Shades of Empire (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  “Oh, all right,” Thaddeus said with a sigh. “Go ahead and do it, then, Gus.”

  Augustus stepped closer, pressed the hypospray against Thaddeus’ neck and waited.

  Thaddeus held his breath for a second and then groaned. The pain started within seconds. “God, I hate stuff that acts directly on the brain.”

  “Shut up and lie down,” Augustus said. “Otherwise you might fall on the floor, and you’re bigger than me.”

  Thaddeus obliged him by lying down on the sofa. He groaned again, and clutched his head. “God,” he said faintly.

  “He’s not here at the moment. I’ll leave him a message that you were asking for him.” Augustus leaned over and switched on what looked like an ordinary holographic projector, that was sitting on the table in front of the sofa. An image of a small town appeared. “Listen up, Thad. Here it comes.”

  A voice began to speak in peculiarly accented Standard, relating details of a family who lived in the town. People appeared, singly and in groups, as the speaker described how each of them was related to him.

  Thaddeus stared at the images determinedly, as the voice continued to give details of the life of one Marko Poussain. It related names of friends, a school, a job, bosses’ names, hobbies, all sorts of activities; it went on to name a woman who had held Marko’s interest for a while, and explained why he was no longer seeing her. After several minutes, the voice changed. A different speaker, but with the same flatly accented way of speaking, began to give directions, ordering someone to say his name, where he was from, and where he lived now.

  “Marko Poussain,” Thaddeus said, in an approximation of the same accent. “I’m from Cour d’Or near Shugart, and I live in a boarding house in the sixth district of Montmartre, near the central square.”

  The questioning continued, and Thaddeus answered each interrogation easily.

  Finally, a third voice spoke crisply. “Factual recall, one hundred percent. Inflection, eighty-seven percent. Accent, fifty-six percent. A second dose is highly recommended.”

  “Shit,” Thaddeus said with feeling.

  Augustus came over to stand beside the sofa. “You sure you want to go through with this, Thad?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You heard the damn thing, Gus. Hit me again.”

  Augustus bent over and pressed the hypospray against Thaddeus’ neck a second time. As the spray hissed gently, Thaddeus groaned. Augustus waited a few seconds and then started the player.

  Thaddeus sat through the whole thing and repeated all the answers he had given before. This time, his voice took on a much more noticeable enunciation as he spoke. His vowels were flatter, his cadence faster.

  “Factual recall, one hundred percent,” the disembodied voice said. “Inflection, ninety-three percent. Accent, eighty-eight percent. A third dose is allowed but not required.”

  Thaddeus rolled over on the sofa and clutched his head. “That’s it,” he said, still in the same uniquely accented version of Standard that was common on some of the more rural parts of Gaulle. “No more.”

  “It’s your call.” Augustus went into the bedroom and came out with a blanket that he draped over Thaddeus.

  “Thanks,” Thaddeus said through clenched teeth. He had already begun to shiver, and he wrapped his arms around himself tightly to keep from shaking violently.

  “If you ask me, that stuff is a hell of a lot worse than nempathenol.”

  “I agree. I don’t suppose you have a stun gun handy, do you, Gus?”

  Augustus shook his head regretfully. “You know better than that, Thad.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Thaddeus flinched as his headache grew suddenly worse. “Tell me again why I wanted to do this?”

  Augustus smiled. “Someone’s got to find out what’s happening with our contact. He’s too valuable to lose.”

  “That was it,” Thaddeus said faintly. “I recruited him; I have to find out what’s happened to him. How long does this stuff take to wear off?”

  “Well, with two doses, the aftereffects can last up to an hour.”

  “Shit.” Thaddeus moaned and rolled over on his side, then suddenly sat up. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Having undergone a similar treatment himself in the past, Augustus was prepared for this eventuality, and he shoved a basin into Thaddeus’ lap.

  “Here, use this,” he said, and Thaddeus did.

  • • •

  The trip down to Gaulle was accomplished more easily than Thaddeus had expected. Augustus provided him with false identification that matched his new persona except that his own image, retinal scans, and fingerprints were on it. Thaddeus had no trouble passing the security check imposed on all Gaullians as they returned to the planet of their birth.

  “Where you from?” the guard asked curiously as he handed him his ID.

  “Cour d’Or,” Thaddeus said, without conscious thought. “It’s near Shugart.”

  “Thought so,” the man said with a nod. “My wife’s from near there.”

  “Really?” Thaddeus said, as if he were actually interested. “Where’s she from exactly?”

  “A wide place in the road called Saume. Ever hear of it?”

  “I think so. But I don’t think I know anyone from there.”

  “I doubt that you do. There aren’t more than a few hundred of them in a good year—less if the press gangs have been through lately.”

  “Cour d’Or’s not much bigger,” Thaddeus said, wondering how he was going to end this conversation. Fortunately, a man two places back began to complain that they were holding up the line, and the guard waved Thaddeus through to take his place on the shuttle that was boarding.

  The shuttle put him down at the spaceport in Montmartre, and Thaddeus used the city transit system to get to the downtown sector. He immediately found a room at a boarding house, so that he would have a real address if anyone asked him. It wasn’t actually near the central square, but it was close enough to be convenient for his observation of their contact.

