A Confusion of Princes (10 page)

‘It’s got a phased-field drill, they’re boring, we’ve lost guard post five and four in Huzgar, they’re almost through three—’

‘How did it get past the system patrol? Achmir must have let it through, curse him; I will protest—’

I recognised that last voice. It was the Commandant, complaining and whining as per usual. I didn’t know who’d spoken before, but what they were saying was a lot more relevant. I was in Huzgar quadrant of the base, and even though I’d lost the Psitek schematic, numerous punishment drills had engraved the base layout on my memory.

Guard post three was directly above my head.

A new voice came on then. A commanding female voice that cut through everyone spouting off whatever was in their heads.

‘This is Captain Glemri, Marine Garrison Commander, assuming tactical command. Clear the voicenet now.’

I didn’t know Prince Glemri, though I had seen the Marine specialists around a few times. They commanded the mekbi troopers and were, as far as I could ascertain, looked down on by most of the Naval Princes and by extension, the cadets. Real Navy Princes fought in space, in ships, not with mekbi troopers, who most Princes considered to be an even lower form of life than normal humans, which was kind of unfair since the troopers were superb at what they were made to do, which was kill enemies of the Empire.

Typically, the only voice that didn’t stop talking was Huzand’s, which kept ranting on about Achmir and treachery and so on.

‘Commandant, shut up!’ barked Glemri. ‘Any cadet officers in Huzgar, report status.’

There was a deafening silence. After a few seconds, I hesitantly transmitted.

‘Uh, I’m in Huzgar, sir, level four, guard post two. Cadet Khemri, with four mekbi troopers.’

‘Cadet Khemri? Is there a cadet officer there?’

‘No, sir. I was on an . . . extra duty with the troopers.’

‘Okay, listen up, Cadet. There isn’t much time—we’ve got a shipload of Sad-Eyes boring down. Get to an emergency armoury and get a Psitek protection suit and—’ ‘I’m suited up and have a dislocation rifle,’ I reported.

Glemri sounded surprised.

‘You are? Uh, good. About fifteen seconds from now the ceiling is going to come down above your guard post. Pull your troopers back to the Huzgar-Jeresk bulkhead and stop anything trying to come through. Got it?’

‘Huzgar-Jeresk bulkhead! Got it—’ I would have added ‘sir,’ but all I could hear now through my headset was the horrible electronic squeal of successful jamming. Which meant that the Sad-Eyes had picked up some puppets who knew at least something about our Mektek.

I ran to the nearest mekbi trooper, intending to tap out an emergency instruction on his chest plate, since these troopers weren’t currently fitted with Mektek comms. But as I got closer, I realised that the low-level Psitek hum of their own talk was still going on, though I could only pick it up when I got close.

Since I could receive it, I could also send. So I sent them a simple message in their own mindspeech.

:Follow me. Glory. Killing. Death:

Technically, it shouldn’t have worked, since there was nothing in it to identify me as their commanding Prince. But as one, they swung out of their defensive wall niches and ran toward me. I spun about and was twenty metres down the corridor when I was blown forward off my feet by the shock wave of something massive smashing through the ceiling behind us.

I rolled over and sat up just in time to cop a wave of dust across my face. The mekbi troopers, who had not fallen thanks to the spurs in their feet, propped to either side of me and opened fire with their energy projectors. Blue beams of intense ferocity shot through the dust, making tiny crackling pops as they passed.

Something the size of my own head but travelling at supersonic speed shot over me and went shrieking down the corridor. Hastily I threw myself flat and found that I had the dislocation rifle already at my shoulder. The sight and target acquisition was active, the small screen showing multiple moving organics coming straight at me, emerging from whatever it was that had come from above and was now filling up the entire other end of the corridor.

I picked the closest enemy and pressed the firing stud. There was the characteristic short, eerie whine, and though I couldn’t see clearly for all the dust and the light bloom from the energy weapons, the scope confirmed the dislocation rifle had hit the target and had basically turned whoever or whatever it was inside out. This was one of the main reasons that dislocation weapons were preferred for fighting Sad-Eyes. If there was one of the remarkably durable master puppeteers inside the braincase of a puppet, it would be flung out by a disco hit instead of potentially lurking inside what otherwise appeared to be a corpse, where it could continue to direct its puppets.

