“You are alive at Jaenna’s request,” Haranyi told me. “Talk.”
I looked up at him and, surprisingly, wasn’t afraid. “A friend of mine was killed tonight bringing me the news that you are a liar,” I said as soon as I was able to draw a breath.
“You expect to stay alive by talking like that?” he asked.
“No, but if you kill me for it, you’ll prove what I said to Jaenna. Unless you plan to kill her too.” At first, my mouth had been moving on sheer bravado. When Haranyi responded with that question, however, my tactical sense took over. There is an art to talking one’s way out of situations, from speeding tickets to returning husbands. Haranyi was going to try to avoid killing me, if only because Jaenna had come with me.
Haranyi’s first response was a snort. Then he said, “So, you come here to kill me for it.”
“No.” The thought had crossed my mind, given different circumstances, but there was no advantage to be gained by mentioning it.
“Sneaking into my house does not suggest that you wanted to talk.”
“I had to be certain we reached you.”
He snorted again. “For that you could have come to the front door. Jaenna could have told you that.”
“She did. But times change and I wanted to be sure. I’m stubborn that way.”
“Stupid, too.” Insults, I could take. What was important was that he backed off and let me sit up on the floor. Miraculously, everything moved on command. From my seat, I could see Jaenna still in the entrance to the room.
“All right, freebooter,” he said, “tell me why I’m a liar.”
“You told us that you had searched for Norboh and learned nothing. Yet my friend learned from one of your guards that Norboh is alive in the city. He heard another guard threaten his source with retribution from you for mentioning it. It wouldn’t happen if you know nothing.” Thankfully, I didn’t need, any longer, to mention Valaria’s comment about the intensity of the search.
“Haranyi?” Jaenna’s question was almost a gasp. She sagged in the doorway as though hit by a punch.
That one plaintive word did what I could not. It took the starch out of Haranyi. It was an old Srihani, not a fighter, who sat back down in the chair.
“You give me a choice of which trust to violate,” he sighed. “Maybe you aren’t quite so stupid, freebooter.”
“Did you lie to us, Haranyi?” Jaenna’s voice half strangled itself as she spoke.
“I did.”
Neither of us was prepared for such an abrupt admission. After a tense silence, Jaenna asked him why he had lied.
“Lying is intrinsic to government and politics. What you mean,” he corrected her, “is why would I lie to someone as close to me as my own son ever was?” Jaenna nodded. “Very well. Norboh is alive and in the city. Denying that would be pointless now. If I tell you the truth, Jaenna, will you vouch for this freebooter? With your life will you vouch for him?”
“Yes.”
There was pain on Haranyi’s face. “You know that I have owed Norboh a great personal debt for my son. There is nothing secret about it. A while ago, Norboh came to me in fear. He believed that he was being set up for assassination. Where his information came from, I don’t know, but he felt that Tyaromon expected to benefit from the appearance of sticking to his policy even in the face of losing two key advisors. We concluded that Norboh’s best chance was to be slipped onto a Fleet ship in the confusion after the ceremony. I arranged for a hiding place and guards to watch over him. Obviously, I cannot admit to this publicly.”
Publicly, Norboh was dead and Tyaromon was playing it for political advantage. That fit. As cold-blooded as it sounded, having met Tyaromon, I could believe it. So Angel had died to cover up a fabrication designed to cover up another fabrication. That was a bitter pill to swallow. But, if true, why had it been so important for us to see Norboh?
Haranyi wasn’t happy when I told him that we had to see Norboh. He protested, quite reasonably, that the fewer people who knew of Norboh’s location, the better it was. He had limited the number of guards at the Residence who knew the truth, and those had strict orders to maintain secrecy. In fact, as he told it, Angel’s death probably resulted from the enforcement of those orders. Still, Angel had died telling us to see Norboh. I wasn’t going to tell Haranyi that, so I insisted that I couldn’t accept his explanations without seeing Norboh. Jaenna backed my stance, and it was her insistence that made him give in.
