Empire's End

by Chris Bunch

  The signal, Freston went on, didn't go to nowhere. It went to a dead system, somewhere between forgotten and lost. Freston had chanced borrowing one of the Bhor ELINT ships, bread-boarding their sensors into some measure of the sophistication he was used to in his access to the Empire's best gear, and then sneaking the ship into the dead system.

  On one world the ship had found a small relay station. He didn't chance ordering a landing or trying any electronic probings, since he surmised the station would be booby-trapped.

  He started to explain what he thought he had accomplished. Sten didn't need one. Preston had traced the mysterious robot AM2 supply convoys back one stage.

  Sten surmised that the robot convoy would appear in this particular system from its origin in a still-unguessed place and receive either a GO, NO GO or DIVERT COURSE from the relay station, and, depending on the signal, either continue to Dusable or whatever other AM2 depot it had been intended for, or divert to a secondary destination, or…

  Or any number of interesting possibilities.

  "Is the ELINT ship still in-system?"

  "That's affirm," Freston said. "I ordered it to lie doggo, all passive receptors on full, and not to attempt any active sensing without a direct order from me."

  "Were there any transmissions when the Bhor ship first arrived?'

  "None reported."

  "Have there been any since?"

  "Technically, none," Freston said. "However, the electronics ship has recently reported increased power output from the station on all lengths. As if it's coming up from standby."

  Preston's reaming—and Sten's dinner—was forgotten.

  "Is the gear on the ELINT ship good enough to pick up another transmission like the one you flagged off Dusable?"

  "Easily."

  "What's the distance?"

  "You could be there in three E-days."

  Sten grinned: Freston knew his boss. "Okay. Is the Aoife ready to lift?"

  "Affirm."

  "I'm on the way. Tell its skipper—"

  "Waldman, sir."

  "This is his or her big chance to step off his sex organ for that convoy disaster. I want couplings ready to hook a tacship up to the Aoife. And I want you to set up a tightbeam com, set up to link between the tacship and destroyer. Yesterday."

  "Yessir. I assume you'll be commanding the tacship?"

  Sten started to nod: Of course. Then he caught himself. Come on, son. You're busting common sense in the chops enough, already. Don't be a complete grandstander.

  "Negative," he said, to Preston's surprise. "I want a drakh-hot pilot—And I've got just the candidate. Out."

  Sten went out the door of his quarters before the com blanked.

  The Gurkha sentry outside was one count into his present arms and Sten was gone, a flicker that might have been a waved return of the salute in his wake.

  Sten had a helmet bag in one hand, weapons harness—pistol, ammo, cleaning kit, kukri—over one shoulder, and a daypack carrying three days' rations and toiletries in the other, three things that were never more than an arm's length from him.

  Ida, unintended, had set an example.

  Now was the time to scrape off some of the rust.

  The three greatest talents a diplomat must have, Sr. Ecu had realized a century or so earlier, was to never take things personally, to always look pleased when served what was genetically dubbed rubberchicken on the banquet circuit, and most importantly to endure boredom.

  Not just the boredom of long, droning conferences while amateur pols tried to score points as if governing were Beginning Debate, but also the boredom of endless hours traveling.

  Ecu had wondered how spaceship crews, particularly on the torchships in the early days, kept from going berserk, and researched the matter. Reading of the murders, mutinies, and worse aberrancies, particularly on the pre-stardrive longliners, told him they didn't.

  Now, on this long flight back from the Cal'gata worlds, especially as his ship was under enforced com blackout, he had started to feel like perhaps mutinying a little himself, even though he tried to remind himself that boredom was not an emotion the Manabi felt, and that the way he was feeling could be no more than a conditioned response from all the decades he had spent around humans.

  Still, he was getting what he had heard described as the Jeabie Heabies.

  He had viewed every livie aboard the small yacht, read every book available, written reports and progs beyond count, and they were still four ship-days out from Seilichi.

  Finally his ennui led him back to Marr and Senn's flier.

