The Court of a Thousand Suns (29 page)

"Necessity is a harsh master."

Sten mentally winced—Hakone couldn't
really
think in those clichés.

"So he dies. Why did you take over the palace?"

"Once the Emperor is dead, and with us holding the center of all Imperial communications, no false information will be broadcast."

"Like who really did it?"

Hakone smiled and didn't bother answering.

"By the way, Hakone, if you don't mind my sayings who
is
going to be your Judas goat?"

"The Tahn, of course."

"Don't you think that those delegates might have their own story? And be listened to?"

"Not if they're equally deceased."

Sten's poker face melted. "You're talking war."

"Exactly, Captain. With a war starting, who will be interested in a postmortem? And a war is what this Empire needs to melt the fat away. That would also settle the Tahn question."

"When is this going to happen?"

"We have no exact timetable. The Praetorians and I were supposed to take the palace three days from now. Your discovery of the
Zaarah Wahrid
forced us into premature motion. The actual termination of the Emperor will be decided by Admiral Ledoh."

"You really think this committee, or whatever you're calling it,
could
run the Empire?"

"Why not? Twenty minds are obviously superior to one, aren't they?" Sten could have answered by stating the obvious—no, because any junta becomes an exercise in backstabbing as each leader tries to take out the others. Instead he went in another way.

"Twenty minds don't know the secret of AM2."

"Captain, you really believe that drivel?"

Drivel, hell—Sten had spent enough time around the Emperor to realize the man
had
that ace up his sleeve.

"There is no way I can believe that one man—one mortal man—controls AM2. That the answer is nowhere in his files."

They continued to walk, Sten maintaining silence, waiting for the offer.

It came.

"The reason I wanted to talk to you privately," Hakone finally continued, "is that after the… event, there will probably be a certain amount of resettlement. You could be of service."

"To you personally, or to your committee?"

"Well, of course, for us all. But I would want you to report to me."

Sten didn't let himself smile. Already Hakone was figuring on having his own people to guard his back.

The man didn't even believe his own theories. "What would be my new job description?"

"You would be allowed to maintain your present position. But I—I mean we—would have you detached for special assignments in the intelligence area."

"You're forgetting I swore an oath. To the Emperor."

"If the Emperor no longer existed, would that oath be valid?"

"Suppose I say no?"

Hakone started to beam, then studied Sten closely. "Are you lying to me, Captain?"

"Of course."

Hakone's smile was subtly different as he beckoned to the guards.

"You are a careful man, Captain. Let us leave things as they are. You are restricted to your room until notified otherwise. After the Emperor's death, perhaps we should rehold this conversation."

Sten bowed politely, then followed the guards back toward his quarters. He was not interested in Hakone at the moment; he'd figured a way out of his confinement—and a way that gave him almost a 10

percent chance of surviving the ensuing debacle.

That was better odds than was normal for Mantis.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Lord Kirghiz ignored the grumblings of his fellow Tahn lords, fitted himself into the lighter's bare-frame jumpseat, and buckled in. After getting Kirghiz's curt nod, the copilot hissed orders to the pilot, and the lighter broke lock with the Tahn battleship and arched toward the
Normandie
.

Kirghiz was showing less the stoicism required of a man worthy of ruling the warrior Tahn than that of a man with worries far more serious than the indignity of being chauffeured in a troop transport. To begin with, less than one third of the Tahn council had agreed to the summit meeting, and those who had deserted him were the most adamantly anti-Empire, prowar faction of the Tahn lords.

Kirghiz's control of the Tahn council was very tenuous, based on an uneasy agreement among a majority of the various Tahn factions. In his absence, he knew that the ruling council might very well change its entire structure.

Still worse were the demands he was required to make on this, the first day of the summit. Several were deal-killers, conditions which Kirghiz knew, from his decades as a diplomat and power broker, the Emperor could not agree to.

In fact, if he were the Emperor, Kirghiz would consider breaking off the meeting moments after hearing those demands.

