Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry by David Weber, John Ringo Read Free Book Online Page A

he'd never actually been on the bridge of one before. The company-sized assault transports were the backbone of the Corps support groups, which meant they were under-emphasized by the Academy. An Academy graduate wanted to be posted to Line or Screen forces, where the promotions and the action were, not to an assault barge. Might as well captain a garbage scow.
    But this garbage scow had survived the crisis, and that said a lot for the captain and crew, Academy graduates or not.
    There was evidence of the damage even on the bridge. Scorch marks on the communications board indicated an overload in the maser com, and most of the front panels were missing from the control stations. Control runs were normally formed directly into the hull structure when a ship was grown, but since military ships had to assume that they would suffer combat damage, there were provisions for bypassing them with temporary systems. In this case, hastily installed relays, some of them even made out of wire, for God's sake, snaked across the floor, and the compartment was filled with the faint pulse of optic transmissions leaking from the joints.
    Roger stepped over the cables littering the deck and joined the captain where he and Pahner were examining the tactical readout. The hologram of the system buckled and rippled as the crippled tactical computers struggled to keep it updated.
    "How are we doing?" he asked.
    "Well," Captain Krasnitsky answered with a grim, utterly humorless smile, "we were doing fine, Your Highness."
    As he finished speaking, the General Quarters alarm sounded. Again.
    "What's happening?" Roger asked over the wail, and Captain Pahner frowned and shook his head.
    "Unidentified warship in the system, Your Highness. They're over a day away from intercept, but we don't know what else might be lying doggo nearby."
    "What?" Roger yipped, his voice cracking in surprise. "How? But—" He stopped and tried to put on a better face. "Are they part of the sabotage? Could they be waiting for us? And who are they? Not imperial?"
    "Captain?" Pahner turned to the ship's commander.
    "Currently, who they are is unknown, Sir. Your Highness, I mean." For once, the captain wasn't flustered by the presence of royalty. The overriding necessity to fight his ship was all he had mind for, and the last three weeks of hell had burned out most of his other worries. "Our sensors are damaged, along with everything else, but it's definitely a warship from the phase drive signature. The filament structure is too deep for it to be anything else." He frowned again and thought about the rest of the questions.
    "I doubt that they're part of some deeply laid plan, Your Highness. When the tunnel drive was damaged, it threw us badly off our planned flight path. I doubt that the conspirators, whoever they were, could believe we're still alive, and if they'd made preparations to 'make sure of the job,' they would have done so in systems closer to our base course. Marduk is off our baseline by almost a full tunnel jump, almost seventeen light-years. I don't see how anyone could have anticipated our ending up here.
    "So, no, I don't think they're 'waiting for us,' but that doesn't necessarily make their presence good news. The drive and emissions signatures look kind of like a Saint parasite cruiser, but if that's so, that means the Saints have had a Line carrier in-system."
    "And that means the Saints have probably taken the system," Pahner snarled.
    The ship captain smiled thinly and sniffed, tapping the edge of the crippled tactical display. "Yes, it does."
    "So the planet is under hostile control?" Roger asked.
    "Possibly, Sir. Your Highness," Krasnitsky agreed. "Okay, probably. The orbitals, at least. They haven't necessarily taken over the port."
    "Almost certainly," Pahner concluded. "Captain, I think we need a council. Myself and my officers, His Highness, your officers who are available. We have time?"
    "Oh, yes. Whoever this is, he waited to bring up his phase