Shades of Empire (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  “But Antonio is young,” Chen said. “He might listen to reason—or perhaps to fear. His father’s too sure of himself to be afraid of us, but if we got him out of the way, the Prince might well be persuaded to yield some power to the populace.”

  Alexander shook his head. “It’s hard to believe a du Plessis would yield anything to the populace.”

  “Do you know the Crown Prince?” Ostrov asked.

  “I know him by sight,” Alexander said. “He came to see his father a few times. I don’t think they’re at all close. The Emperor showed more affection for his dogs than he did for his son.”

  “Well,” Ostrov said, “they seem to be close now. Prince Antonio has his own estate on the outskirts of Montmartre, but he’s been staying at the palace for the last two weeks. But then again, there’s some speculation that he’s being punished for something?”

  Alexander shrugged. After so long away from the palace it was difficult to care about the imperial family’s comings and goings again. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t know.”

  “But,” Karchin said insistently, “you do know the palace. Do you think it’s at all feasible for a team to get in, or is the security so daunting that they’d never even make it through the door?’

  Alexander pondered this question, remembering his days standing guard. Very little had ever happened to disturb that duty. “I suppose it is possible,” he said slowly. “The outer perimeter has lots of electronic monitoring, and the force field is set to kill. But once you’re inside, the palace isn’t as impregnable as you might expect. The Corps believes their own propaganda. The entrances are all kept locked and guarded round the clock and the windows are shielded, but not much has been done to make the interior secure. There are only a few internal monitors, and most of them are right around the Emperor’s quarters.”

  “So a well-armed team could make it if they could breech the outer perimeter or get inside by some other means?”

  Alexander was reluctant to say yes outright. “If they were lucky.”

  Karchin leaned across the table and stared intently at Alexander’s face. “Would you help us? Would you go with our forces when we make the attack? It would help us tremendously.”

  “It’s a suicide mission,” Chen said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We can’t make any promises for your chances of getting out again.”

  Ostrov frowned at her caveat but didn’t dispute it.

  “Well,” the rebel leader said, “how about it, young man? Are you willing to fight against the despot who tried to kill you?”

  Alexander stared at the lines he had drawn on the monitor. It was a crazy scheme, it was true, but what did he have to lose, after all? “I might be,” he said slowly. “If you were willing to help me with something I want to do.”

  “And what’s that?” Ostrov said sharply.

  “I want to get someone out of the palace,” Alexander said, “if she’s still alive.”

  • • •

  By the time Maddy came back to her cabin, Thaddeus was practicably twitching from pent up energy. He had tried yanking, twisting, scraping, and stepping on his restraints, and found that they held no matter what he did. He hadn’t been able to budge the table from the deck, and in consequence he was seething with suppressed rage.

  “About bloody time!” he said when the door opened. “Let me out of these damn things, Maddy!”

  She crossed the room, but didn’t immediately make any move to let him loose.

  “What the hell was that about?” she demanded. “You talked to me. Why couldn’t you talk to them?”

  “Because,” Thaddeus said impatiently, “you may be incredibly lax about import laws and high-handed about how you run your ship, but you’re not in open rebellion against your own government. Now get these damn things off of me!”

  “When I’m ready and not before,” Maddy snapped back at him. “Mind your mouth!”

  Thaddeus realized he was fighting without ammunition. He clamped his mouth shut and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “All right,” he said evenly. “Will you take these things off of me, please? My back is killing me, and I need to use the head.”

  Maddy stepped closer and pulled out the key. “Oh, all right. But you stay in here until my buyers are gone. I’m not taking any chances.”

  Thaddeus looked at her more charitably. “At least you didn’t hand me over to them. I suppose I should be grateful for that.”

  She gave him a warm look. “I’ll expect you to show me how much tonight.”

  “I’ll try to live up to your expectations. Why are they still aboard? Don’t they trust you enough to settle for watching the cargo transfer from their own ship?”

