by David Weber
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 faces 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.
"I have to admit," he said after several moments, whether to himself or Julian it would have been hard to say, "that Roger—or whoever put this together—isn't a complete idiot. At least he's grasped the importance of the KISS principle and applied it as far as anyone could in an operation this fundamentally insane. I think, however, that we might be able to improve on it just a bit."
"Sir?" Julian's tone was so cautious Helmut grinned tightly at him.
"Don't worry, Sergeant. We'll do exactly what His Highness wants. I simply think it may be possible to do it a bit more effectively than he envisioned. Or do you think he'd object to the exercise of a little initiative?"
"Master Rog generally thinks initiative is a good thing," Julian said. "Within limits."
"Oh, certainly, Sergeant. Certainly." The admiral's grin turned decidedly nasty.
"The key to his current plan," he continued, "is that we're to arrive four hours before the attack on the Palace kicks off, correct? We'll be almost ten hours flight time out from the planet at that point, but the system recon platforms will pick us up, and that should draw Home Fleet out to meet us. At the very least, given the dispositions in the intelligence packet, it will almost require them to concentrate well away from Old Earth, between us and the planet and out of range to interfere with the attack on the Palace when it kicks off, or risk letting us run over individual squadrons and mop them up in detail. Right?"
"As I understand it, Sir," Julian agreed, still cautiously, watching in fascination as the diminutive admiral began to pace faster and faster.
"Well, that's sound planning, given how many imponderables your Prince—or his advisers—had to juggle to come up with it. We'll pose a threat the other side must honor. But suppose we could find a way to simultaneously pose a threat they don't realize they need to honor?"
"Sir?" Julian was confused, and it showed.
"Roger intends to assassinate Greenberg," Helmut said. "Good start. Wallenstein's his XO, but everyone knows he's only there because Adoula owns him as completely as he does Greenberg. And unlike Greenberg, he's a chip-shuffler, never had a serious field command in his entire useless life. So he's not going to have a support base with Greenberg gone, and that ought to put Kjerulf in as temporary CO, at least until one of the other squadron commanders can get to Moonbase. Even then, the odds are that Kjerulf isn't going to just cede that command. So! There are—how many squadrons in Home Fleet, Sergeant Julian?" he barked, spinning on one heel to glare at the Marine.
"Six, Sir!" Julian replied.
"Very good." Helmut spun back to his pacing. "Always remember that fleets and squadrons are not just machines, Sergeant; they're human beings!A regiment is only as good as its officers. Who said that Sergeant Julian?" he asked, spinning again to glower at the noncom.
"I don't..." Julian began, then frowned. "Napoleon?"
"You've been learning, Sergeant," Helmut said, and nodded and resumed his pacing.
"The Prince told me that, I think."
"Then he had good tutors." The admiral frowned thoughtfully. "So, six carrier squadrons, effectively without a head. In that situation, they devolve to local command, whatever The Book says. Which means we must read the minds of those local commanders if we want to predict their actions and reactions. Pro-Adoula? Pro-Roger? Sit it out? Neutrality? Informed neutrality? Nervous breakdown?"
His sentences came out in a staccato. Despite the relentless, machine-gun pace of his questions, it was clear they were rhetorical—that his thoughts were already racing far ahead of even his rapidfire questions.
"I don't even know, off the top of my head, who the squadron commanders are, Sir," Julian said, "much less anything about their personalities."
"Eleventh Carrier Squadron, Admiral Brettle," Helmut told him. "Recent promotion via Adoula. Impetuous, but not particularly bright. Two hundred and fifteenth out of a class of two hundred and forty at the Academy. Classroom brilliance doesn't necessarily equate to brilliance in the field, of course, but he's done no better since. Unlikely to have made much advancement, for both personality and ability reasons, without pull from higher up. He had such pull, having long ago given his allegiance to Adoula. Owes one of the Prince's banks a bit more than five years' earnings for an admiral. No indications that he's behind on payments, but I'm sure he is. He spends too much not to be."
"Twelfth Carrier Squadron," Helmut continued. "Admiral Prokourov. Good deceptive tactician. Only middling at the
Academy, but much better standing at Command and Staff College, and excellent in exercises. One command in a brief skirmish with the Saints—Saints came off a distant last. I know him—as well as anyone does. Hard to say exactly where his loyalty lies, or what contact he had with Adoula pre-coup. I'd've thought he was loyal to the Empire, but he's still in command, so maybe I was as wrong about him as I was about Gianetto. Operationally, he started as a fighter pilot and likes fighters. Always look for his fighter wings to be where you don't want them to be... ."
"Sir, are you consulting your toot?" Julian asked quietly.
"If you have to consult records for this sort of thing, you don't deserve a command," Helmut snapped, and his eyes narrowed as he paced faster.
"Larry Gianetto, Larry Gianetto, Larry Gianetto," he half-sang, and did a slight skip in his pacing. "Ground force commander. Never particularly liked him, but that's neither here nor there. Good commander, well-liked in the Marines, considered a really honest man. Clearly a bad reading on many people's parts. But he's a ground commander, no experience running a space battle. Leaves the work of Home Fleet to Greenberg, by and large. Still a bit of a micromanager, though. Probably passes some orders, to known Adoula squadrons, directly—undoubtedly pissing Greenberg off. Last report has Fourteenth Squadron as the most solidly Adoula, so..."
He hummed the tune he'd been singing to himself for a moment, then nodded.
"Admiral Gajelis has the Fourteenth, and it's been reinforced by a third carrier division. Makes it fifty percent stronger than any of the other squadrons, and four of his six carriers have had their COs switched out since the coup. Very heavy-handed fighter. A cruiser officer—uses them for his primary punch. Thinks fighters are purely for defense.