Relic of Empire

by W. Michael Gear

  Gysell took a deep breath, trying to find the words, but Ily cut him off.

  She leaned forward, propping her arms on his desk, even as a powerful rage ate at her control.

  “Of all the things you could tell me right now, saying that you’ve lost her is the most likely to get you busted down to sorting garbage in the recycling factory. “

  Gysell’s jaw muscles worked and he swallowed hard. “Ily, you’ve watched the monitors. What could we have done differently? Our people covered the exit, figuring they could pick them off as they stepped out onto the street. When they didn’t emerge, we sent people in. They found an empty shuttle platform with the shuttle still standing there, immobilized.” he protested defensively, “We thought it was a routine pickup!”

  Ily vented a curse, then relented. “You’re right. Very well, the most logical assumption is that they slipped away into the city substructure. If that’s where they are, they can go anyplace-but they can’t go fast. Cordon the area. I don’t care how many people you have to pull off other duty, but get them on this. I want every nonessential person we’ve got down there in the girders and ducts looking for Daviura.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Gysell bent to his comm, sending orders.

  Ily shook her head, shot the monitor an evil glance, and left Gysell’s office, striding purposefully down the hall toward her lift.

  Do I go see Sinklar? Has he had time enough to cool ofp Will he buy any story I feed him about Daviura? She slapped the lift control with a hard hand, mulling her options.

  Skyla felt movement beside her. The shifting of weight didn’t register immediately in her sleep-sodden brain. Then her combat-honed instincts kicked in and she rolled onto her stomach, jackknifing off the sleeping platform, stumbling, catching herself as the lights came on.

  She settled automatically into a combat stance, poised to strike. Her familiar quarters gleamed in the too-bright glare of the overhead panels. Arta Fera, with spring-tight reflexes, rolled off the far edge of the platform and landed-catlike—on her feet. She stared at Skyla with owlish eyes, a flush of excitement tinging her skin. Gauzy fabric swirled around her like a transparent veil, concealing nothing of Fera’s sculpted body.

  “What were you doing?” Skyla demanded as she struggled to regain her calm.

  Fera’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “You never minded before. “

  Sklya cocked her head suspiciously. “Never minded what?”

  “ The times I slept with you after I took you off the Vega.”

  “I was drugged then.”

  “And you’re not now. “ Arta shook her tumbled hair back over her shoulders in an insolent shrug. “Would you rather be?”

  “No, Rot you. Where have you been sleeping for the past week?” Skyla rubbed her wrists, realizing she should have been imprisoned by the EM restraints. When had Fera deactivated them? Skyla couldn’t help shivering.

  “ In the pilot’s chair ... after I checked the ship’s status. These vessels don’t fly themselves, you know.”

  “So why now?” Skyla indicted the sleeping platform, suddenly aware that Fera looked too dazed to have just crawled in with her. “How long did I lie there asleep with you, anyway?”

  Arta barked a dry laugh. “A couple of hours. Now, do you want to talk all night, or shall we finish what we started?”

  “Finish. . “Sleeping. “

  Sklya slowly shook her head. “I sleep alone.” Arta stepped forward, stretching like some languorous cat. “As you wish, but you’ll have to do it in the EM restraints. I thought I was doing you a favor, that you’d like a night’s sleep where you weren’t racked out like a chunk of meat. “

  “I’ll take my chances as a chunk of meat.”

  Arta stepped close,’placing her hands on Skyla’s shoulders. “I want you to think about something, Wing Commander. I could do anything I want to you while you were in those EM restraints. You know I like you ... respect you. But if I wanted to enjoy your body, I could-and you couldn’t do a curseRotted thing about it.”

  “I’d make you kill me,” Skyla promised despite her hammering heart.

  “That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to appreciate you. You’re a challenge, Skyla, and I do enjoy a challenge. You see, that’s why I’ve spent so much time on the bridge. I’ve been dropping us in and out of null singularity. “

  “That just prolongs the trip.”