  “It’s not that,” Maddy said as she unlocked the restraints. “They’re waiting for Napier to pack. He’s going with them.”

  “What?” Thaddeus roared, jumping to his feet. “You let them take Alex?”

  Maddy looked offended. “I didn’t let them. He asked to be released from his job and I said yes. He wants to go with them. He seems to think he can get someone out of the palace—probably that woman in the holo.”

  “He’s crazy,” Thaddeus said. “She’s dead.”

  Maddy shrugged. “It’s his decision, Thad.”

  “I’m going to talk to him.”

  She frowned. “No, you’re not. You’re staying right here until their shuttle undocks.”

  Thaddeus made an instant and uncharacteristically quick decision. He knew Maddy well enough to know that she couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind, so he lunged for her, catching her in such a way that her arms were confined to her sides. Maddy misinterpreted his actions for a moment, which proved disastrous for her. Only when Thaddeus snatched up the restraints from the table did she seem to comprehend his intent. She screamed for help as she fought back, but the Queen Bee didn’t have any kind of automated monitoring, and she had brought no one with her, so there was no one near enough to hear her.

  Thaddeus shut her up by the somewhat drastic but easily-accomplished expedient of applying pressure to the artery in her throat until she lost consciousness. He checked her breathing, once he had released her, and when he was satisfied that she was in no danger of asphyxiation, he dragged her over to the table and put the restraints on her, much as he had been restrained earlier.

  After one last look at her unconscious form, he went out the door, relieved to find it unlocked, and almost ran back to his own cubby.

  He found Alexander Napier just shoving the last of his clothing into a gear bag.

  “Hello, Thad,” Alexander said in surprise. “I didn’t think the skipper was going to let you out until after we’re gone.”

  “Neither did she,” Alexander said. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Alex?”

  Alexander made a last visual survey of the room. “Gaulle.”

  Thaddeus bit back a curse. The kid was throwing his life away for no good reason. “You’re going to try to get to Celia, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe I am. Is it any of your business?”

  If it came to that, the whole damn mission was none of his business, but Thaddeus had never let that stop him. “It’s crazy, Alex! She’s dead. You can’t help her now, and you’ll get yourself killed trying.”

  “Maybe she is dead,” Alexander said stolidly, “and maybe she isn’t. They didn’t kill me outright. They may still be torturing her.”

  “And what makes you think you can get to her? What makes you think you have any chance at all?”

  “The rebels are going to launch an assault on the palace. They said if I take them in, they’ll give me what I need to get Celia out of there.”

  The news left Thaddeus dumbfounded. “What? Those wackos are going to try to take the palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that strikes you as a reasonable chance?”

  “No. It strikes me as one chance in a thousand, and that’s better than no chance at all.”

  More than
ever, Thaddeus wished he had access to his com. Nothing in the reports he had read suggested this plan by the rebels. “What do they think they’ll accomplish? Do they think they can knock out something crucial from the palace?”

  “Not exactly. They plan to kill the Emperor.”

  Thaddeus drew in a breath and let it out in a hiss. “Assassination?”

  Alexander nodded.

  “Are you going to do it?”

  Alexander picked up his bag and pushed past Thaddeus as he moved toward the door. “I’m not an assassin. I told them that. All I’m going to do is make sure they know the layout and help them get in the door.”

  “With that?” Thaddeus asked, almost flicking Alexander’s cheek with one hand.

  “Yes. It should be good for something. It caused me enough pain when they put it on.”

  “Don’t do it, Alex,” Thaddeus said as his friend reached the door. “Don’t throw your life away out of guilt for something that wasn’t your fault.”

  Alexander turned back and looked at him for a moment. He sighed and shook his head slowly. “I have to try. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, anyway, because I’m not really alive. I haven’t been alive in years. That’s what the Corps does to you—it squeezes your soul until it leaves your body. All that’s left is a husk as cold and soulless as a machine.”

