The Algebraist (29 page)

He entered with only his private secretary going before him. Guards, courtiers, admin, army and naval people bowed as he strode past.

‘Marshal.’

‘Archimandrite.’ The Beyonder marshal was a woman, dressed in light armour which looked like it had been polished up but still gave off an impression of practicality and scruffiness. She was tall, slim and proud-looking, if somewhat flat-chested for Luseferous’s taste. Bald women always repelled him anyway. She gave a formal nod that was probably the very least acknowledgement of his status that anybody who didn’t patently hate him and-or was about to die had given him for several decades. He couldn’t decide whether he found it insulting or refreshing. Two senior officers behind her were Jajuejein, currently in their standard tumbleweed configuration, no part of their glittering plate armour higher than the marshal’s waist. He suspected that the woman had been selected because she was human, just because he was; almost all the Beyonder High Command were non-human.

He sat. It wasn’t really a throne, but it was an impressive seat on a dais. The Beyonder marshal could stand. ‘You wanted to talk, Marshal Lascert.’

‘I speak on behalf of the Transgress, the True Free and the BiAlliance. We have wanted to talk to you for some time,’ the marshal said smoothly. Deep voice for a woman. ‘Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.’

‘A pleasure, I’m sure. So. How goes your end of our little war? Last you heard, obviously.’

‘It goes well, as far as we know.’ The marshal smiled. Lights reflected on her bald scalp. ‘I understand your own campaign has gone from victory to victory.’

He waved a hand. ‘The opposition has been light,’ he said.

‘Your main fleet should be at the outskirts of Ulubis system in, what? One more year?’

‘Something like that.’

‘This is somewhat later than we had all planned for.’

‘It is a big invasion fleet. It took time to put together,’ Luseferous said, trying to show that he resented her implied criticism while also giving the impression that what she thought was of no great importance to him.

They
were
behind schedule, though. He had personally assured these - temporary - allies of his that he would be ready to invade nearly a full half-year earlier than it now looked would be possible. He supposed it was his fault, if fault it was. He liked to keep his fleet together rather than let it split up according to speed and then re-form as needed for the invasion proper. His admirals and generals insisted (though not too strongly if they knew what was good for them) that they didn’t need all units of the fleet to be together at all times, but Luseferous preferred it. It seemed more cohesive, more impressive, just more tidy and pleasing somehow.

It also meant that the Beyonders would shoulder rather more of the responsibility for preparing Ulubis system for invasion than they might have expected, so that the invasion fleet’s job would be all the easier and the Beyonders’ - hopefully much-depleted - forces would be in a position of weakness relative to his own mass of ships.

‘Still,’ Lascert said, ‘we imagine your advance units may be attacking even now.’

‘We’ve had some automated scout-warning ships and highspeed drone attack craft there or on their way for a while now,’ Luseferous told her. ‘Always best to be prepared for any eventuality. Some needed reprogramming but we believe they should be effective in beginning the softening-up process.’ He smiled. He watched her react to the clear diamond teeth. ‘I am a great believer in the usefulness of spreading a little panic, marshal. Better still, a lot of panic. After a long-enough exposure, people will welcome any power that brings an end to uncertainty, even if they might have resisted it before.’

The marshal smiled too, though it looked like she was making an effort. ‘Of course. And we thought now might be an appropriate moment to talk in more depth about what you see your strategy being once you reach Ulubis.’

‘I intend to take it, marshal.’

‘Indeed. Of course, it may be quite well defended.’

‘I expect it might. That’s why I’ve brought such a big fleet with me.’

They were between systems, way out in the empty wilderness of near-nothingness less than a year from Ulubis. The Beyonder fast cruiser and its two escort destroyers had rendezvoused with his own fleet only hours earlier, skid-turning and matching velocities with a grace and rapidity that he could see his own naval people envied. Fine ships, indeed. Well, they had the ships and he had the systems; just another opportunity to trade, maybe. Now those three fast ships lay embedded in a fleet of over a thousand craft, even if they were rather plodding in comparison.

‘May I be frank, Archimandrite?’

He gave her a good wide look at his deep red eyes. ‘I expect no less.’

‘We are concerned at the possible level of civilian casualties if Ulubis is assaulted over-aggressively.’

Now why would she say that?
Luseferous thought to himself with a sort of inward chuckle.

He looked at his private secretary, then at his generals and admirals. ‘Marshal,’ he said reasonably, ‘we are going to invade them. We are going to attack them.’ He smiled broadly, and could see his admirals and generals grinning along with him. ‘I think aggressiveness is… essential, yes?’

He could hear light laughter from one or two of his top brass. People thought that having people so in awe of you that they were frightened to tell you bad news and always laughed when you laughed (and so on) was a bad thing, and supposedly insulated you from what was really going on, but if you knew what you were doing, it didn’t. You just had to adjust your perceptions. Sometimes everybody laughed, sometimes only a few, and sometimes who kept quiet and who made a noise told you a lot more than when you asked them to just speak out and tell you the truth. It was a sort of code, he supposed. He was just lucky to be naturally adept at it.

‘Aggression and judgement are both required, Archimandrite,’ the marshal said. ‘We know you to possess both, of course.’ She smiled. He did not smile back. ‘We merely seek an assurance that your troops will act in a manner which will bring you further praise and greater fame.’

‘Praise?’ the Archimandrite said. ‘I inspire terror, marshal. That’s my strategy. I’ve found that to be the quickest and most effective way of ensuring that people learn what is good both for them and for me.’

‘For glory, then, Archimandrite.

‘Be merciful for glory?’

