A Hero for the Empire: The Dragon's Bidding, Book 1

by Christina Westcott

  He reached for his tea, found it long cold and rose to get a fresh cup plus a plate of shortbread cookies. He returned to the task of meticulously cleaning, oiling and reassembling the weapon. Once finished, he traced a finger along the engraved length of the black barrel.

  When they’d been together, Ari Ransahov had commissioned a matched pair of the pistols from the Empire’s finest gunsmith, Amil Koenigsagg. One for her, one for him. Their relationship ended long ago, but he could never bring himself to give up the antiquated slug thrower.

  After all this time, he’d come to grips with his past, no longer saw the faces of the people he’d killed with this weapon. He’d been young and stupid then; in love and very angry at the world. Ransahov used those emotions to wield him like a scalpel, removing her political enemies and inconvenient associates. He thought he’d put all those memories in a container, dogged the lid, and sealed it in a mental stasis box. The assassination attempt and FitzWarren showing up to resurrect the ghost of his former lover threatened to loosen those bonds. He picked up the empty clip and began to snap cartridges into it.

  In a couple of weeks, he could be in the Imperial capital with a slight change of physical appearance and a forged ident-card. He needed only a few days to reacquaint himself with the layout of the palace, to learn the routines of the security detachment and memorize the Emperor’s schedule. Then Ashcraft would cease to be a problem. Later he’d pay a midnight visit to his old buddy Janos Tritico to learn why the man who’d hoisted many a glass of vilaprim with him would order his assassination.

  He slammed down the half-filled clip and tilted back his chair. It would be easy to surrender to that seductive call, to bend the rules just a little and release the killer he’d fought so hard to keep in check. But it was no longer his problem. Better to leave that solution to the current Triumvir and scrappy little FitzWarren. He smiled as he recalled his first look at the diminutive figure, standing in her underwear glaring at him, challenging him like a mother mistcat protecting her kittens. Soft and pretty on the outside, all power and steel underneath. He snorted at his unintended pun. In this case, a very apt allusion.

  The thought of her on the next floor down, curled in her bed, triggered a pleasant tightness low in his belly. He picked up the clip, twisted it in his fingers and slid it home in the pistol’s grip.

  It jammed.

  He looked down in surprise to realize he’d been trying to insert the clip upside down. Pulling it out, he flipped it over and slapped it into place harder than necessary.

  “Bloody hell.”

  He’d lost focus. Ever since Kimber FitzWarren walked into his life—walked hell, she charged kicking and punching—he’d had trouble concentrating on anything except the flash of anger in her gray eyes or the way her jaw jutted forward when she confronted him. With an assassin after him, he had to be sharp. He couldn’t let her distract him.

  Yet she did.

  All he wanted to do was take her in his arms, carry her to her bed and make love to her. Afterwards, he would hold her, lose himself in the scent of her hair, then drift peacefully into sleep. Gods, it had been too long since he’s been able to do that, to trust any person that much.

  “You still here, Boss?” Jumper landed on the edge of the desk, padding over to sit beside the plate of shortbread. “I kinda figured you’d be off with FitzWarren making the beast with two backs, but instead I find you sitting here playing with your weapon. I think the lady wanted to play with something else.” The cat reached for a cookie.

  “You’re supposed to be on a diet.” Wolf smacked the paw away. “And I don’t think becoming involved with her would be a wise course of action right now.”

  Jumper rolled his eyes. “You think she’s not interested? Well, I can guaran-damn-tee you she is. It isn’t always easy for me to feel emotions from this distance, not unless they’re really strong, but she’s coming through five by five. I haven’t felt such lust since the calico that lives at the mess hall was in heat.”

  “I was referring to the fact that someone is trying to kill me, in case that slipped your furry little mind. Hanging around me right now might not be the safest place to be.”

  “Duh. FitzWarren is fully augmented and trained as a body guard. I don’t think you could find a place on the whole fricking base where you’d be safer than in her bed.”

