by Chris Bunch
But Mahoney was dead.
Sten's old boss, the Eternal Emperor, would have laughed at him, poured a double shot of stregg to put blood in his eye, and sent him off to face a suitable enemy. It wouldn't matter much who the enemy might be. It would be enough that the beings were threatening the peace and security of an empire that had thrived for nearly three thousand years.
But the Emperor, too, was dead.
The last time Sten had seen the Emperor, he had sworn to the man that his career in the military was over. This despite promises of many honors and much important work to come in the aftermath of the Tahn conflict that had nearly bankrupted the Empire.
The Eternal Emperor had scoffed and said Sten was just weary, and understandably so. He said to look him up when he tired of the peaceful life. The Emperor had estimated it would take no longer than six months.
It was one of those rare times when the Eternal Emperor had been wrong. Almost six months to the day, Sten had looked up from blissful idleness in his mansion at Smallbridge, patted the curvaceous naked form nestled against the pillow next to him, and whispered “no clottin’ way” to his absent boss.
A week later, the Eternal Emperor had been assassinated.
It had been one of those stupid things that Sten had dreaded when he commanded the Emperor's bodyguard. No matter what precautions were taken, there was no such thing as absolute safety for a man as public as the Eternal Emperor. Even the fierce loyalty of his Gurkkha guards was not complete protection. The little men with the long, curving knives who had kept the Emperor's foes at bay for nearly thirty centuries were helpless under certain circumstances.
The Emperor had returned to Prime World the conquering hero. Billions upon billions of beings across his far-flung empire had watched on their livies as he stepped from his royal ship and advanced across the tarmac to the phalanx of waiting gravcars that would whisk him home to Arundel.
Tanz Sullamora, the great ship-building industrialist and most trusted member of his privy council, was at his side.
Sten remembered watching the screen in the mansion's vidroom. The newscaster's voice was hoarse from describing the triumphant return. The schedule, he said in a raspy whisper, called for no ceremonies at that moment. The Emperor would board the waiting craft and head for a well-earned rest. In a week or so, a grand celebration of the victory over the Tahn was planned. Beings from all over the Empire would gather to honor their leader. There would be no recriminations, it was said, even against the shakiest of the Emperor's allies.
Sten didn't believe a word of that. He knew his boss too well. There would be a purge. But it would be swift, sure, and hardly a bubble of interruption as the Emperor turned his attention away from war and back to the business of being the chieftain of the greatest capitalist system in history.
But it would still be a good show. The Emperor was a master of dazzle and triple speak.
Idly, Sten noted the small group of spaceport employees gathered far to one side of the screen. They were drawn up in what was obviously a receiving line, waiting to shake the hand of the Emperor. Sten was glad his old boss was heading in the opposite direction. Not that there was any real danger. What would be the point of attacking the Emperor now that the war was over? Still ... His instincts always fought his common sense in such situations. Once among the press of flesh, it would be impossible to totally protect the man.
Then he saw Sullamora catch the Emperor's attention and nod to the waiting line. Sten let out an automatic groan. Tanz would be pointing out, he knew, that the spaceport group had been waiting for hours to greet their ruler and should really not be disappointed.
Sure enough, after a moment's hesitation, the Emperor's party turned toward the assembled group. They were moving fast. The Emperor obviously wanted to get this bit of duty over with as quickly as possible. The Gurkkhas hustled on stubby legs to keep the shield up.
Then the Emperor was going down the line in that smooth, graceful way he had among his people: the charming, fatherly smile fixed on his young features; the tall, muscular body bounding along from being to being; one hand coming out to shake, the other going for the elbow for a warm double-grip that also moved the greeter swiftly aside, so the next hand could be taken.
Sten had seen a blur of motion. What was happening? He heard the distinctive crack crack crack of pistol fire. And the Eternal Emperor was falling back. The camera swirled into mass confusion. Then it cleared—but just for a moment.
He saw the Emperor lying on the tarmac. Sten's heart was still. His breath caught somewhere in his chest. Was he ... dead?
Then the screen turned to pure burning white, and Sten heard the beginnings of a mighty explosion.
Transmission was cut.
When it was finally restored, Sten had his answer.
The Eternal Emperor had been assassinated.
By a madman, it was said. Some malcontent named Chapelle, who had acted alone out of some insane motive—revenge for an imagined slight, or ambition for an odd sort of immortality.
Along with countless billions of other beings, Sten had been a numb witness to what followed.
It was inconceivable that the Emperor was gone. Although there were few who believed that any living thing could be immortal or even close to it. There were a few odd cells—usually particularly virulent things that destroyed their host, hence themselves—that could theoretically live forever, as well as a few dwellers of the seas and upper atmospheres. But that was nit-picking. For all things, to be alive meant eventual death.
For human beings, this was particularly so. And the Emperor was a human being. There was no dispute on that and never would be.
But as long as anyone could remember he had always been there. Whether one agreed or disagreed with his policies, the Emperor was a comforting and permanent presence. Even the most bitter and radical scholars gnashed their teeth as they tracked his reign back century after unbelievable century. It was no accident that the word eternal was the official preface to the Emperor's title.
