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

He’d spend some time reevaluating the settings before he presented it to Princess Kelsey. Thankfully, she wouldn’t need it any time soon. They wouldn’t be fighting hostile AIs or Pale Ones again on this adventure.

He hurried into the lab and dropped his bag on the table.

Doctor Leonard frowned at him. “What’s wrong with your ears?”

Carl reached up to touch the sterile cotton in his ears. “Just a little accident. The doctor down there said I should keep these in until the nanites did some catch up work.”

In actuality, the doctor had blistered Carl’s damaged ears for his carelessness. She’d regenerated his eardrums in the base medical center, but told him that he was in danger of infection, even with the nanites. She’d also told him he was an idiot.

He pretty much agreed with everything she said. He’d really screwed up.

Doctor Leonard gave him a look that said he was less than convinced, but he allowed the explanation to stand. “You made it back in the nick of time. We’re heading through the weak flip point to explore the Nova system. That’s what Admiral Mertz named it. We found something very exciting there.”

His mentor sent him the data through his implants. It only took Carl a moment to realize what he was looking at. “Aliens?”

“Possibly,” Doctor Leonard allowed. “We’ll take point on making that determination. Are you able to wear a pressure suit?”

“Of course!”

He had no idea if that were true, but he wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

Chapter Four

Angela found Kelsey Bandar in her office. Admiral Mertz had decided his sister needed one and it wasn’t as though there wasn’t room on the superdreadnought for it. Someone had decorated it with furnishings from Pentagar, Harrison’s World, and Erorsi. It looked nice.

There were some odd additions she suspected came from somewhere in the Old Empire. No doubt salvaged from the graveyard. That was a little creepy, but Angela supposed that might just be her.

The princess smiled at her. “Angela! We found aliens. Isn’t that exciting?”

“I suppose,” the marine admitted. “Though I’d have liked it better if you’d kept me in the loop.”

“Somehow, I knew that was going to be your takeaway from this,” Kelsey said wryly. “I was on a Marine Raider ship. What additional safety could you have provided?”

“If aliens had boarded you, I could’ve kept shooting them till I went down.”

Angela knew that sounded ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. Kelsey thought her guards were an inconvenience to someone built to be one of the deadliest fighters in the Old Empire. She didn’t say that, but Angela knew that’s what she was thinking.

Her boss sighed a bit theatrically and gestured for Angela to sit. “I’ll try to remember. At least get comfortable while you rip my head off.”

Angela took her up on the offer and sat in one of the comfortable chairs. Unlike the ones in Major Talbot’s office, these actually encouraged someone to stay awhile. She still sat in a posture of attention.

“I’m not going to belabor the obvious, Your Highness,” she said, “but it’s true. Your protective detail is here for a reason. Even if it doesn’t make much sense to you. And you made a deal.”

When Angela agreed to enter the princess’s service as guard commander, she’d extracted a few promises from the woman. Within the basic parameters of Kelsey’s activities, the guards would be low key.

They trusted that the princess was relatively safe on
Invincible
or one of the other Fleet warships. But she was still supposed to inform Angela of where she was and what she was up to.

Looks could be so deceiving. Kelsey was half a meter shorter than Angela and so damned slender that the marine imagined she could break the tiny woman in two without much effort. The reverse was true, as one bout in marine country had decisively proven.

If they ever gained access to the materials to make more Marine Raiders, Angela was going to be the first person in line. That was the other promise Kelsey had made.

“I’m sorry,” the smaller woman said, looking a little contrite. “I got caught up in the moment. I’ll do my best not to forget again. I promise.”

After a moment, Angela nodded. “I appreciate that, Your Highness. In any case, that isn’t the reason I’m here to see you. It’s actually a completely different kind of security issue.”

Kelsey folded her fingers on her desk and gave Angela her complete attention. “Tell me. What threat to life and limb is next on your hit parade of value?”

Angela shook her head. “Where do you get those sayings? Never mind. I don’t want to know. This time, it’s Carl Owlet.”

