A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (5 page)

“‘Woken up’?” parrotted Finesz.
That
she had not expected.

Marine-Captain Kordelasz gave a feral grin. “Perhaps now we’ll find out who they are.”

“Where is he?” Finesz demanded, as eager to learn the secret of the clones as the marine-captain.

“He escaped,” Rinharte said. “Killing these two as he did so.”

Rinharte turned to the young woman. “Romi, I want a boat-squad up in the forecastle immediately. They’re to guard the bridge and signal house.” To the marine-captain: “Mr Kordelasz, you will organise me some boat-squads to search
Tempest
from fo’c’sle to keel. The Winter Rangers can hold the troop-deck.
We must find this clone.
”

Investigators in melodramas might have been able to “read” a crime scene, and from their reading determine perpetrator and method, but Inspector Finesz had no such supernatural deductive powers. Like any member of the OPI’s Enquiry branch, she relied on a combination of knowledge, logic and common sense. But perhaps she did occasionally depend overmuch on intuition. Sadly, none of her skills or experience was of much use in this situation. She saw a typical naval cabin, but dominated by two great catafalques festooned with pipes and dials, and topped with covers of mullioned glass. The lid of one was ajar. A young man in a plain uniform of blue lay comatose in the other.

Finesz compared the readings on the various dials of the two sarcophagi. Some differed… But was that a result of the awakening, or a cause? There was no way of knowing.

“No indication of what triggered it?” asked Rinharte from the doorway.

Finesz glanced back over her shoulder. “If I knew what all these knobs and dials meant…” She shrugged. “Has anybody been playing with any of the controls?”

Rinharte shook her head. “No. The crew were under strict orders to leave well alone. I could not afford to have—Well, to have exactly this happen.”

Finesz squatted to follow a hose from a valve at the head of the sarcophagus. It passed beneath the bier, joined a larger pipe against the decking, which in turn disappeared through the nearest bulkhead. “Um,” she said. “This looks like a data-hose. Could these things be controlled from somewhere else aboard?”

“We’ve not found anything that could be controls.”

After ten weeks, Finesz believed Rinharte and her crew knew
Tempest
from bow to stern.

“Except…,” said Rinharte slowly.

The inspector rose to her feet. She winced as her knees protested.

“We’ve never managed to get the armoury open. It’s a great steel bunker down on the troop-deck.”

“So the controls for these things could be in there?”

“But,” pointed out Rinharte, “for someone to wake up a clone now… Well, that would mean they’ve been living in the armoury all this time. That’s —”

The caster by the door whistled. A voice said, “Captain! Captain!”

Rinharte reached out and flicked a switch. “What is it, Romi?”

“The clone has been spotted, ma’am! On a maintenance catwalk above the troop-deck.”

“Is Marine-Captain Kordelasz on his way there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You remain on the bridge. Tell Mr Kordelasz I’m on my way.”

Finesz followed Rinharte out of the cabin. The bodies in the gangway had been removed, and two fresh marines now stood guard. Rinharte turned astern and began jogging along the gangway.

Finesz had spent time aboard
Tempest
and possessed a passing familiarity with her layout. Three levels of docks in the bow for the troop-transport’s six pinnaces. Above them, the upper deck, quarter-deck and, protruding above the hull, the forecastle. Amidships was the troop-deck, and beneath its decking the troop officers deck. The ship’s engines occupied the aft section of the hull.

The hatch from the quarter-deck opened onto a platform on the forward bulkhead of the troop-deck compartment. Rinharte put a hand to her brow and peered up. Finesz followed her gaze. Three catwalks crossed the roof of the compartment, a good fifty feet above the deck below. Finesz could see green-jacketed figures advancing aft along them.

“Come on,” said Rinharte.

There was a ladder beside the hatch. It was not a naval “ladder”, a steep staircase, but a series of rungs fastened to the bulkhead. It led up to the catwalks. Rinharte climbed. Finesz glanced down at the decking below, and felt a moment of dizziness. She could not fall, she knew full well she could not fall. The chargers beneath the landing upon which she stood only mimicked gravity in a volume some ten feet high. Should she trip and tumble over the landing’s rail, Finesz would find herself floating in mid-air—safe and embarrassed. A fall to the decking below presented no danger. Intellectually, she knew this. But. Fifty feet! Straight down! Finesz was no spacer, for whom shipboard was second nature. Ignoring the fluttering fear she felt, she turned to ladder, gripped the rungs resolutely and began to climb slowly after Rinharte.

