Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (18 page)

“Of course,” said the
avian, his beak opening in the species version of a smile.  “I don’t totally
trust the heads of your intelligence and investigative agencies.  I can’t tell you
why, not yet.  But someday I hope to be able to tell you.”

Shit
, thought the
ambassador, nodding his head. 
You know a lot more about what is going on
than we do.  Decadent Empire indeed.

“And when will the
funeral be?”

“I would hazard a guess
that it will be in three weeks to a month,” said the ambassador, grimacing at
the thought of the Emperor and his family dead.  “It takes time to get everyone
that wishes to attend the ceremony to the capital.  Including that young man
you are so interested in.  Of course there won’t be any bodies.  That damned
black hole will be their graves.”

“So sad,” said the
avian, his head feathers rising again.  “We have told you about that black
hole.  It was the home of the ancients, and they are now gone.  It is an evil
thing, a destructive thing, and trying to harness it for good will ultimately
fail.”

“Not my decision,” said
the ambassador, waving a hand.

“And will you be going
to the funeral?”

“With all the things
going on out here,” said the ambassador in a sad voice, shaking his head. 
“With the attack coming from the Lasharans.  We need someone out here to handle
things.”

“I can’t think of
anyone better,” said the High Lord, standing and walking over to the human,
putting a hand on his shoulder.  “We will of course have a day of mourning here
in the capital for Augustine and his family.  And I would appreciate if you
would speak at the service.”

“My pleasure, High Lord,”
said the human, rising from his own seat and clasping the hand of the avian in
his own.  “I wish I could say I was looking forward to it.  But…”

“I understand
completely, my friend,” said the avian, giving a human head nod.  “But maybe it
will provide closure.  And in the meantime, I will get with my spy masters and
see what we can see.”

And I hope that you
find the smoking gun, my friend
, thought the human as he saw the avian from
his office. 
I want to see the bastards responsible for this fed into a
fusion furnace, and hear their last screams.

Chapter 7

There are no physicists
in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest part' implies
a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would
immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell
comfortably cool.  This is obviously impossible.  Richard Davisson

Lucille Yu sat at her
desk in the Director’s office of the
Donut
Project, looking over the
negative matter production figures and frowning, wondering what else she could
do to boost them. 
We’ve tried everything I can think of
, she thought,
not for the first time lamenting the passing of Dr. Gomez in the assassination
attempt that had taken so many of the senior scientists of the project, along
with the Imperial family, and dropped them in the black hole.

Lucille stood up from
the chair and started to walk the office, which still didn’t feel like hers. 
She looked up at the holo portraits on the wall.  Those at least were hers,
landscape scenes from New Hanou, pictures of family, even one of her favorite
Alsatian dog.  There were still a few physical portraits on the wall that had
belonged to the late Director.  She hadn’t the time or the heart to ask for
their removal.  She still felt that this job was too big for her, beyond her
capabilities to manage.  But it was hers by default, there literally being no
one else that knew the job well enough.

Lucille called up the
clock in her link, and was surprised at how much time had gone by.  As soon as
she realized the time the hunger came.  Enough hunger that she decided to head
to the local cafeteria and get something quick to eat, rather than waiting for
a delivery to her office. 
Besides
, she thought, heading for the door,
I
want to get out of this room for just a bit
.

The pair of Marine
guards snapped to attention as she left the office, their eyes still
continually roaming both directions of the hall.  Chung, the IIA operative,
smiled at her while his eyes assumed the slightly faraway look of a link. 
Lucille knew he was informing the rest of the Imperial Intelligence Agency team
that their charge was leaving her office.  There were six more agents that she
knew about, and probably twice as many that were undercover, unknown to her or
anyone else on the station but their bosses.  And of course the Marine platoon
that was the real muscle of her protection team.

“Where to, ma’am?” said
the always polite Chung, from his accent also from New Hanou, though he looked
the part of a native much more than she did.

Lucille looked at the
man for a moment, wondering how much his background had to do with him being
the Agent in Charge of her detail.  She did have a comfort level with the small
man that was just not there with most of the other agents.

“I would like to eat at
the cafeteria now,” she said, then waited for the agent to make sure that
information was with the security detail.

“Very well, ma’am,”
said Chung, gesturing for her to follow the lead Marine guard while the other
fell in behind her.  She saw a couple more of the lightly armored Marines come
out of a ready room, prepared to guard her office while she was gone.

“Anything new?” she
asked the IIA agent as they walked down the corridor to the bank of elevators.

“We’ve had to turn some
more IIB agents and police away,” said the man with a tight smile.  “Other than
that, nothing.”

“And how long will this
go on?”

“As long as it has to,”
said the agent, stopping for a moment so the Marines could check the elevator. 
“Our orders are to protect you at all costs, ma’am.  You are vital to the
running of this station, after all.”

I just want to go back
to having a normal life
, thought Lucille, shaking her head.  She thought again of
the prison they had taken her from, the indignities she had been subjected to,
and thought that she would take this over that.

The cafeteria was not
crowded.  There were some people there, eating before going back to whatever
shift they were on.  The IIA agents and some more Marines were already there,
and Lucille was led to a table well off from those of the other patrons.  The
food was brought to the table and scanned.  Lucille sat before the meal, not
feeling as hungry as before, but knowing she needed to fuel.  She looked up at
the agent and caught his eye.

“Sit down, please,” she
told him.  “I can’t enjoy the company of my peers, so I guess you are my only
choice.”

