Deathstalker War (45 page)

“He can’t talk,” said Kit calmly. “You’re throttling him. Ease up, David, and let’s hear what he has to say. We can always kill him later.”

David let go of the Steward, and stepped back a pace, breathing heavily. The Steward put a hand to his throat as his breath returned, and glared at David, his servility discarded. “The Empress was kind enough to consult with me, yes. I did my best to be useful to her, as was my duty. You weren’t informed until now because you had nothing useful to add to the discussion. And because we expected precisely this kind of infantile behavior from you. There is nothing you can do, my lord. Nothing at all.”

“I can talk to the Company of Lords,” said David. “And Parliament, if need be. I’m not the only one with a personal stake in this. No other Lord will stand for this happening to one of their planets. Where’s the fun in being a Lord, without people to Lord it over? This new efficiency would leave us nothing more than factory managers. Tradespeople! No, the Lords will never accept this. Dammit, I came here for peace and relaxation, not to oversee the transformation of this world into one big battery farm! Get out of my sight, Steward. I’m sick of looking at you.”

The Steward bowed coldly and left. David leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily. Kit looked at him thoughtfully.

“Can we really stop her?” he said mildly. “If she makes this a matter of security . . .”

“Well, to start with I’ll send her a reply to this message that will make her ears burn. She thinks she can pressure me just because I haven’t been a Lord long. We have to stop her, Kit. These plans would undermine every Lord’s position. She’s trying to take away our power, in return for more money. Well, she’s miscalculated this time. Being a Lord has nothing to do with credits in a bank. Our peasants have always been loyal to us first, and only through us to the Empress. They’ve always been a potential army we could use to defend ourselves against Imperial aggression. Damn, this goes farther than I thought. This is a blow against the fundamental rights and powers of all Lords! With our planets controlled by computers, and our peasants scattered in factories on a dozen worlds, we’d have no real power base at all. If she gets away with this, Lionstone could break the power of the Lords once and for all.”

“Not all Lords,” said Kit. “Only those Families whose fortunes are tied to people and places. Other Clans, such as the Wolfes, draw their wealth and prestige from technology these days.”

“You’re right,” said David slowly. “This would hit the older, more traditional Families, who tend to oppose the Empress, while strengthening the position of the newer Clans, who tend to support her. Damn, this is complicated. Levels within bloody levels. Oh hell, I can’t think any more about this now. I can feel a really bad headache hovering over me.”

“Let’s go to dinner,” said Kit. “The world always looks better after a good meal.”

“To hell with dinner, I need a drink. Lots of drinks. Let’s go to the tavern in town, and see Alice and Jenny.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Kit.

High in orbit above Virimonde, unbeknownst to most of those below, the Imperial starcruiser
Elegance
. Her master, General Shaw Beckett, sat unhappily in his private quarters, drumming the fingers of one hand upon the armrest of his chair. If truth be told, he had no appetite for his present mission, but the Empress’s orders had been clear and quite specific, and as a good soldier he would do as he was told. It wasn’t the first time he’d followed orders he’d had no taste for, and he doubted it would be the last. Life was like that, more often than not, under the reign of Lionstone XIV, the Iron Bitch.

Beckett was a large man, and extremely fat, and his chair groaned slightly under him with every impatient movement. All of his invited guests were late, but there was nothing he could do to hurry them. Too much concern might appear as weakness, and this would be a bad group to appear weak in front of. They’d take advantage. Beckett looked testily about his quarters. He felt like throwing things, but there was nothing easily to hand that didn’t have some personal or sentimental value. Beckett liked to surround himself with personal items when he traveled, a little bit of home in a strange place. And if a General wasn’t entitled to a few home comforts in his quarters, he’d like to know who was.

He thought about this to keep from thinking about other things. There was a great deal in the near future that he preferred not to think about until he had to.

