The Return of the Emperor

by Chris Bunch

  Cind had grown up in such a household. The stories of the past were told to her, privately, around the family hearth with the old weapons hanging above it, or sometimes loudly at family/clan reunions held in very secret places.

  Cind had grown up as a throwback—she was one of the former Jann who had the old love of battle. Since childhood she had disdained the ordinary playthings of other young Jann. Toy weapons were her favorite. Vid-books on great battles and heroic deeds stirred her more than any fairy tales. So it was only natural that when she came of age she volunteered for the Bhor military. Her culture's old enemies—but the only game in town.

  Her instinctual ability with the rifle quickly won her favor among the Bhor. Now, whenever there was conflict requiring arms, Cind was among the first to volunteer for action and also among the first to be accepted. Her youth was no handicap at all. In fact, it was most probably a plus, since the Bhor loved a fight almost more than stregg, that powerful and evil potion Sten had first become addicted to and then passed on to the Eternal Emperor. The Bhor encouraged instincts like Cind's in their own young and boasted of them in their huge feasts and drinking bouts.

  As Otho drunkenly blubbered and patted his clearly embarrassed friend, Cind gazed with adoring eyes at the great Sten. This was the being whose exploits were boasted of more than any other in the Bhor drinking halls. No Bhor who had been even vaguely involved in those exploits could walk down a public byway without drawing admiring looks and comments. Over and over again the tale was told, and each time Sten and Alex shone in greater and greater glory. Especially Sten. He was younger than she imagined. She had been expecting a hoary graybeard filled with stiff dignity. She also found him most handsome.

  Otho had drawn away and was conversing with Alex Kilgour. Cind saw Sten look absently around the room. She thought she had never seen a being so lonely. Her heart went out to all the imagined horrors the great Sten must conceal in his breast. She ached to coax them out, to comfort him. Sten's eyes swept over her ... then ... Ohmigod ... He's looking back! At me! She grew uncomfortably warm, and then his eyes moved on. Oh, dear, oh, me, if only they had lingered. Would he see her worth? Understand her passion for her only true friend—the long-range rifle? Of course he would. A great warrior like Sten would immediately know her feelings about such matters. Cind determined that somehow, some way, they would meet.

  She turned back to her meal, unaware of how nasty an affliction youth could be.

  Alex drained the horn and let Otho refill it. The Bhor chieftain had pulled him aside and was drunkenly quizzing him. Sten's manner was greatly troubling him, Otho said. His mood was so dark, and Otho was at a loss to dispel it. He told Alex he had only gotten a thin smile when he had reminded Sten of their first meetings, back when the Bhor had been handing out Jann captives to all the ships and bloodily executing them in the ancient, joyful Bhor rite of The Blessing.

  "Remember that clottin’ Jann's face as we stuffed him in the lock?” Otho said. Alex remembered. “By my mother's gnarly beard, was that a funny sight. He was so scared his face was screwed up like we'd given his nose a dozen twirls.

  "It was only two or three—and we'd hardly tortured him at all. Then we fired him out to ice up his guts and drank his soul to hell! Ah, those were the days."

  He clapped Alex on the back with a paw like a half-ton club. Even Kilgour was ruffed a mite by that. “Aye,” was all he said. But before Otho could think that he shared Sten's glum disease, Alex remembered to roar with laughter at the thought of those gory times.

  "What's wrong with our Sten?” Otho asked. “There's no fire to him. Point out the being who has wronged our brother and I vow we will slay him now!"

  Alex would have been delighted if the matter were so simple and Sten's dilemma could be cured with an old-fashioned Bhor Blessing. Right now, the thought of guts in space was far more cheery than any Sten had entertained since they had fled Earth.

  * * * *

  Kilgour had run like the gates of hell had been unlocked and all the demons in it were at his heels. This was not much of an exaggeration. If Kilgour had not acted so quickly, not only would they have been pursued, but they would have been caught. Alex threw caution and the laws of physics to the wind. He jinked and jolted and veered the little tacship about until every joint pairing gave a tortured scream of pain. He used every trick he had been taught and invented a few, besides, to elude detection. Once clear, he transmitted a fast “run like bleedin’ drakh” to Mahoney, then shut down and made like a ghost.

