We Few

by David Weber

  "I'm supposed to be a participant," Adoula said with a frown. "But I'll send my regrets."

  "Do that," Gianetto said dryly. "At the last minute, if you want a professional suggestion."

  "What about the Marines?" Adoula asked.

  "I'll replace Brailowsky," Gianetto said. "And have a little chat with him."

  "Okay," Eleanora said, breaking into one of the final planning sessions. "We have a real problem."

  "What?" Roger asked.

  "Sergeant Major Brailowsky was just arrested, and the Marine web sites are all talking about Fatted Calf. I think Kjerulf was a little free with information."

  "Shit." Roger looked at the clock. "Twelve more hours."

  "Ask me for anything but time," Catrone replied.

  "They're going to sweat him," Marinau said. "He's resistant to interrogation, but you can get anything out of anybody eventually."

  "He's going to be in the Moonbase brig," Rosenberg said. "That's lousy with Navy SPs. We can't just spring him quietly."

  "Greenberg is still in place," Roger pointed out. "If he knows Kjerulf is on our side, and Brailowsky would have to, since they're talking about 'Fatted Calf,' then we'll lose Kjerulf, as well. And they'll know it's going down sometime around the Festival."

  "And Kjerulf knows it has to do with Mardukans," Eleanora said with a wince.

  "And there's now a warning order on the IBI datanet," Tebic said, looking up from his station. "A coup attempt planned for around the Imperial Festival."

  "They know everything important," Catrone said flatly, shaking his head. "We should abort."

  Everyone looked at Roger. That was what Catrone realized later—much later. Even he looked at Roger. Who was looking sightlessly at the far wall.

  "No," the prince said after a long pause. "Never take council of your fears. They know about Helmut, but that was obvious. They suspect I may be alive, but they don't know about Miranda."

  He paused and consulted his toot.

  "We move it up," he continued, his voice crisp. "It'll take time for them to do anything. Orders have to be cut, plans have to be made, squadrons moved, questions answered. Temu," he looked at Jin, "you've been managing the parade permits. Can we jump the queue? Get the Parade Marshal to move us forward to first thing in the morning?"

  "We can if you're willing to risk slipping a little cash into someone's pocket," Jin said after a moment, "and I think I know which pocket to fill. But there's a chance he might smell a big enough rat to raise the alarm."

  "Assess the odds," Roger said, and the extremely junior IBI officer closed his eyes for fifteen seconds of intense thought.

  "Maybe one in five he'll smell something, but no more than one in ten that he'll do anything except ask for more cash if he does," he said finally, and Roger frowned. Then the prince shrugged.

  "Not good, but under the circumstances, better than waiting for Brailowsky to be sweated," he decided, and turned to the other IBI agents.

  "Okay, Fatted Calf is the codeword, apparently. Tebic, can you insert something covertly on the Marine sites—the ones they read?"

  "Easy," Tebic said.

  "Codeword Fatted Calf. Insert it so it will read out at oh-seven-hundred. That's seven hours from now. That's the kickoff time."

  "What about Helmut?" Catrone asked.

  "Nothing we can do about that," Roger said. "He was scheduled to turn up at ten, and that's when he'll turn up. I hope."

  Catrone nodded at the prince's qualifier. Unfortunately, they still hadn't gotten any confirmation from Helmut that he'd even received Roger's instructions, much less that he'd be able to comply with them.

  "We don't know anything for sure about Helmut at this point," Roger continued, "but we do know we need Kjerulf. He and Moonbase are right on top of us. If he can't at least confuse things up there long enough for us to take the Palace, we're all dead, anyway. And if we wait for Helmut, we lose Kjerulf."

  He shrugged, and Catrone nodded. Not so much in agreement as in acceptance. Roger nodded back, then returned his attention to Tebic.

  "On the Moonbase net," he said. "Add: Get Brailowsky."

  "Got it."

  "You sure about that?" Catrone asked. "Security is going to be monitoring."

  "Let them," said the prince who'd fought his way halfway around a planet. "We don't leave our people. Ever."

