A Confusion of Princes

  The ship was still droning on in my head when I noticed something else in the holographic display. A tiny green icon amid the great swath of asteroidal dust and debris that made up the ring around Kharalcha Six, the gas giant.

  I touched the icon.

  :What’s that?:

  The ship stopped telling me about its armaments in too great detail. There was another curious pause before it answered.

  :That is Imperial Survey Watch Post Lozhren-Wassek:

  :And what’s at this watch—:

  The icon under my finger faded out of the display.

  :Hey, what happened?:

  :Query not understood:

  I stabbed the holo with my finger.

  :What happened to the Survey watch post in the gas giant ring just there?:

  :Information base update lag. Null-Space/real space dissonance. There is no Survey watch post:

  I guessed that was possible, but I was suspicious. That IS watch post was there, for sure, but a Prince—or maybe the Imperial Mind—had just told my ship not to notice it.

  The whole thing smelled to me. Atalin sent in to wipe out the defenders, a pirate fleet with relatively modern ships and training, a Survey post hidden in the gas giant ring . . . even my own appearance in this, of all systems. But I couldn’t be sure whether this was all set up as part of my test to join Adjustment or whether someone else was involved, pulling other strings.

  ‘Whoever you are, I hope you enjoy the show,’ I muttered.

  :Query?:

  ‘Not you, ship,’ I answered aloud. ‘Which reminds me, do you have a name?’ :What did Xaojhek call you?:

  :Ship:

  :Uh, do you have a name on the Navy list?:

  :Reserve Vessel Khorkrek 1118:

  I sighed. I’d got used to conversing with humans. Communicating to the Bitek brain of a starship was all too like talking to a mind-programmed servant.

  :I’m going to call you Korker:

  :Korker. Kore-ker:

  :Very good, Korker. I want a course that will take us out of here with no or at most minimal damage to the Habitat, then at maximum acceleration past the KSF fleet here, staying beyond their weapon range, to attack this fleet here, first launching kinetic slivers to be followed up by singleship to mop up, which I will pilot. I will then loop back to rendezvous for retrieval and we will depart through the exit wormhole here:

  I tapped the holo as I gave Korker these directions.

  :Bring up wormhole connections from that exit to the closest

  Imperial possession according to your information base:

  I’d looked at the Kharalchans’ star maps, but they weren’t very useful. They had good data spinward to the Confederation and for some parts beyond, but very little coreward to the Empire. Apparently ships just didn’t go through that wormhole exit anymore, or if they did they didn’t report back.

  Korker, on the other hand, had all the star maps I might need, even if they were a few hundred years out of date. According to this information, the nearest Imperial possession was a mere three wormhole transits away. An alien world called something unpronounceable by its inhabitants and Xinxri by the Empire, it was under Colonial Government, which meant there would be a Prince in residence, and a temple. This was unlikely to have changed in the few hundred years since Korker’s information base had been updated. I still didn’t understand why the Empire had left Kharalcha, but alien worlds of worth were relatively rare, and I was sure Xinxri would still be firmly under Imperial control.

  Getting into the temple there might be interesting, but I was content to leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.

  Today’s problem was the pirates, and as per usual, I had been somewhat overconfident about that, as Korker soon told me.

  :Preliminary analysis of inbound fleet suggests lead vessel has gravitonic field suppression capabilities sufficient to divert kinetic slivers from fleet:

  Typical. Just when I got my hands on some advanced tek for once, the enemy turned out to have some as well.

