“In Sankt Peterburg, we had problem,” Ivanov said, putting down an abrasive armor cell he was obviously scanning with a microcam. “Policya were very corrupt, worse than criminals. They do not arrest bandits, they harass the innocent to shake money from them. Is horrible. But in Sankt Peterburg, also half million street dogs that everybody like and they watch over city. Because this, our best geneticists uplift dogs to keep the tzar’s peace, and tzar send all policya to build bridges and dams on Neptune. So who human, who not human? Not important. Is important who contribute to well-being of the people. If ferret nervous, I nervous too. I suggest we check seriously.”

“I say!” York nearly shouted at the Russian, startling the whole assembly, “you have stolen this uplifting technology from me and now you’re bragging—”

“I will not apologize,” Ivanov replied calmly. “Is for the good of the people. This girl, she use one animal to help one rich family. We use half million animals to help many million Russians.”

“Oh, this is all dashed silly. Ivanov, you will forgive me for saying so, but I’ve had enough of this rot!” The professor turned away, nearly tripping both the Russian and the Princess with his immense tail.

As if to fill a vacuum of villainy, Von Schmidt stepped in to occupy the exact spot the professor occupied a second ago. He held in his hand a small rock covered in barely legible, brownish-red English letters. Its unusual texture and color, reminiscent of petrified vomit, made it quite clear that it was of extrasolar origins. In itself, this was not enough to impress the Princess, whose father had placed four gigantic solid diamond cups imported from the darkest recesses of the horror vacui around their palace simply to gather rainwater. As a child, she would spend many hot days soaking in the cup under her balcony while wondering what sort of creature drank from a cup you could drown a mammoth in.

To her surprise, Tanaka shed a single tear from his left eye, the acceptable way to express grief in the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, while Von Schmidt gave a long and mournful sigh. They both looked at the Princess accusatorily, as if they were having a meaningful moment and she sauntered in like a happy little pony and ruined it for them.

“I—I am quite confused,” she confessed. “What is it I am looking at? I can’t make out the letters, is this English …?”

Von Schmidt looked through her. “This is the only memory left by a very dear friend of Tanaka and myself. We shared a tiny cell on Sinii B for nearly three years. Alas, this rock is all that remains of our poor, brave friend.”

“He was a man of great honor and courage. I keep a candle in his honor in the shrine of Ame-no-Koyane, the patron spirit of my clan,” Tanaka said.

“Doubtlessly, some scoundrel who passed away during justified incarceration for participating in some disreputable scheme,” the Princess said dismissively.

“Yes, you are of course correct, my dear lady, it was the most disreputable scheme of all … war.”

“War?” The Princess raised an eyebrow. “I did not imagine you to be the patriotic type.”

“I was once young and foolish. I was an accomplice to great crimes in the name of humanity. Now I commit minor crimes in the name of one human. I was like you, perhaps, although never so well-mannered, or of such breathtaking appearance. Then I learned the sad truth. An army is nothing but a factory that transforms young men with ideals into invalids with medals and replaces loyal sons with letters of gratitude and empty boxes. It is a trade that I no longer care to participate in.

“Now, as I trust a lady of your erudition will recall, the natives of Sinii B, primitive virus clusters only slightly more intelligent than dogs, had destroyed a joint Powers-Mitsubishi relay station that was critical for the exploration of the horror vacui, which was called the Oort cloud at the time. A flotilla of four warships, the Liberty, the Claire, the Toyotama, and the Nagasaki, was dispatched to repair the relay station and carry out punitive operations on the planetoid’s surface.”

The Princess knew how this story would end. She had a souvenir from this battle—an empty box and a letter of gratitude.

“The fleet was perfectly protected against missiles and lasers, but unbeknownst to us, the same French provocateurs who had tricked the natives into destroying the relay station had also supplied them with our plans”—Von Schmidt paused for dramatic effect—“and several miniature nuclear devices. One of these found its way to the deck of the Nagasaki, hidden in the personal effects of a Japanese officer infected with a Sinii suicide bomber. The choice of location would suggest that while devoid of chivalry or honor, the French were not devoid of humor.