  “Of course it does. And despite my novice status as a pilot, I could have figured the galactic drift and shot us right on top of Rega.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Arta lifted a hand and Skyla flinched as the other woman gently stroked the scar on her cheek. “Because, dearest Skyla, Ily may check the log-and she’ll believe I don’t pilot very well. Ily doesn’t ‘have to know everything about me. But most of all, this way I can keep you longer.” Arta’s smile grew wistful. “I know you’re biding your time, and that you really will try and goad me into killing you if it seems there’s no possible escape from Ily. Meanwhile, consider this. I can protect you.”

  “At what price, you sick bitch?”

  Arta stepped back, still wary. “Love me, Skyla. Become mine. I’ll take good care of you. “ Then she pivoted on her heel and vanished through the hatch in a swirl of filmy fabric.

  Sklya drew a deep breath, every nerve electric as she collected herself. The aftereffects of Fera’s touch burned on her skin.

  Where had Fera gone-and more importantly, for how long? Do 1 have time? Is this my chance? Sklya eased forward silently to peek into the hallway. Fera stood there, arms crossed, head down.

  Despite Skyla’s silence, the woman whispered, “But for the rest of tonight, you’ll have to wear the EM restraints. “

  “Gladly,” Skyla called over her shoulder as she threw herself on the sleeping platform.

  Arta entered the room, a pensive expression pinching her sensual face. Wordlessly, she engerized the restraints and stood for a moment, staring down at Skyla. “Let me show you something.”

  Sklya watched warily as the woman climbed onto the sleeping platform and bent over her, the auburn hair falling like a veil around her. From inches away, Arta stared into her eyes, then lowered herself, never shifting her gaze.

  Skyla bucked against the restraints as Arta’s breasts brushed hers. Muscular hands clamped on each side of Skyla’s head, and despite her struggles, Arta kissed her, the action gentle, reverent-physically not that unpleasant.

  “Why do you fight me?” Arta asked in a sultry voice. “Would it be that bad?”

  Skyla quivered, every muscle knotted and strained as Fera moved away from her.

  “A great many men would die to experience what I could give you,” Arta called as she stepped out. “Sleep well, Skyla. Sweet dreams.”

  For long moments Skyla lay gasping and spent. “No way,” she whispered under her breath. Nevertheless, despite her bravado, Fera had cunningly regained the advantage, eroding Skyla’s confidence.

  Protection? Delay? Could Fera do that? Skyla’s overactive imagination began spinning scenarios of Ily Takka’s interrogation room, of the metallic taste of Mytol, and the wealth of secrets safeguarded only by Skyla’s will and ability to resist. Protection? What the hell, being a little cozy with the lunatic bitch might really buy time. Would it be so bad? Memories came unbidden-times in the past when she’d slept with men she hadn’t really liked. Times she’d awakened after a shore party with some stranger in her bed-and nine times out of ten, the Nab had been some simpering fool she’d immediately hated. How often had she spent the following days living with a sense of self-loathing for having bedded scum because the act promised physical gratification?

  You’re no saintly virgin, Skyla. Fera wouldn’t be any new sort of low for you.

  Flashes of Stryker lay just under the surface. Good old Stryker, the man who’d bought her, enslaved her, and raped her repeatedly when she was twelve. Would a little dallying with Fera be any worse than that? Fera---compared to some of the men
she’d awakened next to-was at least clean.

  She didn’t balk over Fera’s gender. Of those Companions who were female, more than one preferred women to men.

  Protection? The frightened half of her brain had begun to plead. Maybe it was a way to gain Fera’s trust, another lever to work her, to get the chance to slip the weapons from the cubbyhole just up there behind her head?

  “Sex is sex,” Skyla whispered under her breath. “If it keeps you alive, what’s the difference?”

  Sklya bit her lip and twisted her head away. The difference is that Fera wins. Just as she’s won this round.

  In the seductive arms of exhaustion, Sinklar slept lost in the realm of dreams; the scene haunted and mocked: He stood in the center of a plush room ornamented with weapons and trophies, his thoughts dominated by tension and foreboding. Beside him, Mac had adopted a grim expression. A fireplace-of all things to find on a starship-rose in stately grace between two brass doors.

  Sinklar watched as the other occupants-the brooding Lord Commander, an ethereal Skyla Lyma, and a time-eaten old man, initiated the familiar drama that skulked in his soul.

