She contemplated him without answering. She thought she’d chosen him well. Duty, honor, die gloriously for Empire, and all of that. This was simply tiresome.
Trippe said, “I am not going to hang for treason. You tricked me.”
“Treason? Tricked you?”
“Just shut up. Just shut up, and get up. I’m not going down for this alone. You’re going to come with me, and we’re going to surrender, and you and your family lawyers are going to save me from the Tribunal.”
“I am?”
“I trusted you. I came to this godforsaken dirt ball because you said to. I served you well. “
“Not well enough, it would appear.”
At that, Trippe snarled, and lunged forward. Van Zandt folded her hands on the tabletop, unperturbed. “Care to dance?” she said, as Trippe tumbled to the floor.
It had felt like—just a tug, really. A little tug, like—like tripping over a wiry icicle. He tried to stand, but stumbled again. Something was wrong with his foot. Suddenly, the pain was incredible. He looked down; couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Half of his right foot was missing. Not missing exactly. There it was, in half a boot, lying behind him on the floor.
“Oh, dear. When dancing, you really should watch where you put your feet.” The pretty mask twisted into a snarl. “Because I really don’t like it when people step on my toes!”
Trippe was shaking now. Involuntarily. His heart was racing. Adrenaline was fighting with shock. Shock seemed to be winning. Forcing deep breaths, he scanned the room, searching for the nearest piece of wood; fabric; anything combustible. A carpet runner circled the baseboards. It was beautiful. Design played along it like brook water; like flower fields; like thunderstorms in mountains. The patterns changed as you turned your head. The very threads were holographic. Things were moving very slowly. This way autumn; that way spring; they changed with the play of light.
“No!” screamed Van Zandt, then forced controlled composure. “Oh, how could you. That carpet’s irreplaceable, you boerenkinkel.”
Trippe looked at his hands. The laser pistol played back and forth, back and forth, along the line of the runner. Curls of acrid smoke swirled above the floor now. It smelled like burning dogs. In what was probably the sole moment of poetic clarity of his entire, boarding-school life, he intoned: “Like Alexander’s gift to Zoroaster, I dress your table with fire, milady.”
Actually, it was not original. He’d read it somewhere. But his brain had registered: table; fire, and unbidden the quote had come. Trippe scanned the room, and saw what he was looking for. The smoke revealed only the one laser-thin line of light: only the one nasty little tripwire. He held the gun steady now, drilling a hole through the baseboard. The laser winked out.
Now Van Zandt was standing. Lurching, grasping the table for support, Trippe stood too. He leveled the gun, began to say, “You will come with me now,” but blinked, groggy, because something new was wrong. Lillith held a grenade in an outstretched hand, her thumb in a thumb-sized depression. They play of light in a halo showed the grenade to be charged and armed.
“On the gripping hand, you seem to have a little problem now, no? Shoot me, I drop this, we both go.” She smiled. “I prefer a different scenario. I leave, and maybe I toss you a little party favor on my way out—or if you continue good service maybe I don’t. Do you play cards?” She stepped forward.
Trippe swung on his good foot in a desperate move. With one hand he grappled for the picket tether and slung it around the massive table leg, the hobble at its end whipping the rope around in a spiral, then lunged to snatch Lillith’s free arm with the other. Lillith was strong, but he was heavier. His dead weight pulled them both to the floor. He was fading now. He tensed to force blood into his brain and tossed the gun, freeing both hands, rolling to pin Lillith’s free arm under his body. He struggled to buckle the hobble to Lillith’s wrist as tight as it would go, threaded the tether end through the ring, snapped the lock, and rolled, heaving on the rope with all his strength. Lillith’s free hand jerked up, cinched to the table leg. Trippe crawled to the far side, and tied the rope off to another leg, far from Lillith’s reach.
He was panting now, adrenaline gone, limbs gone limp, body shutting down from shock. “Turn it off,” he croaked. “They’ll be here soon anyway. Your security detail’s gone. It’s over.”
