Empire from the Ashes

by David Weber

  "That makes sense," Adrienne said slowly, "but I can't shake the feeling that there was more behind it."

  "Indeed there was," Dahak agreed. "The twins were not murdered for personal motives, My Lady, but for who—and what—they were. For whatever reason, our enemy elected to strike at the succession. It is for this reason I believe it to be the start of an effort to destroy the monarchy."

  "Which does make Horus a target," Colin sighed. "Oh, crap!"

  "That is an incorrect assumption. Horus is a member of the imperial family, true, but he is not your heir. He would become a potential heir only should you and 'Tanni die without issue, and with all due respect, I believe the Assembly of Nobles would be unlikely to select one of Horus's advanced years as Emperor. Mother might do so if she were required to execute Case Omega yet again, but she would do so only if there were no Assembly of Nobles to discharge that function. Moreover, Horus would not be the first choice even under Case Omega. The proper successor choice under Case Omega would be Admiral Hatcher, as CNO, followed by Star Marshal Tsien. Horus, as the highest civil official of the Imperium, would become the legal heir only if both of the Imperium's senior military officers were also dead. In addition, any open attack upon Horus would clearly risk awakening the suspicion the twins' 'accidental' deaths were intended to avoid. Thus any attempt to kill him before killing you, 'Tanni, Admiral Hatcher, and Star Marshal Tsien would be pointless unless we are, indeed, dealing with an irrational individual."

  "I hate it when you get this way, Dahak," Colin complained, and several of the angry people around the table surprised themselves by smiling.

  "Maybe, but he's right," Ninhursag said. "I don't want to get complacent, but tightening security for you two—and Gerald and Tao-ling—should have the effect of covering Horus, as well. And he's right, too. If we boost his security, it's a gold-plated warning to whoever we're up against."

  "All right, we'll handle it that way—for starters. Hector, can you manage the security details?"

  "Yes," MacMahan said tersely, and Colin nodded. The protection of the imperial family was the responsibility of the Imperial Marines, and MacMahan's expression was all the reassurance he needed.

  "Good. But that's only a defensive action—how do we nail this bastard?"

  "Whatever we do, Colin, we do it very carefully," Ninhursag said. "We start by putting all of this on a strict need-to-know basis. I don't want to bring in anyone else—not even Gus. Without knowing how 'Mister X' gets his information, every individual added to the information net gives him another possible conduit, however careful our people are."

  "All right, agreed. And then?"

  "And then Dahak and I sit down with every bit of security data we have. Everything, military and civilian, from Day One of the Fifth Imperium. We find any anomalies, and then we eliminate them one at a time.

  "In addition," she leaned back in her chair and frowned up at the ceiling, "we step up efforts to infiltrate every known group of malcontents. Those're underway already, so we don't have to give any new reasons for them. And while we flesh-and-bloods're doing that, Dahak, you jump into the datanets here in Bia and start setting up your own taps. Cruz could futz his terminal, but no one can get to you, so I want you tied into everything."

  "Understood. I must point out, however, that I cannot achieve the same penetration of Earth's datanets."

  "No, but until we figure out what's going on, Colin and 'Tanni will never visit Earth simultaneously. We know someone's after them now, and as long as 'Mister X' has to get through you, ONI, Hector's Marines, and Battle Fleet to reach them, I think they're pretty safe, don't you?"

  * * *

  Darin Gretsky leaned his broom in a corner and surveyed the well-lit workshop with a thin smile. He'd worked thirty years to prepare himself as a theoretical physicist, and during all those years he'd felt disdain for most of his fellows. He'd shared their thirst for knowledge, but for them, acclaim, respect, even power, were by-products of knowledge. For him, they were what knowledge was all about. His calculating pursuit of the lifestyle promised by corporate and governmental research empires had earned the contempt of his fellow students, but he hadn't cared, and the wealth and—especially—power he craved had been just within his reach... until Dahak and the explosion of Imperial science snatched them away.