  Mahoney would have to take care of himself. Th’ braw gr't clot's used't’ it, Alex thought, although not unfondly. Kilgour liked Mahoney. Considered him a Gaelic kin. Alex hoped Ian made it intact. But there was little else he could do about it. If they all survived—and that was certainly an immeasurable “if"—they had a fallback, emergency rendezvous point. Not Poppajoe's. They had agreed, if the mission went awry, not to test their luck twice there. But all that would be in the very doubtful future.

  Kilgour assumed the wrath of the privy council would be so great that they would go to any and all means to bring them to bay. He was correct. So—where to hide? Where could they go to ground? There were two crucial elements the hiding place would require. The first was that no one was likely to look for them there. The second—and far more important—was that if anyone did look, he and Sten would not be betrayed.

  It took awhile to figure it out. Sten was no help. How could he be? The lad was definitely bad off. Alex had strapped Sten to the medtable in the tacship's tiny treatment center and punched in a trauma program. He could hear the little hisses and tricklings of the medic bots at work. The sounds were far too busy for comfort. Eventually, as he dodged in and out of warp to throw off pursuit, they calmed a bit. He looked into the small cabin and saw Sten lying on the medtable. A little less pale. But still out—puir, wee lad.

  The perfect hideout finally dawned on him. It involved calling in a debt, but there were few beings who owed Sten more. He punched in a course for the Lupus Cluster—and the Bhor.

  They were a bit more than halfway through the journey when Sten was finally able to get about feebly. As company, he was clottin’ awful. Stone face. Absolute silence. He conversed rarely, and then it was confined to a few grunts. At first Alex thought it because he was still on the road to recovery. Then the trauma-center computer informed him that no further treatment was necessary and gave Sten a clean bill of health. At last, Kilgour had to admit that his friend had suffered a far greater wound than the physical ones that had temporarily incapacitated him.

  He hadn't the faintest idea how to deal with it, or even how to bring the topic up. So he gritted his teeth and left it alone.

  Then one day Sten broached the matter himself. They were eating dinner—in total silence. Sten had lately formed the habit of staring straight into his dish while he ate. Never speaking, never looking to one side or another. And certainly never raising his eyes as he shoveled in food—more as if it were fuel than anything potentially flavorful. Kilgour watched him out of the corner of his eye.

  Sten popped in a hunk of something. Chewed. Swallowed. Another hunk. Another mechanical repetition. Suddenly he stopped midchew. His face grew dark with inner fury. Then he spat the food out as if it were poison, slammed to his feet, and slammed just as loudly out. That time, Alex decided not to ignore the incident. He waited a few moments and then went to Sten's quarters. The door was open, and Sten was pacing back and forth, working off the angry energy. Alex waited at the door until he was noticed. Sten saw him, stopped, then shook his head.

  "I'm sorry, Alex,” he said. Kilgour determined to bite the bullet and shake Sten up if he could.

  "Y’ aught't'be,” he said, forcing irritation in his tone. “Y’ clottin’ aught't'be."

  He went on, reaming Sten's butt. Sten was told that once again, he had spoiled Alex's dinner. And he was such terrible company that he had driven Kilgour to thoughts of murder, or suicide. He had been behaving like an adoles
cent, Alex said, and it was time he grabbed himself by whatever pride he had left and started thinking about how he was affecting others, such as his longest and dearest friend, one Alex Kilgour.

  Alex felt like drakh when he started—hitting the lad while he was down. But as he went on he warmed to the task. Sten had been getting to him, dammit! And he needed to be told. Then he saw that Sten was not listening—or was only partly listening. His head was down and his fists were clenched until the knuckles were white.

  "I blew it!” Sten hissed. “I clottin’ blew it!"

  "Aye,” Alex said. “We did thae, lad. I’ spades. But y'ken, ‘tis nae th’ first time. Nae wil't be th’ last."

