Sten rose to his feet. "We know there's a leak, sir." He began pacing. "We have to shut down everything.
Someone, sir, is very definitely trying to kill you."
The Emperor smiled an odd smile. He started to speak but kept it to himself. Sten wished to God he had said what was on his mind. What was he still hiding?
"Okay. You are the target. We don't know how many conspirators there are. So we trust no one. I follow the Knox trail. And, you, sir…"
"Yes, Captain? What exactly do you propose I do?"
Sten caught himself, and wondered if he had gone too far.
The Emperor raised several fingers in a mock salute. "Don't worry about me, Captain," he said. "I'll be perfectly safe. Although sometimes I wish…" The Eternal Emperor picked up his last discarded guitar.
He bent low over it and began fingering out a complicated string of chords.
Even to Sten's untrained ear, it sounded pretty good. It also sounded like a final dismissal.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kai Hakone ground his palms together and the tabac leaves shredded down onto the leaf below.
Carefully he sprinkled water onto the leaf, then rolled the leaf around the shreds, folding the ends in on the roll. He finished, inspected the cheroot with satisfaction, then dipped it in the nearly full snifter of Earth cognac before him. Satisfied, he clipped the end and, using a wooden firestick, lit the cheroot and leaned back, looking across the chamber. It was a private room in one of Prime World's most exclusive clubs, where it was very easy for Hakone's fellows to meet, and for Hakone to keep free of monitoring devices.
The other men in the room—perhaps fifty—were Hakone's age or older. Industrialists, retired high-rankers, entrepreneurs with laurels to rest on. To an outsider, they reeked of wealth. To Hakone, they smelled like death.
But to Kai Hakone, that nostril-scorching scent like lamb, like burnt pork, was the smell of his life, and his writing.
Some people are formed by a single experience.
Such was Kai Hakone.
Almost from birth he had wanted to fly. To fly in space. The world he was born on was comfortably settled, as were his parents. His mother had one great idea—that it would be possible to establish a store where persons could walk in, fit themselves into a booth for measurement, then pick a pattern and, within minutes, have a custom-tailored garment. That idea made the Hakones very wealthy and very satisfied.
They had no understanding—but also no disagreement—with their son's desire to go out; and so Kai Hakone ended up commissioned as a lieutenant in command of a probe vessel at the start of the Mueller Wars.
Hakone had taken all the lessons of the Academy to heart and was earnestly trying to lead, inspire, and be an authoritarian friend to the thirty-eight men on the tiny ship. But his probe ship was picked for close-in support of the landing on Saragossa. Five Imperial battlewagons died that day, as did most of the Seventh Guards Division committed on the troopships. Among the million dead, spewed into lung-spilling space or endlessly falling onto a rock-hard planet, were the men and women of Hakone's ship.
His probe ship had died slowly, cut to ribbons by missiles, close-range lasers, and finally projectile-blast guns. Lieutenant Kai Hakone was the only survivor. He'd been dug out of the ruins of the ship and slowly psyched back together.
After the Mueller Wars ground down, the Emperor found it very convenient to allow anyone in the Imperial Service who wanted out, out. Kai Hakone found himself a young civilian, with a more-than-adequate separation allowance, no desire to return to his home world, and the reek of death in his nostrils.
That reek had led him to his current career as a writer.
His first vid-book—a novel on the rites-of-passage-via-slaughter—bombed. His second, a sober analysis of the Mueller Wars, became a best-seller, being published ten years after the war ended, just at the correct time for a revisionist appraisal. Since then, Hakone's works, all grim, all tinged with the skull, were received and reviewed as coming from a major creative artist.
His sixth volume, a return to nonfiction, soberly analyzed what went wrong at the battle of Saragossa, taking the scandalous viewpoint that the young admiral-in-place was a scapegoat for the Emperor's own failings. The work was, of course, cleverly worded to avoid any semblance of political libel.
But that, Hakone realized, was another turning point. That was the reason he was sitting in a rich man's club, smelling rich men's lives and feeling like a spectre at the banquet. But Hakone shut that thought off, much as he closed off the perpetual wonderment of what would have happened to Kai Hakone had the battle of Saragossa been an Imperial triumph.