The door chimed politely, announcing his first visitor. Beckett growled “Enter,” and the door slid open to reveal Lord Valentine Wolfe, in all his morbid glory. He was dressed in exquisitely cut clothes of eye-blinding white, topped by a long black cloak with a scarlet interior. His long thin face was white as bone, save for the heavily mascaraed eyes and his wide crimson smile. A mane of jet black hair fell to his shoulders, with heavily oiled and scented ringlets. He carried a long-stemmed rose in one hand, its petals a deep purple, almost fleshy. The stem had vicious thorns that made Beckett wince just to look at them. Valentine stood posed in the doorway a moment, so Beckett could appreciate the spectacle, and then he drifted casually forward into Beckett’s quarters. The door slid shut behind him, and Beckett felt a brief but very real twinge of unquiet, as though he was now trapped in a room with a deadly predator. As, in a very real sense, he was.

Valentine looked unhurriedly about him, taking in the various points of interest with his dark-lined eyes, and then dismissed them all with the merest twitch of one painted eyebrow. The Wolfe stopped before Beckett and bowed formally. Beckett nodded curtly in return, but didn’t bother to get up. It took a lot of effort to heave all his bulk up out of a chair, and he was damned if Valentine Wolfe was worth it. He gestured at an empty chair with one fat hand, and Valentine sank languorously into it.

“Greetings and salutations, dear General. You’ve done amazing things with your quarters. I don’t like them. But then, my tastes aren’t often appreciated by others.”

Beckett snorted. “Possibly because you’re a drug-soaked degenerate who’s so far gone you probably have to flip a coin to decide which way up you are.”

“Possibly,” said Valentine. “Can I interest you in a little something, General?”

“You can not,” said Beckett firmly. “I have no interest in clouding my mind with chemicals when there’s work to be done.”

“Such a narrow attitude,” Valentine said easily, delicately sniffing his rose and briefly worrying a petal with his teeth. “I’ve often found that the right substances, in the proper proportions and combinations, can be a positive boon to a man’s thoughts, leading to greater clarity and comprehension. Many the insight I’ve been granted, while all around remained lost in darkness. If you could only see the things I’ve seen, dear General, and the wonders that have been revealed to me. I ride my expanded consciousness like an unbridled horse, trampling lesser souls beneath me. However, for the moment I am entirely at your service, and just dying to hear all about our mission here.”

“You’ll have to wait for the others to arrive,” said Beckett stolidly, not allowing himself to be baited. “The Empress’s instructions were quite clear.”

“And God bless the Empress,” said Valentine. He swung one long white-clad leg over the other, and let it swing quietly to and fro, the light gleaming on his highly polished boot. It occurred to Beckett that Valentine looked very like a pen-and-ink drawing, of the kind found in an instructional primer, probably with the word
Debauchery
written underneath. Beckett had to admire the Wolf’s calm, even if it did probably have its origins in a pill bottle. Ever since the debacle on Technos III, and the total destruction of his new stardrive factory, Valentine Wolfe’s fortunes had taken a severe blow. Where once he had been head of the foremost Family in the Empire, with an automatic place at the Empress’s side, he was now barely tolerated at Court, and then mostly for amusement value. Production of the new stardrive had been given over to Clan Chojiro, who were having to start again from scratch. This did not please Lionstone, who wanted the new drive installed in the Imperial Fleet yesterday, if not sooner.

The two Wolfes responsible for the Technos III fiasco, Daniel and Stephanie, had disappeared, leaving Valentine to shoulder the blame, which he did with a shrug, a shake of the head, and a charming smile. These things happen. Anyone else would have been ruined and utterly disgraced, and quite possibly no longer as closely connected with his head as he used to be, but Valentine Wolfe was made of sterner stuff than that. He made good all the financial losses out of his own pocket with nary a wince, publicly disowned his missing brother and sister, and fought back with a trump card few had known he had. Valentine, it turned out, had access to a secret source of extremely advanced high tech, and that had bought him his place here today and a chance at redemption in Lionstone’s eyes.

Valentine hadn’t told anyone that his source for the high tech was actually the rogue AIs of Shub, the official Enemies of Humanity. It would only upset people.

