SJ knew from experience that when things annoyed the Emperor, one had better have a good excuse or you could expect to be on the receiving end of one of his thousand-yard stares, famed for being able to strip hull metal within seconds.
On hearing the Imperial signal announcing the Emperors entrance, he came quickly to attention, banishing his thoughts and focusing on the moment.
The main doors opened and in strode Alexander II, with Ambassador Gallagher following close behind and to his right, for once without his briefcase. Alexander’s armoured formal suit was now embellished with honours from numerous major campaigns and the smart metal shone as if illuminated from within. No weapon systems were visible, but everyone knew that serious armament was concealed within the suit and on-call at a moment’s notice. The black and orange Imperial Sigel adorned both of their plastrons although Gallagher’s was slightly smaller than the Emperors.
Together, the assembled bodyguard came to attention, the sound of armour being struck in salute by three hundred and four gauntleted right fists contrasting sharply with the silence that followed as the Emperor looked around the room and his warm smile of greeting was replaced with a neutral expression.
"Captain Stuart-Jack, where's my son?" he asked, fixing him with a stare and using a tone of voice that didn't bode well for the Crown Prince if he wasn't currently using the toilet facilities at that exact moment.
"Sire, my frequent attempts to contact him were declined by his aide and in the absence of contact and the importance of this meeting I assumed that he would be joining us with you". “Tactfully put,” SJ thought to himself.
One deep breath and several heartbeats later, Alexander sent a private message via his neural link to Gallagher, warning him not to say a word, especially if it was “I told you so.” He continued, “Go on ahead and begin the formalities without me. Tell SJ to take my shuttle instead and leave his here for me. I'll follow shortly once I've located Adam and shown him the error of his ways. I shouldn't be more than forty-five minutes behind you and will try and make up some of the time on the way down.”
Alexander paused and took a deep breath before continuing out loud, speaking to Patrick, “I have every confidence that you will be able to smooth over my lateness. Blame the usual Affairs of State, that sort of thing. You know the drill, Patrick."
Catching the eyes of both the Emperor and SJ, Gallagher couldn't resist sending his old friend a short "Good luck with that one then, Alexander," on his private channel before turning away, missing the Emperor spin his armoured form one hundred and eighty degrees and exit the ready room, purple cloak billowing behind him from the speed of his departure.
The moment Alexander left the room, most of the assembled bodyguard looked at each other and winced, at that moment not wanting to trade places with the Prince for anything.
“Stand down one of the cohorts,” Gallagher told SJ. “They can remain behind and accompany the Emperor when he returns with the Prince.”
Gallagher’s expression remained unreadable as he headed towards the hanger exit, simultaneously updating the ceremonial plan on the fly via his interface, with two cohorts of bodyguards following close behind him.
Stepping into the docking tube, Gallagher was glad when the suit helmet formed around his head, allowing him to mutter a few choice curses under his breath without being overheard. This was not going well at all, and no doubt someone was going to suffer before this day was through, hopefully the Crown Prince. Whilst he was very fond of Adam and was thought of as a surrogate uncle by the boy, a reckoning with his father and his Imperial responsibilities was, in his not-so-humble opinion, long overdue.
Watching events unfurl in the hanger, Vimes had begun asking questions of the ships AI even before the Emperor had turned towards the exit, searching for the whereabouts of the Prince. Interrogating the Princes AI, a stripped down version of himself, Vimes received the same brush off as had the Captain earlier. Frustratingly, the ships AI was unable to locate him, therefore he surmised the Prince had somehow disabled his personal biometric tracker, making him invisible to many of the ships sensors. Blocked from locating him this way, Vimes started checking through surveillance logs from the night before, finally locating him in one of the many Ward Rooms around the ship. Now that he’d found him, Vimes tracked his movements forward until he entered the private quarters of a recently promoted Second Lieutenant. The recording showed him entering arm in arm with the said red haired Lieutenant, resulting in a 95% probability that he would still be there. Checking forward to the present, Vimes checked no-one had entered or left the room, confirming the Prince was still there. By linking into the ship's fire suppression and control systems, Vimes confirmed two heat sources close together in the room, one unidentified.