  “That’s not true. If it had been true, you never would have answered Celia’s note, let alone tried to get her out of there.”

  Alexander shifted his pack. He looked younger suddenly, like a kid going off to summer camp. “Maybe not. But I’m going back to Gaulle anyway. Goodbye, Thad, and thanks for all your help.”

  “Goodbye, Alex.”

  The younger man was gone, and Thaddeus was left to ponder his departure. He was brought up short by the realization that he was truly at liberty on the ship for the first time in days, while Madeline Palestrino was confined to her cabin.

  He was debating the possibility of reaching the com center when the resounding boom of many booted feet hitting the metal deck repeatedly echoed in the corridor, and three men suddenly stopped at the open door to Thaddeus’ cubby.

  “There you are, Thad,” Lucas Pringle said in a pleased tone. “The skipper wants to see you right away.”

  Thaddeus let out a deep sigh and stepped into the corridor. “Might as well go now. I’m tired of living, anyway.”

  • • •

  When Thaddeus was shoved through the door to her cabin, Maddy was pacing up and down with poorly suppressed fury.

  “There you are.” Her tone struck a chill in Thaddeus’ heart.

  “Hello, Maddy.” He looked her up and down for signs of damage. “You look okay.”

  “No thanks to you,” she said, venom dripping from her voice. She held out the restraints Thaddeus had put on her. “Put him in a chair and use these to make sure he can’t get out of it,” she ordered Lucas Pringle. “And then get out—all of you!”

  Pringle pushed Thaddeus into the nearest chair and pulled his arms behind him. He ran the restraints through a slat in the chair back and then fastened them firmly to Thaddeus’ wrists.

  “There you go, ma’am,” he said cheerfully. “He’s not going anywhere until you let him out again.”

  “Hell may freeze over first,” Maddy said with satisfaction.

  She waited until her crewmen were gone before she moved to stand directly in front of Thaddeus. “Well, well, well. Did you enjoy your little excursion, Thad?”

  He held in a sigh. How could he keep her from giving in to her temper? Was that even possible? “No. I didn’t like having to take you out, Maddy. But I couldn’t let Alex leave without trying to persuade him to think better of his decision. He’s very likely to end up dead.”

  “You may end up dead!”

  Thaddeus knew better. He gave her a steady look. “If you didn’t care what happened to me, you’d have sold me to those rebels. You had the chance, and they were eager for you to take their money.”

  The look she gave him in response was every bit as steady, and a good deal more hard-edged than the one he had given her. “Is that what you think—that I only do this for the money?”

  “No.” Thaddeus gave her back stare for stare. “I think you have to make a profit to keep your ship, but I also think you want to help the rebels because you loathe the du Plessis empire as much as I do.”

  She nodded once. “I’ve got a ship full of deserters,” she said, her voice intense with feeling. “That’s how I got my crew. I pick them up on the space stations, and on visits to Lubar. You may have noticed almost no one wants shore leave when we’re in this system; there’s a reason for that.

  “And behind every reason is a story. Sometimes it was just that they couldn’t take the brutality anymore. Sometimes it was because they didn’t like what they were turning into. But in every case, there was no way out for them except to cut and run. About the sixth time I listened to it, it got to me. I decided I’d do what I could to end it.”

  “I heard the same stories,” Thaddeus said quietly. “The crew pretty much ignored me as far as personal conversations went. If there were two people talking in front of me, as far as they were concerned, they were alone. I heard virtually everyone’s story, sooner or later. I don’t have any argument with what you’re doing for the rebels. I just had to talk to Alex before he left.”

  “Even if it meant knocking me out?”

  “You’ve held me at gun point and locked me up in the brig because you thought it was the right thing to do,” Thaddeus said evenly. “I simply followed my own sense of expediency, just as you did.”

  “Yeah, but you did it on my ship.”

  He smiled at this argument. “How’d you get loose?”

