Paying the Price (Book 5 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (3 page)

That was a surmountable problem. One that he was able to rectify by learning how the headsets worked and building an additional transmitter that they could add to an existing set of implants. Since it was going to go inside a person, he’d spent a lot of time working the bugs out. It had to be perfect.

Then Captain Black’s people had gone over every aspect of it and suggested a number of modifications. That only proved to him that he still needed a lot of polish, even though they were uniformly complimentary of his work, calling it ground breaking.

Once he was done with this project, he’d submit the long-range communicator to Admiral Mertz. He’d already worked up a modification to add it to the basic implant set for future recipients. Those would give someone the range of a headset. They could even give it to people that already had implants with an outpatient procedure.

Still, that wasn’t enough range to control the hammer, so he’d created one with even more range for Princess Kelsey. Rather than present her with an untested device, he’d had Doctor Stone implant it inside himself. It was too large for the cranium, so it went in his torso behind his lungs.

He figured it wouldn’t interfere with anything there and Doctor Stone agreed.

The matching equipment in the hammer linked and communicated with the wielder via a channel so heavily encrypted that he doubted even he could hack it without his personal knowledge of the algorithms. Good luck to the outsider that wanted to tap in.

Avoiding jamming was ridiculously simple, in theory. The actual hardware and new scientific theory was a lot more complicated. The execution was fiendishly difficult and he’d had to create an entirely new branch of science to make it work. Well, expand one that existed into something that was actually useful, rather. That had taken the last two months to get working.

Everyone knew about Einstein’s pre-Imperial work. Pre-spaceflight, really. Specifically, spooky action at a distance. Quantum entanglement of photons so that changes in spin replicated on the linked pair without regard to distance or time.

A curious scientific oddity. Nothing had ever been created that could successfully harness the effect in a meaningful way. He’d torn up the databases at the research facility and a few separate projects had smashed together in another dream. The work on that had been so intense that he’d yelled at Doctor Leonard for interrupting him.

He’d been mortified later, but the older scientist just beamed at him. He acted as though Carl had passed some kind of test. Older people were weird.

The quantum validation unit worked in tandem with the long-range communicator. It used an expected sequence of photon spin changes to validate the commands. Someone might tap into the encrypted communications frequency, he supposed, but they wouldn’t even be able to know there was a second signal required to validate orders.

It also kept the two units linked. The hammer and wielder would always know where the other was, within the range of the quantum unit. Whatever that ended up being.

Now that he’d brought it all together in this device, it was time to see if it actually worked. He’d test the range later.

Quantum theory said it was unlimited, but nature didn’t behave that way. Even flip points had limits. There would be a maximum useful range. He just hoped it was enough to prove workable with Mjölnir.

He linked his implants to the hammer and hefted it. With the grav assist, it seemed light enough. It would collapse the table if he turned that off.

The target was a set of the Old Empire marine armor on a stand at the other end of the room. It looked as imposing as hell. Part of him expected the hammer to bounce off, leaving him looking like an idiot.

“I’m ready,” he said after taking a deep breath.

“The recorders are on,” Black said. “You’re clear to go. I have a med team standing by. Just in case.”

“Thanks for the confidence booster,” Carl said in the same dry voice he’d been practicing after hearing how good it sounded on Admiral Mertz.

The hammer had a strap to wrap around the wrist, but this wasn’t the time to use it. He drew the weapon back and awkwardly threw it while designating the armor as the target.

It left his hand and flew toward the armor at maximum speed.

In retrospect, that was probably a mistake.

The hammer brought up its miniature battle screen, broke the sound barrier just in front of Carl, and blasted into the armor with the force of a speeding pinnace. And a good fraction of one’s weight.

It blew through the chest of the armor as though it were tissue paper. The reinforced plascrete behind the target faired just as poorly. Carl had a clear view of the hammer’s surroundings as it screamed around in a tight turn and howled back toward him, generating two more sonic booms right together as it reversed course.

