Empire's End (55 page)

The bathroom door was locked. Cind took two of the “nee-essary tools” from her purse. With the first, she swept the door and jamb. The little “bugeater” told her there appeared to be no security monitors on the other side. The second tool went against the pore-pattern “lock”—odd thing to lock the
outside
of a bathroom. The slimjim hummed, analyzed, and the lock clicked open. Cind pushed the door open. Y-reka.

The com station was elaborate, and automated. Cind ran through the checklist Freston had dummied up for her and, recorder humming, set to work. Not being a commo specialist, she wasn’t sure she was getting what she came for—but the registry/ control/tracker for the antenna array, evidently secreted in another part of the house or estate, surely looked as if the com was “aimed” to receive a tightbeam signal from somewhere.

A somewhere that might be the Emperor’s sanctuary.

She checked the transmitter nearby. It was completely automated, and she was afraid to mess with it. Most likely the transmitter was intended to send out a “Don’t come here” to the Emperor-in-transit if the mansion’s purpose was exposed.

She had—she hoped—what she came after. And she’d left no trace, having plas-coated her fingertips and palms so that any dusting would produce no identifiable prints on the few things that she’d actually touched. She relocked the door behind her.

Now for some cake icing.

She still had just under an hour, and so far had heard no alarums and excursions from downstairs. If necessary, she could always drop back into the sitting room and blank Ochio for another two hours.

The antechamber was still deserted. Cind cracked the library doors. The huge gallery rose to an arched, clear skylight/ceiling. Fiches/reels/files and even books were stacked on the shelves that ran from the floor up ten meters to the ceiling. Now this, she thought, is the kind of library Sten would like to have. When this is all over. If this is ever over.

She looked for life. Nothing.

Cind went in. Near the door was one sysop station. Ochio’s. Now where was the other? The one with all those interesting eyes-only files.

She spotted cables—cables, which meant someone was very worried about transmission security—that ran out through one wall.

Cind exited the library and found another unobtrusive room, this one with its wall in common with the library. She popped the door and went in.

Joy, joy, joy, she thought, looking at the computer station. I don’t know what I am doing.
When in question/Or in doubt/Run in circles/Hack and shout
, and she sat down at the keyboard. A keyboard, for heaven’s sakes. And the computer will be coal-fired, and the screen will be monochromatic. They laughed when I…

She touched a blank key. The screen lit.

RECEIVING. ENTER CURRENT DATE AND STATION.

Cind guessed as to the last, and hit keys. The date, and SHAHRYAR.

SYSOP LOGGED ON. ENTER CLEARANCE.

Oh clot.

Uh… Emperor. No. Empire. No. Oh. Wait a minute.

ENTER CLEARANCE. YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE ALARM.

The name bubbled up in her mind. Saying a small prayer, she keyed… RASCHID.

CLEAR. SYSTEM PRIVILEGE GRANTED.

No way. It could not be this easy. But:

REQUEST COORDS, TRANSMITTER TO SHAHRYAR RECEIVER. PLEASE WAIT.

A light began blinking.

I’m in, she exulted, then, hearing the scuffle of feet outside, rolled out of the chair, and the two security techs burst through the door. They wore gas masks and body armor, and it mattered little as Cind snap-shot them both below their faceplates, and sent two rounds into the lying computer screen, and then dived out the door, bellyfirst.

She hit, skidded, rolled, and dropped the covering guard beside the door, and shot twice at another one coming down a stairway—dammit, I missed, but I sure whitened your hair, woman.

Cind, wanting heavier artillery, shoved her pistol in her suit’s waistband, grabbed the dead guards’ rifle—an Imperial-issue willygun, she noted, and shame on breaking your cover— thumbed the safety down to autofire, and sent a burst shattering the doors into the library.

And now the alarms were howlingroaringscreaming, and there were shouts, and Cind saw a face peering around a corner. She sent a burst in its general direction, another burst blowing out a huge window, grating, alarm wires and glass and all, and dived through her newly created exit.

Hell, just like a clotting infil course, she thought, turfing down across a bush, feeling that ultraexpensive suit rip and tear, siderolling down to the ground, burst… burst… burst…

There, that’s got them pinned down or at least thinking for a minute; after all, they may be Imperial-trained, but their reflexes are a little slow, and why the clot can’t I find the car key.