  She smiled back, a grim smile at best. “When I came to, I took my shoe off, threw it at the com switch and called for help. You were in too much of a hurry to lock the door.”

  He shook his head admiringly. “You’re quite a woman, Maddy.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere—except the brig. As soon as we unload the last of the cargo, you go to the bridge and set our course for Space Station du Plessis. I’ll have Niels check it, just to make sure, and then you’ll go back in the brig and stay there for the rest of the trip.”

  “How long do you think you can keep this up?”

  “As long as necessary.”

  Thaddeus groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

  He could no longer hold in a sigh. “I still need to use the head.”

  She smiled with delight. “Good. Then I won’t have to actually hit you to make you suffer.”

  Damn! Unlike her previous threat, this was one she was capable of carrying out. “Maddy!” he called when she started for the door. She kept going, heedless of his pleas to be released long enough to take care of his bodily demands.

  Thaddeus closed his eyes. He spared a thought for Alexander Napier and wondered if the rebels had any chance of succeeding. Thaddeus wasn’t sanguine. He had seen not only plans of the imperial palace in Montmartre, but reports of the relationships between the members of the imperial family. In attacking the palace, the rebels planned to step into a nest of rattlesnakes, and he for one wouldn’t be surprised if the snakes came off the better from the encounter.

  He sighed and tried not to think about his pressing need for relief.

  Chapter Six

  Thalia Margaret Helena Martain du Plessis waited until her maid had finished dressing her hair, and then she dismissed the woman with a wave of her hand. Her husband lounged in a chair on the other side of her bedroom.

  “Well, Thalia,” Emperor Lothar II said, a hard edge in his tone, “have you been keeping our son in check?”

  The Empress maintained a serene countenance, one eye still admiring the perfection of the elaborate swirl of dusky curls that made up her coiffure. It was a source of great pride to her that her hair was still naturally black. “I’ve managed to limit his
encounters with the outside world. I can’t say, however, that I’m pleased to have him here constantly. I don’t consider that he’s a good influence on Vinitra.”

  Lothar looked disgusted. “Antonio’s not a good influence on anyone.”

  “In any event,” Thalia said, not arguing, “it’s time you settled the matter of Vinitra’s marriage.”

  Her husband’s disgusted expression turned into a frown of annoyance. “Not just yet. I’m playing the Castres against the DePaulles. Depending on which family can do the most to assist in my plans, I’ll marry her to the eldest son of that house.”

  Thalia was no more pleased with his response than he had been with her question. “Louis DePaulle is only eighteen.”

  Lothar showed no visible concern at this argument. “Vinitra’s twenty. Two years is not that much older.”

  “Richard Castres would be better for her. He’s old enough to awe her just a little, but young enough to still be dashing.”

  Lothar made an impatient sound. “I’m attempting to keep our empire intact, Thalia. I can’t be swayed by the groom’s charm. Vinitra will marry where it provides the best advantage.”

  Thalia hid her displeasure at his rebuke. If she let it show, Lothar would be pleased with himself for annoying her. “So it’s definitely one of those two?”

  “Almost certainly. If it looks as if I can bring both them into line, I’ll probably give the other one Cassandra.”

  The Empress lifted her brows with all the haughteur of which she was capable. “To marry?”

  “Certainly to marry,” Lothar said testily. “She has my blood as well as her mother’s. I gave her noble standing when she was born.”

  Thalia sat very straight as she looked at herself in the mirror and adjusted the folds of her deceptively simple purple gown. “Compounding one mistake with another, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you. I seldom ask you.” Lothar came out of his chair. “And I’ll thank you, madam wife,” he said, his voice as smooth as silk as he leaned over her shoulder, “to keep your opinions to yourself.”

  He enforced this edict by laying his hands on her shoulders and gripping her as tightly as he could. Thalia held her composure and made no sound until finally she let out a tiny squeak of pain.