Revenge of the Damned (27 page)

Such would have been the response—from a polite man.

Mason, instead, responded: "
Umed ships. All Umed ships. You have seven minutes remaining. Stand by for boarding. Any resistance will be met with maximum force. All Umed ships. All Umed crewmen. Prepare to abandon ship. Your ships and their cargo have been seized. Imperial Strike Force Mason clear
."

It was to be hoped that Admiral Mason would not survive the war and thus require that the Emperor deal with his vagaries.

* * *

"Cut it," Haines ordered.

The soldier nodded, touched the button of his flamer, and seared through the main power cable that led into the shabby apartment building above them.

"Good. Go!" Haines shouted.

Burdened by a stun rod in one hand, a willygun in the other, plus two separate ranks, Major (Imperial Forces—Mercury Corps—Reserve—Temporary) and Captain (Imperial Police—Prime—Homicide—Permanent) Lisa Haines led the raid upstairs. Two Security mastodons sent the door crashing down, neatly timed so that Haines did not miss a step going into the apartment.

The gray-haired old woman sat up in bed, befuddled, grabbing the ruins of what once might have been a lace nightie around her skinny shoulders.

"Imperial Intelligence," Haines intoned, pro forma. "Andrea Hayyl. You are under arrest as a suspected agent of an enemy power. You are advised that you can be detained for as long as six cycles without benefit of court or attorney. You are also advised that you may be subjected to wartime interrogation techniques authorized by the proper conventions.

"You are also advised that any cooperation you extend voluntarily will be recorded, and be of extreme importance as evidence when you are brought to trial."

The thugs, without needing any orders, had the old woman out and down the stairs in seconds.

The search team came in.

As expected, the transmitter was found in seconds, amateurishly hidden in a false-drawered dresser that might have been the old woman's prized antique.

That was one more.

Haines left the evidence team shooting pictures and went down the stairs.

Six thus far. Two more to go.

More than 12,000 raids were made by Imperial Intelligence at nearly the same time. Years had been spent identifying deep-cover Tahn agents assigned to capital worlds. And then, nearly simultaneously, they were taken.

Haines was disgusted with herself and her job, even more than after the officially sanctioned "disappearances" she had been witness to after the failure of Hakone's conspiracy, the conspiracy that had begun the war.

The agents would be isolated and then given a simple choice: either be doubled or be executed. Wartime penalties for espionage never changed.

The ploy worked. Almost instantly, Tahn Intelligence began receiving completely false information. The few agents the Empire had missed, who continued to feed correct data, were siberiaed as having been doubled. Eventually they were trapped, tried, and executed, along with those agents who had decided to remain true patriots to their cause.

The end result was that the Tahn's own lovingly developed spy network became one of the most lethal weapons the Empire had.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

C
hief Warrant Officer Alex Kilgour went into something approaching battle shock when he realized that not only had he bad-mouthed the Eternal Emperor, his Eternal boss, and been overheard, but he actually was in the presence of said Emperor.

The Emperor allowed himself a wintery smile. "Thank you for your input, Mr. Kilgour. Perhaps you would be interested in stepping into the next chamber, where more information shall be provided."

Alex numbly saluted and stiff-legged through the indicated hatchway, which hissed open and then shut behind him.

"In times like these," the Emperor observed, "you tend to allow yourself cheap little shots as I just did. Pour the stregg, my friend."

Sten, equally obedient, went to a sideboard and decanted two shots of the probably hydrazine-based Bhor liquor he had introduced the Eternal Emperor to years earlier.

The Emperor was in an easy chair, his feet propped on a tabletop, when Sten delivered the drink.

"Chin-chin," he toasted. Sten just mumbled and drank.

"Yes, indeed," the Emperor began, "I want you two thugs back on Heath."

"Yessir," Sten said after the stregg had finished replumbing his plumbing. "However… when I left there were people that were real… interested in me."

"No longer," the Emperor said. "Somebody who must've been taken by the charm of your smile planted a virus in the Tahn central computer. Seems that neither someone named Sten nor someone called Firecontrolman Horatio ever existed. No ID, no prison record, no
nada
.

