The Return of the Emperor (14 page)

Somewhere in the far-off Honjo system a fleet awaited orders.

The team closed in on the late Sullamora's estate. At first they had traveled fast. There were still gravsleds overhead that were clearly not Security vehicles.

At daybreak they had sheltered in a river cave that F'lesa had pinpointed. They had eaten a tasteless meal and tried to sleep, only to be awakened by earthquake rumbles. Quick hand signals were exchanged—reflexively, without orders, they had gone nonverbal, even for whispers. The signals gave redundant, obvious information, variations of "Target on ground," but they broke the silent isolation.

Now, any overhead had to be considered hostile.

Just at dusk, they moved again. Ten kilometers outside the estate, the first passive sensors were encountered. They were quickly given electronic "You don't see anything" signals, and the team moved on.

The sensors became closer together, and more sensitive. But again they were spoofed successfully. Then there was an old road, with a patrol, its time passage exactly what Dum and Dee had filmed. Routine and proper security are oxymoronic. Roving five-man patrols. Mantis, most likely. Again, evaded. A N'Ran crouched to Sten and signed scornfully: "I could dance."

They went on.

A kilometer or so outside the estate, Sten found a hilltop with a decent line of sight and fair overhead cover. "Here. Set up," he signed.

The cases were opened. Two missiles came out. They looked to be standard Imperial short-range, self-homing, fire-and-forget, ground-to-ground weapons. They were not. The propellant had been replaced by a reduced amount of a slow-burning solid fuel. The missiles would be fired from very short, closely estimated range. More explosive went in. The homing mechanisms also went into the trash. More bang went in their place. Space was left for a primitive guidance system near the missile's stern. A small pitot was welded into the base.

Telescoping rods were untelescoped, crossed, and pinned together into simple, X-shaped launching stands. The Archulers unshouldered their packs. Each pack contained a two-kilometer reel of chained molecular wire. One end of the wire connected to the missile, the other to a monopod-mounted passive light-intensification sight with a single, small joystick. The N'ran were ready.

The rest of the team stripped off the phototropic uniforms. Under them, they wore Imperial combat fatigues, exactly the same as those worn by the guard units inside the estate. Sten motioned them down the hill.

More sensors. Physical security barriers, including some archaic razor-wire. Booby traps, passive and active. Guards.

Easy. No problem. A little too easy?

Shut up. A hollow. Signal—flat of hand, going down. Needless. The team dropped. Just in front of them was the final wire—and the compound.

Now the bloodbath should begin—preferably on one side only.

Phase One, scheduled to begin when Sten keyed a tone-com, would be the firing of the first missile. The second would follow ten seconds later. Sten had felt—correctly—that any modern guidance system would be countermeasured or just blocked. So he went primitive.

The guidance system was via that wire the Archulars had lugged in.

Wire guidance had been discarded millennia earlier as an absurdity. Its faults were many: The operator was required to remain in one place and guide the missile to its target. He must have line of sight to the target. The target might also be looking his way and have some objection to being rocketed. Not a problem for Sten—he was back-stabbing, not playing Leonidas.

The wire could snag or break. Not this wire.

But the biggest problem had been the real catch-22. If the missile traveled at any kind of speed, it would take a guidance operator who could also dance on a rolling ball to hit the target rather than over- or under-shoot or, worse, send the missile into out-of-control yawing. They had to slow the missile down. That would give the target time to acquire and destroy the missile and most likely its operator, as well, but that was not a real factor. Luxury estates did not shoot back—Sten hoped.

First the missiles would sequentially impact on the target area, resulting in chaos, flames, and screams. Sten and his team would arrow into that chaos with "Rescue" in their shouts and murder in their hearts. They would terminate any surviving council members, then withdraw, break contact, and head for the pickup point.

The tone-corn would also signal Kilgour to bring the tacship to the surface and low-fly upriver to a preset RP.

Then they could all go home and get drunk.

Stop hesitating. Go, lad.

Sten touched the button.

One…

The first missile was launched and nap-of-the-earth guided into the estate's main building.

