by Neil Clarke
“It’s hard on us all,” Merlin said, feeling a glimmer of empathy for his unwanted guest. “And you’re right about one thing, Prince. I want an end to the war with the Huskers. But not at any cost.”
When they were alone Teal said: “You’ve got some explaining to do. If it wasn’t for Baskin I’d have forced it out of you with torture by now.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. All that screaming would have made our guest distinctly uncomfortable. And have you ever tried getting blood out of upholstery?” Merlin flashed a smile. But Teal’s hard mask of an expression told him she was in no mood for banter.
“Why were you so interested in his genetic profile?”
There were sealed doors between the lounge and the quarters assigned to the Prince, but the ship was silent under normal operation and Merlin found himself glancing around and lowering his voice before answering.
“I just wanted peace of mind, Teal. I just thought that if I could find a genetic match between you and Prince Baskin, it would settle things for good, allow you to put your mind to rest about Cupis . . . ”
“Put my mind to rest.”
“I know I shouldn’t have sampled you without your permission. It was just some hair left on your pillow, with a skin flakes . . . ” Merlin silenced himself. “Now that we’re aboard, the ship can run a profile just by sequencing the cells it picks up through the normal air circulation filters.”
Teal still had her arm out, her look defiant. But slowly she pulled back the arm and slid her sleeve back down. “Run your damned tests. You’ve started this, you may as well finish it.”
“Are you sure, Teal? It may not get us any nearer an answer of what happened to your bloodline.”
“I said finish it,” Teal answered.
Tyrant slipped across the system, into the contested space between the two stars. Battle continued to rage across a dozen worlds and countless more moons, minor planets, and asteroids. Fleets were engaging on a dozen simultaneous fronts, their energy bursts spangling the night sky across light hours of distance. Every radio channel crackled with military traffic, encrypted signals, blatant propaganda, screams of help or mercy from stricken crews.
Tyrant steered clear of the worst of it. But even as they approached Mundar, Merlin picked out more activity than he had hoped for. Gaffurian patrol groups were swinging suspiciously close to the brigands’ asteroid, as if something had begun to attract their interest. So far they were keeping clear of the predicted defence perimeter, but their presence put Merlin on edge. It didn’t help that the Gaffurian incursions were drawing a counter-response from Havergal squadrons. The nearest battlefronts were still light-minutes away, but the last thing Merlin needed was a new combat zone opening up right where he had business of his own.
“I was hoping for a clear theatre of action,” he told Baskin. “Something nice and quiet, where I could do my business without a lot of messy distractions.”
“Gaffurian security may have picked up rumours about the Tactician by this point,” Baskin said.
“And that wasn’t worth sharing with me before now?”
“I said rumours, Merlin—not hard intelligence. Or they may just be taking a renewed interest in the brigands. They’re as much a thorn in the enemy’s side as they are in ours.”
“I like them more and more.”
They were a day out when Merlin risked a quick snoop with Tyrant’s long-range sensors. Baskin and Teal were on the command deck as the scans refreshed and updated, overlaid with the intelligence schematics Merlin had already examined on the Renouncer. Mundar was a fuzzy rock traced through with the equally ghostly fault-lines of shafts, corridors, internal pressure vaults, and weapons emplacements.
“That was a risky thing to do” Baskin said, while Teal nodded her agreement.
“If they picked up anything,” Merlin said, “it would have been momentary and on a spread of frequencies and particle bands they wouldn’t normally expect. They’ll put it down to sensor malfunctions and move on.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Merlin stretched out his hands and cracked his knuckles, as if he were preparing to climb a wall. “Let’s think like Struxer. He’s got his claws on something precious, a one-off machine, so chances are he won’t put the Tactician anywhere vulnerable, especially with these patrol groups sniffing around.”
“How does that help us?”
“Because it narrows down his options. That deep vault there—do you think it would suit?”
“Perhaps. The main thing is to declare our intentions; to give Struxer an unambiguous idea of your capabilities.” Baskin danced his own finger across the display. “You’ll open with a decisive but pin-point attack. Enough to shake them up, and let them know we absolutely mean business. At what distance can you launch a strike?”
“We’ll be in optimum charm-torp range in about six hours. I can lock in the targeting solutions now, if you like. But we’ll have a sharper view of Mundar the nearer we get.”
“Would they be able to see us that soon?” Teal asked.
Merlin was irritated by the question, but only because it had been the next thing on his mind.
“From what we understand of your ship’s sensor footprint, they’ll be able to pick you out inside a volume of radius one and a half light seconds. That’s an estimate, though. Their weapons will be kinetic launchers, pulse beams, drone missiles. Can you deal with that sort of thing?”
“Provided I’m not having a bad day.”
Baskin extended his own finger at the scans, wavering under the effort. “These cratered emplacements are most likely the sites of their kinetic batteries. I suggest a surgical strike against all of them, including the ones around the other side of Mundar. Can you do it?”
“Twelve charm-torps should take care of them. Which is handy, because that’s all I’ve got left. We’ll still have the gamma-cannons and the nova-mine launchers, if things get sticky.”
