazing at something only he could see, his voice distant, almost detached. "Marinau brought me the word. All of it. He brought it in person, along with a couple of the other guys."
"They have to hold you down?" Roger asked quietly. His head was still bent, but he'd managed to stop the whole-body quivers.
"I nearly broke his arm," Catrone said, speaking each word carefully, in a sort of high, soft voice of memory. He licked his lips and shook his head. "It catches me, sometimes. I've been wracking my brain over what to do, other than getting myself killed. I don't have a problem with that, but it wouldn't have helped Alex one bit. Which is why I didn't hesitate, except long enough for some tradecraft, when you turned up. I want those bastards, Your Highness. I want them so bad I can taste it. I've never wanted to kill anyone like I want to kill New Madrid. I want a new meaning of pain for him."