  :Report enemy capability and any identification. Are they communicating?:

  :Enemy vessels self-identify as belonging to Porojavian

  Co-Prosperity Collective. They are Imperial copy-Mektek of unknown origin. Capabilities of basic equivalence to one Lyzgro-class light cruiser, three Dyshzko-class destroyers, twelve Leolekh-class transports:

  I sat back in my chair and thought deeply. The Lyzgro light cruiser was a real fly in the ointment. The transports would be mere chaff to my divine wind, the Dyshzkos not much more opposition. But the Lyzgro was a ship type only thirty or forty years old. I was very surprised there was a copy of it out in the Fringe, as at the Academy I’d been taught it took more than seventy-five years on average for an Imperial design to be successfully copied. Of course it wouldn’t have the Psitek enhancements of a real Imperial ship, but the basic design had all the Mektek trimmings: gravity control, gravitonic screens that could shield the fleet against kinetic sliver attacks, and also very heavy armour, so the reality strippers Korker mounted wouldn’t do much except at very close range. . . .

  I’d have to take the Lyzgro out first with the singleship, and then Korker could destroy the other ships with kinetic slivers, missiles that accelerated up to 0.2 light speed.

  Singleships were made to be piloted by Princes. I could control one with my Psitek, but I hadn’t counted on having to go up against real opposition, requiring full acceleration. The Kragors used most of their power for manoeuvre, so their internal gravity control was far less powerful than that used in larger ships, and it reduced rather than nullified gravitational stress. To successfully assault the Lyzgro and avoid its weapons, I’d have to do an attack run at 40-G acceleration, which meant the effect of 10 G’s in the cockpit, for at least thirty minutes. As a Prince practising that sort of run, all I’d had were momentary blackouts. As a normal human, I’d have a brain like a squashed fruit and all my blood squeezed into my toes and then sprayed all over the cockpit.

  But I simply couldn’t coast in, not against a modern ship like the Lyzgro.

  I thought about this for a few seconds. The obvious solution was not to attack the pirates at all, but just to bug out through the exit wormhole back toward Imperial space. That’s what any sensible Prince would do.

  However, I was no longer a sensible Prince, and it was possible for me to survive 10 G’s for thirty minutes, with suitable precautions.

  :Korker, I presume there is r a Bitek cornucopia on board?:

  :Three. Two general-purpose, one gourmand food specialist.

  There is a shortage of some specialised precursor materials:

  :Okay, manufacture enough Bitek accel gel to fill a singleship cockpit plus twenty per cent, and I need a medical symbiote implanted immediately:

  :Done:

  I felt a slight sting on my arm and looked down. A panel was closing in the armrest, an advanced symbiote applicator withdrawing inside. In one swift motion it had cut away a square of my shipsuit and introduced the symbiote. It was a much more advanced model than the one I had used on Raine. It didn’t need the applicator as an interface but had already grown a patch of vision-skin over my own flesh. This was now displaying my general condition—and an alert that was flashing red.

  I focused on the alert at once. It said there was an alien object the size of a pinhead in the flesh between the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers of my right hand.

  I’d forgotten about the ID tag, which had to also be a tracking device.

  I told the symbiote to destroy it. I guess the KSF and Commander Alice weren’t as trusting as I’d thought. Or maybe it was a parental thing. But it meant they knew that I’d gone into the reservoir and had vanished, as it would appear, as soon as I got behind the ship’s protective screens.

  They’d be looking very seriously for me now, given that I’d inadvertently timed my disappearance to coincide with the pirates’ arrival in system.

  :How soon till launch?:

&n
bsp; :One hour forty-five minutes fifteen seconds:

  I hesitated for a moment, unsure of the best course of action. Or rather, the best course of action given that I’d gone totally mad and wasn’t just going to depart Kharalcha forever.

  :Scan shows small parties of aquatic-equipped humans approaching through the reservoir. Tracking with close-interdiction RS beam. Fire?:

  :Don’t fire! Patch me into the Habitat communication system. Find location of Commander Alice Gryphon and open a channel to a comm at her location:

  Another holographic panel sprang up in the fireplace, partially overlapping the scan display until I flicked it across and closer to me. It showed a very busy control centre, with around fifty KSF and other uniformed personnel all working away at individual command stations that were hybrid tek, each with three or four holographic screens on top of Bitek stalks that funnelled power and provided nerve relays for data transfer.

