A Confusion of Princes

  I never knew they were that smart. I pulled Raine up and we staggered over to the capsule.

  ‘Seven minutes,’ panted Raine. She was hunched over and holding her stomach. I guessed the medical symbiote had cut back on painkilling, correctly reading that the adrenalin level in her blood meant she needed to move.

  I boosted her up and she crawled into the capsule. I jumped more than climbed in after her and immediately slammed the control to shut the hatch. A few shiplice came in with me, but I couldn’t be bothered with them.

  ‘Lie down!’ I ordered Raine, who had hunched up at the other end of the acceleration couch.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked.

  ‘Lie down!’ I bellowed, unwittingly sounding like every cadet officer I had ever known. ‘That’s an order!’

  Raine lay down. That left about sixty centimetres of acceleration couch free. I crouched there, activated the holo control, and ordered an emergency escape launch and the crash webs.

  Web hissed out over Raine and a bit wrapped itself around my middle in an uncertain way. The stuff had very limited programming, and it couldn’t cope with someone hunched next to the hatch instead of lying down where they were supposed to.

  ‘Three minutes,’ said Raine.

  The capsule lurched, breaking free of the docking tentacles. I hoped the dock sphincter was still working; I’d forgotten to check it. But as I’d got the capsule in all right, it should open up automatically for anything trying to get out.

  There was another shudder as the drive activated to manoeuvre us up and away from the cradle. I tapped the holo to get an exterior view from the front, and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw stars and space and the edges of the dock. It was open and we were heading out!

  But all too slowly.

  ‘Call this emergency launch!’ I screamed uselessly at the capsule, my fat, suited finger dancing over the holographic keys. ‘Come on!’

  The capsule shuddered a little more, and I felt a very minor acceleration shoving me sideways. But it was still too slow, and not for the first time I wished I was in an Imperial singleship. Or in fact anything better than the ancient slug I’d been saddled with.

  ‘Two minutes thirty,’ said Raine urgently. From her angle she couldn’t see the holographic view. ‘Are we clear of the dock?’

  ‘Just out,’ I said with relief. ‘Two minutes to go; we should get—’

  I never finished what I was saying. The holoview flashed white, and an instant later we were hit by a sudden explosion of gas and debris and a massive surge in exterior temperature. The capsule spun end over end, sending me tumbling about as the crash webs lost their grip on my middle. Alarms shrieked and the holographic display shifted from an outside view to a sea of red symbols, reporting system failures and extensive damage.

  The missile had launched early. The only thing that had saved us—for now—was the fact that the blowback from its fusion torch had to cut through several hundred metres of the Heffalurp’s hull. So instead of being vapourised, we were just hit by a whole lot of superheated ship atmosphere and lots and lots of the tiny bits of what used to be the ship and its systems.

  Something clanged on the hull, sending a severe shock through the whole capsule. A hole as big as my fist appeared above the acceleration couch where Raine was wrapped in webs. Our atmosphere went out through it, spewing forth as frozen crystals and incidentally messing up the capsule’s attempts to right itself with its thrusters.

  I lunged forward, ripped open the emergency locker amidships, found a Bitek seeking patch, and threw it in the general direction of the hole. The ball of goop exploded into a plate-sized circle as it left my hand and was sucked onto the hole by the departing air. Though there wasn’t enough pressure left inside to keep it in place, its own tiny suckers were already hard at work bonding to the hull.

  Unfortunately this almost instinctive action of mine meant I lost my bracing position, and once again I was tumbled about, crashing into Raine and the sides of the capsule. She cried out in pain, Ekkie complained inside my helmet, and the holo display added some more problems as I tried to reorient myself and not throw up. I’d never had this problem as a Prince, but now the spin and tumble was making my gorge rise in my throat.

  I bit back bile, pressed my feet and one hand hard against the sides of the capsule, and with the other hand took control of the module away from its rather stupid automated flight controls and started to fire the manoeuvre jets in a sequence that would get us stable again.

