“I’m not an idiot,” snapped Brigadier Bomb. “Well, who is this Charmine?”
“BellLunar crashed ninety seconds after the call. Who the devil would do something like that?” asked the captain.
“It must have been a nested program triggered by the query. Crashing the moon’s communications network will be news across the solar system, a signal for someone like that yacht behind us. Forget Summe. He’s obviously expendable as far as the brains behind this are concerned. Forget the yacht. We’ll deal with them later. Forget everything but the mission at hand.”
King Richard fingercombed his hair. “Don’t know much about chess, but if a pawn makes it to the other side of the board, it becomes a king.”
“This is not a game! What do you have to remember, Your Majesty?”
“I twist the ring to start recording. It has only seven minutes of memory, so I wait until we begin talking dirt.” The king had spent the entire night rehearsing his role. It showed in the bags under his grey eyes.
“What else?”
His brow furrowed. “If you yell, I have six seconds to get on the floor, under furniture if I can. After you blow up, I scream about terrorists and run back to the dock.” The king wiped his sweating brow. “What must you remember, My Brigadier?”
“A king should say we, not I,” chided Madcar.
Commando eyes blinked with astonishment. Her head tilted to one side. “What are you talking about?”
Ensign Madcar laughed and twisted his shaggy white mustache. “He means you should not kamikaze your sweet ass unless it is truly necessary. You have to admit you are too, oh, shall we say, too enthusiastic at times.”
“Our most valuable asset is not to sacrifice her life unless it is absolutely required!” commanded the king. He stared at the glove and its huge ring, wishing he understood how the recorder worked.
“My duty is to protect My King.” The brigadier stood straight; her 130 centimeters suddenly seemed to double. Such was the power of confidence. “I once led a team into an Irlane HQ to liberate a Dyb’ general. I lost my lover and my best friend, but I came home with the general. Don’t concern yourself with me.”
Pradesh slapped her stomach. “You shall not return, should you use this.”
“The enemy is L-5, top drawer tech. I wouldn’t get three steps with a conventional weapon, even a plastic knife. They know all the tricks, so we have to deploy new ones.”
“Madcar, you must teach me how to play chess after this is over.”
The ensign turned away from the king so he could roll his eyes. “Yes, sire.”
They stopped the brigadier at the outermost office. In lieu of weapons, Kerrigan Security sported vat-grown muscles implanted by the ton. The brigadier smiled her crooked smile, giving him the high sign. Upon his yell, she would go through the muscle mob like a machete through butter. She needed no bomb to equalize the likes of them.
The mayor’s avarice was obvious. It wasn’t every day that a billionaire moron visited their orbital city. The mayor took him by the arm, touting the investment potential of Kerrigan’s factories.
Once inside the inner reception office, the mayor dallied. It didn’t take a genius to notice the ceiling panels. Similar panels covered the royal airlock. Their sensory webs could scan visitors down to the DNA in their dandruff flakes. Only alien technology could defy the sensors.
The mayor nodded as he spoke, as if his neck were a spring. Leading the Royal into the inner chamber, he introduced the two members of the Councd. The king instantly forgot their names, despite the exhausting briefing he had received during the shuttle flight to the orbital city. A troika, Pradesh had called them. Kerrigan had reduced the usual seven-member council in the name of economy—or so the voters had been told.
The mayor dusted his winged chair before he sat. King Richard remained standing. He cleared his throat.
The troika shared one characteristic: large, dead eyes. The mayor was painfully athletic; he limped slowly on knees destroyed by sports. The blonde woman was painfully Aryan; her skin was so white it nearly glowed. The blue man was merely painful to look at; his dye job appeared fresh. Dead eyes all. Multimillionaires all, they were the primary owners of the touted factories.
“There is one defining difference that separates Kerrigan from the hunnerds—” He coughed his accent away. The blonde woman chewed her knuckles to keep from laughing. “—the hundreds of other poleis. You alone have solved the Grainer problem. It is…” The rehearsed lines poured from his lips until he was interrupted.
“If only we could take credit for our citizens’ common sense,” said Aryan. “Withal, we have suffered terribly from the Trade Commission’s arbitrary retaliations. Our industry has lost several important contracts.”
The king lifted his mauled arm, concentrating lest they distract him from the job at hand. “Do you know who did this to me? A damned Grainer! He should have never been on Mars, but he’d been smuggled off one of those garbage scows. We took the first timid steps to segregate society’s losers. We thought that was protection enough, but we were wrong. Now, they fly throughout the solar system like cancer cells loose in the bloodstream, waiting to infect whatever they touch.”
King Richard IV adjusted the lay of his numb hand. The ring twisted accidentally. Not now! he fretted. The temperature felt as if it’d risen 50 degrees.
“Why haven’t you had that arm fixed?” asked Blue. His pale eyes avoided looking directly at the king’s imperfection.
“I keep it to remind me.” He lied smoothly. “I befriended a Grainer, and this was my reward.”
“A Grainer was once smuggled into our city by a bleeding-heart priest. She caused an outbreak of TB-3.” Blue dabbed his forehead with a monogrammed hankie.
“The Euro—” Thingee, he almost said. He picked a strand of lint off his sash as Madcar had taught him. What did they call their legislative body? “The European poleis around Venus are coming unglued. I’ve been approached by some of my Britons. When the Union disintegrates, I’ll be king to more than a luxury liner. One of the most critical issues I shall face is the charity we are forced to give these interplanetary vagabonds.”
“The Trade Commission has no right to order a sovereign polis to supply these bums!” The mayor sprayed spit as he shouted.
“There’s really nothing to say,” said Aryan. She shifted in her chair as if her doctor had prescribed napalm for her hemorrhoids.
“Fear is the secret! Parasites are cowards by their very nature. My only complaint is how damned long the people waited before they did something about them!” Blue bayoneted the air with a manicured finger.
What else was he supposed to say? How could he have forgotten his lines?
“How did you get away with the riot? I blurt the smallest indiscretion and the media seizes upon it for tomorrow’s lead story across the solar system. How did you keep your roles secret?”
Blue pressed his thumbs against the tabletop until they turned white. The mayor rubbed his knees. Aryan leaned forward.
“Have you considered your kingdom’s future trade policy?” she said. “The dissolution of the European Union will cause massive disruptions in the commercial network.”
The king masked his surprise. Claiming that his Britons wanted him as a ruler seemed absurd when his brigadier had first suggested it. However, first the senator and now the troika sounded convinced it would happen in the foreseeable future.
“Senator Skiepe wouldn’t leave me alone on our flight to Taylor Polis. I’m being actively wooed by the Martians.” The king felt his audience stiffen at the mention of their hated rivals. “But who can trust them? My Privy Council plans to establish close relations with poleis and habitats from Venus to Neptune. Earth is long dead. It is absurd that we continue with the same political groupings that destroyed the Earth—the Europeans around Venus, the Americans of L-5, the Sino-Jays around Saturn. Look at the moon. Russians, Mexicans, Indians, Arabs, and all those others have forgotten the old ways and become Lunars. Look at Mars. Hillbillies, Kurds, Catalonians, Serbs, Afghans, and Mayans have become Martians.”