Empire's End (34 page)

“Sir. I did not ask for anything. This powersharing is—”

“Of course you didn’t ask,” the Emperor said, a note of pet-tishness in his voice. “But after all these centuries, don’t you think I know? Give me credit, at least, for not being a fool.”

“That is something I have
never
thought, Your Majesty.”

“No?” The flickering gaze turned away, back to the darkening landscape far below. “How bare,” the Emperor mused. “How barren.”

He rose. “I plan on eating in my quarters,” he said, and smiled. “I would think that any banquets or public feastings might well wait until we have reached an arrangement. Don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Sten said. “But I’m not particularly inclined to ten courses and having to come up with polite toasts.”

The Emperor’s smile became larger. “That was one of the reasons I respected you at one time. Even, perhaps, liked you. You had no truckle for pretense. I sometimes wonder how you found yourself capable of
this
.”

He nodded, and, still smiling, went inside.

Alex Kilgour saw Sten to his chambers, and, yawning mightily, went to his own rooms.

Once inside, he doffed the outfit he mentally referred to as th‘ Laird Kilgour drag and shrugged off the pretense of exhaustion. He took from the lining of his valise a phototropic camouflage suit and zipped it on. The valise’s straps became a swiss seat, and he took a small can of climbing thread from his sporran.

An“ noo, he thought, we’ll ken i‘ th’ luck ae th‘ spidgers appliet’t’ all Scots, or solely’t‘ Bobbie th’ Brucie.

The problem was that he was not sure exactly what luck would be defined as.

The IS technician ran and reran his tapes. He was trying to figure out just where an annoying buzz on a low freq was coming from. Not from the
Normandie
, nor from any of the Imperial staff. Nor from any of the liviecasters’ equipment.

He had tracked the static to the Guesting Center itself, but it wasn’t from any of the Manabi’s electronics.

The tech had finally nailed it. The buzz was coming from the portable com that the rebel’s aide was carrying. Typical, he thought. Can’t even use a handitalki without mucking it up.

But it was annoying. Sometime, during this conference, he would ask one of his superiors to talk to the clot and tell him to get a new chatterbox.

He went back to his main task, ensuring that the link between the picketboat and the newly installed apparatus aboard the
Normandie
was functioning perfectly.

The Eternal Emperor took Avri twice, in the manner that pleased him most. The woman bit hard into the pillow. A scream at midnight would be ignored by sensible beings if it came from the Imperial quarters in Arundel, but here on Seilichi an unnecessary and foolish alarm might be raised.

The Emperor went to the fresher, then stopped by a case and took a tiny object from it. He returned to the bed, ran his hand down Avri’s close-cropped hair in what might have been a caress, and, as the injector’s tip touched the woman’s medulla oblongata, he pressed the bulb.

Avri slumped into deep unconsciousness.

It would be her last sleep.

The Emperor rose and put on a black coverall from his baggage, a coverall that had built-in climbing harness bonded into it, and thin, rigid-sole rock-climbing shoes. He pulled a mesh vest over it and closed its fastenings. He wished again for a pistol, but he knew that there had been little chance of getting a firearm through the Manabi’s automatic security devices. This would be enough.

He flexed his knees. He pushed the double windows onto the balcony open. Far below him, in the crater’s center, was Sten’s ship, his own
Normandie
, and the picketboat. It was very dark, and very quiet. He thought he saw die single sentry posted at the
Normandie’s
ramp walk out into the open, about-face, and pace back. He didn’t matter. The day the Emperor could not slip past a gate guard was the day he was ready to admit to being the fool that Sten, and it seemed the rest of the Empire, considered him.

To either side of this apartment his aides and supposed confidantes slept. Dream on, my servants, he thought. For now you are performing the finest duty to the Empire you could dream of. And your sacrifice will not have been in vain.

He looked at the naked sleekness of Avri. A slight feeling of pity crossed his mind. But not for long. The only way for a sacrifice to be convincing is when something important is really given away.

Besides, she had started to bore him.

He had already begun to consider other, more skilled women who had drawn his eye.

He unclipped a can of climbing thread from the vest, touched its nozzle, and the end of the single-molecule chain bonded to the edge of the balcony. The Emperor slipped his hands into special jumars—trying to climb down the thread barehanded would be exactly like trying to climb down a flexible razorblade.

The Eternal Emperor slid over the edge of the balcony and, nerves thrilling and blood singing as had not happened in years, went down into the night.

