The Collapsing Empire

by John Scalzi

  Amit was silent.

  “Is it about End?” Cardenia pressed.

  “Your Majesty…”

  “You’re involved in it in some way, aren’t you? The rebellion on End.”

  Amit looked exasperated. “Your Majesty. Why would we do that?”

  Cardenia ignored the condescension inherent in the exasperation, because her mind was focused on the larger question: How would the Nohamapetans benefit from a rebellion on End? If they were engaged in it in some way it would mean they were either trying to win the favor of the sitting duke, install a new one, or possibly have a family member ascend to the throne—Ghreni Nohamapetan, the younger brother, perhaps.

  But why? If the sitting duke was deposed and the action could be traced to the Nohamapetans, then the duke (or more likely his heirs) could force a suit in the Interdependency courts, along with a request to escrow the house’s profits pending the resolution of the suit. That would be bad for business. If the Nohamapetans installed one of their own as duke of End, then they would ultimately have to give up their home base of Terhathum, where Amit’s mother Jedna was the sitting countess—

  Terhathum.

  The part of Cardenia’s brain in charge of gestalting slammed everything together and shoved it into her consciousness.

  “Oh my God,” she said, looking at Amit. “You know. You know about the Flow.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amit said, but his look of absolute surprise when Cardenia mentioned the Flow called him a liar.

  “You know it’s about to collapse. You know that Terhathum is next. You’re abandoning it for End.” Cardenia stopped for a second, and then stared at Amit, not comprehending. “You know it’s going to collapse but you’ve done nothing to save your own people. Why?”

  “It’s not collapsing, it’s shifting,” Amit started to say, and then clammed right the hell up.

  Cardenia continued to stare, and then her brain kicked in and realized what he said. “No, Lord Amit. Oh, no. They’re not shifting, they’re closing entirely. Listen to me. You need to send a message to Terhathum today. Right now. They have to get ready. They have to prepare.”

  “Prepare for what?”

  “For the collapse, Amit. For the collapse.”

  Alarms went off, and from behind and in front, guards came rushing at the two of them.

  Amit looked around, shocked. “She wouldn’t,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t. Not to me. Not now.”

  “What is it, Amit?” Cardenia asked.

  He looked at her. “I’m sorry, Cardenia,” he said, and then they were both grabbed by guards and pulled away, Cardenia in the direction they came from, Amit in the direction they were going to go.

  Both groups got nearly to their respective doors when the cargo hold was torn apart by something slamming into the skin of the ship and driving itself at an angle toward the cargo hold deck. Cardenia turned as she simultaneously ran and was dragged, and saw what looked like the remains of a shuttle barreling across the cargo hold, tip over tail, toward the far wall where Amit and his guards were running. She screamed his name but it was lost in the shearing, tearing noise of the disintegrating shuttle and in the sucking noise of the air vomiting out through the gigantic hole in the cargo hold roof. For a fraction of a second she saw the back of his head, pushed down by the imperial guards as they ran. Then they were all mowed down by the threshing wreckage of the shuttle.

  The ship, sensing the loss of atmosphere, began to drop pressure doors. Cardenia and her guards ran as fast as they could toward the falling doors but the gale-force winds of the ship’s atmosphere sucking out the hole slowed them down. Cardenia screamed as the doors dropped lower, convinced they wouldn’t make it.

  They didn’t. Not all of them. Cardenia’s guards shoved her at the door and she tumbled, arms out. From the other side of the door, an arm reached out, a hand grabbed one of her hands and yanked her through the opening so roughly that she screamed out from the pain as her shoulder nearly dislocated. Then she was on the other side of the door, scrambling to get her foot out of the way as it slammed shut. Somewhere along the way she lost a shoe.

  Cardenia was pulled up and dragged forcefully down the curving corridor, toward the ring spoke that would send them back to the main body of the ship. When they were in sight of one she looked at the three guards who were with her and was about to ask what happened when there was a crack and a shove that pushed her hard into the deck, fracturing her wrist and abrading her arms and face as they were dragged across the surface. The wind howled again. One of her guards, who had stood up after falling, was pushed out of the ring section and was carried away before more pressure doors slammed down.

