Empire's End

by Chris Bunch

  "I'm not so sure about that," Cind said.

  They all looked at her. Praying for a break.

  "There were several places Kyes was interested in he hadn't checked out yet," she said. "They were areas Kyes suspected might be safehouses on the path the Emperor takes when he returns. All my own progs confirm he was correct to suspect them. They fit the profile."

  "I think we should correlate your stuff with Mahoney's," Haines told Cind. "Ian was working a lot of the same angles."

  "Good idea," Cind said. She smiled at Haines. She quite liked her. And as Sten's former lover, Haines reflected well on Cind's own good taste.

  "If this were a homicide case," Haines continued, "which this is, in an awful sort of way—once I figured out where the crime was plotted, I'd tie into the com lines. Bug the clot out of the place. And wait for the suspect to call. When he did, all I'd have to do is trace it."

  "Sticking to your analogy, my love," Sam'l said, stroking his wife's hand, "I'd guess you wouldn't have to wait. The line would be continuously open, assuming that everyone's theories dovetail. The Emperor would need to maintain communication with his hideout… and, Darling, have you ever noticed you've now got me talking like some kind of livie cop? Also, wouldn't there be some kind of open link to a relay station, like the one Kyes evidently came to grief at? There must be more than one of those—the Emperor doesn't depend on chance any more than, say, Schliemann did."

  Sten forced calm. He didn't want to jinx the moment. "It's at least worth checking out," he said.

  "It's better than that," Cind said. "All my instincts are ring-big bells that this is the way to go."

  "Go with them, then," Haines said. "Instinct is what separates the rookies from the pros."

  Sam'l broke into the flow in his hazy, dreamy way. "I keep wondering," he said, "what our lives would be like if AM2 could be copied and manufactured—like many of the common elements. How different things might have turned out, if you could brew it up as easily as our hosts, the Bhor, brew stregg."

  His lips curved into irony. "But I suppose it's highly unlikely such a thing is possible. To actually synthesize AM2, I mean. My college text, if I recall correctly, said even if this were a possibility, the expense would make the whole thing an exercise in futility."

  "Mahoney didn't think so," Haines said.

  Sten jumped. "What?"

  "I said, Mahoney didn't think so. He had a lot of stuff in his files on synthetic AM2. Under the heading of Disinformation. I've only just started to go through them."

  She tapped her head, shaking her memory. "There was something in particular in one of the files. Something Mahoney wanted to bring to your attention."

  Sten nodded. She had shown him several items already that Mahoney had marked with an S so Sten would pay particular mind.

  Haines smiled, remembering. "Oh, yeah. Something about a 'Bravo Project' " She looked at Sten. "Do you know what that means?'

  Cind saw Sten draw back in shock. Saw his face drain of color. What was wrong? She reached over to touch his hand. It was cold.

  "Yes," Sten said. Grim. "I know what Bravo Project means."

  Then he saw the worry on Cind's face. And Haines's. Even the unflappable Sam'l's brow was furrowed.

  He forced cheer into his voice. "But I'll have to do some double-checking on my memory," he said. "With Rykor."

  His insides were far from casual—Yeah, he had to see Rykor, all right.

  About a nightmare.

  He was back on Vulcan.

  Karl Sten. A Mig kid turned Delinq with only hours to live before Thoresen's exterminators tracked him down.

  Bet was with him. So lovely. So young. And Oron. That odd, brainburned genius who knew only the present.

  Mahoney loomed up at him. A much younger Mahoney. Strong and confident. But the adolescent Sten wasn't sure he was to be trusted.

  "I must have confirmation of Thoresen's plan," Mahoney said. "I've blue-boxed into the exec and central computers, and there was nothing on Bravo Project except inquiry-warning triggers."

  Bravo Project! There it was again. Sten felt a wrenching at his chest. A sob bubbled up, and broke.

  Easy, Sten, came Rykor's voice… It's past. It's over. It's all been mourned… He felt a faint sting. Then calmness as the tranquil took affect. He heard faint scratching sounds. Rykor manipulating the keyboard. Coaxing up images. And Mahoney's big, cheerful face was torn away…

  One of Thoresen's guards paced along his beat. Sten floated in behind him. His hand circled the man's throat. His knife lunged forward. And he heard the gasp and felt life draining away. There was no remorse in him. Only an odd flicker of joy.