He clicked fingernails against the table for attention, and the room fell silent.
Again he looked around at the fifty-odd men in the room. If Hakone were brighter, or more analytical, he might have wondered why none of the former military people had rank above one-star, why the industrialists were all people who had inherited their businesses from their forebears, and why the entrepreneurs were those who hustled borderline deals. But the nature of conspiracy is not to question.
"Gentlemen," he began, his quiet voice a contradiction to his bearlike presence. "Before we begin, let me advise you that this room has been proofed against any known electronic eavesdropping, as well as any physical pickups. We are able to speak freely."
A man stood. Hakone identified him as Saw Toyer, who'd increased his riches supplying uniforms for the Guard.
"Time has passed, Sr. Hakone," he accused. "We—and I think I speak for us all—have given more than generously. We expected… something to happen following Empire Day. As you promised. Instead, and I am not asking to be privy to the secrets, nothing has occurred. At least nothing which we can see.
"Were I not committed, I might ask if my credits are being poured into a black hole."
"That is the purpose of the meeting," Hakone answered. "To inform you of what has happened."
Hakone could have gone into detail: That the attempt to shock and then kidnap the Emperor had gone awry. That the assassin had successfully fled Prime World. That his control and their operative doctor, Har Stynburn—"Dr. Knox"—had disappeared. But that as far as Hakone knew, the dangling tails of that conspiracy had either been cleaned up—such as the murder of Tac Chief Kreuger—or had cleaned themselves up. But he knew that the secret to success is never to worry the money-men with minor problems.
"Phase One, as you've said, went awry. But, you'll notice, without any suspicion on the part of the Emperor, other than his assigning one of his personal soldiers to investigate. As guaranteed, we left no traces.
"There is one problem, however. And that is that our normal source of intelligence has gone dry. We no longer have input to the Emperor's next moves."
Hakone swizzled his cheroot in the cognac and relit the cigar, waiting for the buzz of dismay to die.
Gutless. Gutless, he thought. These men have never learned that there is always one more kilometer that you must go. So, his optimistic side answered, you learned long ago that you run with what you brought.
Hakone tapped for silence again. The buzz was louder as fear grew in the room. Hakone wetted a finger in the cognac and began moving it around the rim of the glass. The high whine silenced the throng.
"Thank you," Hakone said. "What is past is past. Now for the good news. Our coordinator is most pleased with what is going on."
"Why?" The snarl was unidentifiable.
"Because in spite of our actions, and in spite of Imperial motion, there have been no breaks."
"So what do we do next—find holes and pull 'em in after ourselves?" That came from Ban Lucery, one of the few industrialists Hakone respected.
"That is a firm negative. Our coordinator—and I heartily agree with his decision—has said that we move to Phase Two of what we've dubbed Operation Zaarah Wahrid. Relax, gentlemen. The days of this intolerable Imperial control are numbered. There is no way Phase Two can fail."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The little men peaveyed the logs from the pond, hooked them into the chain hoist, and the drunk sat against a pile of peeled logs and cheered. Naik Rai and Subadar-Major Chittahang Limbu watched approvingly.
Sten shut his model box down, and figures disappeared instantly although he was sure that his "drunk"
had time to take another swig from the bottle before he vanished.
"This is not good," Haik Rai said. "How will you remember which socks to wear?"
"You are sure this is correct?" Limbu echoed in Gurkhali.
"Goddamn it," Sten swore. "I am not sure of anything, Subadar-Major. All I know is that I am detached on Imperial Service. All I know is that you are to take charge of the Gurkhas.
"And all I know is that if you shame me, on Dashera it shall not be bullocks but ballocks that are cut off.
By me, Subadar-Major."
Limbu started to laugh, then saluted. "Captain, I have no idea what is happening. But I do have this feeling that none of us shall meet short of Moksa."
Sten lifted a lip. "Thank you for your confidence, Chittahang. But I wave my private parts at that feeling.
That is all. You are dismissed."
The two Gurkhas saluted and were gone. Sten continued packing. Again the door signal buzzed, and Sten palmed it open.