The first blast had deafened him, even with the protection of his implants, and blown him into the wall. It thoughtfully slammed the table on top of him. He’d ended up sitting with his back to the wall as the hammer arrowed toward him like a freight train.

He had just a moment to get his hand up and the hammer abruptly slowed, creating a fourth sonic boom that almost knocked him unconscious. The handle slapped into his hand as gently as one could ask for.

Carl lay there, stunned, staring at the hammer. And at the devastation it had wreaked on the range and the surrounding labs.

He couldn’t hear Captain Black shouting for the medical teams, but he saw them rushing in with their trauma gear and expressions that told him he looked pretty bad.

“I think I might need to tweak a few settings before I present Mjölnir to Princess Kelsey,” he said faintly as they surrounded him.

* * * * *

Crown Princess Elise Orison stood beside Admiral Walter Sanders on the bridge of His Majesty’s battlecruiser
New Wales
. It was identical in every respect to Jared’s old ship,
Courageous
. And it was all theirs.

There was still much to do in refitting her, but this was more power than the rest of the Royal Pentagaran navy combined.

She could see the pride in Walter’s expression. He was very pleased with this as his new flagship. At least until Boxer Station completed basic repairs on the superdreadnought
Great Britain
.

“Well, Admiral,” she said. “The time has come for me to say my goodbyes. You’ll be on your way back to Pentagar shortly, so my cutter will take me to
Invincible
. I’m going to miss having you around.”

The older man smiled. “Not so much, I’ll wager, Your Highness. You want more time with Admiral Mertz and I’m too much like a chaperone.”

She grinned. “You’ve found me out. Well, it’s not as though I’ve let that stop me so far. He and I
are
sharing quarters, you know.”

“And what a scandal that would be, if word ever leaked back home. The heir to the Pentagaran crown shacking up with some foreigner.”

She cocked her head. “Shacking up? Have you been watching those old movies Kelsey favors again?”

“Every chance I get,” he admitted. “Princess Kelsey says the 21st century was some kind of touchstone to the Old Empire. They supposedly enshrined it in a kind of collective consciousness.

“She attributed a Captain Jack Harkness in saying that was when everything changes. I suppose it’s a reference to that being the last truly common sense of humanity before they went interstellar and forged their own societies. Perhaps that explains some of her madness for the era, and that of a number of other people.

“In any case, Jared is a fine man. I’d rather not see either of you hurt.”

“And why should I hurt him?”

“You shouldn’t,” the old admiral said gruffly. “But, you need to keep in mind who you are. You’ll inherit the throne one day. He’s a serving officer in a foreign navy. Do you have a future together?”

She’d been pondering that question for a while. She loved Jared, but her duty was clear. That wasn’t going to be an easy decision to make. Give up her soulmate or her people. A stark choice indeed.

“We’re both aware of what lies ahead of us,” she said gravely. “I’m hopeful this trip will settle it for us.”

She checked her internal chronometer. She’d never get used to the capabilities of her new implants. It had been nine months and she still wondered how Kelsey did it.

“I need to be on my way. I promise I’ll uphold the dignity of the Pentagaran people. Be safe, Admiral.”

“Screw dignity, Elise. Do what’s right for you and damn anyone who lifts their nose.”

“Now there’s some advice I can surely follow,” she said with a laugh.

* * * * *

Marine Major Angela Ellis stared at the destruction with wide eyes. “One little guy did all this? The kid from the science department? Seriously?”

“You have no idea, Major,” Fleet Captain Black said. “And you’re selling him short. Way short. My people tell me the work he did on this project is breathtaking.”

She nodded as she walked over to look through the hole in the plascrete wall. It was three meters across. “So I see. Breathtakingly stupid. And he wants to give this thing to Princess Kelsey? Not happening.”

The Fleet officer smiled. “Even the commander of her personal protective detail might find that difficult to enforce.”

