A Confusion of Princes (28 page)

I tried not to think about the pirates. Because if they came, then Raine would go out to fight them, and most likely die somewhere in the utter cold and dark. Without me. Because I planned to be back in the Empire as soon as possible, a Prince again, with all these difficult thoughts washed away.

But in the meantime, the only way not to think about the future was either to be with Raine or to physically wear myself out travelling all over the Habitat doing twice as many hull patches as any hull patcher before me. While also, of course, looking for hidden Imperial tek.

In my first month I spent a lot of time in the Hub, at least in the parts where I was allowed to go. It contained all the docks, the main power plants, and so on, so at first I thought it the most likely place to find anything hidden away by the former ruling Prince. But after I’d managed to visit as much of it as KSF Security would let me, I changed my mind. The Hub was too much in constant use. As the most secure part of the Habitat it would be where the Prince would have deployed all his or her
obvious
ships, the mekbi garrison and so on. The temple would also have been in the Hub.

So where would a sneaky Prince park some secret stuff and, most important of all, a secret ship?

I kept my ears open for any hints, but the Empire had been gone a long time, and if there were any myths about old Imperial tek, I didn’t hear them amid the general abuse of Princes, the Empire, and so forth. Leak detection let me look into odd corners and spaces, but only a small part of my mind was intent on finding leaks. I was also reaching out with my Psitek senses, hoping that I’d get a reaction from something hidden away, something that was just waiting for a Prince to activate it.

I got nothing for a month, except very bored with patching tiny pinprick holes. I decided I had to narrow down my search and really examine the Habitat structure for some likely hiding places.

It took me a while, but when I eventually figured it out, I wondered why it had taken me so long. After all, I’d wandered past the visible part of it several times before. But once I’d targeted it as a likely locale and spent more time probing it with my Psitek, I was finally rewarded with the faintest whisper of a response from an Imperial Psitek system. I felt the slight frisson in my head as I looked out at a section of the Habitat that was perfect for hiding just about anything.

The reservoir in Dolphin ring.

This was the biggest single source of fresh water for the Habitat, occupying the lower fifty metres of a whole octant of the ring. A small part of it was open as a ten-metre-deep lake, which people could swim in if they wanted, but most of it was hidden under a nicely shaped hill loaded with broad-leafed atmosphere-renewal trees.

I reckoned that somewhere deep inside the closed part of the reservoir was where I’d find something interesting. It would be easily accessible for a Prince, who didn’t need to breathe for a half hour or so. But very forbidding for a human. Even recreational divers would not be tempted by the dark depths of a reservoir, and since it was used for drinking-water storage, there would be health barriers as well.

As soon as I found it, I thought about having a look in Ekkie, but I wouldn’t even get to the lake if I was seen wandering about wearing a vacuum suit, or even carrying one. I was sure that a number of citizens had been alerted to look out for me, and the Habitat’s security systems were programmed to keep an eye on me as well. Though both the human and system surveillance had holes I’d identified, I couldn’t get a suit all the way to Dolphin.

But in the box of stuff the KSF had let me keep from my life capsule, I did have the Bitek template for what was described as an aquatic rescue beast. I read the data ribbon on it and discovered that dolphins weren’t mythical after all. This template was a distant development of an Earth dolphin, and it would grow a six-foot-long finned hybrid air/water breather with a tentacled snout and, best of all as far as I was concerned, a breathing spigot for a rider, with automatic oxygen regulation. It could swim along at thirty kilometres an hour with me aboard, dive to seventy metres, and fetch things.

All I had to do was grow one from the template somewhere in the lake—somewhere that wasn’t under the Habitat’s watchful eye. Plus I’d have to feed it about a hundred and fifty kilograms of organic material over ten days.

And after all that, I could well be wrong. There might not be anything very interesting there, or the Kharalchans might have found it long ago. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else old Imperial tek might be hidden—and the faint Psitek echo suggested it would be something good.

