Relic of Empire

by W. Michael Gear

  “Now then,” Ily said easily, “Your name is Rokard Neru. You are an engineer for the Power Authority. Your old supervisor used to be Jackard Rath. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. The next thing we’re going to discuss is your new position at the Power Authority. Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is that Sinklar Fist’s people are doing?”

  Ily crossed her arms while the man struggled to swallow. From somewhere he mustered the courage to glare at her, the Mytol making it hard for him to focus his eyes. “Why don’t you crawl off and die, you Rotted bitch!”

  Ily rubbed her hands together and leaned forward. “I admire your audacity. Now I’m going to admire your pain. I am going to make two small incisions in your scrotum. After that I will insert tubes. Thereafter, I will allow one drop of acid to fall every five minutes. You may tell me what you know now, before your vocal cords are permanently damaged by your screams, or you may tell me later. For your information, the decision you make won’t affect my desire to repay you for your insult, but it might lessen the effects. “

  The tremors began in his face and spread until his entire body shivered. Ily gave him a ravishing smile as she produced a scalpel and the tubes from the bench behind her. He vented the most hideous shriek as she touched the delicate blade to his fear-tightened skin.

  “I don’t really care what my enemies think of me, or even say so long as they do it in the privacy of their own homes. My greatest consideration is that they fear me, for fear is a powerful tool when used artfully. And that, Arta, is the trick. Too much fear, and a person can decide that they have nothing to lose. Then their action against you is fueled with desperation. Too little fear, and people cease to take you seriously.

  “You’ve been an apt pupil, and I appreciate your keen intellect and acute mind when it comes to your thirst for knowledge in this field. Remember fear and its use, but more importantly, the day will come when you face a skilled opponent who will try and gain the advantage against you.

  “As soon as you recognize this, withdraw from the conflict and consider just who you face and what they’re willing to risk. Make your plans and give thought to every eventuality. Let your opponent think he or she is winning and then strike. Once you have them disorganized, press your advantage. If you seek to crush them in one blow, you may suffer in the end. A more complete victory is achieved by eroding their will, eating away at their confidence until when the final conflict is initiated, they have nothing left within.”

  · Letter from Ily Takka to Arta Fera

  CHAPTER 17

  Ily stepped into her office from the lift which had carried her from the subbasement and the interrogation facilities. She used a damp towel to wipe the last of the body fluids from her hands and tossed the remains into the disposal chute. She grimaced at the stains on her clothing and stripped it off, balling her black suit and stuffing it into the disposal after the towel.

  Before she headed for her personal quarters and a hot shower, she settled at her desk, accessing the Comm.

  Gysell’s face formed in her monitor. He cocked his head, apparently spying her disheveled hair. “Yes, Minister?”

  Ily leaned back, a satisfied grin on her face. “I just had the most interesting time in the interrogation room. You know that Power Authority engineer I had you pick up? He proved most helpful. I’m routing you the entire confession. It seems that Sinklar, in building his perfect society, has come to the belief that if he allows the Power Authority workers to fortify themselves in an impregnable fortress, they’ll be able to function autonomously. “

  “I see.” Gysell fingered his chin, lost in thought. “Is this a serious problem?”

  “Sinklar is a dreamer, Gysell. His vision is on a universal plane, not the grubby practical one we tend to work on. While he builds fortresses against mass manipulation, he has no concept of the fatal and frail flaws of the individual.”

  “Then our concerns are’for nothing?”

  “For nothing,’.’ Ily agreed. “Let him continue his little exercise. When the time comes for us to take over, we shall do so with no concerted resistance. In the meantime, identify the people Sinklar’s officers are grooming for positions of authority. We’ll need a complete list of their wives, children, parents, friends, and so forth.”

  “And then we use their loved ones as hostages. But what about Sinklar? How will he react?”

  She gave him a wink. “I think I have him firmly in hand, and he likes where I’m grabbing. By the time our actions become apparent, I imagine Sinklar will have served his purpose.”

