Empire's End (20 page)

Stage Two went off, predawn, just as the market opened for the next trading “day.”

Literally.

Twenty-six small but exceptionally dirty nuclear demolition charges blew Giro’s automated computer center—which meant the Empire’s main securities computer—off the face of the planet. The charges had been designed and built by Kilgour, the super-mad-bomber, before he had wandered off on his own mission.

Total casualties: one custodian who had passed out in a mess area instead of clocking out in a mess area, and a handful of security goons.

Nanoseconds later, the disaster rippled out, across livie channels and business “wires.” Panic. Who… why… what could anyone… how could anyone… anarchy… atrocity… against the rules of something or other…

The market free-fell hundreds of thousands of points. And then instantly recovered, as sanity returned.

The horror was not that horrible. There were backup comput-ers, of course. And certainly the monster who could even think of destroying a staple of civilization wouldn’t know that.

The main backup computer went online.

Wild’s program began running.

A junior trader saw it first, as he activated his workstation. The screen, instead of giving him a market display, showed a portrait of the Eternal Emperor. Scowling. In full uniform. Finger pointing directly at the clerk. The voicesynth boomed, “YOUR EMPIRE NEEDS YOU.” And the image hung there, hung there, and the trader swore something about clotting politicians and clotting— stopped, broke off, looked guiltily around, since Internal Security had begun investigating the business community, and rebooted.

The rebooting activated Ida’s virus, and quite suddenly the Empire wanted
everybody
, and everybody swore to themselves just as they swore when the omnipresent antipiracy warning came on their screen when they fired up their stations and then
they
rebooted…

… and the virus spread some more. Spread and grew and spread and grew…

… and the backup computer system blew, and, as it blew, sent the virus on to yet another backup system.

The Empire’s securities trading network went to La-La Land.

It was almost a full cycle before any trading floor approached normalcy. The first panic reaction of a good capitalist is to go for the gold Liquidate everything into something secure.

Orders went out—but could not be implemented. Several exchanges were closed for trading. Banks declared holidays. Some very healthy corporations were forced into bankruptcy as shareholders dumped their holdings. And, conversely, some truly hemorrhaging entities were not only given a prolonged lease on life, but able to establish themselves firmly as successes. Traders sometimes had to actually keep notes—in
hand
writing. Buy/sell orders were handled verbally and manually!

Sten was quite pleased. Especially since Ida’s grand scheme produced the desired end result: as investors liquidated, and bought into safety, which of course was the AM2-secured Imperial credit, those credits became more expensive as they became scarcer. And for a while, no matter how many credits the Empire’s main bankers dumped out, the crash seemed unstoppable. Eventually the Empire’s emergency financial dumping worked and the pendulum stopped swinging.

But the midget had swung his feather—and the ball had moved. It was yet another beginning on another front of Sten’s total war.

Sten was rather morosely preparing himself a solitary meal, trying to remind himself that the best revenge is living well. Yet another pastime he had sort of picked up from the Eternal Emperor.

His meal was, by description, a simple Earth sandwich. Its filling would be a rib-eye steak from a steer.

But it may have been the Ultimate Steak Sandwich.

Earlier that day, before the paperwork and Go Higher And Hither orders had a chance to consume him as usual, he’d cut diagonal slices in the three-centimeter piece of meat. The steak went into a marinade—one-third extra-virgin olive oil, two-thirds Guinness—the remarkable dark beer he had been introduced to just before his last face-to-face meeting with the Eternal Emperor—salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic.

Now it was ready for the charbroiler.

He took softened butter, and beat a teaspoon of dried parsley, a teaspoon of tarragon, a teaspoon of thyme, and a teaspoon of oregano into it. He spread the butter on a freshly baked soft roll, foil-wrapped the roll, and put the roll in to warm.

Next he sliced onions. A lot of onions. He sauteed them in butter and paprika. As they started to sizzle, he warmed, in a double broiler, a half liter of sour cream mixed with three tablespoons of horseradish.

