The Princess of Caldris Read Free Page A

been foisted upon mankind. The
Princess had discovered pieces of it, revealed like a beast too
large for its camouflage. A wicked talon
here, a fang there.
    “ Hammerstein!” the captain
of the guard snapped. “No more today! Get this child home or I will
summon the King.”
    Hammerstein, for all his
unbending determination of will, sought hard within himself to
grasp and understand my weakness. Hammerstein would have walked
into the dark, with not a thought to his comfort or safety. It is
what he was. The warrior archetype; there was no retreat for him.
It took him time, only moments really, to undue his lifetime of
training and instinct to move in to battle. When he was able to
detach long enough, he pulled me away from the room.
    It seemed like an eternity. The detective’s
ethos, “death before dishonor”, almost undid us both. There was a
place and time for his code; this was not that day. He struggled
with the concept of retreat, found it, and retreated for my sake.
We judge such men harshly, I think, in the realms of civility and
safety. In their world such pauses more often than not cost life
rather than save it. We must give them that much; born fighting it
is not the charge into the fray that gives them pause, but the
hesitation that garners an enemy time to reconnoiter.
    I had learned enough that
day. Firstly, the Princess had found evidence that the official
histories of the Arcturian Wars were in fact incomplete, which
alone put her at odds with great powers in the far away Imperia.
Secondly, a darker secret lay even behind that, vile, inhuman, and
something not even considered. I slept in Hammerstein’s aircar, all
the way back towards the Sole estate I was beyond tired, beyond
rest, and beyond reach. Only Mr. Gibbons chromium assurances
reached my consciousness, and with a joke at that.
    Gibbon’s jokes were not
very good. I remember forcing a smile and then
fading .
    We were high over the Tangerine Sea when I
woke suddenly. Something was coming. Something bad. My impressions
were of waspy things, cloaked things with bad intent. Dead things,
then-no, not dead. Mechanical.
    “ Assassin bots.” I
said.
    Hammerstein was like a well oiled matter
cannon. His attention snapped to his screen.
    “ Defensive maneuvers, scan
for cloaked bots.”

    Gabriel
Montagudo
    The other Security aircars
broke formation like in a floral geometry, spiraling and splining
in different directions. High energy defensive shielding glimmering
in the bright sun of Caldris, and I felt my seat come alive with
emergency protocols; personal shielding. This was not one’s grand
papa’s aircar.
    The world moved like a
giant toy, first below us, then beside, then above; round and
round
    Hammerstein dipped and dove. A gravity
bubble saved us from hi-gee pulls in the dives. Over and over again
he dodged, still unsure where the bots might be. The other Security
aircars were doing the same.
    The bots finally revealed themselves in a
sudden and impossible volley of disser fire. Had I not warned the
Security team, we would have surely been killed. As it was I could
see cuts and slashes of heat ripping at the body of our aircar.
    Sizzling, steaming. Wicked.
    Firing, however, they
revealed their positions and now Hammerstein and his team paid
back. The rapid click of modified guns sung like electronic dance
music, a cool mechanical cursing, vengeance served up
cold.
    Hammerstein's eyes gleamed and I sensed the
thrill of a grown man in combat. Violent death winged about us with
a clockwork impunity such are bots-and there was no fear in him,
only an even, amazing sense of “now’ and “act” that precluded any
of his life before or after.
    Now. Act. Respond. Win. Survive.
    Existence reduced to a sport, a contest, a
ballet of destroying a menace. In the end, he and his team made
short work of the bots. I had provided an unexpected ace in the
hole for them; the warning they needed to act, to respond, to
win-and they did what they were trained