  "We need one more thing," Roger said. It was a clear Saturday in October, the first day of the Imperial Festival. A day when the weather computers knew damned well to make sure the weather in Imperial City was perfect. Clear, crisp, and beautiful, the sun just below the horizon in Imperial City. The Day. Roger was staring unseeingly at the schematic of the Palace, fingering the skintight black suit that was worn under armor.

  "Yeah, backup," Catrone said, looking at the plan one more time. It was going to be tight, especially with the Bad Guys expecting it. And they were all tired. They'd intended to get some sleep before the mission kicked off, but what with last-minute details and moving it up...

  "No, I was talking about Nimashet," Roger said, and swallowed. "They're going to kill her the moment your team hits."

  "Not if they think it's the cops," Catrone pointed out. "They're not going to want a dead body on their hands on top of everything else. I'm more worried about Adoula killing your mother, Roger. And you should be, too."

  "We can't count on that," Roger said, ignoring the jab. "Remember what Subianto said about Siminov—a polished mad-dog, remember? And as much as you say your team is the best of the best, they're not my best. And my best, Mr. Catrone, is pretty damned good. And I do know one person I can count on."

  "We don't need another complication," Catrone said.

  "You'll like this one," Roger said, and grinned ferally.

  * * *

  Pedi Karuse liked to dress up. She especially liked the variety available on Old Earth, and she'd decided on a nice gold-blonde dress that matched the color of her horns. It had been fitted by a very skilled seamstress—she'd had to be to figure out how to design a dress for a pregnant Mardukan that didn't look decidedly odd. Pedi had matched it off with a pair of sandals that clearly revealed the fact that Mardukans had talons instead of nails on their feet. The talons were painted pink, to match the ones on her fingers. Her horns had also been expertly polished only a few hours before, by a very nice Pinopan woman named Mae Su, who normally did manicures. Humans had all sorts of dyes and colors, but she'd stayed with blonde this time. She was considering dying them red, since one of the humans said she was a natural redhead personality, whatever that meant. But for now, she was a blonde.

  There was the problem of Mardukan temperature regulation, of course. In general, they had none. Mardukans were defined by Doc Dobrescu, who'd become the preeminent (if more or less unknown) authority on Mardukan physiology, as "damned near as cold-blooded as a toad." Toads, by and large, do not do well on cold mornings in October in Imperial City. Most of the Mardukans dealt with this by wearing environment suits, but they were so... utilitarian.

  Pedi dealt with this sartorial dilemma—and the frigid environment—in several ways. First, she'd been studying dinshon exercises with Cord since she'd first met him. Dinshon was a discipline Cord's people used to control their internal temperature, a form of homeopathic art. Part of it was herbal, but most of it was a mental discipline. It could help in the Mardukan Mountains, where the temperatures often dropped to what humans considered "pleasant" and Mardukans considered "freezing." Given that this particular morning was what humans considered "freezing," Mardukans didn't even have a fitting descriptive phrase short of "some sort of icy Hell."

  Dinshon exercises could help her manage even this bitter cold, but only for a few minutes. So she'd come up with some additional refinements.

  Around her wrists—all four—and ankles, she had tight leather bands, with a matching collar around her neck. The accouterments made her look something like a Krath Servant of the Flame, which wasn't remotely a pleasant association, but
the important part was that the bands covered heat strips that were hot enough to be on the edge of burning. More strips covered her belly and packed around the developing fetuses on her back.

  Withthose and the dinshon exercises, she should be good for a couple of hours. And no icky, unfashionable environment suit.

  All in all, she looked to be in the very height of style, if you ignored the slight reflection from the poly-saccharide mucoid coating on her skin, as she stepped daintily out of the airtaxi and pranced up to the front door of the Caepio Neighborhood Association Headquarters.

  "My name is Pedi Karuse," she said in her best Imperial, nodding at the two men. One of them was almost as tall as she was. If she'd been wearing heels, she would have towered over even him, but he was big... for a human. "I'm here to see Mr. Siminov. I'm aware that he's in."

  "The Boss don't talk to any scummy walk-in off the street," the shorter of the two said. "Get lost."