Fortunately, the answer to how I might hide and grow my aquatic rescue beast was presented the very next time I prowled along the shore, pointing my leak detector at the floor. Several people were lined up on the bank, about ten metres apart, each with a fishing pole. After the usual discussion about the wormhole, the pirates, and the Confederation fleet, I found that fishing was a popular pastime among many Karalchans. You just registered a spot on the shore and off you went. There were lots of fish, one of the better anglers told me. He showed me the five-kilogram salrout he’d caught. For a small fee, anglers were allowed to take fish home to eat. Or as I planned, not to take anywhere but feed to the template.

When I took it out there, I studied the sky high above, and the Habitat wall, and tried to work out where the long-range lenses were. Then I looked about for a spot that was awkward to reach and most sheltered by the oxygenating trees, registered that as my fishing place, and sent in an order for fishing gear and a training course. Not a direct mind download as in the Empire, but an interactive holo simulation that worked reasonably well. Interestingly, the fishing gear that arrived wasn’t extruded Bitek but had actually been made on the planet, the rod from some kind of native wood and the reel and line from primitive Mektek metal and petroleum-derived substances. Apparently they fished in earnest down there.

A few days later, my aquatic rescue beast was growing nicely in the shallows a few metres out from my fishing spot.

Weirdly, even though it could only cause trouble, I really wanted to tell Raine about what I was up to, particularly as the aquatic beast neared its full growth. It took an effort not to blurt it all out in bed when we were chatting about what we’d been up to in the previous few days while Raine had been on duty.

‘Patches, patches, and leaks,’ I said with a smile. ‘What about you?’

Raine turned in to me.

‘Does it bother you? The patching thing? I’m sure you’ll be able to get a better job soon . . . maybe join me on the
Firestarter
.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said hastily. ‘Or not too much, apart from not seeing you every day.’

‘You should be in the KSF,’ continued Raine. ‘I mean, you know more about ship systems and combat and everything than I do. More than the other officers, too, come to think about it. Even our captain.’

She didn’t mention that was because most of the veterans had been killed when Prince Atalin swept through the system. There was also a hidden question, which Raine was hinting at. We’d kind of moved on from being all about unspoken modes of communication into some actual verbal stuff. Raine had begun to want to know more about me and my past.

I hesitated for a moment, then I told her a little bit of the truth.

‘I . . . ah . . . I
was
trained as a Naval officer, pretty intensively. I left to become a trader.’

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Raine, jumping on top of me. ‘You should tell Mother! We can get you on
Firestarter
for sure.’

‘Raine . . . I left the . . . Five Worlds Navy . . . because I didn’t want to be a Naval officer. That’s still true.’

It was true. If—when—I got back to the Empire, I was going to leave the Navy if it was at all possible. Surely there would be another suitable cover for me as an Adjuster. Imperial Survey, maybe. I quite liked the idea of going exploring.

‘But we need you!’ protested Raine. ‘We need everyone.’

‘The Confederation fleet will arrive before the pirates,’ I reassured her. ‘Everyone says so.’

‘That’s because we want to believe it,’ said Raine. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s true.’

‘If the pirates do come through before the Confederation . . .’ I said slowly, ‘I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

Raine smiled and hugged me tight. I put my arm around her, hating that I wasn’t telling her the truth, because if it was at all possible, I would be gone long before either the Confederation or the pirates arrived.

Later, while Raine slept, I wondered if I could take her with me. But as I watched her, I knew that this couldn’t happen. Raine could only be my courtesan back in the Empire, and Haddad would quite rightly insist she be mind-programmed for obedience. She would die in the Empire, or be as good as dead, since the Raine I knew would no longer exist. I could not do that to her.

Even worse to my mind, if she was not mind-programmed, she would not want to be with
Prince
Khemri. I had to acknowledge that the Empire had done too much harm to her people, and as a Prince, I was the Empire. Or so it would seem to Raine.

I thought about that quite a lot, because while I wanted to be a Prince again, I did not want to lay claim to everything the Empire did. But it was an insoluble problem, for the two could not be separated. Prince and Empire. Empire and Prince. I was what they had made me.