Kilgour was quite comfortable. He had one toe on a firm stance almost three centimeters wide, a safety loop around an outcropping, and one arm around it as well.

He could have danced.

He kept watch, a great spider, invisible, as his phototropic uniform was now on exactly the color and pattern of the false rock the Manabi had built the Guesting Center from.

A bit below him, halfway across the crater, he saw movement. He focused the night glasses more exactly and zoomed in.

Th‘ Emp’s apartment, aye. And one lad comin’ oot.

Luck, eh? P’raps th‘ worst. Good luck—an impossibility— would have been Alex spending a cramped night out here with nothing happening, and the conference beginning as expected.

Noo. Who’s th‘ wee lad danglin’ frae th‘ rope o’er there? Th’ Emp his own self?

Alex frowned, reanalyzing his various progs of possible Imperial blackguarding.

He had anticipated some kind of double-dealing here on Seilichi, but none of his plans matched what seemed to be occurring.

Back aboard the
Victory
, following the final briefing with Sten, Alex had led Cind and Otho to his own quarters. That was the only place on the
Victory
that he knew was unbugged by anyone, not Preston, not Sten. Especially not Sten. Although, from the look the boss had given him, Kilgour was pretty sure Sten knew what was going on.

“Whae we’re on th‘ ground,” he’d started, “Ah’ll wan’ you’t‘ be standin’t by. On command frae me, or frae Sten, or i’ th‘ event com is lost wi’ us, y’re’t‘ take th’ bridge, an‘ read an’ follow th‘ orders Ah’ll hae gie’en y’ afore we depart. E’en i‘ thae means relievin’ Cap‘ Freston i’ he gets arg’ment’ive.

“Ah knoo ‘tis a hard thing’t’ ask, but Ah’ll hae’t‘ request y’ to oath me thae y’ll follow th‘ ’structions wi’oot fail. Trustin‘ me thae Ah hae noo but th’ best ae intentions frae Sten, an‘ frae this clottin’ rebellion thae’s likely’t‘ cause th’ death ae us all.

“I‘ y’ trust me, I‘ y’ trust Sten… y’ll do as Ah’m desirin’t.”

Cind and Otho had considered. Cind had been the first to nod. Besides, she had suspected that Alex was planning for what had become Cind’s worst nightmare—a nightmare she saw herself not being able to end, save in a suicidal battle royal. Then Otho had grunted. He, too, would obey.

Kilgour expressed pleasure in their confidence. Sent them out.

He had reflected… Glencoe… An eerie, narrow, rain-dripping desolate valley on old Earth, whose laird had delayed taking an oath of allegiance to the usurper king until the last minute, and then had been further prevented from an unpleasant if necessary duty by winter storms.

The laird had not considered that the usurper would have a pol named Dalrymple who wanted to make an example of someone who’d failed to sign, nor that there was a treacherous clan named the Campbells, all too willing to garner favor from the sassenach William.

Campbell soldiers appeared in the glen, and were given traditional Highland hospitality. Treachery was in their heart, treachery they did not wait to implement. That night, fire and the ax came to Glencoe, and women and children went howling into the snow and ice and frozen death.

Glencoe, Alex had thought. Aye. Sometimes, contrary to whae all th‘ finest planners think, treachery dinnae wait till th’ perfect mo, i‘ th’ dark ae th‘ moon whae th’ raven rattles its deathcry.

And so he came to Seilichi prepared for the Emperor to double-cross them, from the moment the liner he’d cozened from the Zaginaws landed, till now, when he saw that man in black, who appeared to be the Eternal Emperor himself, abseil out the window.

He already had the corridor outside the Imperial apartments covered with a mechanical sensor, and Alex knew any movement from any of the Emperor’s retinue would be met with alarms from the Manabi who, though no warriors, kept a cautious watch through the night.

Alex puzzled one more moment, wishing desperately he had somehow been able to wangle a sniper rifle onto Seilichi—an‘ then we’d ken whae a
real
expert ae duplic’ty’s capable of, aye? Then he thought he had figured the Emperor’s scheme and touched a switch at his wrist. Then Alex went back up his own climbing thread like a spider fleeing the flame, a flame Kilgour knew would be real in moments.

The Internal Security technician was sound asleep, far from his instruments. He never knew that the annoying static, that buzz, stopped the instant Alex touched his handitalki. The static was a deliberate broadcast.

There are at least two ways to broadcast a warning. The first and most common, is to start a commotion when trouble threatens. The second, and sneakier, is to have a commotion
stop
at the sign of danger.

