The Court of a Thousand Suns

by Chris Bunch

  "Sr. Hakone."

  "This is a young man," Marr said, "who we believe will progress greatly. Captain Sten. And?"

  "Lisa Haines." Like most good cops, Lisa didn't believe in unnecessarily letting anyone know what she was.

  Hakone smiled at her, then effectively shut Lisa, Marr, and Senn out of the conversation. "You command the Emperor's bodyguard, isn't that correct?"

  Sten nodded.

  "It must be interesting work."

  "It's… different," Sten said neutrally.

  "Different? What were you doing previously?"

  Sten's background, as a member of the Emperor's Mantis Section, was of course never to be admitted. For that period his record showed service on some far worlds, enough to justify a double row of medal ribbons that had been won for far stealthier and dirtier deeds.

  "Guards. Mostly out in the pioneer sectors."

  "Unusual," Hakone said, "for someone—and I mean no offense—as young as yourself to be picked for your current post."

  "I guess they needed somebody who could climb up and down all those stairs in the palace without having heart failure."

  "You have a mentor," Hakone pursued.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Never mind. Captain, may I ask you something frankly?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I note from your ribbons that you've seen combat. And now you're here. At the heart of the Empire. Do you like what you see?"

  "I don't understand."

  "You joined the service, I assume, like all of us. Expecting something. Expecting that you were serving a cause."

  "I guess so." Sten knew damned well why he'd joined—to get the hell off the factory world known as Vulcan and to save his own life.

  "When you look around"—and Hakone's expansive hand took in the bejeweled Court denizens that had flocked to the party—"does this match what you expected?"

  Sten kept his face blank.

  "Don't you find this all a little, perhaps decadent?"

  Not a chance, Sten's answer should have been. Not when you come from a world where boys and girls go into slavery at three or four. But that wasn't the right thing to say. "Sorry to be so thick, Sr. Hakone," Sten said, "but on the world I come from, animals are normal sex partners."

  Hakone's face flashed disgust, then he realized. "You joke, Captain."

  "Not very well."

  "Do you read?"

  "When I have the leisure."

  "Perhaps at another time we can discuss this further. In the meantime, I would like to send you some of my works. Will you receive them at the palace?"

  Sten nodded. Hakone bowed formally and turned away. Sten looked after him. Question: Why would the guest of honor decide to look him up? And then stand there and play games? The evening was increasingly surprising.

  The party was ending on a muted note. It had gone from a mass of egos forced together to a swirl of excuses for other appointments. Sten and Lisa, not being very experienced in Prime World high society, were among the last to add themselves to the swarm of beings making polite exit.

  Marr grabbed them just before they hit the pneumotube to their sled. "Too soon, my loves," he cried. "Much too soon."

  And he latched on to their hands and began pulling them back through the crowd. Sten tensed—soldiers, like cats, don't look back. He felt equal tension through Lisa's fingers. Somehow that made him feel more at ease and very close to her. It was a sharing of distrust. "Really, Marr," Sten said. "We gotta go. We both have duty tomorrow, and there really isn't time for—"

  Marr broke in with a sniff. "As you might say, clot duty. And as for time—that's just something the science types use to keep everything from happening at once."

  He pulled them forward, out of the crowd and into a long, pulsing yellow hallway. Sten hesitated once again, and then felt Lisa's fingers tense before tugging him on. They turned a corner and were instantly confronted with a tricolored split, tunnels leading in different directions. Marr urged them toward left—blue—and Sten realized from the tension in his calves that they were moving upward.

  "Senn and I have had our eye on you," Marr said. "Through the whole party. Both of you are a bit out of place, aren't you?"

  "I'm sorry," Sten apologized. "I'm not very used to—"

  Marr waved him down. "Don't be foolish. Our gatherings are not about social niceties. In fact, people's general appreciation is that we provide just the opposite."

  "Oh, my god," Lisa said. "I knew I'd foul this up." She glanced down and checked the gossamer that was her dress. "You can see through it, right? I knew I should have—"

  Sten pulled her close to him, shutting her off.

