Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  Danger. As he opened his mouth she remembered where she’d seen that look: back during the Revolution, or even earlier. He snatched his hand back from her offered palm, lips curling back in rage—

  “Down!” It was Melvyn, her number one bodyguard, shouting over the hubbub. Miriam ducked without thinking and began to roll, realizing This is going to hurt tomorrow—

  —then somebody landed on top of her, crushing the breath from her body and shoving her off to one side as the young man shouted “For God and Emperor!” and repeatedly pulled the trigger of the snub-nosed revolver he had somehow, improbably, smuggled in past the security guards.

  Someone shrieked hoarsely, in an uncontrolled bloody-throated wail of pain. The crash of the gun, so close, felt like ice picks in her inner ears. A bullet struck the floor close enough to her face that she saw splinters. More screaming, and a bellow of rage. “—God and—”

  Boots, stomping past her face. Different screams, with the shrieking of whoever had been shot a ghastly counterpoint. “Got ’im!”

  Miriam gasped, trying to breathe. Her ribs hurt, and her left shoulder was a solid lump of agony. For a moment she wondered if she’d been shot too, but there was no blood. “Off me,” she tried to wheeze. A second later the man lying atop her shifted, grinding her harder against the floor, then began to lever himself up.

  “Sorry, ma’am. Clear?” The latter question was not addressed to her.

  “Shooter down, stand down, stand down! Evacuate the Minister!”

  Suddenly she was free. Miriam took a deep, moaning breath and began to push herself up on her right elbow. Strong hands grabbed her under the armpits and bodies closed in, carrying her backstage in a rush. Her chest heaved. “I’m all right!” she choked out. “Let me walk!”

  Melvyn was insistent. “Madame, we have to get you out of—”

  “I’ll walk!” Her chest heaved. “How many gunmen?”

  “Just the one, but—”

  “Casualties?” She dug her heels in, turning to face him. Her bodyguards drew in, facing outward, forming a human shield. “Who’s hurt?”

  “Madame, he hit Jeffrey in the stomach, an ambulant will be here just as soon as—”

  “Who else?”

  “His shots went wide, thank God,” said the other guard.

  “Right.” She took a deep breath, then another, assessing the situation. “Lone gunman, one pistol, one injured, nobody killed. Secure the scene, Mel, I’m going back.”

  “Ma’am, I can’t let you—”

  “You can’t stop me and you mustn’t stop me,” she shot right back. “Do you want to make me look like a coward? There are frightened people there—”

  “But Commissioner—”

  “Fuck it.” Miriam took an unsteady half-step forward. Her guards shuffled around uneasily, more shocked by her language than by the assassination attempt. “Do you want to make me look like a coward?” She glared at her escort. “Because if I hide, that’s what I’ll be.” She drew herself fully upright, winced and gritted her teeth, forcing herself to ignore her shoulder. “I’ve a factory to open, and we’re not going to let some little royalist toe-rag spoil the big day for everybody else. If he’d brought backup that’d be another matter, but.” She took another step, and they made way for her as she walked back toward the auditorium, which was in turmoil. The shrieking was subsiding, but the sound of sirens was still rising outside. Press flashbulbs flared. “I’m going back in there and I’m going to call for calm.” She bared her teeth at Melvyn: “Because that’s my job. Otherwise the terrorists have won: and that’s not going to happen on my watch.”

  Politicians

  FORT GEORGE, NEW YORK, TIME LINE THREE, MARCH 2020

  Hulius found a surprise waiting for him at his destination. His boss, Colonel Jackson, had a visitor.

  “Come in, sit down.” Jackson gestured at a chair. “Major, I believe you’ve met Mrs. Hjorth already…?”