  “Lord Commander? I need to speak with you. Information has come in.” Kaylla’s voice came over the comm headphone in Staffa’s ear.

  “Just a minute,” Staffa answered into the throat mike as he and Tasha-his big, burly fourth in command-bent over a comm terminal which displayed the status of the refit on Jinx Mistress. Around them the giant warehouse and manufacturing center shrilled and whined, people shouted back and forth, machinery ground away, and mechanical hammers rat-tatted in the background. Overhead, brilliant lights glared down, drowning everything in stark white.

  “I’d say that the smart solution is to lay two trunk lines of powerlead,” Staffa decided. “You can run one along the medial keel, and the other here, along the ventral one. That halves the chance of control loss in the event she takes a direct hit amidships.”

  “Good thinking. I’ll notify the engineers.” Tasha pulled at his beard, a thoughtful look in his one good eye. “When we get the chance, it wouldn’t hurt to put that kind of redundancy into the rest of the ships.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. Real quick, what can you tell me about Countermeasures?”

  “We might have a breakthrough on the communications problem,” Tasha said. “It’s based on observation, and the quanta. We create virtual pairs by exciting heavy elements in the dish. One set is transmitted line of sight, while the other is trapped in a stasis. When the first reaches the receiver, we kill the stasis and shoot the control with microlaser, either on or off. It’s simple binary, line of sight only, lightspeed bound, but it works.”

  “Sort of a virtual pair interferometry effect that depends on spookiness?”

  “You got it.” Tasha gave him a sheepish grin. “It hit one of our people after she’d been in a hell of an argument with a Seddi. Say what you will, they’ve made a lot of us think. And, you know, when you start looking at things in that perspective, lots of stuff begins to make sense-and some of us start to wonder just what we’ve done with our lives.”

  “Don’t I know it. Excuse me, Tasha, I’ve got a message coming in. Sounds important.”

  “Use my office.” Tasha pointed as he made corrections to the schematic on the screen.

  Staffa made his way through the maze of snaking cables, dollies stacked with parts and machinery, and jumpsuited technicians and mechanics who worked on various pieces of equipment that rested on gantries prior to being shuttled up to Jinx Mistress.

  Staffa palmed the lock on Tasha’s cubbyhole office. Along one wall a jungle grew, the plants flowering in incredible blossoms. Flowers filled Tasha with wonder, and his gardens were the prize of Itreata.

  Staffa slipped into the creaking chair and accessed his personal channel, running a diagnostic to ensure privacy. Kaylla’s face formed.

  “What’s happened?”

  Kaylla cocked her head, brown hair hanging straight as she squinted at the background. “What beautiful orchids. You in the gardens?”

  “Tasha’s office. “

  “I didn’t know any of your cutthroats had such redeeming features. But I called to tell you that a report has come in from Rega. Gyton, and MacRuder, are missing. My people checked into it and apparently

  First MacRuder has been sent to preclude a Terguzzi uprising. I went ahead and contacted our people on Terguz. As far as they can tell, the entire planet is excited about what’s going on in the capital, but no one is stirring up the home front.
If something happens in the future, maybe a shortage of supplies, longer hours in the mines, or a cut in pay, then we might see something happen.”

  “Ily might try that, but Sinklar wouldn’t be part of it. He worked too hard trying to calm angry miners on Targa.” Staffa responded. “No, this is something else. I was on my way to my office. Maybe I’ll let Roma know that Rega is missing a warship.”

  “Skyla is going to be making rendezvous in a couple of hours. “

  Staffa thumped the desk with a fist. “I’m painfully aware of that. Why don’t you catch a lift to my quarters. We’ll watch it together. How’s the Nyklos operation coming along?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, we got him without a fight, all right. I followed your suggestion and we gassed him in his sleep. He’s a little ... well, annoyed to say the least, but he’s been cooperative to a fault. By the time I get to your quarters, I’ll know if he’s our man or Ily’s.”