The view was even more vertiginous on the catwalk. Not even a tight grip on the railings eased Finesz’s anxiety. Rinharte appeared totally unaffected as she rushed along the catwalk to the nearest marine: Kordelasz.

“Well?” demanded Rinharte brusquely.

“We have him cornered. Platform at the end of the centre catwalk. I’ve a boat-squad on the ladder below him. He’ll not escape.”

The clone, a young man of nondescript features, stood hard against the compartment’s aft bulkhead. There was, Finesz decided, something odd about him. It was his gaze. It burned with an intensity which made his face appear blank by comparison.

“Who are you?” Rinharte demanded once she was within ten feet of the clone.

He spoke, his face stiff as if unused to movement. “The answer would mean nothing to you.”

“We know you’re a scorpion,” Finesz put in. It was the knights sinister who had labelled the Serpent’s cloned assassins “scorpions”. Between the thumb and first finger of their right hand, the assassins each had a tattoo of a pincered creature with an arched tail.

“Scorpion?”

“The mark,” Finesz clarified, “on your hand.”

The clone lifted his hand and peered at it. “Ah. The Urbat. It is the mark of a warrior. This is not the body of a true warrior, but it fights so it must carry it.”

Quietly, Finesz said, “He said ‘this body’. What could that mean?”

Rinharte ignored her. To the clone, she asked, “What woke you?”

“I woke me,” the clone said. “Only I can wake me.”

“What do you want?” asked Finesz.

“To see, to learn, to understand, to know.” The clone smiled. “And I see enough. I will know more soon enough.”

He stepped forward to the edge of the platform, put his hands to the railing.

Kordelasz yelled, “No!” And rushed forward.

The clone vaulted the railing, swung beneath the landing, and pushed off hard towards the deck below.

The marine-captain was too late. The clone flew downwards, arms wide, head first. Finesz could not tell when the clone entered the influence of the chargers beneath the troop-deck, the point at which his flight became a plummet. He had aimed his dive carefully, however. The top of his head impacted one corner of the armoury with a wet and sickening thud. Sharp steel pierced his crown, crushed his skull. Blood sprayed out in a thin fan. Limbs limp, the body flipped, and dropped to the decking. Red dripped from the armoury roof and drew narrow lines down the wall.

“Dear Lords,” Finesz murmured.

“He killed himself,” Kordelasz said in disbelief.

“Who was he? What was he?”

Rinharte turned away. “Now we know less than we did before.” She let out a sigh. “Mr Kordelasz, have the ship’s surgeon examine the body. I very much doubt we shall learn anything, but we must try.” She turned go, stopped. Looking back, she added, “And double the guard on the remaining clones. Use the Winter Rangers, if you must. I won’t have another clone running loose aboard.”

A voice issued from a caster within the command car: “Approaching the aerodrome now, sir.”

Standing by the vehicle’s rear-hatch, Ahasz grimaced with impatience. This eve-of-war atmosphere had him tense and restless. He could not hurry the plan; it unfolded at its intended pace.

“Very good,” said the regimental-major manning the caster. It was a moment before Ahasz remembered his name: Urnagi.

Moments later, the voice again: “They’ve accepted our orders.”

The orders—permitting a training exercise at the military facility at Kukoi aerodrome—were not faked. An exorbitant garnish to a senior member of the Regimental General Staff had seen to that. Neither was it a “training exercise”, of course. A full battalion of Housecarls was tasked with ensuring that the Palace Boat Squadron did not take to the air, would not be allowed to come to the aid of the Imperial Palace’s defenders.

Perversely, though he knew the attack on the aerodrome was not the main action, Ahasz felt a burning desire to be there. He took a turn away from the command car, hand to the hilt of his sword.

In serried ranks to left and right troop-wagons floated serenely, filling half the garrison parade-ground. Four battalions of five companies each. Twenty wagons. To the rear of the formation, artillery carriages and basilisks bobbed lightly.
They
were the reason Ahasz needed the Imperial Regiment of Housecarls. Directed-energy cannons. Ahasz had enough troopers of his own to overwhelm the Imperial Palace’s defenders, but he had no cannon. They were forbidden to all but the Imperial Regiments and Martial Orders.