  Hulius gaped for a moment. “Yes, we’ve met,” he said. Then he beamed. “Nice to see you again, Brill. Colonel, Mrs. Hjorth is my sister-in-law…”

  Jackson kept a poker face as Brill smiled at Hulius: clearly he hadn’t realized it was a family matter, even though they were both world-walkers. “It’s been ages, Yul.” Indeed, it had been: he’d barely recognized her at first. She’d cut her long blond hair much shorter and curled it after the current mode, and it was graying toward ash. She was also slightly dumpier than he remembered, and the crow’s-feet at the edges of her eyes were deeper. She wore a fashionable shalwar suit: the very model of a modern female Party member. She extended a hand, and he shook it across his boss’s desk, still startled to see her here. “How are Ellie and the girls?” she asked.

  Hulius caught a very slight tension around Jackson’s eyes, and caught himself before relaxing into informality—“Ellie’s doing fine. So are Sophie and Mary and Rina: we really must get together properly! But I take it you’re not here just to catch up?”

  “Sit,” grunted Colonel Jackson, looking rather put out. Hulius sat. “Mrs. Hjorth, before your arrival I was expecting the major to report to me about a matter I can’t discuss in front of you. Hulius, if there are no special circumstances demanding immediate consideration, we can skip the verbal. Just have a final write-up on my desk by first thing tomorrow morning. Yes?”

  “Yes—”

  “Is this about the BRONX RESTART program?” Brilliana asked. Both men looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “Because if so, that particular report is due to land on my desk on Friday morning.”

  Of course. Hulius felt like kicking himself. Definitely not a social call. Brill worked for Miriam: and this entire organization was one of her projects.

  Jackson cleared his throat apologetically. “You may say that, but without confirmation I can’t discuss it with you.”

  Brilliana, formerly the Lady Brilliana d’Ost, in the days before the Clan sought exile in the Commonwealth, frowned. It was an expression that struck fear in the hearts of braver men than Hulius. Now she turned it on Jackson. “The major has just returned from excursion AT-962, collecting this month’s uncleared intel package from Paulette Milan,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “His rendezvous point was the Blue Star Diner in Red Hook, New York. Colonel, your concern for operational security is noted, but you might want to bear in mind that to me, it’s family. If you really want to go through the motions, you can query my clearance with the Minister right now, but that will delay us and drag her away from her dinner—”

  Colonel Jackson raised his hands in surrender. “That won’t be necessary!” he agreed hastily. “I’ll go through the forms and get you added to my cleared list tomorrow. In the meantime…” He winced. “Can I count on your discretion?”

  “Certainly.” Brill’s smile was bright and, reassuringly, walked things back to just the right side of frightening. “I note that the TRACAN forecasts for safe transfer windows have been narrowing rapidly in the past six months. Yul, in your opinion, is Ms. Milan showing signs of stress?”

  “Is she—” Hulius instinctively glanced at the colonel for permission. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Yes, she is. She’s not requesting extraction, but she’s clearly worried about detection.”

  “I see.” Brill nodded thoughtfully.

  Hulius felt an explanation was in order. “She has relatives,” he said. “Nieces and a nephew.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like much of a life to me, but it’s her choice.”

  “Unfortunately—” began Jackson, just as Brilliana cut him off: “No it isn’t.”

  She cleared her throat. “We owe her a huge debt, but the longer we run her, the higher the probability that the adversary’s traffic analysis will identify her as a person of interest. She’s already one of our longest-running agents. Part of my reason for visiting you today was to poll you about the practicality of arranging a voluntary or semivoluntary extraction—”

  “Semivoluntary?” Hulius couldn’t help himself
.

  Brill’s lips pursed. “I can probably persuade her to cooperate, if I talk to her in person. Assuming we’re not already too late. But I think we need to retire her. She knows too much.”

  Hulius shuddered. “It’s going to be difficult. The details will be in my report”—he caught Colonel Jackson’s eye—“but today was extremely difficult.”

  “How difficult?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “I nearly didn’t make it back.” Hulius’s shoulders slumped. “There’s no indication that they’re onto her, but they nearly caught me on the subway. I had to break cover and run.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “Well, that tears it.” Brill frowned. “I’ve got to talk it over with the Minister and clear it with Oversight, but I believe we’re going to have to end her residency.”

