by Chris Bunch
Sten, Alex, and the Gurkhas dropped down to the gun deck through an overhead shell hoist. Fifty meters away a knot of Praetorians was crowding a down-passage.
Twenty of them—and Sten's eyes registered that one of the Praetorians had seen him and was shouting an alarm.
As Sten went down, his hand slapped a red switch on the wall. The switch read load.
A Goblin missile sitting on the overhead of the gun deck slid smoothly down track toward a launcher on the far side of the Praetorians.
The system could launch one missile per launcher every six seconds, so the missile moved very, very rapidly down the loading track, approaching a speed of nearly 60 kilometers per hour when it intersected the Praetorians. One thousand kilos of steel contacting a few hundred kilos of flesh at that speed produces casualties.
By Kilgour's count five Praetorians were down before the remaining fifteen found shelter behind launchers, gun tubes, and such, and opened up.
"Ah hae quite enow a' this drakh," he muttered and took action.
The Normandie's armament was intended not only for deep space but also for planetary action. Of course atmospheric weapons such as chain guns were normally mag-locked in place behind the sealed ports they fired through. An assortment of weapons was racked on the bulkhead, but all were intended for firing from a mount, and—of course—out-ship. One of those devices was a flare projector which, under normal circumstances, took four men to wrestle to the firing port.
Sergeant Major Alex Kilgour, heavy-worlder, was not normal under any circumstances. He had the projector off the wall, loaded, aimed, and the firing switch keyed before anyone could react.
The flare burst down the long corridor, hit the far bulkhead, ricocheted, and… flared.
A signal flare that is intended to be seen for about half a light-second makes quite an explosion when it goes off in a ten-meter-by-ten-meter passageway. The Gurkhas and Sten had barely enough time to flatten ahead of the oncoming fireball before the Normandie's automatic extinguishing system yeeked and dumped several tons of retardant on what it perceived as a fire.
Too late for the fifteen little mounds of charcoal that had been Praetorians.
Sten and his troopies hot-footed down that melted companionway to find their Emperor.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Marr and Senn had taken refuge inside an enormous sonic oven. They were in the vast stainless-steel kitchen of the liner when the massacre began. When they heard the hysterical shouts on the PA system, they had wisely decided to stay put.
Senn hugged Marr close. "When they're done," Senn said with a shiver, "they'll hunt us down and kill us, too." He stroked the fur of his lifelong companion. "Oh, well. It's been a good love, hasn't it?"
Marr suddenly rose to his full height. "Bugger them," he said.
"Do we have to?" Senn asked.
"One thing we know, dear," Marr said, "is kitchens. And if those brutes invade my kitchen they are going to be a sorry set of humans."
He began bustling about, getting himself ready for the final confrontation. Senn saw what he was doing and leaped up, all thoughts of a tender death swept from his mind.
They started with the sonar oven. It was about three meters high and as many wide. Inside were many cooking racks and a retractable spit that could hold an entire bullock. The cooking source was a wide-beam sound projector, which looked somewhat like a large camera, mounted on hydraulic lifts. When the oven was operated, thick protective safety doors automatically locked, and the projector swept across the food, spitting bursts of ultrasound to cook whatever was inside.
The first thing Marr did was smash the safety lock. Then the two of them muscled at the sonar cooker.
Many boots thundered just outside the kitchen, and the two turned to see the Eternal Emperor back into the huge room. He was dragging Tanz Sullamora with him, and firing back through the doorway. A split second later they saw first the chamberlain and then the two remaining Gurkhas follow. Naiks Ram Sing Rana and Agansing Rai shouted defiance at their pursuers and sprayed them with their willyguns.
They ducked as the Praetorians returned fire. Behind them, the stainless steel walls of the kitchen hissed and bubbled and turned to molten metal.
"This way," the Emperor shouted, and he led his tiny group toward the kitchen's emergency exit. Just beyond that was a tunnel leading to the main storehouse area and then the engine rooms.
A thunder of Praetorians followed them. Ram gave a soft cry and dropped as a willygun round sizzled into his abdomen. The rest of the Praetorians crowded toward the Emperor's group, who were just disappearing through the emergency-exit door.