  “Affirmative, I’ll see you then.” Staffa killed the connection, closing his eyes and imagining Free Space. Gyton had disappeared with MacRuder. Where? Which planet did Sinklar think to strike to throw the Sassans off balance? Or had Mac simply been detailed to a long-range intelligence mission?

  “Damn you, MacRuder, what are you up to?” Staffa turned in the seat, accessing the comm again. “Security? This is the Lord Commander. I want all of our systems at full alert. The potential intruder is the Regan warship, Gyton. Her spectral fingerprint is in our records. “

  “Affirmative.

  The little red light on Myles Roma’s desk blinked, and the Legate suffered a pang of unease. Through the windows he could see the morning sunshine slanting through Imperial Sassa’s sky-taunting towers. They sparkled like backlit diamonds, the cool air imparting a bluish tint to the crystalline beauty of the Capitol across the way.

  Myles glanced surreptitiously at his staff, now buried in the multitude of tasks he’d swamped them with. Over his right shoulder, the holo of Divine Sassa continued to glare with colorless eyes. Myles bit back a shiver as he dropped the privacy field around his ample gravchair and pressed a button that connected his ear comm to the line represented by the blinking light.

  “Roma, here.” He tried to move his lips as little as possible lest someone was able to read lips. “Myles?” Staffa kar Therma’s commanding tones came through. “Can you talk?”

  “As long as we don’t take too long. It’s morning here, everyone is beginning work.”

  “I want you to know that a single Regan warship, the Gyton, has spaced with Sinklar Fist’s second in command. That’s Rysta Braktov’s vessel. According to the Regan story, they spaced for Terguz-but they never showed up there. We suspect they may be making a reconnaissance run on the Sassan Empire—or at worst, might strike one of your holdings to throw you off balance. Just thought you should know.”

  “I see. Thank you. Interesting things are happening here. Our fleet is three weeks behind schedule to ship out for Rega. Seems the supplies keep getting delayed. The freighters delegated to those runs are having an abysmal rate of mechanical failures—old equipment, you know. Not only that, I have begun integrating the personnel files we talked about. I can infiltrate two Seddi a week. It would have been more, but our Civil Patrol has clamped down on any mention of Seddi after those Divinely cursed broadcasts began. “

  “Any reaction?”

  “People are talking ... in private. Some are beginning to think. Civil disobedience is three point seven percent higher than normal. I do what I can-and I listen to each broadcast and think about them afterward. There is a great deal of sense in the Seddi messages. “

  “Excellent work. Want to come be a Companion?” “Legate suits me fine. I have a better chance of collecting old age benefits here than I would by jumping out of landing craft while angry people who didn’t approve of my presence shot at me. Despite losing another ten kilos, I’ve still got too much target area.”

  “Ten kilos? Congratulations. Oh, Myles, one more thing. You might want to familiarize yourself with the Resource Allocation and Redistribution Augmentation program in your files. Just thought I’d warn you, since your people fine-tune software. If there are any bugs in that program, we need to know.”

  Myles reached up and tugged at his double chin as he frowned. Resource Allocation and Redistribution Augmentation? “I will do so. Excuse me, I have an aide approaching. “

  “May the quanta keep you, Myles.” The connection broke and Myles killed the screen, looking up as his extractive industries assistant stopped before the desk.

  “Legate,” the young woman began, “I think we have another problem with the copper from the Formosan Asteroids. The processor malfunctioned again and the head engineer is screaming to get spare parts. “

  “Very well, prioritize it.” Myles waved her away and accessed his comm. He worked through the file tree until he located Resource Augmentation and Redistribution. Calling it up, he found the tag: Augmentation. He accessed the file and began to read. After several moments he leaned back and tapped his ringbejeweled fingers on the desktop. He glanced absently at the scintillating walls of the Capitol, now golden in the sunlight.

  “Augmentation? What a profound understatement. Yes, my friend, I shall become familiar indeed.” And hope I live to collect those benefits I was bragging about!