The marshal thought about this for a moment. ‘Ultimately, yes.’

‘I shall conquer them as I see fit, marshal. We are partners in this. You don’t tell me what to do.’

‘I am not trying to, Archimandrite,’ the marshal said quickly. ‘I accept what you must do, I am merely delivering a request regarding the manner in which it is done.’

‘And I have heard your request and I will pay it all due heed.’ This was a form of words Luseferous had heard somebody use once - he couldn’t remember who or where - which, when he’d thought about it, he thought was rather good, especially if you said it slightly pompously: slowly, gravely even, keeping a straight face so that the person you were talking to thought you were taking them seriously and might even hope that you would do as they had asked rather than - at best - ignore them completely. At worst - as far as they were concerned - you’d do the opposite of whatever they asked, just to spite them, precisely to prove you wouldn’t be pushed around… though that got tricky; then people might try to make you do one thing by pretending to favour another, and even without that complication you were still altering your behaviour because of something they had said, which was giving them a sort of power over you, when the whole point of everything the Archimandrite was doing was so that
nobody
could say they had any power over him.

Power was everything. Money was nothing without it. Even happiness was a distraction, a ghost, a hostage. What was happiness? Something people could take away from you. Happiness too often involved other people. It meant giving them power over you, giving them a hold on you that they could exercise whenever they wanted, taking away whatever it was that had made you happy.

Luseferous had known happiness and he’d had it taken away. His father, the only man he’d ever admired - even while hating the old bastard - had got rid of Luseferous’s mother when she became old and less attractive, replacing her, when Luseferous was barely into his teens, with a succession of young, erotically desirable but soulless, uncaring, selfish young women, women he’d wanted for himself but despised at the same time. His mother was sent away. He never saw her again.

His father had been an Omnocrat for the Mercatoria, in the industrial complexes of the Leseum Systems. He’d started out at the bottom, as a Peculan (cynically, the very name implied that the office-bearer would need to be corrupt to make any sort of decent living, so incurring a history of criminality that could always be dredged up against them if they ever stepped out of line later). He’d become an Ovate, worked his way through the many gradations of that estate, then ascended to the office of Diegesian, in charge of a district of a city, then a small industrial city, then a medium-sized city, then a large city, then a continental capital. He became an Apparitor when his immediate superior died in the arms of a shared lover. That lover did very well for a while - his consort, in effect - then grew demanding and met an untimely end too.

His father had never told him if he’d had her killed. Equally, he’d never told his father that the woman had lately become his lover, too.

From Apparitor his father rose to Peregal, in charge of first an orbiting fab\hab cluster, then a continent, then a sizeable moon, with all the trappings of power and wealth and glamour such a post presented in a thriving, connected set of systems such as Leseum. At this point, for the first time in his life, his father had appeared finally to appreciate the position he’d reached. He’d seemed to relax and start enjoying life.

It ended there. Finally setting himself up for the next jump, to Hierchon, his father, who had amassed a great fortune dispensing charters and contracts to the merchants and manufacturers of the many systems, took pity on a favoured Apparitor who was somewhat down on his luck, cut him in on a deal and a kickback he didn’t really need to and found himself denounced, tried and beheaded for gross corruption within a month. The same young Apparitor then took his position.

Luseferous, convinced from early on that he could never compete with his father in his own sphere, and anyway always intrigued by the nature of religion and faith, had joined the Cessoria a few years earlier. He’d been a Piteer, a junior priest, at the time of his father’s trial. They had made him one of his father’s confessors, and he’d accompanied him to the execution ring. His father had been brave at first, then he’d broken. He’d started crying, begging, promising anything (but only all the things he’d already lost). He clutched at Luseferous’s robes, howling and beseeching, burying his face. Luseferous knew they were watching him, that this moment was important for his future. He pushed his father away.

His rise through the Cessoria was swift. He would never be as powerful as his father, but he was clever and capable and respected and on an upward course within an important but not too dangerous part of one of the greatest meta-civilisations the galaxy had seen. He might have been content with that, and never put himself in a position of weakness the way his father had.

Then the Disconnect happened. A swathe of portal destruction had swung across the million-star volume all around Leseum back in the time of the Arteria Collapse, leaving only the bunched Leseum systems themselves connected inside a vast volume of backwardness. The system of Leseum9 had been important, seemed vital and felt unthreatened until their own disconnect came millennia later, courtesy of some vast bicker within the ongoing chaos of the Scatter Wars, an essentially meaningless difference of opinion between three pretending sides which until then practically nobody had heard of. By the time it was all over, nobody would hear of those sides again, save as history. The damage was done, though; the portal near Leseum9 had been destroyed and an enormous volume around it had been cut off from the rest of the civilised galaxy.

Everything changed then, including what you had to do to retain power, and who might contest for absolute power.

His father, nevertheless, had taught Luseferous everything, one way or another, and one of the most important things was this: there was no plateau. In life, you were either on your way up or on your way down, and it was always better to be on your way up, especially as the only reliable way to keep going up was to use other people as stepping stones, as platforms, as scaffolding. The old saying about being nice to people on the way up so that they’d be nice to you when you were on your way back down was perfectly true, but it was a defeatist’s saying, a loser’s truism. Better to keep going up for ever, never to rest, never to relax, never to have to descend. The thought of what might happen to you at the hands of those you’d already offended, exploited and wronged on the way up - those that still lived - was just another incentive for the serious player never even to think about easing off the pace, let alone starting to fall back. The dedicated competitor would keep presenting himself with new challenges to take on and conquer, he would seek out new levels to ascend to, he would always look for new horizons to head towards.