Lillith Van Zandt pursed her lips, then sighed. “You people really are so tiresome.” Then she dropped the grenade, and matter-of-factly straightened and patted her clothing. “I’ve no intention of submitting to Imperial interrogation,” she said. She closed her eyes. Lights pulsed a countdown. It seemed to be very slow.
Trippe croaked, then screamed, then sobbed, as he tried, and failed, to lunge for the grenade. “No! Help! Stop! No!” But there was no-one to hear. No one but Clegg, face down in the corridor.
Yet, in Clegg strode, face impassive behind his shades, his eyes confined to a little secret universe unconnected to the mayhem unfolding around him. The pale sun had brightened the sky to a clear, winter blue that suffused the window wall. It cast his shirtfront with a bluish glow. He paused a moment. His brow furrowed slightly. He inhaled sharply. He stepped forward, staring blankly at the now-blank screen of the window wall, out into the blue space beyond, down into the solid grey mist that carpeted the valley floor.
There was a kind, hard edge to certainty. You could decide, right or wrong, but just decide, and then you stopped being virtual, and started being hard and certain and real. He did not hesitate. He fell forward. One fall, covering the grenade with two inches of solid Plate. Then everything went very, very quiet. Then he sailed right through the screen and into another life.
The blast wave snapped back Lillith’s head; jerked her body backwards, hard against her tethered arm. She looked up at the underside of the conference table. Was appalled to see chewing gum stuck beneath the edge. Then a chunk of Plate tore past her eyes, striking Trippe squarely in the forehead.
16
Chairman of the Board
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
—Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
Sinbad, above Maxroy’s Purchase
Quinn’s report was long. Quinn’s report was thorough. At beginning and end, Quinn’s report cut to the chase. Barthes had read it, and privately concurred with its findings. Renner finished reading it, and sharply sucked in air. Oh, how very ironic. If Bury had known, those few years ago, that unknown to all and sundry “Motie” castes were there, New Utah would now be a ball of glass, and no one would have a stake here.
Instead, a decision hung in the balance that would change human space forever. If the Van Zandt claim held up in Imperial court, there would be no doubt as to New Utah’s status at accession: Colony world, entailed to Maxroy’s Purchase, with Van Zandt Mining holding a ninety-nine-year concession for production of weapons-grade doped YAG. Human population reduced to serfdom, and—what to call them? They weren’t Moties. They had not come from the Mote system; had never seen Mote Prime. They had gone to the Mote, in some age past, and it would be a very long while before anyone knew just when. Swenson’s Apes, maybe, for the moment, though they surely were not that either. Maybe what they called themselves: Mesolimerans, the people between the mountains. Whatever to call them, Van Zandt’s actions would march in time with past precedent: the Miners, possibly, would be enslaved, and all others tagged for extermination.
And what would that do to human-Mote relations? Set the tone for things to come: slavery, or annihilation? Renner shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He had twice survived passage through the Mote system. This was hubris. That tone would doom them forever. If the Motie-patrolled second blockade were to fail, human space would not survive. It could not defeat an alliance of Motie enemies. Even xenophobic Bury had seen that li
ght in the end: human survival depended on an alliance of Motie friends. Quashing the Van Zandt claim was the only option.
And what would that mean? For starters, that would define Lillith Van Zandt as a traitor, and Van Zandt’s illicit operations on New Utah as treason. Treason which had not prospered: treason, loud and clear. The Emperor was as ruthless as needs must. Lillith herself would be for the chop, with Michael appointed the new Margrave by way of consolation. Lillith too had been young once: charming, graceful, powered by ambition. Would Michael prove to be any better over time?
For New Utah it meant accession in—what status? Unless a miracle was conceived, Colony, yet again. Ridiculous though that seemed for a world that was at heart as technologically advanced as any in the sector, and no clear threat to anybody—at least, not in the military sense. But New Utah had no planetary government and, if you excluded the offworld craft, no space presence: no travel, no orbital technology.
For all his years at Bury’s side, Renner was a pilot. He plotted a course, then reacted to events. It gave him a headache, thinking through this mess.