  … Self-disgust welled. And then flooded over… So many deaths by his hand Murders. Rykor's soothing voice crept in: Let it go, my friend. Let it go.

  But he couldn't. The man was dead. Snuffed out. No better than an insect. Sten moaned—God, forgive me… and there was another sting… and the tranquil lies spread through his veins… And the image flipped to—

  They were inside the Eye. Thoresen's hidden safe revealed. Sten sprayed the touch lock. Liquid at Kelvin-Zero crystallized the steel. Bet stepped forward with a hammer and tapped. The metal shattered. The door came open. They were in! Sten felt the long-ago thrill. Looked up at Bet and Oron. Grinning like maniacs for beating Thoresen at his own game.

  … Again, the sting of tranquil. Sten struggled against the terror that would follow. Shouted away the bat wings rustling in his darkest memories. The hammering of his heart eased. He took comfort in the sensation of the hard table under his body. The electrodes attached to his head, arms, and legs. He heard the splash of liquid. It was Rykor, shifting in her tank. No. There was nothing to fear. Trust Rykor. With Rykor operating the brainscan, he was safe. Sten let the images move on…

  Flip. Flip.

  Sten reached into Thoresen's safe. Found the file amid the jumble of paper and bundles of Imperial credits. The folder. Thick and red. Titled: Bravo Project.

  The images came slower now. Flip. Flip. Flip… Oron taking the folder. Flip! The papers spilling to the floor. Hip! And Sten was scrabbling for the papers. Stuffing them into the folder. No particular order… And he saw… Flip! Oh, jesus, one of the Delinqs was falling… chest blasted away… And…

  The image froze. Sten felt vomit rise. Heard Rykor mutter, Too far… reverse… Sten shuddered at the sting of the tranquil and…

  Flip!

  Back to the papers… scrabbling for them… slower… Flip! Slower… And he could see them, now. A page at a time. Flip! A title leaping up—RECREATIONAL AREA 26: A SUMMARY OF ACTIONS… Flip!

  … Wait. Have to stop. Have to see. Go back… And Rykor's voice called to him, It's no good, Sten. Put it behind you. Go on… Sten refused. He fought the voice. The kind coaxing voice. A stinging sensation. And now there was the tranquil to fight.

  Sten pushed the veil away. Forced the image forward. He was in control, dammit!

  And the agony of Recreational Area 26 came tumbling back.

  The Row.

  Riotous voices. Barkers and shills plying their trade. Joyboys and joygirls out in force, emptying Mig pockets for Thoresen's coffers. And there was more. Gambling machines hooting enticements. Drunks brawling. Sociopatrolmen charging into the melee, clubs swinging.

  There were 1,385 beings on the Row that day.

  Among them—

  Sten felt a cry of joy burst from his lips. There was his father, Amos. His mother, Freed. And his brother and sister, Jobs and Ahd. He shouted. But they didn't hear him.

  Stop this, Sten, Rykor hissed. But he wouldn't listen. Couldn't listen… because he knew what was going to happen next…

  Sten tried to shout for his family again. Fear clutched hard as his voice feathered into a whisper. He saw them enter the Row. Saw the big lobby doors shut tight behind them.

  He stood there. Frozen. Waiting.

  More voices.

  "Then dump Twenty-six," Thoresen said.

&nbs
p; The tech protested, "But we've got almost fourteen hundred people—"

  "You have your orders."

  Explosive bolts fired around the dome panels.

  In sympthetic reaction, Sten's body flailed against the operating table. At the brainscan's controls, Rykor watched, helpless. If she interfered now, the damage would be so severe Sten would be fortunate to merely die.

  Sten jumped again as he heard the typhoon roar of air blasting into space. And he was a forced witness—trapped by his own fool self—as…

  Almost in slow motion, the escaping hurricane caught the shanty cubicles of the Row—and the people in them—and spat them through the holes into blackness.

  He heard a tech's voice: "Come on. They were only Migs."

  Then the chief tech: "Yeah. You're right. That's all they were."

  Sten wept.

  Rykor worked over him for hours, using all her psychiatric skills as well as her vast pharmacopoeia to bring him back into something vaguely approaching normalcy.