  The cruiser Vega had been growing in Skyla’s monitors as she followed a careful course around the inert ship. In the faint flickers of the Twin Titans and the shine of Ryklos’ primary, a whitish haze could be seen dissipating around the vessel. Skyla didn’t need her instruments to identify the haze: N2, seventy-seven percent, 02, twenty-two percent, and declining frac,tions of water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide, and traces. Vega had been hit harder than Tyklat had admitted.

  “All right, Lily. There he is. What do you think?” Skyla asked her security chief as she hunched in her command chair. The one-man bridge wrapped around her, holographics projected in a three hundred and sixty degree display. Skyla slipped her attention back and forth between the augmented senses of the worrycap and the tactical situation created by wounded Vega.

  “I’d say she”s ‘about dead,” STO Lily finally admitted. “We can see where she took a hit in the afterdecks. From here it’s impossible to make an assessment of structural damage. There’s no telling how much atmosphere she lost in jump.”

  Skyla sucked at her lower lip. Very well, now what? Sit out here sniffing around while Tyklat runs out of air? What about his climate control? Will I arrive to find a frozen corpse?

  She jerked her head, and ordered, “We’re going in. Stay sharp on the monitors, people.”

  Skyla let her mind mingle with the yacht’s as she tightened the arc around Vega. She’d received Staffa’s warnings about the Sassans. Ignorant fools that they were. She’d approached cautiously and so far the Sassan station at Ryklos hadn’t probed them with active sensors. They might get in and out without tripping a detector. At this stage, even if they did, she could board Vega and skip safely back to Itreata before the Sassans could stumble to their ships and clear port.

  Here we come, Tyklat. Pray to the Blessed Gods, you’re on the up and up. But then, what else could he be? Assuming it was a trap, what could they gain? She’d be happy to play hostage to a hostile force seeking to gain entry to Itreata. A grim smile crossed her lips at the image conjured of the Companions’ reaction to any such silly scheme-no matter who the hostage might be.

  As her yacht closed, she opened a narrow beam. “Tyklat? You there?”

  Nothing. “Pus Rot you, wake up! Tyklat? You getting a reading?”

  Skyla tapped long fingers on her comm console. A malfunction could have forced them to shut down the fusion reactors. She studied the readings, matching her yacht to Vega with a, minimum of correction to her comm. Through the monitors, she could see the slow expansion of crystals and gas from the rent in Vega’s hull. Rot it, it looked more like a near miss than a hard hit, but this was an old ship, and who knew how fra
gile her bones were?

  “Lily? What’s your status?” “Ready to go, Wing Commander.”

  “We’re matched. I’m setting the controls to maintain attitude. “

  “Uh, I’d just as soon you stayed put, Wing Commander. If anything’s rotten about this, you can skip.” “And leave you guys behind?” Skyla stood, getting the kinks out of her stiff body. “Negative, Lily. You know the doctrine. We don’t leave our people behind. Beside which, when was the last time I sat out an operation? What’s the matter with you guys? Getting spooky in your old age?”

  Skyla ducked through the bridge hatch and passed into the sybaritically ornate central cabin with its sandwood and ebony paneling, the Vegan marble tables with burnished gold trim. At the lock, Lily waited, an uneasy look in her brown eyes. The STO handed Skyla a set of pods to strap on, saying, “The others are already outside. Checked your helmet ring and rebreather?”

  Skyla shrugged into the pods with practiced ease, snapping the buckle and pulling the tabs tight. She’d pulled her gloves on, sealing them to her armor and powered up her helmet ring, forcing deep breaths in the field and hearing the rebreather whine in, response. “Let’s go.”

  Lily gave her a thumbs up and grabbed a heavy blaster from where it stood propped by the lock. Skyla checked her own pistol as the STO cycled through the hatch. Her faithful weapon showed a full charge.

  When the lock had cycled, Skyla stepped inside, feeling the change in pressure. What if it is a trap? Then we deal with it. Be rational, Skyla. Tyklat’s cover was blown by the Etarian operation and he’s running to save his skin. You’d run, too. So, why am I wound up?