  He went to the library and reviewed recent news bulletins, looking for information on the attack on the palace. A bulletin for the day before announced that Lady Cassandra Fitzlothar had been kidnapped in the attack and had just recently been rescued. Thaddeus wondered if this kidnapping was somehow connected to Alexander Napier’s quest to save Celia Mjoseth, but he couldn’t imagine how it could be.

  He also sat through accounts of the recent activities of the new emperor, from his toasting the happy couple at his sister’s wedding to his appearance before the Parliament of Nobles, a speech that had not been well received.

  Finally, Thaddeus left the library to find a public com center. He dialed a code that he found in the municipal directory and in a few minutes he was looking at a young woman’s face.

  “Good afternoon,” Thaddeus said pleasantly.

  She replied politely, and Thaddeus asked to speak to his contact.

  “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “He doesn’t know me, but please tell him a mutual friend asked me to call him—Gus Chang.”

  She nodded and paused the connection. In a few seconds, Thaddeus was looking at his contact.

  “Hello,” Thaddeus said immediately. “You don’t know me, but Gus told me to look you up.”

  His contact looked surprised. “Did he?”

  “Yes,” Thaddeus said, still in the same firm voice. “He said you might have some useful information for me.”

  Now his contact seemed merely noncommittal. “I might. Actually, I could use your help with something. Can we talk in person?”

  Thaddeus decided to risk it. “You name the place and time. I don’t know the city that well.”

  His contact named a bar and gave directions on how to find it. Thaddeus agreed to meet him that evening, and broke the connection.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the city streets. He noted angry graffiti protesting a special tax assessment, scrawled across the wall of a transit station; no o
ne had bothered to clean it off yet. Someone had added a smaller complaint about press gangs in the countryside under it.

  Thaddeus had dinner back at his boarding house and then went out again. His landlady warned him to be careful.

  “It’s been calmer since they lifted martial law,” she said, “but there have been a few riots, and you wouldn’t want to get caught up in one.”

  Thaddeus thanked her and made his way to the bar in a thoughtful frame of mind.

  He got there early to scope the place out and was surprised to find it was small and rather rundown. He ordered a drink and sat with his back to the wall and near a rear exit. After half an hour, his contact walked in, glanced around, and headed for Thaddeus’ table.

  “You’re very prompt,” he said. “I thought I was early.”

  “I was earlier,” Thaddeus replied. “Have a seat and order something so we don’t look suspicious.”

  The other man ordered the same kind of beer that Thaddeus was drinking.

  Thaddeus waited for the ancient servoid to rumble back to the bar before he spoke. “Aren’t you worried someone will notice the Emperor’s brother-in-law slumming in a dump like this?”

  Peter Barranca smiled wryly. “No. I find that no one recognizes me without the uniform.” He gave Thaddeus an appraising glance. “You sound different.”

  “Thank you,” Thaddeus said imperturbably. “Is the change in your marital status the reason you haven’t made it back to Station du Plessis to report?”

  “Yes. My movements are considerably more restricted these days. I have to be at the palace every night.”

  Thaddeus was surprised. An increase in status should have meant more freedom, not less. “What the hell for?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Well, then,” Thaddeus said, a little irritated, “do you have anything of interest?”

  “Possibly. How much do you know about the attack on the palace last month?”

  “Not nearly as much as I’d like to,” Thaddeus said.

  “I found it interesting,” Peter Barranca said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “that so little attention was paid to the details of who was killed and where their bodies were found. Of course, one disadvantage of a totalitarian regime is that the press is so restricted, but even the Emperor’s Own Corps did little to investigate what actually happened during the attack.”

  Thaddeus had wondered about the specifics of the raid. This could be his chance to learn what had happened to Alex. “The Emperor and the Empress were both killed?”

  Peter nodded. “The Empress was killed in the garden, in full sight of a squad of guardsmen. There’s no mystery about that. The Emperor, on the other hand, was taking a bath when the attack started. The rebels killed the men who were guarding his suite, then blew open the door. After it was all over, the body of one of the Emperor’s concubines was found in his sitting room. She was naked except for a robe, and she’d been shot through the heart with a laser pistol.”

  Interesting news, but not terribly helpful. “And the Emperor?”

  “The Emperor wasn’t found right away. The reinforcements who arrived expected to find his body, too, but it wasn’t there. There were five dead rebels in the corridor, several dead guardsmen, and the dead concubine, but no sign of Lothar du Plessis.”

  Thaddeus sat up straighter. What had begun as a straightforward assault was now sounding peculiar.

  “The Corps sent out squads to search the palace,” Peter went on, “and they found two dead guardsmen by the entrance to the women’s quarters.”

  That could have been Alex’s work. It was hard to believe the rebels would care about the women’s quarters. Unless one of the dead guardsmen was Alex, and no one had figured that out yet.

  “The Corps encountered three rebels on their way to the gardens and succeeded in killing one of them,” Peter said. “The other two got away but were killed a short time later; it was one of them who shot the Empress, by the way, right after she killed the other rebel herself.”