  Gretsky felt his jaw ache and made himself relax it. Overnight, he'd been transformed from a man on the cutting edge to an aborigine trying to understand that the strange marks on the missionary's white paper actually had meaning. He'd had the stature to be included in the first implant education programs, and, for a time during the Siege, he'd thought he might catch the crest of this new wave as he had the old. But once the emergency was past, Darin Gretsky had realized a horrible thing: he'd become no more than a technician. A flunky using knowledge others had amassed. Knowledge, he'd been forced to admit with bowel-churning hatred, he didn't truly understand.

  It had almost destroyed him... and it had destroyed the life he'd planned. He'd become but one more of the thousands of Terra-born scientists exploring millennia of someone else's research and watching it invalidate much of what they'd believed was holy writ. There were no fellow students whose work he might steal, and it couldn't matter less who "published first." And worst of all, the ones for whom he'd felt contempt—the naive ones to whom it was knowledge itself which mattered—were better at it than he. The Terra-born scientists exploring the rarefied stratosphere of the Fourth Empire's tech base came from their number, and there was no room for Darin Gretsky save as one more hewer of wood and drawer of water in the dust about their feet.

  But things would change once more, and his smile grew ugly at the thought. His work here had filled his secret bank account with enough Imperial credits to buy the life he'd always craved, and that was good, yet far more satisfying to his wounded soul was what his work could bring about. He didn't know how it would be used, but contemplating the cataclysmic power of the device he'd built gave him an almost sexual thrill. It had taken longer than he'd expected, and he'd had to reinvent the wheel a time or two to work around components that didn't exist, but money had been no object, and he'd succeeded. He'd succeeded, and someday soon, unless he was sadly mistaken, his handiwork would topple the smug cretins who'd pushed him aside.

  He gave the workshop one more glance, then walked down the hall to the office in which he became not Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, but one more freelance consultant helping Terran industry cope with the flood of concepts pouring like water from the new Imperial Patent Office. Even that was merely picking the bones of the dead past, he thought acidly. Emperor Colin—the title was an epithet in his soul—had declared all civilian Imperial technology public knowledge, held by the Imperial government and leased at nominal fees to any and all users. The free flow of information was unprecedented, and old, well-established firms were being challenged by thousands of newcomers as the manna tumbled down and imagination became more important than mere capital.

  He hated the people he worked for. Hated all the bright-eyed, smiling people reaching out for the new world which had robbed him. He had to hide that, but not for much longer. Soon what he'd wrought would—

  He looked up in surprise as the office door opened, for it was after midnight. The well-groomed young woman in the doorway looked at him with an odd little smile and raised her eyebrows.

  "Dr. Gretsky?" He nodded. "Dr. Darin Gretsky?" she pressed.

  "Yes. What can I do for you, Ms.—?" He paused, waiting for her name, and she reached into her outsized purse.

  "I have a message for you, Doctor." Something in her voice set off a distant alarm, and his muscles tightened as the door opened once more and four or five men stepped through it. "A message from the Sword of God."

  He leapt to his feet as her hand came out of the purse, but the last thing Darin Gretsky ever saw was the white, bright glare of a muzzle flash.

  * * *

  Lawrence Jefferson closed the report and leaned back
in his swivel chair with a thoughtful expression. Over the past decade he'd assumed ever more of Horus's day-to-day responsibilities, freeing the Governor to concentrate on policy issues, and Gus van Gelder reported directly to him on routine matters now, which was a very useful thing, indeed.

  He swung his chair gently from side to side, considering his strategy yet again in light of the latest report. The Sword of God was becoming quite a headache, he thought cheerfully. They were growing bolder, applying all the lessons of the terrorist organizations Colin MacIntyre and his fellows had smashed, and they were far harder to destroy. These terrorists knew the strengths—and weaknesses—of the Imperial technology opposed to them, and none of the security people trying to defeat them suspected their most priceless advantage. Knowledge was power, and through Gus van Gelder, Lawrence Jefferson knew exactly what moves were being made against his tools.