  He had wanted to look at it before, but had refrained. Thinking of the succulences that the two Milchen could concoct might be the last straw, especially considering the less-than-inspired rations the yacht's bellyrobber served up.

  Ecu now thought he could tough out the four days before real nourishment would become available.

  Again he touched the sensitized area, and again Marr and Senn appeared and greeted him by name. Again the wonderful scents floated toward Ecur's tendrils.

  And again the two beings announced their catering service and began presenting a menu.

  Ecu's senses flickered. Trouble. The menu was being presented in a perfunctory drone, as if Marr and Senn had been forced into this new business through economic desperation. But that could not be. Perhaps—

  Both holographs stopped. Marr and Senn looked at each other.

  "That's time enough for anyone busybodying through your mail to get bored," Marr said.

  "I can only hope," Senn said. "Sr. Ecu, we need your help. I trust it is you who is viewing this, and that some others—"

  He shuddered and crouched, as if an icy windblast had caught him. Marr moved closer, protecting.

  "—some others," he went on, after collecting himself, "are not.

  "We are in trouble. We need to contact Sten. We are not aware if you know where he is, and the only reason we are sending this is because the two of you worked on that Tribunal, back in the awful days of those five beings whose names I will not pronounce.

  "This is our only hope. We need Sten to help us. And someone else. I cannot mention the being's name. But tell Sten that the being is someone he will remember. Tell Sten to remember the party and what came later. In the garden. The black ball against the moon that happens but three times a year. The being does.

  "If Sten remembers, tell him that this being is in trouble. The being is being hunted by the Emperor. We—

  Marr interrupted.

  "We have heard where this being is," he said. "And if the Emperor learns of our knowledge, we too will be hunted. We do not know this being's exact location. We feel that even now a net is being cast, somewhere out there, by beings who intend us harm. Sooner or later, if that fisherman keeps casting, we shall be netted."

  The beings moved together, finding what little love and security was left in their universe, and fell silent.

  "We should say no more," Senn said finally. "Tell Sten of our problem. Ask him if he can help. He will know where we are. We do not have any suggestions.

  "But… but tell him this. Tell him he must not chance all. We say this, and his friend says it as well. If help might risk his crusade, he must not try to help.

  "Sten must not be defeated."

  Drakh-hot pilot Hannelore La Ciotat had wondered—as much as anyone might wonder in a profession where two of the prerequisites were an inability to talk without moving one's hands and concern for the future a mild curiosity about what the O-club's got for its dinner special—just why she had joined the rebellion.

  No one but her fellow rebels knew she had been Sten's pilot when he had ambushed Admiral Mason and the Caligula. And even if accused, she probably could have skated on that, and claimed to be in fear of her life if she disobeyed his commands. Instead, she had been one of the first of the Victory's tacship pilots to throw in on Sten's side.

  She settled on three reasons: First, that the Empire to her was represented by lard-
assed senior officers who never could understand the tactical importance basic to underflying every single bridge that ran through the middle of her planet's capital world at mach speed, officers who would one day insist that she park the ship and start flying a desk. Second was that Sten was a pilot too, and spoke her language. Third was that she surely would have more combat time and flight hours with the rebellion than sticking with the monolithic Imperial forces.

  She shied away from the fourth reason, which was Why The Clot Not, because that might imply that pilots are frequently lacking in any sense, let alone that of the common type. Especially tacship drivers.

  She listened to Sten's briefing aboard the Aoife with some degree of skepticism, which Sten noted with amusement.

  "You have a question, Lieutenant? Sorry, Captain. Congrats on the promo, by the way."

  La Ciotat shrugged. More stars on the shoulder meant only more credits on the O-club bar payday night since sergeant-pilots and admiral-pilots still flew the same ships—and bore in.

  "Last time you had this great plan," she began as tactfully as she knew how, which meant not very, "it was, 'Hey there, Hannelore, let's you and me ambush a battlewagon.'

  "Dumb, dumb, truly dumb, but we blindsided the clot, and got away with it. Now you want to try again, except even bigger. As I understand it, my tacship, supported by one lousy non-Imperial tincan—"

  Sten interrupted. "The Aoife's only there to pull our tails out of the crack. She won't be there for the binga-banga-bonga."