  Hulius paused. “I think you’re going to want to use a different controller for that mission,” he said reluctantly. “I’m pretty sure they made me on the station cameras.”

  Colonel Jackson was frowning too. “Just when we’re shorthanded.”

  “Doesn’t signify,” said Brill. “We can’t afford to leave a compromised agent behind in the United States, not with seventeen years of accumulated bread crumbs pointing to her front door. It would tell them altogether too much about our interests and progress. But it would set a really bad precedent—a terrible one—if we liq—no, if we kill—a loyal agent for no fault of her own other than being at risk of apprehension by the adversary. ‘Trust is a two-way street’ and all that.” Hulius recognized the words: she was quoting the Minister, Miriam.

  “We can lay the groundwork for an extraction,” Colonel Jackson said warily. “But I’ll need a written order.”

  “You’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, it isn’t.” Brill leaned back in her chair. “Feel free to correct me if I am laboring under a misapprehension, but Hulius isn’t due to visit Ms. Milan again for another twenty-seven days. Am I correct? And he’s going to have to be reassigned anyway, now that he’s apparently on their face recognition database?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then. Can you spare him for the next six months, Colonel?”

  “What?” Jackson sat bolt upright. “You’ve got to be joking—”

  “Let me rephrase that, Colonel. I’m in need of Major Hulius Hjorth’s unique combination of abilities, so I’m going to requisition him. You can have him back temporarily if it’s essential to pull Paulie out, but I need him on an ongoing basis for an operation vital to national security. I’m afraid this comes from the top: resistance, as they say, is futile.”

  “I’m sure you can make it stick,” Jackson grumped. “But you realize that Hulius runs nineteen other US-based agents? Not all of whom live in the middle of a camera hot spot. We’ve been hit hard by this damned flu pandemic—”

  “Your sleepers have a protocol to follow in the event of a no-show,” Brill pointed out. “This is going to cause temporary disruption, yes. But I really need Yul.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because we need him for a little trip to Europe in time line two. And he has—or used to have—a private pilot’s license…”

  PALACE OF NEW LONDON, MANHATTAN ISLAND, TIME LINE THREE, SPRING 2018

  Three days after the abortive assassination attempt—only the second in the past two years: the Minister was unsure whether to be relieved or offended that she was held in so little esteem by the enemy—Miriam found herself back in her office in the capital, chairing yet another meeting. Revolutions (she’d long since learned) ran on committees just like any other government, once you got past the screaming-and-shooting stage. The price of leading a faction among the winners in the postcoup dog pile was an office in a government ministry and, by and by, a daily briefing that, in digest form alone, was several inches thick. However, an assassination attempt still merited a meeting with her head of security.

  “On the subject of your assailant, my lady,” said Olga Thorold. Her aristocratic youth in the Gruinmarkt time line still colored the style of her private speech, even though it might have been seen as counterrevolutionary backsliding: only her position enabled her to get away with it, unquestioned. “I have a report from Internal Security on the background of the would-be assassin.” She reached into a side pocket of her wheelchair with one shaky hand and pulled out a slim document file, its edge striped in the yellow and red indicating its security classification level. She slid it carefully across Miriam’s blotter. “I find it disturbing by implication.”

  “Summarize for me, please?” Miriam slid her reading glasses down, then pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly. “Eyestrain again,” she muttered apologetically.

  “Think nothing of it: at least my eyes still work.”

  Miriam winced. When she’d first met her, Olga had been a willowy eighteen-year-old, to all appearances a naive noble lady of the Clan. Her role in life was apparently to make a good marriage and provide the linked families of world-walking merchant princes with a fresh brood of aristocratic couriers. But it had been a creative lie. Working as an agent of the Clan’s internal security organization, Olga’s real role was far from passive. Subsequently she’d acted as Miriam’s head of intelligence during and after the escape to the revolution-racked new home in time line three. But the multiple sclerosis that ran in the Clan’s bloodlines and had taken Miriam’s mother now had its claws into her.