Without hesitating, Senn turned his body into a furry ball and rolled out of the oven they'd retreated to. He palmed the kitchen steam-clean button and then dove back into the oven.
Steam hissed from nozzles in the walls. Sanitation sniffers instantly analyzed the area for foreign—meaning biological—objects and then directed the huge volumes of steam on the invading organisms.
Eleven Praetorians opened their mouths as one to scream. Their lungs filled with intensely hot steam and were parboiled before sound could reach their lips. Their flesh swelled and blistered, then the blisters broke and ran.
The cleaning process took only thirty seconds—just as the instruction manual predicted!—before shutting off. By then, all eleven Praetorians were dead. Or dying. The human body is tough.
More bootheels, more firing, and another group exploded through the doorway, Fohlee at the head. He saw Senn's small face peering from the oven. "Kill them!"
Fohlee shouted. A squad leapt forward as Marr and Senn rolled out of the oven. Fohlee and four of his Praetorians ran for the emergency exit the Emperor had taken. But the door was momentarily blocked.
Meanwhile the flying squad of Praetorians was pounding toward Marr and Senn.
"Help me!" squeaked Marr, and Senn slid his tiny shoulders under the sonar cooker and strained upward.
Slowly… slowly… it came up.
"Now!" Marr shouted, and the two of them jumped through a rain of willygun fire. Marr just had time to hit the cooker button before they were safe behind a steel food bin.
The lens of the sonar cooker blinked and then glowed full on. The invisible but deadly beam coned outward as the squad of Praetorians charged directly into it.
Marr and Senn huddled behind the bin, listening to the terrible sounds of the Praetorians dying. Within seconds every member of the squad had been cooked. The high-frequency waves heated from the inside out, and so, even before the flesh began to curl and smoke and brown, their internal organs exploded outward, spattering fifty meters of kitchen wall with gobs of flesh.
Marr peered out at the gore and shuddered. Senn tried to peek out after him, but Marr pushed his lover back, saving him from what he knew would be a lifetime trauma. Marr felt a small place of beauty shrivel inside him.
Many shouts and thundering. Marr looked up at the main entrance to the kitchen and repositioned himself at the cooker control button again. Whoever came through the door would die like the squad of men before. His finger was almost hitting the button when he saw the slim figure crash into the room.
In one heartbeat he recognized Sten and his finger brushed past the button. Marr didn't even wait to see what happened next. He dropped back behind the bin, beside Senn.
Marr looked at the large luminous eyes of his friend. "I almost killed our young captain!"
He buried his face in Senn's soft fur and wept.
* * *
Sten and Alex back-shot the four Praetorians who were straining at the emergency-exit door. Fohlee had just enough time to spot them, and crammed his body behind the butchering machine, a free-standing bot of red-enameled steel. Its three-by-five-meter bulk stood motionless, razor-sharp knives and meat-gripping claws still and lifeless.
Sten dropped to his knees and edged his slender body into the gap between the machine and the walls. He pushed slowly down the dark tunnel. Would Fohlee
keep moving, or was he waiting just around the turn? There was almost no room to maneuver, and Sten had to shift his gun to his left hand to move forward.
There! He saw the black snout of Fohlee's weapon, and Sten struck out at it, losing his balance and falling to the floor. But his knuckles hit cold metal, and he felt the weapon rip from Fohlee's grip then heard the gun clatter to the kitchen floor. Sten kick-rolled out of the narrow tunnel and started to his feet. A heavy blow sent him down again, and he twisted his body clumsily as he fell, just avoiding Fohlee's dagger. He saw the shadow of a boot flashing down at him, but he managed to get three fingers on a heel and twist. Fohlee staggered backward, slamming against the bot.
Machinery came to life with a shriek, and the bot's upper body whirled, meat-grabbing claws searching for flesh. Before Sten could recover, Fohlee dodged the claws and picked up his gun. The two brought their weapons up at the same time. But a meat hook on a chain swung out of the bot and caught Fohlee in the throat. He screamed in agony as the hook dragged him into the butcher bot's claws.
