It was Parnell’s and Stimson’s fifth night on Il Refugio. They were in the sitting room with Bouchard and Prieto after dinner. Turley and Gulliver had complained of work to do, and gone back to the guesthouse early.
Bouchard had not worn the little black dress and heels since that first memorable dinner. She was dressed tonight, as the last three nights, in slacks and blouse with a jacket over. She also wore a curious cap with a studded hatband, which she nevertheless made look chic. Comfortable flats rounded out her wardrobe.
“Well, at least the capital has quieted down in the last couple of days,” Prieto said. “Really, I didn’t see how they could maintain that level of intensity with the plebiscite still so far off, but still, it’s nice to see it.”
“I don’t like that it’s so quiet,” Bouchard said. “It makes me nervous. It’s like they’ve paused waiting for something to happen.”
Prieto laughed.
“Is that why you’re dressed for business tonight. I think you give them too much credit, Marie. Too much credit for being much more organized than they are.”
“I just wonder what they’re up to,” Bouchard said.
“You really think something is in the works, Marie?” Parnell said.
“Yes, Chad. I just wonder what the hell it is. It’s bound to be unpleasant, whatever it is.”
Bouchard stopped and tilted her head.
“I had a momentary drop-out on a security sensor. Like from a VR suppressor. Something’s up.”
She stood up, and both guns were in her hands. Parnell also stood up, looking around.
There was a gunshot in the hallway.
“DOWN!” Bouchard yelled.
Parnell leapt across the space between him and Prieto, who was sitting in a straight chair next to a side table. She was smoking and she was using the ashtray on the side table. Parnell took her down by taking the chair over backwards, and looked back to the center of the room. He saw that Stimson had hit the deck as well.
Doors burst open on two sides of the room, but Bouchard already had her guns up, pointing at the doors, and she opened fire. In each doorway, the first man in line fell, tripping up the others, but bullets flew across the room as the bunched-up intruders tried to fire from the doorways.
Standing in the middle of it all was Bouchard. She moved like a ballet dancer, her arms out from her sides, turning and moving, the guns in her hands firing in double-tap cadence, again and again and again, as she moved.
She was become the Angel of Death.
Turley and Gulliver heard the gunshots in the guesthouse, in which they had the windows open on this pleasant evening. Turley had dressed down into her MCU, her comfortable clothes of choice after so many years. She shot up out of her chair.
“Get an ID scanner,” she called to Gulliver.
She popped the camera cap onto her head and exited the room through one of the open side windows.
Gulliver hesitated for one second as gunshots continued to ring out, then headed for the bedroom to get one of the VR ID scanners. On second thought, make it two.
There was nothing whatsoever he could add to the mayhem Bouchard and Turley could deliver, except to get in their way.
Turley dialed her cameras down into the infrared and she ejected both pistols from her forearm rigs into her hands.
There would be a backup team. At least there would be if she were planning it. Where would they be? Not from landward, they had to come in from the sea. The very steepest part of the cliff was to the south, ahead of her. They would come up there, go down that path, spread out to cover the escape....
Turley moved through the shadows, listening, watching. There would be at least five on a fire team, she thought. Perhaps as many as eight. If they were covering the exit, they should spread out about there.
She moved toward the cliff edge and edged along it in the darkness, coming around behind where she expected them to be. She stepped around the corner of a garden wall and saw them in an arc facing the house, protecting their escape route, which must go right past where she was standing.
She double-tapped them all from the outside in with both hands, then worked her way back on the stragglers until they were all down.
Another infrared image came running up behind her and she spun around.
“It’s me! Don’t shoot,” Gulliver yelled.
He handed her a VR ID scanner, then ran on toward the main house.
Turley dropped her pistols in her MCU pockets and moved in to scan the VR IDs of their attackers.
The gunshots in the main house had stopped by the time Gulliver came running into the side door from the gardens. He had his own semi-auto pistol from his forearm rig in his hand as he came down the hallway and turned through the open sitting room door.
Bouchard was in the middle of the room, smoking pistols in both hands and a wild look in her eye. The attackers had come in multiple doors and there were bodies piled up in the doorways.
“Marie, it’s Paul,” Gulliver said as she spun to face him.
Bouchard lowered her pistols and sighed.
“Did Ann get the backup team? Is that what I heard outside?”
“Yes. All taken care of.”
“Good.”
Bouchard dropped both pistols on the sofa and moved to assist Parnell, who was helping her mother get disentangled from the chair and get up off the floor.
“Is everybody OK. Any injuries? Sound off.”
“I’m all right,” Bouchard said.
“I’m OK,” Prieto said. “Just a little bumped around.”
“I’m all right,” Stimson said as he got up off the floor.
“I’m fine,” Parnell said.
Parnell looked over to Bouchard.
“If you’re all right, why are you bleeding?”
Bouchard looked down. She was bleeding from high on the left thigh, the stain showing through the grey pants.
“I never felt it,” she said.
“You wouldn’t,” Parnell said.