He prayed, to whatever gods he disbelieved in, that the Emperor was the consummate politician he should be, and would recognize the demands as nothing more than cheap grandstanding for the Tahn peasants and the peasant-mentality of those lords who proposed them. Because, if the talks broke down, Kirghiz saw no other alternative than war between the Tahn worlds and the Empire.

No computer he'd used could predict the outcome of such a war, but all of them showed one thing: Defeated or victorious, the Tahn worlds would be in economic ruin at the war's end.

Kirghiz being a Tahn, a Tahn warrior, and a Tahn lord, he did not even think about the other result to the talk's breaking down—the certainty of his own trial for treason and execution if he returned without a treaty.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

If he survived the breakout attempt, which was very unlikely, Sten made a note to put the cost of replacing his miniholoprocessor on somebody's expense account. Because sure as death and dishonesty, Sten's hobby machine was ruined.

The holoprocessor was intended to create the illusion of very small—no more than 100-centimeters-high—figures, machines, or dioramas.

Cursing his ineptness at electronics, Sten had replaced all of the holoprocessors's fuses with heavy-duty wiring stripped from a shaving light and cut the safety circuits out. He had searched through the holoprocessor's memory looking for some sort of horrible beastie to use, then laughed and input the description and behavior of the wonderful gurions he and Alex had met shortly before.

That complete, the miniprocessor was pushed to a few meters from the door. Its actuating switch was boogered out to a remote, under Sten's foot.

Sten took the required position, directly across from the door opening, and then considered cheap lies.

Sick? Nobody's that dumb, not even a Praetorian. Hungry? Still worse. Then Sten was struck by inspiration. He tossed a vid-tape at the door and got an appropriate clunk.

"What is it?" came the guard's suspicious voice.

"I'm ready now."

"For clottin' what?"

Sten allowed puzzlement to enter his voice. "For Sr. Hakone."

"We have no orders on that."

"Hakone—you must have heard—told me to contact him immediately after our meeting."

"He didn't tell us that."

Sten let silence work for him.

"Besides, he's given orders that no one is to see him until further notice."

"Kai Hakone," Sten said, "is in the Imperial com bunker. I think he would like to speak to me."

Any sergeant can fox a grunt, just as any captain can fox a sergeant. Or at least that's the way it had worked when Sten was on duty in the field. He hoped things hadn't changed much.

"I'll have to check with the sergeant of the guard," came the self-doubting voice.

"As you wish. Sr. Hakone told me that he wanted nobody to know."

There was an inaudible mutter, which Sten's hopeful mind translated as a conference, consisting of yeah, Hakone works things like that, nobody told us nothin', that figures, what'th'clot we got to worry about if we just take him to a com center. And then the louder voice: "Are you back against the wall?"

Sten held out his hands. Indeed, he was standing, obviously unarmed, against the far wall. The guard eyed him through the freshly drilled peephole, then unbolted and opened the door. He was three steps inside, his backups flanking him, when the two-meters-high image of the gurion rose from the holoprocessor and walked toward the guards.

The reaction was instant—the guards' guns came up, blasting reflexively and tearing hell out of the ceiling.

Sten's reaction was equally fast: He flat-rolled, hit, half rose over the self-destructing holoprocessor, his knife lanced before him, and then buried it in the chest of the lead guard.

Sten used the inertia of the guard to stop himself, and the knife came out, splashing blood across the room, through the rapidly fading gurion. And Sten was pivoting, his left, knuckled hand smashing sideways, well inside the second guard's rifle reach, into the man's temple, while his right arm launched the knife into—and through—guard number three. Cartilage and bone cracked and broke in guard number two, and Sten recovered into attack position before any of the three corpses slumped to the floor.

Wasting no time in self-congratulation, Sten catted down the corridor, heading for the palace's catacombs.

Kilgour, too, was trying moves.

"Clottin' Romans," he bellowed down the corridor, "y'r mither did it wi' sheep. Wi' goats! Wi' dogs!

Clottin' hell, wi' Campbells!" No response came from the guards outside the cell.

He stepped back from the window and looked apologetically at the 120 Gurkhas sharing the huge holding cell with him.

