Vortex (34 page)

All of them held kukris, the half-meter-long curved-blade knives, held at a forty-five degree angle to their chests, at the ready.

They came forward ten paces. And stopped, without orders.

Ten Bhor, willyguns leveled, came out, veed back for flank security. They, too, crashed to a halt.

There was a murmur from the crowd. These were the killers. The little brown men who took no prisoners, men who, the wild stories had said, killed and ate their own children if they were not murderous enough. All of the slanders the most skilled propagandists on Jochi had spread on the Nepalese warriors, slanders that the Gurkhas had paid no mind, now back-blasted. These men were even more terrible than the tales said. These were not men, even, but killers, who went in with the long knife, and came out leaving nothing but blood and silence behind them.

Again with no orders, Sten and the Gurkhas took one measured pace forward, then stopped.

Another pace.

Another.

In five more paces, they would close on the rabble.

The crowd broke. That mob, intent moments before on obliterating the embassy and tearing apart every being within it, became a scatter of frightened souls, interested only in getting tender behinds out of harm's way.

Howling, screaming, they pelted away, away from the knives, away from the terror.

There was not a flicker from Sten or the Gurkhas.

Sten barely nodded, and the Gurkhas, in unison, about-faced. With equally measured pace, they walked back inside the embassy grounds. The Bhor waited until the Gurkhas were inside, then port-armed and doubled after them.

The gates clanged shut.

Sten moved to a wall, made sure that he could not be seen outside, and sagged against it. A little close, he thought.

Jemedar Lalbahadur Thapa marched to him, came to attention, and saluted.

Sten returned the salute. "Very good."

"Not very good," the Gurkha said. "Anyone can frighten sheep. Or children. The dead of the Imperial Guard are unavenged."

Sten, too, turned grim. "Tonight," he promised. "Tonight, or the next night. And then we will not be playing child's games, nor with children.''

It took, in fact, three nights before that moving dot that was the telltale pistol came to rest.

Sten's operation order was verbal, with no record being made, and very short.

Twenty Gurkhas. Volunteers. Standby for special duties at 2300 hours. Sidearms only. Barracks dress.

Alex had lifted an eyebrow at that last: Why not the phototropic cammies?

"I'll want no one to wonder about this later," Sten said shortly. "This is authorized slaughter, not private revenge."

The entire Gurkha detachment volunteered, of course.

Eight Bhor. All master-pilot rated. Four gravlighters. Basic weapons.

Again, Cind told him her entire team wanted to go in. Starting with her, she added.

Sten had said nothing about the nature of the special duties. Evidently he did not have to.

The soldiers assembled at 2200 hours. Outside, the sky was partially overcast, black clouds racing across the face of the four currently visible moons.

There was none of the Gurkha's usual prebattle barracking. They knew. As did, somehow, everyone in the embassy. The canteens and hallways were deserted.

Sten and Alex blackened their faces, put on cammies, and checked their weapons. Sten had his kukri, the knife, and a pistol. Alex had a handgun and a meter-long solid-steel bar he had wrapped with ordnance nonslip tape.

Alex went to the com room for a final look at the target—they had not only the pistol's beeper broadcasting, but four Frick & Fracks orbiting the area, and eight more grounded for area intelligence.

The Gurkhas and their eight Bhor pilots were drawn up in an embassy garage. Cind was in front of the formation.

Sten returned her salute and ordered the troops to open ranks for inspection. The Gurkhas had their kukris drawn. The chin straps of their slouch hats were tight under their lower lips—and their eyes were fixed on infinity.

Sten passed down the ranks. Merely as a formality, he checked one or two of their blades. They were, of course, hand-honed into razors.

He turned the formation back to Cind, and she ordered the weapons sheathed and ranks closed. Alex hurried out of a stairwell, a most grim smile on his face.

"W hae a feast a' friends," he said. "Alive-o, alive-o she cried. Th' sensors hae fifteen vultures gatherin't. Thae'll be havin't a conference or p'raps a party, but i' looks like th' whole clottin' cell's i' place."

Sten's acknowledging smile was equally humorless.