Three seconds…

Faye Archuler pitched a sausage charge over the wire and pulled the fuse cord.

Six…

The first missile "crept" forward, at little more than 200 kph.

Eight…

The charge exploded, slicing the fence open like a gate.

Ten…

The second missile launched.

Eleven…

Sten shouted, "Grenades!" The team thumbed timers and hurled grenades into the compound.

Thirteen…

Sten was the first on his feet and charging through the hole in the wire. It may have saved his life.

Fifteen…

The grenades exploded, huge flares broadcasting confusion through visible-invisible spectrums.

Eighteen seconds…

Imperial Security sprang the trap.

Two armored gravsleds floated into sight, their multiple chainguns yammering. A missile launcher snapped up from its silo, tracking.

Twenty-one…

Sten's first missile was just four seconds from impact. The gravsled chainguns' sensors found the incoming missile. Solid collapsed-uranium slugs sheeted through the air—and the missile shattered!

Twenty-four…

The missile launcher acquired its target. Twenty counterbattery missiles spat into the night.

Twenty-eight seconds…

The missiles impacted on Sten's launch site. The two N'Ran disappeared in a howl of explosions.

The second missile, no longer under command, soared vertically.

Twenty-nine seconds…

Akashi's boot heel slammed down on a mine sowed less than an hour before. The charge took his legs off at the groin, and shrapnel scythed through Montoya.

The nearby blast caught Sten, flipping him up and back into the wire. He hung, limply.

Montoya's vital-signs pack blew, purple in the night.

Thirty-one…

High overhead, Sten's second missile exploded harmlessly.

Thirty-six…

The guns on the gravsleds tracked down… ammunition drums clanged as the loads automatically changed and the guns yammered on.

Larry and Faye Archuler were cut nearly in half.

Thirty-nine…

A sniper found the running Havell in his sights… lost him in a grenade blast… then touched the trigger. The AM2 round blew Havell's chest away.

Forty-two…

Corum and Valdiva zagging… rolling… firing… The chainguns found and smashed them.

Sten found himself flat. Stunned. Disoriented. He started to his feet—and the Mantis reflexes took over. He rolled, over and over, somehow keeping hold of his broken-stocked scattergun. Explosive rounds stitched centimeters over his head, and he was back in the hollow. Safety. Stay here, his mind said. They won't see you. They won't find you.

His body disobeyed. He ripped out of his combat harness, thumbed the switch on a grenade, and threw the vest back, into the wire.

The first grenade detonated—and the others went off in sympathetic explosions.

Sten was up, stumbling. Away. You're blown. Move! The others! Clot the others—they're dead! Follow the damned orders I'm issuing!

A five-man patrol came out of the smoke. Gun up, trigger held back—and red spray instead of men, AM2 bullets exploding the razor fence behind them and its sensors.

Through, skin ripping.

Water-sound. Run, damn you. It doesn't hurt.

A bank. Flat-dive over—fearing rocks, hoping water. Neither. Smash into the cushion… the ripping cushion of rusted high-piled concertina wire.

The knife out of your arm, man.

Slashing.

Nothing to slash. Somehow the knife was in its "sheath," and Sten was crashing forward, into the water and through the shallows.

Someone behind him was firing.

Bullet-splashes.

Deeper. Dive. Go under. Hold your clottin' breath. You don't need oxygen.

Now. Surface. One gasp—go under. Swim if you can. Let the current carry you. Away. Down the river.

One hand moved inside his uniform, found a tiny box, slid the cover back on the box, and pressed a stud.

Swim. You can.

Safety.

Downriver. Alex. The pickup.

Sten knew he would never make it.

Kilgour paced the control room of the tacship, waiting. It was not much of a pace—no more than four steps at the maximum before he would slam into something.

The ship was grounded on the river beach chosen for the pickup point. Alex had the hatch open. His orders were clear and exact: remain in place until one hour before daybreak or if discovered. If no one is at the pickup point, return to the ocean. Try to remain near mouth of the river. The team would try, if the pickup was blown, to E&E to the ruins of Reedsport. If no contact was made, he was to head offplanet and report.

