Chapter 1
“We’re waiting, Sergeant.”
Lucky suppressed the urge to snap out a reply. He didn’t care for taking orders from an Imperial princess.
“Impatient little bitch,” echoed Rocky, his internal AI. “I really like her.”
“Not helping,” Lucky echoed back.
“Not trying.”
This particular daughter of the Empire, Princess Elspeth, was also the daughter of a powerful senator, and had spent nearly a decade as a diplomat. In other words, she was a career politician born of a career politician. The fact that she didn’t see that as an insult was the most insulting thing about her.
“It’s not good,” he growled.
“Spell it out,” came the princess’ cool reply.
Lucky looked again at the mess of creatures swarming around the landing site. The wind whipping around through the open hatch of the dropship wasn’t helping to steady the image for him, but he didn’t need much clarity to make out a clusterfuck.
Lucky was supposed to be on the way to Old Earth—they all were—where a full-scale war with the Reds was brewing, but instead he’d gotten this little diplomat babysitting job.
Lucky didn’t draw the short straw. He was the short straw.
“What little security the Embassy has is shit,” he said. “I count two dozen troopers on the checkpoint by the courtyard landing pad, but they aren’t doing anything. The landing pad is covered in Trolls. We can land, but we’re going to crush a helluva lot of the things we’re here to make nice with.”
“Tempting,” said Malby. “Damn tempting. They’re ugly as shit.” He’d been hanging out the door of the dropship since they’d dropped low enough in the thin atmosphere, his feet dangling over the edge. He was sucking on a used canister of Smoke, a stimulant that seemed to be everywhere these days. Lucky had been reminded every day that enlisted members weren’t allowed to consume unauthorized stims on duty, but they might as well ask them not to fire their pulse rifles. Most of the officers were using it these days, too. The Empire was stretched thin. Lucky hadn’t slept in days. Good luck getting unauthorized stims out of the corps. Lucky would start policing everyone else’s vices just as soon as he got rid of a few of his own.
“You should hear what they say about you,” Jiang said. “And seriously, Malby, is that how you man a pulse cannon?”
“Hmmmmm,” Malby said distractedly. Elspeth had unfastened her safety belt and half-stood to lean out of the copilot’s seat so she could to see the surface below. Malby was staring appreciatively at the princess’ well-endowed physique.
Lucky had been around plenty of people who carried the old ceremonial name of princess, but he’d never seen one who embodied it quite as much as Princess Elspeth—both in beauty and bitchiness.
There were tens of thousands of princes and princesses in the Empire. The designation essentially made them diplomats. The Principate, as they were collectively known, were the highest-ranking non-military members of the Empire, on par with members of the Senate. The head of the Principate, Augustus, called himself a king and was, in fact, the second most powerful person in the universe next to the Emperor. He was also the most boring person in the universe.
“I can’t blame the Trolls,” Lucky said. “What the hell is the security detail doing?”
The princess sat back and turned coolly to face Lucky. In his peripheral vision, Lucky saw Malby almost fall out of the gunner’s seat in his efforts to seem nonchalant about his leering.
“That’s the second time you’ve called them Trolls, Sergeant,” she said. “They have a proper name, so use it.”
Lucky suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He was doing a lot of suppressing around Her Royal Pain-in-the-Ass-ness.
“Of course, Your Highness,” Lucky offered.
“I can’t tell if she’s just goading you,” Rocky offered, “or if she really does have something crammed that far up her ass.”
“Damn ugly Trolls,” Malby offered, peering over the pulse cannon. “They’re everywhere.”
Rocky guffawed. “Fabulous.”
In Malby’s defense, the noise of the wind had likely drowned out Princess Elspeth’s words. Not that Malby ever really deserved a defense.
The princess stared lasers into the back of Malby’s oblivious head as he kept scanning below. Her face started to turn purple. “They’re called Trillia.”
Sure, the aliens were officially called Trillia, but everyone called them Trolls. There was no good reason for the nickname other than that they were strange, and strange things got nicknames. They were similar in appearance to chimpanzees, except they had long bushy tails and thicker body hair. Their government routinely assassinated individuals that were thought to be dangerous to the safety, productivity, or happiness of the others. They saw it as a sacred duty and honor. Lucky liked them immediately. The rest of humanity seemed to take a dimmer view, but that was the rest of humanity for you.