  At least that was the plan. It proved harder than I thought, particularly as several thrusters were not responding to commands. I overcorrected, undercorrected, and made us spin and tumble in several different directions in quick succession, all of which was too much for my inner ear. I threw up several times, pointing my chin so the vomit would go down the suit and be dealt with there rather than collect in my helmet. Ekkie was pretty quick at clearing away fluids, but I really didn’t want to drown in my own spew.

  Finally, I got the capsule under control and could actually take stock of what was going on.

  ‘Are we going to make it?’ asked Raine as I gingerly lowered myself back to a sitting position and looked down at her. Her face looked clean. The symbiote had saved her from vomiting, or else her suit was better at tidying up.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I replied as I went through the damage report. It didn’t look too bad at first. We’d lost some manoeuvring ability, but the main drive was fine. All our existing atmosphere had blown out, but we had our suit supplies and there was a Bitek air regenerator . . . or actually, as I read on in this status report, I saw that this was no longer true. The air regenerator was defunct, as was the small reserve tank of oxygen. The debris that had made the hole I’d patched had come through the hull, the air tank, and the regenerator and then the inner compartment lining.

  That still might not be a problem, depending on what else was happening and how long it would take us to get somewhere with breathable air.

  ‘Is the wormhole stoppered?’ asked Raine.

  ‘I don’t know yet!’ I snapped.

  Raine shifted around but didn’t speak. My fingers were sliding over the holo, calculating our trajectory toward the planet and the transit time, as well as trying to get the sensors to make a sensible report instead of trying to track all the myriad bits of debris that were accompanying us away from what used to be the Heffalurp. There was nothing we could do about them anyway—if they hit us, they hit us.

  Very slowly the data picture resolved.

  ‘The missile deployed to the target area and something just happened a moment ago,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m waiting on the wormhole energy signature. No ships showing up on scan so far.’

  Raine didn’t answer. I looked over and saw that her eyes were screwed up tight and her lips were moving without making a sound.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Praying,’ she said without opening her eyes.

  ‘What? Preying? I don’t understand.’

  Raine opened one eye to look up at me in puzzlement. I guess I didn’t look too good—there was still vomit caked around my mouth—because she shut it again pretty quickly.

  ‘Praying. You know, quietly asking an invisible, probably nonexistent higher power to ensure that the wormhole is closed.’

  ‘Uh, I see,’ I replied, though I didn’t see. While we had priests in the Empire, they were not go-betweens to some invisible entity who might or might not exist or have any power; they were agents of a completely real power. Princes didn’t pray to the Emperor. We just communicated with the Imperial Mind.

  ‘Does it ever work?’ I asked after a moment. I was still waiting for the scan to complete.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Raine. ‘Maybe.’

  She hesitated, then added, ‘I was praying back in the Heffalurp, at the ship-heart. Then you came along.’

  ‘Not conclusive,’ I said. Most of my attention was on the scan as it slowly reported the w
ormhole energy state. The numbers were climbing, but hadn’t reached a level that indicated the wormhole was opening.

  ‘I know,’ said Raine. ‘I never really had prayed before. I’m not a believer like—’ She stopped in midsentence.

  ‘Like who?’ I asked. The numbers were static now. Was the wormhole actually closed?

  ‘Like some of the crew on the Heffalurp,’ she said.

  ‘So they probably prayed?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Raine.

  ‘But they all died. So this prayer thing clearly doesn’t work.’

  ‘I guess not,’ said Raine softly.

  The wormhole energy signature started to fall.

  ‘On the other hand . . .’ I said, a smile slowly spreading across my vomit-stained face, ‘the wormhole is closed. And I’m not picking up anything as having come through before it did.’

  ‘All right!’

  Raine pushed one hand out of the restraining web and held it up near me, gloved palm out. Unsure of what to do, I shook the top of her fingers gently. My smile was already fading as I looked back at the holo and our best possible trajectory toward Kharalcha Four.

