9
WHILE I WAS not pleased to be caught up in what appeared to be a Jerrazis trap, or at best some awful sideline for a year, I was delighted to discover that the INS Zwaktuzh Dawn was an automated ship, crewed only by two Priests of the Aspect of the Rigorous Engineer and half a dozen mekbi service drones. Which meant that I could assume command instead of just be a passenger.
As I’d wanted a ship since basically forever, I immediately took advantage of this and swore myself in to the command with the Imperial Mind, whose laconic confirmation couldn’t match the excitement I felt.
:Prince Khemri > taking command INS Zwaktuzh Dawn >>:
The Zwaktuzh Dawn didn’t hold up very well compared to the ships of my childhood daydreams or the Prince Garikm sims. She wasn’t much to look at, specification-wise or in actuality, being just a cargo hauler. Her hull was a hollowed-out piece of millennia-old space junk, a million-tonne spheroid of some long-extinct star-faring culture’s industrially created material that was of a similar toughness to our best Mektek hulls. A relatively modern command-control-habitat module had been stuck into a tunnel bored into the top of the sphere, and a series of Bitek thrusters had been grown onto it around its equatorial ring.
The wormhole drive was the old Mektek one. While it had the advantage of needing far fewer priests than a Psitek drive, this was more than counterbalanced by the fact that it was considerably slower in wormhole transit; and even more significantly, if the Psitek drive failed, you lost only the priests, whereas a Mektek wormhole drive failure usually resulted in an antimatter explosion. On the bright side, according to Uncle Rerrunk, this was very unlikely to happen, and even if it did, the command and accommodation modules would probably survive.
The ship was armed with a number of travelling turrets that moved on a railway system around the hull into different configurations as required, but I soon discovered that only half a dozen of the full fifty turrets were operational, and these six contained short-range interdiction guns, suitable just for intercepting low-grade missile or projectile attacks.
More usefully, there was a launch tunnel with a mothballed Kragor-class singleship inside. Though even older than the Academy’s Jerragors, a Kragor-class singleship carried serious armament, and while it was mothballed, there was a full fit-out of stores for the ship aboard.
There was also plenty of room for the extra priests I had collected. Getting promoted to lieutenant had earned me four more, this time two from the Aspect of the Joyful Companion and one each from Roving Seeker and the Wrathful Foe. I don’t know where Haddad got them, or how they were vetted, but by the time it came to launch, the night of my graduation, they were all aboard, along with another dozen of Haddad’s apprentice assassins who had mysteriously arrived aboard the Zwaktuzh Dawn, even though they must have got aboard well before I was informed by the Imperial Mind that I was going to be travelling on her.
I asked Haddad about this as Kwanantil Nine dwindled in the viewscreen of the bridge. I glanced once at what I suppose was my first real adult home, but I felt no twinges of homesickness or regret. I was glad to be out of the place. The only person I would miss on any level was Tyrtho, but that was tempered by the knowledge that at some time in the future we were far more likely to be rivals than allies. I might have to kill her, or be killed.
‘My apprentices travelling in on the Zwaktuzh is simply a coincidence, Highness,’ replied Haddad. ‘This ship was the first available transport from Bereskizh Five, their temple. However, it has proved fortuitous, as I had tasked these apprentices with the training exercise of surveying the ship they came in on and ensuring it was secure for Your Highness. That has allowed us to board more swiftly and depart ahead of time.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t know about my transfer in advance?’ I asked again. I often felt not only that Haddad was smarter than I, which was of course not possible, but that he was also somehow leading me down a particular path, or at least could see a lot farther ahead than I could.
‘No, Highness,’ replied Haddad.
‘Well, we have three weeks of nothing much to do,’ I replied. ‘I think I shall retire to my quarters with my courtesans and masseur, while Lazkro and his chefs cook up a feast.’
Haddad coughed.