The door chimed again, and opened at Beckett’s command to reveal the Lord High Dram, Warrior Prime to the Empire, and official Consort to Lionstone herself. Also known, as far behind his back as possible, as the Widowmaker. Tall and lithely muscled, clad in his usual black robes and battle armor, Dram bowed to General Beckett and nodded curtly to Valentine. Beckett bowed in return. The Wolfe waggled his long white fingers in a friendly way. Dram pretended he hadn’t seen that, sank comfortably into the chair farthest from the Wolfe, and stretched out his long legs before him. He was handsome, in an unspectacular way, but his dark eyes and constant slight smile were utterly cold. Like Valentine, Dram had kept pretty much to himself on the trip out, staying in his cabin and speaking only to his own people. Beckett curled a lip mentally. Presumably the Lord High Dram felt himself too grand to socialize with the lower orders. Not that Beckett was complaining. The last thing he needed was the Empress’s Consort peering over his shoulder and making notes.

Dram hadn’t told anyone that he wasn’t, in fact, the original Widowmaker, but instead a clone of the original, grown at the Empress’s command. It would only upset people.

“How long before operations begin, General?” said Dram calmly. “I’ve been informed my people are fully prepared and equipped, and ready for action.”

“Soon, my Lord Dram,” said Beckett. “This will be your final briefing. We merely await the arrival of the last few principals.” The door chimed. “And hopefully, this will be them. Enter.”

The door slid open and Captain John Silence, Investigator Frost, and Security Officer V. Stelmach filed in. The Wolfe and the Warrior Prime both sat up a little straighter in their seats. These three officers from the famed
Dauntless
were familiar to anyone in the Empire who owned a holoscreen. Their checkered career had had more ups and downs than a bride’s nightie. They’d gone from heroes to outcasts and back again so fast that some people watching had been known to suffer from whiplash. Their current status was somewhat uncertain. On the one hand, they had failed in their mission to capture that most notable traitor and outlaw, Owen Deathstalker, and had been sent home defeated by his rebel allies, but on the other hand, they had quite definitely single-handedly saved the homeworld Golgotha from attack by a mysterious and powerful alien ship. When last heard of, the
Dauntless
had been touring planets on the outer Rim, essentially on punishment duty until the Empress decided to forgive their sins. And now here they were on the
Elegance
, far from their infamous ship. Beckett, Valentine, and Dram bowed courteously to them, and studied them openly. You didn’t get to see legends in the flesh that often.

Silence was a tall, lean man in his forties, with thinning hair and a thickening waistline. He didn’t look like much on a viewscreen, but at close quarters he had a presence that was almost overpowering. Everyone in the room knew that he was a dangerous man, but now they knew why. There was a calm certainty to the man, a quiet directness. John Silence knew where he was going, and only a fool would have got in his way.

Investigator Frost was in her late twenties, tall and lithely muscular and casually intimidating, like all Investigators. Trained from childhood to study and then kill aliens, or anything else that threatened the Empire. Even standing still and relaxed at her Captain’s side, she still looked ready to kill someone. Probably with her bare hands. Cold blue eyes blazed in a pale, controlled face, framed by auburn hair cropped close to the skull. She wasn’t pretty, but there was a definite daunting glamour to her, attractive and scary at the same time. She stood at Silence’s side, her hands comfortably near her weapons, as though she belonged there, and always had.

After two such godlike beings, a mere mortal like V. Stelmach had to be a disappointment, and he was. A quiet nondescript man, he looked more like some anonymous civil servant than an officer in the Imperial Fleet. Presumably working as a Security Officer did that to you, even on the amazing
Dauntless
. He stood nervously a little behind Silence and Frost, his eyes darting from one new face to another, as though expecting to be sent out at any moment. And yet this unimpressive little man had helped develop tech to control the deadly aliens known as Grendels, and together with Silence and Frost had survived dangerous missions that had killed many lesser men. So there had to be something to the man. Beckett made a mental note to check farther into the man’s background. If only to find out what the V. stood for.

He gestured for the three of them to sit down on the remaining chairs, and they did so. Silence and Frost seemed completely relaxed, though Beckett couldn’t help noticing that their hands were still casually close to their weapons. Stelmach sat on the edge of his chair, hands clasped tightly together so no one could see them shaking. Beckett cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention and wished he hadn’t. In this kind of company it made him sound weak and uncertain.