Price of Imperium

by Dave Robinson

  Tommy and Joey were waiting at the fire barrel, no one had taken Freddy's place. John had gone through Freddy's pockets before placing the body beside a dumpster. There was no money, but the real shock came when John found an old expired driver's license. It took him a moment to add up the dates, the numbers looked wrong, but when he did he realized that Freddy had only been thirty-four. Thirty-four and already an old man.

  "There you are Johnny," Tommy said. "Garth's coming with puff soon."

  "Don't think I want puff." John shook his head, "puff killed Freddy."

  "Puff didn't kill Freddy." Joey shook his head violently. "Old killed Freddy, street killed Freddy."

  "Freddy wasn't old," John said.

  "Sure he wasn't, street makes a man old real fast. Freddy was old, alright." Tommy hunched his shoulders and lowered his voice, "Don't tell Garth puff killed Freddy, Garth might get mad and you don't want Garth mad."

  "No, don't want Garth mad," Joey ducked his head, looking from sided to side. "I made Garth mad one time, went two weeks with no puff." His whole body shuddered. "Two weeks no puff real hard, two weeks Garth tell me every day no puff."

  "I don't want puff," John repeated.

  "Garth give you puff, you take it," Tommy said.

  John closed his mouth and edged closer to the fire barrel. The fire was warm and he could feel the moisture rising from his coat. He needed the heat, not puff.

  They stood quietly around the fire. John offered them some water but they shook their heads. "Won't put warmth in your belly like whiskey," was Tommy's response.

  "Suit yourself." John took another drink, the fire had warmed the water, but he didn't care, it was wet. He was getting dryer, and the coat had stopped smelling like a wet dog. Feeling the front, he turned around to let the heat get at his back.

  He saw a dome light flash over by the street, showing the inside of a car before cutting off quickly, as if it was switched off before the door closed. A woman got out of the car, and he took a step forwards, then back to the barrel. Probably a hooker, with a john who didn't want to be seen. Straining into the darkness he saw she was carrying a heavy plastic grocery bag, picking her way towards them.

  "Hello?" her voice came out of the darkness. "I'm looking for John," she said. "John Doe. It's Jayne." It was the woman from the shelter, looking out of place in her clean clothes and sensible shoes

  He stepped forwards, wishing she hadn't come."I'm here."

  "Good, I've been looking for you," Jayne said quickly, avoiding eye contact. "If I hadn't gone into the dining hall with you, you wouldn't have been kicked out. It was my fault" She thrust the bag towards him. "I brought you some food."

  Reflexively he reached out to take the bag. "You didn't need to."

  "If you don't need it, we'll have it," Tommy said over his shoulder.

  "Yes I did." Jayne's voice sounded stronger. "I had to do it for me." She took a deep breath. "If you think you can work, come to the shelter tomorrow at two, and I'll see if I can find you something. It might not be much, but it's better than standing around here."

  "He already has a job." Garth's voice came from behind John. "He works for me."

  "Who are you?" Jayne's eyes went wide but she didn't move.

  "You don't need to know," Garth continued. "You only need to walk away. Now."

  "Do what he says," John said. "Walk away. Please."

  She dipped into her purse and pulled out her phone. "I'll go," she said, pressing a button on the side .

  "Cool-T, take that phone."

  John turned toward Garth and found himself staring at a shotgun. "Don't be stupid Johnny," Garth said. "If she gives up the phone we'll let her go." He raised his voice. "Won't we, Cool-T?"

  "Once she's had her puff." Cool-T smiled.

  John backed up, trying to keep them both in sight, but failing as Cool-T went wide.

  "Stay right there Johnny," said Garth. "Bring the lady around here, Cool-T. I think Johnny here wants to see her."

  John kept his eyes fixed on Garth's face, waiting for any lapse in his concentration. Cool-T moved behind him, and a moment later the dealer dragged Jayne into view. He had a pistol to her head and a smile on his face. "We gonna make him watch her puff, or her watch him?"

