Ninth Euclid's Prince

by Daniel M. Hoyt

  The port master explained to me how each ship, from the smallest personal jumper to the largest starship, automatically registered with the jumpport upon entry and exit with its autoreg, a required part of every ship, like the autonav and a comlink. The port master claimed he needed to know every ship parked in the port.

  “See this?” the port master bragged, as a list scrolled on a screen. “All the ships are here.”

  An eidetic memory was the single most useful trait I inherited from my father, and I thanked him for it now. I memorized each of the ships on the list effortlessly, hoping I might be able to use the information later, convinced that it was important, somehow.

  We chatted some more, until the port master was called away on more important business. On an impulse, I asked if I could get a tour of the bays, and the port master sent me off with one of his men, Guillaume. We poked into all the nooks and crannies, and Guillaume told me all the intimate details of each of the heirs’ starships, including cruising speed and top speed. With each ship, he recited its specifications and origins.

  “I’ve worked the morning shift for a year,” Guillaume explained. “Nothing much happens around here after daybreak, so I read a lot about the ships harbored here. It’s odd; everybody seems to be in an awful hurry to get here before breakfast.”

  I nodded patiently, electing not to enrich his understanding of palace politics. Arriving after breakfast could change an heir’s standing so fast, he needn’t bother landing when he was late.

  We passed by a sleek little ship called the Raven, not much bigger than a jumpyacht, but I didn’t remember seeing it on the list the port master brought up — and that had included the jumpers. Mentally, I compared the list to the ships I had already seen. I was surprised to find that I’d seen all but six. I scanned the bays and located the other ships, then double checked my results.

  The Raven wasn’t on the list.

  “Is this one broken,” I said, flipping a hand nonchalantly at the Raven. “You didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Oh, that one,” Guillaume said nervously. “We’re not supposed to talk about it, that’s all. Hush hush.” He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Noir’s personal starship, but don’t tell anybody.”

  I assured him I wouldn’t. “A starship,” I whispered, with genuine admiration. “I’ve never seen one that small before.”

  Guillaume looked like he’d swallowed his tongue. Clearly he was making an effort not to talk about something he wasn’t supposed to know about.

  We looked at the next ship and Guillaume told me about it. “—to Old Earth in a week, one of the fastest ships here right now, since the Phoenix left last night.” He looked around conspiratorially and lowered his voice. “Except for that Raven back there. They say she can do it in three days.” He held up three fingers for emphasis and grinned, like a little boy proudly announcing his age on his third birthday.

  I didn’t need to try to look impressed. The Raven was almost twice as fast as Lady Redwing’s ship, and the Phoenix was a scorcher. I wondered how Noir had managed to find such a fast star drive without Lord Oswald knowing about its existence. Maybe it was a special drive, built just for Noir?

  We finished the tour, and I ticked off the last five ships mentally, impatient to get back to the comlink area. I had a burning question I needed to ask, but I couldn’t ask Guillaume or the port master without arousing their suspicion. I thanked Guillaume for the tour and wandered back to the comlink area with the excuse that I needed to check on their success raising the Phoenix for Lord Oswald.

  The port master wasn’t in, as I had hoped, so I checked with the technician on duty.

  “No response yet,” he said. “I can keep trying every now and then if you want.”

  I told him I wanted exactly that, then changed the subject. “The port master told me about those autoreg things earlier. You mean we’ve had one in our ship all this time?”

  “Sure,” the tech said.

  “And it does all the registration coming in and going out all by itself?”

  “That’s why they call it an autoreg.” The tech looked at me like I was a simpleton, then showed me the same list the port master had displayed. “See? All of them.”

  It was time for the burning question. “Can you do one manually? You know, add in a ship yourself when the autoreg doesn’t work or something?”

  The tech tensed. “No!” he said vehemently. “Don’t even talk like that; it’s illegal to tamper with those records.” He relaxed somewhat, but he was still obviously nervous. “Besides, the autoreg is a vital part of the design. It’s way up inside the belly, so that you can’t break it by accident. If you do break it, you’re in a heap of trouble. The ship won’t fly.”

  “So,” I said, hopefully covering my tracks enough to thwart any suspicion, “even if the tech falls asleep and doesn’t notice the Phoenix returning, the list will tell us when she’s back.”

  “Right.”

  “Nobody can fool us by adding or deleting the ship from the list?”

  “Exactly. Can’t be done. Why?”

  “Nothing,” I said casually. “Some friends have been playing practical jokes on us, recently. I just want to make sure we don’t miss the Phoenix when she gets back.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” the tech said, patting the comlink console. “We’ll know the instant she puts in.”

  I smiled and thanked him for his time before rushing back to my Lord’s palace suite.

  Lord Oswald was there, as I’d expected. We made token appearances for lunch and dinner, naturally, our seating arrangements having been returned to their pre-Redwing configuration, but the bulk of the day we spent in the suite, talking about problems and solutions.