‘I regret that this will not be possible, Highness. I thought you were aware when you made the decision to command this vessel, rather than be a passenger, that this made it an on-duty activity for the duration, and consequently we have left the civilian component of your household behind, to join us by other transport in due course.’
‘What!’ I shrieked. ‘You . . . you should have warned me!’
‘I regret I did not, Highness,’ replied Haddad, his head bowed.
I smashed my fist into my hand, truly angry for a moment, before I wondered if my face was going red like Huzand’s used to, and breathed my anger out. I didn’t want to be that kind of Prince.
‘Oh well, I suppose I’ll find something else to occupy my time,’ I said.
‘May I suggest duelling practice, Highness?’ asked Haddad. ‘And I would recommend reactivating the singleship aboard, a process you will need to oversee personally.’
Like I said, Haddad was always looking several steps ahead. I’m sure if I hadn’t taken command of the ship, Haddad would have found some other way to leave my courtesans, cooks, and masseur behind.
He was right that I needed the duelling practice. We had lessons at the Academy, and I did the required practice, but lessons with Haddad were much more intense. He took over one of the empty holds, a space as big as an amphitheatre, and had it rigged for rapid configuration of different habitats, terrains, and structures. Our duels ranged across all manner of possible fighting grounds and all the traditional weapons, like sword, pistol, and nerve-lash, and some of the stranger ones that Haddad said were sometimes chosen for advantage, like bolt-and-cable guns or roulette blasters, which, though apparently random, could be gamed.
I also worked with one of the ship’s engineers and my own Aunt Viviax and Uncle Rerrunk activating the Kragor singleship. Many of its Mektek modules had to be replaced and its Bitek components regrown, and I learned more about singleship engineering from helping the three priests than I had from all the download lessons at the Academy.
Particularly since the official experiences I’d been imprinted with were sometimes simply wrong. I couldn’t believe this at first and argued with the priests the first time it happened, but it was brought totally home when I was assisting with the armament load and tried to manoeuvre a kinetic sliver into its launcher the wrong way around, the overlay in my head completely at odds with the reality of the missile.
The mere fact that it was possible to load it completely the wrong way around, and that my imprinted knowledge was incorrect, shook me quite a lot. I wondered what other data that had been put in my head was false, and I resolved that in the future, I would always try to get practical, actual experience of my own to test the downloaded learning experiences.
I also spent time with Haddad talking about my immediate future, and what my strange promotion and posting actually meant.
‘Prince Jerrazis very likely requested your transfer to his headquarters in order to have you assassinated or killed in a duel, in retribution for the death of Commandant Huzand,’ explained Haddad. ‘The Grand Admiral almost certainly owed Jerrazis a favour and promoted you to assist Jerrazis in this aim, removing the option you had of leaving the Navy. But then other influences came to bear. It is unclear what purpose, if any, the Imperial Mind has in shunting you from Rozaxra HQ to this supply station. Uncle Naljalk has calculated that the highest probabilities are roughly equal for two scenarios: one, that the Mind has placed you somewhere out of the way so that Jerrazis will forget about you; or two, that it has done so to facilitate your removal by Jerrazis.’
‘Great!’ I muttered. ‘I get a boring job and I have to be extra careful!’
‘You will al
ways have to be extra careful, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘This is the life of a Prince.’
‘When you say the Mind might be facilitating my removal by Jerrazis, what exactly do you mean?’ I asked. ‘The Emperor might want me dead?’
‘While the Imperial Mind does express the will of the Emperor Hierself, it is not always the specific personal will of the Emperor,’ said Haddad. ‘Most of the time it simply adjudicates between the competing interests of Princes to achieve the best result for the Empire. It may be that in this relatively small interaction of Jerrazis’s revenge versus your future potential, it has come down on the side of Jerrazis. But it is equally possible it is trying to preserve you, or there may even be some other explanation.’
I thought about that for a minute. I’d hoped that Huzand’s death would get me out of this unearned Jerrazis enmity, but it seemed I’d attracted the negative attention of the boss man of that House himself. If he was really out to get me, and deployed the full assets of House Jerrazis, I didn’t have a chance.
