The Road to Hell # Hell's Gate 3

by Weber, David

  “The first thing is to get ourselves to chan Quay’s HQ and check in,” the division-captain continued as he settled into the forward-facing rear seat and chan Isail and chan Kymo took the rearward-facing seat across from him. “The next order of business is to get a Voice message off to Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar and make sure everything’s still proceeding more or less to plan at his end.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Cormas 19, 5053 AE

  [February 7, 1929 CE]

  Noriellena Drubeka, one of dozens of SUNN correspondents assigned to cover the newly elected members of Sharona’s Imperial Parliament, flipped through notes and prepared to throw her life away over a handful of interview questions. Voice Kylmos Trebar watched her do it with a carefully suppressed sigh.

  Their assigned region of Uromathia included Emperor Chava’s capital city, but they didn’t have to be in his waiting room or attempting to get in to interview the emperor to do their jobs. They could have stayed in Tajvana, interviewing MPs representing that part of his empire instead of following a very dangerous man back to his home country after the conclusion of the Conclave.

  Correspondents all over Sharona’s populated worlds were interviewing the members of parliament and trying to get reactions from public officials about likely power blocs in the new Parliament. But Drubeka wasn’t satisfied with that approach. Years ago, as a beginning SUNN hometown news correspondent, she’d asked Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal to comment on a Uromathian ambassador who’d proposed euthanizing elderly cetaceans for their whale oil.

  Shalassar’s response still replayed in the Voicecasts, and he could tell Drubeka was hoping for another career-making interview.

  She’d initially planned for a single question, if they could only manage to intercept Emperor Chava in transit: “SUNN is honored that you’d take this interview, Your Majesty. Please, tell us just what would it take for you to support the Imperial Parliament’s war caucus?” But it looked like they’d be getting a full formal interview with the emperor, instead.

  The war caucus had other, longer names. “The Sharonan Imperial Defense Group,” for one. Then there was “MPs for the Restoration of the Frontier Universes and Defeat of the Arcanan Scourge,” which was just the beginning of an unwieldy mouthful of a name advocated by MP Ruftuu. Whatever they called it, the MPs who’d joined it were in agreement about supporting the war. The conflict was on how to support it, and the group most reporters were calling the “war hawks” were pushing to extend the policies begun as Emperor Zindel’s executive orders.

  No surprise to political observers, the New Farnalian MP Kinlafia was one of the many representatives expected to vote with that power bloc. The Uromathian MPs—both from the Uromathian Empire and other historically Uromathian nations—were also supporting the war, however, which was enough to make anyone suspicious, given Chava’s influence. Virtually every one of SUNN’s political analysts expected them to become the opposition party, but as yet they hadn’t formed any distinct caucus of their own or even explained exactly how they intended to support the war, and Drubeka wanted answers about what they were really up to from the power everyone knew was writing their marching orders.

  The waiting room lacked mirrors, so Drubeka used Trebar’s eye for her final pre-Voicecast touch ups. The Shurkhali Voice took no special care for his own appearance, beyond buckling on platform shoes to raise his height of eye from five foot three to five foot eight. Viewers liked correspondents at eye level and Drubeka stood five seven in flats and five eight in the pastel court attire selected to complement her olive skin and contrast nicely with the audience chamber’s carpet, where she expected to make her obeisance before and after the interview. SUNN might cut it to show only a cordial bow for the ’cast shown in regions outside Uromathia, but that would be for other staffers to decide. Trebar would capture the best lighting and angles and try to keep Drubeka in sight as much as possible.

  Voices were never harmed in Uromathia except by chance street violence. Critics without the Voice ability to send an exact record of their final moments did not fare so well. But there were more kinds of power than back alley brutality. Drubeka knew that as well as he did, but she was betting the Emperor of Uromathia would see the value of occasionally giving his version of events directly to the people of Sharona.

  If the worst happened and she vanished, SUNN would give her memory as many headline stories as it could, but Drubeka wasn’t planning to die. There was still too much news to find and tell.

  The correspondent’s carefully practiced sexy but still serious personality had a lot of fans, including the court page managing the order of the supplicants to see the Emperor of Uromathia. The young man controlled the political factions in the room without a blink, but his interactions with the famous must have been few. He fairly melted when Drubeka spoke to him and eagerly complied with any requests Trebar conveyed.

  Now Drubeka set aside her notes and nodded to Trebar.

  A word to the page about the need for processing time before the evening Voicecast saw their audience shuffled forward to next in line. A quickened pulsing at Drubeka’s temples caused Trebar to reach for a hairbrush. He could adjust her hair to mask more of her temples, but she lifted a hand and he held back. That wouldn’t be the right look for Drubeka’s public personality, and Emperor Chava was unlikely to be fooled into believing he didn’t scare them.

  Trebar applied a light coat of powder to hide the shine on her forehead.

  “We can walk out of here and catch a train back to Tajvana. Get some interviews with the MPs themselves. Noriellena, we don’t have to do this,” Trebar said. He didn’t like to see her sweat.

