Stardogs (10 page)

“Thanks… Sergio.” The waiter left, closing the soundproof door behind him.

The footman bowed servilely. His lips were wet and his eyes a little bright and wide from what he’d seen out there. “I… I thought it was best not to be too obvious coming in here. I was just lingering in the common-room awhile until I thought I could come here unobtrusively.”

His excuse was greeted with silence. The kind of silence that is far more frightening than words. “I… I’ve got the itinerary. Dates, times… everything you wanted.” The footman was sweating freely now.

Salvatore stood up, dwarfing the footman. He held out his hand. “Where is it,
Eta
?”

“It’s all in my head, Sir. I can’t leave the Imperial compound with a list like that! Selim Puk’s men would find it for sure!” The almond eyed card player put his cards face down with a slight smile. “But, honest, I’ve got it all memorized. Just give me some paper…”

Salvatore looked at him, cocking his big bullet head slightly. “Don’t fuck about with me, mister.” He turned away, to the elegantly underdressed girl who had been serving drinks. “Bring pretty boy here some paper and a pen. And then scram, honey.” She left as fast as her stiletto heels could carry her. Once she’d returned with the paper and pen she again made a rapid exit. She’d been working in this house for two years now. She had a pretty good idea what might happen in that room, and she wanted no part of it.

With slightly shaking hands the footman wrote out the Princess’s itinerary. If he got out of here alive he turn over a new leaf… Then he thought of the reward he’d been promised. He licked his lips again.

Salvatore took the list to the others at the table. The Dakada smuggler got up and looked at it. “It checks. Well, we can get your men the berths. Their stuff will have to come on at the Barhain II stopover. We own that shift of customs.”

“Well, Sam?”

The small man nodded. “Fine by me, San.”

“And your men, Georgio?”

“Blower Yu and Turk Osman. I’m giving you my best, Sal. I’ll have to pull them off somet’ing else, but like you say, if we can pull this one off…”

The bald, ultraviolet-dried elderly man who had said nothing so far allowed his straight-line mouth to twitch into the semblance of a smile that didn’t extend as far as his eyes. He was from the asteroid miner’s union, and crucial to their plans. He was also wary. “We’ll be there, Carranzio-Heiki. We’ll have a ship waiting when they pop out of surf. Your boys’ll have maybe twenty minutes to get control, dump the barge and get us to jump instead. Maybe two hundred years ago, before the League set up their sector system, the dogs used to jump New Sahara - Caladar IV all the time. In all the rocks in the Caldahar System we can disappear for as long as need be.”

Sal flicked a glance to Sam. The Union man had said too much in front of that footman. Well, he was about past being useful anyway.

The spy shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Well… I’ve done it. Now, my money, and… and that boy, er, Mr Carranzio, Sir?” He licked his lips again, greed and other unpleasant desires overcoming his fear.

“Sam’ll sort you out.”

A week later they fished his body out of the sewers. His face, teeth and hands had been carefully mutilated. Sometimes the Yak didn’t like their victims being quickly identifiable.

The Emperor sat, fat and impassive, and listened to his willowy, almond-eyed security chief.

Selim Puk smiled cruelly. “They’ve taken it hook, line and sinker, my liege.

“The Yak are implicated beyond doubt?”

“Absolutely. I have names, dates, places. I lost a witness, unfortunately. That fool footman heard too much from Wright…the asteroid miner’s man. But we can do without a footman. One of the others will crack, when they see I know everything.”

“It is one of your better plots, Selim. At one stroke we discredit the League, dispose of Shari and give me reason to crack down on the Yak, hard. They’ve been getting above themselves.”

“And, if all goes according to plan, we have a Stardog of our own, beyond League control.”

“Yes. But that depends on the agents in place. How do you rate this Brettan?”

“Greedy, my Liege. Greedy, aging and impatient.”

“And he is definitely not in League pay?” The fat-folds around the emperor’s eyes crinkled.

“Definitely not. He has a deep grudge, a deep and a real one. If it were not for the League he would be a wealthy man. A very wealthy man. His older sister married a Leaguesman. One of Wienan’s, no less. She had a falling out with them, and tried to run away, with her child, more the fool her.”

“Stupid. They might have let her get away, but not with a half-Wienan child,” said Turabi, with the clinical assessment of a master of dynastic elimination.

Selim Puk snorted. “Jan-Pieter was brutally thorough, as usual. The young Viscount was in the Imperial Space Navy at the time, on a long patrol, which is why he didn’t get taken out too. The family purge was most thorough otherwise, and the purge of their assets left our Viscount literally destitute when he came home. Anyway, I’ve had him sent for. He should be here any minute now.” On cue there was a knock at the heavy door.

“Enter.”