  "I think he's trying to tell us something else," he said.

  Marr pulled them onward, seemingly ignoring their hesitations. They rushed past rooms gleaming in haunting colors or dimmed to impossible shades of blackness. They were near the top level—the gallery section—and although the two guests didn't realize it, each room represented a fortune in art works. Scents and sounds slipped out, taunting, urging, but Marr pressed on, babbling all the time.

  "This is special," Sten realized Marr was saying, "Something only the two of you would understand. You'll see—see for yourselves—why Senn and I built our home here."

  The hallway suddenly blossomed into the open and Sten felt a soft, perfumed breeze.

  "See," Marr said. "See." He waved a small, furry arm around, taking in… everything.

  They were standing on what could most easily be described as a roof-top garden. Strange and exotic plants shadowed in close to them, nestling their bodies, caressing… what? Lisa, a bit fearfully, tucked in closer to Sten.

  "Through here," Marr said.

  And they followed him along a winding, darkened path. It was like walking through a series of bubbles. Scent and perfumed light tugging… tugging… and then bursting through into another pleasure. Sound, perhaps, or a combination of sound and light and tingling feeling. Sten felt Lisa's body loosen in his arms.

  Then the violin curve tensed and stopped. For a moment all Sten could feel and know was the swell of her hip. Marr was talking again, and as he talked, Sten found himself looking upward.

  "It only happens three times a year," Marr was saying.

  "A work of art that can only be seen, not purchased." He pointed to the shimmer of glaze that separated the roof garden from the real world.

  Sten saw the huddle of mountains, picked out by moonlight, that pressed in toward the dome sky. He shifted his weight and felt his leg brush a flower. There was a slight hiss of perfume, and he felt Lisa's body ignite his skin everyplace it touched.

  "Watch," Marr said.

  And Sten and Lisa watched. The crag of cliff side just beneath the moon suddenly darkened. It became a deeper and deeper blackness until it formed into a knotted, pulsing ball.

  "Wait," Marr droned. "Wait… wait."

  And then the black ball exploded. A soundless fury of storm clouds formed themselves into crayon swirls of black against the Prime World moon. Then they began to twist into a funnel shape that powered across the valley, hurling itself against the mountains on the other side of the valley.

  This, Sten and Lisa didn't see. Because all they could observe was the broad, open end of the funnel, sweeping across the lights of the night sky.

  It was over very quietly and softly. Somehow, Sten found himself holding Lisa in his arms. Above them, the dome was dark. Beneath them, the garden was shadow soft. Sten looked at Lisa, a dim halo of light, just below his height. "I…"

  Lisa held a finger to her lips. "Shhh," she whispered.

  He pulled her closer, and he felt the garden around him hush and soften even more…

  Marr and Senn watched the two lovers embracing under the dome. They cuddled closer in bed when they heard Lisa's soft "shhh."

  Senn turned to Marr and pulled him nearer. "There's only one thing nicer than a new love," he said.

  Marr palmed the switch and the vidscreen
went respectfully blank. He leaned over Senn. "An old love," he finished. "A very old love."

  As Sten tightened his embrace, he could almost feel Lisa blush a very unlieutenantlike blush. A hand on his chest gentled him away a step. And Sten watched as the white gown shimmered off. Then there was only Lisa.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "You clottin' incompetent," Lisa hissed at the corpse. Sten had an idea that if he and the spindar techs weren't present she might have kicked it a couple of times.

  Former Tac Chief Kreuger grinned up at them, blackened scavenger-gnawed flesh drawn back from his teeth. One arm had been torn off and, half-eaten, was lying almost five meters from the body, near the edge of the cliff.

  "You humans have the most unusual idea of sport," Spilsbury rumbled, his subarms tapping busily on a small computer keyboard. "What pleasure can conceivably be derived from the stalking and slaughter of fellow beings? Beyond me. Quite beyond me."

  "Sometimes they taste pretty good," Sten offered.