She found it, as she slid behind the controls of the Stewart/ Henry… POWER ON… GENERATOR TO SPEED… WAITING COOLANT FLOW… Come on, I really don’t give a damn if your luxury handbuilt engine cooks off like a teakettle… READY… READY…

Full lift, full drive, and the passenger door and some of that hand-rubbed dashboard exploded, and the gravcar was airborne, straight ahead, screw the twisty path, for those gates, and she rolled out of the gravcar, three meters in the air, hit turf at twenty kph, rolled a PLF, and was behind some stupid bush carved to look like some clotting animal, and then running, scuttling low, unseen, using every bit of cover.

The Stewart/Henry flamed, ten meters short of the gate, and about fifteen in the air—bastards must’ve had some kind of antiaircraft capability in that goddammed gate—and plowed into the manicured lawn.

The fence… not yet… wait a second, woman…

Come on, you stupid gravcar…

The demo charges she had thoughtfully left in the spotter’s trunk blew up, sending the stone portals and metal gates pin-wheeling up, around, and then down in a ball of fire.

Cind blasted the fence’s alarm system and the jagged glass it was topped with in an obvious distrust of anything electronic. They’ll think it’s part of the general defunct-o as everything’s hemorrhaging.

I hope. Up, up, and away.

Exactly
like an infil course, she thought, rifle across the walltop, slither on side, roll down, hit in firing position.

Nothing to shoot at.

She doubled away, into the surrounding brushland, grateful that the Emperor not only secured his mansions with a lot of grounds, but had them built way out in the country.

It would be a three-klick cross-country run to where she had her backup hidden—a bottom-of-the-line utility gravsled bought on the local graymarket.

She surveyed damage—mission, not costume or scrapes. Negligible, she decided. Since the Emperor and his people were operating on the basis that Sten was dead, and she herself wasn’t a known entity to the Empire, or so rebel intelligence indicated, the most logical interpretation was that some high-credit computer criminal had tried a speculative B&Eing. And if someone in Internal Security added things together, and got a worst-case explanation—well, she’d asked Sten about that, and he said it was all to the good if the Eternal Emperor got the idea that some unknown hellhound is on his trail.

At least I got to try flashin‘ and prancin’, Cind thought. For an amateur, I didn’t do badly, richbitching.

And I think I’m one step closer to the Emperor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THE ETERNAL EMPEROR would not have been pleased to see the use Sten and Cind were putting to his former suite aboard the
Victory
. The luxurious sleeping area—with its athletic-field-sized bed—was littered with fiches and printouts and wads of scrawled notes.

Sten and Cind were perched on the bed itself, plotting the Emperor’s demise.

They went over all the information Cind had gleaned. And then checked it again. Finally they were done. There was only one more piece missing.

“I don’t see any other way to look at it,” Sten said. “That tightbeam antenna has to be the key.”

“Which gives us one directional leg,” Cind said.

Sten grimaced. “Yeah. But to get a fix we’re still going to have to come up with another. A second leg. Right now all we know is that the Emperor’s hideout is somewhere between Point A and infinity.”

Cind nodded, gave a weary sigh, and lay back on the bed. As one side of Sten’s mind worried at the problem, the other noted the slender form of his lover. She was gloved into a black skin-tight jumpsuit that covered her from neck to heel. It had been a long time since they’d had many hours together.

A small part of him wished the impossible. That their existence could be different. That he and Cind could be normal beings with normal problems. Instead, the course he was on required him to continually risk the life of the person who was closest to him.

“Well, I’ll be a beardless mother,” the woman of his dreams suddenly exclaimed. She sat up in the bed. Abrupt “Wait just a clottin‘ minute, here!”

“What do you have?”

Cind shook her head, impatient. Started burrowing through notes. “I’m not sure… but if you will button your lip for a second, my love, I’ll…”

Her voice trailed off as she grabbed a handheld and began punching in data. Sten did as he was told, watching with growing interest as she muttered to herself and pawed about for more bits of information.

She finally looked up at him, eyes bright with excitement. “I think I’ve got it,” she said. “The other leg, I mean. Or how to find it.”