Next he’d charbroil the steak just until it stopped moving, thin-slice it on the diagonal, put the meat on the roll, onions on the meat, sour cream on the onions, and commit cholesterolcide.

For a side dish he had thin-sliced garden tomatoes with a vinegar/olive oil/basil/thin-chopped chive dressing and beer.

The com signaled. It was Freston.

He asked if Sten’s com was shielded and scrambled. It was, of course. Freston said he had just finished an interesting analysis on that strange signal that had been beamed into nowhere from the lead ship in the AM2 convoy as it arrived in the Dusable system and robotically realized it was under attack.

Sten decided to wait until Freston was finished before eating his ass out and reminding the officer he was no longer a technowonk communications specialist but a combat leader with his own ship, and to leave his clottin‘ com techs alone.

The signal, Freston went on, didn’t go to nowhere. It went to a dead system, somewhere between forgotten and lost. Freston had chanced borrowing one of the Bhor ELINT ships, bread-boarding their sensors into some measure of the sophistication he was used to in his access to the Empire’s best gear, and then sneaking the ship into the dead system.

On one world the ship had found a small relay station. He didn’t chance ordering a landing or trying any electronic prob-ings, since he surmised the station would be booby-trapped.

He started to explain what he thought he had accomplished. Sten didn’t need one. Preston had traced the mysterious robot AM2 supply convoys back one stage.

Sten surmised that the robot convoy would appear in this particular system from its origin in a still-unguessed place and receive either a GO, NO GO or DIVERT COURSE from the relay station, and, depending on the signal, either continue to Dusable or whatever other AM2 depot it had been intended for, or divert to a secondary destination, or…

Or any number of interesting possibilities.

“Is the ELINT ship still in-system?”

“That’s affirm,” Freston said. “I ordered it to lie doggo, all passive receptors on full, and not to attempt any active sensing without a direct order from me.”

“Were there any transmissions when the Bhor ship first arrived?‘

“None reported.”

“Have there been any since?”

‘Technically, none,“ Freston said. ”However, the electronics ship has recently reported increased power output from the station on all lengths. As if it’s coming up from standby.“

Preston’s reaming—and Sten’s dinner—was forgotten.

“Is the gear on the ELINT ship good enough to pick up another transmission like the one you flagged off Dusable?”

“Easily.”

“What’s the distance?”

“You could be there in three E-days.”

Sten grinned: Freston knew his boss. “Okay. Is the
Aoife
ready to lift?”

“Affirm.”

“I’m on the way. Tell its skipper—”

“Waldman, sir.”

“This is his or her big chance to step off his sex organ for that convoy disaster. I want couplings ready to hook a tacship up to the
Aoife
. And I want you to set up a tightbeam com, set up to link between the tacship and destroyer. Yesterday.”

“Yessir. I assume you’ll be commanding the tacship?”

Sten started to nod:
Of course
. Then he caught himself. Come on, son. You’re busting common sense in the chops enough, already. Don’t be a complete grandstander.

“Negative,” he said, to Preston’s surprise. “I want a drakh-hot pilot—And I’ve got just the candidate. Out.”

Sten went out the door of his quarters before the com blanked.

The Gurkha sentry outside was one count into his present arms and Sten was gone, a flicker that might have been a waved return of the salute in his wake.

Sten had a helmet bag in one hand, weapons harness—pistol, ammo, cleaning kit, kukri—over one shoulder, and a daypack carrying three days’ rations and toiletries in the other, three things that were never more than an arm’s length from him.

Ida, unintended,
had
set an example.

Now was the time to scrape off some of the rust.

The three greatest talents a diplomat must have, Sr. Ecu had realized a century or so earlier, was to never take things personally, to always look pleased when served what was genetically dubbed rubberchicken on the banquet circuit, and most importantly to endure boredom.

Not just the boredom of long, droning conferences while amateur pols tried to score points as if governing were Beginning Debate, but also the boredom of endless hours traveling.