In the not-very-distance, Alex could hear the sounds of hell. He hoped it was being given, not gotten. Once more he cursed Sten, then broke off in midobscenity as an ululation began from a com speaker.

One screen showed a projection of the target area. Just outside it, a tiny red light blinked—from the river. Mid-river, the map told him.

"Clot!" The obscenity was heartfelt. The light—and signal—came from a standard search-and-rescue transmitter. Each member of the team had carried one, with orders to activate it
only
if they missed pickup. Certainly not anywhere close to the target zone.

An SAR light. One.

Kilgour zoomed the projection back, to see if there were others. Nothing.

His fingers found a mike. "This is pickup. Go."

Nothing but dead air. The light continued to blink.

Kilgour took about a nanosecond to decide that those clear and exact orders could get stuffed. Seconds later, he lifted the tacship, banged the drive selection into Yukawa power—and be damned who could see the torch—and drove forward, upriver.

A screen flashed at him. Six gravsleds.

Alex took one hand from the controls and slapped a switch. The tacship's chainguns blasted. The tacship yawed, ripping through the top of a redwood grove, and almost went in before Alex had control again. He shot through the falling debris of the gravsleds and a voice from a speaker smashed at him:

"Unidentified tacship! Ground, or we fire!"

Alex was forced to lift out of the gorge. He banked the ship into a tight spiral, took three steps away from the control board, and hit all launch on the long-activated weapons panel. Eight Goblin XIX's salvoed upward. He found time to hope the medium-range antiship missiles' brains were awake, and there he was back at the controls, diving down into the gorge; the cliffs dropped away, and Kilgour was almost overflying the blinking light—and into the alerted target zone.

He spun ship, still under power, his stabilizing and nav-gyros screaming, killed power, and went to McLean power.

Far overhead, a nuclear fire blossomed.

Kilgour splashed down and was at the hatch. Just upstream, a body floated down toward him, motionless. Then an arm lifted, trying to swim.

Kilgour stretched… almost fell in… then had the body by its ripped coveralls. He flipped the man into the ship and was back behind the controls and under full power, hands darting across the controls, barely finding time to cycle the lock closed as the tacship clawed for altitude, straight up, toward and through the nuclear blast that had formerly been an Imperial warship.

It may have been the instant fury of Kilgour's reactions, or just the luck of the Scots. But he cleared planet—and vanished into silence under full AM2 drive.

Behind him Sten lay unconscious. His mind concussed and his body, having done its duty and preserved the organism, shut down until repairs were made.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
he librarian and her staff were considering their futures when—or rather if—their boss ever departed. One thought fondly of suicide, another planned a complete breakdown. The librarian herself considered one of two new careers: as a staffer for an orgy livie production company, or, perhaps, as a serial murderer.

Her job had suddenly become a complete, dawn-to-dawn nightmare.

It had not begun like that, nor had it been like that for nearly five years. In fact, she had been enormously envied for getting the post.

Somewhat dissatisfied, certainly overqualified and without time to do her own research and publishing in her previous job as head librarian at a large university, she had been contacted, out of the blue, by an executive search service. She was offered what she thought was the ultimate job—at triple her present salary. Did she mind relocating to a different system? No. The headhunter seemed unsurprised, as if he knew everything about her. The position was as a private librarian. The woman demurred—she had no intention of burying herself in some recluse's dusty archives and letting the world pass.

Nothing like that at all, the man explained. He suggested she visit the planet of Yongjukl and investigate her new job. She would have a round-trip ticket. He offered to accompany her. She declined. The librarian was quite attractive—and the headhunter seemed disappointed.

The library was nearly mansion-size and was but one building on sprawling grounds. The main house dwarfed the library. It was secluded, with more than a thousand square kilometers of guarded, secure grounds. Her own quarters were lavish. There was a full staff: cooks, cleaners, gardeners.

Not that the librarian was imprisoned. She had her own gravcar, and a large, sophisticated city was no more than an hour or two away. She was allowed to keep her own hours—as long as the system remained current. If she ever needed help, she could hire as many day-workers as necessary.