  He had known all along what was haunting Sten. And with the opening he had just achieved, he tried to put it in perspective. He talked about all the other missions that had gone awry, the heaps of corpses left behind. They had suffered far worse things in the past, had witnessed and been partly responsible for far more dead. Alex knew he was pissing in the wind. But he had to try, just the same.

  This was not just a sudden case of the guilts. It went back to Sten's reasons for abandoning his career more than six years before. The Tahn conflict certainly had been the costliest in terms of lives, as well as credits, of any war ever. Even on their own infinitely unimportant level, Sten and Alex had been forced to sacrifice so many lives that the foul taste of blood could never be washed out.

  Sten had grown sick of playing butcher—which was why he had not only resigned but had turned his back on the only family he knew. Living family, at least.

  Some of that also had to do with Kilgour's own decision to quit. But he had Edinburgh, with family and ancestral friends.

  This time, what made it harder for Sten to pay the butcher's price was his long self-imposed exile. There was no way, no matter how hard he had continued to train, that he would not blame the blowup of the mission on his own rusty skills. Morally, if he felt that way, he should have turned down Mahoney's urging to lead the mission and helped Ian find someone else—someone fresher, someone not so tired and bitter.

  Alex laid all of this out for Sten. He cajoled him. He cursed him. But nothing did any good. How could it? In the same position, Alex knew he would probably feel the same way.

  The silence resumed. It lasted the remainder of the trip. And beyond.

  * * * *

  Cind faithfully attended every one of the numerous feasts the Bohr had laid on to honor the returning heroes of the Jann war. She couldn't know that one of the key reasons for the banquets was Otho's clumsy attempts to break Sten out of his gloom and self-blame. But she couldn't help but notice how drawn Sten seemed, how oblivious he appeared to his surroundings, as if he were lost in some torment that no normal being could imagine. It seemed terribly tragic to her—and romantic.

  She had finally gotten up the nerve to enter Sten's exalted presence. After considering how best to present herself, she had bought a costume so daring that she blushed even to think of it dangling in her locker. When she put it on and looked herself over in the mirror, she had almost pulled a sheet in front of herself so she would not have to look. Cind smoothed her already blemishless features with the most expensive and exotic makeup she could find, then dotted herself with a perfume guaranteed by the salesbeing to make strong human males fall at the feet of the woman wise enough to seek out this particular musk.

  Cind dared the mirror again. She thought she looked like a clotting joygirl. If this is what men wanted, they could ... she couldn't think of what they ought to do, but she was sure that with thought she would come up with something suitably nasty. That even included Sten. Clot it! He would have to take her as she was.

  She showered and scrubbed off all the offending stuff, then threw away the bitty thing that had disgraced her closet. Instead she chose one of her best uniforms. It was made of a fine leatherlike cloth and fit as if the beast who had borne the skin had been genetically bred just for Cind's fine young body. Her face was fresh and glowing from the scouring, her cheeks rosy from the bold thoughts she entertained.

  Cind looked herself over in the mirror again. Oh, well. It would have to do.

  * * * *

  She could not have picked more wisely. Sten had once had a lover from this part of the Empire. Her name was Sofia. Lady Sofia was a woman who entertained ambitions for the Imperial Court. Sten had helped her achieve them. A long time passed until he and Sofia had met again. It was at a Function, thrown by those greatest of all Imperial hosts, Marr and Senn.

  The makeup and perfume Sofia had worn were not much different than Cind's—although vastly more expensive. And as for her dress—Sofia had worn nothing at all except some scattered glitter dust.

  Faced with all that pulchritude, Sten had done what Sofia had least expected. He had run like the wind—into the arms of a homicide lieutenant, one Lisa Haines, a woman who was much more Sten's style.

  Cind knew that this particular feast was going to be semiformal—for the Bhor, at least. Preceding the usual gluttony, there would be a receiving line to greet the honored guests. She called in a heavy favor with a Bhor friend and found a place at the end of the line.

  Otho paraded Kilgour and Sten into the hall and past the line. After his stint as chief of the Emperor's palace guard, there was little Sten did not know about such polite entries. He shook the hand of each being, looked them in the eye, and smiled. It was not a great smile, but it would have to do. Then he passed on to the next. Still, by the time he reached Cind he was anxious to hie himself to the safety of his table. He gave her a perfunctory handclasp, smiled, and started to move on.