Ecu had wondered how spaceship crews, particularly on the torchships in the early days, kept from going berserk, and researched the matter. Reading of the murders, mutinies, and worse aberrancies, particularly on the pre-stardrive longliners, told him they didn’t.

Now, on this long flight back from the Cal’gata worlds, especially as his ship was under enforced com blackout, he had started to feel like perhaps mutinying a little himself, even though he tried to remind himself that boredom was not an emotion the Manabi felt, and that the way he was feeling could be no more than a conditioned response from all the decades he had spent around humans.

Still, he was getting what he had heard described as the Jeabie Heabies.

He had viewed every livie aboard the small yacht, read every book available, written reports and progs beyond count, and they were still four ship-days out from Seilichi.

Finally his ennui led him back to Marr and Senn’s flier.

He had wanted to look at it before, but had refrained. Thinking of the succulences that the two Milchen could concoct might be the last straw, especially considering the less-than-inspired rations the yacht’s bellyrobber served up.

Ecu now thought he could tough out the four days before real nourishment would become available.

Again he touched the sensitized area, and again Marr and Senn appeared and greeted him by name. Again the wonderful scents floated toward Ecur’s tendrils.

And again the two beings announced their catering service and began presenting a menu.

Ecu’s senses flickered. Trouble. The menu was being presented in a perfunctory drone, as if Marr and Senn had been forced into this new business through economic desperation. But that could not be. Perhaps—

Both holographs stopped. Marr and Senn looked at each other.

“That’s time enough for anyone busybodying through your mail to get bored,” Marr said.

“I can only hope,” Senn said. “Sr. Ecu, we need your help. I trust it is you who is viewing this, and that some others—”

He shuddered and crouched, as if an icy windblast had caught him. Marr moved closer, protecting.

“—some others,” he went on, after collecting himself, “are not.

“We are in trouble. We need to contact Sten. We are not aware if you know where he is, and the only reason we are sending this is because the two of you worked on that Tribunal, back in the awful days of those five beings whose names I will not pronounce.

“This is our only hope. We need Sten to help us. And someone else. I cannot mention the being’s name. But tell Sten that the being is someone he will remember. Tell Sten to remember the party and what came later. In the garden. The black ball against the moon that happens but three times a year. The being does.

“If Sten remembers, tell him that this being is in trouble. The being is being hunted by the Emperor. We—

Marr interrupted.

“We have
heard
where this being is,” he said. “And if the Emperor learns of our knowledge, we too will be hunted. We do not know this being’s exact location. We feel that even now a net is being cast, somewhere out there, by beings who intend us harm. Sooner or later, if that fisherman keeps casting, we shall be netted.”

The beings moved together, finding what little love and security was left in their universe, and fell silent.

“We should say no more,” Senn said finally. ‘Tell Sten of our problem. Ask him if he can help. He will know where we are. We do not have any suggestions.

“But… but tell him this. Tell him he must not chance all. We say this, and his friend says it as well. If help might risk his crusade, he must not try to help.

“Sten
must
not be defeated.”

Drakh-hot pilot Hannelore La Ciotat had wondered—as much as anyone might wonder in a profession where two of the prerequisites were an inability to talk without moving one’s hands and concern for the future a mild curiosity about what the O-club’s got for its dinner special—just why she had joined the rebellion.

No one but her fellow rebels knew she had been Sten’s pilot when he had ambushed Admiral Mason and the
Caligula
. And even if accused, she probably could have skated on that, and claimed to be in fear of her life if she disobeyed his commands. Instead, she had been one of the first of the
Victory’s
tacship pilots to throw in on Sten’s side.

She settled on three reasons: First, that the Empire to her was represented by lard-assed senior officers who never could understand the tactical importance basic to underflying every single bridge that ran through the middle of her planet’s capital world at mach speed, officers who would one day insist that she park the ship and start flying a desk. Second was that Sten was a pilot too, and spoke her language. Third was that she surely would have more combat time and flight hours with the rebellion than sticking with the monolithic Imperial forces.