  "Tell him I'm an emissary from Mr. Chung," Pedi said, doing her best to smile. It wasn't a natural expression for Mardukans, with their limited facial muscles, and it came out as more of a grimace. "And he'd really like to speak to me. It's important. To him."

  The guard spoke into his throat mike and waited, then nodded.

  "Somebody's coming," he said. "You wait here."

  "Of course," Pedi said, and giggled. "It's not like we're going to wander around back, is it?"

  "Not with a scummy," the bigger guard said with a scowl.

  "You never know till you try it," Pedi said, and wiggled her hips. It was another nonnatural action, but she'd watched human females enough to get the general idea.

  The person who came to the door was wearing a suit. It looked badly tailored, but that was probably the body under it. Pedi had seen pictures of a terrestrial creature called a "gorilla," and this guy looked as if he'd just fallen out of the tree... and hit his head on the way down.

  "Come on," the gorilla look-alike said, opening the door and stepping aside. "The Boss is just up. He hasn't even had his coffee. He hates to be kept waiting when he hasn't had his coffee."

  There was a loud buzz as Pedi stopped into the corridor, and the gorilla scowled ferociously.

  "Hold it!" he said, surprise and menace warring in his voice. "You got weapons."

  "Well, of course I've got weapons," Pedi said, giggling again as three more men stepped into the corridor. "I'm dressed, aren't I?"

  "You got to hand them over," the gorilla said with the expression of someone who'd never understood jokes, anyway.

  "What?" Pedi asked. "All of them?"

  "All of 'em," the gorilla growled.

  "Well, all right," Pedi sighed. "But the Boss is going to be waiting for some time, then."

  She reached through the upper slits on her dress and drew out two swords. They were short for a Mardukan, which made them about as long as a cavalry sabre, and similarly curved. She flipped them and offered the hilts to the gorilla.

  When he'd taken those, she started pulling out everything else. Two curved daggers, the size of human short swords. A punch-dagger on the inside of either thigh. Two daggers at the neck, and two more secreted in various spots that required a certain amount of reaching. Last, she handed over four sets of brass knuckles, a cosh, and four rolls of Imperial quarter-credits.

  "That's it?" the gorilla asked, his arms full.

  "Well..." She reached up and under her skirt and withdrew a long punch-stiletto. It was slightly sticky. "Now that's it. My father would kill me for handing them over so tamely, too.

  "Just set it on the pile," the gorilla said. When she had, he offered the armload to one of the other guards and ran a wand over her, carefully. There were still a couple of things he didn't like. She had another roll of credits, for example, and a nail file. It was about two decimeters long, with a wickedly sharp point.

  "I've got to have something to do my horns with!" she said, aghast, as he confiscated that.

  "Not in here," the gorilla said. "Okay, now you can see the Boss."

  "I'd better get it all back," she said to the guard with the armful of ironmongery.

  "I'm going to love watching you put it all back," the guard replied cheerfully as he carted it into one of the side rooms and dropped it on a convenient table with a semimusical clang.

  "So, what's it like, working for Mr. Siminov?" Pedi asked as they walked to the elevator.

  "It's a job," the gorilla said.

  "Anyplace in an organization like this for a woman?"

  "You know how to use any of that stuff?" the guard asked, punching for the third floor.

  "Pretty much," Pedi answered truthfully. "Pretty much. Always learning, you know."

  "Then, yeah, I guess so," the gorilla said as the doors closed.

  * * *

  "She's in," Bill said.

  "One more body to keep from killing." Clovis shook his head. "I hate distractions."

  "'Just follow the yellow brick road!'" Davis said in a munchkin voice. "'Just follow the yellow brick road! Follow the, follow the, follow the, follow the, follow the yellow brick road! Just follow—'"

  "I've got live ammo," Clovis said, shifting slightly. "Don't tempt me."

  "Can it," Tomcat said, reaching up and lowering the visor on his helmet. "Forty-five seconds."

  Honal wiggled to try to get some more space in the seat. He failed, and snarled as he began punching buttons.

  "Damned dwarfs," he muttered.

  "Say again, Red Six," the communicator said.