“If I know Struxer, they will.” Something twitched in Baskin’s cheek, some nervous, betraying tic. “But the deaths will be all on his side, not ours. If that’s the cost of enforcing peace, so be it.”
Merlin eyed him carefully. “I’ve never been very good with that sort of calculus.”
“None of us like it,” Baskin said.
Teal went off to catch some sleep until they approached the attack threshold. Merlin grabbed a few hours as well, but his rest was fitful and he soon found himself returning to the command deck, watching as the scans slowly sharpened and their view of Mundar grew more precise. Tyrant was using passive sensors now, but these were already improving on the earlier active snapshot. Merlin was understandably on edge, though. They were backing toward the asteroid, and if there was ever a chance of their exhaust emissions being picked up, now was the time. Merlin had done what he could, trading deceleration efficiency for a constantly altering thrust angle that ought to provide maximum cover, but nothing was guaranteed.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Baskin said, pinching at the corners of his eyes as he entered the room. “You’ve barely slept since we left Havergal, have you?”
“You don’t look much more refreshed, Prince.”
“I know—I saw myself in the mirror just now. Sometimes when I look at my own portrait, I barely recognise myself. I think I can be excused a little anxiety, though. So much depends on the next few hours, Merlin. I think these may be the most critical hours of my entire career. My entire life, even.”
Merlin waited until the Prince had taken his seat, folding his bones with care. “You mentioned Struxer back there.”
“Did I?”
“The intelligence briefings told me very little, Prince—even the confidential files I lifted from your sealed archives on Havergal. But you spoke as if you knew the man.”
“Struxer was one of us. That was never any sort of secret.”
“A senior tactician, that’s what I was told. That sounds like quite a high-up role to me. Struxer wasn’t
just some anonymous military minion, was he?”
After a moment Baskin said: “He was known to me. As of course were all the high-ranking strategists.”
“Was Struxer involved in the Tactician?”
If Baskin meant to hide his hesitation, he did a poor job of it. “To a degree. The Tactician required a large staff, not just to coordinate the feeding-in of intelligence data, but to analyse and act on the results. The battle computers I mentioned . . . ”
“But Struxer was close to it all, wasn’t he?” Merlin was guessing now, relying on hard-won intuition, but Baskin’s reactions were all he needed to know he was on the right track. “He worked closely with the computer.”
“His defection was . . . regrettable.”
“If you can call it a defection. That would depend on what those brigands actually want, wouldn’t it? And no one’s been terribly clear on that with me.”
Baskin’s face was strained. “They’re against peace. Is there anything more you need to know?”
Merlin smiled, content with that line of questioning for now. “Prince, might I ask you something else? You know I took an interest in your constitutional history when we were on Havergal. Assassinations are commonplace, aren’t they? There was that time when almost the entire ruling house of Havergal was wiped out in one strike . . . ”
“That was twelve or thirteen centuries ago.”
“But only a little after the visitation of the Shrike. That was why it caught my eye.”
“No other reason?”
“Should there be?”
“Don’t play games with me, Merlin—you’ll always lose. I was the boy who dreamed of war, remember.”
The door behind them opened. It was Teal, awake sooner than Merlin had expected. Her face had a freshly scrubbed look, her hair wetted down.
“Are we close?”
“About thirty minutes out,” Merlin said. “Buckle in, Teal—it could get interesting from any point onwards, especially if their sensors are a little better than the Prince believes.”
Teal slipped into the vacant seat. Befitting her Cohort training, she had adapted well to the two gees, moving around Tyrant with a confident, sinewy ease.
“Have you run that genetic scan again?” she asked.
“I have,” Merlin said. “And I came up with the same result, only at a higher confidence level. Do you want to tell him, or should I?” “Tell me what?” Baskin asked.
“There’s a glitch in your family tree,” Merlin said, then nodded at Teal for her to continue.
“I’ve already been to your world,” she said, delivering the words with a defiant and brazen confidence. “I was on the diplomatic party, aboard the swallowship Shrike. I was with them when they sold you the syrinx.” Before he had a chance to voice his disbelief, she said: “A little later, our ship ran into trouble in a nearby system. The Huskers took us, wrecked the ship, but left just enough of us alive to suffer. We went into frostwatch, those of us who remained. And one by one we died, when the frostwatch failed. I was the last living survivor. Then Merlin found me, and we returned to your system. You know this to be possible, Prince. You know of frostwatch, of near-light travel, of time-compression.”
“I suppose . . . ” he said.
“But there’s more to it than that,” Teal went on. “My daughter stayed on Havergal. She became Cupis, Queen Cupis, after Tierce was promoted to the throne. You said it yourself, Prince: there was something in my face you thought you recognised. It’s your own lineage, your own family tree.”
“Except it isn’t, quite,” Merlin said. “You see, you’re not related, and you should be. I ran a genetic cross-match between the two of you on Havergal, and another since you’ve been on Tyrant. Both say there’s no correlation, which is odd given the family tree. But I think there’s a fairly simple explanation.”