The mekbi troopers were firing but also shuffling back, obviously in response to the sheer number of enemies. Another one of the big projectiles boomed over my head, the dust eddying in its path. In that brief moment I saw dozens and dozens of armed and dangerous life-forms, most of them nonhuman, boiling out of the wide hatch of some kind of earth-boring attack ship.

The mekbi hum was all tactical discussion now.

:Back, back. Keep minimum energy distance:

:Agreed. Back, back. Too many. Who will stand?:

:I am oldest. I am 8734DDD871F. Go:

Three of the mekbi troopers stood and fired as the fourth ducked forward, energy filament blades extended from each hand. Whirling like a top, he spun into the onrushing wall of enemies, the blades arcing and sparking as they met armour and bone.

I slithered back, twisted around, and ran for the corner, crouching low. The mekbi troopers followed, walking backward and firing. The last one was hit just before it turned the corner, yet another of the big projectiles taking off the entire top of its body. Its legs kept walking back for a few paces, then the spurs locked in and the remnants fell, Bitek juices spraying out of severed lines.

A second later, there was an explosion back where we’d come from. Flames and fragments blew past, a few ricocheting down our arm of the corridor. The shock wave came through the floor and made me bite my tongue, which despite all efforts of my candidate priests, nerve programming and all, I still stuck out a little bit when I was concentrating.

:8734DDD871F antimatter battery self-overload. Good death: remarked the two surviving troopers, both at the same time.

They did not pause, trotting past me to each rip out a Bitek panel and move into the defensive niche behind.

I tried to do the same thing, but either I didn’t have the knack or I was in the wrong place. All I got was a handful of crumbly material and the sight of a bare patch of rock behind.

Apart from the niches the troopers already occupied, there was no cover in this corridor. There was only the bulkhead door at the end, which I must not open and through which the enemy must not be allowed to pass.

‘Defend,’ I said aloud to the troopers. ‘The enemy are not to pass this point.’

Then I lay down on the floor and readied my rifle as the next wave of mind-reamed puppets came rampaging around the corner.

I can’t say I really remember what happened next, though I have replayed my internal visual and auditory recordings. It all happened too quickly. The enemy employed no tactics at all. They didn’t do anything sensible, like fire guided projectiles from around the corner, or throw grenades. They just charged, wave after wave of them. Most of them didn’t even have distance weapons—the big projectiles had evidently been fired from a turret or mount on the driller. They were swinging charged axes and electro-rapiers and the kinds of stuff you see in a gladiatorial demonstration, not in modern combat.

Maybe that’s what it was, for the Sad-Eye who was controlling them all. A gladiatorial show.

A little more than three minutes after we got around the corner, there were only good old 95E6711AD19 and me left, and the mekbi trooper was hopping about on one leg and wielding just one filament blade because it had lost the hand that had been holding an energy projector.

I wasn’t a lot better off. I fired from the prone position until a bellowing ursine creature cut the front end off my disco rifle with what could only be described as a plasma-arc meat cleaver. Jumping back, I discharged my Bitek phage emitter at the bear thing and his closest companions, but it wasn’t fast-acting enough. Even as his fur and flesh melted, that cleaver came whistling across. I raised my hand to block and had every internal system flash emergency warnings as I saw my arm from the elbow down go flying across the corridor.

The next thing I knew, I was ten feet back, the deintegration wand in my right hand, the stump of my left arm tucked into my side. The wound had been cauterised by the plasma burn, and my own systems had also closed the blood supply, and I felt no pain. But it was disturbing.

Particularly as I only had three shots in the deintegration wand, my mekbi companion had just gone down with his head as well as his limbs missing, and there was a whole new wave of enemies coming around the corner, waving their glowing, pulsing, sparking hand weapons of great destruction.

When in a situation like that—essentially being about to die— it wasn’t helpful to suddenly realise that without a connection to the Imperial Mind, I really
was
going to die, like
permanently
.