  The command stations were arranged in five concentric rings, and it was easy to see that the outer rings were junior stations, growing more senior as you progressed inward. Alice Gryphon was standing at her station in the innermost ring. Like most of the others, she had a headset on and was listening intently to something.

  :Patch in and project my image and voice on the holo unit in front of Alice Gryphon:

  My screen flashed and my viewpoint changed. I was now looking directly at Alice, and she was looking directly at me. Her jaw dropped for an instant, before she suppressed her surprise.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ I said. ‘Uh, I wanted to call to . . . to update you on some stuff you need to know.’

  ‘You’re in that ship in the reservoir,’ said Alice slowly.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Look, it’s not exactly—’

  ‘Gold Taiga Rosamond Latchkey Execute,’ said Alice, but not to me. She shut her eyes and added in a whisper, ‘Forgive me, Raine.’

  21

  ‘ UH, IS SOMETHING supposed to have happened?’ I asked Alice nicely.

  This time she couldn’t hide the shock on her face.

  :Nuclear fusion initiation stifled in close proximity: reported Korker. :Device rendered inoperative:

  :What device?:

  :A fusion mine copy of model Fyrrez-Waltav 231, fixed to the reservoir floor under my hull, emplaced there thirty-two years ago, replacing an earlier device. Nil threat:

  So the Kharalchans had pretty much always known this ship was here. They just couldn’t get into it or do anything about it. Though obviously they’d hoped the fusion mine would take it out in extreme circumstances, like someone trying to use it against them. As Alice had clearly presumed I would.

  ‘Just wait!’ I said hurriedly as the shock passed over Alice’s face and I saw determination sweep back in. ‘Don’t do anything rash. I actually want to help you.’

  ‘Help us?’ replied Alice bleakly. ‘To ensure more loot survives for you and the other pirates?’

  ‘I’m not with the pirates, Alice,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Then you serve the Empire, which aids the pirates.’

  ‘Ah, not that, either,’ I replied. Some other KSF officers, including a man I recognised as Admiral Wylliam Sphinx, their commander-in-chief, had come in close to Alice’s station. ‘I had no prior knowledge of the pirates, and while it’s true I am . . . um . . . I am temporarily working for a Prince, he’s not involved here either. And I doubt that it was an Imperial order to clear the path for the pirates. That’s some private initiative.’

  ‘A private initiative to kill more than twelve thousand men and women and leave thousands more to be the prey of pirates and slavers?’ spat Alice.

  ‘I’m not going to discuss how the Empire works right now, or its morality,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to tell you not to do anything stupid, because this ship will react against any attacks, and also . . .’

  I bit my lip for a moment and hesitated. I could still change my mind. But somehow saying to Raine’s mother what I was going to do made my choice irrevocable. It was stupid, and irrational, and I didn’t know why a few simple words could bind me to a course of action, but there it was.

  ‘Also,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘I have asked the Prince in command of this ship to destroy those pirates . . . and he has agreed to do so.’

  ‘There’s a Prince there?’ asked the Admiral, butting in as Alice stared at me without speaking, her eyes looking like they would burn a hole through an Imperial battlesuit.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘He’s been in stasis. I was sent to find him and wake him up.’

  ‘We want to talk to the Prince,’ demanded Admiral Sphinx.

  I shook my head.

  ‘He’s . . . busy. You should be grateful he’s agreed to attack the pirates. They’ve got some recent tek, and it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Alice, her voice overriding something the Admiral was going to say. ‘What are you?’

  Who was I? What was I? I didn’t really know myself.

  ‘You know I’m just an ordinary human; you scanned me,’ I said, doing my best to look her in the eye. ‘A Fringe trader. I trade with some Imperial worlds. A Prince on one of my regular stops made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—I mean really couldn’t—to come here and retrieve the sleeping Prince and this ship. I don’t know why she wanted it done on the quiet. Princes . . . Princes work in inexplicable ways to us ordinary people.’