The princess blinked. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Finally, she spoke with a bit of a smile playing about the corners of her lips. “If I had to rank my friends as threatening, he’d be buried somewhere in a footnote. How could that young man possibly threaten me? Or anyone? He’s a scientist.”

“With science,” she said firmly. “Or rather, what he builds using it. He’s working on something he intends to give you and it’s dangerous.”

Kelsey rubbed her hands together like a little kid. “Oooooo! I like presents! What is it? And how is it dangerous? You can tell me. I’ll still act surprised.”

“You’re going to be the death of me yet,” Angela said glumly. “Let me put this into perspective. He destroyed a weapons range down on Harrison’s World and almost killed himself with it.”

That wiped the gleeful expression right off Kelsey’s face. “Oh, my God! Is he okay?” She surged to her feet. “We’re going to see him right now. Why didn’t someone tell me he was hurt?”

Angela kept her seat. “He only caught a few minor injuries. He’s already back at work on
Pallas
, but that’s only because he got lucky. Damned lucky. His creation could very easily have killed him and dozens of other people in the area. I don’t want you accepting that gift.”

She probably shouldn’t have phrased it so bluntly. She realized that as soon as she’d said it.

Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a strong statement. I’ll consider it when
I
make
my
decision on the matter. Now, enough dancing around. What the hell is this weapon?”

“Something he calls Project Mjölnir.”

The princess’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Like Thor’s hammer?”

“It is a hammer. I have no idea about it belonging to someone else. It’s based on a vid.”

“Which is based on an ancient myth from pre-Empire Terra. Hell, before modern technology. And he destroyed a lab with it? What happened?”

Angela sent Kelsey the vid she’d uploaded to her implants.

The princess frowned as she watched it in her head and then twitched violently. “Holy shit! That thing just vaporized a set of marine armor and the wall behind it. I couldn’t even do that with a plasma rifle. Oh, it really messed him up. He should’ve been in armor.”

“That isn’t the right takeaway from this fiasco,” Angela said repressively. “He was incredibly reckless and that weapon is far too dangerous for you to use.”

Kelsey shrugged. “I thought the same thing about my implants before I learned to control them. Practice and refining the skills needed are key. Come on. We’re going to pay him a visit and let him explain this for himself.”

She took one step toward the hatch and stopped. “And you aren’t to tear into him about this. I’ll handle that. You’ve delivered your warning and I’ve heard it. I’ll decide how to chastise him about this. Clear?”

Angela sighed inside where it was safe. “Of course, Your Highness.”

This wasn’t going to work out well at all. The little blonde maniac would take the weapon and gleefully put herself in the medical center. Angela just knew it.

* * * * *

Carl went over everything Doctor Leonard had recorded about the alien station with a fine-toothed comb. The interference of the radiation combined with the distance of the ship from the object made the small details difficult to make out, but he had a good general feeling for it.

It was somewhat larger than Boxer Station, but a lot of that area was empty space in the center of the ring. The structure itself was a mighty circle. He couldn’t tell, but there were probably instruments on the interior of the ring.

The station was at least several decks thick, but looked fragile because of the empty space. It wasn’t rotating, so the purpose wasn’t to generate artificial gravity. Frankly, he was at a loss as to what it really did.

The most obvious guess was that it was there to study the black hole. Certainly, the Empire would want to do the same thing. The opportunity was unprecedented.

That still didn’t explain who had built the station. It didn’t look Imperial, but there had been other human polities before the Fall. He wasn’t quite ready to jump on the “aliens” bandwagon.

Humanity had never found a single example of non-human sentience. Not even the remains of a long-dead civilization. Nothing.

Well, arguably the AIs were sentient non-humans. He should be more precise.

Yet, this station wasn’t using battle screens to filter out the deadly radiation. In that environment, it would quickly fry an unprotected Imperial facility, so there must be something there shielding it.

Or, perhaps not. Maybe the screens had failed long ago and the station was a dead hulk. They wouldn’t know until they got a chance to examine it more closely.

The hatch to his lab slid open and Princess Kelsey walked in. Her guard dog was at her heels.

