The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (17 page)

Jonas struggled to breathe as he ran across an empty field on Athena, far behind his unit. His side ached. The other eleven had been training for an extra three weeks, while he had been touring the kingdom, but Dmitri had insisted he take his final on time.

Commander Azziz dropped back. “You don't want your papa to hear that you couldn't pass training, do you? Get a move on, Athena.”

Screw you, Azziz
, thought Jonas. But he had no intention of failing his father. Despite his desperate need to stop and get a breath, he trudged harder. Step by step, he caught up to his squad.

His adrenaline kicked up a notch as his unit entered The Zero Gravity and Vacuum Training Center. The cadets continued to run as they passed under the red flashing light above the two-story doors, which closed behind them. Jonas’ unit sorted themselves into pairs. He just nodded when his training buddy Gordy Conner dropped back beside him. He was still too winded to speak. Brightly lit green arrows in the floor led the runners past cretefiber walls that gave way to pipes, wires, and grating. Their new decor simulated the belly of a starship.

Jonas was still running full speed when, without warning, his feet left the floor, and he found himself somersaulting head over heels.

Only after he began cartwheeling across the room did klaxons start to scream, and an automated female voice said, “Warning, low gravity.”

No shit
, thought Jonas. Suddenly, a pipe, which seconds before had been near the ceiling on the other end of the room, appeared in Jonas' face. He reached out to grab it but missed. He felt his kneecap smash into what his hands had not caught. Pain burst in Jonas' brain, and he careened off in a different direction. He instinctively balled up, grabbing his knee. Jonas tried to orient himself, and this time, he managed to see what had been the floor coming at him before he hit it. He reached above his head and grabbed onto the grating with one hand. His feet remained pointed in the air at the ceiling. At the same moment, he heard a hissing sound.

“Hole! Hole! Hole!” yelled Jonas. Other members of his unit took up the cry. The hiss quickly increased to a roar.

Jonas gently let go of the grate and tried to look around the room without propelling himself in an unwanted direction. The whole twelve person squad had to get into the escape pods within three minutes for the group to pass the exam.

His mind fought against his body’s disorientation. It was at this point he noticed blood on the hand that had been wrapped around his knee.
Oh, fuck
, thought Jonas. He looked down, or up. The pipe had left a gash in the right leg of his uniform. His kneecap was not exactly in the right place. Between the pain and the nausea, Jonas feared he was going to pass out and fail the test. He didn’t want to make the papers again. Some part of Jonas' oxygen-deprived brain felt slightly amused as little globules of blood floated by his face.

Still panting from the run, the quickly diminishing air made him light-headed. His vision started to dim until he vomited. The effort cleared his head a little. He tried to force his thoughts to focus on the problem at hand. I won’t fail my unit. I can’t.

With the clearer head, his training took over. “Vomit and blood,” he yelled, informing his team of the bio-hazard, even as he heaved a final time. As he focused his thoughts, the excruciating pain from his knee faded a little. He saw a picture in his mind and acted on it before the thought even became conscious.

He took a deep breath of the fleeing air as he fumbled for two zippers on his uniform at the same time. His heart rate spiked as his body struggled to find oxygen. As his vision began to turn red, he retrieved his HeFAR, shoved the respirator in his mouth, and bit down. The expanding polymer blurred his vision as it engulfed his head, but the Helmet and Fresh Air Respirator gave Jonas a shot of oxygen-rich air. His left hand continued to work at the zipper on the pocket which held his med kit. Keeping his head still while the polymer bonded to the neck of his uniform, he worked with the med kit by feel. His hands found the two things he was looking for. First, his now free right hand grabbed a pressure bandage. His left hand took out the medical bonding tape.

By now, the wind had begun to slow as most of the air had left the room, but Jonas only noticed that in the back of his mind. He fumbled in his bulky gloves to find the end of the medical tape. As the polymer helmet cured, Jonas' vision cleared somewhat, but he still couldn't see any fine details. Suddenly, he saw another uniform and a pair of gloved hands take the tape. He lifted his hands away as Gordy took it and bent over to wrap the gash in his uniform. The bandage formed itself into a splint that stabilized his knee.