Lucky wasn’t really sure if the Empire had fully grasped the nature of the Trolls when they admitted them into the Empire, but since they were among the first aliens to join the Empire, their penchant for murdering each other was overlooked. Saving face was a powerful motivator.
“My bad,” Malby said. “Damn ugly Trillia.”
Chapter 2
The princess blew out her cheeks, not at all impressed with Malby. “We’re here to extend Empire hospitality to them,” Elspeth said. “So let’s show some dignity.”
“I thought we were here to get a treaty signed so we can put weapons systems on their moon,” offered the baby-faced lance corporal sitting across from Lucky.
His name was Crusher, and he was the kind of cocky and competent Frontier Marine that Lucky liked to work with. On the other hand, he was also smart and curious. But nobody was perfect.
Crusher had taken Dabs’ seat for this excursion. She’d remained back on the ESS Everton in orbit. The tiny hunter-killer was their anchor ship for this little jaunt.
“Of course,” the princess said to Crusher. If she was surprised to see that one of her security detail cared about the mission, she didn’t show it. “But we can’t do that if we’re pulverizing them.”
“Pulverizing them?” Malby said. “Now that’s diplomacy I could get behind.” He winked at Elspeth, who rolled her eyes. One nice thing about ferrying around a civilian was that they didn’t really know how to act around the Marines. That usually allowed the Marines to get away with a lot more than they could with a ranking officer aboard.
But Lucky had a feeling that Elspeth wasn’t going to be the typical civilian. For one thing, she had plenty of experience making trips just like this one, with full Marine details around her. This was nothing she wasn’t used to. She was here to close the deal. The final muscle to get the Empire’s way.
Elspeth turned to Lucky. “You need to do something about that landing pad.”
“Oh?” Lucky said.
“We don’t land outside the embassy walls. So it’s the platform or nothing.”
Lucky shared a glance with the pilot. He didn’t know the guy, but there was nothing like having a princess onboard to create instant camaraderie among everyone else. “Can you do it?”
The pilot shrugged. “I’ll get low, hover for a few seconds, they should get the message. They usually do.”
“So this is usual?” Jiang asked from the jumpseat next to Lucky.
“Nah,” he said. “It looks like this is a special day.”
Lucky looked back at the princess. She had a look on her face that said she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Lucky had a feeling she wore that face a lot. She was young. And spoiled. And annoying.
He glanced at Malby, still lazily hanging his feet out the hatch. Further back in the dropship were a dozen Army Regulars—Joyheads—looking for an excuse to get high. They were riding heavy for a diplomatic mission, but the Joyheads were just along to relieve their opposite numbers at the embassy.
“Your Highness,” Lucky said. “Are you sure they aren’t expecting you?”
Princess Elspeth looked offended at the question. “Not that it’s really any of your business, but these negotiations have been going on for months at the highest level. Do you really think Principate Augustus wouldn’t understand the need for discretion? No one outside the Embassy staff realizes I’m coming, I assure you.”
Lucky looked back out the side of the dropship. The thrusters were firing lazily as it settled over the landing pad. Another minute and they’d be behind the massive force shield that surrounded the Empire embassy.
“It just seems like a damn coincidence,” he said, “that the minute we show up, there’s a crowd here.”
Then again, this was Trollworld. Roughly 40 billion of the Trolls had settled here. It was crowded by definition. The planet had a real name, but Lucky couldn’t pronounce it and Rocky refused to help. The first Troll had come shortly after the Great Corridor had opened up, and they’d just kept coming.
“If they weren’t so damn nasty, maybe they wouldn’t have to move their entire civilization here,” Malby offered.
The Trolls were the universe’s loud neighbors. Sooner or later, everyone seemed to tire of them.
“They do tend to wear out their welcome wherever they go,” Jiang said.
“Yeah, I wonder how that must feel,” Rocky echoed.
“Speaking of our welcome,” Malby said. “It looks like ours just arrived.”
He was nodding over the pulse cannon at a formation of Empire fighters, easily sliding around on the slow-moving dropship’s six o’clock. They were Devastator models, different than the space-based Skreamers that Lucky was used to seeing in the fleet.
They were closing the distance fast. A little too fast.
Lucky glanced at their pilot. “Chevez, that seem a little aggressive to you?”
The pilot started to shake his head when the all-comm exploded to life. The Marines, wearing their battle suits and helmets, heard the message at the same time the pilot did. “Unauthorized ship, state your intentions or be fired upon.”