“Still asleep, no doubt after a strenuous session,” thought Vimes, before noting that all the intercom and ship-wide messaging systems had been switched off in the room. Whilst not alive in the classical sense, Vimes understood human emotions well enough to know that whatever pleasure the Prince might have derived from this romantic assignation, it would in no way compensate him for the storm that was coming his way. Collating all of the information, Vimes transmitted it to the Emperor just as he was exiting the hanger, caveating it with a note that the Lieutenant had been off duty at the time of the meeting, was single, extremely attractive by most human standards, and that as his son currently held no formal rank in the Navy no offence had been committed and she was, therefore, free to consort with him. Although Alexander was normally a very fair man, a subtle reminder such as this from Vimes would ensure her career suffered no harm.
Passing through into the corridor, Alexander waited for the doors to close behind him then leaned heavily against the nearest wall, feeling sick inside.
"What is it with that boy?" he thought to himself, whilst at the same time calling up a display of the flight deck so he could watch the two shuttles close their doors and begin launching. He decided to gather his thoughts and watch until the shuttles had disembarked for the short hop to the planet’s surface before confronting his son. Challenging him in his current mood would not be a good idea. It would take the shuttles twenty minutes to make planet fall and by then he would have decided what to say to his wayward son.
"I might be the most powerful individual in the Empire yet I can't install any sense into him," he thought bitterly. "If Christine and I had been blessed with a daughter instead of a son would things have turned out any different?” he asked himself out loud. “Damned if I know, although if she’d turned out as willful as her mother, perhaps worse”.
As he watched the last of the two shuttles clear the hanger and depart, Alexander let his mind drift back to the desperate days of the Succession Wars which saw his own parents killed at the start of a bitterly fought revolt led by one of his uncles, and the later murder of his brother and sister by the same hand. On coming to the throne, Alexander and Christine decided to have only the one child to avoid sibling rivalry for the crown. Whilst Adam didn't know it yet, Alexander had decided to abdicate once his son was ready to rule. Partially self-preservation, he hoped Adam would never feel the need to replace him or become impatient waiting to rule. Both of these things had led in the past to bloody in-fighting within the royal family. Although blessed with a long lifespan, it was a simple fact of life that despite the best efforts of scientists, nothing could currently be done to extend childbearing age in women beyond one hundred years or so. Alexander loved his wife deeply and had no intention of siring another child on a woman other than her, so, however he turned out, Adam was it. Whilst a risky strategy, the scars left by the revolt had affected him deeply and invariably shaped both the way he thought and acted.
Walking quickly to the nearest transit tube, Alexander entered the waiting pod and instructed it to take him to the officers’ quarters where his son was currently “sleeping.” His initial anger had calmed somewhat, replaced with a depression that threatened to deepen unless he could reso
lve matters with his son.
Feeling the pods acceleration increase to two-G as it compensated for his being in armour and still able to move around comfortably in his suit, Alexander called up from Vimes information on the layout of the officers’ quarters. Suddenly, in the middle of speaking, Vimes interrupted himself mid-sentence and announced a General Alert, followed an instant later by the ship's AI informing him he was being redirected straight to the Bridge. Something serious had occurred and as Vimes and the ships AI began sending him reports, one thing was certain, his son would have to wait.
Scene 3, Heaven
The two shuttles entered the outer atmosphere a mile apart, SJ’s on the left and Gallagher’s another mile further forward on the right, bleeding away velocity to match orbital speed. Inside, unlike regular shuttles, the larger military versions were effectively open plan, maximising space for troops and their equipment. This configuration had the added benefit of allowing both pilots and passengers to see and hear everything that was going on from the viewscreens placed along the walls in lieu of windows, rather than watch via their suit helmets. At the rear of the shuttle, Ambassador Gallagher began walking carefully forward towards the flight deck, passing orderly rows of troops standing upright, docked in G-cages on either side. The troops were quiet, lost in their own private thoughts or chatting to each other via comms due to the roar of re-entry, which was increasing as the shuttle dipped lower into the atmosphere. As the pilot began matching his speed to that of the planet below, both the noise and buffeting began to subside.
