Relic of Empire

by W. Michael Gear

  Coughing followed the pumping sound of dry heaves. “No. I knew what I was taking. They brew it on Ashtan. It’s not like that pathetic stuff you get here. This is real beer. And for as smooth as it goes down. . . . “

  “Yeah, I know.” Mac grimaced at the continuing violence issuing from the toilet.

  Sinklar appeared, bare to the waist, looking a little pale and definitely shaken. The towel wrapped around his neck only accented his bony chest. His thatch of black hair stuck up this way and that. Sinklar’s odd eyes looked pained. He took in Mac’s grim look and blinked, sinking onto the cot. “I take it you didn’t drop by just to wake me up and listen to me puke.”

  “No.” Mac took a deep breath. “Remember that Orbital Defense Commander? The guy that let us sneak into Rega?”

  “Bryn Hack?”

  “That’s ‘him. They found him in his personal quarters this morning ... dead. The last anyone saw of him, he was leaving the orbital platform’s officer’s lounge last night. They say he was with quite a lady. A real knockout. Half the guys in the bar were breathing hard. “

  Sinklar’s bloodshot eyes glazed. “No. Not her, not. . . . “

  “Yeah, you got it: amber-eyed, auburn-haired, athletic, the kind of breasts that defy gravity, and dripping pheromones all over.”

  Sinklar looked sicker. “You gonna puke again?”

  Sinklar slowly shook his head. “No. Rot it all, Mac. It’s Ily. Pus dripping hell, what I almost did last night. “

  “You sure she didn’t drug you?”

  Sinklar nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure because she threw me out when I would have made a fool out of myself. The woman’s a viper.”

  Mac grunted. But he’s having problems believing it. Curse it, what did she do to him down there? “Sink, she’s using Arta Fera to kill people. Now, I didn’t know Commander Bryn Hack, but the guy was definitely on our side!”

  Sinklar rubbed the back of his neck before he looked up. “We’ve got four months to retrain the army. Can you think of any possible way that we can be ready to ambush a Sassan military strike on someplace like Ashtan in that time?”

  Mac stiffened. “Four months? You sure?”

  Sinklar stifled a groan as he pulled himself to his feet and flipped a button on the desk comm. One of the wall monitors flickered to life. The view appeared to be a military space station. The ships that clustered like Riparian cigars around the central module were Sassan warships.

  “This just came in. Two days old. The Regan agent says they’ll be ready to space in three and a half months. It’s not a big bunch, but they could easily neutralize the defenses around one of our planets and blast the place to rubble. They could take a crucial world like Sylene or Riparious and turn it into slag. Estimates are that Divine Sassa’s ready to do just that. I believe it. He wants to keep us reeling, constantly on the defensive-and damn it, Mac, he can do it.”

  MacRuder glanced uneasily at his friend. “This is leading up to something I’m not going to like, right?” Sinklar tried to grin but failed. “We’ve got to stop this attack, Mac. I have to have at least six months of hard training for the Assault and Armored Divisions. I have to replace and train an unknown number of officers. That command structure has to be integrated with the Squadron Commanders, who, so far, are an unknown quantity. A great deal of our industrial base has to be reorganized before we’re ready to support a war. Fortunately, Tybalt initiated the process and all we have to do is follow up. We must keep them from hitting us before we’re ready.”

  “I love miracles! I can’t wait to see how you’re going to take some thirty Squadron Commanders who hate your guts, mold them into a strike force, and ship them for wherever this base is-“

  “Imperial Sassa.”

  “Right! Imperial Sassa-to blow up those enemy ships, when Sassan spies will know we’re massing overnight to go blast something, someplace, and surely they’ll never guess where! Let alone with every Commander in the fleet bitching about it! I’m waiting with goose bumps all over to hear how you’re gonna pull this off.”

  “Good. I’m glad to see you understand the problem.” MacRuder rubbed his jaw. He hadn’t shaved the abatis of stubble off. A jumpy queasiness had started to squirrel his guts around. “Damn it, what are you thinking, Sink?”

  Sinklar raised his hands and let them fall. “I hate it, Mac. We’re still in the same stink we’ve always been in. There’s never time to catch up, get our breath, and organize. It’s always a crisis.” Sinklar turned haunted eyes on MacRuder. “Remember the Decker Lucky Mack Mine?”