Like Sherlock Holmes’s famous dog, which did nothing in the nighttime, the end of the deliberately generated static from Kilgour’s com was a tightbeam alarm linked to two spaceships.

The GQ alarms yammered aboard the
Victory
. The ship, already at standby, went to full combat readiness.

Cind, Otho, Freston, and Lalbahadur had not been asleep, nor had they intended to go offshift until Sten returned, even if they’d had to progress to stimulants and cold showers.

“All stations ready, sir,” the officer of the watch reported. “No external signs of GQ readiness apparent.”

“Very good,” Freston said. He turned to Cind. “My orders from Mister Kilgour in the event of alarm were to place myself under your command, and obey your instructions absolutely. Take over.”

“Thank you.” Cind took a deep breath, and keyed her pore pattern into the small fiche holder Alex had given her when they left the
Victory
.

The instructions were simple:

WAIT IN PRESENT ORBIT UNTIL THREATENED. DO NOT, REPEAT DO NOT, ATTEMPT OFFENSIVE MOVES AGAINST EMPIRE. DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CLOSE PLANET OR MAKE PLANETFALL. MAINTAIN WATCH ON FREQ QUEBEC THIRTY-FOUR ALPHA. IN THE EVENT IMPERIAL COMBAT ELEMENTS ATTEMPT TO ENGAGE, BREAK

CONTACT, MOVE COVERTLY TO [a set of coordinates]. THIS WILL

BE RENDEZVOUS POINT. IF NO CONTACT MADE AT SECONDARY RV,

VICTORY IS TO REVERT TO INDEPENDENT COMMAND AND TAKE WHATEVER ACTION OR ACTIONS IS DEEMED CORRECT AT THE TIME. GOOD LUCK.

… and the squiggle that was Kilgour’s signature. “We just wait,” Otho interpreted.

Cind growled—a noise that dignified her Bhor training—and then gritted, “We wait.”

The Emperor’s feet touched down, and he slid down to his knees. He broke the climbing thread off and discarded the jumars.

A few guardspots glared around the three ships on the landing field. Once again, there was no movement except for the single sentry at the
Normandie’s
ramp.

Crouching, he made for the picketboat.

The broken static-buzz signaled to yet another ship.

Hannelore La Ciotat was awake, feet out of her bunk and on the tacship’s deck. Her tacship’s GQ alarm was a civilized
bonging
, the synthesized sound of a bell. It was more than loud enough to cover the cramped crew area.

La Ciotat sealed the front of her shipsuit and damned near physically threw her onwatch weapons officer/XO out of the command seat.

“I relieve you, Mister.” Her fingers were like fluid across the panel. POWER… UP… SYSTEMS STANDBY… CREW READY…

WEAPONS READY…

She touched keys, and the tacship lifted clear of the ground on McLean drive, ripping away from the camouflage net that La Ciotat and her crew had staked over the tiny ship a day earlier.

The tacship was hidden just inside the first twist of one of the canyons leading to the great valley the Guesting Center was in the middle of.

La Ciotat ghosted the ship around the bend.

“I have the center on visual,” she told her XO.

“Roger. All screens show same.”

“Drive status?”

“Drakh-hot, Hannelore.”

And she, too, waited.

“Up, lad! Th‘ Emp’s movin’!”

Sten’s mind groped out of a disremembered, terrible dream, and Kilgour was pulling him up.

“What’s the—”

“Shut up!”

Alex tossed him a phototropic suit, and Sten pulled it on. He looked around for some boots.

“No time, Sten! Move!”

Kilgour shoved him toward the door that yawned into a deserted open corridor, light glaring, and Sten was in a stumbling, nightmare run, not sure if he was still asleep and dreaming, but the rough carpet hurt his feet, and Alex slung him around a corner and up a ramp, toward the top of the crater.

“Which way—”

“!‘ y’ speaki’t again, Ah’ll coldcock y‘, Ah swear! We’re i’ th‘ eye ae th’ storm!”

A great door, barred, that led out onto a balcony on the outer wall of the crater. Alex, without slowing, crashed into the door and sent it pinwheeling away. Some sort of alarm—fire, intrusion, it didn’t matter—began sounding.

The Eternal Emperor came in the picketboat’s port. The duty officer jerked in surprise, even though he’d been briefed.

“Lift ship,” the Emperor snapped, as he turned and slapped the PORT CLOSE switch.