TRAITOR
PROLOGUE
Cutler Gustavus von Tischendorf was eight T-years old when he had his first space battle.
Though in retrospect, he realized it probably wasn’t actually the first such battle he’d been in. He had vague memories of his mother disappearing for hours at a time while he floated in zero-gee in their cabin, listening to rumblings and thuds and occasional shouts from the passageways beyond. Afterward, when all was quiet again, his mom would come back into their cabin, and the deck would slowly become a deck again instead of just another bulkhead. Sometimes his mom would then go out again and not be back for another few hours, but sometimes they went off to the wardroom to eat. There was laughter and loud talk at those times, and he always got an ice cream sundae before his mom took him back and tucked him in for the night.
But it wasn’t until the Battle of Jorgan’s Star that Cutler finally learned the whole truth.
His mom was a kapitän now. That meant their cabin on Schreien was bigger than the ones on their previous ships. But it also meant that the cabin had a small set of repeater bridge displays that let Cutler see what was going on.
And it was glorious.
The rumbling was autocannon fire as the ship defended itself from incoming missiles. The thuds marked the launch of Schreien’s own missiles in response. The shouting was men and women swimming rapidly through the passageways on their way to fix equipment that had failed or to reroute power or sensor lines.
Finally, it was over. Cutler had kept track as he watched, and by his reckoning his mom and Schreien had destroyed three whole enemy ships.
And sure enough, an hour later, he got his ice cream sundae.
“Did you watch the battle from the cabin?” his mom asked as he dug into the bowl.
“Uh-huh,” Cutler said. “It was really cool. We got three of their ships, right?”
“Three ships were destroyed, yes,” she confirmed with a smile. “But we didn’t do it all by ourselves. The other ships helped, too.”
“Oh. Right.” Vaguely, Cutler remembered other ships being in the battle. He hadn’t paid much attention to them. “Was Uncle Gustav’s ship one of them?”
“Oh, yes,” his mom said. “His ship is always one of them. And always the best one.”
“I don’t think so,” Cutler said firmly. “Schreien’s the best. Because you’re the captain.”
“Well, thank you,” she said with another smile. “I’m glad you think so.” Her eyes shifted across the room—“Pablo?” she called.
“Yes, Kapitän Jen?” a swarthy man Cutler remembered seeing around the ship said, coming over to their table. He shot a smile at Cutler. “How you doing, Kapitän Jen’s son?”
Cutler bristled. He hated when people on his mother’s ship called him that. Almost as much as he hated it when they called her Kapitän Jen.
But she didn’t notice, or else didn’t care. She launched into some stuff with Pablo that was way too technical for Cutler to understand. “Yes, Ma’am,” Pablo said when she’d finished. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She almost always said thank-you to people.
Cutler wasn’t sure he liked that. He’d heard Uncle Gustav order people around, and he was a lot more firm and a lot less friendly sounding.
And they called him Admiral Anderman, not Admiral Gustav.
“Trouble?”
Cutler blinked. His mom was looking at him, her forehead wrinkled a little. “How come they call you Kapitän Jen?” he asked. “I don’t think that’s very polite.”
“Oh, they’re polite enough,” Jennifer assured him. “The thing is, when politeness and protocol are fighting practicality, the practicality—”
“What’s practicality?”
“Practicality is doing things the practical way,” his mother explained. “Being efficient. Making sure you get to the result you want in the simplest way that works. In this case, Kapitän von Tischendorf takes”—she paused, her lips moving—“seven syllables to say. But Kapitän Jen takes—?”
Cutler did a quick count. “Four.”
“Four,” Jennifer agreed. “A little over half as many. Besides that, von Tischendorf is a bit hard for some of the crew to pronounce. So I just told everyone to call me Kapitän Jen. You see?”
“Uh-huh,” Cutler said. But he still didn’t like it. A kapitän should be respected, not called by her first name. “But when I’m a kapitän I’m going to make them call me Kapitän von Tischendorf.”
“When you’re a kapitän?” Jennifer asked, raising her eyebrows. “You want to command a ship like this?”
Cutler looked around the wardroom. Of all the ships he’d been on, this was the one he liked the best. He liked it even better than Uncle Gustav’s battlecruiser Seydlitz. “Not a ship like this,” he corrected her. “I want this ship.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, you know, there’s a lot of work to captaining a ship. And a lot of study and learning first. Are you ready to spend your whole life that way?”
Cutler looked around the wardroom again. “Yes,” he said firmly.
“Good,” his mom said. “Then finish your ice cream and let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Cutler asked. He stuffed in the last two mouthfuls, wincing at the momentary brain freeze.
“Forward Weapons,” she said, getting up and picking up his bowl and spoon. “Commander Pablo is going to tear apart one of the autocannon.”
She leveled a finger at him. “And you, Kapitän Jen’s Son, are going to watch.”
I
“Bayern to escort commanders,” Großadmiral von Tischendorf’s voice came over Schreien’s bridge speaker. “Call in ready.”
Cutler waited until the vanguard leader and each of the two flank leaders checked in with confirmations. After that, it was his turn. “Schreien reporting ready,” he called.
“Thank you,” the Großadmiral said.
Mentally, Cutler shook his head. There she went again—and a Großadmiral now, too—still thanking people for doing nothing more than their jobs. And probably still letting her senior officers call her by her first name. At the very least, he could hope it was Großadmiral Jen now.
Though if he wanted to get really technical, it was Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf von Tischendorf. Gustav Anderman had always been amused by their family name, not just because of how incredibly German it was, but also because the “von” part made it sound like a relic of nobility from pre-Diaspora days. A few years ago, when Gustav started really leaning into his obsession with the Old Prussian leader Frederick the Great and began handing out titles and lordships, he’d decided to double down on the von Tischendorf name and also make it their title.
Cutler’s mother took it as a sign of affection for her and her son. Cutler himself wasn’t so sure it wasn’t just Anderman laughing to himself.
“Everyone stay sharp,” the Großadmiral warned. “We’re getting some gravitic signatures from behind T-116.”
Cutler peered at his display. Sure enough, someone lurking behind one of the larger asteroids in the distance ahead had lit off a wedge. Right on schedule, the Tomlinson Security Force was coming out to play.
For all the good it would do them. Andermani Naval Intelligence had already done a complete workup on the Tomlinson forces, and they weren’t in the least bit impressive: two frigates, five corvettes, and an unknown but probably small number of remote-operated missile batteries on some of the larger rocks of the asteroid zone the Andermani task force was currently decelerating through.
And with those seven defenders facing a battlecruiser, two heavy cruisers, two frigates, three destroyers and one of Gustav Anderman’s incredibly powerful battleships, the Tomlinson force was going to be less than a speed bump on the way to teaching President McIntyre that destroying an Andermani heavy cruiser was not a good idea.
Especially when that battleship was the flagship of Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf von Tischendorf.
“Getting telemetry signals,” Cutler’s sensor officer announced. “Probably sending to one or more local missile batteries. Jamming now.”
“Acknowledged,” Cutler said, glowering at the displays. Sitting back here in the three-ship aft screen, he could certainly disable the Tomlinson missile batteries. But that was about all he could do. Where he should be was near the center of the formation, between the battlecruiser and his mother’s battleship, where Schreien’s sophisticated EW suite could draw enemy attacks away from those high-value targets and then neutralize them with her heavy antimissile systems.
The problem was that there were three more warships in the TSF’s collection: a frigate and two corvettes, warships that the ANI report said were currently undergoing repairs. But that was a conclusion, not hard data, and Großadmiral von Tischendorf was too good a commander to put her full trust in even expert extrapolations.
Hence, Schreien’s position in the aft screen. If the TSF had managed to get the frigate and corvettes back to operational status, they might hide them out here among the asteroids to pop out behind the Andermani force and attempt to throw some missiles up their kilts. Such an attack would be a long shot at best, given that the Andermani were still racing away from such a theoretical ambush and those theoretical missiles, which would give the Großadmiral plenty of warning and enough time to pitch wedges against them. But it was possible, and the Großadmiral wanted to make sure Schreien was there to foil any such backstabbing attack.
“Trakhener and Drachen, decrease deceleration fifty gees,” the Großadmiral ordered.
The two commanders acknowledged, and on Cutler’s tactical the frigates’ icons began drifting forward of the main group. Now that contact with the enemy had been made, the admiral was sending the flanking ships ahead of the force to hopefully sniff out any surprises the Tomlinson defenders might have planted up there.
For whatever good it would do them. In a few hours—a few days at the most—Tomlinson would cease to exist as an independent nation.
They had only themselves to blame, of course. Gustav Anderman had never intended to create an empire out here. He’d been perfectly happy to take over the struggling colony world Kuan Yin, rename it Potsdam, find a solution to the genetic plant problem that was killing the crops and starving the colonists, and accept their gratitude in the form of being proclaimed king.
But not everyone had been so pleased with the planet’s regime change. Seven T-years after Anderman’s arrival, Ronald Devane of Nimbalker had allowed one of his vassals, Baron Sigismund, to raid the New Berlin system. At the time, the prevailing theory among Cutler’s circle of friends and fellow officers was that Devane had known what was happening to the Kuan Yin colonists and had a solution, but had deliberately withheld it in the hopes that everyone would die off and he could pick up some new real estate at bargain prices. Gustav’s arrival had ruined that plan, and so he was going to call out the upstart and see what he was made of.
On paper, at least, the plan looked reasonable. Nearly a quarter of the Liegnitz, Ltd., officers and spacers had chafed at the prospect of settling down on Potsdam, and had been permitted to take their ships and return to mercenary life elsewhere in the galaxy. Many of those who stayed were rotated from shipboard duty to civilian police and ground security forces. Looking at the resulting “official” size of what was then the New Potsdam Protectorate Navy, Devane had clearly concluded that Gustav’s fighting strength was almost nonexistent.
But numbers were only half the story. Devane should also have looked into the tales of Gustav’s fighting skill and checked out Liegnitz’s success rate. He hadn’t, and as a result was forced to watch as his world was annexed barely a T-year later. Three years after that, New Berlin and Nimbalker were formally redesignated as the Andermani Empire, with King Gustav now Emperor Gustav.
That should have been the end of it. The Empire’s other neighbors should have taken the hint and steered clear of New Berlin. Certainly Gustav wouldn’t have made any further trouble on his own. Even before his coronation he’d told his closest friends, including Cutler’s mother, that he had no interest in further expanding his new empire.
But Hereditary President Trudy McIntyre of Tomlinson was rotten at taking hints. There had been tension between the Tomlinson and Nimbalker systems dating back well before Gustav arrived on the scene, and McIntyre wasn’t the type to let a change in management interfere with a good feud. Six T-years after Nimbalker’s annexation she sent three frigates to attack the heavy cruiser SMS Sirene in Nimbalker space, destroying her and her entire crew.
To no one’s surprise, except possibly McIntyre’s, Gustav took it personally.
Which was why today, eight T-months later, Großadmiral von Tischendorf and the battleship Bayern had arrived to deliver an ultimatum: McIntyre would surrender herself, and the remainder of the Tomlinson government would cede control of their world to the Andermani Empire.
There was no or else included in the message. Cutler was pretty sure no one on Tomlinson needed one.
Maybe this would be the end of it. Once Tomlinson had been dealt with, maybe all the other small nations out here would leave the Andermani alone. A few hours, a few days at the most—
“Contacts!” the voice of Trakhener’s Fregattenkapitän Rosten came suddenly from the com. “Six contacts, bearing—”
“Wedges!” Cutler’s tactical officer snapped. “Six wedges forward, three each starboard and portside.”
“All ships, pitch one-eighty positive,” Großadmiral von Tischendorf ordered, her voice as glacially calm as always. “Trakhener and Drachen, return to flanking positions. Aft screen, stay sharp for an up-the-kilt ambush. Schreien, increase your missile battery jamming if you can.”
“Aye, aye, Großadmiral,” Cutler said, eyeing the tactical. The six unknowns were clearing the edges of the oversized asteroids they’d been lurking behind, about midway to the TSF ships the Andermani force had first spotted in the distance. The plan had probably been for the first group to act as decoy, holding the Andermani forces’ attention long enough for them to sweep past the lurkers, whereupon the latter would swoop out of hiding and put the Andermani into a pincer.
But thanks to Großadmiral von Tischendorf’s caution, the lurkers had been spotted before that could happen. The Andermani force was now bearing down on them, alerted and in the proper attack formation to quickly deal with the threat.
There was only one problem. Even if the Großadmiral had been right about the missing TSF ships being functional again, that only added up to three extra ships.
So why were the Andermani facing six wedges?
And then, the ship IDs came up on the tactical, and for a frozen heartbeat Cutler found himself staring in disbelief.
The ambush force wasn’t the missing frigate and two corvettes. It was, instead, a full squadron of six corvettes.
Six corvettes.
Someone on Schreien’s bridge swore softly. Cutler couldn’t blame him. There had been no indication of additional warships in the Tomlinson system: nothing the task force had seen, nothing that ANI had heard even a whisper about.
But they were here. And all six were charging toward the Andermani force, toward Bayern’s forward screen and toward Bayern herself.
“Here they come,” Großadmiral von Tischendorf’s voice came over the speaker. If she was startled at the size of the unexpected attack force, it didn’t show in her voice. “All ships: cease deceleration on my mark: mark. Aft screen, hold position.”
Cutler hissed out a silent curse. Hold position. In other words, stay back where he and his two companions would be completely out of the battle.
That was insane. Schreien’s whole reason for existence was to be out there in the open where she could draw off the attacks that would otherwise be directed at Bayern. But his admiral had given him an order, and he had no choice but to obey.
Unless he saw an additional threat that needed to be checked out. Or even just suspected there was such a threat.
“Pitch twenty degrees positive and move us up one hundred kilometers,” he ordered. “I want to be able to see behind that asteroid ahead to portside.”
“Twenty degrees positive, up one hundred kilometers,” the helm acknowledged.
“Herr Flottillenadmiral?” Cutler’s XO asked quietly.
“The asteroid in question is large enough to conceal another corvette,” Cutler told her. “I want to make sure nothing sneaks up behind us.” And in the meantime, once they reached their new position they would be fully clear of Bayern’s wedge, allowing the Lorelei lure of Schreien’s EW signal to hopefully draw away some of the attacks the corvettes were about to launch.
“Yes, Sir,” the XO said.
“Missile tracks!” the call came from CIC. “Incoming—Gott im Himmel! There are twenty-four of them. Repeat: twenty-four missile tracks.”
Cutler stared at the display, his brain momentarily refusing to accept the evidence of his eyes. Twenty-four missiles—four from each attacking ship—was insane. A typical corvette could barely control half that number.
Which meant these corvettes were anything but typical. Modern corporate ringers, beyond a doubt.
And with that salvo came terrible danger. Even with Bayern’s forward screen and flankers running at top efficiency, twenty-four missiles were almost certain to overwhelm their defenses. One or more of those missiles were going to get through.
And their target was certainly going to be Bayern.
His mother’s ship.
“Helm, get us in there,” he bit out, tearing his eyes from the tactical long enough to start running some numbers. “Leipzig, Danzig—hold position. Watch for additional attacks.” At full acceleration, once Schreien was at the new position he’d specified . . .
The XO got there first. “We’re not going to make it, Sir,” she murmured. “We’re still in Bayern’s impeller shadow. There’s nothing we can do about that salvo.”
Cutler ground his teeth. “Then we’d best make sure we’re there for the second, hadn’t we?”
He sensed her wince. “Yes, Sir.”
Schreien was still moving to get clear when the salvo hit.
The result was as bad as Cutler had feared. The forward screen took the brunt of the attack, with the heavy cruiser Bretagne blazing into scrap with the nuclear fire of missile strikes and the even brighter starfire as her ruptured reactors exploded. The destroyer München survived, but the attack took down her wedge, forcing her to fall out of formation and head for the hyper limit as best she could. The battlecruiser Rossbach also survived, but suffered two near-misses which neutralized her forward sensors and missile launchers and likewise knocked her out of the fight.