  “The one on Targa? Where we were left without transportation?” A cold realization soaked through Mac’s hard shell. “I hate it when you get great ideas.” “You’re gonna love this one.”

  Mac turned to the dispenser, punched the code for a scotch, waited for the glass, and tossed it back in one gulp. With meticulous care, he placed the empty container on the top of a teetering stack of flimsies, belched, and said, “All right, why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Sinklar’s grin wavered and fell. “I want you to take Gyton and drop out on the commerce route between Imperial Sassa and Myklene. They’re moving a lot of stuff from Myklene to the Sassan capital. If you could pirate a Sassan ship as it drops out of null singularity, you could capture all the clearance codes. From deep space buoys, they couldn’t pick out Gyton tucked in close to a big Sassan freighter. They’d never expect a single ship to slip through their defenses that way.”

  Mac’s breath caught in his throat as he choked out, “You’re outta your Rotted mind! How in thricecursed hell are we supposed to get out!”

  Sinklar’s cheek twitched and he pulled at his knobby nose. “That’s the one thing I haven’t quite figured out yet.

  Ily bent down and checked Tyklat’s pupils. The faint odor of Mytol hung on his breath. Naked, he had been strapped into the hard steel chair, electrodes attached to his shaved scalp, chest, wrists, and inner thighs. On the tray to one side lay a false tooth, a subcutaneous ampule, and a very complex shoe that contained a small laboratory, a miniaturized comm center, and several sophisticated weapons. The shoe had been taken from Tyklat’s baggage when it arrived.

  Tyklat groaned, head rolling before he blinked his eyes open and stared blearily around the gray concrete of the interrogation room. For long moments he frowned, trying to make sense of the battery of cameras that lined the angle of the ceiling.

  “Tyklat!” Ily greeted warmly. “Welcome to Rega. I’m very pleased that you enjoyed the gift I sent you. I’m sorry we had to do things this way, but any suspicion and you would have used the clever poison tooth the Seddi provided you with.”

  Tyklat frowned for a moment, and blinked, vision clearing as he looked up at her.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Ily Takka,” he responded hoarsely. Ily watched as the monitors on the comm behind Tyklat established a pattern, the fingerprint for his biological responses. “What is your name?”

  “Tyklat Isbanion. “

  “Your position within Internal Security?” “Director of Internal Security for Etaria. I am being transferred to Rega for promotion and reassignment to a Regional Directorship.”

  “Are you a Seddi?”

  Tyklat’s brow knit, as though his mind had knotted around the idea. His expression became pained, and he bit his lip. “No. Not ... not.

  Ily tapped her cheek. “Fascinating. You are the first person I’ve ever had under the drug who fought it so well. You impress me, Tyklat. My supplier of Mytol refines the purest form of the drug known, but perhaps you’ll have to have a higher dose. Is that it? Do the Seddi use some process to raise the tolerance level?”

  Tyklat’s jaw clamped, his muscles bunched. Proof enough of Ily’s suspicion. She reached for the tray, took the bottle, and used her thumb to insert the tube past Tyklat’s lips. With practiced familiarity, she snaked the curved tube past his teeth and down his throat, dripping morre of the solution down his esophagus.

  Ty
klat stared up with burning hatred in his eyes. “If it doesn’t work, there’s always torture to back it up,” Ily reminded sweetly. “Mytol doesn’t dull any nerve endings, just the inhibitions.” She cocked her head, studying him. “Do you know what it’s like to have a hole drilled in your skull, and drops of acid released in various portions of the brain? You can feel yourself being burned out, a bit at a time. One hand will cease to work, memories will vanish.”

  Tyklat closed his eyes, struggling to ignore her.

  “Very well, time enough for the Mytol to begin working. Are you Seddi?”

  “Yes.” The instruments wiggled in the same manner they had when he gave his name.”

  Do you know that you can’t lie to me?”

  “Yes.” The instruments read positive again.

  “Do the Seddi have a way of raising tolerance to Mytol?”

  “Yes.” His facial muscles still contorted as he fought, but his efforts were in vain.

  I’ve won! Let him fight. The knowledge of his betrayal will make breaking him that much more powerful. “Good. Normally, I would take great delight in wringing you dry of every scrap of information that you have within you. Time, however, is pressing, Tyklat, so I’m going to ask you to explain something to me. Will you do that?”