Malby finally slid behind the pulse cannon. The pair of mag cartridges started to hum as the plasma packs prepared to fire.
“What’s happening?” Elspeth said, clearly sensing the shift in the mood. She didn’t have a helmet on, so she hadn’t heard the message.
“Looks like somebody didn’t get our RSVP for this party,” Jiang said.
“What does that mean?” Elspeth asked, or rather demanded.
Lucky was about to respond when a bright red light flashed on the control panel in front of Chevez. Even from where Lucky was sitting, just outside the cockpit proper, he could see angry tracers light up the radar.
The pilot jerked back like he’d been punched. “What the hell!” he shouted. “Those assholes are firing at us.”
Chapter 3
The dropship juked hard as Chevez slammed the nose forward. Lucky felt himself lift to the restraints of his seat. He reached out for the lip of the open hatch next to him and just got a grip on it as Rocky hit him with a combat stim.
He felt his grip tighten on the hatch frame like a clamp.
As he stared out the hatch into the thin, cold Trollworld atmosphere, he saw a stream of pulse tracers streaking through the space the dropship had just vacated. He didn’t need the Da’hune spiders in his head to tell him that those shots would have hit them if their pilot hadn’t reacted when he did.
But the spiders loved to tell him all about the patterns they saw. “Those weren’t warning shots,” Lucky said. “Those were kill shots.”
“No, shit,” Malby shouted back. He was sprawled over the back of the pulse cannon, arms and legs wide, like a dog humping a chair leg.
If Malby was a decent Marine, he’d have been strapped in when the shit hit the fan. If Lucky was a decent squad commander, he’d have forced Malby to do just that.
Zero for two on both counts.
“I thought this was supposed to be a babysitting mission for a princess,” Lucky echoed.
“Maybe they don’t know?” Rocky answered.
“Did you ID us when we got inside the landing beacon?” Lucky asked.
“What do you think?” Chevez shouted back, struggling to regain level flight. Lucky knew that flying one of these rust-buckets was a nightmare, even without getting shot at.
“So they know the princess is aboard?” Jiang asked. She’d managed to rotate around Lucky and get herself into one of the jumpseats along the interior wall. Crusher was already there, having never bothered to get up.
“This is outrageous,” Elspeth said. She unsnapped her buckle and began to lean across Chevez, reaching for the manual radio. “I’m going to talk to them.”
The pilot seemed paralyzed as the princess leaned across him and his controls. It probably wasn’t something they covered in pilot school. “Your Highness,” Chevez said. “I think—”
Before the pilot could finish his thought, another flashing red alarm went off on the pilot’s board as Lucky saw a pair of streaking white lights swing lazily through the air in their direction.
“Inbound missiles!” he shouted. “At your nine o’clock.”
“I see them,” Chevez said. But he didn’t make a move to grab the stick. “Princess, please.”
Lucky was on the move now, only a couple of steps away.
“Why isn’t this radio broadcasting?” she asked, the radio finally in her hand.
“Evasive, NOW!” shouted Lucky, incredulous that he might die in this rust-bucket because some useless princess — and career politician, he reminded himself — was throwing a hissy fit.
“Elspeth, get the hell off the pilot!” he shouted. The princess swung her head around like she’d been punched in the face.
“What did you say to me?” she growled.
Lucky grabbed her by the back handle of her civilian space suit and jerked her off Chevez’ lap. She screamed a handful of obscenities that Lucky didn’t think they taught in princess school and almost jerked the manual radio right off the control panel before she finally let go.
He swung her over his head and slammed her down into the copilot’s seat. Her head smacked into window of the cockpit with a thud. Lucky winced a little, but there was nothing to be done about it. She was the one who’d decided not to wear a helmet like the rest of them.
“I think you knocked her out cold,” Rocky said.
The unconscious princess began to slide down the chair.
Chevez stared at her in shock. “Sorry!” he stammered.
Who was he apologizing to, Lucky wondered. Himself? The unconscious princess? The gods of Empire protocol?
“Fly!” Lucky growled as he flopped the princess into the seat and snapped her seatbelt.
Chevez seemed to finally remember that they were about to die and shoved hard over on the stick as he engaged the countermeasure package. An explosion of light and energy roared out of the rear of the dropship as it twisted and turned away.
Both missiles streaked away toward the energy pouring out of the countermeasure package. One exploded, but the other seemed to lazily roll forward and around like a hungry shark, confused but no less hungry.
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