And Bayern . . .
The battleship was tough. Tougher than most people who’d never faced anything bigger than a battlecruiser realized. The single missile that got through her defenses would have destroyed any other warship. But Bayern, while severely damaged, survived the blast.
But it was only a respite. With the forward screen and Bayern’s own defenses gone, the attacking corvettes had a virtually clear field for their next salvo. Only the flanking frigates were still in position to counterattack.
They were doing their best. Both ships had pulled in closer, trying to bring Bayern into the protective shield of their autocannon. Simultaneously, they were throwing their own missiles as fast as they could at the enemy.
But it wasn’t enough, Cutler knew. Each of the Andermani frigates could only control two missiles, and even if by some miracle all four of them found their targets that would still leave two corvettes ready to throw another eight missiles at their undefended prey.
Bayern’s only hope was for Cutler to get close enough to draw that second salvo to himself.
And then, he spotted something. A telltale flicker in Bayern’s nodes, a clear sign that they were about to go.
Again, he quickly ran the numbers, keeping an eye on the readouts of Bayern’s wedge and nodes. Another flicker, and then a third. The battleship’s last gasp . . . and possibly also her last hope.
“Change vector,” he snapped, keying the new course over to the helm. “Execute at once.”
“Ah—” the helmsman hesitated, peering at the numbers.
“Execute at once!”
The helmsman twitched violently. “Aye, Sir.”
“Herr Flottillenadmiral—” the XO began urgently as Schreien leaped forward.
“Yes, I know,” Cutler cut her off. “Don’t worry. Bayern’s wedge will be gone well before we’re in danger of intersecting it.”
“Sir, that’s an assumption,” she countered. “And if it isn’t gone—”
“Then we die,” Cutler said harshly. “What’s the matter, XO? Are you afraid of death in the line of duty?”
“I’m not afraid of death, Sir,” she said stiffly. “But I have no interest in dying for no reason.”
“The reason writhes in pain in front of you,” Cutler said, just as stiffly. “Bayern, and however many of her crew still live. Without us, all of them will die. With us, some may yet survive.”
“And if you’re wrong, not only do they die, but so do all of us.”
Deliberately, Cutler turned back to the tactical. “I’m not wrong,” he said. “Make sure all EW systems are operating at full efficiency, and prepare missiles and autocannon.”
They were ten seconds away from crossing wedges with Bayern, and Cutler was starting to wonder if he might indeed have made a mistake, when the battleship’s stress bands gave one final flicker and vanished.
Leaving the battleship helpless . . . but also leaving the enemy corvettes open and vulnerable in the distance ahead.
“Stand by missiles,” Cutler said coolly, permitting himself a small smile as the tac lit up with the tracks of the corvettes’ second salvo. “Autocannon ready. Flank ships, prepare a full salvo on my signal. As soon as this attack has been dealt with, we take the battle to the enemy.”
It didn’t work out that way. In the end, Cutler had no choice but to take the task force’s remaining ships and abandon the field, leaving the twisted hulk of Bayern and an unknown number of survivors behind.
But it wasn’t over, he knew. There would be a day of reckoning. And it would come very, very soon.
II
“Flottillenadmiral von Tischendorf?”
With a start, Cutler looked up from the flag-draped coffin resting beneath the soft lighting. To his surprise, he saw that he was the only one still sitting in the room.
A young ensign stood at the side door, her face and body language radiating discomfort for interrupting a senior officer at a time like this.
“Yes, Kadett?” Cutler kept his voice calm and civil. What had happened wasn’t her fault, after all.
“Your pardon, Herr Flottillenadmiral. His Excellency has called for you. He requests your presence at the Palace at your earliest convenience.”
In other words, immediately. “Understood,” Cutler said, standing up. He gave his mother’s casket one final, lingering look, then headed toward the ensign. “You have a car?”
“Yes, Sir,” she said. “If you’ll come this way, please?”
She headed down the hallway at a brisk walk. Cutler followed, his heart starting to pick up its pace. Maybe, just maybe, Uncle Gustav had finally made his decision.
The military funeral home was only a few blocks from Sorgenfrei Palace. Probably set up that way on purpose, Cutler had often thought, given the Emperor’s long association with warfare and violent death. The car covered the distance in less than a minute, the ensign dropping him in the courtyard with instructions to meet the Emperor in the audience room. Cutler climbed the wide steps, passed between the pair of two-meter-tall Totenkopf Hussars standing their silent watch on either side of the door, and went inside. He walked through the Marble Hall, pausing along the way to briefly pat three of the greyhounds who bounded over to greet him, then passed into the audience room.
Cutler had wondered if Uncle Gustav would be alone. He wasn’t. There was another uniformed man in the room, his back to the door as he talked quietly to the Emperor. Gustav looked past him as Cutler walked in and beckoned the newcomer forward. “Guten abend, Herr Flottillenadmiral,” Gustav boomed out a greeting. “May I once again offer my condolences on the passing of your mother.”
“Vielen dank, ihre Exzellenz,” Cutler replied politely as he walked forward. The other man half turned—
Cutler felt a stirring of cautious excitement. It was Vizeadmiral Gottlieb Riefenstahl, commander of the battlecruiser Faust.
And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why he was here.
There were quiet reports that Gustav was forming a new military unit, Wehrkreis II, which would focus on the slowly expanding Andermani Empire with the battleship Liegnitz as its flagship. The rumors—and, really, basic logic—also suggested that Riefenstahl was going to be promoted to admiral and put in command of the force. What the rumors didn’t say was who was in line to be his flag captain.
Riefenstahl was here, talking to Gustav. Cutler had been summoned into their presence.
It was always risky to connect speculative dots. But in this case . . .
“She was an excellent officer,” Gustav continued as Cutler reached the proper place in front of the Emperor and bowed to the proper angle. “And an even more excellent friend.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Cutler said, fighting against the reflex to say Uncle Gustav instead. He’d been twelve when Gustav told him not to call him that in public anymore, but the reflex remained.
He straightened up from his bow, giving his Emperor a quick once-over. Most visitors, even those who should be more discerning, saw mainly the archaic King Frederick the Great garb and powdered wig that Gustav had been outfitting himself with for the past thirty-three T-years. Most of the visitors who got past the clothing stopped again at the Emperor’s piercing gaze. Only a few could see past both of those to the face of the man itself.
And only a very few, like Cutler himself, could see how that face had changed over the past few years.
Years, hell—he could see how Gustav’s face had changed over the past few months. The Emperor had been shaken by Tomlinson’s unexpected and unprovoked attack. Shaken and furious both. The whole reason he’d settled down on Potsdam in the first place was that he was tired of the constant battles of a mercenary’s life. He’d come here hoping all of that had been put behind him, and that he would finally find peace.
It hadn’t worked out that way. And people like Cutler, who’d grown up with the man, could see how rapidly he was aging.
Of course, Gustav was eighty-six T-years old. Even someone who’d held off old age as well as he had couldn’t hold it off forever.
Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t still a good deal of fire behind that lined face. McIntyre had found that out the hard way. The Second Battle of Tomlinson had followed the first by only a few T-months, with the Andermani forces this time under the direct command of Gustav himself. In the intervening months McIntyre had received three more of the fancy corporate corvettes that had caused Bayern’s force such grief, reinforcements that had been of exactly zero use against Gustav’s force of twin battleships plus much of the rest of the Andermani fleet.
The results had been quick, inevitable, and thoroughly decisive. The Tomlinson Security Force had been utterly demolished, the sole survivor being a frigate that was undergoing maintenance at the time. The victors had plucked a few survivors from their ships, subsequently trading them for the handful of Bayern crew that the TSF had rescued.
And, of course, for the bodies that had been recovered.
Gustav had made arrangements to tow Bayern back to New Berlin, but there was little hope that she could be repaired.
“I’ve been studying your tactics at First Tomlinson, Flottillenadmiral von Tischendorf,” Gustav continued. “I’ve also been considering your requests.” He raised his eyebrows, those piercing eyes flicking from Cutler to Riefenstahl and back again.
Cutler nodded, again trying to suppress his growing excitement. If Riefenstahl was promoted and given Liegnitz, that would also leave Faust in need of a new commander. The only question was which of the two possible positions Cutler was about to be offered.
Both had their advantages. Serving as flag captain of the Leignitz under Riefenstahl would probably let him see more action than sitting on a battlecruiser whose sole job was to orbit Potsdam and keep the capital safe. On the other hand, there was a lot to be said for the prestige of having his own battlecruiser.
Besides, given the current trend of political rumbling in neighboring star nations, there was every chance that even the Home Fleet ships would get out for some exercise every now and then. No, he would be content with whichever post Gustav offered.
And the Emperor would offer one of them. Because Cutler deserved it.
Not just because he was ready. Not even because Gustav had been promising him a major command for at least five years. He deserved it because Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf had been one of Gustav’s absolute best officers since before Cutler was even born. Legacy alone—honor and gratitude alone—dictated that Cutler get one of those positions.
And if Emperor Gustav was anything, he was a man of honor.
“Before I address that, though,” Gustav said, “I want to speak to you about the maneuver that saved Bayern and the last remnant of her force from total destruction.”
Cutler felt himself grow a little taller. Legacy, honor, and gratitude were all well and good. But ultimately, it was ability and ingenuity that Gustav prized above all else. Gustav’s own genius was why Liegnitz, Ltd., had been the best mercenary group the galaxy had ever known, and why the Andermani Empire would last forever.
“It was, and I say this with all respect and deliberation—”
Cutler suppressed a smile. Gloating was unprofessional, especially in front of his Emperor and a senior officer.
“—possibly the most foolhardy maneuver I’ve ever seen.”
The rosy glow vanished. Had Cutler heard him correctly? “Your Excellency?” he asked carefully.
“Not only did it endanger both Schreien and Bayern, but also the other ships of the task force,” Gustav continued. “If Bayern’s impellers hadn’t collapsed, you would have instantly destroyed both ships. Furthermore, the loss of Schreien would likely have strained the task force’s remaining resources to the point where none of the ships would have survived.”
“But, Your Excellency,” Cutler protested. “It worked. It worked.”
“That it did,” Gustav acknowledged. “But the fact that it succeeded does not alter the fact that it was untested, untried, and extremely dangerous.”
“Your Excellency—” Cutler broke off. Gustav’s mind was clearly made up. And if there was one thing his mother had hammered into him, it was the fact that once Gustav Anderman made up his mind, the decision might as well be cast in battle steel.
“Having said that,” Gustav continued, ignoring the choked-off protest, “the situation you found yourself in has highlighted a possible flaw in our battle doctrine. Vizeadmiral Riefenstahl has formed a group from the Academy to study the issue, including experts from both engineering and tactics, particularly as regards the positioning of EW warships within a formation. I would like you to lead that group.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Cutler managed.
So there it was. No Faust, no flag captain of Liegnitz, and a kick downstairs to the Academy.
Was Schreien also being taken away from him? “About my current command . . . ?”
“For the moment, this study group will be your only concern,” the Emperor said. “Officially, you’re still Schreien’s CO, but your XO will oversee her repairs. Once your report is in and Schreien is ready to return to duty, we’ll discuss your future assignment.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.” So much for honor and gratitude and loyalty. “Will there be anything more?”
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if wondering whether Cutler’s brusqueness constituted an insult. “No, Herr Flottillenadmiral, I believe we are finished,” he said. “You’ll report to Konteradmiral Chun Kao-ni at the Academy tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred. He’ll assist you in assembling your study team.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Cutler said. He gave the proper bow, to the proper angle, because someone ought to show proper respect today. Then, turning his back on his Emperor, he strode through the door.
Trying very hard not to let his anguish and simmering rage show. There were, after all, Totenkopf guards at the door. No doubt watching him closely.
The guards closed the door behind von Tischendorf, and Riefenstahl suppressed a sigh.
The man didn’t get it. In fact, as near as Riefenstahl could tell, he’d missed the point completely.
Yes, his maneuver had been foolhardy. Yes, it had risked the entire mission. By all logic and probability the outcome should have been a completely destroyed task force, whereas if von Tischendorf had simply accepted the loss of Bayern and the other ships and broken off after that first devastating salvo, he might have saved more than just Schreien and two of the other ships. And yes, it was the Emperor’s right as sovereign, as well as his duty as overall Navy commander, to point that out.
But the fact that the Emperor had recognized that von Tischendorf had found a flaw in standard combat tactics and wanted him to take the lead in building new doctrine was an incredible compliment.
Von Tischendorf didn’t see it that way. He’d come in here fresh off his mother’s memorial service, fixated on claiming Faust as if it was his by divine right. That wasn’t how the Navy did things.
But his mother had been one of the Emperor’s closest friends and confidantes, and von Tischendorf himself had grown up calling their sovereign Uncle Gustav. He clearly felt like the universe owed him.
Which wasn’t how the universe did things, either.
“Have you seen the latest report on the corvettes’ missile control package?” the Emperor asked.
Quickly, Riefenstahl shifted his mind from spoiled military brats to the more immediate problem at hand. “I skimmed it, Your Excellency, but haven’t had a chance to give it a proper study,” he said. “The approach seemed unorthodox but intriguing. Probably Solarian League, but it’s possible some researchers at PFT came up with it. Either way, we’ll want to follow up on it.”
“Agreed,” the Emperor said. “I’ve sent out enquiries. We shall see what they uncover. A question, Vizeadmiral: Clearly, the first use of this telemetry system should be on our warships. But it occurs to me that a scaled-down version could perhaps be added to our freighters.”
“An interesting suggestion, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said, running the possibilities through his mind. Six T-years ago, in the wake of the Nimbalkar annexation, the Emperor had decreed that all Andermani freighters would henceforth be armed. Two of those freighters were already in service, with Lenz nearly completed. “I doubt we’ll want to load that many missiles on a single freighter, but the system would certainly allow control of two missiles at a time and likely give the captain better and longer control of them.”
“My thoughts exactly,” the Emperor agreed. “I’ll call Konteradmiral Popovich and have him suspend Lenz’s final construction work until the telemetry group has finished their analysis.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. Would you like me to handle that?”
“Thank you, Herr Vizeadmiral, but I’ll see to it,” Gustav said. “I haven’t spoken to Yuri for a long time, and it would be good to renew acquaintances.” The Emperor’s lips creased in an almost melancholy smile. “So few of my old friends still remain.”
He lifted a hand, and the reflective mood lifted. “At any rate, you already have enough work to do. I’ll let you get to it.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said again. Bowing, he turned and headed out of the audience room.
Four of the palace greyhounds were milling around the Marble Hall as he entered, and he paused for a moment to make sure each of them got a pat and chin scritch. He could understand the Emperor’s melancholy and sense of loss—Cutler’s mother had been just the most recent of many, many of his old friends who had passed on.
But where others might look at that increasingly empty glass and yield to sadness or despair, Gustav Anderman instead turned those memories into a determination to make sure that the men and women under his command would never unnecessarily lose their own friends and colleagues. And when they did, that those losses would not be useless or in vain.
Tomlinson had learned about that determination the hard way. Maybe the Andermani Empire’s other neighbors would take the hint.
But he doubted it.
III
“Very good, Sir,” Korvettenkapitän Ludmilla Golovskina said briskly, making a final note on her tablet. “I’ll add these to the official report.” She looked up and gave Cutler a cheerful smile. “And then, I believe, we’ll be at an end.”
“So it would seem, Frau Kapitän,” Cutler agreed, eyeing her with a set of decidedly mixed feelings. Golovskina had come into the project late, a full two weeks into the study, substituting for an officer who’d had to withdraw due to a family emergency. At the time Cutler had been angry at the potential delay and had nearly asked that she be dropped and that the group simply go on as it was, one member short.