  Wolf rocked his chair back, tapping his steepled fingers against his upper lip.

  “If FitzWarren is correct, the assassin is already in place. The longer he hangs around, the greater the chance we’ll just stumble across him, so he’s got to make his move quickly. Tonight, I expect.” His smile was feral. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “I guess this means you won’t go jogging tonight?”

  “I doubt our friends are expecting me to meekly present myself for slaughter—not that they wouldn’t blow me away if I gave them the opportunity. No, I think they’ll have something less predictable in mind. If this were my hit, I’d go after the mark where he felt the safest; someplace so unexpected and secure it would send a message that the Empire can reach out and touch you, anytime, anywhere, and there is nothing you can do about it.” Wolf let his chair rock forward, tapping a finger on the desk. “They’ll come at me right here.”

  Jumper blinked. “Here? In our quarters? During the day, it’s hard enough to get onto this floor if you don’t have clearance. At night there’s no way.”

  Wolf arched an eyebrow at the cat. “FitzWarren did it.”

  “But you purged all the access codes on the environmental maintenance hatch and I saw techs out today installing key pad locks on all the AC ducts. No one’s getting in that way.” The cat’s ears folded back in consternation. “You don’t think it could be a GD, do you? Someone who’s on duty tonight?”

  “Damn, I bloody well hope not.” Wolf hated that this affair forced him to be suspicious of his own people, men and women who’d served with him, some for many years. “I want to rule out every other possibility before I consider that. Who else has access to this floor during the overnight hours?”

  The two stared at each other for several seconds. The cat’s eyes widened at the same time Wolf’s eyebrow arched.

  “Food Services,” he said, Jumper echoing the words in his mind.

  In the field, the mercenaries relied on processors and ration packs, but at Ishtok he insisted they receive freshly prepared meals at the mess hall. Dining together created bonds among the troops, a trust that could mean the difference between life and death in a combat situation. The feeding of a base this size, with its full complement of soldiers, support personnel, dependents and civilian employees, necessitated they use an independent contractor. A contractor who saw to it that hot meals were delivered nightly to every person working midshift.

  The owner of the company assured them he vetted prospective employees using the same standards as the mercenaries, but Wolf knew how easy an ID could be faked. He turned to his computer. “Let’s see if they’ve added any new people recently.”

  Within seconds, he was in the company’s employment files, sorting his enquiry by length of service. The computer displayed a series of holos.

  “Wait.” Jumper stalked forward. “Go back. That one, Boss.” His paw passed through the image hanging above the desk. The man pictured had a shaved head covered with a proliferation of tattoos. The whorls and stripes extended onto his face, reminding Wolf of an ancient type of camouflage called razzle-dazzle. The patterns made it hard to ascertain his features or accurately estimate his age.

  “It says here that Will Abacrombie has been with Food Services since the spring and comes highly recommended by his previous employer, but that kind of letter is easy to forge. Or the real Mr. Abacrombie could have met with an untimely accident, and our tattooed friend is an Imperial ringer.”

  “Everyone calls him Stripes. He works the overnight shift a lot, but he seem
s like an okay guy, always laughing and telling jokes. He remembers everyone’s favorite foods and makes a point of getting them an extra portion when it’s on the menu. He’s got some of the best dirty jokes—like the one about the hooker, the preacher and the merc in a lifepod…”

  “Jumper,” Wolf interrupted. “Have you ever read him?”

  “Read him?”

  “Empathically.” He tapped the cat on the forehead.

  “Don’t need to. I can tell he’s a great guy. He’s always got a piece of steak or a small dish of cheese casserole for me.”

  “One of the first tricks a fledgling assassin learns is to use food to distract the guard dog, or in this case, guard cat. Although, if he’s Imperial, he’s undoubtedly trained in psi-blocking, so you’d have to push so hard to get anything, he’d be aware of you. The cheese casserole was his way of making sure you never did that.”