He called Blaine. It was never the same as in person, no matter how high-end the holo-D. It wasn’t just the blotches and delays. It was the absence of subliminal input: body language in peripheral vision; changes in odor and breathing. But they had been friends, on and off, for so many years, that Kevin could fill in the gaps. Rod was pissed off and edgy, even though he wasn’t saying.
It began amicably enough. “Rod, why’d you pick Quinn?”
Blaine shrugged. “Originally? The first Jackson Delegation? Simple, really. That Mormon thing. It was all muddy Church politics, and Quinn was handy.”
“No, this time.”
“Precedence, really. And this time I had Bury’s testament about past and future reliability.”
Renner was confused. “If Quinn was unreliable, why send—”
Blaine burst out laughing. “Quinn? Unreliable? You are joking?”
“Well, who then?”
Blaine sobered. “Oh, for Christ’s sake Kevin, do try to keep up. You were even in on it. Jackson, of course. And Lillith. Though I can’t say Lillith surprised me, really.”
Renner sat back, blinking. “But Jackson fought the Outies. That’s what earned him his Knighthood. And the Governorship.”
Blaine snorted. “I know you think I’m just being an elitist prick, but Jackson played the oldest hand in the book. Bury would have found it himself, if you all hadn’t gotten sidetracked with the Motie scare and the real threat at the Sister. For all I know, he did. You remember what he said: There was too much money flowing through that system. Jackson allied himself with Lillith Van Zandt—or, should I say, Lillith spotted Jackson’s ambition early on—then he invented an Outie threat—bankrolled by Lillith—and defeated it. Handy, really. As you say, it earned him a title and Governorship. I no longer recall in which order. Of course the Emperor knew some of it even then, but he admired Jackson’s ambition, tenacity, and capacity for accommodation. And there was the original Motie angle, of course. ”
“His prior service.”
“Yes, in my first command.”
Renner chewed on this. “Then along came Bury.”
“Yes, Kevin, along came Bury, but more to the point, along came you, and your incredibly inconvenient dedication to creating and investigating the Motie Scare on Maxroy’s Purchase. You nearly got my children killed, you know.”
“That’s unfair. You know that—”
“Oh, of course Kevin. It all worked out in the end. Children intact, Empire saved, alliance patched to blockade the second jump point, and now you arsing about on pins and needles waiting for Senate confirmation of your Mote System governorship. But think a moment. What did any of that actually have to do with New Utah? And who supplied the ship for Jackson’s first accession delegation? That was Bury. You got lucky, because you were along for the trip, which put you in the right sector to go and have your second joyride through Motie space. But regarding New Utah, it was Bury who was right in the end: There was too much money flowing through that system. Bury, who’d had a stake in purchasing unregistered ships from New Chicago. Who better—”
“—to spot a world where somebody had a stake in manufacturing unregistered weapons systems.”
Blaine answered by way of silence.
“So, this will cost Jackson his governorship.”
“Oh, I should think so. He can hardly claim to be the innocent. He may have thought using Lillith as proxy would keep it all at arm’s length, but no arm is long enough to distance him from this.”
Renner saw doors opening and closing. For himself; for Imperial Autonetics. He also saw a quagmire of politics. Who would become his enemies at the fall of Lillith Van Zandt? Aside from Jackson, of course. “Rod, I’m not sure what to do here. I don’t want to lose that Governorship. I’ve got to get back to the Mote.”
And now Blaine was white-lipped. “You are asking me for advice? Kevin, advice is your responsibility. What will secure Acrux? What will secure my House? What will secure my family? A poke in the Emperor’s eye for backing the wrong horse? A running feud with the House of Van Zandt? Welcome to real politics. Some of it is talk, not action. You are sitting on the fence chewing your nails, scared to death of what you might not get. What do you have that you care to defend? Your own ass? Your ship? Your stake in Imperial Autonetics? Our friendship?”