But she’d been faster on the ramp-up than he’d expected, doing much of the catch-up work on her own time. She also proved herself smart and capable, offering fresh ideas and new twists on old ones in the group meetings, and showing a flair for composition and wording as the official report took shape. In fact, much to Cutler’s surprise, she quickly became his favorite member.
But now the project was coming to a close. It had been decidedly successful, with the group coming up with new suggestions for EW ship deployment in a variety of situations, as well as how those ships could support and be supported in turn by the rest of a formation.
Whether Emperor Gustav would accept any of them into official Andermani doctrine, of course, was another matter. For years, off and on, the Emperor had been writing what he claimed would be the definitive text on space warfare strategy and tactics, and it was quite possible that once the book was finished Gustav would consider the matter set in stone. Hopefully, Cutler’s report would be in time to make the final version. “Any idea how long it’ll take to make the additions?”
“I’ll have them for you by tomorrow morning,” Golovskina promised.
And then she’d be gone, reassigned to a ship or another ground station, and he’d probably never see her again. A smart, capable officer, and the closest he would ever come to her again would be exchanged nods in passing. “You really don’t have to do this on your own time, you know,” he said. Or we could work on it together, a small part of his mind added.
Sternly, he stifled back the suggestion. “Tomorrow afternoon will be soon enough.”
“Thank you, Sir, but I have nothing else to do tonight,” she said. “And I’m anxious to see how His Excellency receives it. Hopefully, he’ll be pleased.”
“Hopefully,” Cutler agreed, feeling a sour taste in his mouth. After kicking Cutler off his ship for this little exercise, Uncle Gustav had damn well better be pleased.
“So what will you do next, Sir?” Golovskina asked. “If I may be permitted the question?”
“Of course, Frau Kapitän,” Cutler assured her. “The simple answer is that I don’t know. The Emperor said we would discuss my next assignment after we delivered our report.”
“Really,” she said, sounding a bit taken aback. “I see.”
“Is that a problem?” he asked.
“No, Sir, not at all,” she hastened to assure him. “I was just assuming that with the new weapons upgrade you’d be returning as Schreien’s commander. With a long-overdue promotion, of course.”
“That would be up to the Emperor,” Cutler said, frowning. Granted that his XO was the one in charge of Schreien’s repairs, it was still odd that she hadn’t at least taken a moment to call him with the news of an upgrade.
Unless Cutler wasn’t going to be returned there. Had that decision already been made, only no one had bothered to tell him? “Where did you hear about new weapons?”
Golovskina shrugged uncomfortably. “I have a friend who works at the shipyard,” she said. “Forgive me, Herr Flottillenadmiral. I shouldn’t have spoken.”
“No, that’s all right,” Cutler said. Maybe Gustav was finally catching up with the rest of the galaxy and upgrading the Navy’s missile launchers. “What’s Schreien supposed to be getting? A new cell launch system? Railguns?”
Golovskina made a face. “No, Sir, at least not from what I’ve heard. It looks like Schreien will be getting the new RW5 twin-arm launchers.”
Cutler stared at her, his gut curling tightly around the remains of his lunch. Schreien already had a pair of twin-arm launchers. Was Gustav really going to just replace those maintenance nightmares with newer versions of the same? Especially when the rest of the civilized galaxy was updating to more modern equipment?
“Personally, I don’t understand what he sees in that kind of launcher,” Golovskina continued into Cutler’s thoughts. “There have been several proposals for replacements, but the Emperor continues to ignore or table them.” She winced, a small wrinkling of her nose. “I wonder sometimes if he still yearns for the days of Frederick the Great, when majestic wooden wet-navy ships exchanged massive broadsides in battle.”
“Those were certainly glorious days,” Cutler muttered. And if that was indeed what Gustav was envisioning, he was sadly out of luck. The only way a modern ship could launch a broadside was to lower her sidewalls and keep them lowered long enough to guide the missiles all the way to their targets. Unfortunately, a missile’s flight typically took several minutes, during which time the attacker’s entire flank would be vulnerable to counterattack.
Twin-arm launchers were the past. Cell launchers were the present. Electromagnetic railgun launchers were the future.
And yet there sat Emperor Gustav, who thought he was Frederick the Great, firmly clinging to the past.
Cutler looked at his tablet. Gustav had been a brilliant tactician once. What had happened to him?
“I’m sure the most glorious days of the Andermani Empire are still to come,” Golovskina said diplomatically. “Actually, Sir—if I may be so bold—perhaps you’re right about the report. I can do that tomorrow. Perhaps this night is one for celebration and conversation.”
Cutler eyed her, Gustav’s powdered wigs and two-meter-tall Totenkopf guards suddenly forgotten. “What exactly did you have in mind, Frau Kapitän?” he asked carefully. Attractive she might be; but he was her superior, and there were certain proprieties and distances that had to be maintained.
“Oh, nothing untoward, Sir,” she said hastily. “A few friends and I were going to meet for coffee.”
“Other Navy people?”
“Yes, Sir,” Golovskina said. “We discuss how things are going in our respective areas—nothing classified, of course. We also like to get into strategies and tactics, sometimes from classic eras, other times more modern ones. I know your insights and presence would be welcome.”
Cutler hesitated. Going in cold to a group of people he didn’t know wasn’t exactly his favorite way to spend an evening.
“The man who told me about Schreien’s upgrades might also be there,” she added. “He may have more information to offer you.”
“That might be useful,” Cutler agreed, frowning as a sudden thought struck him. “I thought you said you didn’t have anything else to do tonight.”
“I was going to cancel so that I could finish the report. But since you said I could do it tomorrow . . . I really think you’d find this interesting, Sir. Please come.”
Cutler had to smile at her intensity. And really, why not? Getting out with a group of officers he’d never met would be helpful for broadening his contacts within the Navy.
And those contacts couldn’t hurt. Especially if Uncle Gustav wasn’t going to give him the respect he and his late mother had earned. “If you think I’d fit in,” he said. “Yes. Let’s go meet your friends.”
He’d expected the meeting to be large and perhaps somewhat boisterous. He’d also expected it to be held at some gasthous or café.
He was wrong on both counts. The place Golovskina took him to was a private home—a very nice, comfortably large home—and aside from Golovskina and himself there were just two others present.
“This is Konteradmiral Heinrich Eulenberg.” Golovskina made the introductions. “Currently commanding Kolin.”
“Herr Konteradmiral,” Cutler said, shaking hands. Kolin was a battlecruiser, a sister ship to Riefenstahl’s Faust, though somewhat less well equipped.
“Herr Flottillenadmiral,” Eulenberg greeted him in turn. Eulenberg was a good twenty T-years older than Cutler, with a balding skullcap of white hair and the wrinkled face of someone who’d started his rise through the ranks from the reactor compartment. “I understand you’re the one who snatched victory from the jaws at First Tomlinson.”
“Not sure it qualified as a victory,” Cutler had to admit. “But I’d agree I helped make it less of a defeat.”
Eulenberg grunted. “Sometimes these days that’s all one can hope for.”
Cutler frowned. An odd sort of comment. He opened his mouth to ask what Eulenberg meant—
“And this is Fregattenkapitän Li Gong-Hu,” Golovskina continued, gesturing to the other man. “Currently commanding Wilhelm.”
“Herr Fregattenkapitän,” Cutler acknowledged, again shaking hands. Li was an unusually young man to be commanding a heavy cruiser. That, even more than his small smile and air of quiet confidence, spoke volumes about his competence.
“Flottillenadmiral von Tischendorf,” Li greeted him in return. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Thank you,” Cutler said, glancing around the conversation room. The four of them appeared to be it. “The rest of the group couldn’t make it, I gather?”
“The rest of the group wanted us to speak with you first,” Eulenberg said. He gestured to one of the comfortable-looking chairs in the circle. “Please.”
Cutler sat down, frowning as the others took seats facing him. “May I ask what this is about?”
“Of course,” Eulenberg said. “To put it in the most direct and concise terms, we’re concerned that Emperor Gustav may be going insane.”
Cutler snorted. “Hardly an original thought,” he said. “People have been saying that since he first started speaking German.”
“And as long as he was just speaking German, wearing powdered wigs, and insisting his personal guards were over two meters tall, no one had any problem with it,” Li said. “But now, his eccentricities are threatening the entire Empire.”
Cutler looked at Golovskina, the second knot of the day forming in his gut. “You might have told me what this meeting was really about.”
“It’s not what you think,” she insisted, her voice low and sincere. “We’re just a group of officers concerned about our nation.”
“You swore allegiance to the Emperor.”
“We also swore allegiance to the Empire,” Eulenberg reminded him. “Tell me, Herr Flottillenadmiral: what’s your military opinion about having Schreien outfitted with yet another set of obsolete twin-arm launchers?”
“The Emperor is a brilliant tactician,” Cutler said, forcing down his own misgivings. “Whatever his reasons, I’m sure they’re good ones.”
“Are you?” Eulenberg countered. “Certainly he was a brilliant tactician. Whether he still remains one is the question before us.”
“And not just us,” Golovskina said. “There are other star nations out there, nations like Angelique and Cantiz, who are watching us closely.”
“As well as star-spanning corporations like Tomlinson’s parent company PFT,” Li added. “They’ll be watching us closely, and the last thing we can afford is for one of them to perceive us as weak or disorganized.”
“I doubt that’s an issue,” Cutler pointed out. “Not after Tomlinson.”
“Maybe not after Second Tomlinson,” Eulenberg said. “But First Tomlinson is another matter. The theory has always been that a sufficiently numerous swarm of small ships can overwhelm a battlecruiser or even one of our wonderfully impressive battleships. No offense to you, Herr Flottillenadmiral, but it seems to me that First Tomlinson effectively proved that to be the case.”
Cutler ground his teeth. What was he supposed to say to that?
“And Second Tomlinson doesn’t really help that perception,” Li added. “There, the Emperor needed two battleships and a large percentage of the rest of the fleet to beat them down.”
“He didn’t exactly need them,” Cutler argued. “And don’t forget, Tomlinson also had all those little missile bases. He only took two battleships to make sure it wouldn’t even be a contest.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what he was thinking,” Li said. “I’m not sure that’s what our enemies will take away from it.”
“Let’s cut to the end,” Cutler said. “What exactly are you suggesting, and what are you proposing?”
The others glanced at each other. “We think it’s time—past time, even—that Emperor Gustav had a full psychological examination,” Eulenberg said. “To that end, we propose to . . . detain him . . . and require him to—”
“Detain him by force?” Cutler interrupted.
Eulenberg’s lip twitched. “Others have tried petitioning, requesting, even pleading with him to undergo a proper medical exam. The Emperor has refused all such requests, citing extreme busyness.”
“All the more reason for him to take the time necessary for a few tests,” Golovskina added. “The stress of his position can’t be good for a man of his advanced age.”
“And who would perform these tests?” Cutler asked.
“Medical and psychological experts, of course,” Eulenberg said. “With some of us standing by to make sure they don’t simply rubberstamp the Emperor’s own preconceptions about his health.”
“And if they decide he’s unfit to rule?”
“The Throne would pass to his son,” Eulenberg said. “Though since a five-year-old is obviously unprepared to rule a multi-system empire, a regency council would have to be appointed until the boy comes of age.”
“So you’re talking about a coup,” Cutler said flatly. He pinned Golovskina with a hard look. “And mutiny.”
Golovskina squirmed under his gaze. But her voice was calm enough. “We’re talking about the survival of the Andermani Empire,” she corrected. “Angelique isn’t just going to sit by and wait until Gustav turns his eyes toward them. Neither are Babel, Cantiz, or any of the other colony worlds out there.”
“And yes, we know that Gustav has stated he has no further territorial aspirations,” Eulenberg said. “Do you think any of them believe him?”
Cutler lowered his eyes, scowling at the ornately carved table in the center of the circle. This conversation, and the actions being advocated, certainly had the appearance of treason.
And yet . . .
Gustav Anderman, pretending he was the reincarnation of Frederick the Great. Worse, Gustav Anderman genuinely believing he was the reincarnation of Frederick the Great.
He was still a military genius. Li’s disparagements notwithstanding, Second Tomlinson had proved that.
But even genius could start fraying around the edges. Twin-arm launchers instead of railguns. Condemning a successful tactic simply because it had been risky. And, really, the damn powdered wigs.
And if Eulenberg and the others—and Cutler himself—had noticed, the Empire’s potential enemies certainly had.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
He sensed a lowering of the tension in the room. “Nothing you should have trouble with,” Eulenberg promised. “We really just want your voice added to ours afterward, calming the nation and hopefully averting panic or chaos.”
“You’re a hero, you know,” Golovskina said, giving him a tentative smile. “The man who kept First Tomlinson from being a complete slaughter.”
Cutler clenched his teeth. No, it hadn’t been a complete slaughter. It had only taken Bayern, Rosshach, and Bretagne, plus most of their crews.
And Cutler’s own mother.
“After it’s over and the Emperor is undergoing his examination there are bound to be rumors and accusations,” Eulenberg continued. “The more voices calmly saying there’s no need to fear, the better.”
“And if the tests prove the Emperor is fine?” Cutler asked.
“Then he’ll be restored immediately to his position, and the nation will be stronger for it,” Eulenberg promised. “Needless to say, those of us most closely involved will of course submit our resignations.”
A chill ran up Cutler’s back. “I see.”
“Not you, of course,” Li hastened to assure him. “As we said, yours would simply be one of the many voices of reason afterward. There would be no reason for you to face any adverse consequences.”
“But the fact that we are willing to face them should be an indication of how strongly we feel about this,” Eulenberg said. “The Empire is at risk, Herr Flottillenadmiral. How will you respond?”
Cutler lowered his eyes again to the table. It was a risk, but a minimal one.
And if Emperor Gustav really was unfit to lead?
“Very well,” he said. “When do you propose to move?”
Once again, there was additional lowering of tension. “Eight days from now,” Eulenberg said. “The Emperor is holding a dinner meeting with the captains and XOs of his capital ships. That will be our opportunity to slip our people inside the Palace. Later that night, after everyone else has left, we’ll detain him and take him to a place where the experts will be called to administer the tests.”
“Very well,” Cutler said again. “In eight days.”
“In eight days,” Eulenberg confirmed. “And in nine . . . we’ll know what the future of the Andermani Empire holds.”
IV
“Andrew?” Marija Shenoa called across the nursery. “Time to get washed up for dinner.”
There was no response, of course. Andrew Anderman, five T-years old and heir to the Andermani Empire, was building an elaborate spaceship with his lockblocks, and Andrew in the throes of creation might as well be on the other side of the Solarian League.
Which was why Marija always left herself enough leeway for three separate announcements before the actual and proper time for meals, baths, or bedtimes.
“Andrew?” she called again, getting up from the couch and crossing over for a closer look. It was certainly an elaborate ship, though nothing like any actual vessel she’d ever seen. “It’s time for your bath.”
“Shh,” he whispered, his eyes still on his creation. “The pirates have sneaked aboard.”
Marija raised her eyebrows. “Really. How many?”
“Twenty-six,” he whispered back. “They came in here.” He pointed to a small shape sticking out from the rear part of his ship.
“Uh-oh,” Marija warned. “They’re near the hyper generator. Are they trying to steal the ship?”
“Uh-huh,” Andrew said. “But don’t worry.” He shifted his finger to a spot near one of the radiator fins. “Harold is waiting for them here.”
“Our Harold?”
“Our Harold,” Andrew confirmed. “I told him to go fight the pirates.”
“Ah,” Marija said. Not that Andrew could actually order his chief Totenkopf bodyguard to go fight bad guys somewhere else. But as long as the pirates weren’t real, she supposed that Harold would agree to go fight them. “They’re in for a big surprise.”
“They sure are,” Andrew agreed.
“But I don’t think Harold would agree to go away and fight unless he knew you were keeping up your strength,” Marija said. “And Annalise would be very upset if the pirates got here and ate the dinner she made before you got to it.”