  When they were down, Cardenia counted to ten before getting up off the deck. She gasped desperately for air; the two ruptures had thinned out so much of the ship’s atmosphere in the ring that Cardenia felt like she was suffocating. One of the remaining guards, gasping herself, located a wall-mounted emergency kit and broke it open, fishing out the two small pressurized containers of oxygen inside of it. She handed one to Cardenia and showed her how to use it. Cardenia sucked down a gulp of the oxygen and was so grateful for it that she started to sob.

  The guard then checked on the other, who had not gotten up from the deck. Cardenia looked and saw a pool of blood surrounding the guard’s head. He’d been pushed so hard into the deck that he’d hemorrhaged out.

  All around them a huge creaking, popping sound moaned through the surfaces of their ring segment and into the attenuated air.

  “What is that?” Cardenia asked.

  “The ring was rotating to help give it gravity,” the guard said. “Now it’s been ruptured. The ring is tearing itself apart.” She reached over to Cardenia, offering up her hand. “Come on, ma’am. We need to get you up that spoke.”

  The spoke was designed with push fields in mind; a wide walkway detoured off the main floor and up what appeared to be the wall of the ring segment and then into the spoke, with focused push fields securing crew as they walked up the “wall” to get to the spoke. The spokes emptied out into the main ship with push fields securing the path on that end as well.

  “You first, ma’am,” the guard said, and Cardenia limped up the wall, oxygen container in hand, and into the spoke, then turned back to look at the guard. “Keep going!” she said, looking up, motioning Cardenia forward, and then the groaning noise became much louder and from below the guard Cardenia could see the deck of the ring segment begin to buckle and tear. A pressure door, this one to seal off the spoke, irised closed. The last image Cardenia had of the guard was her yelling at Cardenia to run.

  She didn’t need the encouragement. She sprinted down the spoke until the push fields gave out, and then she was careening weightless down the spoke, first crashing into the wall and then dragging herself down it, trying to get to the far portal into the main ship.

  As Cardenia careened down she passed a segment of the spoke with a transparent section. She looked out and saw the wreckage of the ship’s ring, and the segment opposite her tearing away from the ship, rupturing the spoke that led from it, spilling debris. She watched it as she floated past and then it was behind her. In front of her was the portal to the main ship.

  Which she now realized was sealed.

  A sharp, jolting crack shoved the spoke around Cardenia, slamming her into a wall and spinning her around. As she spun she heard a high, chorused whistling; down the spoke was a rupture along the wall, little holes like pinpricks, strung out in a rough line at least three meters long. The spoke was losing atmosphere.

  Cardenia clutched her oxygen canister tighter, pushed her way to the portal separating her from the main ship, grabbed a handhold on the side of the portal, and started banging on the portal with her canister. She kept at it as the air thinned and grew cold, taking occasional hits off the canister to remain conscious and banging. She kept at it until she either heard or hallucinated someone banging back on the other side.


  She kept at it until the cold took her.

  Chapter

  17

  Imperial guards swarmed through the House of Lagos offices in the Guild House, prompting what Kiva thought was the only rational response to the event.

  “What the fuck?” she demanded of Lord Pretar, who stood in his office while guards and investigators went through his files and tablet, along with the files and tablets of every other single person in the offices.

  “There’s been an assassination attempt against the emperox,” Pretar explained.

  “Which has fuck all to do with us how?” Kiva demanded.

  “Lady Kiva, please,” Pretar said, looking around at the guards. “Keep your tone respectful.”

  “Fuck tone,” Kiva said. “Answer the goddamned question.”