  It didn’t sound like Alex could be among the dead, at least not so far. “The Empress was armed?”

  “The du Plessis are almost always armed, and Thalia was a du Plessis on her mother’s side.”

  Thaddeus brought the story back to the main point of interest. “So how did the Emperor get killed?”

  “Interesting question,” Peter said. “They found his body after all the rebels were dead—almost all of them, anyway. Lothar was found in a parlor some distance from his suite. He was wearing only a towel and he had been shot with an energy pistol and then, after he was dead, someone held a laser to one ear and burned a hole through his brain.”

  “A laser again?” Had Alex had a laser? He might have killed Lothar, but Thaddeus couldn’t believe he would kill an unarmed concubine. “The rebels seemed to have a liking for lasers.”

  “Not really. None of the dead rebels had a laser on him.”

  Thaddeus lifted his brows in surprise. “None of them?”

  “None of them. There was a laser found by Lothar’s body, but it had his seal on it.”

  “They shot him with his own pistol?”

  “Someone did.”

  Thaddeus leaned back in his chair. This conversation had turned in a wholly unexpected direction. “What are you suggesting?”

  Peter looked down into his beer. “The du Plessis have a fondness for secret corridors and hidden doors. If Lothar du Plessis heard the fuss outside his door, he may well have bolted—towel and all—through a hidden exit.”

  It sounded plausible, given what Thaddeus knew of the palace. “And the dead concubine?”

  “No one ever accused Lothar of being squeamish. If he thought she was in the way, he’d have killed her in a heartbeat.”

  All too plausible. “So what happened then?”

  “He bolted, but there were those who would know where he was likely to end up.”

  If the Empress was dead, that left only one likely candidate. “The son?”

  Peter nodded. “I doubt he was in on the raid, but once he saw his opportunity, he would have jumped on it. He had a compelling incentive not to wait for his father to drop dead naturally.”

  Now this was news. “What?”

  Peter sighed and looked around the room. “This is going to be hard to believe, but the reason I have to spend every night at the palace is so that Vinitra du Plessis can go into my bedroom, supposedly to wait for me. I, on the other hand, have to stay in my sitting room until she signals that she’s ready for me. Once I go in, the bedroom is completely and totally dark. There’s a woman in my bed, but I’m quite certain that she’s not Vinitra du Plessis.”

  Thaddeus stared at him.

  “I told you the du Plessis have a fondness for hidden passages,” Peter said dryly.

  “She goes to her brother’s room?” Thaddeus said. It seemed unbelievable.

  Peter nodded. “I’d bet my entire family fortune on it.”

  “But you’re talking about incest?”

  Peter gave him an annoyed look. “Do you think I don’t know that? I have to eat breakfast with the two of them every morning. It just about turns my stomach.”

  Thaddeus nodded. He could imagine what his own reaction would be. “This could be useful information.”

  Peter leaned closer. “I realize that. But you have to be careful. This city is like a kettle put on to boil. There have been riots and demonstrations since Antonio came into power. Lothar has assumed an almost saintly aura by comparison with his son.”

  “Why you?” Thaddeus said, as it came to him that his own contact being in this position seemed an incredible coincidence. Could there be any chance the Imperium knew that Count Peter Barranca was a spy for ThreeCon and was feeding him false information? “Why were you drafted to play the part of the pseudo brother-in-law?”

  Peter pushed himself back in his chair. He grimaced. “Because my sister was unwise enough to get involved with the reb
els. She was financing them, as well as being in on the planning of the attack. I prevented her execution by agreeing to this mockery of a marriage. I hope I’m not putting her life in jeopardy now.”

  Bad for the Barrancas, but at least it made the coincidence less suspicious. “Sheesh! The du Plessis are a treat, aren’t they?”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Peter said with feeling. “It turns out the other sister was kidnapped somehow, during the raid. They just found her the other day, and from the way Antonio looks at her, I’d say Vinitra will be having a jealous fit soon.”

  Amazing how once he had accepted the idea of Antonio having incestuous desires, it all fit together. “He’s got the hots for this sister, too?”

  “Yes. And from what I’ve seen at the breakfast table, she doesn’t relish it nearly as much as Vinitra. She looks scared to death. I think Antonio is only holding off until his tame snake finds a way for him to deflower this sister, too, without anyone catching on.”

  Thaddeus wished he had thought to bring a recorder. The details were getting elaborate. “His tame snake?”

  “Sergei Paznowski,” Peter said, scorn filling his voice as he said the words. “He was a minister to Lothar. Antonio just named him his Chief Confidential Adviser—and chief panderer, if you ask me. I’m willing to bet the whole setup with me marrying Princess Vinitra was his idea. Antonio thinks of himself as clever, but really he’s just an opportunist. Paznowski is the brains behind the throne, but he hasn’t got an ethical bone in his body. He seems to worship the Imperium, and he’ll do anything for his Emperor.”

  It sounded terrifying to Thaddeus. “Brains with no scruples is a dangerous combination.”

  “I know it.” Peter moved forward on his chair and leaned closer to Thaddeus, so close he could almost touch heads. “I need you to do something for me.”