Bonneville, New Utah
The True Church Elder muttered hostile prayers as Ollie Azhad escorted him from the room. He’d been dragged from his bed and flown to this godforsaken wasteland, and at his own expense to boot. The corridors of Bonneville Citadel were ugly and crude. Its windows faced east, the view across the endless Barrens a reminder of the waste from which Heaven had been hewn.
He thought the use of the old Founder’s Bowl a bit of cheap theatrics. Beyond the stage, there was nothing but the dusty plain stretching to infinity. Across the tiered semicircle, Bonneville whites predominated, but the ecclesiastical garb was many-hued. They’d brought a small delegation from Saint George, including the Mayor with that female Captain as escort, but he suffered no delusions. Planetary government my eye, he thought. Constitutional convention be screwed. This was about him: about how far he’d bend; about Church and State and what he’d do.
He’d not been in Bonneville these past days. He’d arrived by night. His hubris might be excused.
Sinbad, above Maxroy’s Purchase
A human might have paced, or drummed fingers, or raided the food locker. Ali Baba hummed, in a range inaudible to humans. It was a thrumming pitch, like a drawn-out groan, that both expressed discontent and soothed.
For the thousandth time, he played the recording of Bury’s voice on the testament cube. It helped him forget how afraid he was; how alone; how misused. He desperately needed something to do.
So he did what he always did when bored: he hacked. There wasn’t an onboard system he couldn’t break into. Everyone had long since learned that the only encryption immune to his many prying fingers and miraculously accurate imitations of voice were a triple combination of biometrics and randomly-generated codes.
So, obviously, Kevin meant him to find this. He might as well have drawn circles and arrows. Ali Baba called up the files, and listened transfixed to a medley of non-human voices. They were nothing he’d heard from the Mote. They were everything he’d heard from the Mote. He found the translation packets. He worked through those. They mimed the words, but they missed all the notes. They were right, sort of, but all wrong. He listened to the originals, and then the translations, over and over, and trembled. “I would know my enemy.” “Legitimate government.” “Allies.” “From the stars.”
Bonneville, New Utah
The hoppers floated on transparent albatross wings, their descent rippling toward them from the horizon in a rolling mirage. As they approached, the Elder felt a vague trembling in his seat, and craned his neck, trying to make sense of the non-rela
tionship between the ground vibration and the approaching gliders.
A wiry man, at least the Elder’s age, moved across the stage in a careful series of folding and unfolding joints. It was the stride of a man who, for a very long life, had never walked anywhere if he could ride. Beside him strode a lanky girl, who looked up at them all with piercing aquamarine eyes. Beside her was an odd-looking chap in a ridiculous getup: The City Gates Uniform, representing the privy council of Bonneville. He looked like something from the top of a Christmas tree.
The vibration increased slightly, and resolved into separate pulses. It was like sitting inside a giant cup, with a giant finger tapping on its side. The Elder’s eyes narrowed. It had been a score years, or more, since he’d last set eyes on Collie.
The acoustics were incredible. The old man spoke out clearly, and no amplification was required. “Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Collier Staten Orcutt, and this is my niece, Laurel Courter. On behalf of all pilgrims and The Barrens gatherings, I’d like to introduce you to some friends of ours.” The Gatekeeper merely nodded.
Orcutt stood impassive as the source of the vibration became loud and clear. Ranks marched in from behind the Bowl. TCM Security tramped in to line the aisles. Wave on wave of Seers filled the orchestra pits and choirs, ranging in age from infants-in-arms to older-than-God. And then, with a steady tramp-slap, tramp-slap, in concentric arcs to complete the circle on the far side of the stage, marched half a Side from Sargon’s Army. It seemed to go on for weeks. The Bowl sat, awed into eerie silence.
The hoppers settled to ground, sun glinting from their wings as they coasted to a halt beyond the troops, lined up side by side. A path opened through the ranks like a parting sea. The Elder felt his bones tingle; his intestines begin to writhe. Then, as the sound rose to human-audible registers, and washed over them in a terrifying tide, the Seers joined in, overlaying the alien strains with the eerie polyphony of The Gathering Hymn.
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