  Jumper’s ears folded down. “I thought spies were supposed to be plain gray little people who blended in.”

  “Sometimes it works as well to be so obvious and over the top that no one would suspect you of having a hidden agenda. The tattoos could be chromatophores, specialized color changing cells implanted in the skin that he can control. If he turned off the tats and put on a wig, I doubt anyone would connect him with Mr. Stripes.”

  Wolf pulled up the contractor’s duty roster. “Let’s see if our tattooed friend is working tonight. Now isn’t that interesting. Mr. Abacrombie was not scheduled for this evening, but at the last minute, he asked to switch with the person who was assigned the duty. Seems he needed the time off tomorrow because he has something important to do—like getting the hell out of the system after he’s blown me away.”

  He turned to the cat. “What time does he usually show up?”

  “0230, on the nose.” The cat had a precise sense of time when it came to eating.

  “Alone or does he have a helper?”

  “Sometimes there’re two of them; other times he’s alone.”

  “So, he’d be able to bring the augie with him without attracting any attention.” Wolf picked up the heavy pistol and gave it one last check before sliding it into its holster. “I think I’ll provide a little surprise for Mr. Stripes.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  Wolf shrugged. “Then I’ll get a nice midnight snack, but I think I’ve got the right man. Sorry, Jumper, but you’re going to have to kiss your late night cheese casseroles goodbye.”

  He leaned back in his chair and propped his boots on the desk top. Within a few minutes the entire plan had fallen into place. He reached for the remaining cookie, but found the plate empty and Jumper disappearing out the door, the last piece of shortbread clenched in his teeth.

  In that inexplicable way of dreams, Fitz knew the indistinct figure she followed was Youngblood. There was no cute butt or golden braid; nevertheless, she was sure. He led her down a hallway, and she couldn’t force her legs to move quickly enough to catch up. They were aboard the flagship Ari Ransahov, that much she was certain, but she’d never seen the corridors so silent, empty and dark, washed only in the wan red glow of the emergency lights. Even in the depths of midshift, the battleship usually buzzed with people going about the business of keeping the giant mechanical entity alive. She followed Youngblood onto the command deck, the room eerie without its usual staff and the compliment of Marine guards. He stopped before a door. Fitz recognized it as the entrance to the Triumvir’s office by the Imperial Seal emblazoned on it—a rearing quolla breaking a starship in its talons. As he turned to look at her, the figure presented a gray formless face, but Fitz thought she noticed a blond eyebrow quirk upward. He stepped forward and the door whooshed open…

  Fitz started awake, blinking into the darkness. She’d finally gotten to sleep, then had that stupid dream, and now something woke her.

  The door to her room swished closed, clicking as it locked.

  She must have heard it open in her sleep, incorporating the sound into her dream even as it jarred her awake. Had she sensed Youngblood’s presence, working that into her dream also? Perhaps her ploy with Jumper worked, and the cat convinced him to pay her a nocturnal visit. Even without the sensitivity of her hearing augs, she could interpret her surroundings through sound alone. She waited to hear the soft rustle of the pistol belt eased onto the couch, and of clothes slipping off before he slid into her bed.

  Instead, she heard heavy footsteps.

  Her body tensed, respiration and heartbeat quickened but she felt no answer from her combat systems. There was a second of panic before she remembered she’d been disarmed. Her fingers twitched to reach out to the night stand, but she wasn’t in her own bed. There was no pistol resting on the table.

  The slightly built mercenary would make next to no sound as he moved. These footsteps belonged to a heavier person, bulky and graceless. A second individual, a woman or smaller man, crept in the wake of the first. Cursing Youngblood for his insistence that she disarm would only be a waste of her effort. Instead, she built a sound picture of her room, judging where each intruder was as they drew closer.

  She shifted, feigning restlessness. The footsteps stopped, waited a few seconds, and then began again, slower this time.