  “Well Is Sinklar Fist my son?” Staffa kar Therma roared with resonant power. The Lord Commander towered over the stunned old man. A purple-mottled bruise scarred the elder’s bald pate. A shriveled specimen, he wore dirt-encrusted white robes which Staffa gripped in an iron fist; his fingers puckered the coarse fabric the way talons twisted into flesh.

  Magister Bruen slumped in defeat. “Yes. We got him from the Praetor.”

  From the Praetor? What? Did Staffa stage this?*as he seeking to gain some advantage by this charade9, At Sinklar’s side, Mac whispered, “They’re all Rotted berserk!”

  “And Chrysla?” Staffa asked.

  Bruen whined, “The Praetor kept her. Kept her until you gutted Pylos off Myklene.”

  In the wavering reality of the dream, Staffa seemed to swell and change, his shape blurring. The charcoal cape flowing down from his shoulders spread like avenging wings around a raptor’s frail prey. The old man cowered before him as would a desiccated lizard whose day had passed. Staffa’s voice beat at the shrunken reptile with the fury of invincible wings. “And this Arta Fera? She’s not Chrysla?”

  “No! She’s a clone, Lord Commander. A clone provided by the Praetor!” the reptile defended in its dry hiss.

  “To assassinate me!” Staffa reeled-the dark raptor dazed by venom injected into an ancient wound. Skyla Lyma stepped forward, a gleaming white goddess whose blue eyes burned like precious stones. She turned a deadly glare on the old man ... and in the shining intensity, her features became those of Anatolia.

  The giant hunting bird that Staffa had become whirled on black claws, spreading wings floating. “Wait! Bruen, what about Sinklar’s claim that he saw his parents on Rega?”

  Sinklar’s sense of distress began to focus, growing acute as his heart began to beat a countdown cadence. Bright worry coursed though his veins with each thundering stroke.

  “Tanya and Valient.” Bruen withered more, his scaly flesh turning dusty, moldering; the bones began to poke through. Before Sinklar’s eyes, the old lizard’s body shriveled, skin parching. His moisture might bleed away with his words. “Yes, they were Seddi. Another of the machine’s ideas. If Tybalt were removed before he could sire an heir, Rega’s drive for hegemony might be blunted. A young security officer, Ily Takka, broke the case. At the time, it happened that they created a perfect excuse for Sinklar to be placed in Regan custody. Doing so kept him safe from discovery. “

  Liquid fear traced acid patterns through Sinklar’s body. No! Not true! It can’t be! Tanya! Valient! They are my parents! They have to be! They just have to.

  Mac began pulling Sinklar away, tugging firmly on his arm as the room wavered and faded. But Staffa followed, the cloak wings fluttering as he pursued like a falcon descending on a frantic hare. A taloned hand reached out, voice booming in sync with powerful wing beats, “I swear ... you’re my son. If I could run a serology, HLA, or DNA test, I could prove it! Prove it! Prove it ... my son!”

  The taloned foot extended, light glinting off the polished ebony of claw and scale, reaching, reaching, closing on Sinklar as he stood rooted in fear, the talons....

  Sinklar groaned and turned, pain piercing his side. He blinked his eyes open, rolling back and reaching down to fumble at the holstered blaster and comm pack that ate angrily into his side where they had shifted on his belt. A cold sweat had beaded on his skin despite the warmth of the room.

  He gasped for breath as the last foggy fragments of the dream misted away in his mind. Yawning, he pulled himself up and stared around at his private quarters in the palace. Overhead, the milky fabric of the drapes played their endless game with color and light. The familiar paneling and furnishings didn’t reassure, not after a dream as horrible as that. The sense of foreboding, of impending defeat lingered along with the faint trace of a dead lover’s perfume. The walls bore silent witness-as they had when Tybalt spent his last days here.

  “Up?” Mhitshul called.

  “ I guess.” Sinklar stumbled to his feet and walked into the toilet to relieve himself. “How long was I out?” He looked at his comm. “Three hours?”

