Empire's End (64 page)

Fine. So get out as you got in. He went to the doorway, made himself into a smallish target for ricochets, and fired once at the far wall.

A smashing explosion, and shards of metalloid sang around me room. A crater. Not a hole. And the blast had eaten even more of the oxygen. Sten coughed in the smoke. How long would it take him to shoot through the wall, even if he buttoned up the suit? Unknown, but certainly longer than it would take pieces of shrapnel to finish him.

Could he use his knife to cut his way through? Possibly, given enough time, and enough leverage. Not probable.

Up there. A vent duct.

Too small.

But as he thought it, his knife was in his hand, slicing the grille away.

The duct was tiny. Sten would never fit. He looked into it— his forehead touching the top, his chin the bottom. Not only was it not much more than a forearm wide, but it turned through 90 degrees about an equal distance in.

Sten’s palms were sweat-drenched.

He told his mind to shut up, and stripped naked. He kept the pistol ready. Hell, you can always shoot yourself.

Head turned to the side, he forced himself into the vent. One shoulder cocked forward, palms finding a hold on the smooth metal, pulling, pulling, legs flailing in the room behind him. He pulled himself three centimeters forward. Then another three. And another.

Then he stuck.

His chest and mind swelled in panic. Stop that, he told himself. You can’t be stuck. You can always go back in the room and start over. You can always crawl out of anything you can crawl into.

That was a physiological lie.

Don’t flail. Don’t hyperventilate. Exhale. Wriggle. Exhale again. The lungs are empty. Goddamn it, no they aren’t! Lose here and the Emperor wins…
clot
the Emperor, and with a great squirm he was in the vent, around the bend, and writhing, writhing down the tight passage not thinking, just moving, pushing his clothes and suit ahead of him, and then it opened down into a wider duct, and he could bring up a knee, and lift his head, and then it widened again, and again, and he was up, feet and hands sending him forward, bearwalking, and hell, now he could move upright, standing, this was just like the ducts you used as a private throughway back on Vulcan, when you were a Delinq and it wasn’t so bad back there, was it? You’ve been through tighter squeezes, you lying clot, and isn’t this about right? You
do
want the control room, don’t you?

Sten unconfused his mental map. And agreed. He found a grille with an empty room on the other side, cut the grille away, and dropped inside.

A messroom. Tables. Cooking gear over there.

Then he heard it.

It sounded like a voice.

Sten quickly dressed, and moved silently toward the voice.

It was the Eternal Emperor.

He stood in the center of a large, bare compartment. Just in front of him was a shallow pool, now dry. There was a bare stand beside it.

The far wall was a monster screen, sensesmashing with the colors/not colors of N-space.

His back was to Sten. His arms hung empty.

Who had he been talking to? Himself? The ship?

Sten lifted his pistol, then hesitated. It was not any misguided sense of fair play—he’d shot many an enemy from behind without warning in his life.

But…

“In my end,” the Emperor said, “is my beginning.”

Sten jolted. The Emperor laughed, but did not turn.

“Of course, would there even be another beginning is the question?” the Emperor said, in a near monotone. “Or would the next refute beelzy, and return to that long line of milksops it took to breed me?

“And even if the ship bred true again, what would the path be? Would he… would my… perhaps you might call him my son… find his way, alone, back? Would he be able to cut out the telltale inside as I did, without it detonating?

“But,” and the Emperor’s voice slowed, “it’s a question that’ll never be answered, will it?

“Either way”—and as he spoke, he whirled, dropping into a gunfighter’s crouch, Sten realizing here was the trap, the Emperor’s right hand flashing for his belt, gun coming up, reflexpoint aim…

Sten fired, and the projection flickered, holograph flashing off, and then the real Emperor came around the corner, close, too close, real pistol about to fire, Sten’s foot up leg blocking, the Emperor’s arm thudding against the bulkhead, painshout and somehow his own pistol was gone, knife coming out of armsheath, into hand, and it was very slow:

Sten’s right foot slid forward, just clear of the ground. It found a firm stance, half a meter in front of his left, as that foot precisely turned toe outward, and slid backward on its instep.

His knife-hand came up and forward, just as Sten’s left hand caught his right, just at the wrist, clamped for a brace, as his hips swiveled, shock-impact and he full-stretch lunged, needlepoint attack lancing out, going home.