Andrew looked up, blinking. “Oh. It’s dinner time?”
“Yes, indeed,” Marija said. “We’re eating in here today. Go wash up, and I’ll set the table.”
“Okay,” Andrew said, frowning a little. “I’m not eating with Daddy?”
“Your father has a dinner meeting,” Marija said, wincing at his obvious disappointment. She’d tried to let Gustav know how important these father-son times were to the little boy, but there were always a million voices clamoring for the Emperor’s attention, and a lowly child’s nurse was pretty far down on the priority list. “Go on, now. After you finish your dinner, you can play a little more, and then it’ll be time for your bath.”
“With swirlies and bubbles?”
Marija smiled. “With swirlies, bubbles, and a grand ocean battle if you want,” she promised. “But first, dinner.”
“Okay,” Andrew said, scrambling to his feet. “I guess the pirates can eat now, too.”
“And Harold?”
“Sure,” Andrew said. “And Harold.”
The dinner had been decent enough, as meals in the Imperial Palace tended to be. The conversation, revolving around distant star nations, corporations, and threat assessments, had been mildly enlightening.
But Eulenberg had been too tense to properly enjoy either. His people were in place, and were supposedly on the move. But until he got the message there would be no way of knowing if they were on schedule.
If they failed, of course, some of the black-clad Totenkopfs standing guard at various places around the palace would undoubtedly be by to inform him of that unpleasant development.
Gustav was doing his usual wrap-up when Eulenberg’s uni-link gave a silent vibration. Keeping his movements slow—the Emperor wouldn’t like it if he caught one of his officers taking messages while their lord and master was talking—he slipped it out onto his thigh and glanced at the display.
Monitor room secured. Guard room secured.
He slid the uni-link back into its case, taking a slow, careful breath. They’d done it. They’d taken the two places in the Palace where concerted opposition could be directed from. The plan was in motion, the objective in clear sight.
And they were committed. Right up to their necks.
The recap continued for another five minutes. But Eulenberg wasn’t really listening. The possibilities—the risks—the rewards—all of it flowed past him like water swirling across a river rapids.
The departure from the Marble Hall and the Palace went at a leisurely pace. Eulenberg made sure to chat with several of his fellow officers, making sure at least one or two would remember seeing him leave with everyone else. Gradually, he fell back from the general exodus, making comments to the stragglers, until he was the last one out the massive door. He paused there, standing a couple of meters in front of the two door guards, watching the other officers stride away.
Feeling a tingling sensation between his shoulder blades. The Totenkopfs behind him were two of the ones his people were supposed to have replaced. If they’d failed . . .
The last of Gustav’s visitors passed out of the courtyard on his way to the car park. Taking a deep breath, Eulenberg turned and started back toward the door.
The two guards made no attempt to stop him. In fact, as he approached, one of them reached to the handle and pulled the door open for him. “Good luck, Sir,” the man murmured as Eulenberg went back inside.
Eulenberg nodded to himself. Yes, they would still need some luck.
But from this point on it would require mostly skill. Skill, nerve, and courage of their convictions.
Fortunately they had enough of all three. Listening to his footsteps as he strode down the empty corridors, alert for any trouble, he headed to the monitor room.
“I appreciate you staying behind for a few minutes, Herr Admiral,” the Emperor said as he walked around the desk in his study. “Please; be seated.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said politely, remaining on his feet as the Emperor settled into his ornate chair. His new title still sounded odd in his ears, the higher rank of full admiral carrying both the weight of additional authority and the sobering knowledge that he was now an unofficial part of the Emperor’s inner circle. That latter role added a new level of responsibility, but also included a few extra privileges. Speaking his mind and offering advice, presumably, were among them.
Seating himself before his Emperor was not.
Riefenstahl had never been to the Emperor’s private study, and he was struck by the differences between Gustav’s public face and his private one. Everywhere else in the Palace—in the audience room, Marble Hall, music room, gallery, even the service corridor—the décor was full of pomp and glory and echoes of Old Earth’s pre-Diaspora Prussia.
Here, though, the tone was more intimate, even reflective. There were still plenty of reminders of the time of Frederick the Great, but the historical mementos and copies were interspersed with more personal memories: relics and reminders of Gustav’s days as a mercenary commander. There were pictures, too, genuine antique-looking pictures of some of his closest comrades-in-arms. Many of them had small black ribbons across their lower-right-hand corners.
The ribbon across the picture of Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf von Tischendorf, he noted, was very new.
“You’re wondering why I asked you here,” Gustav said, reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulling out a bottle of schnapps. As usual with Gustav, it wasn’t a question, but a statement. “I wanted to discuss a possible obstacle to the appointment of Flottillenadmiral Wan Tun-chang as your flag captain.”
Riefenstahl frowned. “I was unaware there were any problems, Your Excellency.”
“There are none from your end,” Gustav assured him. “It’s a question of whether some of the ship’s other officers may need to be replaced.” He smiled thinly. “The Flottillenadmiral has built up a degree of mutual animosity with our impetuous Flottillenadmiral von Tischendorf. Von Tischendorf, fortunately or otherwise, has a certain dedicated following within the officer corps.”
“Mm.” Riefenstahl looked again at the picture of Großadmiral von Tischendorf. “Or his mother had.”
“Indeed,” Gustav agreed. “And her reputation and honor were well deserved.”
“Of course, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said.
“So,” Gustav said, turning on his tablet and peering at it. “Let us go over some names together, men and women who might resent Wan’s appointment, and discuss what we shall do about them.”
“Flottillenadmiral on the bridge!” the woman at the missile station called as Cutler maneuvered easily through the hatchway.
“Herr Flottillenadmiral,” Puntar, the oberleutnant manning the OOW station greeted him, unstrapping with practiced ease and coming to a floating attention. “Your presence is an unexpected honor, Sir.”
“Yes,” Cutler said, glancing around at the rest of the bridge crew. Their faces were all at full parade-ground neutral, but he could tell they were all glad to see him. “I must first apologize for my neglect of my ship and her crew while I was engrossed in the research project to which I was assigned.”
“We all serve at the Emperor’s wish,” Puntar said. “That said, Sir, I know everyone aboard Schreien is delighted to have you back aboard.”
“As am I,” Cutler said, pulling himself forward to the OOW station. “I understand the repairs have been completed?”
“Yes, Sir, as has the dorsal launcher upgrade. The ventral upgrade should be completed within the week.”
“Excellent,” Cutler said, carefully filtering any hint of scorn from his face and voice. “That’s the reason for my visit tonight, in fact. I wanted to see first-hand how the rearming is going.”
“Yes, Sir,” Puntar said. “Korvettenkapitän Bermann anticipated your request, and said he would await you in Dorsal Missile. At your convenience, of course.”
“Excellent,” Cutler said again, casually looking over at the tactical. All of the ships of the Home Fleet were in their proper orbits, as designated by the standing orders.
All except one. Konteradmiral Eulenberg’s battlecruiser, Kolin, was out of place, circling the planet in a much lower orbit than usual. “Is there a problem with Kolin?” he asked.
“No, Sir,” Puntar assured him. “There are some major resupply shipments scheduled, and Konteradmiral Eulenberg requested a lower orbit to facilitate the transfers.”
“Ah,” Cutler said, an odd feeling settling into his gut. How convenient that Eulenberg’s ship would be orbiting unusually close right at the time he and his colleagues were supposed to be detaining the Emperor for his mental exam. “Keep an eye on her, will you, Oberleutnant?”
“Of course, Sir,” Puntar promised.
“And let me know immediately if anything about her changes,” Cutler added, reversing direction and heading again for the bridge hatch. “In the meantime, please inform Korvettenkapitän Bermann that I’m on my way.”
The Palace monitor room was everything Eulenberg had hoped.
“Not bad,” he said, resting his hand on Li’s shoulder as he gazed at the wall of displays. There were fifty of them, showing the grounds and gardens and all of the Palace’s public spaces. Conspicuous by their absence, unfortunately, were views of the Emperor’s private study and all the rooms in the family wing.
Still, he should have expected that. “At least we have a view of those corridors,” he continued. “If Andrew or his nurse poke their noses out, we’ll know it.”
“Maybe,” Li said sourly, swiveling around to another console and punching up a schematic. “Maybe not. Apparently, our Emperor is also an admirer of secret passages.”
Eulenberg frowned, leaning closer. “What the hell?”
“Secret passages and rooms, Sir,” Li said. “A whole network of them, running under the Palace at sub-basement depth.”
“I’ll be damned,” Eulenberg growled. “The old man was even more paranoid than I thought. Do we know where the entrances are?”
“No, this just shows which above-ground rooms are connected to it,” Li said. “Still, there can’t be many places you can hide a door in something the size of his study or audience room.”
“I suppose not,” Eulenberg said. “No monitors down there, either, I suppose.”
“Would you expect there to be?”
Eulenberg scowled. No, of course not. The first job of a secret passage, after all, was to remain secret. “No matter. If we stay on schedule, no one should have time to use any of them.”
“So we continue?”
“Of course we continue,” Eulenberg said gruffly. “We’ve come too far to back out now. All other communications have been dealt with?”
“Yes, Sir,” Li said. “The diversions are up and running, and so far seem to be keeping the Hussars’ attention without making them suspicious. Internal and external coms and uni-links are running the same glitches and misconnects as everything else in the city. It won’t keep them busy forever, but it should give us the time we need. The entire emergency call system is disabled, of course.”
“And the Kolin?”
“We have a solid connection to the bridge,” Li confirmed.
“Good,” Eulenberg said. Of course, the staged communications snafu also meant that his people in the Palace also had no way to communicate with each other except by sending messengers back and forth.
But that was all right. They’d been well trained in what needed to be done tonight. Now that they had the Palace proper, it was the Totenkopfs guarding the exterior who would be most inconvenienced by the communications trouble. “Very well,” he said, straightening up. In for a centicred, the old saying whispered through his mind, in for a cred. “The Emperor will be in his study. His son will be in the nursery.
“Take them both.”
V
There was a loud splash, a sudden geyser of water, and a war whoop. “There!” Andrew crowed, raising one of his toy boats and spinning it around his head like a captured trophy flag. “That to the enemies of the Empire!”
“That to the enemies of warmth and dryness,” Marija warned, pointing toward the wide towel-warming rack that angled out into the room where it would be easily accessible from both the tub and the large shower stall behind it. “Just remember that if you get all your towels wet, you’ll have to dry off with face tissues.”
For an adult, she reflected, that would be a credible threat. For a five-year-old, it was more of an challenge. “Can I?” Andrew asked eagerly. “Really?”
“No, not really,” Marija said, crossing the bathroom for a closer look at the towels. Despite the tub’s sixty-centimeter-high walls, Andrew’s wet-navy battle had created some collateral dampness in the top row of towels. Fortunately, the bottom two rows were still more than dry enough for their intended purpose. “But I think it’s time for the battle to be over. Put your toys up, and start playing with the soap.”
Andrew’s eyes widened, and Marija leveled a finger. “By which I mean start washing. Starting with your toes.”
His face fell, just a little. “O-kay,” he said theatrically.
“I’ll go get your pajamas,” she said. “Be safe.”
“I will,” he promised.
He would, too, she knew as she headed back to the door leading into the playroom. Andrew had learned to swim almost before he’d learned to walk. And while the tub itself was impressively big and tall, she was always careful to never put in more than half a meter of water.
She walked out of the bathroom, shivering briefly as the cooler air hit her skin, and headed across the playroom toward the nursery suite’s door. Before she fetched Andrew’s pajamas she would alert Harold that the boy was nearly done with his bath, and would soon be calling for his chief bodyguard and nurse to perform one of the dramatic, two-voice readings that was the standard prelude to bedtime these days.
She shook her head, smiling at the memory of the night three months ago when Andrew had declared that instead of an ordinary bedtime story he wanted to watch one of his videos. As that had been strictly forbidden by his father, Marija and Harold had quickly improvised a dramatic reading of the evening’s story. The boy had been delighted, and the pattern had continued ever since.
Of course, Harold had a tendency to roll his eyes at some of the stories. Not entirely professional, but definitely one of the best ways to get giggles out of their young charge. Marija reached the door and pulled it open.
Harold wasn’t there. Neither was Karel, the other bodyguard.
For a long moment Marija just stood there, the door open a crack, staring out into the empty corridor. It was impossible. The nursery’s door was never left unguarded. Never. If Harold and Karel had been called elsewhere, two other Totenkopfs should have taken their places.
A motion down the corridor caught her eye. To her relief, she saw two men in black Totenkopf uniforms come into view, striding purposefully toward her. She smiled and started to call to them—
The greeting died in her throat. The two men were passing one of the tapestries on the hallway walls . . . and they weren’t anywhere near tall enough to be family guards. Based on how far they came up on the tapestry, both were at least fifteen centimeters shy of the two meters Emperor Gustav insisted on for his personal bodyguards.
They weren’t Totenkopfs. But they were wearing Totenkopf uniforms.
And suddenly Marija understood.
Quickly, silently, she closed the door and locked it, her whole body suddenly shaking so hard she could barely fumble out her uni-link. She thumbed back the cover and keyed the emergency button.
Nothing happened.
She peered at the device, only then seeing that the display was flicking between on, off, garbled words, and static snow. Dropping it back into its case, she hurried across the room to the desk and. The internal Palace intercom system was surely working.
Only it wasn’t.
For a few seconds she stood over the intercom, pushing buttons at random, panic bubbling in her throat. But it was no use. She and Andrew were alone, cut off from the rest of the universe, with two men of unknown identity and purpose coming toward them.
She looked at the door. It was locked, and it was solid, but it wouldn’t stand for long against determined attackers.
But there was a secret passageway connecting the nursery to some of the other private areas of the Palace. She’d never been inside, but Harold had made sure she knew where the door was and how to open it. She and Andrew could get out that way.
Only what then? If there were men coming for Andrew, did that mean they were also coming for his father? Worse, was the Emperor already in their hands?
And even if she and the boy escaped, what then? If the attackers didn’t already know about the secret passages, it wouldn’t take them long to figure it out. Once they started a concerted search of the nursery, they would surely find the door.
No. If she was going to keep Andrew safe, she would need to make them all think she’d taken the boy out some other way.
And the only way to do that would be to take down the two men coming for them.
Harold was a Totenkopf Hussar, one of the finest warriors in the Andermani Empire. But even the best-trained soldiers knew they had limitations. Accordingly, one day Harold had sat her down for a long talk about end-game scenarios and on-the-fly battle tactics.
He’d then proceeded to show her all the spots in the nursery where he’d hidden his last-ditch weapons.
He’d spent some time over the subsequent weeks training her in their use. But right now, with her heart thudding in her throat and her hands shaking, she knew it was no time to get fancy.
There were two pepper sprays in the room, both safely higher than Andrew could reach. She got both of them, slipping one into her pocket and concealing the other in her hand. Her next job would be to get Andrew out of the tub, hide him in the secret passage—
There was a knock on the door. “Marija?” a voice called. “His Excellency’s calling for his son.”
Marija clenched her teeth. So that was how they were going to play it.
And now it was too late to get Andrew out of harm’s way. The only way to make this work was to make them think she was completely unaware of their scheme, and taking too long to answer the door would raise suspicions she couldn’t afford.
Unless they planned to simply shoot her and the boy where they stood. But in that case there was nothing she could do anyway.
Still, the fake Totenkopf uniforms and the polite voice surely meant they were going to keep up the charade as long as possible. Anyway, that was her only hope.
The men were standing casually outside as she opened the door, smiling encouragingly at her. “Guten abend, fräulein,” the one who’d called to her through the door said. “Apologies for the late hour, but His Excellency has asked to see his son before he goes to bed.”