  For example, he knew Gus was getting uncomfortably close to Francine. Gus didn't know it yet, but Jefferson did, and so Bishop Hilgemann was driving the Sword from the Church of the Armageddon. The excesses of zealotry must be forever anathema to the godly, and she was horrified by the thought that such misguided souls might be numbered among her flock. They must recognize the error of their ways or be cut off from the body of the faithful, for they had embraced a fundamental error. Hatred for the Achuultani and all other works of the Anti-Christ was every godly person's duty, but that hate must not be extended to the leadership which stood against the foe. Rather the errors of that leadership must be addressed nonviolently, by prayer and remonstrance, lest all the undeniable good it had achieved be lost, as well.

  It was all very touching, and it had Gus a bit confused, since he didn't know about the conduits through which she directed those same zealots. What Gus hadn't quite grasped yet was that the Sword no longer required the infrastructure of the Church. No doubt Gus would figure it out, but by then it should be too late to find any institutional links to Bishop Hilgemann.

  * * *

  Security Councilor van Gelder nodded to the Marine sentry as the elevator deposited him on an upper floor of White Tower. He walked down the hall and knocked on the frame of an open door.

  "Busy?" he asked when the man behind the desk looked up.

  "Not terribly." Lieutenant Governor Jefferson rose courteously, waving to a chair, then sat again as van Gelder seated himself. "What's up?"

  "Horus still on Birhat?"

  "Well, yes." Jefferson leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin, and raised his eyebrows. "He's not scheduled to return until tomorrow night. Why? Has something urgent come up?"

  "You might say that," van Gelder said. "I've finally got a break on the Sword of God."

  "You have?" Jefferson's chair snapped upright, and van Gelder smiled. He'd thought Jefferson would be glad to hear it.

  "Yes. You know how hard it's been to break their security. Even when we manage to take one or two of them alive, they're so tightly compartmented we can't ID anyone outside the cell they come from. But I've finally managed to get one of my people inside. I haven't reported it yet—we're playing her cover on a strict need-to-know basis—but she's just been tapped to serve as a link in the courier chain to her cell's main intelligence pipeline."

  "Why, that's wonderful, Gus!" Jefferson cocked his head, considering the implications, then rubbed his blotter gently. "How soon do you expect this to pay off?"

  "Within the next few weeks," van Gelder replied, smothering a small, familiar spurt of exasperation. Jefferson couldn't help it any more than any other bureaucratic type, but even the best of them had a sort of institutional impatience that irritated intelligence officers immensely. They couldn't appreciate the life-and-death risks his field people ran, and a "why can't we move quicker on this?" mind-set seemed to go with their jobs.

  "Good. Good! And you want to report this directly to Horus?"

  "Yes. As I say, I've been running this agent very carefully. I'm the only one in the shop who knows everything about the job, and I just got her report this afternoon. Horus and I set the concept up several months ago, and I need to let him know what's happening before I brief anyone on my staff."

  "I see. Do you have a formal report for him, then?"

  "Not a formal one, but—" van Gelder reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small security file "—these are my briefing notes."

  "I see." Jefferson regarded the security file thoughtfully. Such files were keyed to randomly generated implant access codes when they were sealed. Any attempt to open them without those codes would reduce the chips within them to useless slag.

  "Well, as I say, he won't be back until tomorrow night. Is this really urgent? I mean—" he waved his hand apologetically at van Gelder's slightly affronted expression "—are we facing a time pressure problem so we have to get the word to him immediately?"

  "It's not exactly a crisis, but I'd like to brief him as soon as possible. I don't want to be too far from the office in case something breaks, but maybe I should mat-trans out to Birhat and catch him there. If he agrees, I could brief Colin and Jiltanith, too."

  "That might be a good idea," Jefferson mused, then paused with an arrested air. "In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think we ought to get it to him ASAP. It's the middle of the night in Phoenix right now, but I'm already scheduled to mat-trans out tomorrow morning their time. Could I drop your notes off with him, or is he going to need a personal briefing?"