Unless I could somehow counterattack. I had an idea about that, though it was typically a not very practical or well-formed notion.
‘Haddad, tell me what you know about how a Prince is chosen to be the next Emperor.’
‘I know very little, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘The abdication is in less than a year. Three months before Abdication Day, a cohort of one thousand Princes will be announced as Imperial candidates at the Imperial Core. But what happens after that is a mystery. None of the candidates are ever seen again, but they are not recorded as permanently dead or missing, just listed as candidates forever after. One of them becomes the Emperor. It is not known what happens to the others, nor is it known who ascends to the Imperial Throne. Considerable analysis is always ordered by Princes at the beginning of a new reign to see if patterns of decision making or favouritism indicate the successful Prince of the thousand candidates. Sometimes particular Houses have been favoured in new reigns, but I do not believe the analysis has ever been able to narrow down this sort of data to conclusively establish which particular candidate has ascended the throne.’
‘So I can’t count on becoming the next Emperor,’ I said. ‘As a means of getting Jerrazis before he gets me.’
‘It would be best not to make any actual plans based on that eventuality,’ agreed Haddad, without apparent humour. ‘Given the disparity of experience and power between you and Jerrazis, Highness, perhaps the best course of action is simply to be on guard, present a small target . . . and continue with your duelling practice. There are two thousand three hundred and five members of the Jerrazis House who currently hold the rank of lieutenant or its equivalent in other services, and every one of these is a potential challenger. A duel is the most likely way that House Jerrazis will target you.’
‘Let’s practise, then,’ I agreed.
At least it took my mind off my bleak future.
The future looked no less bleak as we made our fifth and final wormhole transition into the Arokh-Pipadh system. There was only the one wormhole exit and only one wormhole entrance, which was fairly unusual. Most systems had multiple wormhole exits and entrances. Arokh-Pipadh was really out of the way, and having only one pathway back to Imperial space made it feel even more like a trap to me.
The system itself was also very uninspiring. It had no planets as such, just a bunch of big asteroids and two broad bands of much smaller rocks and dust. Its star was blue, and too damned bright, even way out in the tenth orbit where the wormhole spat us out into local space.
I was sitting in the command seat of the Kragor singleship as we emerged, on the advice of Haddad. An armed and hostile reception committee was unlikely, but even at the 0.01 possibility calculated by Uncle Naljalk, that was enough for Haddad to be cautious.
As per standard procedure, the first thing I did was to connect to the Imperial Mind. At least that was the first thing I tried. But nothing happened.
:Haddad. No connection to the Mind! Are we being blocked?:
:No, Highness. It appears we are too remote and have insufficient priests for the relay distance:
:Are there any hostiles in system? Do we have communication with the supply station? Why isn’t there a guard ship on this wormhole exit?:
:No hostiles on ship scans or Psitek reach. We’re deep in Imperial space, Highness. It is not unusual for the wormhole to be unguarded. Frekwo and Aleakh are sending to the station now, and will relay if we achieve comms:
:Should I launch?:
Of course, I just wanted to fly the Kragor. Even six months before, I would have just launched without asking for Haddad’s advice. But I had learned a little caution. Day by day, in a small way, I was getting smarter.
:Strongly advise against launch, Highness. We have connection with the station . . . and they are now relaying to the Mind:
I could almost sense an undercurrent of relief in Haddad’s mindspeech. Or maybe it was just an echo of my own feelings. After all, it could have been a big, nasty trap. Jerrazis could have had a ship waiting to take us out and, with no connection to the Mind, would probably have got away with it.
I guess I wasn’t worth that much trouble.
We docked at the supply station twenty-six hours later. I’d managed to get one short, seriously high-G flight in the Kragor, which was fun. And I’d blown up a chunk of cometary rock with a kinetic sliver, ditto.
