Read Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry for Free Online

uncomfortable surprise.
    He now had time to examine the vac suit and found that—surprise, surprise—the com was limited to the emergency "Guard" frequency only. It was an unforgivable sin, roughly comparable to eating one's own young, to use that frequency in anything but a true emergency. That was a lesson (one of the few) he'd learned quite painfully during his mandatory ordeal at the Academy, and since the troopers didn't seem to be hostile—just very, very determined to keep him safe—this probably didn't count as a "true" emergency. So no communicator.
    Which left him to ponder what was going on with virtually no data. There was air, but the emergency lights were on. He reached for the latches on his suit to take the helmet off, but one of the armored Marines tapped his hand away from them. The tap was obviously intended to be polite but firm, but the pseudo-muscles of the armor turned it into a stinging slap.
    Rubbing his knuckles, Roger leaned over until his helmet was in contact with the Marine's.
    "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?"
    "Captain Pahner said to wait until he got here, Your Highness," a female soprano, badly distorted by the helmets, responded.
    Roger nodded and leaned back against the bulkhead, flipping his head inside the helmet to try to make his ponytail lie flat and smooth. So, either there'd been a coup, and Pahner was in on it, or there'd been some sort of emergency, and Pahner wanted to be able to give him a complete report rather than a garbled version second- or third-hand.
    If the second scenario were correct, well and good. He would just cool his heels here for a while, then find out what the problem was. If it was a case of the first scenario . . . He looked at the armored Marine with the bead cannon pointed at the door. There was probably a snowball's chance in hell that he could actually wrest it away from the Marine and kill Pahner with it, but if this was a coup, his life was worth less than spit anyway. Might as well go out like a MacClintock.
    He walked mentally back over every step of the event, and noticed that the floor had stopped vibrating. The background hum of the various life-support and drive systems had become so familiar that it was unnoticed, but now, with it gone, its absence was obvious. If those systems were off-line, they were in deep trouble indeed . . . which at least militated against the coup theory.
    Then he thought about the two troopers who'd dragged him out of bed. They'd suited him up and literally sat on him for a good ten minutes before anyone showed up to relieve them. And they hadn't had suits. If the cabin had lost pressure, they would have died rapid and unpleasant deaths. So the privates, at least, thought he was worth keeping alive. Which also argued against the coup theory.
    They'd also risked their lives to protect him, and while that willingness to risk or lose their lives to keep their charges alive was assumed on the part of the Imperial Family, Roger had never been in an emergency. There'd never been a situation in which his bodyguard's life was threatened. Well, there'd been that one disastrous encounter on a vacation, but the bodyguard was never actually in danger, whatever the young lady had threatened. . . .
    But in this case, two people whose names he didn't even know had risked an awful death to protect his life.
    It was a confusing thought.
    * * *
    Nearly two hours passed before "Captain" Pahner appeared, accompanied by Captain Krasnitsky. Pahner was in a chameleon suit, while the ship's captain was in a Fleet skin suit, with his helmet flopped back out of the way.
    Pahner nodded to the two guards, who left the cabin, closing the hatch behind them. Roger took a good look at Krasnitsky, and promptly waved him into the station chair at the small desk. While the Fleet captain collapsed into the seat, Pahner touched the stud to lock the hatch, then turned and faced the prince.
    "We have a problem, Your