  Her movement succeeded in freeing her feet from the entangling covers. She exploded out from under the blanket and rolled onto the floor on the far side of the bed, coming to her feet in a fighter’s stance, her back against the window.

  “Lights. Low.” She blinked as her eyes adjusted.

  The man who faced her across the bed was built like a cargo loading bot—short, broad and every bit as ugly. In the past, his nose had been broken several times, and one ear was notched. A bruiser. She detected a slight wince as his eyes snapped down from night vision to normal.

  An augie. The hypothetical second assassin was now very much of a reality.

  Fitz glanced at her second assailant, recognizing him as the heavily tattooed man she’d seen that morning. He stood hip shot in indolent relaxation, his shoulders loose, the thumb of one hand tucked into his belt. The other held a small pistol on her, its sighting laser’s red dot steady on her chest. A Cauldfield CP-38. Tiny, powerful, and virtually undetectable on scans. An assassin’s favorite. The last time she’d seen one of these weapons was in the hand of a man who claimed to love her. She remembered shots, screams and the smell of blood. Her fingers curled into fists as a cold rage filled her.

  He chuckled as he saw recognition bloom in her eyes, his smile causing the tattoos on his cheeks to twist grotesquely.

  “Imagine my surprise when I saw you this morning. Now I asked myself, what would old Kiernan’s pet augie be doing way out here on Rainbow? Razor and I have a real busy schedule tonight, but we had to drop by and take a few minutes to find out.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Some security agent you are, you didn’t even recognize me, did you? Of course, I had to get a new face after you tried to smash my old one to a bloody pulp. And after all those good times we had in the sack.”

  The voice was honey and acid. The voice of Jeferi Hiruko.

  Chapter Six

  Fitz’s fingers clinched with the need to rip the smug smile off Hiruko’s face. He’d used her, used her love to get close to Maks Kiernan. She’d believed the lies, been so blind to his deception that she’d given him the opportunity to kill her commanding officer. Almost, but not quite.

  The assassin’s dark eyes read her emotions easily. He shook his head in mock sadness. “You want to kill me, beat me until I’m just a pile of meat, don’t you? That’s how you wireheads solve all your problems. All I had to do was treat you like a real person, and you got me into all those places I needed to go. You made it too easy.”

  “Not that easy.” It was Fitz’s turn to smile. “I still busted your ass in the end.”

  “Just pure luck.”

  “We should ha
ve taken care of you ourselves. Fleet takes out its own garbage. I warned Kiernan to ignore the message from DIS requesting we send you back to Scyr for trial. I had a feeling you’d have ‘an unforeseen disappearance’ on the way.”

  “You would have just come to my holding cell and shot me?”

  “No, too quick. Security had its eye on a hydrogen extraction operation in the Brax-271 system. I’d have arranged a little vacation for you there.”

  Hiruko laughed. “Well, I got that vacation; just not the way you planned. I’ve been here on the hottest resort planet in the entire Human Sector, keeping tabs on pretty boy Youngblood. Hell if I know why. That self-righteous prig doesn’t give a rat’s rectum what’s going on in the Empire anymore.”

  “Then why are you trying to kill him?”

  “I’m not. Two weeks ago some wirehead bitch showed up with orders to chop off his head and ship it back to Tritico in a stasis box. I told her Youngblood had a reputation as a bad dude, but she figured she could dazzle him with her sex appeal. For all the damn computers you’re full of, you wireheads haven’t got the brains of an amoeba. Now they send out Razor with the same orders.”

  Fitz noticed the flash of anger in the larger man’s eyes at Hiruko’s use of a slur that would send most augies ballistic. Maybe she could use that hatred to pit the two men against each other. Not much of a chance, but it was better than zip—which was what she’d have as soon as they realized she’d been disarmed. She kept her movements slow and graceful, trying to appear as if she was idling, waiting to explode into hyperkinetic motion.