Sten found himself watching in awful fascination as the machine skillfully dealt with Fohlee. Within seconds, many knives had skinned him while still alive. Tiny hoses snaked out to suck up the blood. Saws whirred in to cut the joints, and boning knives flicked in and out to separate the flesh.
Fohlee's final scream was still echoing through the kitchen when the last of him had been carved, packaged, and shipped into cold storage.
Absently, Sten reached out and shut off the machine. Then he walked heavily around the butcher bot to find Alex.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Power sources and engines may have changed immensely, but any twenty-first-century deep-space black-ganger would have been at home in the Normandie's engine room. The chambers were the same huge echoing metal rooms, throbbing with unseen power. The gleaming AM2 drive units could have been diesel-electric or nuclear, and the same walkways spidered up, around, and over bewildering machinery and arcane gauges.
Since the Normandie wasn't under drive, only one watch officer and a wiper had been on shift, and they lay in pools of blood.
The Emperor spotted the two Praetorians one level up, crouched behind an AM2 feedway. He considered, then aimed carefully and fired four times. The four rounds hit on either side of the spiderwalk and cut it free, and the Praetorians dropped. Just like skeet, the Emperor thought as he snap-shot both men before they crashed to the deck.
"Come on, Admiral. CYA," he shouted, and Ledoh and the last remaining Gurkha helped him weasel a portable welding rig to the emergency door. The Emperor was slightly proud of himself as his body-memory adjusted the oxy-gas mix, fired the torch, and spot-welded the emergency hatchway they'd come through shut.
"That'll give us some more time, Mik."
Ledoh was glaring at him, and another part of the Emperor's brain wondered what the hell was going on with the man. When the shooting had started, Ledoh'd been one of the first to pull out a service pistol, but it had been knocked from his hand by what the Emperor considered an overly protective Gurkha. The man couldn't be scared, the Emperor thought. But maybe he is, he went on, as he led the three men up catwalks. Maybe it's been too long since he'd had somebody shooting directly at his tail.
Maybe he's as scared as Tanz Sullamora, who was wheezing up behind the Emperor, his face near-coronary flushed.
Ledoh waited until all four men were on the next platform. Now, he decided. Now. That damned Gurkha had spoiled his first chance. Now was the time, and his ceremonial sword was in his hand and he was lunging, the blade aimed for the middle of the Emperor's back.
But just as the conspirators had underestimated the lethality of the Gurkhas, so did Ledoh underestimate the reaction time of Naik Agansing Rai.
Rai—Sten's ex-batman—somehow leaped between the Emperor and the blade—and was spitted neatly through the lungs. He sagged down, almost dragging the blade from Ledoh's hands.
Ledoh stepped in, pulled the blade from the man's chest, and came back for a swing—and then Tanz Sullamora became a hero.
The fat man somehow managed to wildly swing his willygun—the willygun he had no idea how to fire—into Ledoh's ribs, staggering him into the platform's side railing. Sullamora was still reacting to his own bravery as Ledoh pivoted back and slammed the sword's pommel into his neck. Gasping for air, Sullamora went down, and Ledoh was in lunging position…
To find the Emperor standing four meters away, at the end of the platform. He was empty-handed, his willygun still slung across his back.
"That figures," the Emperor said. "Do I get to know why?"
Ledoh could barely speak—all those years, all the plans, all the hatred. But he managed, "Rob Gades was my son."
And then he was attacking.
Again the bystanding part of the Emperor's mind was wondering who in hell Gades was as he pulled a breaker bar from the emergency fire kit on the bulkhead behind him, held it two-handed in front of him, and parried Ledoh's blade clear.
Ledoh's eyes glittered as he stop-stanced closer and slashed at the Emperor's waist, a cut that was again deflected, and then the Emperor was in motion, left foot kicking out into Ledoh's chest.
A sword against a crowbar appears an unequal fight—which it is, as several people who'd pulled blades on the Emperor during his ship engineer days had found to their considerable surprise.
As Ledoh tried to recover, the Emperor slid one hand down the bar and swung, two-handed. The steel crashed against Ledoh's sword, snapping the blade just above the hilt, before the Emperor changed his swing and the bar smashed back against Ledoh's forearm.