He gave the mission orders:

Four-man teams. After grounding, move to the target zone. Wait for the assault command. No guns to be used unless in complete emergency.

And:

No wounded. No prisoners.

They doubled out into the courtyard, where the gravlighters waited. The Bhor slid behind the controls, the Gurkhas boarded the first two—the others would be used for cleanup—and the lighters lifted, flying nap of the city toward the attack zone.

The target was less than twenty minutes flight time away. No one spoke. Sten, hanging over the pilot's right seat, saw the large-projection map on-screen and the blinking dot that represented that pistol and their objective.

It had come to rest two days earlier in a large mansion, surrounded by extended grounds, on a riverbank just outside and upstream from Rurik. A headquarters? A safe house?

Sten did not much care. He and Alex would shake the place—afterward.

The lighters grounded a few hundred meters from the sprawling house.

There was a half-alert sentry at the front and another at the rear. They were silenced.

Alex checked the main entrance for sensors or alarms. There were none.

Sten drew his kukri, and in a ripple, twenty-one other knives flashed in moonlight.

Then the corpse-glow vanished, obscured by clouds.

They went in.

The task took five minutes. There had been no outcry. When it was over, the bodies of fifteen butchered terrorists, and the two sentries, were lined up on the overgrown lawn. Cind searched the bodies for identification and anything intelligence-worthy. There was very little.

Sten and Alex took porta lights from one gravlighter and searched the mansion, in the high-speed, fine-tooth manner they had learned in basic intelligence. Neither of them spoke.

Alex broke the silence. "Ah hae indicators. Th' mob wae big fans ae Iskra. Look't all th' prop'ganda. All th' same. Jochi for Jochians an' thae. But Ah noo hae aught thae'll link th' quack solid."

"Nor do I."

"Clot. Whyn't the bassid happen t' slip oot ae th' evenin', t' hae a brew wi' his thugs, an' we'd find him here."

"That only happens in the livies."

"Ah know thae too. But a lad can dream, canna he? C'mon, Sten. Thae's nae f'r us here. Do Ah fire th' place?"

"Yes."

The bodies had already been loaded onto the two spare grav-lighters. Sten waited until he could see flames build inside the mansion, then he ordered withdrawal.

The seventeen bodies would be weighted and dumped far out at sea.

Terrorism, properly implemented, was a double-edged sword. Dr. Iskra's people might have a bit of trouble recruiting more action cells after this one vanished into the night and fog.

Then the killers departed, having gone in with the long knife, and come out leaving nothing but blood and silence behind them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

F
ew socio-historians would argue that at the height of his reign the Eternal Emperor held more raw power than any being who had come before him.

His admirers—and they had always been legion—wrote that for most of that reign he chose not to exercise that power. The cynics say that was the key reason he held it for so long: The Emperor was the ideal third-party solution to many heated and bloody disputes.

In short, power was conferred because it was the safest place to put it.

So, when the Emperor set out to win more power still and to wield it against his enemies, he faced a formidable task. As soon as his intentions became clear he knew he would be opposed by despot and democrat alike.

He also knew that the first target his opponents would choose was his competency to rule. The Emperor was too much of a political fox not to understand that all his pluses had a flip-side negative.

The Emperor's triumphant return from death had thrilled his billions of subjects. Grand parades and public spectacles were staged for nearly two years. He was a hero beyond heroism.

But parades all have an end—usually in a back alley where the colorful bunting is revealed to be dull tatters. The thrill of victory soon turns to boredom with mundane daily life. Finally, the victory itself raises problem-solving to an impossible standard. Average beings become frustrated that their own personal problems persist.

They usually lay this to a gut belief that their leaders simply don't care. Socio-historians like to dodge this point. It's one of those basic truths that kick the pins from under their science. Which is why there's nothing a historian distrusts more than the truth.

To counter this political prime negative, the Emperor had to show success. In normal times, he could have pumped up the volume of any number of his efforts. Now, there was nothing but ruins and suffering all about him. To be sure, he had the Tahn war to blame for the ruins; suffering was laid to the excesses of the privy council.

Unfortunately both of those causes had become—in the words of that mythical pol, Lanslidejons'n—pretty old dogs to whup.