His knife buried itself in the Eternal Emperor’s throat. Mouthgape. Bloodgush.

Sten recovered as the Emperor stumbled backward, back-ward, then fell, fell through all time and space, and his body struck the deck with the limp thud of a corpse.

Sten took two steps forward.

The Emperor’s face held a look of vast bewilderment.

It softened, toward blankness.

And then the mouth that had ordered too many deaths twisted. Deathrictus—but Sten thought it to be a smile. The eyes that had seen too many years and too much evil saw nothing, looking straight up at the chamber’s overhead.

Or perhaps they saw everything.

Time ran free again, and Sten was moving, diving for his pistol, and in a crouch. He was firing, firing like a madman. Into that empty pool, into that wallscreen, and, in now-realized carefully spaced shots, around the room.

An end…

… there would never be another beginning for the Emperor.

Fire gouted from the walls, and multicolored smokes whirled.

The ship screamed.

Emergency alarms… distorted metal… self-destructing cybernetics and electronics…

Perhaps.

But the ship screamed.

And Sten ran for the control room.

Sten swung the targeting indicators across the bulk of the ship. One here… two here… three here… four here… five here… six here… seven targeted here.

One reserve.

Fire when…

… the first charge blew, the screen told him, the demo pack in the control room that Sten had set for a fifteen-E-minute delay as he fled toward the meteor hole and his ship.

One blast, and the robot mining ships brainlessly processing AM2 somewhere in the distance would be stopping. But they could be reprogrammed and recontrolled, if anyone wished. Later.

Sten slammed fingers down onto firing keys, a dissonant chord of hellfire.

Seven nuclear-headed Goblin XII missiles spat from the tacship’s launch tubes, and, ignoring the jumble of N-space input their sensors shouted to them, homed as ordered on the Emperor’s birth/death ship.

Sten’s ship was too close when they impacted.

All his screens blanked, went to secondary, blanked again, and then, probably because they were jury-rigged to give computer enhancements of N-space, stayed dead for long seconds.

Finally, one imaging radar came to life, and adjusted its input to the enhancement program.

Colors/not colors.

Nothing else.

It was as if the great decahedron had never existed.

The Eternal Emperor was gone.

Sten stared for a long, long time at that emptiness, perhaps wishing many things had never been, perhaps making sure the void would not take form.

Finally, he turned to his controls.

He fed in his return course, and went at full drive, for the discontinuity.

And home.

It was over.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

FOUR SCREENS YAMMERED HIGHEST PRIORITY—IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. Three others flashed with CRITICAL—PERSONAL messages for Sten, using his private access code that supposedly only Cind, Alex, and Sr. Ecu had ever been given.

All of them—and other corns outside Sten’s suite in Otho’s castle—wanted one thing, in various categories: Sten. Sten’s appearance, Sten’s advice, Sten’s prognostications, Sten’s orders, Sten’s suggestions, Sten’s emissaries.

“Doesn’t anybody want to do anything for themselves?” Sten wondered. “I mean, the Emperor is dead. Go for it, people.”

“Th‘ Zaginows’re feelin’ frisky,” Alex said. “Ah hae logged a un’lateral declaration ae independence an‘ non-alliance frae th’ lads.
T
be present’d ae th‘ Imperial Parl’ment, if i’ e’er sits again. Th‘ copy thae sen’ you, f’r inf’rmation on’y, has a wee pers’nal note. Sayin‘ thanks, an’ i‘ y’ e’er hap by their part ae‘ th’ universe, i‘
an un’fficial capac’ty
, their emph’sis nae mine, drop by f r a dram.”

“It’s like an infected tusk,” Otho said. “It hurts, and it hurts, and then it falls out. And your tongue keeps seeking the gap, wondering where the tusk went, and maybe even missing it a trace.”

There were only two other beings in the chamber—Cind and Rykor.

But there should have been more:

The dead: Mahoney. Sr. Ecu. Others, stretching back into the dimness of Sten’s memory, soldiers, civilians, even bandits and criminals, who had died for the mask of freedom that they never knew concealed the skullface of tyranny.

The living: Haines. Her husband. Marr. Senn. Ida. Jemedar Mankajiri Gurung and the other Gurkhas. A woman, long ago, named Bet.