There would be no weighing up of my service by the priests of the Aspect of the Discerning Hand, no rebirth.

I just wasn’t that special after all.

And as I discovered, right then, I
really really really
didn’t want to die. It was all very well thinking about death in the abstract, secure in the knowledge that in the very unlikely event that something lethal did happen to me, I would almost certainly come back, compared to the finality of it all when it was actually happening.

But on top of these sudden, mortal terrors, I also grasped at one slim hope. Perhaps the directing Sad-Eye had been mentally walled off by the priests of the temple. Maybe I could connect to the Imperial Mind after all. I just had to remove my Psitek defence suit hood in the few seconds remaining before the horde descended on me.

Lacking a left hand, I found this easier said than done. Holding the wand with three fingers, I reached up and ripped the hood apart with my thumb, hoping that I would feel the sudden flowering of a connection to the Mind.

But I didn’t. Instead, I felt a cold, loathsome touch, almost as if something had plunged its frozen fingers into my brain and was feeling around for something it had lost. I knew instantly it was the Sad-Eye puppeteer, and more than that, I could sense a kind of illusory Psitek tendril leading back into the pack of attackers, and suddenly I knew exactly where the thing was located—inside the head of a humanoid creature who was moving slowly in the rear ranks of the assault, taking care to be shielded by a large creature, with grey folded skin and a trunk, whose ancestors might well have been uplifted elephants from old Earth.

My first shot from the deintegration wand took out the elephant creature. The second shot was more difficult, because the mental fingers in my head were stabbing everywhere now, no longer looking for something, just causing me intense pain and disorientation. But I managed it, and the humanoid’s head was blow apart.

I nailed the Sad-Eye itself with my third and final shot as it was hurled out of the remains of its host. It had probably been hoping I’d miss so it could scuttle away on its horrid little feet and find a new home inside the head of one of the dozens or perhaps even scores of its puppets who still remained.

But it wasn’t going anywhere.

With the death of the Sad-Eye, the terrible pain inside my head disappeared. The puppets also regained control of their senses, but not in quite enough time to do me any good. I’d fired just as the leading wave reached me, and I went down under multiple charged weapon blows. I think I lost my other hand then, trying to shield my head, but I can’t be sure. Certainly many blows struck my body and legs.

But as I lay dying against the bulkhead that I had defended with my life, there was a sudden, blissful buzz at the base of my skull.

:Connection reestablished Prince Khemri <>and running. Check. Check. Save for rebirth assessment:

7

T
HAT WAS MY first death.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a broad and very comfortable bed. I had the sensation of having just woken up, allied with the wooliness of being half asleep and not quite knowing where I was.

Then I remembered. I’d been dead. I mean, I was dead; I’d been dismembered by Sad-Eye puppets. . .

I checked my internal systems. Everything was working. I could feel all my limbs. All augmentation was operational.

:Welcome back Prince Khemri II <> You have been weighed in the balance by our Priests of the Aspect of the Emperor’s Discerning Hand and found worthy of rebirth <>:

The Imperial Mind’s mental voice faded, but the connection was still there, that buzz at the base of my skull. I let the Mind keep witnessing, raised my head, and saw that I was in my own bed, in the off-duty rooms that my demerit load meant I wasn’t supposed to be in for at least another month. Haddad was waiting at the foot of the bed, with all my twelve priests arrayed around him . . . only there were more than twelve. . .

I sat up properly, yawned, and wiped my eyes, happily removing sleep, not tears. That small act was a delight, not least because this allowed me to physically confirm what my various natural and assisted senses told me. I had both arms and I was alive!

‘Welcome back, Highness,’ said Haddad.

‘Thank you, Haddad,’ I replied. I looked around at all the blue-paned shaved heads. There were eighteen of them now. ‘Who are these other priests?’

‘You have been granted another six priests as part of your gallantry award,’ replied Haddad. He made a gesture at the ceiling. I looked up and saw that each corner was occupied by a spread-eagled assassin’s apprentice, holding themselves up by sheer physical strength and dexterity, not with antigrav. ‘And four of my apprentices have arrived from Jadekha Seven.’