"Any idea who your unknown benefactor could be?"

Sten had less than none.

"Light a votive candle to the patron saint of computer programmers. Whoever that is.

"However. If such circumstances are correct, would you be willing to go back to Heath? That's an honest question. You've already figured out, I assume, what your next assignment would be if you tell me to clot off."

Sten had not so figured. "Uh," he hazarded, "in charge of some garbage scow somewhere."

"Admirals don't run drakhbuckets."

"Huh?" was all Sten could get out.

The Emperor smiled. "You're most unobservant, Sten. Think. How many of my Gurkhas, looking stupid and uncomfortable in white gloves, were on the ramp when you boarded?"

Eight, Sten suddenly remembered.

"Exactly," the Emperor said. "Four clots to pipe you aboard when you're a working slob. Eight when you put up your star."

Sten, uninvited, got up, poured himself another shot of stregg, drank it down, and refilled his shot glass while recovering.

"If you don't go back to Heath, you'll get a destroyer squadron, and you can go out there and be one more dashing leader who'll get some nice medals and whom I'll be publicly proud of in the livies.

"Sten, the one thing I don't have a shortage of is heroes. What I don't have is somebody who knows what's going on on the bad guys' home turf."

A destroyer squadron, Sten thought. And a star. That was a bit beyond Sten's dreams. Years ago, he had decided to be career military. At the end of the line, he had figured, was, if not a gravestone, some kind of honorable wound and retirement as colonel—maybe, with his naval training added, commodore.

The Emperor filled his own glass and stayed silent.

Sure, Sten's mind went on, I could do some serious ass kicking on the Tahn. I know how what passes for their mind works. I could turn any Tahn ship or formation under a battle-wagon every which way but loose. But like the Emperor just said, I'm not the only one who could do that.

"Why?" he asked, his face and tone as blank as it would have been to any Tahn guard.

"The agents I have on Heath are button counters. Maybe. The clotting nets I have are low-level and, I suspect, doubled by the Tahn. That's one problem. Your tubby cohort can shake them out, if he's willing to go back.

"I need someone in place on Heath as
my
agent. We've reached, like the man said, if not the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning. I'm looking for somebody who can be a spy—and who can sit and talk like he's a diplomat.

"I am not praising you, by the by. You're at least a century too young and several assignments too gory to be my dream square peg. Mahoney, back when you first met him on Vulcan—don't jump, I did a little refresher course—would be ideal. But he's a little long in the tooth and too clottin' good as a fleet marshal to waste on Heath.

"No offense.

"And I've wasted enough time jacking my jaws while you think about it. Decision time."

Sten had already made it. Not only could he probably do more good on Heath than as a bucko destroyer leader, but there were certain things there he wanted to deal with personally. Such as the prisoners in Koldyeze.

"Thank you, Admiral," the Emperor said without waiting for a verbalization. "My intelligence types will brief you and set up the insertion plan."

Sten got up. "I think I'd rather use my own way to get in."

"Your option. Like I said, the only boss you've got this time is me. All orders that you get will be mine. How you carry them out—and even if you do or not—is your option. You're the man in place. Oh, yeah, before I forget. Mahoney had something that might be of help. He said there was a POW at Koldyeze. I think his name was Sorensen. Is that right?"

Sten nodded, remembering the big, smiling face of the farmbeing. He and Alex had debated for hours whether Sorensen was a Mantis battle computer.

"Fine," the Emperor said. "Mahoney said to tell you that Sorensen's code word is 'Saider.' Whatever that's worth."

If the drakh came down at Koldyeze, it would be worth a lot. Sten smiled to himself, but the Emperor was not through yet.

"One favor?"

Sten waited.

"If you decide to overthrow the clottin' government, don't put some anthropoid who likes stregg and can't speak the same language I do in. Or if you do, let me know first. 'Kay?"

Sten found himself saluting a rapidly closing hatchway.