Captain Viscount Martin Brettan’s nerves shrieked as he passed the bodyguards. He hoped it didn’t show. An audience with Selim Puk and the Blob didn’t happen every day, even if he was some sort of distant cousin to the Blob. You could afford to turn into a lard-lump like that if you were the Emperor. If you were just a pretty-boy beefcake like himself on a thin spy’s salary you had to work out in the gym every day to keep being pretty. He knelt. It was not a mistake despite the fact that this was not a formal reception. The Blob liked to be reminded of his power, even now, nearly twenty years after he had seized it. “My Lord Emperor. How may I serve you?”

The Emperor was well enough pleased by the fawning to be gracious. The fat face nearly creased to a smile. Graciousness of course didn’t extend as far as offering the man a seat. “We need your services, Viscount Brettan. We are sure Selim has already briefed you.”

The handsome aristocrat nodded warily. He wondered if he dared question why he had received such rapid promotion in the schemes of the Empire. “Yes Sire. Of course I’m willing, Sire… but why me?”

“A modest man, eh Selim?” said the Emperor.

“It is a useful trait, my Liege. Captain, you’re being used for this because you are an agent in place. Moving new men in would cause suspicion. The majordomo is of course also an agent, but he also spies for the League. He does this with our consent… but it reduces the degree to which he trustable. As for the two bodyguards… Hayley is a good executioner, but he doesn’t have the brains we require for this. Albeer is loyal, but just hasn’t displayed the right attitude for this aspect of security work. Squeamish. He was dumped there, I’m afraid. Anyway, any or all of them may be corrupted by the League. But you’ll have a team among the crew of the barge. Good, safe, clean men. You be able to deal with the Yak easily enough. There are only four of them. I sat in on their planning,” said Selim Puk.

“But don’t fail us, Brettan. If you bring us a Stardog, we’ll make good again all that the League robbed you of… but don’t fail us.” It was said so mildly that if anyone other than the Blob had said it, it wouldn’t have been a threat.

Martin Brettan knew it for what it was. His face paled slightly. “I won’t fail you, my Emperor.”

“Good. You are dismissed, Brettan,” said the Emperor.

The Viscount bowed and turned. As he walked away he heard the Emperor say to the head of security. “Selim, that problem with that son of mine. A possible solution has…” The heavy nail-studded door of the private audience chamber closed behind the Princess’s escort. Rivulets of sweat touched the stiff fabric of his tunic as his tense shoulders began to relax. He walked past the last of the hawk-eyed guards. He’d have given a great deal to have heard which of the Emperor’s sons was in for the chop this time. A lot of people would have given a great deal of money to know who
not
to position themselves behind. With five of the seven sons still surviving the dynastic battle was hotting up. Martin Brettan suspected Prince Vartan would be next to go. There were rumours about certain expensive and hopelessly addictive drugs drifting around, hooked to that young man’s name.

The Viscount was wrong. A drug problem meant that Vartan could be manipulated, true. But the Emperor was more concerned by a subtle and nearly successful attempt on the life of his own Imperial person. Prince Jarian had to go. Young Jarian was only sixteen, but then, by that age, he, Turabi, had already eliminated his own brother and his father and mother.

Sam Teovan had the meeting and training session with the wine-nosed old toff patsy himself. He didn’t like him. The fellow was too old and too damn soft. But Sam’s instincts held that the old fart wouldn’t chicken out on them. Not while they had all that black on the old boy’s son. Still, the man was a weak link. Sam resolved to put no faith in him. The man’s purpose really had been as a double-check on all the other information. It might be useful to have a man on the inside, yes. But Sam had more trust in professionals like Blower and Turk. They had a good rep, those two. Georgio was really giving the boss his best, to prove his faith.

But the whole thing still felt… bad. And he had no way he could back out.

Our journeys have many dimensions, physical, mental, spiritual. The physical journey to the expected may lead us to unplanned destinations in the other dimensions. Always be wary about the water in these places.

From a tomb-epitaph in the churchyard of our Lady of Chatterjee, in the grounds of the Thuggee training-madrassa on Arunchal.

It was cold in the rider-compound in the early mornings. Looking up from the raked gravel of the exercise ground you could see the mullioned windows of the League Grand-Dacha. They shared the same outer perimeter wall. There the similarity ended. The ornate Neo-Ottoman design of the Grand-Dacha on Phillipia was used as a model by schools of architecture. The irreverent claimed it to be the finest example of bad taste that money could buy. The rider-compound was a prison. Built of un-plastered cinderblocks the architecture compared well to East-German slave-labor camps. But the architectural students who came to see the Grand-Dacha were quite skilled at ignoring the compound. Besides, compared to the vastness of the Grand-Dacha, it was tiny.