The bone snapped loudly and Ledoh screamed in pain. Clutching his arm, white bone protruding through his tunic sleeve, he went to his knees.
The Emperor studied him. "You poor bastard," he said, not unsympathetically. "You poor, sorry bastard." He stepped back, to the emergency com next to the fire kit, and considered the next step.
Kilgour was wrenching mightily at the welded-shut hatch into the engine spaces when Sten elbowed him aside.
The knife popped from its sheath into his hand, and he held his wrist in a brace then forced the knife through the hatchway itself. The crystal blade sliced through the steel as if it were plas. Sten made two cuts around the blackened areas that marked the weld, then shoulder-blocked the hatch open and was into the engine room, kukri in one hand, his own knife in the other.
Four bodies… no Emperor. He scanned above him, then was up the ladders, moving like a stalking cat.
Levels overhead he could see two more sprawled bodies and two men.
Emperor. Still alive. Praise a few dozen gods. Around the walkway. Other man… on his knees. Ledoh.
Neither the Emperor nor Ledoh heard Sten.
Sten was on the catwalk just below the two when he saw Ledoh force himself out of his pain. His unbroken hand went back into his waistband and emerged with a tiny Mantis willygun, and Sten was only halfway up the ladder as Ledoh aimed the pistol.
A kukri cannot be thrown. It's single-edged, and its bulbous-ended off-balance blade guarantees that, once thrown, the knife will spin wildly.
It is, however, almost a full kilo of steel.
Sten overhanded the long knife at Ledoh, in a desperate last chance to save the Emperor's life.
At best the blade should have clubbed Ledoh down. But the whirling blade sank point first into the back of Grand Chamberlain Mik Ledoh, severing his spine.
Ledoh, dead before his finger could touch the willy-gun's trigger, spasmed through the guardrails to thump finally, soggily, on the deck plates many meters below.
Sten came up the last few steps and stood looking at the Emperor. One or the other of them should probably have said something terribly dramatic. But dramatic gestures happen, most often, during the retelling. The two bloodstained men just stared at each other in silence and relief.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Naked under a bright summer sun, Haines considered perfection. The dr
ink comfortably close at hand was icy; the sun was hot; a cool breeze from the forest below kept her houseboat comfortable.
Almost perfect, she corrected herself.
One thing missing, and one problem.
The last months, after the Emperor had returned to Prime World, had been very long indeed, and the attempts to clean up the mess had begun.
Haines was fairly grateful that she'd only been witness to part of them; Sten had told her about the rest.
Evidently, after the last Praetorian had been hunted down on the Normandie, the Imperial fleet had immediately scudded since even the Eternal Emperor couldn't cobble together any believable explanation that the Tahn would accept for the deaths of their chief lord and his retinue.
Kirghiz or one of his underlings must have been under orders to report regularly, because barely two days out, the fleet found itself pursued. One Tahn battleship and cruiser and destroyer escorts should have been an overmatch for the Normandie and its escorts. But the Emperor had already called in reinforcements and two full battleship squadrons rendezvoused with the Normandie.
The Tahn fought bravely and in ignorance. Despite all attempts to communicate, they fought to the last man under complete radio silence. Sten never knew if they thought they were rescuing Kirghiz or revenging him.
On return to Prime, the Emperor immediately attempted to explain to the Tahn, but diplomatic relations were severed and all Tahn personnel were withdrawn.
Haines had barely noticed, since she'd been too busy rounding up the surviving conspirators. She'd never arrested so many wealthy, high-ranking people in her life.
Then there was a show trial because the Emperor was hoping that somehow the Tahn would listen to the truth. Of course they wouldn't—any good totalitarian knows he can always find somebody to pin a crime on. Even attempts to convince the Tahn of the truth by neutral diplomats from cultures constitutionally incapable of dishonesty were ignored.
The series of trials was mind-numbing. At least Haines had the opportunity to testify in open court. Sten, under Imperial orders, gave his testimony from a sealed chamber, his voice electronically altered to prevent any possibility of identification.