  “You looked like you needed it,” Mhitshul supplied from beyond the door. “You’re not getting enough sleep. “

  “Anatolia and Buchman come back yet?” “No, sir. “

  “It was a fool stunt.” Sinklar insisted as he stepped out, running a hand through his disobedient hair. “Buchman didn’t have orders to hold her, just that her safety was his top priority. Don’t worry about them. Buchman is one of the best. He’s quick and decisive-otherwise, none of us would be here today. It was his courage that saved the day when Third Section destroyed Weebouw’s Division.”

  Sinklar remained unconvinced. “Maybe. With Ily, well ... Mhitshul, we’re in a different kind of fight here. Rotted Gods, what a fool I was! She’s got her poison into everything.”

  The dream image of Staffa replayed in his mind.

  Poisoned by a serpent ... and I’ve called Ily a reptile how many times?

  “Glad to see you’re yourself again,” Mhitshul replied laconically.

  Sinklar shot him an evil look as he pushed past, headed for the comm. “Anything come up while I was asleep?”

  “Of course, but I made sure that none of it necessitated waking you up.”

  Sinklar walked into the office and settled himself behind the wraparound desk. Mac ought to be inbound sometime soon. Rot it all, where was he?

  “Mhitshul, how long ago did Anatolia and Buchman leave?”

  “It’s been nearly seven hours, now.”

  “Seven? Sinklar turned to the comm. “Patch me through to First Mayz.”

  He scanned the other messages that had come in. Kap continued to make requisitions, as did Axel. Axel had turned into a first-class asset. She’d taken to the reorganization of the military with an uncanny acumen. With her grasp of strategic and tactical changes, she’d taken over many of the logistical and administrative functions.

  “Sink?” Mayz asked hazily, blinking her puffy eyes to clear them of sleep. “What’s up?”

  “Sorry to bother you. Sergeant First Buchman and one of his people is missing along with Anatolia Daviura. Buchman should have a battle comm. See if you can raise him. Find out where he’s at.”

  “Sure thing.” She turned her attention to one of her other monitors, talking into the system. For long moments, she listened, then shook her head. “Sink, We’ve got a faint response-barely a jump on the needles-but it’s like the signal’s blocked-maybe jammed. If ... and I repeat, if this is Buchman, he can hear us but we can’t get a read on him. “

  Sinklar frowned, bracing his chin between thumb and forefinger. “Get hold of Kap. Have him run transects, across the capital. Let’s see. Establish a grid centered on the palace ... and start around the Biological Sciences Center.”

  “Affirmative.” Mayz gave him a
frazzled look. “We in trouble again?”

  The sense of disaster riding the air settled around him with the cloying persistence of smoke in cool air. Days had passed-and not a word from Ily, as if she understood the change in relations through some osmosis. “I don’t know, Mayz. Just a feeling. Something’s cooking. The ground might disappear from under us at any moment. Stay frosty.”

  Her expression had hardened. “Right.” A pause. “You think it’s turning into Targa?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  MiniIntISec SecIComm Level 1 Mgt SbcIDir Step 1 Eyes Only Command Directive Class

  To all personnel:

  As of receipt of this notice, you should be aware that unanticipated events have precipitated a crisis in civil management and administration. As of 17:30 hours Operation Pincer was formally begun and steps were initiated to counter the increasing military interference in the direction and control of Imperial utilities and services administrations. All personnel will consider themselves activated and will consult their orders immediately. All Directorates are hereby placed on high alert until further notice and will conduct themselves circumspectly with regard to the general population.

  It is the Minister’s explicit order that disturbance of the general population be minimized to the greatest extent possible, since the citizenery might react adversely should they realize the true nature of the power struggle currently taking place.

  We cannot assess the potential involvement of the rank and file military personnel at this time. However, as Operation Pincer unfolds, such assessments will be passed on as soon as available. Assuming that all Internal Security staff act with total commitment and initiative, this operation could be concluded without most field-grade military officers even realizing a change in command has taken place.

  In addition to the attached orders, each Security Director will receive additional specific instructions which will detail hisIher objectives, responsibilities, and the timetable for completion of various tasks. Each Security Director will be responsible for the coordination of his/her field officers and special technicians, and will immediately communicate any unexpected resistance.