Empire's End (56 page)

“I’m not much enamored of that thought,” Sten said. Flat.

Cind put a hand on his. “I know,” she said. “And that’s why I love you. It’s also why I want you to think about it. Because when the moment comes, there won’t be much time to decide.”

“I notice you didn’t offer your opinion on what I ought to do,” Sten said.

“I’m the last person who should say,” Cind answered. “Do I think you’d make a good ruler? Clot, yes. Would I rather have you to myself? Double clot, yes.”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m prejudiced, remember?”

Sten flushed, embarrassed. Cind giggled. “How cute,” she said. “You’re blushing. Now, I’ve got something on you. The great rebel leader, blushing like a boy.”

“Blackmail,” Sten said.

“Absolutely,” Cind replied.

She slid out of her seat and slipped into his lap. Sten found his arms füH of a wriggling, willing woman. Kissing at his neck. Nipping at his earlobes.

“What’ll you give me if I don’t tell?” she whispered. Naughty.

Sten’s hands were busy moving over the form-fitting jumpsuit. Outlining curves. Exploring hollows.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said. “But first, you tell me. How the hell do you get this thing off?”

She took his hand… and showed him.

The whisper came hot in his ear: “There,” she said. “Press… right… there!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE GUARDS‘ BOOTHEELS crashed louder and closer. Alex hung like a spider in his web just above the great blast doors that led from the huge parade-ground/bailey into Arundel Castle. Waited patiently, eye on his timer, trying to ignore the skincrawl.

It had grown worse the closer he got to the Emperor’s castle. Not that he had encountered any concrete reasons for this death-tick. Kilgour’s serf-insertion had been a piece of cake. Thus far. And by his own self-deprecating definition.

He had ridden public trans from Ashley-on-Wye to the nearest decent-sized city. Then he had checked to make sure there had been no recent changes to the ID required on Prime World, and that his own fake cards were correct. Then he found a bad section of town, and bought a currently-in-register gravcar at one of the town’s graymarket hurleyburleys. None of the unpleasant questions such as Place of Residence, Place of Work, Reason for Cash Purchase, References, or the rest that might have concerned a conventional dealer were asked.

The sled may have been registered, but its drive was in unspeakable shape^4he McLean generator would only lift the gravcar three meters, at max, and held the car at a 15-degree angle to the side. Top speed was no more than 55 kph.

Alex dropped another hundred credits to the seller’s purported brother, to get it running right. He knew the “brother” would jury-rig the repairs, and probably fill the lubricant reserve chambers with something on the specific gravity of molasses— frozen. But what of it? The craft was intended for only a oneway trip.

Twenty klicks outside Fowler, the city closest to the Imperial grounds, Alex found a litter-filled field just beyond one of Prime’s omnipresent parks. Clottin‘ gorgeous, he thought. Put i’ a park, w‘ penalties f’r trash, an’ thae’ll still be clots thae’ll dump their slok ten meters beyon‘ the gate. Exact whae Ah been seekin’, however. He lifted the gravsled into the middle of the lot, grounded it, smashed the ignition and choice parts of the drive, stripped its registry off and buried it, and abandoned the wreck.

He hitched into the city and disappeared into its high-rise slums.

Step One, Two, and Three were accomplished successfully— getting onto Prime, setting up a secure base, and infiltrating into Fowler. Now for a cooling-off period. There was just a possibility he’d been tracked from his arrival, and the Emperor’s Internal Security was giving him rope, to see what mischief he had in mind. I‘ dinnae be likely, he thought. But why chance m’ neck i‘ th’ noose? I’s th‘ only one Ah hae.

He had rented the room because it had two separate “back doors”—one out onto a rusty, abandoned fire ladder that Alex had secretly reinforced, and the second from the other side of the corner room onto some rooftops just made for a rapid departure. Plus it had a half-arsed kitchen, so he wouldn’t be forced out into public view.

After a week of laying low and eating packaged food not much better than military rats, he concluded he had dragged no tail with him. On to the next part.

He treated himself to a bottle of expensive brandy, remembering he would have to dump the flask somewhere else to avoid suspicion, since people in the district he had taken lodgings in seemed addicted to simpler pleasures, such as filtered industrial alk or home brew. And he plotted.

Stage Four would be getting himself as close as possible to Arundel. Stage Five would be getting into the Emperor’s castle.