It was also something one didn't dwell on. An ordinary human might live for two hundred years if he were lucky. To think of someone vastly older was frightening.
Sten had personally known the man a great deal of his own allotted span. In apparent age, the Emperor was no more than thirty-five or so. His eyes were youthfully bright. He even made occasional mocking references to his great age. But there was little the Eternal Emperor didn't mock. Nothing was holy to him, especially himself.
Sometimes, however, Sten had seen him overtaken by a great and terrible weariness. It had happened more often toward the end of the Tahn debacle. Deep lines would be etched on his features, and his eyes would suddenly grow so distant that anyone looking believed for a moment that the man had seen and been places far beyond any being who had ever lived. And somehow one was sure he would remain long after one's own memory was lost in distant time.
Two days after the assassination, the members of the Emperor's privy council had, one by one, mounted the stage hastily set up in the great grounds around the ruins of Arundel Castle. Only one member did not appear; Tanz Sullamora. Faithful servant to the last, he had died in the explosion that had also wiped out everyone within the one-eighth-of-a-kilometer kill zone. Why Chapelle had found it necessary to set off such an enormous explosion after he slew the Emperor, no one could say. Except that it was the act of an insane man. All else remained part of that mad puzzle, because Chapelle himself had been one of the first victims of his actions.
The five lords of industry stood before the vast throng assembled on the grounds. Prior to their entrance, it had been explained in great detail exactly who and what they were.
There was Kyes, a tall, slender, silver being, who controlled most things involving artificial intelligence. He was a Grb'chev, a vastly bright race, and appeared to be the chief spokesbeing of the privy council. Next was Malperin. She ruled a gargantuan conglomerate that included agriculture, chemical, and pharmaceuticals. Then t
here was Lovett, scion of a great banking family. Finally, the Kraa twins—one grossly fat, the other painfully thin—who controlled the major mines, mills, and foundries in the Empire. Besides Sullamora, there had once been another member of their group. But Volmer, a media baron, had died in some silly mishap just prior to the end of the war.
Kyes had a dry, light, pleasant voice. It was somber now as he explained that Parliament had cast a unanimous vote urging the five lords to rule in the Emperor's place during this terrible emergency. None of them had sought this awful burden, and none of them certainly felt worthy of the trust beings everywhere were placing in them at that very moment.
But they had been convinced that for the time being there was no other choice. Order must come out of this awesome chaos, and they pledged to do their very best to govern wisely and fairly until the proper moment came—very soon, he hoped—when free elections could be held to determine how exactly the Empire was to be led without the presence of His Majesty, their martyred ruler.
Kyes said he knew this was a weak solution at best, but all of them had racked their brains for tortuous hours and could find no other way out. A commission was being set up—as he spoke, in fact—to study the situation and to make suggestions. He and the other members of the council awaited word from this eminent body of scholarly beings as eagerly as anyone watching and listening. But he had been told that what they were attempting to accomplish had never been done before and might take a great deal of time and reasoned debate.
Kyes counseled patience, then pledged he would carry on in the spirit of the great man who had rescued them all from the threat of enslavement under the Tahn.
One by one the others stepped up to make similar remarks—and to add a bit of detail, such as the date of the funeral, which would be vaster and richer than any funeral that had gone before. New honors were announced to be posthumously bestowed on the Emperor, and a year of mourning was declared. Sten palmed the button that blanked the screen and sat back to reflect.
He did not need his Mantis psywar training to know that he had just witnessed a power grab.
So. The privy council would reluctantly govern until free elections could be held. Sten had propped up a few despots in his time with similar empty pledges. He wondered how long it would be before the first coup attempt. And which one would eventually be successful. And then the one after that. And the other—on and on until the entire system collapsed. He supposed there would be constant warfare of greater and greater intensity for the rest of his life.
Ultimate power was at stake. He who controlled the Empire determined the flow of all the Anti-Matter Two—AM2—the fuel upon which civilization everywhere was based. It was the source of cheap power, the key to all major weaponry, and the sole practical means of interstellar travel. Without AM2, trade would be almost entirely reduced to intrasystem lumbering about on the infinitely practical but painfully slow Yukawa drive engines.
But there was nothing Sten could do about any of it. The Eternal Emperor was dead. Long live the Emperor.
He would mourn him. Not as a friend. No one could call the Emperor friend. But, as—well, a comrade at arms, then. Sten got drunk and remained drunk for a month, switching from Scotch to stregg and back again—the Emperor's two favorite drinks.
Then he tried to get on with his life.
Sten didn't pay much mind to the chaos the Empire fell into. He only coppered his bets by purchasing all the AM2 he could lay his hands on, and it wasn't long before the shortages began and he was congratulating himself on his foresight. The why of the shortages didn't concern him. He assumed the privy council—in its infinite wisdom—had determined such a course to further line their already heavy pockets.
He dabbled a bit in business, found it far from his liking, then was reduced to an endless series of momentary enthusiasms. Not unlike the Emperor, who had a host of hobbies always in progress. He became a fair cook, although he knew he would never be the Emperor's match. He honed his skills with tools and building things. He took a fling at a few of the lusher fleshpots. When he wearied of that—a little too quickly for comfort, he sometimes thought—he explored and improved Smallbridge.