And just as there had been invisible beings with Sten before he entered the discontinuity, all these were now in this chamber.

Waiting.

“Cind,” Sten wondered. “What will the Bhor do?”

“I will no longer be speaking for them,” Cind said. “I’ll be traveling. With a friend.” She smiled at Sten, a promising smile.

“The Bhor will accept my retirement. Even if I have to grow a beard to cut.”

She nodded across the room. “I rather imagine Otho will be the speaker once more, even if he has to be drafted.”

Otho growled. “Perhaps. But only for the moment. I have seen as much of the slow dry death of politics as any being could wish for his worst enemy.

“Perhaps I shall outfit a ship, as I did when young. There will be great chances for a trader now, with freedom instead of Empire.

“Perhaps I shall go looking for those strange human friends of yours. The Rom, I believe they called themselves? You know that none of them remain on Vi? They departed before your return from that other place… leaving no word as to their intent.”

Sten was silent, surprised. Ida, gone? Evidently without even a farewell. She didn’t even stick around to see that the good guys won. He remembered words of hers, said over her shoulder: “Freedom cannot be served by making laws and fences…”

Otho got up. “Or perhaps I shall take up sewing,” he said. “But enough of this, by Kholeric. I am thirsty and hungry, and a bit angry. I shall butcher out your incompetent staff, Sr. Sten, and inform them when you wish privacy, there are no alternative choices.”

Otho banged out, and a few seconds later, Sten heard loud growls. All of the screens blanked.

But in his mind he still saw their pleas.

He was suddenly, irrationally, angry.

“What the hell,” he near-snarled, “do they want? Me to declare myself the new Eternal Emperor? What, the tyrant is dead, now put your necks down for the iron boot again?”

“Some of them wish exactly that,” Cind said softly. “Muscles get lazy when they aren’t worked. And it’s always easier to let somebody else make the decisions, isn’t it?

“I know. All that my forebears had to do was obey— absolutely—the Jannissar general. He would tell them when to eat, when to sleep, who to kill, and when to die. If they obeyed—absolutely—they were rewarded, and had a place after death guaranteed.

“Right,” she said. “That was all.”

“Both a y‘ appear a wee bit hard ae our allies,” Alex said, his face carefully composed. “Thae’ll hae’t’ be somebody ae th‘ top, aye? T’ oversee th‘ changes an’ th‘ transition. There cannae be an empty throne, e’en i’ thae’s but a caretaker gov’mint. Can there?

“F’r beginnin’s, who’s‘t’ divvy th‘ AM2?”

Again, Anti-Matter Two, hell and heaven, riches and death.

There was a splash from Rykor’s tank. She was watching Sten, her great compassionate eyes wide. But she said nothing of the common secret they held.

“A caretaker,” Sten mused, his anger gone. “What? You think I should soldier on? At least until somebody figures out who should run things? Maybe until we put together some kind of coalition like Ecu would have overseen?”

“To most beings,” Cind said, “that’d be the most comfortable. The hero slays the dragon… and helps the people begin their lives anew.”

“Just like in the livies,” Sten said cynically.

Cind shrugged. “Why do you think they’re so popular?”

“How does that play, Rykor?” Sten asked.

Rykor considered, whiskers fluffing. “Logical. Psychologically welcome, as Cind said. Certainly you have the experience for it. How many times did your ambassadorial duties in fact mean you were the entire government in a cluster? I know you hardly bothered getting the Emperor’s approval for every decision.”

No, Sten thought. He hadn’t And he had run things with, he thought pridefully, a certain measure of success, assuming clotheads hadn’t gotten in the way, clotheads who just didn’t understand what was supposed to happen, and that their best interests would be eventually served.

Christ. With no one second-guessing his decisions after the fact from afar. Not a section commander. Not a general. Not even an Eternal Emperor.

Not anyone.

A chance to correct a lot of those wrongs he’d seen across the years, wrongs too big or too distant to confront. And there would be the time—Sten could easily train a diplomatic equivalent of a general staff that would be able to carry out Sten’s policies.

All those dictators some mythical thing called Policy or Expediency said should be supported. All those crimes that Pragmatism told him to ignore. All the beings who stole and murdered from their lessers, beings that Sten had never had the opportunity to confront and destroy.