Baskin glanced from Merlin to Teal and back to Merlin, his eyes wide, doubting and slightly fearful. “Which would be?”
“You’re not Prince Baskin,” Merlin said. “You just think you are.”
“Don’t be absurd. My entire life has been lived in the public eye, subject to the harshest scrutiny.”
Merlin did his best not to sound too callous, nor give the impression that he took any pleasure in disclosing what he now knew to be the truth. “There’s no doubt, I’m afraid. If you were really of royal blood, I’d know it. The only question is where along your family tree the birth line was broken, and why. And I think I know the answer to that, as well . . . ”
The console chimed. Merlin turned to it with irritation, but a glance told him that the ship had every reason to demand his attention. A signal was beaming out at them, straight from Mundar.
“That isn’t possible,” Baskin said. “We’re still three light seconds out— much too far for their sensors.”
Teal said: “Perhaps you should see what it says.”
The transmission used local protocols, but it only took an instant for Tyrant to unscramble the packets and resolve them into a video signal. A man’s head appeared above the console, backdropped by a roughly hewn wall of pale rock. Merlin recognised the face as belonging to Struxer, but only because he had paid close attention to the intelligence briefings. Otherwise it would have been easy to miss the similarities. This Struxer was thinner of face, somehow more delicate of bone structure, older and wearier looking, than the cold-eyed defector Merlin had been expecting.
He started speaking in a high steady voice, babbling out a string of words in the Havergal tongue. Tyrant was listening in, but it would be a little while before it could offer a reliable translation.
Merlin turned to Teal.
“What’s he saying?”
“I’m just as capable of telling you,” Baskin said.
Merlin nodded. “But I’d sooner hear it from Teal.”
“He’s got a fix on you,” she said, frowning slightly as she caught up with the stream of words. “Says he’s had a lock since the moment you were silly enough to turn those scanning systems onto Mundar. Says you must have thought they were idiots, to miss something that obvious. Also that we’re not as stealthy as we think we are, judging by the ease with which he’s tracking our engine signature.”
“You fool,” Baskin hissed. “I told you it was a risk.”
“He says he knows what our intentions are,” Teal went on. “But no matter how much force you throw at them they’re not going to relinquish the Iron Tactician. He says to turn back now, and avoid unnecessary violence.”
Merlin gritted teeth. “Ship, get ready to send a return transmission using the same channel and protocols. Teal, you’re doing the talking. Tell Struxer I’ve no axe to grind with him or his brigands, and if we can do this without bloodshed no one’ll be happier than me. Also that I can take apart that asteroid as easily as if it’s a piece of rotten fruit.”
Baskin gave a thin smile, evidently liking Merlin’s tone.
“Belligerent enough for you, was it?” Merlin asked, while Teal leaned in and translated Merlin’s reply.
“Threats and force are what they understand,” Baskin said.
It took three seconds for Teal’s statement to reach Mundar, and another three for Struxer’s response to find its way back to Tyrant. They listened to what he had to say, Merlin needing no translator to tell him that Struxer’s answer was a great deal more strident than before.
“You can forget about them handing it over without a struggle,” Teal said. “And he says that we’d be very wise not to put Mundar’s armaments to the test, now that the Iron Tactician’s coordinating its own defence plans. They’ve got every weapon on that asteroid hooked directly into the Tactician, and they’re prepared to let it protect itself.”
“They’d still be outgunned,” Merlin said. But even he couldn’t quite disguise the profound unease he was beginning to feel.
“It’s a bluff,” Baskin said. “The Tactician has no concept of its own self-preservation.”
“Can you be sure?” Teal
asked.
“Tell Struxer this,” Merlin said. “Surrender the Iron Tactician and I won’t lay a finger on that asteroid. All they have to do is bring it to the surface—my proctors can take care of the rest.”
Teal relayed the statement. Struxer barked back his answer, which was monosyllabic enough to require no translation.
“He says if we want it, we should try taking it,” Teal said.
Merlin nodded—he had been expecting as much, but it had seemed worth his while to make one last concession at a negotiated settlement. “Ship, give me manual fire control on the torp racks. We’re a little further out than I’d like, but it’ll give me time to issue a warning. I’m taking out those kinetic batteries.”
“You have control, Merlin,” Tyrant said.
Baskin asked: “Are you sure it isn’t too soon?”
Merlin gave his reply by means of issuing the firing command. Tyrant pushed out its ventral weapons racks and the charm-torps sped away with barely a twitch of recoil. Only a pattern of moving nodes on the targeting display gave any real hint that the weapons had been deployed.
“Torps armed and running,” Tyrant said.
“Teal, tell them they have a strike on its way. They’ve got a few minutes to move their people deeper into the asteroid, if they aren’t already there. My intention is to disable their defences, not to take lives. Make sure Struxer understands that.”
Teal was in the middle of delivering her message when Tyrant jolted violently and without warning. It was a sideways impulse, harsh enough to bruise bones, and for a moment Merlin could only stare at the displays, as shocked as he had been when Teal had slapped him across the face.
Then there was another jolt, in the opposite direction, and he understood.