  “Just the talking points will do, Olga.”

  “Certainly. Your shooter was a Mr. Michael Buerke, age nineteen, born and raised in Boston. By employment, a postal sorter. Unmarried, no children, second youngest of six siblings, father deceased. No criminal record to speak of.” Olga shook her head. “We had no warnings about him, which is disturbing. He left his previous job as an assistant railway signalman nine months ago and his whereabouts were unknown for two months afterward, before he sought work with the post office.”

  “Hell.” Miriam closed her eyes. “Any leads?”

  “Hard to say. Mr. Buerke was not an associate of any known royalist clubs or debating societies. I cannot swear to his reading habits at the library, but he certainly did not subscribe to any questionable periodicals, and none such were found in his room when SCEP raided it. And they’re cooperating with my people about as well as you can expect.”

  Miriam winced again. The Special Counter-Espionage Police were not her favorite people.

  “I can’t help thinking this sort of trawl would be easier if we had hot and cold running Internets, cameras on every street corner, and carte blanche to wage a war on terror.” Miriam paused: “Probably just as well we don’t, come to think of it. If the previous regime had such tools we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  “You might think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.” Olga’s frown was eloquent. But then her expression brightened: “I had enough leverage to learn that the Specials found a ticket stub in his room,” Olga continued. “The return half of an open railway return from Philadelphia. The issue dates match when he was missing.”

  “What are they—”

  “SCEP are proceeding on the assumption they’re hunting for a sleeper cell. There’s a certain stench to this that suggests careful organization, not a lone wolf. They said they’ll let me know if they uncover anything, and for once I’m inclined to believe them.” An attempt on the life of a Minister was too serious to sweep under the rug, and SCEP would risk serious blowback if they didn’t keep Miriam’s own security team updated on the threat. “I have a contact there; for now, that will be sufficient. But it looks as if the royal court may finally have worked out who their real enemies are.”

  “Ouch.” Miriam frowned. The King-in-Exile in St. Petersburg, capital of the French continental empire, was slow on the uptake when it came to matters mechanical; with the arrogance of hereditary aristocrats, they had paid far more attention to the Commonwealth’s navies and armies than to their ministry of washing machines and higher e
ducation. But it seemed that he—or one of his advisors—had finally realized where the Commonwealth’s economic and technological progress was coming from and decided to do something about it at source. “Do I have anything to worry about?”

  “I’m doubling your bodyguard and putting them on twenty-four/seven alert, my lady. And notifying your husband’s department. Other than that, nothing immediate. Once we get confirmation, Brilliana and I will come back to you with some concrete proposals to teach them the un-wisdom of playing games with us.”

  “All right. Other matters…”

  “Yes.” Olga straightened painfully, levering herself up against the back of her wheelchair. “Do you want the weekly update on operations in the United States first, or—”

  There was a push-button phone to one side of Miriam’s desk, equipped with a bulky transistorized scrambler unit. Right at that moment it began to buzz angrily. “Hold on?” She glanced at Olga, then back at the phone: “You can stay.”

  “Certainly. Who is it?”

  “External, long-distance, encrypted.” She frowned. “Wait—” Her direct secure line wasn’t public, but government phone directories were quite extensive. She picked up the receiver. “Miriam speaking.”

  “Miriam?” The voice was familiar, and welcome. “I have a sitrep.”

  “Huw!” It was Brilliana’s husband, the Explorer-General, head of the department’s exploration force based in South America—and of various other exotic assets, which were also based as close as possible to the equator for reasons of orbital dynamics. Her chest suddenly felt hollow. “What’s happening at your end?” Across the desk from her, Olga leaned forward eagerly.

  “I thought you might want to know before it makes the evening news—Rudi just called. Test five was a complete success.” His voice was shaky, as if he was finding it hard to control himself. “Dawn One is in the correct orbit, and we’re receiving telemetry from the payload!”

  “What?” She realized she was clutching the phone as if it were trying to escape. “It worked?”