  Then I did look Alice square in the eye.

  ‘I didn’t know I would meet Raine. I didn’t know that I would . . . that I would fall in love with her.’

  Love. I’d said it now, and now I knew what it meant.

  Alice might have said something then, but the Admiral had pretty much edged her out of the way.

  ‘The Prince . . . he really will attack the pirates?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He owes me.’

  ‘How quickly can you engage the enemy?’ asked the Admiral.

  I asked Korker this via mindspeech at almost the same time and relayed the answer. It was a hell of a lot faster than the KSF, because Korker could maintain 25-G acceleration and a nice single gravity inside the ship.

  ‘Twenty-one hours,’ I replied. ‘Well ahead of your fleet, Admiral.’

  He blinked, but it wasn’t surprise at the speed of my ship. They’d seen Imperial craft in action before. I knew it was relief, that he had given up hope and now here was a straw to clutch at.

  ‘You don’t have to go with the ship, if the Prince has agreed,’ said Alice suddenly. ‘We’d detain you, until things work out as you say and the pirates are defeated, but then . . . you’d be welcome here. Right, Admiral?’

  ‘Of course!’ snapped the Admiral. ‘You’ll have done us another great service, on top of your part in shutting down the wormhole.’

  So they had known how involved I’d been in that and just pretended otherwise. These Kharalchans were more cunning across the board than I’d thought.

  I shook my head, not bothering to try to hide my regret.

  ‘It’s not up to me. The Prince has given his orders. I have to go with the ship. It’s old, and has been on standby a long time. There are things I can do to help prepare for the combat.’

  ‘Khem, I didn’t want to . . . the standing orders were to fire that mine,’ said Alice.

  ‘I understand,’ I replied. ‘If things were different . . . but they’re not. I’ll do what I can against the pirates.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Admiral Sphinx.

  I almost said ‘Thank Raine’ but held my tongue. That might cause her problems; they might think she knew more about me and hadn’t reported it. Besides, while it was true, it wasn’t the whole story. I did want to save Raine, but I also wanted to save the whole sorry Habitat, even including the stupid, annoying people like Ganulf, simply because they had become people to me, not just subservient pawns to be used for my own purposes.

  A Bitek servitor arrived at this point and handed me a towel.

  Alice and the o
ther Kharalchans tried not to stare but couldn’t help it. I guess they’d never seen the insect-human hybrids in a current context instead of in old recordings, and as mekbi servitors weren’t hidden under armour like the troopers, their narrow waists, chitinous thoraxes, and limbs were glaringly obvious.

  :Terminate transmission:

  Korker obeyed, cutting Alice off as she was about to say something. I didn’t want to keep talking. There wasn’t anything left to say.

  Besides, I hadn’t been lying when I said there was work to be done on the ship. There were many preparations to be made.

  We left the reservoir on schedule, a little less than an hour later. I’d thought we might have to cut our way out through the Habitat hull, but Prince Xaojhek had prepared everything very carefully. There was an emergency hatch beneath us, big enough for the ship. It opened slowly, water boiling off into space for a good fifteen minutes, creating a nice diversionary cloud if we’d needed one. But not as much water as I’d expected, since various membranes like the one between the lake and the reservoir proper changed to their emergency properties and no longer allowed even water through.

  The ship slid out of its long hiding place with a gentle push from its thrusters and manoeuvred away from the Habitat at a sedate 0.25 G. The Kharalchans didn’t even bother to track us with the meteor protection laser grid in case I was lying. I guess they knew that it would be a waste of time anyway.

  A suitable distance from the Habitat, we kicked into high gear. Korker went from an amble to a sprint, accelerating up to its full 25 G’s and twenty thousand kilometres a second in less than an hour.

  Not that I noticed inside. With internal gravity control, allied with Null-Space sensors and a Bitek artificial consciousness to operate them, this velocity and such things as minor relativistic effects were of no consequence.