He and Alex corresponded, always swearing to get together soon, but soon never came. And as the controls on AM2 tightened, travel became more and more impractical, and before he knew it “soon” wasn't even mentioned in any of their letters.
Ian Mahoney—his only other real friend—quietly retired to the life of a military historian, then died in some silly accident. Sten had heard that he had drowned and that the body had never been found. He supposed there was some irony in such a meaningless death for a man who had managed to survive against impossible odds so many times before. But he didn't see it, or he was too depressed to examine it. The final year of his self-imposed exile was proving the worst. His bleak moods were constantly on him, as well as a gut-itching paranoia. Whom he should fear, he had no idea. He had no suspects. But he became paranoid just the same. Every residence he set up on Smallbridge was enclosed with increasingly sophisticated and—he had to admit it—eccentric security devices, including some nasty, being-devouring plants he imported from some hellhole whose name he had easily forgotten. They had taken off like mad in the nonthreatening environment of Smallbridge. Every once in a while he had to set the perimeter on fire to keep the grove under control.
Lately, he had taken up residence in the northwestern sector of the second largest land mass in the temperate zone.
Temperate was a weak, nondescript word for this place beside the chain of four mighty lakes. The winds always blew fierce and cold there. The snow lay deep on the ground and bowed the trees of the forest for many months of the year. But for some reason it had a powerful attraction to him—just as it seemed to have for the being-devouring plants, which thrived in the cold, wet climate.
Sten had built several frontier-style domes in the cluster by one of the lakes. One was devoted to a kitchen and pantry where he prepared and stored food, butchered out a little game, or cleaned the strange, bullet-shaped but tasty dwellers of the lake. He grew vegetables in the hydroponic tubs that took up all of one side. The second dome contained his workshop and was crammed with tools and building materials of every variety. He also kept and worked on his weapons there, as well as the snooping devices he was always toying with. The last dome held his living quarters and gymnasium. He spent hours in the gym and outside in the cold, endlessly practicing and honing his Mantis skills.
He lined the walls of his living quarters with real wood cut from his own forest. He built bunks and cabinets and all sorts of things from the same material. When he was done, it looked so homey that he was pleased with himself. Still, something seemed to be missing. He scratched his memory until he came up with an “aha.” It wanted a fireplace. After several smoky and tortuous attempts, he finally had it. And it was huge, big enough to take a two-meter log. It drew like clot and gave off a wonderfully cheery glow.
A woman who had stayed with him a few months said it reminded her of something she had seen before but couldn't quite make out. Sten pressed her, but all she could remember was that it had involved some item at a shop where “less expensive things” were sold. From the tone in her voice, Sten got the drift she meant garish and sentimental.
He was so lonely, he let it pass.
A week or so later, he was returning from some errand in the forest. It was a beautiful, gray day, and a light snowfall was drifting down from the skies and through the trees.
Sten hailed the dome, and the woman opened the door to greet him. She was framed in the doorway, with the glowing fire lighting her from behind, and Sten knew then what she had been thinking of. Because now he remembered, as well.
A long time before, his mother had extended her contract for six months to buy a muraliv. A country girl completely lost and out of place in the workshops of Vulcan, she had deeded half a year more of her life for what she believed was a work of art.
It was o
f a snowy landscape on a frontier world. He remembered the snow drifting down on the little cluster of domes, and the door that always swung open to greet the returning workers from the forest and field—and the bright cheery fire the open door had revealed. It was his mother's dearest treasure. In eight months, it had gone quite still.
Sten had unconsciously recreated the mural.
He made some excuses and hustled the woman on her way. It was silly to blame her for a slight she couldn't know she was committing, but he couldn't bear to have her around anymore.
That was when the gloom reached its absolute bottom. Month after month, he pricked at the wound. He didn't need the walrus-psychologist Rykor to tell him what he was doing. Sten knew. But he did it just the same. He even named the four lakes after his long-dead family.
The largest lake, where the domes were clustered, he named Amos, for his father. The next in the chain became Freed, for his mother. Then Ahd and Johs, for his brother and sister.
When that was done, he sat and brooded, hoping his condition was no more than a lingering fever that had to be endured until the viral tide shifted and the fever broke.
* * * *
Five hundred miles to the north, a bright light winked into being and arced down through the night skies. It steadied a moment above the frozen ground, then sped toward the lakes and Sten's retreat.
Then a globe appeared, hanging amid the stars. Powerful jamming devices hummed into life, bathing Smallbridge in an electronic blanket that comforted and coaxed Sten's alarm system into believing all was well.
A light very much like the first separated from the globe, then sped off in the same direction.
A few klicks from the domes, the battered little space-boat came to ground, a black splotch against the snow. The port groaned open, and a dark figure exited. After dragging on cold-weather gear and snapping snowshoes to his feet, the man straightened, then hesitated, scanning the skies, an immense, bulky figure, sniffing the air for danger very much like a big Kodiak from distant Earth. Suddenly he saw a light pop above the horizon. It was the other ship, coming fast.