  "Cause of death?" Haines asked. She was not in the mood for philosophical discussion. The phone call had, fortunately, come not quite at the crucial moment, but rather early the next morning, just as Sten and Lisa were awake enough to be getting reinterested in each other again.

  "Hunting accident. We have an entry wound characteristic of that from a projectile weapon.

  "Plus—and this will please you, Lieutenant—there are no signs of an exit wound. I would assume the projectile remains in the body.

  "Shortly one of my offspring should have it retrieved for you. Cause of death, therefore, I would theorize as emanating from a hunting accident."

  "Very clottin' convenient," Haines said. Spilsbury's computer rattled, and the spindar handed the readout to the policewoman.

  "Time of death… time of death. Here." Haines mentally ran time back. "One cycle prior to the bombing."

  "Plus or minus three hours," Spilsbury said. "The precise time will be available momentarily."

  Haines started to say something else, and Sten nodded her away from the tech. They walked to the cliff edge.

  "Like you said, Lieutenant. Real convenient."

  Since it was the first time it had happened, Haines had been wondering just what one called a person you worked with who you'd just made love to. She decided Sten's reversion to formality was probably the most sensible. "Cops don't believe in coincidence," she said.

  "I don't either." Sten was trying to keep his theorizing under control. Coincidence did exist—every now and then.

  Spilsbury waddled up behind them, holding a vis-envelope out. "This is the projectile."

  Sten took the envelope. The projectile—a bullet—was evidently made of some fairly soft metal; its tip had mushroomed until the bullet was fully twice as wide at its tip as at its base.

  "I cannot identify the exact caliber," Spilsbury went on, "but it is indeed a hunting-type bullet.

  "From the entry wound it appears that the corpse turned to face down the mountain just before the bullet struck him.

  "It is a pity you humans were constructed with such soft epidermi, unlike more cleverly designed beings."

  "Yeah. Helluva pity," Sten said. "Lieutenant, do you have any idea what kind of critters they hunt on this preserve?"

  "Dangerous game."

  "Like what, exactly?"

  "I'll call the preserve center." She busied herself with a belt talker.

  Sten chewed on his lower lip. Haines, the talker to her ear, turned and began reciting the list of target game the preserve featured. Two or three times Sten had to ask particulars about an animal. Lisa finished the list and waited. Sten nodded at her, and she broke com.

  "Dangerous game," he said. "All designed to be real efficient."

  Lisa looked puzzled.

  "Efficient like the tech just said. Hairy, scaled, armored, or whatever. The kind of critter that'd take some serious killing."

  Haines still didn't get it.

  "When you are trying to stop something big and nasty, especially something that's got skin armor, you use a big bullet," Sten explained. In his Mantis career, there had been times he'd encountered said big and nasties in the performance of his duties and had to drop them. "A big bullet," Sten went on, "made out of some heavy dense alloy. You don't want the bullet to mushroom when it hits skin armor."

  Lisa took the envelope from Sten. "So you wouldn't want a nice soft slug like this one. Not unless you were hunting a nice, soft-skinned animal."

  "Like a man," Sten finished.

  "I don't like this, Captain. Not worth a drakh."

  Sten had to agree.

  "You know what my bosses are going to say," Haines continued, "when I report that Tactical Chief Kreuger was involved in this conspiracy? That he put a tac squad in position knowing what was going to happen—and then got his chest blown in as a payoff?"

  Sten looked at her, and knew that wasn't what the homicide detective was worried about. If one high-level police officer was involved, was he the only one?

  "Something tells me there's going to be more than one boss with his tail out of joint," Sten said.

  "Drakh, drakh, drakh, Captain. Come on, let's get back and see what else can ruin our day."

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Dynsman is our mad bomber," Lisa said glumly.

  Sten wondered why no joy, but that was less important than making sure the police identification was correct. He knew it would be far better to give the Emperor a "no report" than a wrong one. "Are we operating on a most-likely suspect or do we have the clot nailed?"