  Kiva could see Pretar trying to decide if he, the senior director of the House of Lagos on Hub, could thump on the daughter of the matriarch of the house. After a second he decided against it, which Kiva thought was the correct although disappointing choice, because she was itching for a chance to grind him directly into the fucking carpet right about now. “The emperox was touring a newly completed spaceship,” he said. “Someone crashed a shuttle into the ring segment she was touring.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “And, the shuttle is from one of our ships.”

  “What? Which ship?”

  “The Yes, Sir.”

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” Kiva said.

  Pretar looked around them and arched his eyes, which Kiva found spectacularly annoying, as if to say, These people wouldn’t be here if I were kidding.

  “Lady Kiva,” a voice said from behind her. She turned and saw a very officious-looking prick staring at her.

  “Who are you?”

  “Hibert Limbar. Chief of the Imperial Guard. I want to talk to you.”

  “Good, because I want to talk to you, too.” Kiva turned to Pretar. “Out.”

  “It’s my office,” Pretar protested. “And you’re not your mother, Lady Kiva.”

  “No, I’m not,” Kiva said. “Call her and complain about me if you want. Until then, fuck off. I need your office.”

  Pretar stared for a moment, then exited. The guards and investigators in the office stared as he went.

  Kiva motioned to them. “Tell the rest of them to fuck off, too,” she said to Limbar.

  “Everyone fuck off,” Limbar said. “For the next fifteen minutes.”

  Everyone fucked off, and Limbar closed the door behind them.

  “So how the fuck did one of our shuttles get jacked for this?” Kiva asked, walking over to Pretar’s office chair and falling into it.

  “It’s funny you should ask me that, Lady Kiva,” Limbar said. “I was going to ask the very same question of you. Possibly with fewer ‘fucks’ involved.”

  “Obviously I have no idea.”

  “You were the owner’s representative on the Yes, Sir.”

  “Yes.”

  “And on the way back to Hub from End you stuffed your ship full of emigrants from End, allegedly fleeing the civil war there.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So it’s possible one or more of those emigrants had plans once they got here.”

  Kiva snorted. “You’re suggesting one of those assholes we shipped to Hub knew the emperox—a brand-new emperox, who was being crowned just about the time we left—was going to be on a particular ship at a particular time and then just borrowed a shuttle to take her out.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely. I think it’s rather more likely someone here gave them instructions once they arrived, and scoped out the political landscape.”

  “What does that mean?” Kiva asked.

  “Lady Kiva, are you aware of the ship that was attacked?”

  “No.”

  “It was the If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, which was a new tenner commissioned by the House of Nohamapetan.”

  Kiva said nothing.

  “Lady Nohamapetan tells me that not too long before her house’s ship was attacked, you and your mother the countess threatened Amit Nohamapetan over a business dispute.”

  “We didn’t threaten him. We just made very clear our displeasure over certain actions his house undertook against us on End, but offered to settle those issues out of court. You can ask him yourself.”

  “I would love to do that, except that he was with the emperox when the attack happened. The emperox survived. Amit Nohamapetan, alas, did not.”

  “Well, fuck,” Kiva said, after a minute.

  Limbar nodded. “I can show you the pictures if you like. There’s not much left, however. Most of what wasn’t smeared onto the ship deck was ejected out into space.”

  “You don’t think we did that, do you?”

  “Well, Lady Kiva, you tell me. You arrive from End with a business dispute against the Nohamapetans and with a ship full of emigrants from a planet whose rebels have been attacking targets all around the Interdependency—and who have attempted to assassinate the emperox before. So now here is an assassination attempt that not only targets the emperox but also gets rid of the heir to the head of the House of Nohamapetan, and incidentally does immense financial damage to his house by destroying its new tenner just before it’s deployed into service. Do you not see how I could imagine that you and these terrorists from End might have decided to assassinate two birds with one stone?”

  “You can imagine anything you like,” Kiva said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s true. And it wouldn’t make sense anyway. We needed Lord Amit alive to push through the settlement we wanted from him. Killing him before we got that wouldn’t do us any good. Now they’re not going to have a goddamn thing to do with us, especially if they think we’re involved.”