Perhaps that was being too harsh, but he’d never seen Major Ellis smile. Of course, perhaps having her ship shot out from under her had something to do with that.

In any case, he wasn’t really a fan.

Kelsey came over to him. “I heard you got hurt and I wanted to see you for myself. Why do you have cotton balls in your ears?”

He tried to give a nonchalant shrug. “Just a problem testing something out. The docs fixed me up and put those in to help speed the healing.”

She gave him a stern look. “You should know me better than that. I want the real story and I want you to trot it out right now, young man.”

He sighed. He should’ve known this wasn’t going to be easy.

“It’s a surprise.”

“Congratulations. I’m surprised. Now, let’s have some details.”

He shot a look at Major Ellis. The woman had obviously ran to tattle on him. His opinion of her plummeted.

“I’m not sure what you heard,” he said as he walked over to his desk, “but I’ll wager some important details were left out.”

He pulled the hammer out of his pack and handed it to her. “This is Mjölnir.”

She hefted it with a frown. “It’s kind of light. After watching that vid, I expected something with a bit more heft.”

So, she’d already seen the vid. He considered turning off the grav support, but that might cause an injury. He’d already done enough to give her the wrong opinion about this.

“Set it down, please.”

She placed it on the floor and he stopped the miniature grav drive from neutralizing the weight. “Try it now.”

Kelsey went to pick it up and her eyes widened in surprise. “Wow. Okay, that is heavy.”

She lifted it, but he imagined it had taken a significant percentage of her Marine Raider artificial muscles to do it.

“The shell is made of partially collapsed matter,” he said. “It weighs about three tons. And that’s not all. Set it back down.”

Once she did, he engaged the grav drive to resist motion. It didn’t precisely make the hammer weigh more, but it added resistance to movement. If someone tried to lift it, it quickly adjusted the drive to counteract that pressure. It could stop a dozen Marine Raiders acting in concert, but still not damage the floor.

When combined with the neutral buoyancy function he’d worked out, it wasn’t dangerous to set it on a glass table and yet still prevent others from moving it. One of his smarter ideas, he thought.

This time Kelsey couldn’t budge it.

She stood and shook her head. “I suppose I’m not worthy. Impressive.”

“You
could
be worthy, with the right additions to your implants.”

Kelsey nodded. “You can tell me all about it, but I want to make something particularly clear first. You’re my friend and we’ve been through so much together. I don’t want to see you hurt yourself. That vid was scary and you were lucky.”

He deflated a bit at that. “Things didn’t quite go as planned. I didn’t anticipate how abruptly the hammer could change speed. And, to be honest, I didn’t realize the destructive scope of a grav drive pushing it like that. My simulations were flawed. I’ve corrected that and will add in safeguards to prevent something like that from happening again.”

“Sit down,” Kelsey said.

He sat on his roller chair and she took a handy stool. Now came the ass chewing.

“I’m honored and grateful that you thought I’d like this. And you’re right. The idea of this in my arsenal is exceptionally cool. That said, you don’t understand how the mind of a warrior works. And, contrary to some opinions, that’s what I am.”

He wondered who she was talking about. Everyone knew she was a badass.

“You need to do more testing,” she continued, “but that kind of capability might save my life one day. If I had someone in marine armor shooting at me, I’d do exactly what you did. Boom. Problem solved. Sometimes, you have to blow shit up.

“Still, you’re not a warrior. You’re more like that guy Q in the Bond movies. You come up with all the cool toys.”

He felt his lips quirk at her cursing. It still seemed so out of place. Talbot was rubbing off on her.

“I thought Batman had the cool toys.”

“Don’t quibble,” she said with a smile of her own. “Both of them can have cool toys. Now, I want you to explain the capabilities of this hammer to me.”

“Well, it can obviously power through heavy armor and thick walls with ease. It’s a combination of the partially collapsed matter shielding it, a miniaturized battle screen, and the grav drive.”

Kelsey blinked. “Battle screens don’t work in atmosphere. Besides, the equipment to project one takes up a lot of room.”