While Gordy finished his work, Jonas took another look around the room. Most of the unit was already following the green light on the grate underneath him, pulling themselves toward the escape pods. They had maybe a minute left. Twisting his body around, Jonas did a quick count of the squad and came up one short.

“I'm done, but stop thrashing about like that, or you’ll make it worse,” Gordon said with irritation in his voice.

Jonas' unit provided him with one of a few places where anyone would dare show irritation at his behavior. Here, he was just one of the team, and that made it by far his favorite thing demanded of him by the Palace.

Jonas grinned and kept counting. “We’re one short.”

“Quit moving, or you’ll hurt that leg worse.”

“Too late,” said Jonas, as another spasm of pain shot through. He brought up the unit commander on his com. “Henderson, my count comes up one short. Do we evac?” Henderson didn't answer. Jonas twisted awkwardly in the zero G to look back at the helmeted group leaving through the far hatch. “Duncan, where’s Henderson?”

“Oh, shit! I don't know.” Duncan's panicked voice came on the com. One of the suited bodies heading out of the room stopped and turned around. Jonas tried to twist out of the way so that he could get a look around. He was trying to find his missing squad leader when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a black shape launch itself from the entrance through which they had run a moment before.
That's a rescue flyer
, thought Jonas. He noticed that several others had seen it. He looked down the trajectory of the flyer’s path. There on the exit side of the room, half-way up the wall, was Henderson, passed out, without her HeFar on. If the flyer got to her first, they all failed the exam.

Jonas acted on what needed to be done before he thought it.

“Duncan,” Jonas yelled into the com, “Henderson is right above you on the grate. She doesn't have her gear on. Get to her. Now!”

“On it.”

Jonas watched her climb the wall like a spider using her grip gloves.

The flyer was moving quickly, too quickly. A Court Reporter headline flashed in Jonas’ mind. “Klutzy Prince Breaks Leg! Causes Unit to Fail Training!” Jonas had already had too many Court Reporter headlines this month. Without thinking, he pushed off the grate. He collided with the flyer in the middle of the room. Jonas pushed the flyer in a direction nowhere near Henderson. As they ricocheted apart, he caught a glance inside the flyer's helmet. The look was murderous. Jonas didn't have time to think much about it as he had to watch out for the ceiling, which was coming up quickly. This time, Jonas made sure to grab on to one of the handholds.

“Athena, you are fucking nuts.” Jonas heard Gordy's voice in his ear.

“Probably, but let's just get this done so we can all graduate. Get to the door,” Jonas said as he tried to keep his momentum from cramming his bad knee into the ceiling. He was only partially successful and another spasm of excruciating pain shot through his mind. When he finally got his residual motion under control, he looked around the room and saw that Duncan was just finishing getting Henderson's gear on.

Suddenly, Jonas realized what he had done, and that if it went wrong, Henderson could be in real trouble. “Duncan, are you sure that gear is on right?”

“Yeah. She’s breathing hard. Still passed out though.”

Jonas shook his head. He saw that the flyer remained in the room not far from Duncan and Henderson, but for now, he was letting the exercise continue.

“Duncan, get Henderson down to Gordy. Then the two of you get her to the nearest pod.”

“Right!” came the response.

Jonas watched for a second as Duncan pushed Henderson down the wall toward the waiting Gordy.

“There you go, Gordy,” she said. “That’s about the only way in hell you’ll ever get Henderson in your arms.”

It was a well-known secret in the squad that Gordy had the hots for Henderson.

“Fuck you, Duncan. Get your ass down here and help me before we fuck this up and get to do it again.”

Duncan climbed down the wall. “Fuck me? Yeah, that’s never gonna happen, either.”

Jonas smiled as he turned and awkwardly pushed off the ceiling toward the door himself. Duncan was a genius at keeping the mood light, no matter what the situation.

Jonas missed the exit by some six feet but managed this time to control his motion and keep from banging into the floor. He started pulling himself with his hands toward the hatch. By the time he got there, Duncan and Joel were putting Henderson into the escape pod nearest the door.