  Limbar smiled. “That much I expect is true. Lady Nadashe is in a rage, and only the fact that she’s currently whipping up support to send a troopship to End is keeping her full attention from the House of Lagos.”

  Kiva opened her mouth to say something about the Nohamapetan involvement with the rebels on End and why the fuck wasn’t Limbar looking into that, when she snapped her mouth closed so fast that her teeth actually clacked together.

  “Yes, Lady Kiva?” Limbar said, noticing. “Something just occur to you?”

  “I was wondering whether you have any evidence to back up your hunch here.”

  Limbar motioned around him. “There is a reason we’re here. I don’t imagine you or your mother is stupid enough to commit any plans like this to recordable media, if you were involved. But perhaps not everyone in your employ is that aware. In which case, we’ll find out. In the meantime, Lady Kiva, you’ll understand that I’ve restricted your movements to Hubfall for now and that you’ll be discreetly monitored in your movement. It’s not just you, of course. Your mother, Lord Pretar, and most of your executives here on Hub and on Xi’an are also being restricted.”

  “That’s not going to go over very well with my mother.”

  “Then you may tell the countess, and you may quote me fully, that I don’t give a fuck. Someone just tried to kill my emperox for the second time on my watch. You can be assured that I will find out who it is. And if it is you, or your mother, or anyone involved with the House of Lagos, I won’t care how high and mighty you are, or how much you intimidate your underlings. I’ll take you down, and your entire house, if I have to.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  “Do that. And now, Lady Kiva, if you’ll excuse me, my people have to get back to work.” He went and opened the door to let his guards and investigators back into the room. Kiva watched them file in and then got out of the chair, left the office, and headed toward the elevator bank. As she did so a guard detached herself from her duties and walked toward her.

  “Oh, come on,” Kiva said, to the guard. “Your asshole boss said you would be discreet.”

  “This is discreet,” the guard said, standing next to her.

  Kiva resisted the temptati
on to roll her eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Sergeant Brenja Pitof.”

  “Well, Sergeant, am I going to get a moment to myself between now and whenever the end of this is?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “So you’re going to watch me when I take a dump.”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “As long as the bathroom doesn’t have a window or a second exit.”

  The elevator door opened and Kiva stepped inside. Sergeant Pitof followed.

  “Press the ‘Ground’ button,” Kiva said.

  “I’m supposed to follow you, Lady Kiva, not be your servant,” Pitof said. Then she pushed the button anyway.

  * * *

  “Where are you?” Captain Blinnikka said to Kiva, over her tablet, the one the Imperial Guard hadn’t confiscated.

  “I’m in my hotel room bathroom,” Kiva said.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “It’s the shower.”

  “You’re calling me from the shower?”

  “No, I’m running the shower so I can talk to you. I have a fucking guard in my hotel room.”

  “What’s the guard doing?”

  Lying on the bed after a particularly exhausting bout of screwing, Kiva thought, but did not say. Kiva decided that as long as she was going to be that closely watched, she might as well get something out of it. “Waiting for me to be done showering, so maybe let’s get to the subject. Which is, what the fuck happened with our shuttle?”

  “It was coming back from Imperial Station when the communications went dead and it piloted itself to the dock where the Sing Out was being built and rammed itself into the damn thing. Imperial Guard craft opened up on it as it came in but they didn’t manage to destroy it before it hit.”

  “Who was the pilot?”

  “Ling Xi.”

  Kiva grimaced. Xi was completely competent and wholly uninteresting and had no personal politics as far as Kiva knew. “It doesn’t make sense she would jam a shuttle into that ship.”

  “I don’t think she did,” Blinnikka said. “We have the data from the shuttle’s control panels. It shows a lot of activity during the trip, but not piloting data—or more accurately piloting data that corresponds to the trip. Everything we see is what you’d see from a pilot trying to take control of the shuttle, not actively piloting it.”