The Emperor didn't need excuses. He needed positive action.

When the Khaqan died he saw his opportunity. Here was an entire cluster in shambles. But it was a fixable shambles. Once it was repaired, the cluster would be portrayed as a mini portrait of his empire: Humans and ETs living and working happily together in the warm glow of Imperial benefice.

This is why he chose Dr. Iskra. The being had performed dully but well as a territorial governor. His books were politically correct, his passions tempered. And he surveyed well in the Altaic Cluster. When his name was added to a list of potential rulers, it was viewed favorably by all.

In the survey of Jochians, he came in first. With the Torks, he placed second—after Menynder. Just as he placed second after the favorite sons—an archaic political phrase, no longer implying gender or species—of the Bogazi and Suzdal.

Iskra seemed the safest of bets. The Emperor got into trouble by coppering that bet, then publicizing it Empire-wide.

Sten wasn't sent to the Altaics just because of his undisputed skills of turning ascorbic acid into a tasty, hot-weather drink. His accomplishments were so high-profile that his name guaranteed the attention of the media, hacks as well as pros.

Next, the Emperor launched a sophisticated, although purposely blunt, public relations campaign on Iskra's behalf.

There were thoughtful front-page think pieces planted in scholarly publications, discussing the plight of the citizens of the Altaic, pointing up the gulf between species in the past, and laying that division at the feet of the senile Khaqan. Praise was lavished on Professor Iskra in these pieces. There were frequent mentions of Iskra's abilities as a "healer of wounds."

The yellow press was fed the common touch. Iskra was portrayed as an intellect with a heart, a being sworn to live a Spartan existence as an example to his people. His dietary oddities were turned into sidebar recipes and columns on sure-fire ways to health and long life.

The PR clamor over Iskra was so loud that only a fool—and that fool a hermit—wouldn't know the Emperor's prestige was hung out to dry in the Altaics.

So when the bomb blew at the Imperial barracks on Rurik, more than the lives of the Emperor's troops were destroyed. His own plans were in danger of going up in the same smoke.

Sure, he had that big dog Mahoney waiting in the wings. But he couldn't unleash him yet. There was much political groundwork to prepare.

The Emperor needed a momentary, stopgap solution.

He acted swiftly. The solution was a news blackout.

Ranett was an old-fashioned see-for-herself newsbeing. She was also a legendary combat reporter who had covered the Tahn war from the front lines. She had kept her head low during the murderous years of the privy council. But she had kept on scribbling notes during those years. When the Emperor returned she had turned those notes into a stunning series of livie documentaries detailing the atrocities and stupidities of the privy council.

The last installment ran just as Iskra was assuming power in the Altaics. The broadcast was viewed by billions. It would be cynical to say that this was the reason the Eternal Emperor had insisted on personally thanking her in a tag to that final broadcast.

Ranett took this praise from on high in typical stride. When the vid camera shut off she turned to the Emperor and asked, "Your Majesty, what's with this clown, Iskra?"

The Emperor's smiling face went blank. He pretended he hadn't heard. His attention suddenly shifted to important matters of state. Before Ranett could repeat the question, the Emperor's front men had hustled him out the door.

So Ranett decided to learn the answer to the question herself. Her editor was not pleased.

"I got Altaic Cluster stories and Iskra beeswax comin' out my clottin' ears, Ranett. Who needs more? Besides, good news does not sell vid casts."

"I don't think it's all that good," Ranett answered. "Otherwise I wouldn't ask."

"That's a lotta drakh, Ranett. Anything happens in that cluster is good news. They been down so long, everything looks up to them. No, what we need is for you to go find some nice little war to cover. With lots of blood."

"If I go to the Altaics," Ranett said, "I think I'll find all the blood you want."

"Whatcha got besides reporter's instinct?"

Ranett just stared at her editor in eloquent silence. Then she shrugged, meaning:
instinct was all she had, but it was by-god bankable instinct
. The editor stared back at her. Hard. His silence was equally eloquent in this routine battle of the wills. Then he lifted an eyebrow, meaning:
are you really, really sure
? Ranett shrugged again.