  "Nothing, Captain," Honal replied.

  "Outer doors opening," Rosenberg said. "Move to inner door positions."

  "Dwarfs," Honal muttered again, making sure he wasn't broadcasting, and picked up on the antigravity. "A race of dwarfs." But at least they made cool toys to play with, he thought, and pressed the button to transmit.

  "Red Six, light," he said, then flipped the lever to lift the landing skids and pulled the stingship out of its bay, turning out to line up with the doors to the warehouse. They were still in the underground facility, but once out of the cover of the bunkers' concealing depth of earth, they were going to light up every beacon in Imperial City.

  It was time to party.

  "Three, four, five," Roger counted as he trotted along the damp passageway. Water rose up to the lip of the catwalk, and the slippery concrete surface was covered with slime.

  The passage was an ancient "subway," a means of mass transit that had predated grav-tubes. Imperial City's unending expansion had left it behind long before the Dagger Years, and the Palace—whether by accident or Miranda MacClintock's design—was right over a spot that used to be called "Union Station."

  Roger was counting side passages, and stopped at seven.

  "Time to get the mission face on," he said, looking at his team of Mardukans and retired Empress' Own. The latter were mostly sounding a bit puffed by the three-kilometer run, but they checked their equipment and armed their bead and plasma cannon with the ease of years of practice.

  Roger consulted his toot one last time, then opened what looked like an ancient fuse box. Inside was a not much more modern keypad. Hoping like hell that the electronics had held up in the damp, he drew a deep breath and punched in a long code.

  Metal scraped, and the wall began to move away.

  Roger stepped into the darkness, followed by twelve Mardukans in battle armor, a half-dozen former Empress' Own, likewise armored, and one slightly bewildered dog-lizard.

  "Your first meeting is in twenty-three minutes, with Mr. Van den Vondel," Adoula's administrative assistant said as the prince entered the limousine. "After that—"

  "Cancel it," Adoula said. "Duauf, head for the Richen house."

  "Yes, sir," the chauffeur said, lifting the limo off the platform and inserting it deftly into traffic.

  "But... but, Your Highness," the girl said, flushing. "You have a number of appointments, and the Imperial Festival is—"

  "I think we'll watch the parade from home thi
s year," he said, looking out the window. Dawn was just breaking.

  The Imperial Festival celebrated the overthrow of the Dagger Lords and the establishment of the Imperial Throne, five hundred and ninety years before. The Dagger Lord forces had been "officially" beaten on October fifth; the removal of minor local adherents, most of whom had been dealt with by dropping rocks on their heads, was ignored. For reasons known to only a few specialized historians, Miranda MacClintock had stomped all over any use of the term "October Revolution." She had, however, initiated the Imperial Festival, and it remained a yearly celebration of the continuation of the MacClintock line and the Empire of Man.

  The Festival was having a bit of a problem being festive this year. The crowds for the fireworks the night before had been unruly, and a large group of them had pressed into Imperial Park, calling for the Empress. They'd been dispersed, but the police were less than certain that something else, possibly worse, wouldn't happen today.

  The Mardukans unloading from trailers, however, were simply a sight to boggle the eye. The beasts they were leading down the cargo ramps were like something from the Jurassic, and the Mardukans were supposedly—and the saddles and bridles bore it out—planning on riding them. The riders were big guys, even for Mardukans, wearing polished mail, of all things, and steel helmets. The police eyed the swords they wore—cultural artifacts, fully in keeping with the Festival and, what was more, tied in place with cords—and hoped they weren't going to be a problem.

  The same went for the infantry types. They bore long pikes and antique chemical rifles over their backs. One of the sergeants from the local police went over and checked to make certain they didn't have any propellants on them. Scanners weren't tuned for old-fashioned black powder, and they looked as if they knew which end the bullet came out. They didn't have any ammunition, but he checked out the rifles anyway, just out of personal interest. They were complicated breechloaders, and one of the Mardukans demonstrated the way his broke open and was loaded. The ease with which he handled the rifle spoke to the cop of long practice, which was troubling, since they were supposedly a group of waiters from a local restaurant.