  It didn’t look good. At our maximum thrust of 0.1 G, it was going to take fourteen standard days—336 hours—and that presumed they had a deceleration web to catch us, which was probably unlikely. If we had to turn over halfway and decelerate, we were looking at twenty days.

  Ekkie could keep me alive for about ten days without an infusion of fresh atmosphere. Raine’s suit was Mektek. It might have a Bitek air scrubber, but even so, I doubted it had an endurance beyond a few days.

  ‘Uh, how much atmosphere do you have in your suit, Raine?’

  She dipped her head inside her helmet, looking at a readout near her chin.

  ‘Eight hours, give or take.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  16

  ‘ I . . . take it that is going to be a problem?’ Raine asked. Even without my augmented hearing I detected a tremor in her voice, though she was trying her best to sound calm and in control.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘We’ve lost the capsule’s atmosphere reserve and the regenerator, and with the pathetic drive this capsule’s got, it’s going to take at least three hundred hours to get to Kharalcha Four. Is there anything closer? Or have your lot got any ships left?’

  ‘There are other ships,’ said Raine. ‘But I think they’d be kept close, to try to protect the Habitat. Even at full boost . . . eight hours is just too short. How long have you got?’

  ‘Around two hundred and forty hours,’ I said. ‘On full recycling, if Ekkie . . . my suit . . . keeps working.’

  ‘You call your suit Ekkie?’ asked Raine. I noticed she had a dimple when she smiled.

  ‘The previous owner called it something unpronounceable; I call it Ekkie for short,’ I said. I repeated my earlier question. ‘Is there anywhere closer than Kharalcha Four? A mining station or something? I can’t resolve anything in those rings around the gas giant in the sixth orbital.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Raine. ‘I mean, I think there was some kind of palace thing there when this was still part of the Empire—’

  ‘What?’ I spat.

  ‘Still part of the Empire,’ Raine repeated. ‘Uh, do you mind if I sit up? It’s kind of weird looking up at you like this.’

  ‘Sit, lie down, it doesn’t matter,’ I replied. ‘What do you mean, used to be part of the Empire?’

  Raine struggled to push the restraint web aside till I helped her shove it back into its dispensers. The stuff was supposed to retract automatically, but of course it wasn’t working properly.

  ‘I mean “part of the Empire”,’ she said. ‘Why is that so hard to understand? This was an Imperial system until about three hundred years ago. For some reason Prince Xaojhek left, with all the priests and everything, and that was it. No one took over; no one came back. There wasn’t even a visit from an Imperial ship till that first attack, nine years ago.’

  I tried to take this in. I knew that the Empire never retreated from anywhere, never gave up a system or world. The Empire was always expanding, in a perpetual, triumphant conquest of the galaxy.

  Or was it? Yet another of the pillars that had underpinned my early life was looking a lot less solid. I’d thought that Imperial Law was sacrosanct, that Princes always obeyed the Imperial Mind . . . perhaps the continued expansion of the Empire was about as true as all that was.

  ‘Kharalcha Four was once an Imperial world?’ I asked, thinking of the basically rural, undeveloped planets that were most typical of the Empire. ‘I mean, a rural food producer and so on?’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Raine. ‘It still is, kind of. I mean, it’s all yokels and farms, and pretty countryside and not much of anything useful. Except food variety, I guess.’

  ‘So you’re not a planetsider.’

  Raine laughed.

  ‘A dirtgrubber? Of course not. I’m from the Habitat. Gryphon torus.’

  She tapped the symbol of the winged creature on the shoulder plate of her suit, and her laughter faded.

  ‘All of us on the Heffalurp were from Gryphon. But the other rings will have suffered too, with the rest of the fleet destroyed.’

  ‘The Habitat is an orbital environment, from Imperial times?’ I asked.

  ‘It was,’ said Raine. ‘There’s been a lot done to it since.’

