March Upcountry

Pahner looked at her woodenly for a moment.

"Yes, Ma'am. I suppose we could," he said finally. "But, frankly, I think it's important that whoever has taken over the system understand that when you dick around with an imperial base, all it gets you is bloody and bruised. More to the immediate point, we might end up hiding on the ground. I'd prefer that base be neutralized if we do."

"You mean if the cruiser's support ship comes back?" Roger asked.

"Yes, Your Highness. Or if it's still around somewhere," Pahner replied shortly.

"Will His Highness be on the assault?" Krasnitsky asked in a diffident tone.

"Yes!" Roger said quickly, his face lighting at the thought of getting off the ship.

"No!" Pahner and O'Casey spoke simultaneously, and it was difficult to say which sounded more emphatic. They looked at each other, then at the prince. The two of them flanked him like lions at the gate, and O'Casey leaned out over the table to fix his eye, since he was steadfastly looking across the table at Captain Krasnitsky.

"No," she said even more firmly.

"Why not?" Roger asked, wincing inwardly as he heard his own whining tone. "I can carry my own weight!"

"It's too dangerous," O'Casey snapped. "The very idea is ludicrous!"

"If we're performing an assault, Your Highness, I can't have my troops guarding you at the same time," Pahner pointed out in her support.

"My troops," Roger said petulantly. He hated the tone, but he didn't know how else to say it. "Mine, Captain. I'm the battalion commander; you work for me." He smoothed his hair and pulled a couple of imaginary wayward strands into place, and Pahner's face turned to clenched-jawed iron.

"Yes, Your Highness, you are." He leaned back, crossed his arms, and gazed impassively up at the deckhead. "What are your orders, Sir?"

Roger had already opened his mouth to protest the next infringement on his prerogatives, and the sudden lack of resistance left him with his mouth hanging wide. He had absolutely no idea what orders he should give, nor did he want to give any. He just wished that people would start treating him like an adult and the commander of the battalion instead of an appendage only important as something to guard. But suddenly the image of a Marine, out of his chameleon suit, exposed to vacuum, sitting on his own vac suited chest, waiting to see if the ship was going to depressurize, flashed across his vision, and he knew he had to find a way out of the corner he'd painted himself into. He thought about the conversation which had been going on around him, to the point of doing a quick check of his toot. The device had been set to a one-minute memory storage, a technique that had stood him in good stead in school and on numerous social occasions, and he felt a surge of relief as he spotted an out.

"Well, Captain, I think we should get started on drafting an operations order while the platoons prep the shuttles. We'll settle who's going to be included on the mission in the operations order." He glanced sideways at Eleanora, but she refused to meet his eye, as did the embarrassed-looking officers across the table. "Do you have anything further, Captain Krasnitsky?"

"No, Your Highness," Krasnitsky said. "I think that's it."

"Very well," the prince said. "Let's get to it!"

Krasnitsky looked at Pahner, who nodded, and with that, the meeting adjourned.

CHAPTER SIX

"Prince Roger to the bridge, please. Prince Roger to the bridge."

The intercom a

The decision had been made, not without some heated discussion, that although Roger would not be permitted to join any assault on the port facilities, he would go down with the second wave of technical support from the ship. It was only half a victory, from his perspective, but at least Pahner had admitted that since there might still be some hostile fire, breaking out a suit of armor and fitting it to the prince was probably a good idea.

Roger suspected that the captain's rationale was intended as much to get the Marines' charge out of his hair as anything, but it only made sense to put as much security around the Imperial Person as possible. Unfortunately, the fitting was going to be interrupted, and he felt some trepidation as he looked over at the armorer who was glaring at the intercom with his lips drawn back in a snarl.

Since good armorers were much harder to find than good guards, and since their function was an "out of sight, out of mind" one, armorers assigned to The Empress' Own went through a far less stringent wi

"So what do we do now?" the prince asked, staring at a hand frozen in an alloy gauntlet. The gauntlet's interface was proving cranky, and the armorer had been deeply engrossed in the debugging process when the a

"Will, Yer Highness," said the slight Marine, whose name tag read Poertena, "I guess we git a pocking can opener and cot you out."

It took Roger a moment to translate the sergeant's thick Pinopan accent. Pinopa was a world of widespread archipelagoes and tropical seas which had been settled in the first wave of slow-boat colonization by refugees from the Dragon Wars in Southeast Asia, and although the planet's official language was Standard English, the Pinopan had obviously grown up in a non-English household. Despite the accent, Roger was pretty sure he had "pocking" translated correctly. He hoped, however, that the corporal was exaggerating the rest.

"Should I call them and tell them I'm busy?" Roger asked, unsure how they were going to get him out of the ill-fitted armor in any short period of time. Normally, it was a matter of hitting controls which opened the armor along numerous seams, but given the problems this particular suit had been evincing, the experienced armorer had locked down and tagged out most of the controls. The alternative, in which he wasn't particularly interested, was the possibility of intercepting several hundred amps of current or getting cold-cocked by a flailing fist. Now it would be necessary to reco

"New, Yer Highness. I'll have you out in a pocking minute. Tell them yer go

The armorer crossed the room to a disused tool chest and extracted a one-meter wrench. He dragged the mass of metal back over to the prince, who was immobilized by the armor, and looked the noble right in the eye.

"Now, Yer Highness," the slight, dark Marine said, gri

He swung the giant wrench back like a batter, and, with a grunt of effort, slammed its head into the left upper biceps of the suit with all his might.

Roger grimaced when he realized what was about to happen, but other than an unpleasant vibration, the only effect on the suit was that the co