“Of course,” Marija said. To her relief, the initial adrenaline surge had apparently run its course, and her voice was as calm and casual as his. “Let me get him out of the tub.”
She turned and headed for the bathroom. She’d made it three steps before he caught up. “I’ll come with you,” he offered. “Sometimes it takes two adults to get a child out of his tub.”
“Absolutely,” she agreed, feeling her heart pick up its pace again. She’d counted on one of them coming with her.
It was all up to her now.
They reached the door and she opened it, taking the opportunity for a quick glance behind her. The other fake guard was standing just inside the doorway, his attention turned outward into the hallway. Perfect. Marija stepped through the bathroom door, gesturing the guard to come in behind her.
“Who are you?” Andrew asked, peering at the newcomer over the tub edge and through a soap-bubble beard.
“He’s come to take you to your father,” Marija said, closing the door behind them. “I—oops.”
“What?” the man asked, turning toward her.
And from a meter away, Marija blasted him squarely in the face with the pepper spray.
He tried to gasp, or maybe he tried to shout. But with his eyes instantly useless, his throat and lungs instantly on fire, he could do nothing except scrabble for the pistol strapped to his side. Marija blasted him again and again, wincing as he finally got the weapon free, wanting to dodge but afraid that if he lost sight of her he would simply turn the weapon on Andrew—
She expected an ear-shattering explosion as he fired. But the shot was utterly silent. His first round slammed into the wall beside her head, his second hit the wall a meter from her side. She fired another blast into his face, and another, and half of another, and then the spray bottle ran dry.
And then, to her relief, he crumpled to the floor, his gun skittering away across the tile, his labored breathing slowing as he lost consciousness. Marija glanced at Andrew, saw him sitting bolt upright in the tub, his face rigid, then hurried forward and picked up the gun. It was an airgun, she saw now, with far less range than a standard handgun, but delivering a silent round carrying a lethal electrical charge.
She hefted the gun, a new resolve settling into her heart. Harold hadn’t given her any training in this specific weapon, but it had the trigger and safety in the usual places. That should be all she needed.
Because if the other attacker hadn’t heard the brief battle . . .
Only one way to find out. Stepping to the door, Marija opened it a few centimeters. “Come quickly!” she called, putting some desperation in to her voice. “There’s been an accident. Hurry!”
If she’d given him time to think, she reflected later, maybe he wouldn’t have reacted so quickly and so carelessly. But she hadn’t; and he did. He all but sprinted across the playroom, his own holstered gun ignored at his side. She opened the door further as he approached and started to step out of his way.
And with him half a meter away, impossible for even an amateur like her to miss, she fired twice into his chest.
His mad rush carried him on, slamming his body into the door and shoving his way through. The impact ate up the rest of his momentum, and he toppled to the floor to lie motionless beside his unconscious comrade.
Marija stepped over him, fighting back the sudden urge to vomit. She hadn’t expected such a horrible mix of ozone and burned flesh. Probably she should have. Clamping her teeth together, she looked over at the tub.
Andrew was still sitting motionless in the water. But his face was no longer rigid with surprise and terror. “Are they dead?” he asked, only a small quaver in his voice.
“One is,” she said. “I think the other’s still alive. Come on, we have to get out of here.”
He nodded, a jerky motion of his head, and climbed out of the tub. He grabbed a towel off the rack and started drying himself.
“Finish drying and then get dressed,” Marija added. Gripping her gun tightly, she went back into the playroom.
The door to the corridor was still open. She hurried across to it, confirmed that the hallway outside was deserted, then again closed and locked it. The door to the hidden passageway was behind one of the bookcases at the side of the playroom, but it took her two false starts to remember how to open it.
The staircase behind the door was narrow and only dimly lit. She peered down, satisfied herself that there was no one in sight, then returned to the bathroom.
Andrew usually dawdled over his bedtime preparations. Not tonight. She went in to find him dry and back in the clothes he’d been wearing before his bath. “Good,” she said. “Come, now. Quietly.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Marija confessed, somewhat startled to realize that she hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Your father’s office, I guess.”
“No,” Andrew said, his face and voice solemn. “Father always told me that if something like this happened I needed to go to the safe room.”
A shiver ran up Marija’s back. Father. Not Daddy.
And suddenly, Andrew was no longer just a five-year-old boy. He was, indeed, the true heir to the Andermani Empire.
“Good,” she said. “Do you know the way?”
“Yes,” he said. He looked down at the two guards, and Marija saw his throat work. “You should probably get the other gun.”
Marija winced. “Of course,” she said. Bracing herself, she leaned over the dead man and slid his pistol from his holster. “Ready?”
“Yes.” The boy took a deep breath. “Follow me.”
“All right,” Gustav said, tapping his tablet to send the latest batch of names to Riefenstahl. “Which ones of these do you know well?”
Riefenstahl wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know any of them well, Your Excellency,” he admitted. “But I of course know them all by name, and a few by reputation. Fregattenkapitän Li Gong-Hu has a very good record, and Oberleutnant Alves served with my XO—”
“Quiet,” Gustav cut him off, a suddenly intense look on his face. “Did you hear something?”
Riefenstahl frowned, playing back his memory of the past few seconds. “No, Your Excellency,” he said. “What did it sound like?”
And immediately jumped as something abruptly smashed hard against the door behind him.
He was out of his chair in an instant, dropping his tablet onto Gustav’s desk to free up his hands. His first reflexive thought—some kind of groundquake?—quickly vanished as a second blow came against the heavy panel.
“It sounded like that,” Gustav said, his dark tone edged with scorn. “Except quieter, like the thudding sound of two of my guards dying at their posts.”
Riefenstahl caught his breath. “Mein Gott,” he murmured.
“I doubt Gott has anything to do with this,” Gustav said. He hesitated a moment, then stood up and stepped over to one of the curio cabinets against the wall. “Listen to me carefully, Herr Admiral, and do exactly as I say. Do you understand? Exactly.”
“Of course, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. Gustav nodded and did something to the side of the cabinet.
And to Riefenstahl’s amazement, the entire cabinet swung out into the room, revealing a ladder leading downward. “Go to my son’s nursery,” the Emperor said. He reached to the desk, scooped up Riefenstahl’s tablet and thrust it into the other’s hands. “Find him, and get him to safety. Do you understand?”
“I—yes, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. “How do I—?”
“Down the ladder,” Gustav said, pointing. “There’s an intermediate level; ignore that and keep going. When you reach the lowest level head down the corridor to your left—it will twist and turn; don’t let that confuse you, just keep to the right-hand wall. The third stairs you reach—a circular staircase on your left—will lead back up to his playroom. Do you need that repeated?”
“No, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said, crossing to the door. “What about you? You’re coming, too, aren’t you?”
“Not yet,” Gustav said. Stepping back to the desk, he took his powdered wig off the stand and set it almost delicately on his head, giving Riefenstahl a quick and malicious smile as he did so. “First, I want to know who these people are, the people behind these acts of murder and treason. Your mission right now is to find and protect Andrew. Go, and do not let them catch you.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.” Clenching his teeth, Riefenstahl stepped through the narrow opening and onto the ladder. There was a handle on the inside of the hidden door; gripping it tightly, he pulled the door closed, catching a final glimpse of his Emperor doing up the buttons on his tunic.
Just in time. He’d just heard the soft click of the lock when there was a final thud from the other side—
“Stand fast!” Gustav bellowed. “You will bow in the presence of your Emperor.”
“Your indulgence, Your Excellency,” a voice said. Even through the panel Riefenstahl could hear the sarcasm in the other’s tone. “Forgive the intrusion, but you need to come with us.”
“I will do no such thing,” Gustav said scornfully. “Your very presence in this office uninvited is an act of treachery. And you’ve ruined my door.”
“You will come with us, Your Excellency,” the voice said again. “Willingly, or otherwise.”
There was a short pause. Riefenstahl squeezed the ladder’s side rails, visualizing guns being leveled at his Emperor . . .
“Very well,” Gustav said, his voice rigid with dignity. “We will go to my audience room.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Your Excellency. We’ll wait in the monitor room until it’s time to leave the Palace—”
“We will go to my audience room!” Gustav thundered. “And we will light a fire, and we will speak as civilized gentlemen. Then, if I deem it necessary, we will leave the Palace.”
“Fine,” the voice said acerbically. “We’ll go to your audience room. But you will answer our questions, and you will not make trouble. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Gustav said, his voice all calm again. “Lead on, Herr Konteradmiral, and I will follow.”
Riefenstahl caught his breath. A Konteradmiral? But that was incredible. For someone of command rank to be involved—
Meant that this was nothing less than a full-blown mutiny.
The conversation had changed to the sound of murmured instructions and multiple footsteps. Cursing silently to himself, Riefenstahl started down the ladder. He climbed past the first level, reached the second, and turned in the direction Gustav had indicated.
The lighting down here was dim, just enough to see the walls and floor and maybe the outline of a person if there’d been anyone else down here. The passageway was every bit as twisty as the Emperor had warned, with multiple side passageways heading off God only knew where. But at least the floor was level.
The mutineers could have killed Gustav where he stood. They hadn’t. That meant they still wanted or needed something from him.
Only they’d never get it. Not from Emperor Gustav Anderman. Not a chance.
Not unless they had something to use as leverage.
Cursing again, Riefenstahl picked up his pace. If the mutineers hadn’t yet taken Gustav’s son, that was clearly next on their list.
The Empire’s—and Andrew’s—only hope was for Riefenstahl to get there first.
Only he didn’t.
The playroom was deserted. The boy’s bedroom was deserted.
But the bathroom . . .
“Damn,” Riefenstahl muttered angrily, uselessly, helplessly. One of the Totenkopf guards sprawled on the bathroom floor was unconscious, with the telltale swelling of pepper-spray poisoning. Probably a full canister’s worth, from the looks of it.
The other guard was dead, taken down by a pair of shock rounds.
Which meant it was all over. Gustav’s fierce affection for his son was known throughout the Empire. If the mutineers had Andrew, Gustav would do anything they demanded rather than see the boy killed.
Riefenstahl had to do something. But what? Until he knew how they’d gained access to the Palace, contacting the monitor room or even grabbing one of the Totenkopfs from his post might unwittingly play into the mutineers’ hands. He’d already tried unsuccessfully to use his uni-link on his way through the tunnels, and it was unlikely that the mutineers had forgotten to similarly block the Palace’s own internal com system.
But he had to do something. And if grabbing the nearest Totenkopf got him summarily shot, it was a chance he would have to take. He hurried across to the playroom door—
And stopped short, staring.
The door was locked.
From the inside.
He stared at the lock another few seconds, trying to make sense of it all. If the mutineers had killed Andrew’s guards and snatched the boy, how had they gotten out with the door locked? Did they already know about the sub-basement secret passages?
Andrew’s guards fighting to the death to enable the boy to escape ran into the same problem. The only way it worked was if the mutineers had killed the guards, grabbed the boy, and left the same way Riefenstahl had arrived.
But why? Why bother with the dark, cramped environs of the passageway when the hallway outside was better lighted, more comfortable, and permitted concentration of firepower if they unexpectedly met an opponent?
Unless . . .
He hurried back to the bathroom, and this time took a longer look at the casualties.
Longer, ironically, being the operative word. These two men were tall, but they were at least fifteen centimeters short of the two-meter-height Gustav insisted on for his family’s personal Totenkopf guards.
Which meant Riefenstahl had it exactly backwards. The men lying at his feet were in fact two of the mutineers. They’d been taken down by person or persons unknown, who’d followed up his or her victory by hustling Andrew to safety.
Riefenstahl stared down at the men, the rest of the pieces rapidly falling into place. The silent shock rounds, which were hardly standard Navy issue, had been brought in by the mutineers. That meant Andrew’s defender hadn’t used his own weapons, but had somehow managed to get his opponents’ weapons and turn them against them. The very presence of silent weapons implied that the mutineers didn’t have the entire Palace behind them, or at least weren’t numerous enough to take down the entire Totenkopf contingent simultaneously.
But that didn’t mean that all Riefenstahl had to do to raise the alarm was go out into the hall and start shouting. In fact, just the opposite. A small group clever enough and determined enough to have gotten this far wouldn’t be easily taken. In fact, chances were good that they’d already mapped out choke points and ambush spots to take out anyone who came running to the rescue. It might save Gustav and Andrew, but it might just as easily backfire and precipitate a blood bath.
But it was even more certain that the mutiny wasn’t going to be stopped by negotiation or stern language. Riefenstahl needed some weapons, and he needed them now.
He stood up and once again headed across the playroom to the door. Andrew’s ill-fated attackers must first have eliminated the Totenkopfs who’d been standing guard outside the nursery. They must also have hidden the bodies; and given the size of their victims, they probably hadn’t moved them very far.
And if Riefenstahl was very lucky, they wouldn’t have bothered to strip the bodies of weapons before dumping them.
Riefenstahl hissed between his teeth. Lucky. Not really a word that applied to any part of this situation.
But this was the hand they’d been dealt, and it was up to him to see it through. Checking to make sure the hallway outside was still deserted, he slipped out of the nursery to start his hunt.
VI
Eulenberg had never been to Gustav’s audience room. But after the almost homey atmosphere of the private office, the quiet grace and intimacy of the room wasn’t really a surprise.
Nor, really, were the reasons the Emperor had insisted on moving the conversation here.
The audience room was smaller than the private study, for one thing. That meant a smaller number of guards could be present if they didn’t want to get in each other’s way. There were also two doors, one on each end, leading into the Marble Hall and the music room. Two doors meant two possible escape venues, should he be mad enough to try.
Most important, though, was the fact that the hidden floorplan had showed this was also one of the rooms connected to the Palace’s secret maze of underground tunnels. Gustav probably figured this would be his best bet to try and make an escape while Eulenberg’s people uselessly guarded the regular doors.
On the other hand, his study had also been on Li’s map, and he hadn’t tried to run from there. Maybe the doors weren’t designed to be opened quickly. Maybe Gustav had decided it was beneath his dignity to run like a hare.
Maybe he’d simply forgotten the escape route was there.
He eyed the Emperor as the other paused to look around the ornate décor, the paintings, and the elaborate furnishings. Sometimes he seemed so normal, so much in command of himself and those around him. He could give orders, discuss strategy and tactics, and talk about the Empire’s future.
But then there was the powdered wig and the Frederick the Great obsession. Those were the first signs of a man standing on the edge of reality, and everyone from here to the Solarian League knew it. Gustav had to be neutralized before he fell off completely, taking his dreams and reflexive strategic background and the whole damn Empire with him.
That neutralization would happen tonight. And whether he was counting on the audience room’s visible doors or its invisible one, there would be no escape for him. Not with Eulenberg, Golovskina, and two of their soldiers ready to stop him.
“All right, we’re here,” Eulenberg said, letting Gustav finish his posturing and then pointing him toward one of the couches by the fireplace. “Now, Your Excellency, we need to talk—”
“Fire,” Gustav said curtly.
Eulenberg tensed, reflexively glancing around for hidden gunports and Totenkopf guards preparing to cut him down. But nothing appeared, and nothing shot at him—
He made a face as his brain caught up with his combat reflexes. Oh—that kind of fire.
“We don’t need a fire, Your Excellency,” he said, eyeing the cold fireplace. “We need to talk—”
“You will make a fire,” Gustav again cut him off. “When I met with Wenzel Anton Furst von Kaunitz-Rietbert over the Poland problem, we discussed the country’s partition in front of a roaring fire. If you seek to wrest my empire from me, kindly allow me the same courtesy.”
Eulenberg looked at Golovskina, raised his eyebrows. She gave a microscopic shrug and crossed the room toward the fireplace. For a moment she peered at the edges, clearly looking for the gas jet. “Where’s the ignition?” she finally asked.
“The matches are on the mantel,” Gustav said with clearly strained patience. “Light one and apply the flame to the kindling. Does no one understand true culture anymore?”