  Cind held the hand tight. It was just for a moment, but it was enough to make Sten hesitate, so as not to be rude. Then he found himself looking at an absolutely lovely young woman with a stunning uniformed figure, face as fresh as nature itself, eyes clear and innocent, and the sober serious look that only the young could adopt and still be charming.

  Cind spoke in a rush, to get it all out before Sten moved on. “Admiral Sten, I want you to know this is the greatest honor in my life. I've studied all the details of your actions during the Jann conflict, and I'd like you to know just how much of an inspiration you've been to me."

  Sten couldn't help himself. He had to laugh. But it was not the kind of laughter anyone—especially Cind—would take offense to, or think she was the object of.

  "Thank you,” he said. He meant it. He started to move on.

  But Cind wasn't through. “If ever you have a free moment,” she continued, “I would very much appreciate if I could steal a little of it. There are so many questions I'd like to ask. Any warrior would. Although, I'm sure I'd bore you."

  Then she turned on her best smile. It was far from shabby. It was the kind that lit up whole rooms. One did not have to look too closely to realize there were all sorts of other invitations implied.

  Sten would have had to be a dead man not to have understood that this young lady thought him very attractive and would be delighted to share his bunk. This time, he didn't laugh. Instead, he gave her his most sincere thanks and asked her name. Receiving it, he promised he would certainly remember her and would be delighted with her company—if he ever had the time. He gave her a sad little smile at this last bit. He meant it to say, of course, that he unfortunately never would. But, ah, well...

  Only then did he move on. By the time he reached his table he had all but forgotten her—but not entirely. Although she was very young, Sten was not made of ice. He was flattered. His steps were just a bit lighter as he walked.

  Cind watched him go. As far as she was concerned the meeting had gone perfectly. She was so pleased that she wanted to hug herself. She thought that close up, Sten was even more handsome. Mission accomplished. Invitation made. Invitation accepted.

  Now it was up to her to make sure Sten had the time.

  * * * *

  Sten tossed in his sleep, the thin covering knotted around his legs. He was back on Vulcan, a seventeen-year-old
Delinq hiding from Baron Thoresen's Sociopatrolmen. Sten had taken refuge with Oron, the brainburned king of the Delinqs. He was weary from running so long and hard. Sten felt a slender body slide onto the soft mattress. It was Bet. Seventeen, as well. Naked and lovely. Eager for him. Lovely. So lovely.

  He gasped out of the depths of the dream and found a willing, wriggling form in his arms. What the clot? Gently he pried the lady away. It certainly wasn't Bet! But she was lovely. The young lady moaned and grabbed for him again. For a moment, Sten almost went for it. He was still so far gone into the dream—which had proved to be very real—that he had almost no resistance.

  Then he thought: who was this woman, anyway?

  Mmmm. More kissing and stuff. Then he remembered the sincere young lady in the receiving line. What was her ... Cind. Ooohh boy! Careful, Admiral. This is not a lady one screwed and forgot. Once bedded, she would be his responsibility. Mmmmm. More stuff. More kissing. Yeah, but ... But me no buts, you clot! This is serious business. How'd you like someone as nice as this on your conscience? Aww ... Come on. What's a little...

  Sten plucked Cind away again. She started to protest, but he gently covered her mouth with a hand. He tried to explain to her that this was definitely not a good idea. He was flattered and all, he said, and he was sure she was the most wonderful human-type female in the Empire, but he was in no position to start up any kind of a relationship. So, although he would regret this moment the rest of his life, would Cind please, please, get her clothes on and go?

  It took awhile. But Cind did as she was told. When she was gone, Sten punched the drakh out of his pillow. He did not sleep again that night. For once, it had nothing to do with nightmares of a blown mission.

  As for Cind, she was hurt, to be sure. She was also more in love than ever. By thinking so much of her that he was willing to forget her attentions, Sten was promoted from hero to godhood.