A Confusion of Princes (31 page)

I had twenty hours or so before we would be in launch range, but that was only just enough time, because in addition to the symbiote who I hoped would help me live through serious singleship manoeuvres and anything else that might happen, I also had to fill the Kragor’s cockpit—and myself—with Bitek acceleration gel.

This disgusting, translucent material was roughly the consistency of snot. Highly oxygenated and engineered to be breathable, it broke down carbon dioxide and did a whole lot of other useful things. But to get the full effect, you had to be immersed in it and breathing the stuff.

And as I discovered, if you have a normal human body, you definitely need a medical symbiote to keep you calm as the stuff slowly flows into nostrils, mouth, throat, and lungs. It hurt, and it felt like drowning, and even though I knew it was designed to be breathable, I just couldn’t believe it.

Nevertheless, quite a few hours later, I was in the Kragor cockpit, in an Imperial flight suit, totally restrained by crash webs, and completely saturated and immersed in acceleration gel. Not to mention mildly sedated by the symbiote.

Everything depended on my Psitek now. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t talk. I could fly the Kragor using direct Psitek commands, and I could communicate with
Korker
. At least I hoped I’d still be able to communicate with
Korker
after I launched. But my Psitek felt strong, so I was reasonably confident.

Korker
kept me updated on scan, but there wasn’t a lot to tell. We’d long since shot past the KSF fleet, and the pirates were just barrelling in, without any tricky tactical manoeuvres. There was a slim possibility that
Korker
’s stealth capabilities were hiding us, but it was more likely that they did not see me as an enemy, and thus saw no need to change their course or plan.

I hoped this would give me another small edge in what was to come.

I also hoped I would survive the launch. The point of greatest stress on my body would be when the singleship was launched by
Korker
’s slinging gravitor and at the same time went on its own gravity control.

:Let’s just go over the plan one more time, Korker:

:Yes:

:As soon as we enter extreme effective range, you fire one salvo of kinetic slivers at the Lyzgro and launch the Kragor immediately behind. With the cloaking package, it should look like a defective missile. They’ll think it will get taken care of by the gravitic screen, so they won’t bother shooting. As soon as I’m in close effective range, I launch the Kragor’s slivers. I’ll be inside their screen by then, there’ll be nothing they can do, and the Lyzgro will be knocked out. At the same time I launch my sliver, you launch slivers at all the other ships. Without the Lyzgro’s screen, they also explode into little bits. Got it?:

:Affirmative:

It was either a brilliantly simple plan or a remarkably stupid one. Unfortunately the only way to discover which one was to carry it out. Most of it would depend on just how up-to-date the Lyzgro’s tek was. If their sensors could see through
Korker
’s cloaking and spoofing systems, they would see me coming, and though they probably couldn’t hit a singleship with a sliver, they had reality strippers, fusion beam cannon, and other stuff that certainly could.

I also had to survive the brutal acceleration and high-velocity manoeuvring long enough to not only pilot the singleship but coordinate the strike.

:Fourteen minutes fifty seconds to launch:

:Acknowledged:

I wondered if there was anything else I should do, or order
Korker
to do. But I couldn’t think of a single thing.

:Anomalous rayder message received ‘For Khem’:

:Relay it:

It was from Raine. Even though it was the ship relaying it to me via Psitek and so it was straight into my head, I could have sworn I heard her voice.

‘Khem. It’s Raine. I just got a message from Mother about what you’re doing, and how you came to be able to do it . . . and I wanted to tell you I don’t care who you are, or where you’re from, or why you came here. I know you’ll do what’s right. I love you.’

:The message is looped. Do you wish to receive it again?:

:No . . . but keep it. I may . . . I may want to listen to it again, when . . . if I get back:

:Ten minutes thirty seconds to launch:

I lay in my sea of goop and
didn’t
wonder what I was doing, or why I was doing it.

I knew it was right.

Eleven minutes later, I wasn’t so sure. Barely able to stay conscious, I had a terrible pain in my chest and guts, despite the symbiote’s efforts. The acceleration gel around me was stained pink with blood from my nose and ears and who knows where else, and I couldn’t tell if I still had any hands or feet since I couldn’t feel anything below my elbows or knees.

On the positive side, my Kragor singleship was streaking toward the enemy at incredible speed, Null-space sensors had detected no launches toward me, and even better, one of
Korker
’s preliminary kinetic slivers had got through the Lyzgro’s screen and taken out one of the Leolekh transports already. Analysis suggested that many of the bits and pieces trailing along in the funnel-shaped cloud where it had been were people or bits of them. That transport and probably most of the others had been packed with ground troops. Many hands make light work of serious looting. If they got through, they would strip the Habitat bare, taking all useful tek, and they would plunder the world beneath as well, stealing all the crops, livestock, and stores, thus sentencing everyone they didn’t kill in the first place to a lingering death through starvation.

My Psitek was also working, though it took a supreme effort to focus, to rise above the pain and the terrible sensation of being crushed to death. But I had no problem reaching
Korker
, and the singleship continued to answer to my mental controls.