Cind scooted closer to Sten, so he could see the handhold’s small screen. “See… That little factor that kept messing us up before. We thought it might be static. Or, maybe even a screwy secondary from all that security apparatus. But look. That wasn’t the explanation at all.”

She watched anxiously as Sten weighed the information on the screen. “Maybe I’m full of it,” she said, beginning to doubt herself. “Maybe my brain has turned to something like one of Kilgour’s pet haggises.”

“No,” Sten said, hastily running a recheck program. “I’m pretty sure your mind is functioning perfectly.”

A grin split his face from ear to ear. “It’s a second beam, all right. It’s gotta be. On a different freq and aimed in a completely different direction!”

Sten quickly patched into the Victory’s main logic banks and ran the data. In a few moments the answer came back. “That’s it,” he said. “There’s no other possibility.”

Cind chortled in triumph. “Now all we have to do is track that bearded wonder down… and locate Point B. Which should be… I’m hoping… one of the relay stations like Kyes found. Except that it hopefully won’t have done a meltdown. Run a fix from there, and that should give us the other leg—straight into the Emp’s scrotum.”

She knelt on the bed. Hoisted a lovely hand to give Sten a salute. Looking sexier than hell. “Sir! I respectfully request permission to investigate.”

Sten hated what he had to say next. He would have to tell her no. His rejection would take a great deal of explanation. None of which Cind would buy.

This time, he would be the one to go. Alone.

Not out of love. Or fear of losing her. Well… not really, he rationalized, steering to the cold facts of the matter.

When Kyes had confronted the Emperor on that burned-out AM2 station, he had come supported by an entire team of former Mantis operatives. Yet there’d been some kind of mistake made—and the station had self-destructed.

As skilled a soldier as Cind was, she was certainly not as experienced as any member of that grizzled team of stealth warriors. And he assumed the relay station had far more devices for self-protection than just autodestruct.

Sten had spent a small lifetime in Mantis. It was not ego that told him he was the best of the very best. His built-in Mantis calculator delivered this up as solid truth.

He was the only logical choice for the mission.

But how could he say all this to Cind and get her to understand? To see the situation clearly, and unemotionally. With no rationalizations of her own to spare her lover from danger?

He saw the flushed excitement on her face. The dancing lights in her eyes. He hated to kill that look.

Sten told her. She raged at him. She reasoned with him. She pleaded with him. But he held his ground.

Finally the matter was settled. Or at least they’d declared a truce and had agreed not to discuss it for a while.

On the shaky theory that one couldn’t eat and be angry at the same time, he rang the mess to serve dinner in the suite.

They spent the first half of the meal in near silence. The second in light chatter. By the time they got to the snifters of crusty old port, the chatter had turned to serious talk.

Sten told her about Rykor and the brainscan and Bravo Project.

“I still don’t know what to do about it,” he said.

“Some people would wrap it in suit-proof patents,” Cind said, “and then sit back and rake in several large fortunes.”

“I know I won’t do that,” Sten said.

“I figured as much,” Cind said, with a small smile.

“Besides,” Sten said, “the ability to manufacture AM2 really doesn’t have much to do with the problem we have right now. I suppose one reason I’ve put off a decision is because I’m not sure how this is going to turn out.”

“I’ve thought of that, as well,” Cind said. “I wake up with the cold sweats sometimes, wondering… What if the Emperor wins?”

Sten said nothing. He refilled the snifters.

“But that sort of thinking is pointless,” Cind said. “He either will or he won’t. Sometimes Bhor fatalism can save a lot of agonizing.”

She swirled the port in her glass. Thinking. Sten could see she was hesitating to ask a question. Then she spoke, without lifting her eyes.

“What happens if
we
win?” she asked. “Who—or what—is going to replace the Emperor?”

Sten shook his head. “It isn’t up to me,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is a revolution. Not a coup. Other beings are going to have to make those kinds of decisions. It’s their future. Their choice.”

“I think you’re being a little romantic,” Cind said, “if you think it’s going to be that simple. You’ll be the man of the hour. The rescuer. More to the point, there’s the AM2. Whether it’s natural or synthetic. From an alternate universe or a processing plant. You’ll be the one holding the keys… the keys to the Emperor’s kingdom.”