The Princess of Caldris Read Free Page B

to do, flawlessly,
beautifully in fact.
    I knew then, at twelve standard Caldris
years something most civilized humans never truly understand; the
place a warrior goes in combat, a timeless place where they are one
with all their ancestors, outside the well of time-with all their
descendants hanging in the balance.
    Now. Act. Respond. Win. Survive.
    “ Hammerstein, this is
Palace security. We’ve just recorded the attack and will have a CSI
team on it stat!” a small holo-face spoke from Hammerstein’s
screen. Suspicion ran dark and wild in his mind.
    “ Sure, you do that. I’ll
have our unit expect the results as soon as they come
in”
    He wasn’t counting on any
of the information being helpful. Whoever had sent the things were
professionals. Their trails would be curled and Byzantine. He
glanced at me and I sensed his gratitude, and passing curiosity if
maybe I could find something even the CSI team had
missed.
    “ Thanks kid, you saved
our-err, well…you know. Hope you had that disser ready, aye, Buck?
Hit ‘em back, hit ‘em hard, and hit ‘em hot.”
    I placed my small hand on
the disser. “Yeah!” For I am a Sole, and we are from a long line of
those who go first, into the unknown; beyond the charted worlds, to
settle and build, and fight if need be. That was the first time in
my life a warrior had acknowledged me. I held the moment clear and
bright, the thick of the fight, glory. My ancestors were with me
that day.
    “ Let’s get the kid home,
people. Tokushima, staff that estate with a platoon of combat duty
guards with tech support. Police orders.”
    He held back a very ugly and profane
expletive, for my sake. I chuckled a little. The ribald words
people invent to snap back at the madness of the universe. In a
way, they’re art form unto themselves.
    Mother was furious when
informed of the attack, of course. Father’s growing pride in his
son, his strange and inscrutable boy, well, it was something new
and pleasant for me. No longer merely the child with “special
needs” who couldn’t fit in to the ordinary world, I was
instrumental in the search for the Princess. I had just preserved
the lives of a number of Royal Detectives.
    He had discovered something
he hadn’t sensed in me before, call it courage. I realized then too
something I hadn’t sensed in him before, his mind so full of
business and tasks, errands, responsibilities as it were. How
profoundly he valued this thing. Courage. The essential virtue on
which all others depend.
    I sensed then too how fragile that
virtue-how years of it could be broken with a single moment of
weakness, and how often it was so for otherwise brave and
worthwhile people. Should that day ever come, should I succumb to
fear and fail him, I hope he could find it within himself to
forgive me.
    For even at twelve I was
not fool enough to think the courageous were always so. Fear and
doubt; on the edge of our universe always, ready to pull us in to
shambling other-worlds of surreal nightmares. At the end of the
day, we have no weapon but our courage, our faith. Woe the one that
reaches such a state without a friend. Without a mighty Hammerstein
ready to stand in the fire with you.
    Mother had a few expletives of her own
withheld when she saw the disser marks on the aircars.
    I have no clue where
Gibbons had gotten this bit of programming, but when we alighted
from the aircars he surveyed the damage and amazingly, whistled . A long one too.
Then he quipped, “Ayie, caramba!”
    Tokushima gave him a look of surprise.
“Okay!” she said, “I’ll escort the boy to the kitchens?” she looked
to my parents.

    “ Crab cakes.” Father said,
“he likes crab cakes.”
    I wore the disser in the kitchen while the
Chef made the cakes. It made him uncomfortable, and I felt my first
guilty pleasure of swaggering machismo. The Chef, an artist to his
hypersensitive core, was thoroughly nonplussed.
    “ Dissers in my kitchen?
Nyet!” He swatted at me with a