"Goddamn it, Julio," the captain said, shaking his head. "What have you gotten yourself into? I should have had a team of Marines standing by, you know that? I'm putting my balls on the line here for you."
"They're not on the line for him," Julian said. "They're on the line for the Empire."
"Which one are you?" the captain snapped.
"Adib Julian."
"I don't recognize the name," the captain said, regarding him intently.
"You wouldn't. I was just a sergeant in one of the line companies. But get this straight, we've been on Marduk," Julian gestured with a thumb at Denat and Sena, "for the last ten months. Marduk. We can prove that a dozen different ways. We had nothing to do with it."
"This is about the coup!" the pilot blurted. "Holy shit."
"Sergeant—well, Captain, sort of, Adib Julian," Julian said, nodding. "Bronze Battalion of the Empress' Own. Currently, S-2 to Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock. Heir Primus to the Throne of Man."
Despite the racket all around them, a brief bubble of intense silence seemed to surround the barroom table.
"So," Captain Poertena said after a moment, "what's the plan?"
"I need to talk to Helmut," Julian said. "I've got encrypted data chips that prove beyond any reasonable doubt that we were on Marduk when the coup occurred, not Old Earth. This is Adoula's plot, not the Prince's. Helmut needs to know that."
"What's he going to do with it?" Sims asked.
"Warrant, that's between the Admiral and myself," Julian said. "You realize, of course, that you're going to spend the next few weeks, at least, in solitary lockdown. Right?"
"Shit, this is what I get for talking to strangers in bars," the warrant said. "Let me get this straight. The Prince was on Marduk. Which means the whole line about him being behind the attempted coup so much bullshit. Right?"
"Right," Julian ground out. "Trust me on that one. I was there the whole time. Poertena and I are two of only twelve survivors from an entire Marine company that went in with him. We had to walk across that hot, miserable, rain-filled ball of jungle and swamp. It's a long story. But we didn't even know there'd been a coup until a month, month and a half ago. And Adoula is in charge, not the Empress."
"We'd sort of figured that out," the captain said dryly. "Which is why we're stooging around in the back of beyond out here. You're either a godsend or a goddammed menace, and I can't decide which." He sighed and shrugged. "You'll have to meet the Admiral. Sims, you and these other four go in solitary when we get to the ship. When we make rendezvous with the Fleet, I'll send them over in your shuttle to the Zetian. Why you four, by the way?"
"Julio to convince you," Julian said. "Me, because I've met Admiral Helmut before. And Denat and Sena because they're a counterpoint to proving we were on Marduk. And because Denat's a buddy of Julio's."
"Taught me everything I know," Denat said, shrugging all four shoulders.
"In that case, remind me not to play poker with you."
Admiral Angus Helmut, Third Baron Flechelle, was short, almost a dwarf. Well under regulation height, his feet dangled off the deck in a standard station chair, which was why the one in which he now sat was lower than standard. He had a gray, lined face, high cheekbones, thinning gray hair, and gray eyes. His black uniform was two uniform changes old—the pattern he'd worn as an ensign, and quite possibly the same uniform Ensign Helmut had worn, judging by the smoothness of the fabric. He wore his admiral's pips on one collar point, and the crossed cloak and daggers of his original position in Naval Intelligence on the other, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot from lack of sleep as he stared at Julian as if the Marine were something a cat had left on his doorstep.
"Adib Julian," he said. "I should have known. I noticed your name on the seizure orders and thought that treason would be about your métier."
"I've never committed treason," Julian shot back. "No more than you have by keeping your fleet out of contact. The traitors are Adoula and Gianetto and Greenberg."
"Perhaps. But what I see before me is a jumped-up sergeant—one I last met standing charges for falsifying a readiness report."
"There've been changes," Julian replied.
"So you tell me." The admiral considered him with basilisk eyes for several seconds, then tipped his chair very slightly back. "So, the wastrel prince returns as pretender to the Throne, and you want my help?"
"Let's just say... there have been changes," Julian repeated. "Calling Master Rog a wastrel would be... incorrect at this point. And not a pretender to the Throne; he just wants his mother back on it, and that bastard Adoula's head. Although his balls would do in a pinch."
"So what's the non-wastrel's plan?"
"I have to get some assurances that you're going to back us," Julian pointed out. "Not simply use the information to carry favor with Adoula, Admiral."
The admiral's jaw muscles flexed at that, and he shrugged angrily.
"Well, that's the problem in these little plots that run around the Palace," he said. "Trust. I can give you all the assurances in the universe. Prepare the fleet for battle, head for Sol. And then, when we get there, clap you in irons and send you to Adoula as a trophy, along with all your plans. By the same token, there could be Marines standing right outside my cabin, waiting for me to reveal my disloyalty to the Throne. In which case, when I say 'Oh, yes, Sergeant Julian, we'll help your little plot,' they come busting in and arrest me."
"Not if Sergeant Major Steinberg is still in charge," Julian said with a slight grin.
"There is that," Helmut admitted. He and the sergeant major had been close throughout their respective (and lengthy) careers. Which was one reason Steinberg had been Sergeant Major of Sixth Fleet as long as Helmut had commanded it. "Nonetheless."
"The Prince intends to capture his mother, and the Palace, and then to bring in independents to show that she's been held in duress, and that he had nothing to do with it."
"Well, that much is obvious," Helmut snapped. "How?"
"Are you going to back us?"
The admiral leaned further back and steepled his fingers, staring at the sergeant.
"Falsifying a weapons room readiness report," he said, changing the subject. "It wasn't actually your doing, was it?"
"I took the blame. It was my responsibility."
"But you didn't do the shoddy work, did you?"
"No," Julian admitted. "I trusted someone else's statement that it had been done, and signed off on it. The last time I made that particular mistake."
"And what did you do to the person who was actually responsible for losing you your stripes?"
"Beat the crap out of him, Sir," Julian replied after a short pause.
"Yes, I saw the surgeon's report," Helmut said with a trace of satisfaction. Then— "What happened to Pahner?" he rapped suddenly.
"Killed, Sir," Julian said, and swallowed. "Taking the ship we captured to get off that mudball."
"Hard man to kill," Helmut mused.
"It was a Saint covert commando ship," Julian said. "We didn't know until we were in too deep to back out. He died to save the Prince."
"That was his responsibility," Helmut said. "And what was his position on this... countercoup?"
"We developed the original plan's framework before the attack on the ship, Sir. It had his full backing."
"It would," the admiral said. "He was a rather all-or-nothing person. Very well, Julian. Yes, you have my backing. No Marines at the last minute, no double crosses."