Bouchard sat in a chair and Parnell cut the pants leg open with a penknife to see the wound.
“Skinned it. Another sixteenth of an inch and it would have missed you entirely.”
“Just one hit, then?” Bouchard asked.
“Well, that and these two hits in your jacket. Here and here.”
He pointed out the holes, two entry holes and two exit holes on the right side of her jacket. The rounds had missed her.
“Close. Too close. I told you it was too quiet, Mother.”
“I never would have dreamed anyone would be this bold,” Prieto said.
Gulliver was scanning the VR IDs of the bodies before the nanites shut down operations now that their host was dead. He got six good IDs from the eight attackers. The other two’s VR systems were too mangled from head shots to scan. He stood up finally at the last body and caught Prieto and Bouchard talking.
“All this?” Prieto asked. “Over the annexation plebiscite? It’s incredible.”
Gulliver and Parnell looked at each other, and Parnell raised an eyebrow. Gulliver just nodded.
It was late morning in Imperial City. Hayes took the meeting request.
“Hello, Mr. Hayes.”
“Hello, Governor Turley. How are you?”
“We’ve been better, Mr. Hayes. There’s been an assassination attempt here on the planetary president. At least we think it was on the planetary president. There was another occupant of the room, however, and we don’t know if that person may have been the target. Nobody was hurt except the attackers, and all sixteen of them are dead.”
“Sixteen attackers? My God.”
“Yes. Two fire teams. We wondered if you could have Investigations do the same thing for this as they did for the Dalnimir attack on me and Mr. Gulliver. You know, Mr. Hayes. Track the money. Make sure, for instance, that it didn’t come from, say, Stanton Sector or Vandalia Sector.”
“Stanton or Vandalia? You’re serious.”
“Yes, Mr.
Hayes. Given who else was in the room....”
Hayes’s eyes widened.
“I understand, Governor Turley. Do you have VR IDs for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Hayes. Thirteen of them.”
Turley pushed the IDs to Hayes in VR.
“We’re on it, Governor Turley.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hayes.”
Hayes hung up the call and considered. He didn’t even know where ‘here’ was. Gulliver and Turley had disappeared completely ten years ago. They ran Section Six, but from where God alone knew. Well, this investigation would tell him where they were at least. Now, how to phrase the request to Investigations so they didn’t put two and two together.
Best to not mention anyone else at all. The planetary president had asked him to track it down as a favor. Given that the Empire took a dim view of assassination, that would be explanation enough.
Parnell tossed and turned that night. He kept seeing Bouchard, pirouetting and moving, her twin pistols barking a double-tap cadence, her grace as she moved, her deadly effect. He had watched spellbound at the time, and it kept coming back to him.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, this warrior woman, this dervish, protecting her charges, wreaking havoc on evil, become the very Angel of Death.
It clicked into place with what else he had seen of her, what she had said, how she had laughed, to become an integrated whole, an appreciation of all she was and could be.
He sighed and faced the terrible truth.
He was in love.
Bouchard put in a meeting request with Turley and Gulliver the next morning, and asked to meet with them both privately and personally, in the guest house. Turley sent a meeting acceptance for ten o’clock. That would give her and Gulliver a chance to take care of a couple things first, things where timeliness was required.
The butler showed her in at ten o’clock. Turley spoke to him.
“Coffee for three, please, George.”
“Of course, Ma’am.”
“Come in, Marie, come in. Have a seat.”
“Thanks, Paul.”
She sat, and she was obviously nervous. That fascinated Turley. What could possibly make this self-possessed young woman this nervous?
“Did you start an investigation into those VR IDs?” Bouchard asked.
“Yes. I asked for it last night. They should be twelve hours into it by now.”
“Through the night?”
“Well, it was morning when I called, but people in Investigations are weird. I think they only sleep between major cases.”
Bouchard nodded.
George came in with a tray with coffee and service for three.
“Shall I pour, Ma’am?”
“No, thank you, George. We’ve got it.”
“Very well, Ma’am.”
He slipped out as quietly as he had come in.
“You know, that was the first time I ever actually killed anyone. Before it was always just targets,” Bouchard said.
Was that what this was about?
“That’s why you train,” Turley said. “So that when the time comes, you don’t have to think about it. Any hesitation last night and you would all have been dead.”
Turley poured herself a cup of coffee, and added milk and sugar. A weakness, she knew, but she liked it sweet.
“Oh, I know. I don’t have any regrets about that. I would do it again in a second.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I know about your little deception, Ann.”
“You do? Which one is that, Marie?”
“I keep up on the newsfeeds. Months back, you asked me how to hide an Imperial Navy attack ship carrier. Did you know that Imperial Marine parasites have their mother ship stenciled on them?”
Turley looked across to Gulliver.
“We missed that,” Turley said.
“We sure did.”
“HMS Illustrious was all over the newsfeeds a month ago when it went missing,” Bouchard said. “But I know where it is, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s the Emperor you’ve brought here. To hide him.”
“Yes.”
