Fortunes of the Imperium (52 page)

“My lord,” said Parsons’s voice in my ear.

“Parsons!” I exclaimed, pleased. “Where are you? You are missing a grand contest.”

“I have been with the High Calculator’s forensic accountants, sir.”

“Well, that sounds dreary. I thought you might be out extracting confessions or uncovering an unsavory plot.”

“I believe that we have done both, my lord. We have been examining the cargo manifests of the ships passing through every frontier crossing on the Days of Grace dating back almost two years, and found some interesting correlations. Ask the High Wisdom how, if he dislikes outworlders so greatly, that he has allowed himself to profit from Kail merchants importing inexpensive skanana seed, a staple in a third of the Autocracy. The funds passed through three shell corporations, but the same sum landed in Lord Toliaus’s accounts.”

“Really?” I turned to the High Wisdom. “It would seem that not only are you a wretch, but a greedy wretch. But I knew that. It seems that your coffers have been filled by your very manipulation of those so-called Days of Grace!”

“What?” Visoltia exclaimed, horrified.

I went to take his arm.

“Come and confess to the Autocrat. All you have ever offered is some form of trickery and base superstition. There are no Days of Grace, are there? It’s all a plot to profit from her gullibility—all apologies to Your Serenity,” I added with a bow. “The Kail have been quietly taking over a large portion of the market on skanana seed, all with your manipulation of the numbers of ships that could pass within the borders, always ensuring that your cronies were among those who could enter.”

The Autocrat might have been a child in age, but she was eternal in her outrage.

“You betrayed me, High Wisdom? I trusted you to guide me! You . . . you have been using me to earn a profit on the backs of my subjects? Is nothing that I came to believe in real?”

“It is his fault!” Toliaus shouted. He shook me off and pointed at Rimbalius. “He is strangling the Autocracy with his limits and rules! But this is the end of his days!”

The High Wisdom spread his arms wide.

I could not fault his showmanship. At that moment the gorgeous stained glass windows and the walls surrounding them burst inward. Five silver arrows screamed into the room. I realized that they were single-pilot fighter craft, exactly the same as the one that Uctu Customs had impounded. They were made to be nimble, little more than an enclosed pilot and a pair of pulse cannon on the stubby wings, plus the propulsion engine behind. They flew in formation around the enormous room. The crowd of guests shrieked in terror and ran for the door, but it burst apart as pulse missiles reduced it to rubble. Shards of wood, stone and metal peppered us all. I pushed my cousin and her friend to the ground and shielded them with my body.

Rimbalius leaped to pull Visoltia out of her chair and down underneath the table. Guards and servants swarmed to surround her. One of them activated a sonic shield that would dispel pulse fire. The High Protector rose up and leaped over the table. He drew my sword and made for Toliaus.

The High Wisdom grinned ferally. This was the moment that he had been waiting for. None of us needed the confirmation that Rimbalius was the target that Toliaus had planned to destroy all along. He backed away, putting guests, furniture and servants between him and Rimbalius.

“Enstidius!” he bellowed, pointing magnificently at the High Protector. “Kill him!”

Before Rimbalius could run him through, two of the fighters turned in mid-air and made for the High Protector. They peppered the ground with slug fire. He hit the ground and rolled behind Toliaus, making the craft veer off to come around for another pass. With their hand weapons, Plet and Oskelev provided covering fire for the crowd of guests as they scrambled over the wreckage to escape. A couple of bodies lay on the floor, never having made it to the door.

I wanted to help, but Jil’s safety was my first priority. I put my arms around Jil’s shoulders and pushed Banitra in the direction of the servers’ door.

To my horror, Nile Bertu popped up beside me. He reached for Jil’s hand and a stud on his belt.

Instantly, he lay flat on his face with Banitra sitting on his back. Hopeli appeared at our side. From somewhere within her filmy costume, Hopeli had produced a long and lethal firearm, pointed at his head.

“What are you doing?” I asked them.

“We’re professional bodyguards,” Hopeli said, tossing her long hair out of her face. “Commander Parsons engaged us to look after Lady Jil.”

“Well done, Parsons!” I exclaimed. “I never saw that coming. Not that this fellow has proved much of a challenge.”

The fighters zoomed over our heads. We ducked low to the floor.