As he pushed himself through the door of the escape pod opposite them, Jonas started to feel the pain of his knee again. A buzzing filled his ears and his vision started to narrow. As he collapsed on the floor of the gravity-filled pod, he noticed a digital countdown clock on the wall which read eleven seconds. He wasn't sure that his unit had passed the test, but in the real world, they would have lived.

Jonas came to laid out on a hovering stretcher. The first thing he noticed was that he was still breathing oxygen and then he noticed the pain in his leg. He was sure that someone was stabbing him in a thousand different places. He tried to sit up but his vision narrowed suddenly, and he fell back on the pillow and moaned.

“Hey, take it easy, Athena.” Commander Azziz' voice was the last that he wanted to hear right now. “Rest your pretty head. Medics are on the way.”

Jonas only had vague memories of the next couple of hours. Somewhere along the way he was given a drug which had the effect of instantly taking away the pain but also making him very drowsy.

His head was still fuzzy as he overheard commander Azziz' voice talking to someone. “...most goddamn stupid thing I ever saw, sir. Absolutely stupid. Passed the exam, sir, but he interfered with the rescue flyer. That could have been really bad for Henderson.”

“Was Henderson injured?” Jonas kept his eyes closed but recognized the voice as Admiral Hansen, the head of the Navy and a member of his father's security council. He acted as the House of Athena’s liaison for all things military. Hearing Azziz' tone and Hanson's question returned Jonas’ knot of fear to its rightful home. He knew that he wasn't going to pass now.

“No, sir! She was fine ten minutes after the exercise. He may have been foolhardy and way out of line, but the truth is, Athena—begging your pardon—I mean His Highness, showed some real leadership in there. Without him, the unit would have failed the exam.”

“Then I think we will leave this one off the record and let the prince pass his training, understood?”

“Yes, sir. My only concern, sir, is that this doesn't undermine the whole principle of our training. We trained him harder and treated him worse so that his unit would accept him as just one of them. We didn't even let him lead his unit, although his birth will make him a senior officer well before any of the rest of them. Don't we undermine all of that if we let this slide, when you know as well as I do that any other cadet would at least be reprimanded?”

“You are correct that any other cadet would be reprimanded, but as far as the squad is concerned, Athena just saved all of them from having to go through training again—which is true. I can’t think of a better way for us to accomplish our goals for his training. His unit looks at him as just one of their own, and better still, he’s shown them that he can lead them.”

Jonas heard the voice of his Aunt Dora take up the conversation. “I don't want any formal reprimand on his record. It would not serve the needs of the palace, and that would not serve the needs of the military, understood?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Azziz.

Jonas smiled to himself.

Apparently his smile wasn't just for himself, because Commander Azziz hesitated for a second, and then quickly added, “...but he wrecked his uniform and those things aren't cheap. I am going to have to give him extra duty for that.”

Jonas groaned out loud.

He heard Dora begin to laugh, and he opened his eyes.

Hansen was smiling.

Azziz was trying to scowl, but finally gave up and started laughing with Dora. “You got some stuff to learn, Athena, but you did all right.”

In the middle of the night, Jack woke up and took a groggy breath or two before he heard the offending noise again. A muffled, electronic bleating came from his office next door. Jack got out of bed and wandered out into the central sitting room in the palace apartment he shared with Jo and Teddy. Teddy’s room was mostly packed, as he would be leaving for the University on Rhinegau in a couple of days.

Bleary and dressed only in a set of undergarments, he wandered into his office, listening for the irritating noise. As it rang once again, Jack realized what was making the noise and instantly felt wide awake. He shuffled through a drawer full of old devices and other discarded bits of lost technology. From the bottom, he retrieved a heads-up which he hadn’t used in years. He put it down on the desk in front of him, staring at it as if a Georgian stinging viper had suddenly landed on his desk.

This particular heads-up had been given to him by the team of Imperial spies who had rescued him and Anna from Aetna. He hadn’t used it since that time. The device was supposed to be encrypted and secure, but Unity seemed to have at least been able to trace its signal, somehow, on a local basis. When he last used it, he had been in the middle of a pitched battle, and shortly thereafter, ceiling tiles had rained on his head as a missile hit nearby. Jack had kept it as a memento.