:Enemy launch: reported
Korker
. Simultaneously, I ordered evasive action and discovered that in acceleration gel, it is impossible to scream. I managed a mental one, though.

A second later, we were struck by the passage envelope of a kinetic sliver.

I knew it was only the envelope because I was still alive and the singleship was still sort of in one piece around me.

But the drive had been damaged. Dozens of status reports flickered through my brain, all of them negative.

I felt the pressure on my body lessen. We were still moving at an incredible speed toward the enemy, but the singleship was losing acceleration as the drive failed.

There was other damage too. We were venting something, a trail visible to
Korker
. I pretty much knew what it was even before I checked, or
Korker
chimed it.

:You are losing acceleration gel:

:I know. Time to optimum firing position?:

:Forty-four seconds:

I knew, all right. I’d been here before, with Raine. My acceleration gel was my atmosphere, and it was going fast. Too fast to be survivable. No induced coma can help you survive a total lack of air. There had to be a biggish hole somewhere behind me, and all my precious atmosphere was spewing out of it.

I really was dead this time.

I just had to live long enough to make sure I took out the pirate flagship so
Korker
could take out the rest.

It was a long forty-four seconds.

:Screen perimeter passed. Launch:

All my slivers flew, followed only seconds later by
Korker
’s.

The singleship’s acceleration faded again a moment later. The pressure on my body eased, though the pain didn’t, and the feeling didn’t return to my arms and legs.

But I didn’t care about that. All my attention was focused on waiting for the sliver impact, which came some three seconds later.

The singleship and
Korker
reported at exactly the same time, a chorus inside my head.

:Target destroyed. Lyzgro destroyed. Dyshzko 1 destroyed.

Dyshzko 2 destroyed. Dyshzko 3 destroyed. Leolekh-class transports 1 through 10 destroyed. One transport severely damaged:

So we didn’t quite get them all,
I thought wearily. But I couldn’t do anything now. I was too tired, and everything hurt. I wanted to rest. . . .

But I knew I couldn’t yet, not quite. The task had to be finished. Raine and her people had to be protected.

:Korker. Close and . . . destroy remaining transport. Pick up singleship. Carry on planned course . . . to Xinxri:

My eyes were already shut. They had been all the time. But I felt a darkness come as if I had squeezed my eyelids tight, a spreading darkness that brought with it a biting cold.

I guessed I’d failed the test to become an Adjuster.

But I’d passed the test for being human.

So this is the very precipice of death,
I thought.
It feels different
when it’s final.

:Highness. Reach for the Mind:

I think I tried to smile, though my face was frozen. It seemed appropriate that Haddad would be with me now, here at the end. Even if only as a figment of my imagination, the last gasp of electrical impulses in a failing cerebellum— :Highness! Reach for the Mind!:

It wasn’t just Haddad. It was all the priests of my household, all my uncles and aunts. I could feel them reaching for my mind, trying to grab me and reel me in, all the way from that little observation station in the ring around the gas giant. . .

They were actually
in the system
! I could connect!

Dying, I reached out, and though I felt no buzz at the back of my head, the Imperial Mind was suddenly there, in all its cold glory.

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

22

T
HAT WAS MY second death.

As previously, the next thing I knew I was lying on a comfortable bed. This time, I had the brief feeling that I was emerging from some long, calm sleep, but it vanished as I came to full consciousness with a snap and instantly I was back in my augmented body, a flood of reports rushed through my head, and hard on the heels of these updates came the familiar presence of the Imperial Mind.

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

I sat up, and while I did not recognise the large and lavish chamber in which I found myself, I was greatly pleased to see Haddad and my original twelve priests, with Uncles Frekwo and Aleakh at the front.

‘Welcome back, Highness,’ said Haddad gravely.

‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘The observation post in Kharalcha?’

‘No, Highness. We are at the Imperial Core. You were returned to physicality here. However, your household and I did indeed come in from the system Odkhaz, which you may know as Kharalcha.’

I raised an eyebrow. The Imperial Core was a world essentially reserved for ceremony. Long ago the Emperor and the Imperial Mind might have been located here, but it was well known that this was no longer the case. Whatever infrastructure the Imperial Mind needed was spread across the Empire, and the Emperor—well, no one knew who the Emperor was, let alone where he or she might be at any given time.

‘How long was it this time?’ I asked. ‘I mean, how long since I died?’

‘Four months and one day, Highness.’

Four months. So whatever had happened at Kharalcha was long done, already beyond any intervention from me.

‘Did . . . did the pirates get through?’ I asked.

‘The fleet that you engaged was completely destroyed, Highness,’ said Haddad.

I looked away from him for a moment to hide my emotion as best I could. Raine was alive! The Habitat wasn’t plundered . . . or at least it shouldn’t have been . . . provided Atalin hadn’t swung back again. I suppressed a surge of sudden fear.

‘What is the current status of Kharalcha?’ I asked. ‘What happened after . . . after I died?’

‘As I mentioned, your household, including myself, returned to Imperial space almost immediately,’ said Haddad. ‘However, knowing your interest, Highness, I have monitored system Odkhaz and can report that no further military engagements have taken place and that the system is on track to regaining its lost economic potential—’