For the trip, Haranyi supplied us with an aircar and a driver. He did not give us Norboh’s location. The pilot was waiting when we arrived in a tiny clearing only a few hundred feet from the house. It made me wonder whether Haranyi kept one on call at all times. Haranyi ordered him to take us to Norboh and as soon as we were strapped in, he lifted off with an acceleration that had stars dancing in front of my eyes.
The pilot swung north once we had left the Residence to avoid flying to near the spaceport, then arced back toward the city proper. That little car was fast. I doubt we had been airborne more than fifteen minutes before we began to close in on the city towers. Where Kordon on Calldlamm had been striking in its beauty, Seerie, the capital city of Kaaran, stood out by its size. The central portion of the city was a mountain of glowing towers, with a pair of twin peaks set close together, a saddle of slightly lower buildings between them. It was only when we came closer that I realized that the area covered by the towers was at least as large as Manhattan and that many of the towers were over a half-mile high. Aircar traffic flitted around and between the buildings, but our pilot didn’t head for them. Instead, he banked toward an area where the buildings rapidly tapered to three and four stories tall.
There was little traffic in that area and there were fewer lights. We landed after a steep dive. Once down, the aircar functioned like a standard hovercar. From ground level, this part of the city was very unprepossessing. Streetlights were out and there was litter in the street. Some of the buildings sported broken windows. There wasn’t a soul on the street. It seemed that even in the biggest city of one of the richest worlds of the Galactic Empire, there were slums.
The driver stopped the car at a restaurant. The place looked grimy even in the dim streetlight. There were few lights and no customers evident inside.
The driver turned and spoke his first words of the evening. “Stay in the car,” he said. “I’ll make certain it is secure.”
I could see movement inside the restaurant after he went in, but could not make out anyone else. He was gone only a few minutes.
Returning to the car, he said, “It’s clear. Walk slowly to the main entrance. Make sure that your hands are visible at all times. I’ll stay here to guard the car.” It dawned on me that he was wearing a blaster.
Inside the restaurant, Jaenna and I were met by a burly Srihani in civilian clothes. The blaster he covered us with, however, was identical to the ones Haranyi’s guards carried. After he was satisfied of our identity, he introduced himself as Anders and lowered the blaster.
I looked around. If that joint had ever been a restaurant, it had been a long time ago. The front room was empty and dust-covered. Anders led us to a door at the back. Another Srihani in the doorway had also been covering us with a blaster. Behind him, a small room had been set up as a sleeping area. There were three more Srihani in it. One of them rose as we entered.
“Norboh!” Jaenna exclaimed.
He was a tall, gaunt Srihani whose skin had a yellowish cast. Thinning gray hair topped a face whose cheekbones cast shadows on the skin below them. Still, this human husk managed a genuine smile.
“Jaenna and the freebooter Captain,” he said. “I’m glad you came.”
That surprised me. “You sound as though you were expecting us,” I said.
Norboh gave me another look, the sort used by someone who knows more than you do. “Credit me with knowing my trade,” he said. “I’m able to obtain news of the Residence through the guards Haranyi sends. There’s no reason for them not to
speak to me. I heard you were here and I heard that one of your crew had inquired about me. It was easy to pass a message back that you should be brought to see me.”
Somewhere in the middle his words ceased to make sense. Maybe that was how Norboh thought we had come to see him, but it didn’t coincide with the facts that I knew. Jaenna looked confused too. I told Norboh, in brief, how we had really come to see him. As I did, his smile disappeared.
“That is not good news,” he said. “Do you know who did the killing?”
“No,” I said.
I was going to leave it at that, but Jaenna added, “Haranyi said that the guards have orders to prevent leaks about you. He thinks it happened that way.”
“Let us hope so,” Norboh replied. “If it was by anyone else, there is likely to be more trouble soon. I think that we three need to have a serious talk.”
“You will get no objection from either of us,” I told him. “Go right ahead.”