  "Even more wonderful. One spitkit, not supported by one lousy non-Imperial DD, to jump an entire convoy, a convoy carrying what's only the most important resource the Empire's got, and you think we're gonna accomplish the mission?

  "Hell, I don't think we'll limp away, let alone do what you've got in mind. Who's gonna take care of the escorts?"

  "There won't be any."

  "Hoo. You weren't listening… by the way, what the clot do I call you? Besides 'sir'? I mean, what's your post-rebellion rank? Leader? Hero? I assume you've given yourself more tabs than just clottin' Admiral."

  "Try Sten. No rank. No 'sir.' "

  "Right. Anyway, you're saying the Empire lets its goodies travel unescorted?"

  "I am."

  "Sten, I gotta question how good your skinny is."

  "You can question the intelligence and you can ask, La Ciotat. But you aren't going to get an answer. Need-to-know and all that."

  La Ciotat stared at Sten for a long moment. "I'm not hot for your carcass," she finally said. "Nor needing any kind of an adrenaline rush. But I'm thinking I'm gonna be party to this silly-ass operation. So it's gotta be that I was born twins, and Momma said drown the dumb one and Daddy blew it. Okay, skipper. I'll brief my crew.

  "They're gonna love this. Fearless Volunteers Into the Valley of Slok and all that. One of these years I gotta ask them before I toss them into the crapper, I guess."

  Just beyond the dead system, Sten, La Ciotat, and her crew boarded the tacship, the Sterns. The com link was opened between the Aoife, the Sterns, and the Bhor ELINT ship, the Heomt, still monitoring from its silent parking orbit not too far off the relay-station world.

  And then they waited.

  La Ciotat, as was her custom before battle, retired to the tiny cubbyhole that was the captain's cabin, which meant on a tacship a closet-size room with a pulldown desk. But a cabin for all of that—there was a drawcurtain that everyone on a tacship called a door. She depilled from head to foot and bathed in water she had brought over from the Aoife's supply, water that had been augmented with aromatic oils from her home world. She painted her face in the ancestral battlepattern of her house, and then cleared her mind of evil, of lust, of desires.

  She was ready for battle.

  She wondered what Sten—who occupied the only other cabin on the tacship—formerly belonging to the XO and engineer, given up at their request—was doing. What customs did his world practice? If any?

  She considered the possibility of imminent nonexistence. And the ramifications if she were to pull on a wrap, slip through the curtain, walk two meters to the next compartment, tap politely, and…

  She caught herself. She went through the exercises again, forcibly clearing lust or ambition from her mind.

  Besides, what was she worrying about, knowing that the void only beckoned her enemies, not her? She put on a fresh flightsuit and tried to sleep.

  Sten, in the next compartment, slept deeply. Woke. Ate. Thinking of nothing except the taste of what he had put in his mouth, the hum of the air freshers in the background, the drone of the ship's internal power, the small jokes and large laughter at the mess table, as all thirteen beings on the Sterns waited for battle, trying not to snarl at or massacre the being beside them.

  He slept once more. Perhaps he dreamed.

  If he did, his mind chose not to record them when he woke to the yammer of the GQ siren.

  He glanced at the overhead telltale. It was less than four ship-days since he had arrived insystem. Freston might have crystal balls and talent beyond that of being a mere battleship commander.

  Heomt: "All stations! I have incoming—"

  Aoife: "At battle stations!"

  Sterns: "We have them."

  Sten, from Sterns: "All stations! Maintain silence!"

  The three ships watched the huge convoy bulk out of hyper-space toward them.

  AM2. Twice the size of the convoy the rebels had ambushed off Dusable.

  A com officer on the Heorot picked up a convoy relay-station blurt—a response to the convoy's initial inquiry from the planet. He resisted a temptation to run an analysis. Instead, he reported the transmission.

  "All stations," Sten said calmly. "All recorders, all sensors on full. Stand by… stand by… stand by… Now! Captain! Full drive!"