"Tha' dinnae ken."

Kilgour's plan, for want of a weaker word, was to somehow anger the guards so much they'd come into the cell to bust kneecaps. Alex hoped that, regardless of weapons, he and the 120 stocky brown men in the cell could somehow break out.

Havildar-Major Lalbahadur Thapa leaned against the wall beside him. "In Gurkhali," he offered helpfully,

"you might try one pubic hair."

Alex laughed. "Now that's the stupidest insult Ah've heard in years."

"Stupider, Sergeant Major, than calling someone a Campbell—whatever that is?"

Without warning a section of seemingly solid stone in one wall slid open, and Sten was suddenly leaning nonchalantly against the far wall. "Sergeant-Major, I could hear your big mouth all the way down the corridor. Now if you'd knock off the slanging and follow me.

"The arms room," Sten continued, as the Gurkhas recovered from their astonishment and bustled into the low tunnel Sten had emerged from, "is three levels up and one corridor across."

"Ah'm thinkit Ah owe y' a pint," Alex managed, as he forced his bulk after the Gurkhas. Sten looked very knowing as he palmed the rock wall shut.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Years later, Sten and Alex would have a favorite pondering point. They could understand why the Emperor built Arundel. They could also understand why a man who believed in romance required a castle to have secret passages.

The problem was the
why
for some of those passages. Both men thought it very logical that a backstairs went from the Imperial chambers to feed into the various bedchambers. Sten could even understand why the Emperor wanted a tunnel that provided secret egress from cells in the dungeon far below.

They were never able to explain to everyone's satisfaction why a few of the tunnels opened into a main passageway.

Some of the former Praetorians involved in the revolt might have wondered, too, if they had survived.

Most did not.

A Praetorian paced down a seemingly doorless corridor then a panel swung noiselessly open and a small grinning man swung a large knife that looked to be a cross between a machete and a small cutlass.

There were only a little over a thousand Praetorians, facing 120 wall-slinking Gurkhas. The battle was completely one-sided.

The reoccupation of the palace went quickly, silently, and very, very bloodily, as Sten deployed his troops in a slow circle, closing on the Imperial chambers, the communication center, and that one room with the com-link to the Emperor.

The armored door to the com center was sealed, which offered no potential problem to the Gurkha squad deployed around it. The lance-naik already had his bunker-buster loaded and the rocket aimed at the door's hinges when Sten kicked him aside. "Yak-pubes," he snarled in Gurkhali, "do you know what would happen if you discharged that rocket in this passageway?"

The lance-naik didn't seem worried. Kilgour was already slapping together a shaped charge from the demo-pack he'd secured from the armory.

"Best w' be all hangin't on th' sides ae the corridor," he muttered, and yanked the detonator. Sten had barely time to follow the suggestion before the charge blew the door in. The Gurkhas, kukris ready, leaped in the wreckage but could find nothing to savage. The Praetorians inside had been reduced to a thin paste plastered across the room's far wall. Kukri in hand, Sten ran past them, leapt, and his foot snapped into the thin door leading to the com room itself. He recovered and rolled in, low, to find himself looking at a shambles of crushed circuitry, looped power cables, and spaghetti-strung wires.

And Kai Hakone, standing in an alcove away from the doorway, mini-willygun leveled at Sten.

"You're somewhat late, Captain." Hakone motioned with his free hand, eyes and gun never moving away from Sten.

"You have the palace, but we have the Emperor. The com-link is destroyed. Before it can be rebuilt…"

and Hakone gestured theatrically. His eyes flickered away as he scanned for Sten's accomplices—enough time for Sten to grab the end of a severed power cable and throw it into Hakone's face.

Hakone fried, and in his convulsions the willygun went off, its projectile whining away harmlessly as his flesh blackened then sizzled before the circuit-breakers popped and the body collapsed, leaving Sten in the ruins of the com room.

" 'Twould appear th' only hope our Emp hae is us bairns doin't o'er th' hills't' far away."

Sten nodded agreement, and then he and Alex were moving, headed for the palace's command center.