Now, as I waited for my welcoming interview with Commodore Elzweko in my newly fabricated field uniform with a lieutenant’s green epaulettes and (unpowered) medal and wound badge, I internally said goodbye to all things fun.
The station was a metallic asteroid some two hundred kilometres long and eighty kilometres in diameter at its widest point, with the addition of an exterior layer of ice a few kilometres thick along two-thirds of its length. The ice had been removed in the last third in order to emplace various Imperial installations like the starship dock, though as per usual most of the base was bored deep into the asteroid itself.
The first thing I noticed on arrival was that the place stank, and I really mean stank. It had a stench that was worse than the Bitek sludge I’d fallen into at the Academy, and for a similar reason. The initial information I’d got from the Mind had failed to include the salient point that the Arokh-Pipadh Supply Station was a Bitek Resource Growth Centre, not a general storage facility.
In other words, the whole place was a cross between a vast botanic garden, a zoo, and a compost pit. It smelled of fertiliser, animal excrement, and the Emperor knew what else. Most likely some kind of horrible alien shit.
And lucky me was going to be one of the two Princes in charge of the whole place, as I discovered when I delved further into the Mind. There was just the Commodore and myself, some three thousand priests from the Aspect of the Kindly Gardener and the Aspect of the Companion of Life, an equivalent number of mekbi drone workers, and a single company of mekbi troopers, which would undoubtedly come to be my particular responsibility, bringing an awesome load of additional administrative tasks and the danger of being tracked into future Marine assignments.
‘Please enter, Highness,’ said the priest who opened the Commodore’s door. He appeared to be wearing a kind of smock and was holding a spraying device, fortunately pointed at the ground. I looked at it carefully for a moment, wary of some Bitek attack, but I was connected to the Mind and witnessing, and Haddad was close to me. I went in. The priest turned aside and began to spray a large trefoil plant near the door with nothing more complex than water.
The Commodore’s office smelled as well, but even more strongly, with good reason. It was a big room, but one half of it was occupied by a banked-up pile of earth in which there were numerous growing plants. There was also a pile of what could only be some form of animal manure.
The Commodore—and believe me, I checked his identity broadcast twice—was digging into the pile with a shovel. He was taller and broader than me; in fact he was considerably larger than most Princes, and as he
was wearing only a pair of field uniform shorts, his impressive muscles were well displayed. He grunted as he lifted a shovel load of dung and flung it between a row of plants, then drove the shovel back into the pile and turned to me.
He smiled as I saluted, and waved several fingers in the air. Like many Princes of an older generation, he had a full beard and a long moustache, both of which had quite a lot of dirt caught in the yellow hair. At least I hoped it was dirt.
‘Lieutenant Khemri,’ he said jovially. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’
I snapped my hand down.
‘Thank you, sir. It’s . . . uh . . . good to be here.’
‘Excellent! Excellent!’ boomed Elzweko. ‘Nice to meet you. Now I suppose you’d best go straight on through.’
He pointed to the far end of his vegetable patch or whatever it was. There were taller plants there, and even a luxuriant stand of bamboo. Looking closer, I saw a path made from wooden slats between the bamboo, a path that led into a darkness resistant to all my various visual faculties.
‘I see,’ I said, even though I couldn’t see.
I turned back to Haddad to ask him if he’d known about this all along. But he had gone, and so had the other priest.
‘Hurry along, Lieutenant,’ said Elzweko. There was no cheer in his voice now.
Still I hesitated. Could this be a trap after all?
:Take the path through the bamboo Prince Khemri > it is our command >:
There was no arguing with that. Avoiding the spread dung, I clomped through the loose earth, got onto the path, and went into the darkness between the overarching strands of bamboo.
10
I FOUND MYSELF ONCE again in a bamboo forest, following a stream. After a few steps I was sure it was the same stream from the temple sanctum back on Kwanantil Nine and that this was the same bamboo forest, the same small bridge; and by this stage not unexpectedly, the Arch-Priest of the Aspect of the Emperor’s Discerning Hand was waiting for me.