  “I’ve got this,” Drubeka said. She was deepening her voice and lengthening the vowels to stretch her normal speech patterns—getting mentally ready to be on. “SUNN needs this interview. We’re going to bring in ratings gold on this one.”

  “You can’t move up to Special Correspondent if a third of the features are in areas SUNN can’t send you because Chava has you declared persona non grata.” Trebar reminded her. “Go easy, Noriellena. Just remember he’s an emperor and this is his seat of power. Don’t push too hard. Promise me, okay?”

  “No promises; no lies, Kylmos.” Drubeka rolled back her shoulders and smoothed her dark hair, tucking a lock behind her ear in her signature interview pose: Noriellena Drubeka, SUNN, listening for you. “How do I look?”

  “Ready as always,” Trebar replied, just as the page gave them the nod and opened the double doors of the entry hall. They were on!

  “Good. Let’s do this.” She flashed her classic grin.

  * * *

  Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia and power behind a dozen or more theoretically independent polities, understood perception—and how to create it—well. He met the SUNN team on his own terms a few steps inside the audience chamber.

  The emperor wore normal street wear and held his formal court robes tucked over one arm, as if he was a mere justiciar who’d just finished ruling on a long case, without a legion of servants to take that heavy brocade and see it cleaned and pressed for his next audience.

  Drubeka in her SUNN personality began a very creditable obeisance for a woman who’d spent the last several years interviewing small town fishermen and plebeian business magnates. She got no further than the initial bow, because the emperor stepped in close and clasped both her arms in the warm greeting of colleagues. That caused the robe to slide, and Drubeka caught it.

  Emperor Chava laughed out loud, the handful of courtiers attending to business around the room chuckled in pure delight…and a chill ran down Trebar’s spine.

  Chava’s eyes twinkled inviting all of Sharona to share in the joke. The Uromathian-based Voice Broadcast Service had accused SUNN of carrying the robe for Emperor Zindel. The phrase implied an ugly willingness to do distasteful things to further the desires of the robe’s owner—an insinuation SUNN Voicecasters had simply ignored. Now VBS would play the nasty co
mment to the hilt with their audience if SUNN used the interview.

  “Mistress Drubeka.” The emperor chuckled. “You SUNN correspondents simply cannot help yourselves. I shall have to ask the VBS to take your natural inclinations into account when they make their news bulletins.” He tipped his head at a courtier standing a half dozen paces back up the entry wearing, Trebar noticed belatedly, the sash of office adopted by Voices in the employ of VBS.

  So they could be sure this interlude would run tonight whether SUNN showed it or not, he thought. SUNN in the person of Noriellena Drubeka would be accused of being Emperor Zindel’s robeholder, and the VBS report would surely expand that to imply Drubeka was so used to being Zindel’s servant that she’d reached out and grabbed Emperor Chava’s robe too out of helpless habit. Regrettably the other man had had a better view of the whole exchange, and Trebar moved quickly around to position himself for the rest of the interview.

  Drubeka rallied by offering the robe to the VBS Voice…who avoided ruining his version of events by making a leave-taking bow to Emperor Chava and exiting the chamber. At a crook of the emperor’s finger, a servant relieved Drubeka of the heavy garment.

  “Please, please.” Chava motioned to an alcove, clearly set up specifically for this meeting. “Let us sit. My page, he tells me he is a big fan of your work, but you have questions about the new Parliament, of course. And you would like to ask me about the war caucus. Is that not so?”

  Trebar was already very still taking the record. Drubeka only froze for a fraction of a second. Then she smiled right back at the emperor.

  Chava Busar was good. He’d had to be to build and hold the political position Uromathia had maintained for the last decade, but in Ternathian-influenced areas of Sharona it was too easy to discount the man as a power-mad aristocrat more likely to be killed by his own kin than to survive to old age.

  The emperor sat and the interview began.

  Drubeka skipped the formal, flowery intro she’d practiced. This had become Chava’s Voicecast, not hers. He was setting the tone and she’d have to scramble to slip in her best questions wherever she could make them fit. The plan had been to distract him with a few cetacean rights questions, the topic she was known for pursuing in many of her interviews, and then shock him into an unplanned response with questions about the MPs who might emerge as parliamentary leaders.

  Clearly surprise was now out of the question. She could ask about the cetaceans after all, but that was old news, with well-worn talking points he’d already spoken to with a dozen VBS reporters. Drubeka had pursued this audience to get something fresh, and the war caucus was the topic of the day.

  The group supported Emperor Zindel, celebrated the unification of the Sharonan universes, and sought to transfer as much power as possible to the Winged Crown. One MP had even suggested folding existing national police agencies into a single imperial police force—far beyond anything Emperor Zindel had requested. The obvious question was what the Uromathian emperor would have to say about this support for his rival’s objectives.

  Drubeka didn’t do obvious, but she didn’t normally interview emperors, either.

  “Mistress Drubeka.” She’d waited too long and Chava was taking the interview’s reins again, and the correspondent clenched her teeth at the thought. “Why is it, exactly, that your news organization, this SUNN, is so negative towards all things Uromathian?”