“No, but we understand stalling,” Eulenberg growled. “Sit down, Your Excellency. Now.”
Gustav didn’t move. “Fire,” he said again.
Eulenberg dropped his hand to his sidearm. “I said sit, Your Excellency.”
“It’s all right,” Golovskina said hastily. “I’ve got it.”
Grinding his teeth, Eulenberg watched as she lit a long match and touched it to the bits of wood under the two big logs in the fireplace. They caught immediately, the flame spreading out and igniting the logs. Within two minutes, the fire was burning brightly.
“Now, Your Excellency—” Eulenberg began.
“Not yet,” Gustav said, his full attention on the fire. “A moment to savor, if you please.” He gestured toward the fire. “Do you smell it, Konteradmiral? That’s genuine North Slope cedar. See how the wood crackles and sparkles? This is truly a regal wood for a regal fireplace. Very similar to the Bavarian evergreen known as—”
“Sit down!” Eulenberg roared.
For a pair of heartbeats Gustav continued to gaze at the fire. Eulenberg squeezed the grip of his weapon . . .
“Thank you, Konteradmiral, but I prefer to stand,” the Emperor said, turning to face his captors.
And in that moment, he was the Emperor again. Not an old man on the path to full senility, but a true leader and commander.
A shiver ran up Eulenberg’s back. If the man had been like this all the time, he would have been unbeatable.
Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—he wasn’t. The damn powdered wigs . . .
“I congratulate you on the efficiency of your first salvo, Konteradmiral,” Gustav said. His eyes flicked to each of the others in turn. “I’m forced to say, though, that if this is indeed an attempted coup, you have sorely underestimated the weight of troops required.”
“No one has spoken of a coup, Your Excellency,” Golovskina said.
“No?” Gustav countered. “Social calls, in my experience, involve less death and destruction of doors.”
“We’re concerned about you, Your Excellency,” Golovskina said. “Your behavior of late has been—”
She broke off at a sharp gesture from Eulenberg. “We’re concerned about the Empire, Your Excellency,” he said. “Accordingly, we’re going to take you somewhere for a proper examination.”
“Interesting,” Gustav said, his voice thoughtful. “And if I refuse to cooperate?”
“I don’t think it’s possible to not cooperate with a brain scan,” Eulenberg said with a tight smile.
“And if I refuse to cooperate?” Gustav repeated.
One of the others muttered something under his breath. “We could just shoot him,” he suggested darkly.
“That would be foolish indeed,” Gustav said calmly. “I’ve returned once from the grave. I can do so again.”
“No one’s going to shoot you, Your Excellency,” Eulenberg assured him. Certainly not in such a public and blatant way. “As Korvettenkapitän Golovskina said, we’re merely concerned for your welfare and the safety of the Empire.”
“Safety,” Gustav spat. “Great nations are not built on safety, Konteradmiral. They are built on the willingness of their rulers and their people to do whatever is necessary, and to make whatever sacrifices are needed to defeat the foe and bring honor and glory to the realm.” He leveled a finger at Eulenberg. “So tell me, Konteradmiral. Who are these allies who are prepared to make sacrifices for you?”
“Who my allies are is irrelevant,” Eulenberg said.
Gustav snorted. “So you seek to deny them their share of the honor? Such pettiness ill becomes a true leader.”
Eulenberg glanced at Golovskina, saw her same confusion at the apparent non sequitur. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What honor?”
“The defeat of Frederick the Great is the ultimate accomplishment, Konteradmiral,” Gustav said loftily. “The records of this era will forever laud the names of those who took part in such a glorious achievement. I ask again: do you seek to deny them their place in history?”
He was stalling, Eulenberg knew. Stalling for time, and simultaneously trying to worm information out of him.
He felt his lip curl with fresh contempt. Fine. Let him. The operation was well on schedule, and they still had nearly ten minutes before the transports arrived to take them and their prisoner to the secluded spot where the examination was to take place.
And where, unbeknownst to most of the conspirators, Emperor Gustav Anderman and his son would be shot trying to escape.
He frowned. And his son. He’d been concentrating so hard on Gustav that he’d completely forgotten that Andrew and his captors should have joined them by now.
His face cleared. Of course. The others hadn’t expected Gustav to insist on going to his audience room. Andrew and the others would be waiting in the monitor room, wondering in turn what had happened to Eulenberg and his team.
He beckoned Golovskina to him. “Go to the monitor room,” he said quietly. “The others should be waiting there by now. Bring them back here.”
“And the boy?” she murmured back.
“And the boy,” Eulenberg confirmed. Even men as stubborn as Gustav became amazingly cooperative when there were guns pressed to their loved ones’ heads.
“Yes, Sir,” Golovskina said. Walking past the soldier standing guard beside the Marble Hall door, she opened it and left the room.
Eulenberg turned back to see Gustav staring hard at him. For a moment he wondered if the Emperor had overheard the conversation, then decided he didn’t care. Gustav was an old man, and he was being watched by three armed men with clear lines of fire.
And really, if he genuinely was trying to escape when he was shot, so much the better.
“Names, Konteradmiral,” Gustav said quietly. “Tell me their names.”
Eulenberg shrugged. There was nothing else they could do until the transports arrived. He might as well show Gustav just how large and wide-ranging the conspiracy was. The sheer number might impress and demoralize the supposed universally beloved leader.
Besides, as long as Gustav thought he was putting one over on his captors, he was likely to stand quietly instead of attempting any additional ruses or heroics.
“Very well, Your Excellency,” Eulenberg said. “Would you like them alphabetically, or in descending order of rank?”
Gustav inclined his head. “The latter, if you please.”
Eulenberg inclined his head back. “Aside from those you see here, our numbers include Flottillenadmiral Cutler von Tischendorf, Fregattenkapitän Li Gong-Hu, Fregattenkapitän Xiao Chen-tzi . . .”
Marija had feared the safe room would already be under enemy control. To her relief, it was not only empty, but apparently even unwatched.
Still, it wasn’t until she got the massive door swung shut and locked that she finally felt the tension drain out of her.
But only some of it. Andrew was safe, but the Emperor was still presumably in the building. What was she supposed to do now?
Call for help, of course. Making sure the door was sealed, squeezing Andrew’s shoulder reassuringly as she passed, she hurried to a small communications desk along the side wall. The layout was unfamiliar, but the controls were clearly labeled: internal com, external com, emergency com. The coms in the nursery hadn’t worked, but surely the ones in here would.
Only they didn’t.
She tried each of them twice, fighting against the panic once again trying to bubble up her throat. For a moment she stared at the board, wondering what she was doing wrong.
She looked up at the ceiling, belatedly realizing why the safe room and the secret corridors they’d traveled to get here had been so dark. The only lights that were functioning were the battery-powered emergency ones. Somewhere along the line, the conspirators had cut the power to this section of the Palace.
Leaving her and the boy helpless.
Or maybe not. Lowering her eyes from the ceiling, she focused on the other side wall . . . and the subdued glint of racked shotguns, rifles, submachineguns, and handguns.
She straightened her shoulders, peripherally aware that Andrew was watching her. “Is there a place in here to lie down?” she asked him.
He pointed to a door a couple of meters past the gun rack. “The beds are in there.”
“Good,” Marija said. “Let’s go settle you down, okay? It’s just about your bedtime.”
He looked up at her as if she was crazy. “I don’t think I can sleep,” he said.
“Maybe not, but you can at least lie down,” she said. “Okay? For me?”
He managed a faint smile. It was amazing how much he looked like his father when he did that. “Okay,” he said.
The room was laid out like a barracks, with twenty bunkbeds lined up neatly along the walls. Marija got Andrew settled, promised him a story if he was still awake when this was all over, and headed back to the vestibule.
The boy wasn’t really safe in there, Marija knew as she gently closed the barracks door behind her. No safer than he would be out here in the vestibule with her. But at least in there, lying down, he would be out of the direct line of fire if and when the conspirators broke in.
The rifles and submachineguns were tempting. But Harold had always told her that for close-quarters work shotguns were an untrained fighter’s best bet. Collecting all three of the shotguns from the rack, she carried them over to the wall facing the heavy outer door. Two handguns were next, and then the chair from the useless com board. She loaded all five weapons and set four of them neatly on the floor around her within easy reach.
Then, laying the final shotgun across her knees, she settled in to wait.
Getting past her wouldn’t be very difficult, she knew. But at least it would be one more chore for them to do before they could get to the Emperor’s son.
Riefenstahl hadn’t expected the mutineers to have moved Andrew’s guards very far. He certainly hadn’t expected them to treat the dead with any dignity.
He was right on both counts. He found the two bodies stuffed into a service closet just around the corner from the boy’s nursery.
But for all their cleverness and treachery, they hadn’t been quite clever enough. Focused on getting to Andrew, they hadn’t bothered to strip the two Totenkopfs of their weapons.
Twenty seconds later, Riefenstahl was finally armed.
Only armed for what?
Andrew was gone, presumably still free. But where would he and his nurse have gone? Riefenstahl had looked over the Palace floorplan in the days before tonight’s working dinner, mainly to make sure he wouldn’t embarrass himself by taking a wrong turn somewhere and getting lost. There had been no indication of emergency exits or safe rooms or anything of that sort. Nor had he seen anything like that labeled in the underground passages he’d just been in.
But surely the Emperor would have prepared for all contingencies, from revolt and mutiny to all-out revolution. Andrew had gone somewhere.
Riefenstahl mouthed a curse at his stupidity. Anything like that labeled in the underground passages. Of course nothing had been labeled. Nor would it be on any of the public floorplans or blueprints.
But private floorplans . . .
One of the dead Totenkopfs had unfortunately locked his tablet. But the other had left his open. A few tense minutes of sorting through menus, and Riefenstahl had a full map of the underground maze.
And there, in all its glory, was a section labeled Safe Room.
Riefenstahl froze, half in and half out of the closet. From somewhere nearby came the sounds of soft voices and hurrying feet. He tensed, gripping his gun . . .
To his relief, the footsteps receded, running now, and faded quickly into the silence. Huffing out a silent breath, he took another look at the tablet. If he went back into the nursery, through the hidden door and down the circular staircase into the passageways . . .
He frowned at the tablet, his eyes flicking across the various rooms: Private Office, Nursery, Private Quarters, Sitting Room, Safe Room. Something about the locations seemed oddly familiar.
And then he got it. The Palace itself might be a copy of Frederick the Great’s own official residence, but the underground rooms were laid out like an unfolded battleship deck plan. The Emperor’s hidden study was where the flag bridge would be; his private quarters were a larger version of CIC; the nursery and kennels were at the forward and aft impeller rings; and the safe room was at the hyper generator.
And with that, the route, directions, and positioning were now obvious. Even the various twists, turns, and dead ends in the passageways fit the overall pattern. Tucking the tablet inside his tunic, he hefted his gun and headed toward the corner and the nursery beyond it—
The sound of fresh footsteps was his only warning, and it nearly came too late. He scrambled back from the corner just in time, backing up as quietly as he could. The footsteps were rapidly approaching, and with nowhere else to go he stepped into the closet with the two dead Totenkopfs and pulled the door closed. Shifting his gun to his left hand, he gripped the door handle with his right and braced his shoulder against the jamb. The footsteps were harder to hear in here, but he was pretty sure they were getting closer.
The tug on the door came with no warning. But it was quick and superficial, and Riefenstahl already had a death-grip on his side of the handle, and neither the handle nor the door budged. “Locked,” a voice came from out in the hall.
“This one, too,” another, more distant voice came. “Where the hell did they stash them?”
“Maybe they didn’t,” the first man said grimly. “Maybe the guards got the drop on them and already have the kid out of here.”
“You’d better hope that didn’t happen,” the second warned. “Keep looking. If we don’t find them, and fast, we’re going to have to shift from extraction to siege.”
“Or worse,” the first man said. “You take that corridor; I’ll take this one.”
The footsteps moved away. Riefenstahl pressed his ear to the door, hoping to follow their progress. But the faint sounds had already faded away.
Leaving Riefenstahl in a complete and horrible limbo. Until the mutineers gave up and took their search elsewhere, he didn’t dare leave his hiding place.
But without anything to cue him, he had no way of knowing when that moment happened. All he could do was make the best judgment he could, and hope to God he didn’t walk straight into their arms.
And in the meantime, Andrew was out there with no one but his nurse to protect him.
Riefenstahl mouthed a curse, not daring even to give whispered vent to his frustration. His Emperor had sent him on a mission, and so far, he had completely failed.
But there was nothing he could do. It would gain the child nothing if Riefenstahl simply got himself killed.
He would have to wait. And to trust that he would be free in time to make a difference.
“Interesting,” Gustav murmured, tapping his lip thoughtfully. “I don’t believe you for a moment, of course.”
“You take me for a liar?” Eulenberg asked. Not that he cared. Gustav had now burned nearly all the time he had left before the transports arrived, time he probably could have used more productively to plan an escape or something.
Still, if the Emperor preferred to stand by the fire and listen to his captor talk numbers and plans, far be it for Eulenberg to stop him.
“Of course,” Gustav said. “None of those you named would dare rise up against their Emperor. I am beloved throughout my Empire—”
Behind Eulenberg, a door slammed open. Eulenberg spun around, dropping his hand to his sidearm—
“They’re gone,” Golovskina said, her voice tense. “Both of them. And the—”
“Who’s gone?” Eulenberg demanded.
“The boy and his nurse,” Golovskina said. “And Peter and Michael are dead—one shot, the other probably suffocated.”
Eulenberg turned back to Gustav. The Emperor had a tight, knowing smile on his face. “What about the boy’s guards?”
“Gone,” Golovskina said. “I don’t know where—I didn’t want to take the time to search for them. But Peter and Michael were inside the nursery, so I assume they’d already eliminated the guards.”
“You assume?” Eulenberg snapped. “Don’t assume, Korvettenkapitän. Send someone to find out for sure.”
“I did,” Golovskina said stiffly. “I caught Chin and Mac and sent them back to look for the bodies. Do you want me to go help them?”
Eulenberg clenched his teeth. An extra person could make a big difference in a search.
But the transports would be here any minute, and he wanted her on the one with him and Gustav. “No, they can handle it,” he told her. “Go see if the transports have arrived, then come back here.”
“Yes, Sir.” Once again, she slipped out of the room.
“And so your defeat begins,” Gustav said softly.
Eulenberg turned back. “The unexpected occasionally happens,” he said. “But it’s of no concern. We have you, we have the guard room, and thanks to our diversions and uni-com tricks no one outside the Palace even suspects what’s happening in here. And even if by some miracle they found out, we have the firepower to deal with them.”
Gustav shook his head. “No, Herr Konteradmiral. Even as we speak, your plot unravels. Your allies edge toward panic; your troops are forcibly converted from traitors to corpses. But if you surrender now, I promise to be lenient.”
“Your promises are no longer of any value, you old fool,” Eulenberg snarled. “You will die tonight, as will your son, and the rule of New Berlin will come to one who can command respect and fear from the Empire’s enemies.”
Gustav sighed and shook his head. “And so it ends,” he said, a twinge of sadness in his voice. “The second reign of Frederick the Great.” Carefully, he took the powdered wig from his head. For a moment he gazed at it; and then, ceremoniously, he tossed it into the fire.
And with a tremendous whoosh, the fireplace erupted into a cloud of dense white smoke.
Reflexively, Eulenberg snatched his gun from its holster. But it was too late. The billowing cloud had already filled the room, enveloping and blinding him. He tried anyway, firing three shots at the spot where Gustav had been standing a second earlier, knowing full well that the Emperor was long gone.
A sudden wind pressed against his back, the white cloud around him swirling in reaction. One of the men had opened the door to the Marble Hall. Eulenberg stood where he was, resisting the urge to do something—anything—and waited as the smoke flowed out. A minute later he found himself in a room containing himself, his two men, and a nearly smothered fire.