“I don’t want to hurt her!” Nile Bertu protested, kicking his feet. “I want to protect her! My belt’s a shield! State of the art repulsors.”

I made a decision. I pulled Banitra off.

“Go with him,” I told the two women. “Don’t let anything untoward happen. I need to help the Autocrat. Take Jil to safety.” Bertu stood up and thumbed the button on his belt. The force field it generated shoved me backward.

“Thomas, no!” Jil shouted, as Banitra pulled her toward the door, but I had already turned back to the fray.

The silver craft were laying criminal waste to the State Dining Room. The huge chamber filled with smoke from burning tablecloths and liquefied metal and stone. In the midst of the wreckage, Toliaus stood untouched. I scanned the room for the High Protector.

But Rimbalius, too, had been prepared for an attack. Several of the guards pulled large pulse rifles from behind arrases, and under tables, and from behind statues. They shot at the flyers, but they were sadly outgunned. More soldiers poured into the room, armed with antiaircraft weaponry. They returned fire, blasting out large chunks of the ceiling. Pulse fire from the fighters struck into the midst of a group, sending the soldiers flying, but they were protected by shield belts. I had nothing but my robes and an idea.

“Anstruther, can you make me a suit of armor?”

“I’m not sure that’s in the profile, sir.”

“Nonsense. I can’t believe no one ever tried.”

Anstruther, like everyone else, always responded well to a challenge. Within seconds, my hands shimmered with silver, and I found myself looking at the world through a gleaming haze.

“Leave the room, sir,” Parsons instructed me. “Let the military handle this matter. Our craft are coming down from orbit to join them. Those are mark six fighters.”

“Parsons, they came from the same place as the one that Anstruther destroyed,” I said. “They, too, must be made of nanites. Anstruther, can you disintegrate these, too?”

“Not unless they make contact with the ones I have reprogrammed, sir,” she said. “That’s how the merchant ships were contaminated. They transferred their program by touch.”

“Then I need to touch them,” I said. I stood up from my place of concealment.

A pair of fighters zipped past me. I caught sight of the Uctu pilots. They looked shocked at what must have seemed to be a silver man walking among them. I was too late to touch either craft. I had to attract their attention. I waved my arms up and down.

Rimbalius put his head up over the edge of an overturned table.

“Get out of here, you fool!”

Toliaus spotted him and pointed in his direction.

“There! Kill him!”

A fighter detached itself from the others and turned in a tight circle. It came in low, strafing the already-damaged floor. It was only a few meters off the ground. I waited until it was a heartbeat away, then leaped.

I missed my jump, falling onto the ruin of the dessert table. As I righted myself, brushing off ribbons of cream and jelly, another fighter craft followed in its wake. It shot at me, hitting me in the side. I flew meters into the air, and found myself in the path of yet a third fighter. I crouched and sprang.

To my surprise and delight, I managed to grab hold of the undercarriage. The fighter went zipping dizzily around the room, but I was an experienced skimmer pilot with numerous agility wins to my name. The only difference was that I was not steering and did not know where he was going to turn next. My insides were battered against my ribs, pummeling them into rags. I regretted my second glass of wine and the third helping of dessert.

“I’ve got one, Anstruther!” I shouted.

“Just hold on, Thomas,” Anstruther said. I could tell she was gritting her teeth. Suddenly, I went plummeting to the ground in a cloud of silver dust. An Uctu in a helmet fell on top of me. Before I could register it, guards grabbed him and put him in restraints.

The other craft saw their fellow’s destruction and promptly retreated into the upper reaches of the chamber. I threw handfuls of dust from the powdered ship upward, hoping to hit one of them.

But they couldn’t avoid me forever, not if they wanted to kill their quarry. Rimbalius must have been watching me. He understood. He climbed out from behind his shelter and held my sword up to the heights.

I applauded his courage, even as I wondered at my ability to keep him from being blown apart.

“There!” Toliaus shrieked. “Kill him!”

The four remaining craft homed in on Rimbalius from all directions. I raced toward him, prepared to spring. I would have only one chance.

“Anstruther, are you ready?” I asked.

“I’ve got them set to disperse, sir, but you’re going to lose your armor.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her, though I was certain of no such thing.

As the four small craft converged on the High Protector, their guns stitching the floor from every direction, I leaped into the air in their midst.