  "That's a good question," Garth said. "I think we'll let her watch him puff. It'll give her the chance to see just how worthless these pieces of shit really are." He shifted his grip on the shotgun and reached into his pocket. "Don't do anything stupid Johnny, you wouldn't want to be cleaning her brains off your new coat."

  John clenched fists, looking for an opening. Not yet. said the voices, wait for an opening. The inhaler was made of pale green plastic, and the shadowed opening drew his attention.

  "Wrap your lips around it, push the button and take a big puff." The inhaler lay there on Garth's outstretched hand. "Puffer or shotgun, your choice."

  John reached out and took the puffer. The plastic was warm in his hand. Just another harmless object, nothing to worry about. John raised it slowly to his lips, tasting the coldness of the inside. "Take a deep puff," Garth said. "I can see if you're faking it."

  John pressed the button, inhaling as the cold gas shot into his lungs. He gagged and dropped the puffer; his chest heaving, pulling air into his lungs. Images shot through his mind. Blackness. Space. A man in a blue uniform, himself in a mirror. Standing alone in a room before a pillar, the Imperial Crest embossed on the surface. His hand outstretched as something drilled into his brain.

  John dropped to his knees, cutting himself on a rock. The sharp pain pulled him back to the present and he saw Garth standing above him, the shotgun pointing straight ahead. Cool-T had dropped the barrel of the pistol from Jayne's head, but was still holding her.

  "Stop! Police! Put the guns down and walk away." It was the cop who had brought him to the shelter.

  Both guns turned towards the voice, Cool-T pulled Jayne's body in front of him like a shield. The drug-dealer's face wavered, replaced with something alien, rising on a long neck from an inhuman body. John blinked it away and launched himself at the dealer. Both guns barked, their muzzle flashes hitting his eyes like a hammer. For a second he lost his sense of place, he was in zero-g, training on... He slammed into Cool-T, batting the pistol aside with one hand.

  Jayne hit the ground, he was close up against Cool-T. The drug-dealer had managed to hold onto his gun, and John felt the muzzle dig into his side. He reached to try and wrench it away when Cool-T's face vanished, pulped by a hammerbeam.

  John dropped to the ground, unable to support himself. Jayne was running, sobbing. "Bill? Bill! Nooo...."

  "That's him," Imperial combat boots flickered in and out of view. Nothing stayed in focus, one moment he was on the ground, the next lying on a deck. The world kept changing, the puff burning in his lungs. He shuddered, curling into fetal position.

  "We've got him sir." Someone caught him under the arms and started to lift him to his feet. "Time to go."

  The flickering stopped and John saw Jayne kneeling beside the body of the police officer who had arrested him. "Bring her," he croaked, watching her face flicker in and out with the visions. Two figures, marines, reached out to help Jayne to her feet.

  "He's going again." This voice was very close. "Whatever that was hit him hard."

  John concentrated on the figure before him. It was a man in Fleet blue; they locked eyes and then everything went black.

  Chapter 11

  Tam paced the deck of the boat bay. He was the first one there, and had decided to wait outside the shuttle for Pirk and his Marines. They were taking the number-one shuttle, the only one the ship carried that was designed for covert insertions. It was fairly small as shuttles went, about thirty meters long and about eight in width. Unlike the other shuttles that were picked out in Fleet White, this one was a dark nondescript color. To the casual eye it looked black, and it absorbed every photon that came towards it. The only exceptions to the unrelieved blackness were the various edges,
where a touch of gray softened the outline, hiding the sharpness of the black.

  Oversized thrust field generators hung on the outside, four of them on mounts that would allow the shuttle to maneuver in any direction at will. It could be a rough ride though. Unlike a starship, which travelled completely inside its drive field, the shuttle's body was outside its own fields. That allowed for the redundancy of multiple drives, but at the cost of subjecting the crew to the forces of acceleration. Shuttles carried grav plates, but they were limited to at most a ten-to-one reduction. It was enough to allow for reasonably rapid travel within a system, but nothing in comparison to a starship's near-instantaneous acceleration.