  Succession announcements didn’t come along every day, and this one couldn’t be treated lightly. Generally, an emperor didn’t feel the need to make one unless he felt that he was close to dying, he wanted his heirs to avoid an all-out civil war, or he felt that the most favored heir wasn’t suitable for the job. Since Prince Vere was born and bred for the job, the last possibility probably wasn’t likely. A civil war was likely if Prince Vere wasn’t named — and quite possible if he was — and the emperor had been close to death for at least ten years, so either of those explanations was possible.

  Since Prince Vere was the favorite, and he was a suitable successor, it seemed likely that Emperor Seraphim just wanted to formalize what everybody else suspected before he died. However, somebody had been killing heirs recently, and the prime suspect was the fair-haired prince. Why would he do that if his succession was assured? Did he know something that we didn’t?

  Assuming Prince Vere wasn’t named, then who would it be?

  Suppose Prince Oswald were named. Vere would certainly contest it when the time came to take the reins. Civil war wouldn’t begin to describe the carnage if that happened.

  Add to that my suspicion that Prince Oswald didn’t actually want to be an emperor. He already shirked responsibilities as much as possible, why would he want the pressures of an empire? For that matter, would his performance in office make him a prime candidate for assassination, anyway?

  What if neither prince were named? Again, Vere would press for a civil war. All of the heirs would get pulled into it, forced to choose a side.

  Maybe the emperor wasn’t going to name Vere. I couldn’t see any other reason to name a successor otherwise, since Vere was the favorite by far.

  So, what was the volatile Lady Redwing’s role, then? Did it matter if she was a no-show for the succession announcement?

  Suppose the emperor was thinking about naming one of the heirs, but not either prince. The emperor and his wife liked Lady Redwing, and the emperor even had emotional ties to her family. Would his successor care? Was there any real advantage to Lord Oswald to have her confidence? I wasn’t sure.

  But suppose the emperor was thinking about naming Prince Oswald. Would Lady Redwing’s absence cause him to reconsider
and change his mind? Would he name someone else instead?

  Something else about Lady Redwing’s relationship with the emperor had been bothering me for a while, and I didn’t put it together until then. It was marginally possible that the emperor felt the need to name a successor because he was going to name someone indistinct, such as Lady Redwing’s future spouse, whomever that would be. The lady instantly would find more suitors than she could handle, and Lord Oswald’s apparent indifference to her affections would not bode well for his chances at winning her hand — if he even wanted to try after an announcement like that.

  Or maybe the emperor was planning to break with tradition and name Lady Redwing herself. There was no law against naming a lady as an heir, it was just a long-held tradition that heirs were always men. That kind of a radical departure would necessitate an announcement, if the emperor had any hope for his decision being accepted.

  If either of the two dark horse candidates were named, it was vital that Lady Redwing appeared at the succession announcement party. After all, she’d be the guest of honor.

  And if the emperor planned to name Prince Oswald, Lady Redwing needed to appear before the party, just in case she was one of the emperor’s decision factors.

  My Lord might not want to be emperor, but he knew it was a better option than ending up with his head on a spike because the new emperor didn’t like him. When in doubt, choose to live.

  Lord Oswald and I finished our discussions about an hour after dinner. Lady Redwing needed to come back to New Rome, and fast. I knew the lady fairly well by that time, and I didn’t expect her to respond any time soon, so that meant we — or at least one of us — needed to go and retrieve her. Forcibly, if necessary.

  The fastest registered starship in the jumpport could make the trip to Oasis and back in barely enough time, but there was a snag. It belonged to Lord Sumter, now deceased, with my Lord the accused. It didn’t seem likely that his survivors would be likely to allow Prince Oswald the luxury of borrowing his ship for a few days. For that matter, I didn’t think any of the heirs would willingly allow the prince the loan of a ship.

  However, there was one unregistered starship that could do it, at least according to the jumpport tech, Guillaume, with plenty of time to spare. The Raven, Lord Noir’s apparently clandestine vessel.

  I didn’t think much of my Lord’s plan, and I told him so. We’d have to borrow the Raven without Noir’s permission, and not get caught doing it. And gain entry to the ship without setting off any alarms.

  And I’d have to do it alone.

  Lord Oswald felt that his absence would raise too many alarms, and he didn’t trust a task this delicate to one of his Angels. I’d have to do it. And if I got caught, it had to be my own idea; the prince couldn’t have prior knowledge.

  My Lord suggested that I go back to the jumpport that night and assess the feasibility of his plan, see if there was a way to get on the starship undetected. I already knew the answer, but I grudgingly agreed.

  I found a black knit cap to hide my blue hair, and put on some black clothes. I recruited one of Oswald’s Angels to distract the jumpport techs while I sneaked around the bays.

  With the black cap and clothes, I looked like a shadow. It reminded me of the nights I sneaked off to the south barn back on Daddy’s farm, before I dyed my hair blue. My heart raced as I skulked around in the bays, dashing from the shadowy cover of one spaceship to another. I found the Raven, and inspected as much of her as I could from the safety of the shadows.

  I was hiding underneath the starship, looking for some means of entry, when a hatch on the ship opened on the far side of the fuselage, out of the jumpport tech’s line of sight.

  Two people stood in the hatchway, talking and laughing.

  “Just leave it to me, Vere,” one of them said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  My heart and breathing both stopped. It was Lord Noir, and he was clearing talking to Prince Vere.