  La Ciotat obeyed. The Sterns flashed toward the monster convoy.

  The com officer on the Heorot "saw" the convoy panic. Nothing physical happened, but the convoy began broadcasting on many frequencies.

  "Ms. La Ciotat," Sten went on, "I would like a Kali launch… individual control… area target… convoy on main screen… on my command…"

  "Ms. Castaglione," Hannelore said in turn to her weapons officer.

  "Acquired___"

  "Target acquired, sir."

  "Launch," Sten ordered.

  "Fire."

  The huge shipkilling missile lurched out of the center firing tube of the Sterns.

  Screens flashed on the Heorot.

  "We have a convoy-station 'cast," the Bhor com officer reported. "We have a response from the relay station… direction unknown, power strength massive… we have a signal transmitted on EM subspectrum… unclassifiable single spectrum… computers suggest between Omicron Sub Two and Xeta Three… no known previous use of spectrum by any known—by the clottin' beard of my clottin' mother?"

  The fairly irregular interjection from the com officer occurred as his screens told him that the entire convoy had committed seppuku, a monstrous blast as if a star had gone nova! The explosion was beyond even the cataclysm that had resulted when the smaller AM2 convoy off Dusable had been hit by the Victory's Kalis.

  A second later, another screen showed him the robot relay station on the dead planet had also self-destructed.

  Aboard the Sterns all screens overloaded and blew out.

  Finally, one emergency screen cleared. It was a tertiary screen, 'casting from the Kali missile. It showed a great deal of nothing. Castaglione ran the pickup through all available bands.

  Nothing but parsecs and parsecs of parsecs and parsecs.

  La Ciotat forced herself to appear quite calm, as if a thousand-ship convoy suddenly blew itself up in her sights every E-day or so.

  "All right," she grudged. "Your intelligence is One-A. But what a piddle-poor excuse for a battle this was."

  Sten didn't answer immediately. Instead, he picked up the open mike on the three-way circuit.

  "Heorot. Sterns. Six Actual. Trap? An
gle?"

  "Heomt. Affirm both."

  "Do you have a receiving station?"

  "Negative. None known. Analysis will continue."

  "Sterns clear."

  And now Sten smiled. "It was clottin' wonderful," he said.

  "So what did we get?"

  "We've got," Sten said accurately, "an Emperor with a major case of the hips, which is almost a case of the ass. We've just cut off a big chunk of the AM2 he'd be doling out to his cronies and allies. A big chunk."

  His smile grew larger. La Ciotat looked at him skeptically—she wasn't sure she was hearing all of it.

  She wasn't, although the fact that merely jumping out of the bushes and shouting boo had been enough to make the Big Bad Wolf drop dead of heart failure was significant—and certainly a tactic that could be repeated indefinitely, if they could continue finding the courses of the AM2 convoys.

  Sten was realizing that one of the Eternal Emperor's primary weapons—that no one but the Emperor was permitted to get close to wherever AM2 came from—was a double-edged sword. Just as the shutdown of AM2 subsequent to the Emperor's disappearance would destroy any coup, so, too, Sten's boo-shouting could wreak economic havoc on the Emperor himself.

  Possibly. Or at least until the Eternal Emperor figured out a response.

  More importantly, the Heorot had recorded a second, equally mysterious signal to nowhere, this time from the relay station.

  If they could home on its target… Sten would be one step closer to finding the AM2.

  And one step closer to destroying the Emperor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  41413… 31146… 00983… 01507…

  Far beyond the stretch of the most sensitive sensor, far beyond the Bhor picketlines, an Imperial destroyer, modified into a special-missions delivery craft, dumped a tacship into space and fled.

  The tacship, completely unarmed, its weapons systems replaced with massive electronic suites, slid toward Vi, the Bhor home world and capital of the Lupus Cluster. There were just five crewmen aboard, plus one Internal Security agent, fresh from her training and initial intern assignment.

  09856… 37731… 20691…

  It found a parking orbit offworld, hiding behind one of the planet's moons until the ordered time came around.