  Pirk was the first Marine to enter, followed by a squad of fourteen. They stopped and braced to attention, their battledress conforming to the color scheme of the bay, dark metal with yellow and orange danger stripes. Short barreled hammerbeams hung by their sides, and their heads were covered with the dark shapes of combat control helmets. As they stood there, Tam could pick out pulse lasers slung across some of their backs. All they need now are some drive artillery.

  "Marine detachment reporting, sir." Pirk saluted. "Fourth platoon, Bravo Company, Seventh of the Eleventh."

  "Thank you lieutenant." Tam returned the salute. "Have your troops been informed of the situation?"

  "Yes sir," Pirk faced straight ahead. "We are to provide cover and support should you be unable to convince the prince to return peacefully. You will be making the first contact with him."

  "Exactly so, lieutenant," Tam met the Marine's eyes. "This should be no more difficult than an aircab picking up a fare. After my last 'cab ride, you will forgive me if I want a little insurance."

  Pirk nodded. "Yes sir."

  "Then let's get aboard," Tam turned and led the way up the boarding ramp. The main compartment was roomy, tall enough for a squad of Marines in powered armor rather than the battledress this unit was wearing. Tam went directly forwards to the cabin, where CPO Husk was waiting in the pilot's seat. Tam nodded to her and took the co-pilot's position, strapping himself in. Strapped in, he flipped on the internal camera to watch Pirk and his troops buckling in.

  "Ready to go, Husk?" Tam turned towards the pilot, who simply smiled.

  "Aye sir," she gestured towards the entry. "I'm just waiting on Havis and Carmon to finish making sure the troops are all safe and sound."

  "Snug as a bug in a rug, Chief." Havis strapped himself into the flight engineer's station. "Sorry about that, sir." His eyes widened a bit when Tam turned so the engineer could see him.

  "It's alright, Havis."

  "Give me a moment to get buckled in," Carmon slid in through the entry and into the electronics station. "I've just finished running a diagnostic on all the stealth systems and they're looking good."

  "Very good," Tam returned his attention to the Marines buckled into place and tapped an icon. "Mr. Pirk, this is the Captain, what's your status?"

  "All clear for launch Captain."

  "Very well, stand by for acceleration."

  Tam closed the channel and turned back to the flight crew. "Alright Chief, it's time."

  "Aye sir," Husk's slender hands danced over the controls. "Button her up if you will Mr. Havis."

  "Roger that Chief, buttoning up."

  Tam felt the slight pressure in his ears as the cabin hatch slid shut and they went to combat pressure. A moment later came the sound of the main ramp retracting and the ports closing back into the spaceframe. Two red bars on his console switched to green circles. The shuttle started to vibrate as Husk fed power to the thrust generators, bringing all four up together. Tam tapped a series of icons and watched through the front viewport as the bay took on the sharpness of vacuum.

  "Bay clear," Carmon's voice came from behind him. "Ready to open bay doors."

  "Roger that, Mr. Carmon." Tam touched the icon that sent the signal they were ready to open the landing bay. The far wall caught a sliver of blackness as the two halves of the doors started to move apart, pulling inwards before separating to slide under hull. Tam remembered combat drops he'd done on previous ships, ones where the bay doors swung outwards to space, opening in a tenth the time these did, and dumping tons of atmosphere into the void. His impatient side wished Talon worked the same way, but those designs were hopeless for stealth. The Raptors took a slower option that kept the hull form the same and allowed these sorts of operations without breaking stealth.

  Once the doors were fully open, Husk took them out on a smooth curve that Tam secretly envied. He had been good enough to pass the training courses with some distinction, but Husk was a natural. She could put a shuttle in a space nine-tenths its own size without touching the edges, and he'd seen her do it. His own position on this trip was mostly a passenger. All he was really there for was to lend the air of legitimacy to the operation. That and from the way Admiral Calthran had been talking, he had not wanted the prince out of Tam's sight for any longer than absolutely necessary.