  They climbed out the hatch and went around the side of the ship, but the hatch stayed open. I glanced around and saw no one, so I crept out from the shadow and peeked inside the hatch. I still didn’t see anyone.

  My heart pounding in my chest, I slipped into the Raven cautiously. Standing just inside the hatchway, out of sight, I listened carefully for any sounds, but I heard none. I made my way to the pilot station and looked around. Most of the manual controls were familiar, and I decided that I probably could fly the thing if I really wanted to — which I didn’t.

  The craft seemed well cared for, and there wasn’t a gadget I’d heard of that wasn’t there. In fact, there were a few that I didn’t recognize. One such was a button marked Reg Defeat. Given my previous conversations with the jumpport techs, I had a pretty good idea that this control was what prevented the Raven from showing up on the automatic entry and exit manifests.

  Satisfied with my inspection of the pilot and navigation controls, I made my way around the ship slowly, poking into each of the cabins to get a better idea of what was on the ship. There was a hallway running in a circle inside the ship, rather than the straight spine that was typical of a jumpyacht. The center section was locked; I assumed it housed the star drive and other engineering controls and facilities. The cabins were all set on the outside of the hallway, so that each cabin included a section of the outer hull. I found the expected captain’s cabin and crew cabins, as well as the galley and requisite washing and bathing facilities.

  I almost felt a little disappointed that I didn’t find a locked room somewhere with a big flashing warning sign on it telling intruders to keep out or die. The interior of the Raven didn’t seem at all sinister, unlike her owner.

  I made my way all the way around to the pilot’s station again before I realized that the hatchway was closed. Panicked, I stole around the hallway again in the opposite direction as the first time, double-checking all the cabins, just to make sure I was alone.

  I was. And I was trapped.

  The hatchway was shut tight, and I had no clue how to get it open again. There should have been buttons or something nearby that opened it, but I pressed everything I could find and nothing happened.

  Leaning up against the hallway, I considered my options. I could stay on the ship and wait for someone to come in again, and then, hopefully, I could sneak out while nobody was looking. Hopefully, but not likely. Alternatively, I could fly this bird out of the jumpport in stealth mode and hope nobody came after me. Under normal circumstances, I’d say that was an exceptionally bad idea, but Noir had just left the starship. If my Lord’s Angel had been keeping the jumpport tech busy as he was supposed to be doing, there was a possibility he might not realize that Lord Noir had left the ship, and that he was just going out somewhere.

  There was the matter of the flight plan and permission to leave Eternity III, but I was betting that a ship with an automatic registration defeat probably had some other measures to deal with those things, too.

  It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much of a choice at that point. If I was found inside the locked starship, Noir might not take kindly to the intrusion.

  My Lord’s plan was going into motion, whether I wanted any part of it or not.

  I took a deep breath and headed for the pilot’s chair. The first think I did was check all the unknown controls for anything that looked like it might help me with a stealth departure. I engaged the automatic registration defeat and started up the launch sequence, then pressed a button marked Silent. I wasn’t sure what it did, but it looked promising.

  The starship shuddered slightly as it lifted off, and it swung out of the bay smoothly, headed for the sky.

  “Raven pilot,” the comlink crackled. “Identify yourself, please, file your destination and await permission.”

  My blood ran cold. I’d been spotted. What should I do now? Give them a fake destination and hope Lord Noir wasn’t hanging around the comlink room? Or tell them Oasis and take my chances? Would I even get permission?

  Woul
d my voice be recognized?

  It struck me then that this whole escapade was a really stupid idea. It seemed reasonable at the time, but now I could see all the flaws in the plan, most of which seemed to end up with me in some kind of prison. The problem, of course, was that I was now committed. I couldn’t really claim that I’d accidentally taken off.

  “Raven,” the comlink boomed again, the tech clearly impatient. “Who are you? What’s your destination?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. Should I just give up now?

  Pulling off my cap, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and prayed for a miracle.

  “Greengarden,” a high voice behind me said through a comlink.

  Nearly falling out of the chair, I spun around, surprised to find that I wasn’t alone on the ship.

  An attractive platinum blonde lady stood a few feet away from me, with a burner pointed at my head. She wore a unisex jumpsuit, the type the jumpport techs wore, and she raised a finger to her lips, indicating I should remain silent.

  She smiled at me and said, “This is Lady Willow Vere. I need to return home for an emergency.”

  Chapter 13

  Willow's Passenger

  THE RAVEN TILTED UP TOWARD THE ATMOSPHERE as soon as New Rome’s jumpport cleared Lady Vere. I stared at her.

  She pocketed the burner. “So, Euclid, where do you really want to go?” She gestured at the pilot’s console. “New Rome set an automatic course for us to Greengarden.”

  I was still in shock.

  “Oasis?” she suggested.

  I nodded.

  “Good,” she said, and sat down in the copilot’s chair. Her fingers tapped the console, while she brought up the star maps and laid in the new coordinates. She was about to press the Reg Defeat and Silent buttons, but noticed they were already engaged. “Very good,” she said, glancing at me and smiling. She sat back and grinned. “New course, Oasis,” she said aloud. “Do it.”