  "Nobody's ever nailed until they confess. But I don't see anybody else but Dynsman being the nominated party. Item: He's the only professional Prime World bomber who's unaccounted for."

  "How do you account for mad bombers?" Sten asked curiously.

  "People who blow things up for a living tend to get watched pretty closely by us," Haines said. "And since they tend to be self-eliminating, there aren't that many of them."

  "We're assuming that the bomber was a Prime World native?"

  "We've got to start somewhere—plus no outworlder who pays the rent that way has come to Prime World within the past year."

  "GA."

  "This Dynsman specializes in insurance jobs. Using military explosives."

  "Whoever blew the Covenanter used military demo."

  "Second, this clown's never been offworld in his life. A few cycles before Alain got hamburgered," Haines went on, "Dynsman was in hock to his eyebrows to every loan shark around.

  "Then he paid his debts and was flush. He hung out with the Psauri—don't bother asking: They're small-time lizards and even smaller-time crooks.

  "Suddenly he was picking up the tab and promising even bigger parties to come.

  "All at once he hit up every ten-percenter in Soward. Since he'd paid them off, his credit was good.

  "Then he disappeared."

  Sten ran through what Lisa'd given him. Contemplating, he walked to the railing of her "houseboat" and stared down at the forest below.

  Since housing on Prime World was at a shortage, and strictly controlled, some fairly creative homes had been developed. Lisa lived in one such. Her landlord had leased a forest that was legally unsettleable. No one, however, said anything about overhead. So large McLean-powered houseboats were available, moored above the forest. They were built in varying styles, and rented for a premium. The occupants had supreme privacy and, except in a high wind, luxury.

  The interior of Haines' houseboat was a large, single room, with the kitchen and 'fresher located toward the stern in separate compartments. Lisa divided the room with movable screens, giving her the option of redesigning the chamber with minimum work any time she had a spare afternoon.

  Furnishings consisted of static wall hangings of the single-stroke color school, plus low tables and pillows that served as chairs, couches, and beds.

  Sten, on the whole, wouldn't have minded living there without changing a thing. He went back to b
usiness. "You've got more."

  "Uh-huh. This Dynsman went to the port and ironed a securicop who was guarding some richie's yacht. Exit yacht, two minutes later."

  "Where'd Dynsman learn how to run a spaceship?"

  "You've been in the military too long, Captain. Yachts are built for people with more money than brains. All you have to do is shove a course card in the computer; the boat does everything else. So the boat did everything else, and Dynsman was offworld."

  "Clottin' wonderful."

  "Yeah. Well, I got more. Including where Dynsman went."

  "So why the glum?" Sten asked.

  "The glum is for the real bad news. Background, Sten. When I made Homicide, I figured out that sometime I'd want to file something that nobody could access. So I set up a code in my computer. And just to be sneaky, in case somebody broke the code, I set up a trap. If somebody got into my files, at least I'd know it had happened."

  "Drakh," Sten swore, seeing what came next. He stalked across the room.

  "Pour me one, too. Right. Somebody got inside my computer. Somebody knows everything I've got."

  Haines shot her drink back.

  "Still worse, babe. I ran a trail on the intrusion: Captain, whoever broke my file's inside the Imperial palace!"

  Chapter Seventeen

  "I do not think I needed this," the Eternal Emperor said, quite calmly.

  "Nossir," Sten agreed.

  "Congratulations, Captain. You're doing an excellent job. I'm sorry as all hell I gave you the assignment."

  "Yessir."

  "Go ahead," the Emperor continued. "From the gleam, I know you've got something worse than just having a spy here in the palace."

  "Yessir. This Dynsman took the yacht as far as the fuel would go, then abandoned the ship."

  "Do you have a track?"

  "Lieutenant Haines's report said that Dynsman signed on a tramp freighter in that port—Hollister, it was—and transshipped."

  "How in the blazes could he get a berth? You didn't say this jerk has any deep-space experience."

  "He doesn't. But the tramp, according to Lloyds, shouldn't be too particular. It carries high-yield fuels."