Bouchard nodded, as if she had confirmed something in her own mind. She was still knotting and twining her fingers, though, Turley noticed. Where was this going?
“But that’s not what’s bothering you,” Turley said.
“No.”
Bouchard got up and started pacing.
“You two are in love, right?”
Turley blinked at the non sequitur.
“Yes. Very much so.”
“I’ve never been in love. Oh, I’m not inexperienced. And I’ve had plenty of people willing, believe me.”
Turley could believe that. She looked over to Gulliver. Just as Turley was about to say something, he raised a quelling hand on the arm of his chair. She waited.
Bouchard made another pass in her pacing, then spoke to the air in front of her as she walked.
“Last night, during the gunfight, I didn’t have any care for myself. Not even for my mother. I just kept thinking ‘I can’t let them kill him, I can’t let them kill him. They can kill me, but I can’t let them kill him.’”
She stopped pacing and turned to Turley.
“Is that love?”
She was looking at Turley, but it was Gulliver who answered.
“That’s the short definition, yes.”
“Then I’m in love with him,” Bouchard said flatly.
“With whom? The Emperor?” Turley asked.
“That pretty-boy? No. I’m in love with his pilot. Mr. Clemson.”
Turley’s mouth dropped open and her coffee cup slipped from her hand to spill unnoticed on the floor. Gulliver started laughing.
“What’s the matter?” Bouchard asked Turley.
“And why are you laughing?” she asked Gulliver.
It took Turley several seconds to find her tongue while a perplexed Bouchard looked back and forth between them.
“I’m afraid you don’t know all my deceptions, Marie. Mr. Carmell is the pilot. Mr. Clemson is the Emperor.
Bouchard’s eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted dead away, falling sprawled on the carpeted floor.
Bouchard came back to consciousness laid out on the sofa in the living room of the guesthouse. Paul Gulliver was holding an amyl nitrate popper under her nose. Gradually her head cleared and she remembered Ann Turley’s terrible revelation. She started to cry.
Gulliver helped her into a sitting position and gave her a napkin from the coffee tray. She wiped her eyes and started to settle down.
“I’m in love with the Emperor?” Bouchard asked tearfully.
“Yes, Marie,” Turley said.
“Shit.”
Bouchard started crying again.
“Marie. He’s good looking, he’s witty, he’s competent, and he’s the Emperor of all humanity. Could it be we’re setting our standards too high?”
“Yes, I know. And when the shooting started, he took my mother to the floor and covered her with his own body, not even thinking of himself. All that’s true, but I don’t want to be Empress. I don’t want to be shut up in a building the rest of my life. That would be horrible.”
“Ah. That. Well, I have a friend you might want to talk to about that. But it may not be a problem, you know. It takes two to tango, and he may not be in love with you.”
“Do you think so?” Bouchard asked hopefully, then darkened. “But that would be even worse. I think. Oh, I don’t know. I’m so confused.”
“Why don’t I find out for you where he stands?”
“Could you do that? Would you do that? Ann, I would be so grateful. I’ve never been in love. I’m completely at sea on this.”
“But what do you want the answer to be?”
“I don’t know,” Bouchard said. “I truly don’t.”
Several Inquiries
Later on that first day of the investigation, Sandy Hayes met with J
enny Beecher, the head of Investigations. She had been his second when he headed that organization, and had taken over the group when he was made Co-Consul ten years before.
He logged into the investigation map in VR. Beecher was waiting for him there.
“What have you got for me, Jenny?”
“This was a request from the planetary president, Sandy?”
“Yes. Assassination attempt.”
“The planet must be Verano. That’s not even in the Empire. It’s a Western colony. President is one Morena Prieto, who is in the middle of her third four-year term. They have the plebiscite vote coming up in a couple years, and it’s turning nasty.”
Beecher got up from her seat and pointed out features in the investigation map, a three-dimensional representation of the information discovered so far in the investigation. It was comprised of hundreds of nodes linked by different-colored lines.
“Here at the bottom we see the thirteen attackers on whom you gave us VR IDs. We’ve been able to determine the other three from what we’ve tracked down so far. These three here.”
Beecher pointed out the other three of the attackers to Hayes, then turned and spoke to the map.
“Display red and green contacts and connections only.”
The display changed, with the red and green links remaining and the other links and nodes fading to grey.
“If you look at just the money flows, you can see the payments made to the attackers. Some of these payments were advance payments for the assassination attempt itself, and some were for other activities.”
“What other activities?” Hayes asked.
“We’re not sure, Sandy. I would assume political dirty tricks of various sorts. Perhaps organizing demonstrations or something like that. It’s gotten pretty hot over there. The thing to notice, though, is all this is local money.”
“No money coming in from Imperial sources? No involvement of anyone in the Empire?”
“Not yet, Sandy. It looks like a completely local job.”
“All right, Jenny. Thanks. Give me an update first thing tomorrow morning, if you would. My primary interest is in whether or not anybody in the Empire is involved, and secondarily in who the ringleaders of the dirty stuff are out there.”
EMPIRE: Succession Page 10