  “Yes. “

  “How did Staffa kar Therma escape from Etaria?” “In a shipping crate.”

  Ily started, glancing at the instruments. Rot it, he wasn’t lying. “A shipping crate? Really?”

  “Yes. “

  “Then who accompanied Skyla Lyma from Etaria when she used the jessant-de-lis to recover her yacht?”

  Tyklat frowned, the instrument readings quivering. From long practice at interrogation, Ily immediately backtracked, “Wait. Let me rephrase that. Who escaped from Etaria with Skyla Lyma?”

  “Nyklos.” “And who is Nyklos?” “Another Seddi agent.”

  Ily tapped at her teeth with a long fingernail. “And Skyla didn’t use the jessant-de-lis to escape?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “ I did.”

  Ily glared at him. “Tyklat. Why don’t you begin when you walked into the Director’s office and told me you had located Staffa kar Therma. Tell me everything that happened.”

  The story began to unfold. Ily stepped back, ac cessing her personal comm. “Gysell? Cancel all of my appointments this morning. Something has come up.” “But the chairman of the-“

  “I said, cancel them.”

  The lid of the heavy med unit lifted and Anatolia caught the stinging odor of medical chemicals drifting out from around her. She crinkled her nose and sat up, staring at the ceramic, metal, and plastic cocoon she’d been trapped in for the last hour. The med unit could be likened to a giant clam. A person lay down in the open mouth and it snapped shut, immobilizing the body, scanning it for injuries. In severe cases it monitored and directed the healing process through surgical, chemo, and electro-stim procedures.

  The physician who monitored the instruments stepped out from behind the unit and gave her a curt nod. “Looks like bruises, a cracked rib, and a bit of exhaustion. A couple of days of rest, a few good solid meals, and you should be fit. “

  Anatolia nodded grimly, swinging her feet over the side and standing. The floor, like all tiled floors, chilled her feet. She reached for her clothing, hating to put the soiled garments on her clean flesh, and discovered the pile had disappeared.

  “Thought you might like something else.” The physician handed her a common smock. “From the condition your clothes were in, I’m not sure they’d have held together long enough to get you home.”

  “Thanks.” Anatolia tried to smile, but it faded. Home? With the pimply blond kid living just down the hall?

  “If you’ll sign the release at the desk at the end of the hall, you’re free to go and, after what you’ve been through, very lucky to be walking out of here so soon. “

  She nodded, pulling the smock over her trim body, belting it at her thin waist. After the cleaning they’d given her upon admittance, her hair fluffed golden around her shoulders. She left the examining room and padded down the long hallway.

  At the checkout she entered her name on the comm before giving the machine her address, employer, and account number. She sealed the contract with a thumbprint, wondering how she’d ever pay for the medical service.

  She turned around then, suddenly aware of her condition. Barefoot, without a credit to her name, how was she supposed to get back to her apartment that lay halfway across town from the medical center?

  She stepped into one of the public comms, hoping against hope that Vet would be home and would accept a collect charge. For once, her luck held.

  “Anatolia?” Vet asked after accepting. “Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you for three days!” She bowed her head. “I’m at the med center. Look,

  I don’t want to talk about it now. Vet? I need a favor. I need a ride back to my apartment. After that, could you drop me off at the lab?”

  He nodded. “Sure, be there in a minute.” Anatolia cut the connection, a chill in her soul. I can’t go home. I can’t walk those hallways again. And if I see that pimply kid-I’ll kill him.

  She took a deep breath. Never before had she felt so far away from her parents’ siva root farm on Vermilion.

  “So what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?” She could worry about that later. For now, going back to work would divert her attention, mask her memories of the darkness, of the sticky feel of blood ... of Micky’s fetid breath as he savagely jerked her pants down to expose her.

  “I have always derived an immense delight from Ily Takka. While others in my administration are talented and capable, few posssess Ily’s icy cunning. She leaves nothing to chance, and her self-serving machinations are those of a genius. I’ve never met anyone who possesses the singlemindedness, or cold-blooded efficiency she does. Ily undertakes no action unless it serves her purpose. She has no cause outside of herself. Power is her sole addiction. She reads her victims with a master’s eye, playing to their weaknesses with a calculated expertise until she achieves her goal.