The next morning Raine was called back on duty, with her ship about to launch. The KSF had cut short everyone’s leave, but there were no official announcements for the reason behind this, and no reliable rumour, either.

It was yet another measure of how far I had departed from the normal behaviour of a Prince that I made Raine take Ekkie for herself, with some sleight of hand covering a quick Psitek injunction to the suit to let itself be worn by her. Ekkie was by far the best vacuum suit I’d seen anywhere in Kharalcha, and I should have kept it for myself. But as I had now demonstrated twice, first in the capsule and then with the silver box I’d thought was a flower-trap, I was more concerned for her safety than my own.

Raine left with Ekkie. I forced down the feeling that I was somehow being broken in half—my Imperial self tearing away from some other identity that was emerging—and went to do my leak detecting and patching, and then to my fishing spot.

I queried the rescue beast’s growth with Psitek and was startled by its reply. I’d thought it needed another few days, but it was fully operational, reporting that it had caught additional fish on its own to complete its growth.

I waded into the lake, letting the cool water lap against my knees, and then my waist. The rescue beast came up next to me, still submerged so it could not be seen.

I started to reach my hand out to it but stopped. This was now the point of decision, come upon me unexpectedly, ahead of time.

I didn’t know what to do. This was my first step back toward the Empire, back to being Prince Khemri. If I went into the lake now and found, as I hoped, a ship, my former life would be within my grasp once more.

But it would also be the first step away from Raine. The step that could not be taken back. Did I really want to leave Raine and return to the Empire?

‘I love her,’ I whispered, trying the words out on my tongue. I had not yet said them to Raine, and now that I wanted to, it was too late.

Or was it?

I took a step back, the water coiling around my knees, settling back into its equilibrium.

Who did I really want to be? Khem, who had found the universe to be a far more varied and marvellous place than he had ever supposed? Or Prince Khemri, who I suddenly saw clearly was a cog in a vast machine? A massively overprivileged cog, to be sure, but those privileges disguised the fact that we Princes were not free. Not free to be anything other than what the Empire desired us to be.

I stood there for what felt like a very long time but was probably only seconds, torn between my past and my possible futures.

I pushed a foot back, the water swirling, and began to turn for the shore, beginning a decision that I was still not entirely sure would be my final choice.

As I turned, the artificial sky of the ring flashed from blue to a sunset red, accompanied by the sound of a long-drawn-out electronic scream followed by three short blasts, repeated over and over again.

I knew what it meant. It was the signal for all KSF to report to battle stations and civilians to Evacuation Drop Points. Not that there was much chance of getting a hundred and fifty thousand Hab dwellers down to the planet in time, but I supposed they had to try.

There was only one possible reason for the alarm. The wormhole must have reopened earlier than expected.

The pirate fleet was coming through.

20

F
OR A FEW seconds I was frozen by that alarm. All my thoughts were now with Raine. Her ship would be flung out to try to stop the pirates, along with the few others that had been at least partially refitted over the last four months. A forlorn hope, the too young and the too old, in ancient, undergunned ships. They wouldn’t stand a chance. . .

‘Khem! Khem Gryphon!’

Startled, I looked around. A man and a woman were coming through the trees. Both wore green-and-black security shipsuits and carried synaptic scramblers at the ready.

I guess I’d been under closer surveillance than I’d thought.

‘Stay still and raise your hands!’

My mind changed again. I wasn’t going to hang around as a prisoner. If I stayed free, and there was a ship under this lake, I might even be able to do something useful. For Raine, if not the ungrateful Kharalchans.

I waved to the security agents and dived into the lake. The rescue beast, as per its training, dived underneath me and rose up so I was on its back. I let my breath go in a cloud of bubbles and closed my mouth over the breathing tube. Then, following a sharp Psitek command, the rescue beast took me down, down through the bright upper waters into the dark depths of the lake that led to the inner reservoir.