  I was beginning to think ahead again. If I could stay alive and get to the Kharalcha Four orbit, there might be some Imperial tek I could salvage. Princes typically had secret caches. Maybe there was even a ship hidden away that would answer to my Psitek.

  But I had to get there first, before the air ran out.

  ‘What kind of comms do you have?’ asked Raine. ‘If I can get in touch with KSF headquarters . . . there might be a ship somewhere close that can pick us up.’

  ‘Not much that’s any use,’ I replied. The capsule had once had a superior comms system, but it had been ripped out before I got it. ‘Wide- and narrow-band rayder, basically. Nothing real-time.’

  ‘I’d better try now,’ said Raine. ‘We’re about a billion kilometres out from the Habitat; that’s a fifty-minute lag or thereabouts.’

  I nodded. Almost an hour for them to get our message, another hour to get a reply, or for a nearby ship to be dispatched, if there was one. . . It wasn’t very promising.

  Something moved in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly, reaching for a weapon, but it was only a shiplouse. I’d forgotten a few had come on board with us.

  ‘Hey, maybe the shiplice could fix the regenerator!’ exclaimed Raine.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Different Bitek,’ I said. Which was true. I realised I needed to lie about how I worked with them, though, so I mimed patting my pocket and added, ‘Besides, I dropped the coding wand after I had programmed them to open the doors. Here’s the rayder hand unit.’

  I pulled the comms control unit out of its socket, flicked it on, and handed it to Raine. She looked it over, adjusted a few settings, rotated the connections to the one she wanted, and plugged it into her suit. That was the best thing about most of the tek lying around the Fringe being Imperial tek or copies of it. Connectivity across teks and generations of tek was a fundamental part of Imperial design.

  ‘Calling KSF Tac-Command and any KSF ship beyond sixth orbital, any KSF ship beyond sixth orbital, this is Raine Gryphon, survivor of KSFS-17 Heffalurp. I am in a civilian life capsule; coordinates and vector are . . .’

  She looked at me. I flicked the holo display to bring up our position, tilted it toward her, and she read off the coordinates, heading, and acceleration.

  ‘The capsule is damaged and we have limited atmosphere. Rendezvous and retrieval urgent, any KSF ship, KSF Tac-Command.’

  Raine repeated the message five times, while I thought about the situation. We were continuing to boost toward Kharalcha Four, but there was no question that even I wouldn’t make it. And Raine had far less air. I had to work out
something that would save both of us.

  I glanced across at her, still sending her message. I did need to save her, but I didn’t know why. I mean, there were logical arguments about the Kharalchans’ gratitude and so on, but that didn’t explain the almost overwhelming feeling I had that I must not let her die. It was an inexplicable, emotional response, one I had never felt before.

  I didn’t like it, because it felt weak, but somehow I couldn’t stop it. I tried to tell myself that she was just like a mind-programmed servant of my household, but she wasn’t. They were all the same. She was . . . different. More interesting . . . and she was different from all the humans I’d met in my training. I’d got on well enough with some of them, but I’d certainly never felt like I needed to protect them.

  What had she done to me? There wasn’t any real possibility that she had somehow introduced a behavioural virus into my mind. Whatever I was feeling had to be coming from inside me. . .

  But there was no time to conduct any self-analysis. I had to work out what the hell we were going to do.

  Raine stopped sending and looked at me looking at her. I looked away.

  ‘Now I guess we wait for a while,’ she said. ‘I’ll resend every ten minutes until we get a reply.’

  ‘What’s your exact atmosphere supply?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, like I said, around eight hours,’ replied Raine. She didn’t look at her readout.

  ‘Exactly,’ I repeated sternly.

  Raine’s nose twitched, but she inclined her head to check the readout.

  ‘Seven hours, twenty-three minutes,’ she replied. ‘Presuming minimal activity, which I think is a given, considering.’

  She indicated the lack of room, patting the hull and my suit. We were crammed in very close together.

  ‘The symbiote could probably put you in a trance state,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘But that would only be good for another eight hours or so, at most . . .’