  “Your Excellency, I’m no emperor to speak for all of SUNN.” Trebar breathed relief as Drubeka rallied enough to speak calmly. “Personally, I find Uromathia a lovely place and, as you yourself mentioned, we have many fans here, including Master Rihva your Excellency’s Court Page.”

  She didn’t take the bait and attempt to defend the reporting, for a lot of reasons. One was that it was true reporting, highly critical not of Uromathia itself but of Uromathia’s current emperor, as she and her Voice were in a far better position than most non-Uromathians to know. Kylmos Trebar and Noriellena Drubeka were among the many who’d been greatly relieved when Zindel had emerged as Emperor of Sharona instead of Chava. Another reason, of course, was that attempting to defend it would give Chava exactly what he wanted: legitimization for the VSB’s claims of bias. The SUNN correspondent had obviously been scrambling for an explanation of Chava’s legitimate question, their mouthpieces would opine. It wouldn’t matter what she’d actually said, either; they were past masters at twisting clear, simple declarative sentences into pretzels to make those sentences say exactly what they wanted them to say.

  “Your Excellency,” Drubeka said instead, “while I have this wonderful chance to ask, and I must say it’s beyond gracious of you to have allowed this interview, I must ask some questions myself. So I suppose I should start with a question your page told me he hoped I would ask: Who’s your favorite MP?”

  It was a simple question, she’d never thought to ask, but after the page had mentioned it, Drubeka hadn’t been able to let it go. If Chava answered, he’d probably name the man he’d chosen as leader of the opposition and she’d be able to stop leaning on the SUNN analysts’ guesses about which Uromathian MPs had influence and which didn’t.

  Emperor Chava smiled indulgently, as Drubeka held her breath waiting to see what he’d say.

  “Here in Uromathia,” he said. “All our MPs are the exquisite flowers of their districts, as difficult to chose between as an orchid over a rose. So I would not normally answer this question.” Emperor Chava leaned in with a knowing look directly at Trebar. “But for my friend Mistress Drubeka who sees the loveliness of Uromathia, I tell this secret. My favorite is the fine Mister Darcel Kinlafia.”

  Trebar blinked quickly. He needed to focus and catch all this.

  Kinlafia had no connection to Uromathia. The MP’s district was in New Farnal, which had been populated by settlers from Ternathia not Uromathia, and the MP’s wife was even Emperor Zindel’s former Privy Voice.

  Someone was being played right now. Quite possibly it was all of Sharona, but it might be just SUNN and Drubeka. Trebar couldn’t tell where this was going and he needed to see and hear what Chava decided to announce next.

  Drubeka glanced downward with an eyelash flutter that was something of a signature expression for her. It gave the viewers a distraction while she thought.

  And she might not realize it, but Trebar knew she used it far more often when she thought the interviews were going exceptionally well than when she thought they were out of control. Not for the first time he wished she’d been at least a trace Mind Speaker so he could whisper a warning as she played with a black tendril of hair by her ear.

  “Oh my, that is a secret.” Drubeka tilted her head with another eyelash flutter at Trebar inviting all of Sharona to join her and the emperor in this interview-turned-intimate-conversation. “I know all the women out there agree Darcel has that wild universe-explorer handsomeness, but tell me really, what attracted Your Excellency?”

  Kinlafia was on the wrong side of average in Trebar’s opinion, but the right angles and lighting could make anyone look good, as every SUNN correspondent certainly knew.

  “My girl Krethva,” the emperor named a Uromathian society journalist for VBS who certainly wouldn’t disagree with any words he put in her mouth, “tells me the strong shoulders are more than sufficient reason to favor a man.

  “But,” he continued with a side look at Trebar, proving himself an adept at Voicecast interviews, “We all know the famous Mistress Drubeka does not fall for just a pretty face.”

  He made a mournful expression inviting the audience to sympathize with him for not personally attracting the correspondent in that way. Then he winked as if to tell the viewer he knew full well that he, one of the most powerful men in all of Sharona, had not a chance with their darling beautiful newsgirl.

  It wasn’t the truth, but perception, even on live Voicecasts, showed only the surface. No emotions were permitted in commercial Voicecasts without the express permission of the interviewee. And without that, no amount
of additional commentary would convince the audience which Saw this that Emperor Chava was really a dangerous man who’d have a pretty reporter slaughtered like a farm animal if he found her responses disrespectful.

  Drubeka blushed, and Trebar thanked the Double Triad that she was a capable actress.

  “Many of my viewers have quite the crush on you, Your Excellency.” She covered the emperor’s implied self-disparagement, carefully.

  Chava shrugged off the flattery, this time not quite managing to appear unconceited. He acknowledged the comment with a shade too much arrogance.

  “Darcel Kinlafia and I have much in common in this way. I do for Uromathia what I can to protect the people from those who would wish us ill. And sometimes, regrettably, always regrettably, there is a conflict of understanding in the need for these protective acts. And,” Chava’s accent was thinning as the interview went on, but Trebar suspected few viewers would notice, “Mister Darcel with his Voice report of the Arcanan brutality brings us warning of the danger. We must have this man in the Parliament. His warning must be repeated again and again until all of Sharona demands a leader who will defend our universes properly.”