And no Emperor Gustav.
“Where is he?” Eulenberg snarled.
“I don’t know,” the guard at the Marble Hall door insisted. “He didn’t get out this way.”
“I had this one blocked the whole time,” the one at the music room door added.
Eulenberg swore again. So the Emperor had gone down his damn bolt-hole. Apparently he was willing to run like a hare. “Don’t just stand there,” he snapped. “There’s a hidden door somewhere in here. Find it. Tear the room apart if you have to, but find it!”
For a moment he watched in silence as they hurriedly started checking the walls. The plan had been for the conspirators to present themselves as the men and women who’d saved the Andermani Empire from its leader’s dangerous lunacy. Now, Gustav’s vanishing act had threatened to unravel that rationale.
But that was all right. Eulenberg would have been a fool not to anticipate such a contingency and work up a response to cover it.
He grabbed one of the men as he hurried toward a different section of wall. “New plan,” he said. “Go back to the monitor room. Tell Li to call Kolin and give the code word Götterdämmerung. Then bring Golovskina back here.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He fled from the room, and Eulenberg crossed to the likely-looking wall tapestry the other had been headed toward. Gustav was clever, all right. But he wasn’t clever enough.
Because if Eulenberg and the others couldn’t be the patriots who’d saved the Empire from its leader, they would just have to be the patriots who’d sadly been too late to save the Emperor from a mutiny.
VII
Cutler was in Schreien’s dorsal missile compartment, glowering at the new electronics for the utterly outdated twin-arm launchers, when he got the call from the bridge.
“Oberleutnant Puntar, Sir,” the OOW identified himself. “You asked me to keep watch on Kolin.”
“Yes, I did,” Cutler confirmed. “Is she showing unusual activity?”
“Possibly, Sir,” Puntar said. “She’s activated her nodes. I think she may be preparing to bring up her wedge.”
Across the compartment, Korvettenkapitän Bermann looked up. “Have you received any orders regarding an imminent departure?” he called toward the intercom.
“We haven’t, Sir, no,” Puntar said. “There’s been no general warning from Astro Control to shipping, either. Though that may be waiting on whenever Kolin actually begins raising her wedge.”
“And nothing from Command?” Bermann pressed.
“No, Sir,” Puntar said. “But if the orders are only for Kolin there’s no reason we would necessarily be copied.”
Cutler and Bermann exchanged looks. No, it wasn’t necessary. But it was usually done, especially with the relatively close-packed ships in Potsdam orbit.
Unless, of course, Kolin’s orders weren’t coming from Command.
“Let’s take a closer look,” he said. “Take us down toward her orbit. Make it a slow approach—I don’t want it to look obvious.”
“Hard not to be obvious when your wedge is up, Sir,” Bermann pointed out.
“That’s why we won’t be using the wedge,” Cutler told him. “Reaction thrusters only. Nice and slow and casual.”
He looked at the repeater tac display, at the distant ship still hugging the horizon. “And,” he added, “put the ship on alert.”
Even in an audience room as elaborately decorated as Gustav’s, there were only so many places a secret door could be hidden. Three minutes after Eulenberg’s men started their hunt, they had found it.
There was probably a trick for opening it. One of Gustav’s heavy trophies was equally effective.
“Quiet,” Eulenberg warned, peering into the diffuse light of the curved tunnel beyond the door. The dim emergency lighting was a good sign; it meant Li’s efforts to cut the power to the Palace had also hit this secret section.
Less good was the fact that the tunnel was very short, circling around the fireplace and dead-ending in a spiral staircase leading down.
A staircase leading down into unknown territory, with the pursuers open to attack the whole way. Suddenly, darkness no longer seemed like their friend.
“Sir?” the man behind him prompted.
Eulenberg took a deep breath. If Gustav thought he would hang back and let his men lead the way into danger, he didn’t know him very well. “Follow me,” he said over his shoulder. “Watch for movement and be cautious around corners. We’re looking for a safe room, possibly labeled Tower or Inner Keep or something equally archaic.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And be careful,” Eulenberg added. “His Excellency may have picked himself up a weapon.”
Riefenstahl stood silently in the darkness with the two dead men as long as he could stand it. Then, very carefully, he turned the handle and opened the door a crack.
No one shouted triumphant discovery. Even better, no one shot at him. He eased the door open the rest of the way and cautiously looked out.
The passageway was deserted. He stepped out of the closet, eased around a corner, and headed back to Andrew’s nursery.
He half expected the mutineers to have left a guard. But the playroom was deserted.
He crossed to the bathroom. Also deserted, though he noted that the two dead men had been roughly turned over, their glazed eyes now staring unseeing at the ceiling.
He had turned back, intending to cross the playroom and check out Andrew’s bedroom, when he heard a sound from the other side of the door.
The mutineers had found him.
For a frozen second he stood there, wondering if he should try to find cover in the handful of seconds he had left. The tub was deep enough to hide him, but there was still half a meter of steaming water in there, and a splash would be a dead giveaway. The shower stall on the other side of the towel rack was big enough to hide him, but the only cover was the rack itself, and there weren’t enough towels there to make that work.
Which left him only one option. Crouching down beside the bodies, he leveled his gun at the playroom door. If he could get in the first shot, at least he’d be able to sell his life at cost. The door swung open—
He barely managed to quash his reflexes in time. “Your Excellency!” he breathed, twitching aside his gun.
“Where is he?” Gustav demanded, his eyes flicking around the bathroom. He was still dressed in all his heavy finery, though he’d lost his powdered wig somewhere.
“I don’t know, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. “I had to hide from the mutineers and only just arrived.”
“Then we shall hope he has already reached the safe room,” Gustav said, stepping back and gesturing impatiently. “Come—come. Do you have a second weapon?”
“I do, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said, producing the second gun as he hurried forward.
“This was Harold’s gun,” Gustav said, looking hard at the monogram on the weapon’s grip as he took it. There was a fire in his eyes that, perhaps paradoxically, sent a cold chill across Riefenstahl’s back. “We shall pay them back in full, you and I.” He crossed to the hidden door and popped the catch. “Quickly,” he murmured as he swung it open and started down the stairs. “Silence from here on. We may yet be too late.”
Earlier, Riefenstahl had gotten the impression that the secret passageway system was more of a maze than his brief journey had demonstrated. Now, as he followed Gustav, he saw that it was far more complicated even than he’d guessed. The Emperor zigged and zagged, passing by some side passageways and turning down others, and twice changing levels. With no obvious passage identifiers or intersection markers, Riefenstahl reflected, an average Potsdam civilian would be hopelessly lost in minutes.
But with the insight he’d pulled from the dead Totenkopf’s tablet, Riefenstahl was able to visualize exactly where he was, and which direction he was going.
He was starting to feel both smug and hopeful when the chair was pulled straight out from under him.
It came without warning. Three meters ahead, Gustav came to a sudden halt, his gun held ready. Riefenstahl stopped, too, straining his ears and eyes, trying to figure out what had caught the Emperor’s attention.
And then, he heard it. Footsteps, several sets, somewhere in the near distance.
For a long moment, Gustav stood stock-still, clearly listening, possibly mapping the intruders’ movements in his mind. Then, without a word, he gestured back over his shoulder.
They were retreating.
Riefenstahl walked in front, his heart twisted with anger and frustration, until they reached an intersection wide enough for Gustav to get around him and lead the way further into the maze. The footsteps had long since faded into the background by the time the Emperor took one final turn that ended them in front of a heavy-looking door.
“The safe room?” Riefenstahl murmured hopefully. It shouldn’t be; the hyper generator was in the other direction, back where they’d heard the footsteps.
Gustav didn’t answer, but simply punched in a code on the door’s keypad. There were half a dozen clicks as lockpins disengaged, and Gustav pulled the door open.
Riefenstahl nodded heavily to himself. Of course. The hyper generator was the safe room.
The armory was the armory.
“Here,” Gustav said, pulling a submachinegun from the weapons rack and handing it to Riefenstahl. “You’ll want these, too,” he added, scooping up two additional forty-round magazines.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said, checking over the gun. He hadn’t fired this specific model in twenty T-years, but it was similar enough to the weapons he was proficient with to make no difference. “And you?”
In answer, Gustav tucked Harold’s sidearm into his waistband and selected another submachinegun and two extra magazines. “You’ll also want these,” he said, handing Riefenstahl a small box. “Ear protectors with built-in coms.” His gaze darkened as he pulled out another set and slipped them into his ears. “It is likely to become very noisy.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said, the weight of the weapon seeming to also bear down on his heart and soul. If the Palace’s internal Totenkopfs had all been compromised or diverted elsewhere—and from the confidence the mutineers had shown as they moved freely through the corridors that seemed likely—then it was all down to him and Gustav. Two men, against an unknown number of enemies, with both the Empire and Andrew’s life hanging in the balance.
“It’s not as bad as you envision, Herr Admiral,” Gustav said. “Konteradmiral Eulenberg is clever and determined, and has assembled a cadre of equally determined men and women. But he has both blind spots and preconceptions, and they will bring an end to him and his mutiny.”
Riefenstahl nodded, a sour taste in his mouth. Eulenberg. He should have known. It was practically a joke among the senior officers how every conversation with the man seemed to end up with his concerns about the state of the Emperor and the Empire.
The general conclusion was that he simply had a one-track mind when it came to politics. Now, Riefenstahl realized, the man had been deliberately trotting out his theories in order to troll for supporters.
“So be of stout heart and good cheer,” Gustav continued, gesturing him back into the passageway. “Even now we move to establish ourselves upon the high ground.”
“The high ground, Your Excellency?” Riefenstahl echoed, frowning. “Where is that?”
“You shall see,” Gustav said, closing the armory door behind him with a solid thunk. “It all rests on Andrew now.”
Riefenstahl frowned. “On Andrew?”
“He has his instructions,” Gustav said. “I have no doubt he will carry them out to the fullest.”
VIII
Marija didn’t realize she’d dozed off until she was startled awake by a thudding knock on the safe room door.
She jolted in her seat, coming within an ace of knocking the shotgun across her lap onto the floor. “Who is it?” she called, her heart thudding hard. Please let it be Emperor Gustav, she begged silently. Please let him be all right.
“Konteradmiral Heinrich Eulenberg,” a voice came back through the speaker beside the door that she hadn’t noticed before. “Emperor Gustav sent me to check on his son. Is the Crown Prince there?”
“Yes, he’s safe,” Marija said, breathing a sigh of relief. Konteradmiral Eulenberg—she was pretty sure she’d heard that name when Harold was talking about the evening’s guest list. “Is the Emperor there with you?” she asked, standing up and reaching for the door lock.
“No, but he’s safe,” Eulenberg assured her. “He wants me to bring Andrew to him so that they can get out of the Palace together.”
Marija froze, her hand on the lock. “Excuse me?” she called.
“I said Emperor Gustav wants me to bring Andrew and get them both out of the Palace,” Eulenberg said.
Marija stared at the door, the flood of relief reversing itself. Of course the Emperor would want Andrew safely out of the Palace under these horrifying circumstances.
But Gustav himself would never run away. Never. He would stand and fight; alone if necessary, to the death if God willed it.
And he would absolutely not cower somewhere while he sent someone else into danger to bring his son to him.
“I see,” she said, stepping back from the door and raising the shotgun to hip level. “Tell me, Konteradmiral Eulenberg: where exactly is this safe place where Frederick the Great cowers?”
For a long minute she thought Eulenberg had left. “I see I underestimated you,” Eulenberg said, his voice now dark and menacing. “I trust you will not in turn underestimate me. You may think the room you’re in is secure. It’s not. I’ve sent for explosives, and when they arrive I will bring down this door.”
“Killing us will gain you nothing,” Marija said, fighting to filter the shaking from her voice. The door was thick, but she had no doubt that enough force would bring it down. “Until you have the Emperor, you haven’t won.”
“Oh, we’ll have him,” Eulenberg promised darkly. “I make you an offer, fräulein—what’s your name again?”
“I’m a loyal subject of the Emperor’s,” Marija said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Very well, then,” Eulenberg said. “I make you an offer, Loyal Subject. Come out now—surrender the boy—and you’ll both be treated well. We’ll let you take him into exile, in the Solarian League or wherever you choose, where he can have a long and peaceful life. But if you stay in there—if you continue to defy the tide of history—you’ll face the most severe and horrible consequences.”
Marija snorted. “And why should I trust you?”
“Because I have no reason to lie,” Eulenberg said. “And because you really have no other option. The Emperor is alone and on the run. Do you really think he’s going to come and rescue you all by himself?”
“Yes,” a young voice said firmly from Marija’s side. “He will.”
Marija jumped. With her attention on Eulenberg and the door between them, she hadn’t even noticed that Andrew had joined her. “Andrew, shh,” she hissed, putting a warning hand on his shoulder.
To her surprise, he shook his head. “My father will always come for me,” he called loudly toward the speaker. “Whether he is a prisoner or free; whether he is ill or well; whether he is afar or near; it makes no difference. He will come to me, and he will rescue me. And when I am safe, all his enemies will die.”
Marija stared at the boy. His face was flushed, his fingers twitching nervously at his sides. But his voice was steady, the words flowing like—
Like one of the Emperor’s speeches, actually. Was this something Gustav had given Andrew to memorize for just this sort of occasion?
Was the speech a coded message?
But a message to whom? Unless the situation was even stranger than Marija guessed, the only ones out there were the Emperor’s enemies.
“So think well about what you are doing,” Andrew continued. “There may yet be redemption for you. But if you continue, you will face the wrath of His Excellency.”
“Yes, we’re trembling where we stand,” Eulenberg said scornfully.
But to Marija’s ear, there was a new edge of thoughtfulness beneath the contempt. As if the traitor had just had a revelation . . .
“Very well,” Eulenberg continued. “I’ll leave you to think it over. But I’ll be back. And with my explosives. So think well, and think quickly.”
Marija let the silence linger another few seconds. Then, she stepped to the door, located the speaker control, and turned it off. “I’m sorry, Andrew,” she apologized, laying her shotgun on the chair and crouching down to face the boy. “That wasn’t something you needed to hear.”
“It’s okay,” Andrew said. His voice was shaking now as he allowed his rigid control to crack. “It’ll be okay.”
“I know,” Marija said. She pulled him to her for a long, tight hug. “Your father or his men will get us out of this.”
“I know,” Andrew said, his voice muffled in her shoulder as he clung to her.
Marija pursed her lips. “That thing you said,” she said. “That . . . speech. Were those your father’s words?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “He told me I should always say that if anyone ever threatened me.”
“You did an excellent job,” Marija complimented him. “I’m sure it scared them off.”
“It’s not supposed to scare them off,” the boy said. “It’s supposed to . . .” He paused, as if searching his memory. “It’s supposed to give them a solid data point that my father will then know that they have.”
Marija frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew confessed. “But he told me to say it. So I did.”
“And I know he’ll be very proud of you,” Marija said. She gave him a final squeeze and drew back. “And now, it’s time for you to get back to bed. Come on, I’ll come and tuck you in.”
And she did. This time, she made sure she carried the shotgun into the sleeping area with her.
And with that, Eulenberg thought with satisfaction, the next move was clear.
“You two stay here,” he said, pointing to two of the men. “Golovskina, get back to the monitor room. Grab everyone and bring them to the nursery.”
“The nursery?” she echoed, frowning in the darkness.
“You heard the boy,” Eulenberg said. “His father will always come for him. So that’s where he’ll have gone.”
“Only the boy isn’t there,” Golovskina reminded him.
“But that’s where Gustav will start,” Eulenberg said, glaring at her. Didn’t anyone understand the Emperor except him? “That’s where he’ll have gone, so that’s where he’ll leave from, so that’s the set of vectors we need to cover. You and the others come at it from the public side, we’ll come at it from the rat-hole side, and one of us is bound to run into him.”