Stage Six would be out and gone for home, hopefully in one flat-out ran.

Alex’s plan—one in, twa oot—was that he’d have a partner when he left.

Poyndex. He was fairly sure the man might have some objections to being snatched, and might become violent, or at the very least vocal.

Neither of which was in Kilgour’s scheme, especially since a brouhaha would produce an uncomfortable feeling for Mm, such as death. And for his overall plan to work, Poyndex would have to vanish silently and completely. The Snark would have to be a Boojum. But he didn’t want the distinction to be made positively until it suited Alex, Sten, and the rebellion’s plans.

Alex’s ambitious plan was to vanish Poyndex straight to the brig of the
Victory
. There he would be offered the same choice his agent on Vi, Hohne, had been given: double or be brain-scanned.

Alex cynically figured that Poyndex, being a purported professional, and having turned his coat once, wouldn’t even hesitate as long as Hohne had.

All of Alex’s sources on Prime said Poyndex was the Emperor’s cat’s-paw in everything. His knowledge of the Emperor’s closely held secrets would help in the final days.

At that point, Alex planned to have Poyndex surface, publicly.
That
would be yet another blow to the Empire.

All he had to do was bell his pussycat…

He forced himself to pay no attention to that little backbrain chant saying, “And lang lang may the maidens sit/Wi‘ their goud kaims in their hair, A’waiting for their ain dear love/For him they’ll see nae mair…”

Maybe he
would
be killed this time. He felt it likely. Maybe this was his last run—but what of it? He had never had the idea he was either immortal or that he would die in a silken bed of old age. But he was determined that at the least, his ran on Poyndex would succeed before he would consider taking the journey to the Isle of the Blessed.

He muttered as he finished the bottle. He was going on like a creaking seer, mewling around a cauldron on a blasted heath, thinking naught but wrack and rain. Stick to bus’ness, lad. But if he
was
a seer, and his plan held up in the sober morn, Alex foresaw
a
minor crime wave in Fowler’s future. At that point, he shut off the single light in the shabby room and rolled over to sleep.

He slept. If he dreamed, he did not remember them when he awoke. He ignored the hangover and reconsidered his drunken plans of the night before. They still made sense. Alex went out for one beer and a plate of greasy eggs and settled down for a nap until night.

The first theft was from an ambulance, parked at the back of an emergency ward. Kilgour, cross-trained as a medic in Mantis, knew just what he needed to clip from the gravsled’s kit. He got what he needed, muttered at one object’s unwieldiness, and left, relocking the ambulance’s door behind him.

He stashed his loot, and checked the time. Ver‘ good, he thought. Ah still hae time, i’ Ah hurry. Th‘ bistros’ll nae be closin’t frae another three hours. Back out into the night he went, headed crosstown to another part of Fowler, where an un-grated window didn’t immediately suggest a brick and an eyeball-calculated trajectory.

The joint wae jumpin‘, he thought, looking through the mesh fence at the luxury gravcars parked behind the exclusive boite. One… two security bein’s, a couple of carparks. Nae problem.

He used a small laser to cut a Kilgour-sized hole in the fence and went into the lot. He stole the registration plates from six gravcars—and put five of them back. On different craft than the ones they had been taken from. He replaced the fence grating and, with the sixth plate, went back to his tenement. Clean and simple. Kilgour rewarded himself with a couple of beers in an after-hours dive. He bought some rounds, and made some friends.

The next day, he lazed around, after doing minor stretch exercises, only going out for a meal and a shopping expedition. He bought three days’ worth of dried rations, a pack, a canteen, a flash, a set of camouflaged coveralls, and a cammie ground-sheet. He wished the Mantis phototropic camouflage was available on the open market, which it of course was not. He couldn’t have brought a set with him, since he had carried nothing that would even lift an eyebrow in the event of a stripsearch. The birdwatcher’s gear would have to do. His final purchase was a small but heavy-bladed “survival” knife. His next stop was at an electronic hobbyist’s center, where he bought some innocuous devices and the tools and circuitry necessary to modify them.

Then he allowed himself one of the two indulgences he had promised himself for the mission. He found a grocer’s and bought three kilos of inexpensive, thin-sliced lean beef, salt, fresh parsley, and a collection of dried spices. Back at his tene-ment, he strip-cut the beef, about three centimeters wide. The strips went into a marinade of soy sauce, water, some cheap red wine, some hot sauce, and spices—garlic, a handful of juniper berries, summer savory, pepper. The garlic, berries, and spices were sauteed a bit, and men dumped, hissing hot, into the rest of the marinade. The strips of beef went in to soak for a day.