“Not here,” he said. Then he turned to the guards. “Anders, I need to talk alone with these two. Have the guard outside bring the car up to block off the entrance to the back alley. Then see that the front and rear doors here are secured. We will be out back for a little while.”
“At your order.”
Norboh led us to another door and into a narrow alley behind the restaurant. It was almost pitch-black outside. Neither of the moons was high in the sky and little light from the few streetlights that functioned penetrated to the alleyway. The whole alley was cluttered with trash and rubble. Norboh led us into the deeper gloom, then halted.
“I hate to ask,” I said, “but how safe is this place? This doesn’t look like the best of neighborhoods.”
Norboh chuckled. “It’s actually quite safe here. This part of the city is quite old and some time ago it became apparent that it was too expensive to maintain it. Clearing it would be almost as much trouble, so it was just cordoned off. Were you alone in this section, it would be very unsafe. Misfits and outlaws tend to accumulate in such areas. But we make certain that no one is in the immediate vicinity here. I don’t trust the guards to hear what I must say, and I would expect Haranyi to have the interior under surveillance.”
“Fine,” I said. “So it’s better to talk in the dark in a trash-filled alley. About what?”
“I must ask you both a question first,” he said. “I have heard that you have fought for the empire. Will you do it again?”
The question sounded like a trap. “I have an Imperial commission,” I said carefully. I couldn’t see Norboh’s face, but there was no immediate response.
“He is telling the truth, Norboh,” Jaenna said. “You may rely on it.”
“The question I asked was whether you will fight for the empire. Plenty of people have Imperial commissions.”
“We will,” Jaenna said. I wouldn’t have agreed so readily. In fact, that was the whole point of my first ambiguous answer. I knew Jaenna, unlike many Imperials, would not lightly betray her word.
Norboh obviously knew it as well because he said, “Good, that is what I needed to know. Here.” He handed me a small pouch that appeared to contain a memory card. “Originally I planned to have Haranyi’s guards smuggle me onto one of the Fleet boats after the ceremony. It was a risky plan, but it offered a quantifiable chance of success. You two, however, should have no trouble reaching your boat tonight. Even if the worst is true and your friend’s body has been found, I doubt they would stop you at the port tonight. From your boat, you can contact the Fleet.”
“Slow down a moment, Norboh. I’m not following you. Why should we be contacting the Fleet and what is this that you handed me?”
“That is the fate of the civilized galaxy that you have in your hands,” he said.
Chapter 25
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Briefly, I wondered if Norboh’s real problem was paranoid schizophrenia.
He disillusioned me quickly. “What it means,” he said, “is that the card contains, among other things, the evidence that it was Tyaromon who arranged the trap for the emperor at Albane.”
This time the exclamations of shock came from both Jaenna and myself. “Norboh, that makes no sense at all,” she said. “My father has always led the independent worlds in support of emperor and empire. That goes back even to the days when we scarcely had an emperor to support. You, of all people, should know that.”
“I should know that, yes. Well, all that is true on the surface; it may well have been true in reality once. I can’t say how far back the treachery goes. It may have been no older than the accession of Jerem, a strong emperor for the first time in ages, who displaced Tyaromon from his position as a preeminent leader. Jerem, you will remember, kept his main strength at Triuvir. Before Jerem, Triuvir was nothing more than an old Fleet base in the Outer Empire. I’m sure that offended Tyaromon. But,” and his voice hardened as he said it, “the reasons do not matter. The truth is that Tyaromon achieved a rapprochement with Carrillacki and, because he was trusted, was instrumental in placing Jerem in an untenable position on Albane. This tie is his reward and, ultimately, it will serve to undermine the empire, not reinforce it. You know Kaaran’s importance. Think what another well-timed betrayal will do.”
I thought about it. I thought about the bombs at Lussern. I thought about Donnar saying that Kaaran’s alliance with Duromond could tip the balance of power. Which way?