“Tanaka, myself, and your uncle Herbert Corrino were the sole survivors of the resulting catastrophe. We found ourselves marooned on a hostile world with an inadequate supply of oxygen, food, and water. We were soon captured by the natives and held captive until released due to—”

“This does not concern the Princess,” Tanaka interjected.

“Quite,” Von Schmidt agreed. “To this day, I do not know if the natives displayed such poor hospitality due to sadistic inclinations on their part, or simply due to lacking even a rudimentary understanding of terrestrial biology.

“Before your noble uncle passed, knowing he had only a few hours left breathing the miserable air substitute produced by the Sinii savages and their equally savage French allies, your uncle produced the little memorial stone I am presently holding. It was a most thoughtful investment of his time, short though it was, for I later learned that Tanaka and I were the sole survivors of this doomed mission and neither of us had a mind for lyrics.

“Had he not done it, I’m afraid that the hymn of our regiment would have been lost to humanity. A most unappealing possibility since, unlike wars, some songs are rather good things. Don’t you find?”

Von Schmidt started singing in a clear and quiet voice.

Where are the boys of the Old Brigade,

Who fought with us side by side?

Spacecraft to spacecraft, and raid by raid,

Fought ’til they fell and died!

Who so ready and undismayed?

Tanaka offered in a hoarse and raspy voice.

Who so merry and true?

Where are the boys of the Old Brigade?

Where are the lads we knew?

Over planets faraway they lie,

York joined in, sounding like he was inside a barrel.

Far from the land of their love;

Nations alter, the years go by,

But cosmos still is cosmos above.

Finally, Ivanov’s heavily accented tenor reinforced the ensemble.

Not in the abbey proudly laid,

Find they a place or part;

The gallant boys of the Old Brigade,

They sleep in old Terra’s heart.

The four men sighed heavily and stared morosely into a remembered distance, lost in memories of radiation leaks, severed limbs, seared flesh, and the wilderness of the horror vacui and its inhuman, almost unimaginably strange, inhabitants. The Jeans escaped the melancholy surge by focusing all their attention on a the Korean hyperdiptych “Blue Server Ravaged by Cyber Vikings” and “Tears of the Obese Data Miner” farther down the hall.

The Princess suddenly realized the meaning of the term les grognards or, as her mother had called it, the old boys’ club. The dashing young aristocrat had never felt so excluded in her life. She remembered her uncle, the shiny chief executive admiral who left and never returned, humming this very song just before he boarded the shuttle that took him away forever. She had been too young to remember the words. She made a silent oath to never forget them again.

When she was a child, her parents always answered her inquiries about his whereabouts with “he will return next year.” As an adult, she no longer had to ask. But this was the first time the truth was made so bluntly clear to her. All these vicious and infamous men were as much a part of the fabric of the ruling elites as the crowned heads and corporate aristocracy of Terra. It was strange thinking of the warmest, jolliest man she’d known in her life as a part of this gathering of ill repute. He had more medals and decorations than any man she knew, but for the life of her, she could not imagine him as a killer, only as a captivating storyteller and a merry jokester.

The Princess felt an itch in her eyes and her nose became blocked. She bit her lower lip and clenched her fist until her knuckles went white to avoid losing face in front of her enemies. Decorum above all. However, just to stay on the safe side, she looked away, her face hidden by the tendrils of her hair.

To keep her voice even, she spoke slowly and calmly, not uttering a word until she was certain she could make the next one as flat and civil as the previous. “Herr Schmidt, I appreciate you taking the time to notify me of my uncle’s final years on Sinii. One is grateful for the closure offered.”

“It is my honor. Your uncle was a great man, perhaps the greatest of his generation,” Von Schmidt said.

Von Schmidt’s martial nostalgia left all the members of the group in a bleak and reserved mood. Those who spent their youth serving Terra on its farthest posts were lost in memories, their faces occasionally twitching with rage or sorrow, two sentiments that were often indistinguishable among the higher echelons of society. Those who were spared the horror vacui felt humbled. The Princess couldn’t decide if Von Schmidt had just committed a major faux pas, because it was utterly unacceptable to embarrass a fine and cheerful company into awkward silence, or if he had just expressed his sole redeeming feature by honoring his betters, the glorious dead. It was dilemmas like that, that made it such a drag to be a princess. Well, there was that and also the issue of occasionally being kidnapped by interstellar criminal masterminds.