  Then she took him back. Past the nightmare of the Row. Back to Bravo Project.

  And the secret Thoresen himself later died for.

  The secret of synthetic AM2.

  Sten huddled in a blanket. Sweat streamed from him, but he was cold. He felt as if he had been pried open, emptied out and discarded.

  He took the mug Rykor offered, and sipped at thick, hot, nourishing broth. Rykor's flipper brushed a control panel and soft music swelled. Cleansing music. He closed his eyes and let it wash over him for a long time.

  Then he opened his eyes and took another drink. He saw Rykor's large, empathetic eyes studying him.

  Sten made a face. "Never again," he croaked.

  "I am very sorry, my dear friend," Rykor said. Her rich voice gave meaning to empty words.

  "Me, too," Sten said. "At least… now we know. Not only is it possible to make AM2… but, we have the formula and procedure. I'm not a chemist, and it sounds like the process is a pain, and expensive as hell. But so what? Production cuts prices."

  He stopped, thinking.

  "And this just turns the whole clotting universe around and around, doesn't it? Or does it?"

  "What do you intend to do with the knowledge?" Rykor asked.

  "I'm not sure," Sten said. "This changes a great many things."

  He lifted weary eyes to plead with Rykor. "Don't say anything," he said. "I need time to think."

  Rykor studied him. Thinking, He's my friend. A trusted friend. But some secrets are worms that probe and spoil all goodness.

  "If something happens to me," Sten said, "you've got all the information. Do with it as you please."

  "Very well," Rykor said. "I'll wait."

  "Thanks," Sten said, weak. Then his head slumped. Rykor's flipper came out and lifted the mug away before it spilled.

  He slept for many hours. It was a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  HOTSCO LET HER number two run her ship and the surreptitious movements toward Prime World. She had smuggled things on and off Prime so many times it wasn't a challenge anymore. And her exec had already been making noises about getting her own ship, once this absurd commitment Jon Wild had made to social justice and drakh like that was over.

  The third reason was, Hotsco had better things to do. As did Marl. As did Alex. He was most glad, by the time they closed on the Empire's capital, that he stayed in something near shape and that he was a heavy-worlder.

  Hotsco had been right—Marl's culture had some very, sometimes even excessively, interesting customs. She was a beaut, he thought fondly. As was Hotsco. He wondered what his wee mum would think if he brought them home and introduced them to her. Hmm. That might require some preparation.

  Besides, he was going to die on Prime, he reminded himself.

  When Hotsco's ship, the Rum Row, closed on the first of Prime's elaborate screens, Hotsco took the bridge.

  Sten may have needed an elaborate diversion to slither the Victory onto Prime to rescue Haines and the others. Hotsco did not. She ghosted down, past mechanicals that seemed rusted solid, past patrol patterns that seemed loose-weave, even once past a patrolling Imperial destroyer within visual range.

  She brought the ship down in atmosphere, and slipped toward a midnight landing, in one of the deepest spots of the River Wye that ran through the center of the green, protected Valley Wye. If the landing had been witnessed by one of the fanatic fishermen who considered the River Wye as their Mecca, Sten and his minions would have been considered fiends incarnate, and the worst punishment the Eternal Emperor could wreak on them considered corporal. Kilgour—who'd been known to cast a bit of feather and fur to assuage the savage salmon gods without ever landing one of the three-meter monsters—felt a little ashamed. But only a little.

  He slid out of the ship's airlock in a spacesuit and swam to the bank. The Rum Row was under about seven meters of water, resting on the bottom. Not very much, but the dark anodizing would hopefully camouflage the ship against the river's bottom. Of course, if the Wye was overflown by a patrolcraft with sensors, the quality of the camouflage or the depth of the water wouldn't matter.

  But why think about trouble?

  He buried the suit under a layer of turf for quick retrieval, and headed directly for Ashley-on-Wye, the small town in the valley's center, where he hoped to set up his RV/safehouse. The town appeared abandoned. Quiet, deserted cobbled streets. There was a sign of life in one bar, where, long past closing, songs were being sung, barmaids being pinched and pints poured. Kilgour ignored his thirst and moved on.

  The Blue Bhor was dark.