Reaching the front of the shuttle, Gallagher was relieved to feel the ride improve. Never a comfortable flyer he tolerated it as a necessary evil. Despite the Empire having developed artificial gravity millennia ago, nothing could be done about inertia which stubbornly refused to be tamed, making sudden changes in direction as uncomfortable now as they were in the distant past, hence his earlier pleasure on the way up at finding a very smooth pilot. In fact, he'd asked earlier for her to pilot this shuttle and was disappointed to find her currently in the co-pilot chair this time. “Perhaps on the return journey,” he thought.
Sensing a presence behind her, Flt. Lieutenant Harris looked around over her shoulder and flashed the Ambassador a brief smile of recognition, at the same time as the outlying edges of the big storm they'd passed over in orbit gave the shuttle one final buffet, causing Harris to quickly turn back to her panel and Gallagher’s smart metal boots to merge themselves temporarily into the floor for stability at the sudden movement.
Before Patrick could say anything, Harris announced, “As agreed, the honour guard of six atmospheric fighters are approaching from the south and will have matched speed and rendezvoused with us in three minutes. I confirm they’re not registered as hostile and our point defences are cold at this time.”
The turbulence having ceased, Gallagher thanked her and the pilot, then walked over to an empty G-cage, locked himself in place and started interrogating his suit’s AI to confirm arrival time. He noted they were only a few minutes away from the landing field, where the planets chief dignitaries and the world's press would be waiting for them, and allowed himself to relax a little.
Up front, Harris, with nothing to do unless the pilot relinquished control to her instead of the AI, requested a schematic of the fighters racing to escort them. Like many fighter pilots she was curious about anything deadly that flew and might prove a threat, so wanted to get a closer look at the fighter and what it was capable of.
Sleek, with stubby swept wings that were slowly extending as the atmosphere thickened, the silver craft looked like deadly silver needles. The cockpit was made of some sort of transparent material enabling the pilot to look out and the missile racks were empty as agreed. She could see various insignia visible on the wings and tail and wondered if they denoted some sort of religious or mythological figure from the planet’s history.
As the fighters drew level to the first shuttle, the formation split up into three groups of two, two pair taking station with SJ’s and the remaining pair accelerating to catch up with hers.
Curious as to the crafts capabilities and impressed with the startling turn of speed such basic technology demonstrated, she requested an internal scan to see if she could glean more information. They wouldn’t be able to detect the scanning and in the unlikely event they could, it would not be seen as a hostile act. Instantly the information began displaying on her screen and she speed-read the data. Almost immediately she picked up an anomaly.
Turning to look at her pilot she asked, “Taylor, what need would fighters, propelled via scram and conventional jet engines, have for fissionable material?” He looked perplexed for a moment, then both their eyes widened as they simultaneously exclaimed “Damn!” slamming the throttle controls hard forward. The AI automatically flipped their seats to the horizontal, locking them both firmly into place and everyone else on the shuttle into their G-racks. Tablets and anything not tightly secured flew violently out of armoured hands as the shuttle accelerated instantly to fifteen-G. Harris could see her vision tunnelling and tried hard not to black out. Through the pounding of blood in her ears, she heard the AI confirm it had taken control, and felt her flight suit compress, forcing blood back to her brain.