  “Having her in my bed excites something in my blood. “I must ask myself, why? What perverted pleasure do I gain from the knowledge that her passionate body contains the mind and soul of a heartless demon? I know for a fact that she uses her sexuality to subdue the suspicions of her victims-and that she shares her bed with other men she’s manipulating. Yet I welcome her back with anticipation, knowing full well the number of her guileless victims. In the heat of our coupling, a tingle runs up my spine, fired by the knowledge that this wanton I’m bedding is an insidious killer who would execute me without a backward glance should it serve her purpose.

  “At least I know her tricks-the Rotted Gods pity the poor fool who unwittingly falls under her spell.”

  Excerpt from Tybaft the Imperial Seventh’s personal journal

  CHAPTER 9

  Skyla sat in the command chair and watched Imperial Sassa begin to shrink in the main bridge monitor as she added more thrust to Chrysla’s mighty reactors. Behind them, space wavered and contorted from the violent energies released as the huge warship increased acceleration, building to a moderate thirty gravities which would slingshot them toward lightspeed without straining the ship’s gravity compensation fields.

  Chrysla’s bridge gleamed. The officers relaxed at their duty stations as they studied the monitors. First Officer Lynette Helmutt reclined in the pilot’s couch, her eyes closed. The worry-cap, the shiny alloy helmet that linked her brain to the ship’s computers and nav comm, covered her head.

  Skyla made one final check of the systems displayed on the stat board that rose in a chrome pod from the armrest. The deep space scan indicated three freighters incoming from the direction of Myklene-more than eighty degrees off their present course. Chrysla had only a haze of cirrus—dark matter and space dust the shields would have to warp out of the way-between her armore
d bow and the Itreatic Asteroids.

  “Looks like clear spacing all the way home,” Skyla said. “First Officer, you have the helm.” “Acknowledged,” the bridge speaker responded in

  Lynette’s voice. While entranced by the worry-cap, a person heard, saw, and spoke through the ship’s systems.

  Skyla stood, adding, “I’ll be in the personal quarters if you need me.”

  “Acknowledged, Wing Commander.”

  Skyla palmed the hatch and stepped into the corridor beyond, walking down the airy hallway in long strides. . She caught the tube to Staffa’s level and leaned back, arms crossed, a frown on her high forehead as she considered the visit to Sassa.

  “It’s a bust. Pus Rot that fat fool.” So what are we going to do now? Go to war with Sassa? After Roma had delivered His Holiness’ ultimatum, a deep worry had settled on Staffa. Now, when Skyla caught him off guard, she’d find him staring into nothingness, a sadness reflected in his eyes.

  “Staffa, you can’t bleed for them all,” Skyla whispered to herself, shaking the sudden melancholy from her spirit.

  When the door snicked open, she paced to Staffa’s double lock and entered.

  Not so long ago, the Lord Commander’s sanctum had been a place of mystery and intriguing speculation. Here he’d locked himself away to plan and plot. Here he’d buried himself in the memories of his wife-the enigmatic Chrysla for whom the ship had been named.

  And here he and I first made love. During the twenty years it had taken Skyla to rise through the ranks, their affection for each other had grown. Looking back, she could only wonder at the slow, but inexorable, weave of time. Filaments and tendrils of experience, of momentary vulnerability and trust, of shared triumphs and wretched tragedy had woven into a bond more durable than sialon. Love had crept up on both of them, pervading friendship, admiration, and respect. But it had taken the Praetor of Myklene to precipitate the events that finally brought them to a full realization of what they meant to each other. For that, and not much else, Skyla could appreciate the old villain.

  Skyla stalked across the cushioning carpet in the main room and stepped through the Ashtan door to the right of the fireplace. There she found the Lord Commander at his office desk, totally engrossed. He sat hunched over a monitor, a headset pressed over his long black hair like a diadem. Before the desk, the wall had disappeared in holographic display. Free Space had been modeled in three dimensions. Sassan planets glowed blue; the Regan holdings shone in fluorescent orange. Defiant yellow marked the tiny triangular section of the Itreatic Asteroid Belt, which bordered both empires. Here and there in the display arrows had been placed in violet, and small squares of text noted certain assets or strategic significance in electric red.