My protective shield sluiced away from me in ribbons, filling the air with filaments of silver that streamed upward. I landed on top of Rimbalius as a barrage of fire exploded over our heads. We tumbled together over and over, landing up against the foot of the dais.

I lay on my back with his foot on my chest. A silver rope led upward from my belly and spread out over the entire room like the crown of an enormous snow-covered tree. The four fighters seemed to be caught in its branches. They zipped outward, as though preparing for a return sally to strike their victim.

Then, one by one, the silver craft each burst in mid-air with an audible
poof!

Naturally, gravity being what it is, once deprived of their ships, the pilots descended rapidly. I curled into a ball to avoid being struck by any more falling Uctus. They fell to the ground amid the wreckage and lay there moaning.

“Nooooo!” wailed Toliaus.

His dreams of vengeance dashed, the High Wisdom sought to escape over the wreckage of the grand doorway. I struggled to my feet to follow, but an Uctu in uniform broke loose from the fighting force and tackled him from behind. He twisted a claw up under the shield of scales at the base of the minister’s tail. Toliaus gasped audibly.

“Walk,” he said. “You shall confess to Her Serenity all that you have done.”

In spite of the pain, the High Wisdom still tried to pull rank. He turned his head to glare at the soldier.

“You, a subject of the Autocracy, dare to lay hands on one of her ministers?”

Redius grinned up at him from under the helmet.

“I am not your subject,” he said. “I serve Her Serenity out of friendship.”

The reporters seemed to come out of the very enamelwork to point cameras and microphones in our direction. I straightened my robes and prepared to be interviewed.

Toliaus was dragged away into custody, still raging at Rimbalius. The pilots and their cronies had been arrested. At a word from Anstruther, the nanites mustered themselves into a cleanup crew and cleared away the broken glass and the shattered pieces of wall and door.

Visoltia gave a statement to the press, but her confidence had been shattered. She returned to the dining hall, but stayed in the shelter of Ema’s arms.

“How could he do this to me?” she said over and over again. “He was my guide! My sage!”

“He wasn’t a prophet, Your Excellence, but a profit,” I quipped.

“Power corrupts, Your Serenity,” Rimbalius said, simply. “You will learn that.”

“But it did not corrupt you, my friend,” she said, with a smile for him. “Thank you for guiding me even when I did not see where you were going.”

He bowed deeply.

“I, too, was blind,” he said. He turned to me. “I respected your mother, even when I hated her. I thought she had sent you to taunt me about our shared past. It was hard for me to see that the gift was presented in an open hand. You risked your life to save me today.”

“It’s what the maternal unit would have wanted,” I said. “Now, if you can open the borders again so there is no holdup for our trade vessels, she will feel well recompensed.”

“It shall be done,” Visoltia said.

I could feel that I still had some kilos of nanites clinging to my tissues and bones. I held out my palm.

“Anstruther, make me a flower,” I said. It formed in my palm, and I presented it to Visoltia. She smiled and tucked it into the neck of her white gown.

A small hubbub erupted at the rear of the ruined hall. The servers’s door opened to admit my cousin and her now-extended party, and Parsons.

“Oh, Thomas, are you all right?” Jil asked.

I patted my chest.

“I am intact. I will feel a good deal better when I have returned to my normal weight. Carrying sixty kilos of nanites around makes me feel deep sympathy for explorers of heavy-gravity worlds.” I essayed a curious glance in the direction of Nile and Skana Bertu. “And you?”

“Oh, he was a perfect gentleman,” Jil said. She kissed Nile on the cheek and squeezed Skana’s hand. “Thank you for looking after us. And I am sorry for all the trouble I caused.”

“Now, that’s a lady,” Skana Bertu said, looking more satisfied than if someone had given her a country manor.

At a gesture from Rimbalius, a host of guards moved in on the Bertus and their Croctoid secretary. In a twinkling, restraints were snapped on their wrists and ankles.

“Now, wait a moment,” Nile exclaimed. “What’s this?”

“I arrest you in the name of the Autocrat,” the High Protector intoned. “For smuggling weapons of war over our borders. For the violation of no fewer than sixty-two laws that protect our state, you are hereby remanded into custody. You will be permitted legal counsel and decent creature comforts throughout the proceedings.”