"David Weber - Empire of Man 04 - We Few" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

The Road to Damascus
(with Linda Evans)




Prologue
Of Alexandra VII's three children, the youngest, Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang
MacClintockтАФknown variously to political writers of his own time as "Roger the Terrible," "Roger the
Mad," "the Tyrant," "the Restorer," and even "the Kin-Slayer"тАФdid not begin his career as the most
promising material the famed MacClintock Dynasty had ever produced. Alexandra's child by Lazar
Fillipo, the sixth Earl of New Madrid, whom she never married, the then-Prince Roger was widely
regarded prior to the Adoula Coup as an overly handsome, self-centered, clothes-conscious fop. It was
widely known within court circles that his mother nursed serious reservations about his reliability and was
actively disappointed by his indolent, self-centered neglect of those duties and responsibilities which
attached to his position as Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man. Less widely known, although scarcely a
secret, was her lingering distrust of his loyalty.
As such, it was perhaps not unreasonable, when the "Playboy Prince" and his bodyguard (Bravo
Company, Bronze Battalion, of the Empress' Own Regiment) disappeared en route to a routine
flag-showing ceremony only months before an attack upon the Imperial Palace, that suspicion should turn
to him. The assassination of his older brother, Crown Prince John, and of his sister, Princess Alexandra,
and of all of John's children, combined with the apparent attempt to assassinate his Empress Mother,
would have left Roger the only surviving heir to the throne.
What was unknown at the time was that those truly behind the coup were, in fact, convinced that
Roger and his Marine bodyguard were all dead, as his assassination had been the first step in their plans
to overthrow Empress Alexandra. By hacking into the personal computer implant of a junior officer
aboard the Prince's transport vessel, they were able, through their unwilling, programmed agent, to plant
demolition charges at critical points within the vessel's engineering sections. Unfortunately for their plans,
the saboteur was discovered before she could quite complete her mission, and the ship, although badly
crippled, was not destroyed outright.
Instead of dying almost instantly in space, the "Playboy Prince" found himself marooned on the planet
of Marduk . . . a fate some might not have considered preferable. Although legally claimed by the Empire
and the site of an Imperial starport, it was obvious to the commander of his bodyguard, Captain Armand
Pahner, that the system was actually under the de facto control of the Cavazan Empire, the ruthless rivals
of the Empire of Man. The "Saints'" fanatical attachment to the principle that humanity's polluting,
ecology-destroying presence should be excised from as many planets as physically possible was matched
only by their burning desire to replace the Empire of Man as the dominant political and military power of
the explored galaxy. Their interest in Marduk was easily explainable by the star system's strategic
location on the somehwat amorphous boundary between the two rival star nations, although precisely
what at least two of their sublight cruisers were doing there was rather more problematical. But whatever
the exact details of their presence in the Marduk System might be, it was imperative that the Heir Tertiary
not fall into their hands.
To prevent that from happening, the entire crew of Roger's transport vessel, HMS Charles
DeGlopper, sacrificed their lives in a desperate, close-range action which destroyed both Saint cruisers in
the system without ever revealing DeGlopper's identity or the fact that Roger had been aboard. Just
before the transport's final battle, the Prince and his Marine bodyguards, along with his valet and his chief
of staff and one-time tutor, escaped undetected aboard DeGlopper's assault shuttles to the planet. There,
they faced the formidable task of marching halfway around one of the most hostile, technically habitable
planets ever claimed by the Empire so that they might assault the spaceport and seize control of it.