“Jerny knew of the plan,” Norboh continued. “He advised Tyaromon against it and then, foolishly, continued to oppose it. That’s why he was killed. Tyaromon had to remove him before he set up the trap at Albane. It was nicely done, too, except for the fact that I stumbled upon Jerny’s data and then did some investigating of my own. That’s why I’m here tonight.”
“A nice story, except for one thing,” I responded. “Why are you risking your life for the empire? You said Jerny was foolish to do so. Why should you?”
“Jerny was foolish to oppose Tyaromon openly,” Norboh said. “Do not mistake me, I have no great love for the empire. Only the Fleet dies willingly for that shred of memory they call empire. But think what this means. Jerem sought to end the Game of Empire. In doing so, he made Carrillacki realize that they might lose the power they have built up over all these years; they feared that enough that they dared to strike openly. Say this for Jerem’s plan: the Game of Empire is over. The Fleet is bracing for a fight. With Tyaromon planted like a poison tooth, Carrillacki will welcome an open break. They will draw all the kvenningari in, on one side or the other. I think they hope to dominate all of what will remain after the fighting. I must stop that.”
“And Haranyi is in on this too?” I asked. “He is hiding you from Tyaromon to get this to the Fleet?”
“Don’t be silly, freebooter. If Haranyi were siding with me, there would have been a coup by now. Haranyi knows only the story he related to you. It was plausible enough, and Haranyi needs to pay his debt badly enough, that he acted without checking my story too closely. I would not chance giving this story to Tyaromon’s commander.”
The story was at least consistent. I was almost ready to believe it, but something was niggling at the back of my mind. I couldn’t quite put it to words, but Jaenna did.
“Norboh, I will grant that you believe what you say, but it cannot be true,” Jaenna said. “You claim that Jerny was assassinated on my father’s orders because he opposed this Carrillacki scheme.” Norboh nodded. “That is wrong! Jerny came with me aboard Fireflower. He was killed during the freebooter attack. Lords of Space, Norboh, I saw him die! That was no planned assassination.”
There was anguish in Jaenna’s voice as she said that and in Norboh’s reply as well.
“Of course it was, Jaenna. Why do you think the ship was attacked in the first place? You were told that Jerny had decided to come with you. In fact, he was ordered to go by Tyaromon. Not so bluntly, of course. He was led to believe that Tyaromon wanted to help you but couldn’t do it openly.”
The gloom hid
the expression on Jaenna’s face, but I could hear the quaver in her voice. “You’re claiming that the whole attack was arranged to kill Jerny? Then why was Carvalho holding me for ransom? Why all that commotion about collecting a ransom if he was only paid to kill Jerny?”
“Because that was the cover,” Norboh said. “The freebooter was tipped that you were the prize, that a large ransom could be obtained. A few members of the crew were quietly paid to ensure that Jerny did not survive the action.”
“Oh.” Jaenna sounded as though she needed something to sit on, but there was nothing but the street. Quietly, she said, “When Valaria learns that I was used as the bait for this trap …” She paused. “He will explode. He will settle this score no matter who is involved.”
Norboh’s sharp, “Oh, come on, Jaenna,” interrupted her. “Valaria knew all about it,” he said. “It was his idea to set it up that way.”
Jaenna’s mouth dropped open.
“What did you think, Jaenna?” Norboh went on. “That Tyaromon had actually been talked into giving you a station to manage? Be realistic. Valaria is old enough to want his hands on real power, but he also knows that he either has to make a tie or wait for Tyaromon to die in order to get it. He’d gotten a reputation for listening too much to his little sister and, even if he didn’t see it for himself, I’m sure Tyaromon spelled it out for him. No one, Tyaromon least of all, would give him a position of real authority as long as it was suspected that he was leaning on you, especially since that military fossil, Haranyi, had trained you as a soldier. Getting rid of you took care of that. At the same time, he gave Tyaromon a nice solution to his problem with Jerny. As you see, Valaria is getting his reward.”
My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire Page 35