It was Lisa. Sten noticed that she carried a debugging pouch that was on. The door closed, and he decided the first order of business was to kiss her thoroughly.
Eventually they broke. Lisa smiled up at him. "Everything is ga-ga."
"No drakh," Sten said. "You sound like the Eternal Emperor."
"You're leaving."
"I say again my last. I know I am leaving. For the safe house."
"Nope," Haines said, coming back to the point. "I mean you're
leaving
leaving. You and that tubby thug of yours."
"Uh-oh."
"We've found our famous Dr. Knox." And Haines threw a fiche onto Sten's table.
"Tell me about it."
"Dr. John Knox is actually named Hars Stynburn. Broken out of the Mercury Corps. Court-martial sealed I quote 'for the good of the Service' end quote."
Sten felt a first wave of relief: At least the conspiracy didn't involve the current Imperial military.
"It seems that Dr. Stynburn, who always was fairly militant about his views, was assigned as Med Off to a pacification team. Some world—it's in the fiche—that the Empire had trouble bringing under control.
"The natives on this particular world didn't want much of anything," Lisa said. "Except steel weapons. Dr.
Stynburn somehow arranged that the spearheads and so forth were highly radioactive. Is that what you people really do?"
"Knock it off, Lisa."
"Sorry. It's been a long day. Anyway, so the natives kicked—the female ones, since the planet was a matriarchy. Native life span was real short, so by the time Stynburn's team was taken off, the planet was clean for settlement.
"Unfortunately somebody sang like a vulture, and Dr. Stynburn got a court-martial."
By this time, Sten had fed the fiche into his desk viewer, listening to Haines with only a quarter of his attention.
"Busted out. No prison… clot it… should'a spaced him… drifted… no record of employment…" He shut off the viewer and looked at Lisa.
"No record," she said. "But we found him. He's off Prime."
"Where?"
"A little hidey-hole of a planet named Kulak." Haines handed Sten another fiche.
"How'd you find him so fast?"
"Since you pointed out that our Dr. Knox appeared more 'n a bit egocentric, I wondered if he wasn't also dumb enough to keep his career going instead of disappearing as a potwalloper.
"Sure enough. Dr.—his new name's William Block—is the contract medico on Kulak."
Sten fed more fiche into his viewer, scanned the overall description, and was scared several different shades of white. "I should've stayed in Mantis," he said to himself. "All I'd be doing is making a drop into some swamp with no more than ten thousand to one odds. But not dummy me."
"You've heard of Kulak?"
Sten didn't bother with the full explanation, since it was fairly involved. Kulak was a small planetoid with a poisonous atmosphere and a killer environment. Its location was approximately between Galaxy's End and Nowhere. Its only interesting feature was that crystalline metals on the planet had a life of their own, growing like plants. One of those metals was incredibly light, yet far stronger than any conventional metal known to the Empire. Its chemical properties and description were included on the fiche.
But Sten was quite familiar with that substance—he'd "built" the knife hidden in his arm from it, back on Vulcan, in "Hellworld"—the punishment sector for Vulcan's slave laborers. The work area—Area 35—had duplicated Kulak's environment exactly, down to the point of killing over 100 percent of the workers sentenced to it.
And now Sten was required to go back to Area 35. He was as terrified as he'd ever been in his life.
Sten told his swirling stomach to shut up and scanned on. After discovery, Kulak had been abandoned by the discovering company, but it was reopened years later by independent miners, tough men and women who were willing to crapshoot their settlement on Kulak. Since Kulak was not considered a plush assignment, their co-op had jumped at the chance to get a for-real doctor, especially one willing to pact on a two-E-year-contract. Since many of the miners were themselves on the run from Imperial justice, no one was much interested in exactly what Dr. "Block"—Hars Stynburn—had done. On Kulak, Imperial treason rated up there with nonpayment of child support.
Sten corrected his features and yanked the fiche. "Yeah, I've heard of Kulak."
"I have a tacship standing by," Haines said. "Destination sealed, even for the pilot. And I ordered the necessary environmental suits."
None of the replies that occurred immediately to Sten was suitable—and then Kilgour thundered through the entranceway, tapping a fiche angrily.