About midnight, he went back to the dive he had scouted the night before. One of his new friends was waiting. He had secured what Kilgour had expressed interest in. Actually, he had an assortment. Kilgour sneered audibly at the miniwillygun, although that was the weapon he would have preferred. But, as he told the fence, ‘T Ah gie nabbed, wi’ one ae th‘ Eternal Emperor’s owene pieces ae AM2 artillery, Ah’m f r th’ high jump, an‘ Ah dinnae wan’‘t’ revisit m‘ old haunts, f r a while yet.“ Also that’d keep the fence from thinking Kilgour had major mayhem in mind, and possibly keep him from singing to the local constabulary about the gun-buying stranger to whom he owed nothing in the way of a buttoned lip.

For similar reasons he rejected a large-caliber handgun, and a folding-stock carbine, even though they were conventional projectile weapons. He chose—and then bargained for half an hour over the price of—a smallbore targetshooter. “Ah dinnae wan‘’t‘ be doin’t more’n bluffin’,” he lied.

Happy he had convinced the fence he was no more than a ‘ lightweight mugger, he trundled home and to bed.

Early the next day he finished off the first indulgence. The strips of beef were drained and laid on the counter. Over them Alex sprinkled salt—at least a pinch per slice. After that, chopped parsley. Then
very
generous pinches of a potpourri of the spices he’d bought. Thyme. More savory. Sweet basil. Pepper. Garlic pepper. Herb pepper. Marjoram. Some cumin, just for the hell of it. He pressed the spices into the meat with the flat of his knife, then flipped the slices over and repeated the seasoning. The meat went into the tenement’s dilapidated oven, set at its absolute lowest, and with a cork holding the oven door open a centimeter or two.

While the beef dried, he went to work on the electronic devices, turning them from innocent gimmicks into proper burglar’s tools.

He took a lon& nap, storing energy for the future. When he awoke, just before duslCthe-slices-orbeef were dry, twisted, black, thoroughly nasty, and no more than a kilo in total weight. He admired his jerky. Ah’m noo th‘ cook th’ Emp, Marr, Senn, or e’en m‘ wee Sten is. But this’ll chew easy, i’ th‘ woods i’ lh‘ rain. He sealed the jerky in a water-resistant pack. Then he packed and cleaned house. If Security was able to find the tenement, all of their most clever sweeps would yield them nothing, except that the slum had been rented by someone who was compulsively neat

He went looking for his second indulgence. Taking all of his debris, from that brandy bottle to the electronics tools he’d purchased with him, and leaving them in an industrial dumper.

He found a restaurant big enough so he wouldn’t be remembered, and savory-smelling from the outside. And he ate. First he protein-packed, even though he knew that wasn’t the best way to prep himself for the run, but clot th‘ nutritionists, he thought. Ah’ll hae someat’t’ think aboot, eatin‘ bushes an’ pap. Three seafood cocktails. Two very large steaks, ultrarare. A side of sauteed fungi. A large salad, with a simple dressing. A half bottle of wine, to help digestion. The waitress lifted an eyebrow when he finished, sighed, and announced he was now ready for part two of his meal, but said nothing. Part two was carb-packing. He stuffed pasta, in as many permutations as the menu offered, until even he could detect outward movement in his rotund belly. He drank heavily. Water. Pitcher after pitcher of it. Water-packing.

By the time he finished gourmandizing and rolled out tipping well as Laird Kilgour ought, considering this might be his last
real
meal, it was getting on.

Now he was operational. The plan was running.

In an exclusive residential enclave he had cased several days earlier, he stole an expensive gravcar, easily subverting its alarm and ignition cutouts. He put the registration plate lifted from the bar’s parking lot on the car, and that craft’s legal plates on the gravcar just in front of it Confusion shall
noo
be m‘ epitaph, he thought and lifted the gravcar away toward his slum. That was a bit of a risk, as he left the out-of-place gravcar down the street long enough to grab his gear and bid a long, last farewell to the slum. Ah’d say thae’s naught humbler, but Ah know, i’ an hour or so, Ah’ll be thinkin’t ae aught havin‘ a roof wi’ infin’te fondness.