Nine months ago, she’d been the commander of the destroyer
Ginnie Dare
’s marine complement. With the loss of the ship and far too many of her people, they’d assigned her to keep an eye on Princess Kelsey. Which was more of a challenge than it sometimes appeared. Even with a double squad of men and women working diligently to make it happen.

Such as when Kelsey took off on her ship through an unexplored weak flip point without calling Angela back to the ship.

“What did this?” she asked, gesturing toward the shattered armor and ruptured wall.

He pointed to an innocuous hammer on the floor. It sat handle up, as though someone had just set it down.

“That. He threw it at a suit of marine armor. The recorders say it broke the sound barrier less than five meters in front of him. It reached Mach 7 before it hit the armor. It was still accelerating. Don’t ask me what its top speed is. I have no idea.

“It destroyed the lab on the other side of the wall with a double sonic boom when it reversed course. He ate a table and took another sonic boom when it decelerated on the way back. Even behind a blast shield, four sonic booms all on top of each other felt like being on hand for the apocalypse.”

She bent down and grasped the handle. The hammer didn’t even twitch. Not even when she put her back into it.

“Jesus. How much does this thing weigh?”

“Somewhere in the ballpark of three tons. Imagine that with the full power of a grav generator pushing it to that kind of speed.”

She tried and failed. “That makes the anti-vehicle weapons we have look like a kid’s popgun. Even the new plasma ones.”

Black righted the table and sat on its corner. “My chief of weapons design locked himself in his office right after Carl wrecked his lab. He has this idea for a new set of implant-controlled ground assault weapons. Something with ‘real heft,’ he said.”

“Jesus.”

She ran her hand through her hair. “This kid is a menace. Why haven’t your people made something like this before?”

“Because we didn’t put everything together. Even if we had, we couldn’t have solved the communications issues. Mister Owlet came up with the theories needed for these breakthroughs in days, though it took months to make working prototypes. You call him a kid, but that’s not what I see when I look at him.”

She sat down beside the Fleet officer. “What do you see?”

“You can never tell him this, but he’s the kind of man who redefines the course of entire civilizations. Like Einstein on old Terra. The man was such a giant that his shadow still falls across us today. People might mention him and Carl Owlet in the same breath one day, too. Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t kill himself before then.”

Angela felt an expression of disbelief steal onto her face. “You’re kidding me. I’ve met the kid. He’s not all that.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried, Major.” His voice had gone hard. She felt her spine reflexively straighten. When a Fleet captain used that tone, you’d screwed up big time.

Black waved his hand, dissipating the cloud of tension. “Sorry. I just don’t think you can see the forest for the trees. I work with geniuses here every day. Everything from the quiet, brilliant men and women to the screaming and shouting prima donnas that throw things when they don’t get their way. That kid is brighter than all of them.

“The best minds in this research facility simultaneously worship and hate him. Once he gains the experience of age, I expect he’ll probe the very secrets of the universe. And with medical nanites pushing our lifespans to centuries, the mind boggles.”

She shook her head. “We can’t be talking about the same person. He’s not old enough to drink. Hell, he couldn’t get a date if he tried.”

The Fleet captain smiled. “I expect that will change with time. Meanwhile, we’re going to rebuild this room with a lot more protection. I imagine he’ll also put some more stringent limits into the hammer when the medics release him.”

“What’s his condition?”

“Shattered eardrums and a concussion. A few scrapes and bruises. He got off light. We both did.”

She felt her lips tighten. “He won’t feel that way once I get ahold of him. If he thinks he’s giving that damned hammer to the princess, he’s got another think coming.”

Black laughed. “Good luck with that. The boy has spine.”

Chapter Three

Kelsey guided
Persephone
deeper into the radiation-filled void of the nova star system with a hint of disappointment. She’d expected there to be more excitement running around the remnants of a supernova.

Instead, she could barely see anything. The intense radiation made a hash of scanner readings in a ridiculously short distance.