  Kilgour settled down to wait for dawn, unobtrusively, under a bush. Either his friend was gone, bankrupt, or conceivably arrested for past sins by IS or the gamekeepers; was out poaching; or else would be out…

  Just at dawn Chris Frye, ex-Mantis, proprietor of the Blue Bhor Inn, fanatic fisherman and skilled cook and drinker, came out the side door of his inn carrying a rod and creel.

  He strolled past a bush, and stiffened. He stopped. Puzzled a bit, then dug into his creel as if to make sure he had not forgotten something.

  "Y' c'n drop th' charade," Alex advised. "Ah wonder'd i' y' still hae y'r moves, an w'd spot m' marker."

  Frye took the tiny colored metal clip that could've been a flower from a twig and pocketed it as Alex stepped out.

  "Sod off, Kilgour. I had those reflexes as a poacher long before I took the clottin' Emp's shilling. What're you doing on Prime? You and your traitorous friend're supposed to be dead, according to the lies I've heard from the drakh-for-brains propaganda mill."

  "Rumors ae m' passin' bein't overrated an' thae. Din't figure you'd put up wi' the drakh comin't doon ae late. How bad is it?"

  "Clottin' clotted," Frye said quietly. "Anybody who had anything to do with Mercury or Mantis, even way back then, isn't exactly thought of as the best citizen. Nobody's gotten boxed yet, but you're watched pretty close.

  "Or so I've heard from friends who drop by. Most folks here in the valley don't remember what kind of sojering I did, and wouldn't cough if they did. Gotta tell you, Alex, I don't know what the hell happened to the Emperor, when he wasn't around—but something sure as hell did.

  "Tell you the truth, when they shot Mahoney, and then Sten ran up the black flag, I clotting near nailed the door shut and took off to join you clowns. Only thing that stopped me was a strong feeling of cowardice and old age."

  The two eyed each other. It had been a lot of years, indeed, since Mantis, and almost as many since Frye's Blue Bhor had been used as a safehouse when Sten was investigating the attempted murder of the Eternal Emperor.

  "You look a bit older, a bit fatter, and a bit grayer," Frye observed.

  "Dinnae we all, mate," Alex said. "An' how's th' life ae a publican?"

  "The doors stay open," Frye's business, offering meals, teds, packed lunches, ghillie-ing, and alk to the dedicated rod-wranglers who came to the Blue Bhor, brought credits in—and Frye's love
of good food, drink, and not letting friends pay for anything poured them out just as rapidly.

  "I assume you want something?"

  "Not much. Just a place for some friends of mine to stay."

  "How many?"

  "Twelve." '

  "About the crew side of a small spaceship," Frye said. "I thought I heard something around midnight. Well, welcome to the king's enemies and all that. Clottin' Emperor. Just one question, so I can shriek quietly and wake up the whole clotting town. Is Sten one of them?"

  "No. Ah'm th' hottest ae th' lot, an' Ah'll noo be stayin't."

  "Well, bring 'em in, then. I knew there was something lacking in my life lately. Listenin' for the tread of the hangman, the knock on the door, and the clap on the shoulder. Damn, but I love getting back into harness, particularly if it's something that sounds a lot like high treason. I can't say how nice it is to see you, Sergeant Kilgour."

  * * *

  Since the citizens of Ashley-on-Wye slept late as a habit, there was no problem moving Marl, Hotsco, and the rest of the smugglers into the inn without notice.

  Then they waited until nightfall. Frye fed them sumptuously and kept asking if there wasn't something he could help with. Transport? Credits? Frye had some interesting things that went bang buried around somewhere. Phony ID? Hell, did Alex need backup?

  No to all of them. What Alex didn't have, he could steal.

  He kissed Hotsco and Marl good-bye.

  "Y hae th' orders, noo? I' y' dinnae hear frae me wi'in th' week, or i' y' hae reason to suss thae Ah'm blown or y're under's'picion, y' promise't' haul oot like y' hae a Campbell a'ter y'r skirts?"

  The two women promised.

  They watched Alex disappear into the darkness, just another casual laborer headed for towncenter and transport to somewhere on Prime.

  They looked at each other.

  "How long?" Marl asked.

  "We'll wait till there's frost on Sheol," Hotsco said.

  "Good. And if Alex gets nailed?"

  "We'll go in after him," Hotsco said softly. "If we have to take him out of Arundel itself."

  They touched palms. The compact was made.