“Yes, Sir,” Golovskina said. She didn’t sound convinced, but obediently turned and hurried down the passageway.
“And you two stay sharp,” Eulenberg added to the rear guard. “If we don’t catch him en route, he’ll come here. Keep watch, and make sure you’re far enough apart that he can’t take you with a quick two-shot.”
“Don’t worry, Sir,” one of them said. “If he comes, we’ll get him.”
“Good.” Eulenberg gestured to the other two. “Come with me. We have a walking dead man to catch.”
The maze of secret passageways was undoubtedly designed to confuse intruders. But as usual, Gustav had been too clever for his own good. The diagram Li had pulled up in the monitor room had clearly showed how the sentimental old fool had tried to relive his glory days by laying out his private lair like an unfolded battleship. Anyone who’d ever served aboard Friedrich der Grosse or Liegnitz would find the labyrinth perfectly easy to navigate.
Still, it was a longer and slower path than the outside route to the nursery via the monitor room. As a result, he was just pushing open the secret door in Andrew’s playroom as Golovskina and her team came in from the hallway.
“Anything?” Eulenberg murmured, glancing over the group. Golovskina had taken him at his word, bringing everyone he’d left in the monitor room except Li himself, bringing their assault team to ten.
Which would probably be good numbers to have if Gustav had sneaked back into the secret maze and they had to hunt him down.
“Nothing about Gustav,” Golovskina said. “Li says he hasn’t seen any movement on the monitors.”
“Because everyone’s been using the rat maze,” Eulenberg growled. Damn Gustav for not extending his usual paranoia to the extent of putting monitors down there. “Any word from Kolin?”
“Fregattenkapitän Xiao Chen-tzi confirms they’re standing ready and requesting instructions.”
Eulenberg felt his throat tighten. A single, surgical laser blast to destroy the palace—Kolin’s wedge going up to protect it from a knee-jerk reaction from the rest of the Home Fleet—Eulenberg’s XO shooting everyone else on the bridge and then claiming he’d stumbled upon a mutiny but had arrived to late to stop it—the subsequent inquiry that would show all the deceased officers had received quiet payments from Tomlinson’s former government and the PFT corporation—
An unwanted shiver ran up his back. It wasn’t ideal. Far from it. But if he and the others failed to take Gustav into custody in the next few minutes, it would at least ensure that the Emperor’s madness was ended. “What did you tell him?” he asked.
A muscle in Golovskina’s cheek twitched. “I said that if we haven’t checked in in fifteen minutes they should take the shot.”
“Understood,” Eulenberg said. Ten more minutes to find Gustav and Andrew, five to get themselves out of the Palace and the blast area if they didn’t. “That gives us—”
He jerked his head toward the door leading to the boy’s bathroom. Had that been a splash?
“What the hell?” one of Golovskina’s men muttered.
“Stay close,” Eulenberg murmured.
Another splash came as he crossed to the door and carefully turned the handle. Resettling his grip on his gun, he gently pushed open the door.
And found himself facing an extraordinary sight. Emperor Gustav was sitting in the tub, apparently fully absorbed in the two toy boats he was playing with. He looked up as the door swung open—
“Ah—Konteradmiral,” he greeted Eulenberg. “Come in, come in. Did you bring your bath toys?”
“I did not, Your Excellency,” Eulenberg said, frowning as he took a couple of steps closer. The steaming water was piled high with suds that hid everything below Gustav’s shoulders, but a quick look at the towel rack where the Emperor had draped his clothing showed he was indeed stark naked in there.
“Well, I’m not going to lend you any of mine,” Gustav huffed, waving one of the boats for emphasis. “But we could have a water fight.” He slammed the boat into the water, sending water and suds fountaining into the air. A few drops made it over the edge of the tub, joining the large puddle already there.
A puddle, Eulenberg saw now, that extended all the way to the bodies of Peter and Michael, still lying where they’d died.
Eulenberg looked back at Gustav, his stomach churning with sudden anger. For some reason the Emperor’s complete indifference to the dignity of the deceased was hitting him harder than anything else that had happened tonight. “Enough of this,” he bit out. “You’re coming with us.”
“I haven’t finished my bath,” Gustav protested mildly.
“You’re coming with us now,” Eulenberg snapped. Once he had the Emperor outside the safe room that damn nurse would have no choice but to open the door or let her young charge listen to his father die.
Gustav folded his arms across his chest. “Make me,” he challenged.
Eulenberg swore. They didn’t have time for this. “You heard your Emperor,” he growled “Get him out of there.”
Two of his men strode forward, holstering their guns as they did so. They passed the two bodies of their comrades—
And with a sudden windmilling of arms and legs their feet shot up from under them and they slammed onto their backs on the floor, each sending up a small fountain of water as he landed.
“Be careful,” Gustav said, peering over the edge of the tub at them as they tried to scramble to their feet. “There might be soap on the floor.”
“The rest of you—go get him,” Golovskina ordered.
The men streamed past Eulenberg, moving carefully on the slippery tiles. Gustav looked at Eulenberg and gave him a sly, smug smile.
And abruptly, Eulenberg had had it.
Never mind that people would have questions. Never mind that there would be enquiries and suspicions. Never mind that everyone in the room would know he’d gunned down the Emperor in cold blood. Cursing viciously at the man and at the stubborn insanity that had forced him to do this, he raised his gun and pointed it at the old fool—
—and rising from concealment behind the towel rack, Riefenstahl leveled his submachinegun and opened fire.
His first burst caught Eulenberg squarely in the chest, the hail of lead collapsing him into a crumpled heap on the floor and sending a splatter of blood and flesh into the far wall. He swiveled toward the nearest of the other mutineers—
Just as a second burst of fire erupted from the submachinegun that had magically appeared from under the suds in Gustav’s tub. Two men flailed and died in that blast; three more collapsed in the fire from Riefenstahl’s second attack. At the door Golovskina, now dropped to one knee and holding her gun in a marksman’s two-handed grip, sent a three-slug burst into the tub wall directly in front of Gustav’s torso. Out of the corner of his eye, Riefenstahl saw the tub’s porcelain coating disintegrate into white chips, revealing the solid core of battle steel beneath it—
And then the floodlights along the tub enclosure’s back wall blazed to life, burning into the mutineers’ eyes. Golovskina threw one forearm across her face as she sent one more useless burst at Gustav, and died in that same position.
Riefenstahl lost track of how many times he and Gustav fired their weapons. All he knew afterward was that all the mutineers were dead.
For another few seconds the only sound was the slight ringing in Riefenstahl’s ears that the ear protectors hadn’t quite compensated for. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun to rest on the top of the towel rack. “Are you all right, Your Excellency?” he asked.
“I am,” Gustav said. His eyes were steady on Riefenstahl’s as he rested the muzzle of his submachinegun on the rim of the tub. “Guard the door—there may be more of them.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. He stepped carefully around the bodies and blood, trying not to look at any of it. It was one thing to kill an enemy ship with a missile from half a million kilometers away. It was quite another to stare into their eyes as you ended their existence.
“Well done, Herr Admiral,” Gustav said. “We will join my son now, and will there await the end.”
Riefenstahl looked behind him. The Emperor was minimally dressed again, though it was clear from the state of his clothing that he hadn’t bothered to dry off first. “I’m ready, Your Excellency.”
“To the secret door, then,” Gustav ordered. “And be cautious. There may still be enemies to face.”
It wasn’t until Kolin was in the final stage of her maneuver that Cutler realized just what her commander was going for.
She was lining up her laser on the capital. Probably, specifically, on the Emperor’s Palace.
And suddenly the full intent of the whole awful plot unfolded into view before him.
We will simply detain him, Eulenberg had promised. We will question him, and have psychologists examine him. If he is competent to rule, we will of course return him to the throne.
Lies. All of it. Eulenberg wasn’t planning an intervention. He was planning an assassination.
Cutler squared his shoulders. Like hell he was.
“Signal Kolin,” he ordered. “I want to speak to whoever’s in command.”
“Yes, Sir.” There was a moment of silence—
“This is Fregattenkapitän Xiao Chen-tzi,” a voice came from the bridge speaker. “XO of Kolin.”
“This is Flottillenadmiral Cutler von Tischendorf,” Cutler said. “You seem to be turning your laser toward Potsdam. Explain.”
“Flottillenadmiral Cutler von Tischendorf, you say?” Xiao said. “Ah.”
Cutler felt Bermann’s eyes on him. “That’s hardly an explanation, Fregattenkapitän Xiao,” he said stiffly.
“Do you really need one, Flottillenadmiral?”
“No, I suppose not,” Cutler agreed, glancing at the tactical, confirming Schreien was in the position he’d ordered. “Let’s make it formal. You will cease your current maneuvering. You will then yaw your ship so that all weapons are pointed away from the planet. You will then also shut down your nodes.”
“Excuse me, Flottillenadmiral?” Xiao asked cautiously. “Do you not understand?”
“I understand perfectly,” Cutler said. “Understand in turn that as Kolin’s laser is aimed at the Palace, so Schreien’s laser is aimed at you. You will obey my orders immediately, or I will open fire.”
There was another silence, a longer one this time. Cutler kept his eyes on the tactical, watching the still incomplete formation of Kolin’s wedge and the not-quite-there positioning of the ship’s forward laser. Another three degrees and he would be ready to destroy the palace. Two more degrees and Cutler would have no choice but to blow Kolin out of the sky. Would Xiao really insist on sacrificing his life and his ship for nothing?
“Kolin’s thrusters activated, Sir,” Bermann reported, an odd edge to his voice. “She’s yawing to portside, swinging her bow away from the planet.”
“Acknowledged,” Cutler said, some of his tension flowing away. Whatever was happening down there, at least the Emperor would have nothing to fear from up here.
“Her nodes are also powering down, Sir.” Bermann said. He hesitated. “Sir . . . what did Fregattenkapitän Xiao mean by your not needing an explanation?”
“Nothing, Korvettenkapitän,” Cutler said quietly. “Nothing at all.”
Riefenstahl, Gustav, Andrew, and Marija ended up spending the night in the safe room. Riefenstahl stood guard by the door most of that time, just in case.
The precaution proved unnecessary. Desperation, as every ship commander knew, was no match for skill and training. In the end, all of the traitors were dead; some in battle, others by execution at the conclusion of their trials.
All of them except one.
IX
“The Emperor,” Admiral Riefenstahl said, his voice stiff and formal, “thought long and hard before deciding what to do with you.”
Cutler stood at attention, anger and hopelessness seething together in his gut. He’d asked to speak directly to Emperor Gustav. Instead, the Emperor had sent Riefenstahl.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Cutler had saved the Emperor and the Empire by forcing Xiao to stand down. He deserved better.
“The problem is that you were part of the conspiracy,” Riefenstahl continued. “You met with Eulenberg and agreed to join his coup.”
“That’s a lie,” Cutler bit out.
Riefenstahl raised his eyebrows. “It’s in the testimony, Flottillenadmiral. And it’s on Eulenberg’s own recordings.”
Cutler winced. He’d had no idea Eulenberg had recorded their meeting. Son of a Hündin. “And you know full well from that recording that I only agreed to assist in giving the Emperor a proper mental examination.”
“From that recording, yes,” Riefenstahl said. “But who knows what else was said at later meetings?”
“Nothing was said, because there were no other meetings.”
“So you say,” Riefenstahl said. “But you have no proof.”
“A negative cannot be proven.”
“That is indeed the dilemma you face.”
Cutler ground his teeth. “I’ve served the Emperor all of my life,” he said. “As did my mother before me. Surely that counts for something.”
“It does,” Riefenstahl agreed, nodding. “That’s why the Emperor has graciously decided that you will be released and permitted to go into exile.”
Cutler stared. Exile? “Meaning?”
“Meaning exactly what it says,” Riefenstahl said evenly. “The Navy has a spare ship, the frigate we captured at Second Tomlinson. You’ll be allowed to take that ship, along with any officers and crew you can persuade to leave the Empire with you, and seek your fortune elsewhere.”
Cutler’s hands curled into fists. “May I be permitted to appeal this decision to the Emperor?”
“The decision was made by the Emperor,” Riefenstahl said. “There is no appeal.”
“I would like to see him anyway.”
“He does not wish to see you.”
“I see,” Cutler said, a bitter darkness swirling in front of his eyes. So that was to be his fate. He would be cast out, alone, far from any semblance of civilization, facing the galaxy with only a single minor warship.
It was a death sentence. Or at least, Riefenstahl probably expected it to be. Was undoubtedly counting on it, in fact.
But there was one crucial factor he hadn’t taken into account. This was Cutler von Tischendorf he was dealing with . . . and the von Tischendorfs always survived.
“Very well,” he said, standing up, ignoring the weight of the restraints tugging at his wrists. “I’ll take the Emperor’s generous offer. But understand something.”
He pinned Riefenstahl with the kind of look he’d learned at an early age from his mother. “I won’t be gone forever,” he continued. “I will return. And when I do, the Emperor will see me. Whether he wishes to or not.”
Giving Riefenstahl his best about-face, he started toward the door, his two guards falling into step beside him.
Yes, he would be back. But not as Cutler von Tischendorf. Gustav was too clever a tactician to throw him out without keeping close track of him.
And so the name Cutler von Tischendorf would have to die.
He smiled tightly. Kapitän Jen, they’d called his mother. Jen’s son, they’d called him.
So be it.
Cutler von Tischendorf was no more. In his place was Cutler Gensonne.
Who would one day make Emperor Gustav regret what he’d done.
“He’s gone?” Gustav asked.
“He is, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl confirmed. “He hit the hyper limit two hours ago.”
“With a full crew?”
“More than a full crew,” Riefenstahl admitted, wincing a little. “I had no idea he was held in such esteem.”
“I’d warned you about that, if you recall,” Gustav reminded him. “That was the reason you were in the Palace the night of the coup in the first place.”
“I remember, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. “I just thought that everything that happened after that would have tarnished his reputation.”
“Hardly,” Gustav said. “With his involvement no more than verbal, and his only real action that night to stand down Xiao and Kolin, there was hardly anything to tarnish him with.”
Riefenstahl felt his eyes widen as he suddenly understood. “That’s why you sent him into exile? Because you didn’t want to risk bringing him to trial?”
“You’re a good officer, Admiral Riefenstahl,” Gustav said grimly. “But you still have much to learn of politics. With his name on the traitors’ record, Flottillenadmiral von Tischendorf could not be permitted to remain in the Navy. But a trial that ended in his acquittal would leave him here, where he could become the rallying point for future disaffection.”
“And so he had to leave,” Riefenstahl murmured. “I understand, Your Excellency. But under the circumstances . . .”
“We will watch him,” Gustav assured him. “Even now we are reaching out to nearby systems with trade and diplomacy. We will watch Cutler von Tischendorf and assure ourselves that he will never be a threat to the Emperor.”
Riefenstahl nodded. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
“In the meantime,” Gustav continued, tapping his tablet to send a file to Riefenstahl’s, “a bit of information you may find enlightening.”
Riefenstahl frowned down at his tablet. Beneath the Solarian League Navy: Top Secret heading was the title: Localized Transient Apertures in Gravitic Sidewalls.
He looked up at Gustav. “Is this genuine?”
“My agents assure me it is,” Gustav said. “I trust you see the implications.”
“Yes, Your Excellency, I do,” Riefenstahl said. “If functional gun ports become a reality, all the so-called modern navies that have installed box and railgun launchers are suddenly going to be scrambling to replace them with launchers that can also fire sideways.”
He smiled tightly. “The same twin-arm launchers the Andermani Navy already has.”
“Indeed,” Gustav said. “I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that it’s better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” He lifted a finger in emphasis. “But better still is to be thought a fool and accept their contempt . . . and then prove them wrong.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Riefenstahl said. Gustav would certainly have the chance to prove his enemies wrong.
He could only hope Cutler von Tischendorf wouldn’t do the same.