All he had to do was get the detailed briefing, listen to Kilgour tell him why it was a good idea to go back to Heath, and then track down Wild and let him know the time for fence-sitting neutral smugglers was over.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

V
olmer, publishing baron and member of the Emperor's privy council, was very proud of his complex mind.

He could sit, completely invisible, at the far end of a roaring Barbary hell, one of the rowdiest of the rowdy dock bars in Prime World's port city of Soward, and do some serious thinking, undisturbed by the noise and unnoticed by the occupants.

On one level, he was contemplating what the evening might provide. Volmer had never heard the expression "polymorphously perverse" and would have been grandly irked if he had heard it applied—after, of course, he had looked up the meaning of "polymorphous."

But that was one level of Volmer. Rich beyond comprehension and able to pay for safe, clean, comfortable sex of whatever category, he found it more interesting to look for it in the gutter. Volmer found it fully as satisfying to end up jackrolled in a gutter, Murphied, or badgered as it was to wake up next to an incredibly beautiful and insatiable sex object. That was his secret life, which only the top two percent of his reporters knew and laughed about. He had once heard a rumor that the Eternal Emperor did the same—and canned six journalists for being unable to verify it. But regardless, at least once a month Volmer gave his bodyguards and staff two days off and slipped away, in the appropriate disguise, through a hidden exit of his mansion to slink, disguised as "one of the people," onto the wild side.

He thought that he was able to blend seamlessly into the sexual underworld and that he was accepted as nothing more than a mysterious man. Actually, he had been accepted as a sicko mark. But just recently another rumor had cropped up—a rumor that would be acted upon that very night.

The second layer of Volmer's mind was pondering the recent meeting on Earth with Sullamora and the others. He had reacted, he thought, perhaps a little too quickly. Perhaps Sullamora and the others had considered their future problems more carefully than he had. Perhaps he should have been silent, or perhaps expressed more interest—if, he suddenly realized, he had even heard them correctly. Perhaps he had jumped to some incorrect conclusions. Volmer rewarded himself for considering all possibilities, even one that might not be the most ego-rewarding.

That kind of thinking, he added, was what had made him as successful and respected a media baron as he was.

He never knew that his staff referred to him as "Old Ademony-Kademony," a term lost in journalism's prehistory meaning a waffler who can never make up his mind on anything.

But if he was correct in his understanding, he went on, would he be better off informing the Emperor of his suspicions? Well, not suspicions. Actually there was not that much to report to the Emperor. Suppose he had misunderstood what Sullamora and the others were saying. Would he not appear as a prize ass, some kind of hysteroid, if he
did
trouble his Emperor with what had gone on?

Perhaps, he concluded, he should do nothing. Perhaps he should reapproach Tanz and let the situation develop.

Yes. That was the way to behave.

Satisfied that once again he had reached the decision to juggle, he turned his primary focus to the pleasures of the evening.

He listened with interest to the handsome young man who appeared at the bar beside him, discussing some dizzying possibilities as to sex partners, not the least of which was the young man himself. Volmer thought that a possibility—but he was more intrigued with what the young man told him about certain most unusual events that were occurring among the staff of a certain hospital, centering on that hospital's cold room.

The handsome young man was available, indeed. But not as a whore. The young man's services were available, in fact, at a much higher price, specifically to take care of annoyances.

The rumor that had spread recently about the sicko mark was that he was more than what he appeared. He was, in fact, a deep-cover copper. Why else had some of Soward's more eminent sex hustlers been arrested, charged, and convicted sans deal in the last month?

The rumor—no one knew where it came from—made perfect sense.

And for that reason it was logical for the underworld bosses, each of whom thought he was much more lethal and in charge than he in fact was, to put out an open contract on the mark. The handsome young man proposed to fill that contract.

Two hours later, as Volmer listened drunkenly and fascinatedly to the young man's descriptions of necro-pleasures, he was skillfully sandbagged below his left ear, his pockets ransacked, his jewels and half boots stolen; then the unconscious body was tipped over the railing to thud soddenly down four levels to the concrete below.