"You'd better get your armor back on, Sir," Jin said, glancing at the chameleon suit Roger had changed into. "It'll take you at least that long."
"Right. Talk to you later, Sergeant." Roger had become accustomed to walking the transom, and now he sprang lightly onto it and skipped forward, swinging gracefully from pillar to pillar.
"Show off," Julian muttered as he shifted the rucksack across his knees. It wasn't particularly uncomfortable, since it was supported by his armor, but the confinement got to him after a while.
He'd been awakened by the prince's circuit, and hadn't yet gotten back to sleep. He realized that his responses to the fop's rote questions had been a bit surly, but the prince hadn't seemed to notice.
"I don't think he was showing off," Despreaux said tartly. "I think he was hurrying up front."
Julian raised an eyebrow. Since Despreaux was seated across from him, it gave him the perfect opportunity to needle her, and it would have violated his most deeply held principles to pass it up.
"Ah, you're just jealous because he has better hair than you do."
She glanced sideways to get a glimpse of the rapidly undressing prince.
"It is nice," she murmured, and Julian's mouth dropped open as the realization dawned on him.
"You like him, don't you? You've got the hots for the Prince!"
Her head snapped back around, and she glared at the other squad leader.
"That is the stupidest thing— Of course I don't!"
Julian started to tease her further, but then the full implications hit him. There was no way the Regiment would allow one of the guards to carry on with a member of the Imperial Family. He looked around, but all the other troopers seemed to be asleep or had earbuds in. Fortunately, no one had caught his earlier outburst, and he leaned forward as far as the packed equipment permitted.
"Nimashet, are you nuts?" he hissed softly. "They'll have your ass for this!"
"There's nothing going on," she replied just as quietly, fingering the gray chameleon cover of the rucksack on her knees. "Nothing."
"There'd better be nothing!" he whispered fiercely. "But I don't believe it."
"I can handle it," the sergeant said, leaning back. "Don't worry about me. I'm a big girl."
"Sure you are. Sure." He shook his head and leaned back as well. What a cock-up, he thought.
On the opposite side of the transom, Poertena managed to turn a laugh into a cough. He rolled his head around as if half-asleep, and coughed again. Despreaux and the Prince, he thought. Oh, t'at's pocking funny!
"What's so funny, Sir?" Commander Talcott asked. The XO had just returned from a survey of the ship, and the news wasn't good. Four of DeGlopper's eight missile launchers had taken enough damage to put them out of play for the next bout, and the dead cruiser's fire had gouged deep wounds into the ChromSten-armored hull. Some of them threatened loaded magazines, and although the laser-pumped fusion warheads wouldn't detonate from impact, the power systems of the missile drives would... and take the entire ship with them.
But at least the phase drive had suffered no further damage. In fact, it was actually in better shape than for the last encounter, so they'd have a few more gravities to play with and more time on the power. And while they'd lost launchers, they'd also used less than half the total missile inventory against their first opponent, so the next fight would be nearly even.
Except for the cruiser's ability to dance rings around them.
"Oh, I was just thinking about our ship's namesake," Krasnitsky answered the question with a grim smile. "I wonder if he ever thought 'What the heck am I doing this for?'"
Roger watched the external monitors as the giant docking hatches opened. The perfect blackness of space beckoned as the tractor moorings cut loose, and the shuttles drifted forward. As they cleared the ship's field, DeGlopper's artificial gravity fell away, and they were in freefall.
"I forgot to ask, Your Highness," Pahner said tactfully. "How are you in microgravity?" He carefully avoided any mention of the excuses O'Casey had made to explain the prince's "indisposition" the first evening aboard.
"I play null-gee handball quite a bit," the prince said in an offhand manner as he swiveled the monitor around to watch the ship disappearing in the distance behind them. "I don't have any problems with freefall at all." He smiled evilly for just a moment. "Eleanora, on the other hand..."
"I'm gonna diiie," the chief of staff moaned, clutching the motion sickness bag to her mouth as another wave of wracking nausea washed over her.
"I've got a Mo-Fix injector around here somewhere," Kosutic said with the half-malicious chuckle of one who possessed a cast-iron stomach. Even the smell of the ejecta was survivable; it wasn't like she hadn't smelled it before.
"I'm allergic." Eleanora's voice was muffled by the plastic bag. Then she leaned back and zipped the bag shut. "Oh, Goddd... ."
"Oh," Kosutic said in more sympathetic tones. She shook her head. "We're going to be out here for a couple of days, you realize?"
"Yes," Eleanora said miserably. "I do realize that. But I'd forgotten these shuttles don't have artificial gravity."
"I don't think we can rotate, either," the sergeant major told her. "We're going to do a long, slow burn. I don't think we can do that and rotate at the same time."
"I'll live... I think." The chief of staff suddenly ripped the bag open and buried her face in the contents. "Arrggg."
Kosutic leaned back and shook her head.
"I can see this is gonna be a great trip," she said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"On a scale from one to ten," Captain Krasnitsky muttered, "I give this trip a negative four hundred."
He coughed and shook his head to clear the mist of blood the cough brought up. The instructions on the box were fairly clear. Now if he could just hold together long enough to enter the codes.
Finding the keys for this particular device had been tough. Talcott, who'd had one, had been cut in half on his way back from Engineering. And, of course, the third had been in the suit of the acting engineer. He'd felt awful about having to cut it off of her to get to the device, but he'd had no choice. Tactical had had the fourth, and Navigation the fifth; those two had been easy to snag after the hit on the bridge.
Somewhat to his surprise, the ship had held together. And now, the Saints, after receiving the surrender transmission and the recording of the prince ordering Krasnitsky to surrender, were practically salivating. Capturing the prince would set every member of the ship's crew up for life, even in the austere Saint theocracy.
There was no plot here in the armory, but he didn't need one to know what was happening. He could hear the parasite cruiser docking onto the larger ship, and the concussion as the Saint Marines forced the airlocks for boarding.
Lessee. If I have all five keys, but only one activator, I have to set a delay. Okay. Makes sense.
"Captain Delaney, this is Lieutenant Scalucci." The Caravazan Marine paused and looked around the bridge. "We've taken the bridge but no prisoners. We are encountering resistance from the crew. So far, no prisoners. They're fighting hard—some of them in powered armor—and not surrendering as I would've expected. We have yet to encounter the Prince's bodyguards." He paused and looked around again. "There's something about this I don't like."