The agent took another
look around, then took the seat opposite hers.

“I didn’t mean that
last comment to sound like that,” said Lucille with a grimace.

“That’s quite alright,
ma’am,” said the agent.  “I know it has to be hard on you.  But we don’t want
you spirited away to someplace we don’t know about, so we do what we must.”

Lucille nodded her
head, thinking of all the security that had been put in place since the
assassination of the Emperor.  Too late for him, but maybe enough to safeguard
the facility.

“So, how did they get
in this time?” she asked the young agent, taking up a forkful of noodles.  “I
thought the wormhole gate was secure, and you were checking everyone.”  She
then took a bite of her noodles and looked at the man’s face.

“The gate is secure,”
said the man, his eyes always moving across the cafeteria.  “Anyone coming
across is checked thoroughly.  But there were already undercover agents on the
Donut
. 
And there will probably be more coming in by ship.  Because you are so far in a
gravity well that may not happen for at least a couple of days to a week.”

“And what will they do
if they catch me alone?”

“We don’t think they’ll
kill you, if that’s what worries you,” said Chung, looking into her eyes in a
manner that sent a thrill up her spine.  “They might try to kidnap you, bring
you back to a detention facility so they can continue their scapegoating. 
Though we cannot for the Universe figure on how they would do that.”

“So why the heavy
security?”

“Because the Admiral
wants it,” said the agent with a shrug of his shoulders.  “And he is in good
with my boss.”

Thinking about the
detention facility she had been rescued from, she was glad to have the
security.  Anything that allowed her to do her work was a good thing.

“High Admiral Lenkowski
wishes to schedule a conference at your earliest convenience,” said the voice
of her AI over the link.

“Tell him I can talk to
him in ten minutes,” she replied over the link.

“I’ve got to hurry,”
she told Chung, then took a last forkful of food into her mouth.

“I’ve received the
updated itinerary,” said the agent, giving a hand signal to another agent.

Within eight minutes
Lucille Yu was back in her office, sitting at the desk and waiting for the
connection.  The Admiral was over forty light hours away through normal space. 
If he was still in orbit around Jewel that would place him at much less than a
light second from the central docks, where the wormhole gate to the
Donut
was located.

Right on time the holo
formed in the chair on the other side, the figure of the Admiral.  Except for
the slight shimmering transparency it looked as if the man really occupied the
seat.

“Dr. Yu,” said the
Chief of Naval Operations.  “How goes it?”

“I feel like I’m
trapped with all this security around me,” said Lucille, raising her hand before
the man could reply.  “I understand the need for it, and it sure beats being in
a cell.  But it’s not the environment I prefer.”

“I know you’re a
scientist, used to intellectual and personal freedom,” said the Admiral after a
small delay.  “But we need you there, not in some damned cell being messed
with.”

“And I thank you for
that,” said Yu with a smile.  “I assume you have been able to keep the long arm
of the law from interfering with your business.”

The Admiral laughed for
a moment.  “It’s surprising what twenty million tons of battleship can do to
keep that long arm at a distance.  But what about your work?  How is wormhole
production going?”

“I have some good news
there,” said Lucille, letting a smile creep onto her face.  “We are opening a
new hole every thirteen hours.”

“That’s wonderful,”
said the Admiral, leaning forward in his seat.  “You were only doing one about
every twenty-four hours before.  How’d you do it?”

“Those theoretical boys
you sent me deserve the credit,” said Yu, feeling a blush come over her face. 
“They found some wastage in the graviton reservoir, and found out how to form
the hole with a little less overall energy.  They almost doubled production.”

“Excellent.  We can
really use all the holes you can give us.”

“We’re still having
some problems in negative matter production,” said Yu with a frown, looking
down on the screen of her flat comp.  “I wish we could find someone like
Gonzalez.”

“We’re looking into
building some more production facilities,” said the Admiral, nodding his head. 
“But right now we need heat sinks and communications links.  Save up the excess
negative matter and we’ll build some ship gates down the road.”

“We can do that, Admiral,”
said the scientist with a smile, her imagination showing her those ship gates,
shortening the time between core worlds to almost nothing.  “We can do that.”

*     *     *

High Grand Admiral Len
Lenkowski sat in the command chair on the flag bridge of
Valkyrie
,
looking at the blue and white planet spinning below.  A planet he could bombard
into ruins, if given time.  Of course that planet had the defenses to destroy
the super-battleship he was using as his command post.  There were people down
there who would be more than glad to do just that with those defenses. 
Fortunately for him, the planetary defenses were controlled by the Imperial
Army and Navy, and they were still on his side.

“We have a shuttle requesting
permission to dock, Admiral,” came the voice of the Captain of the
Valkyrie
,
Connie Mathers.  “What are your orders?”

“I assume they are more
of our friends,” said the Admiral, grinning over at his security officer.

“The same,” agreed the Captain.

“Allow them to dock,
and to leave their ship,” said the Admiral, nodding to the security officer,
who nodded back before his eyes took on the look of someone linking.  “I’ll be
right down.”

The Admiral took his
time getting down to the hanger, stopping on the way to chat with officers and
crew, letting someone else use the first available lift, basically wasting
time.  When he arrived outside the hanger he looked through the vid relays to
see a delegation of what had to be police and lawyers waiting, a couple in an
argument while others paced back and forth across the deck.  He gave the signal
and the fun began.