A stiff breeze blew across the parade-ground. Vehicles’ banners snapped in the wind, as if they too were eager for battle. Confections of clouds, small and shapeless, sailed across the sky. Ahasz felt the sun’s heat on his face and upper chest:

A nice day for war.

He was keen to start, to take his army—the Housecarls here, the ten battalions of household troops even now loading up on trains to be carried across the city from his estate in the south; to take his army and unseat Emperor Willim IX. But no clones—not the one hundred he had hidden in his townhouse, nor the further two hundred he had secreted at his estate. Besides, they were trained as assassins, not soldiers.

Years of scheming had led to this point. History in the making. For almost thirteen centuries, the Shutan family had ruled the Empire. If all went well, Ahasz would be the first to break their hold on the Imperial Throne. He scowled. Years of scheming… He was only the most recent in a millennium-long line of cloned dukes who had subverted and corrupted the Empire from within. But he had piggybacked his own plot on those centuries of conspiring, all to an end that was not his masters’.

There might be years yet before his masters’ plan came to fruition, but he needed years to prepare for their arrival. And he could only truly bring the Empire to readiness from the Throne.

He returned to the command car, stuck his head through the open rear-hatch. “How long?” he asked.

The regimental-major looked up from his console and turned to the duke. “He should be securing the boats and the pilots’ mess now, your grace. We’ll hear soon —”

A crackle of static from the caster.

“Ah.” The regimental-major fiddled with a knob.

“Objective achieved.” The voice from the speaker sounded triumphant.

So, thought Ahasz, it had been easier than estimated. Colonel Everst, officer commanding of the Housecarls, had assured Ahasz the lieutenant-colonel leading the attack on the aerodrome was “an excellent sort in a tight spot”. Cynic that he was, Ahasz had refrained from asking if that meant Alezred had paid a tidy sum for his colonelcy, or if he had risen up through the ranks on merit.

“No problems?” asked the major.

“None,” replied Alezred over the caster. “We have the boats grounded, and all the crews in custody. Tell his grace the skies are clear and will remain so.”

“Right.” Ahasz scrambled into the command car, removed his sword from his belt, dropped into a seat and buckled up. He placed his weapon in the receptacle at his side. “Give the order to move out.”

Minutes later, a trooper ran up and closed the command car’s hatch. The major left his seat to slam the bolts shut. The vehicle bobbed sickeningly once or twice. Hoses began to hiss, rods to clatter. Urnagi did not return to his console, but climbed up into the vehicle commander’s cupola. Once he was settled, all Ahasz could see were his boots, and his rear on the abridged seat. More rods chattered, then settled to a sharp-edged susurration.

Ahasz placed his hands on his knees, felt pressure on his kneecaps from fingers which seemed to press of their own accord. He felt no fear—this tenseness was not fear. Though he had never fought in combat, he had duelled often. Sometimes to the death.

The command car jerked into motion. Ahasz twisted to peer out of the narrow slit-window by his seat. He watched as the vehicle sped along the road from the parade-ground, through the garrison’s ornate bailey. In the distance, buildings crawled over the hills, rendering the landscape blocky and unnatural. Beyond, the toothy escarpments of the hills surrounding Toshi bit at the sky. The command car turned towards the city. Now the duke could see only flat scrubby earth beside the highway. Soon, that too had been eaten up by structures in varying degrees of repair. Some were four- and five-storey slums; others proudly displayed the care and attention, the pride, of their landlords.

When I am emperor, Ahasz promised himself, there will be no slums, there will be no mistreatment.

The highway climbed above the tenements, and he saw their roofs were as varied as their facades. Some boasted roof-gardens, surprising patches of green amongst the chimney-pots and skylights. Ahasz spotted several roof-top shacks, crudely knocked together out of salvaged timber, and in which a dozen or more proles clearly dwelt. The sight strengthened his resolve.

They were in the city now, near one hundred feet above the ground. Ahasz was committed: his convoy was large enough to be remarked upon. And so it should be: there could be no obvious reason for a force of nearly two thousand troopers to enter Toshi.