  "We do need to discuss it," van Gelder said thoughtfully, "but the basic information's in the notes... . In fact, it might help if he had them before we sat down to talk."

  "Then I'll take them out with me, if you like."

  "Fine." Van Gelder handed over the file with a grin. "Never thought I'd be using a courier quite this secure!"

  "You flatter me." Jefferson slid the file into his own pocket. "Does Horus have the file access code?"

  "No. Here—" Van Gelder flipped his feed into Jefferson's computer and used it to relay the code to the Lieutenant Governor, then wiped it from the computer's memory. "I hope you don't talk in your sleep," he cautioned.

  "I don't," Jefferson assured him, rising to escort him to the door. He paused to shake his hand. "Again, let me congratulate you. This is a tremendous achievement. I'm sure there are going to be some very relieved people when they get this information."

  Chapter Thirteen

  "We've got another one, Admiral."

  Ninhursag MacMahan grimaced and took the chip from Captain Jabr. She dropped it into the reader on her desk, and the two of them watched through their neural feeds as the report played itself to them. When it ended, she sighed and shook her head, trying to understand how the slaughter of nineteen power service employees possibly served the "holy" ends of the Sword of God.

  "I wish we'd gotten at least one of them," she said.

  "Yes, Ma'am." Jabr rubbed his bearded jaw, dark eyes hard. "I would have liked to entertain those gentlemen myself."

  "Now, now, Sayed. We can't have you backsliding to your bloodthirsty Bedouin ancestors. Not that you might not be onto something." She drummed on her desk for a moment, then shrugged. "Pass it on to Commander Wadisclaw. It sounds like part of his bailiwick."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  Captain Jabr carried the chip away, and Ninhursag rubbed weary eyes, propped her chin in cupped palms, and stared sightlessly at the wall.

  The "Sword of God's" escalating attacks worried her. One or two, like the one on Gus, had hurt them badly, and even the ones that weren't doing that much damage—except, she amended with a wince, to the people who died—achieved the classic terrorist goal of proving they could strike targets despite the authorities. Open societies couldn't protect every power station, transit terminal, and pedestrian belt landing, but anyone with the IQ of a rock knew that, and at least this time humanity seemed to have learned its lesson. Not even the intellectuals were suggesting the Sword might, for all its deplorable choice of tactics, have "a legitimate demand" to give it
some sort of sick quasirespectability. Yet as long as these animals were willing to select targets virtually at random, no analyst could predict where they'd strike next, and they were killing people she was supposed to protect. Which was why they had to get someone inside the Sword if they ever expected to stop them.

  She winced again as her roving thoughts reminded her of the single agent they had gotten inside. Janice Coatsworth had been an FBI field agent before the Siege, and Gus had been delighted to get her. She'd been one of his star performers—one of his "aces" as he called them—and she'd died the same day he had. Somehow she'd been made by the Sword, and they'd dumped what was left of her body on Gus's lawn the same day they killed him, his wife, and two of their four children. Four of his personal security staff had died, as well, two of them shielding his surviving children with their own bodies.

  Ninhursag's eyes were colder and harder by far than Captain Jabr's had been. If anything could be called a "legitimate" terrorist target, it was certainly the head of the opposing security force, but she'd been as astounded as any by the attack. Indeed, the van Gelder murders had shaken everyone into a reevaluation of the Sword's capabilities, for Gus's security had been tight. Penetrating it had taken meticulous planning.

  She chewed her lip and frowned over a familiar, nagging question. Why was the Sword so... spotty? One day they carried out a meaningless massacre of defenseless power workers and left clues all over the countryside; on another they executed a precision attack on a high-security target and left the forensic people damn-all. She knew the Sword was intricately compartmented, but did it have a split personality, too? And where had a bunch of yahoos who could be as clumsy as that power station attack gotten a tight, cellular organization in the first place? Anyone who could put that together could choose more effective targets, and hit them more cleanly, too.