Gallagher was surprised to hear both pilots curse and shocked when their seats flipped. A crushing weight settled onto his chest and like the pilots, his vision began to tunnel and fade. Momentarily confused, he was just starting to recover when the shuttle tilted violently forward, then down, as a blinding white flare of light and concussion of sound hit it hard from behind. The overloaded viewscreens blazed white, bathing the hold in sharp contrast before dimming themselves. The force of the blow almost caught out the bundles of metal fibres making up the muscles of his suit and he was thankful everybody was in their G-dock. The smart-metal of his suit helmet automatically formed into place, blanking out the noise.
Simultaneously linking himself into both the shuttles systems and the troop channels, he was gratified that chatter was being kept to a minimum by the experienced bodyguard as they read the information being relayed to them by the Sergeant. Ridiculously experienced by most standards, these troops knew the drill better than anyone. Smart-metal helmets were all in place and the exo-suits were powering up into full combat readiness. He noted the Master Sergeant was even recording, for extra practice time, which of his troops were slowest in powering up.
Gallagher couldn't see the pilots’ expressions, but the way in which they were struggling with the controls and the slew of red flagged information scrolling across his vision told him they had a serious problem. He so hated flying.
Another, less powerful blow hit the shuttle, compounding the damage caused by the first, this time disrupting the viewscreens and knocking the craft completely off its landing trajectory, eliciting another string of curses from Lt. Harris and Taylor.
“Main power down, micro fractures reported throughout the hull, secondary systems partially online,” reported the pilot while Harris’s hands were a blur of motion as she worked the manual switches and controls that were the worst-case fallback. The automatic back-ups, sensing the viewscreen failure, triggered the cockpits opaque metal to turn transparent so they could see out.
“We are in a controlled descent, coming in fast but way off the flight plan. Contact with the other shuttle is down. I think we caught the leading edges of at least two small tactical nukes of around .25 kilotons each. They probably had them in their cockpits and were detonated manually.”
“I can confirm that, Ambassador,” said Harris, looking behind her at Gallagher, “I can see the expanding fireballs from here and there’s no sign of the other shuttle. I think the fighters came up close to the Emperors shuttle then suicided. We caught the remaining two off guard and they detonated as we pulled away, hoping to catch us in the blast.”
Gallagher agreed with the assessment then kept quiet, letting the pilots do their jobs as he waited for his link to the flagship t
o come back on. Captain Stuart-Jack had been on the other shuttle, and whilst Gallagher had only a nodding acquaintance with him, his presumed loss along with all his troops left a bitter taste. He could only imagine what other, nastier surprises they had waiting for them if this shuttle made it safely planet-side. Reading the information passing across his vision on the shuttles status, he could clearly see the port repulsors were down, and whilst some of the microfractures were already healing, larger ones where the smart-metal had been fatally damaged, were beyond repair.
The violent buffeting intensified as the damaged shuttle descended lower into the atmosphere and the pilots struggled to maintain control with only half of the flight systems available to them. The buffeting was making him feel nauseous so Gallagher debated with himself whether to request his suit to give him something for it, but, in the end, decided he needed to keep his head clear.
Trying to contact Alexander on his private channel, his suit reported that contact with Dauntless was somehow being blocked from the ground.
“But that’s not possible,” he thought, “given their current level of technology. How have they done this and why? Someone else has to be behind this attack on the Emperor, perhaps a third-party not of this planet?”
“Was this how they managed to jump an Ascension Class?” he said out loud to himself, “How on earth did I miss the signs?” His nausea was worsened by the sickening thought that only chance had saved his friend and son from instant destruction, and through gritted teeth, Gallagher fervently hoped he would live long enough and get the opportunity to deliver some old-fashioned retribution to the citizens of the planet that was rapidly coming to meet him.
Scene 4, Bridge, Dauntless
Entering the bridge, nodding in acknowledgement to the guards at the entrance, Alexander was pleased to see everyone was in their place and working towards a solution. Vimes had already sent him both details from Dauntless’ sensors, along with shuttle telemetry right up to the moment it had stopped or was jammed.
Imperium: Betrayal: Book One in the Imperium Trilogy Page 3