  A glance at the controls showed Husk was going for a low speed re-entry, coming down on thrust so they wouldn't blaze like a meteorite across the sky. They were coming down over water, just off the west coast of the continent. Then it would just be a low-altitude dash at high subsonic across what looked like two thinly settled peninsulas before a cut across the sound to the city where Prince Jhon's locator showed him to be.

  Ten minutes later they were on the deck, thirty meters above the water at six hundred knots. Tam switched to night vision and watched the coast race towards them. His own console dimmed to match the lower illumination and repeaters showed an overview of what Havis and Carmon had on their own displays. So far, everything was looking quiet, all four generators were in the green and most of the radar Carmon was picking up looked to be more looking for storms than shuttles.

  Another line showed their projected track, up across the mountains of this larger peninsula, then ducking just south of what looked like a port town on the east coast of a long fjord and then north of another before heading straight across the sound for the city. Tam felt the shuttle shudder as they went 'feet dry,' pulling up a little to get over the tree line. Husk kept the shuttle under control as they scorched across the forest, curving to keep lost in the ground-scatter and under the radar. Tam felt the straps bite into his chest when he was thrown against his harness by a particularly violent maneuver. Close flying in wooded mountains had never been his favorite kind of flying and he kept both hands tightly clasped on the arms of his seat, leaving the controls strictly to CPO Husk.

  Minutes later they were coming down the other slope and towards a narrow band of water. Tam was thrown forwards, cursing as the straps bit into the same spot of his chest when Husk chopped power to send them sailing across the water at a bare two hundred knots.

  "Naval base," she muttered as they crossed past some lights off to the north. "See our tail."

  Seconds later they were back over land, Tam looked down to see the ribbon of a highway flash beneath them at a bare forty meters, vehicles picked out in each other's lights. Husk threw them sideways and they just missed a power line, then she hauled back on the controls lifting them just a little higher as they headed for the sound.

  "They don't pay me for this." Husk's words came out in time with movements of the stick, guiding the shuttle past obstacles Tam could barely see. He could see water ahead as they came up on the shore.

  Suddenly the repeater from Carmon's board lit up. Active radar sources at close range. Tam switched to a visual display and gasped. The thing looked huge, and they were coming up fast. A moment later he saw the scale and realized it was only about three hundred meters long, smaller than Talon, but there was something menacing about its bulk, a hundred thousand tons of steel.

  "Carrier," Carmon muttered. Tam watched the shuttle's stealth systems adjust for the radar as they hurtled past the ship.

  They actually dropped below the level of the flight deck as they crossed her bow at a range of less than two kilom
eters, and even at that range it looked huge. Tam could see the curve of the bow as the ship closed on their course and for a moment was taken back to the Kendradi images of the Enemy's ships. Nothing short of a mauler carried the same look of sheer power. The shuttle passed out of the ship's shadow and they were caught by another radar, more powerful than the carrier's.

  "Careful... careful..." Carmon muttered by his console while he adjusted the stealth fields. "That's a nasty sucker, high performance air-search radar. Systems aren't designed to stop things that primitive."

  Tam reached for the weapons release, the button glowing softly under its protective cover, then deliberately pulled his hand back. A glance at the threat receivers showed that it didn't look like they were getting through. A second thought reminded Tam that even with the importance of his mission, the prince might not be too happy if he sank some Earth ships.

  "If we don't get lost in the clutter fast, they're going to burn through." Carmon's words pulled Tam's attention back to his own screen. "They're close and have tons of power. We're not designed to hide from this. As it is they can probably make us with the mark 1 eyeball."

  Tam grimaced and looked at the threat receivers. It was getting close, they might have another minute, if that. "Show them our tail Chief." He glanced over to Husk in the other seat. "They're going to know something's out here, but if we show a tail they might not get a good look and we don't need to be on the ground very long."

  "Aye, sir." CPO Husk put the throttles down and the shuttle jerked forwards. Tam glanced at a rear pickup and could see a trail of white water rising behind them as they accelerated away from the ships. The threat warnings dropped away as they put some distance behind them, and it was only a moment or so later that Tam looked ahead to see the city rushing towards them. "Cut your speed, Chief, we need to leave the water behind when we come ashore."