The Last Emperox

by John Scalzi

  Before Kiva could panic further her tablet lit up, with big white friendly sans serif letters on a black background.

  Hello! The letters read. Welcome to your jailbreak.

  “Fuck?” Kiva said, confused. The letters disappeared and new ones took their place.

  Cutting the power was necessary to reboot security and other systems, they said. Power will resume momentarily. Be ready to move when it does. Enjoy this music until then! The tablet began playing soothing instrumental versions of modern popular hits. Kiva didn’t know whether to shit or hum along.

  The lights came back on, as suddenly as they’d gone off.

  Time to go! the words on the tablet said. The music shifted to something a little more upbeat and staccato. Fucking jailbreak music, Kiva thought.

  There was a click from her door—the sound it made when it was unlocked.

  Please step through the door and go left down the corridor, the tablet’s words instructed. Take this tablet with you!

  Kiva did what she was told, walking briskly out of her cell with the tablet. She noted that no other prisoners appeared to be out of their cells. She could hear them, but they stayed locked up.

  At least until she reached a security door, which opened to allow her passage. As she closed the door behind her, she heard the security door latch shut and then a multitude of other doors unlock; all the other prisoners in that section were now free to leave their cells but were confined to the section.

  Kiva followed further directions to a guard room. As the door unlocked, she peered in to see two unconscious guards.

  To facilitate your jailbreak, the oxygen in this room was temporarily removed, the tablet said. Don’t worry, these guards are probably fine!

  Kiva took the tablet’s word for it and moved quickly through the room into another corridor.

  And so it went for the better part of a half hour, with Kiva picking her way through the facility, going where the tablet guided her. As she moved, she could hear the sounds of the facility: the rumblings of released prisoners, the sirens of the guard stations, and the general sounds of chaos and confusion. It didn’t sound like a riot, not yet at least, but Kiva knew she didn’t want to wait around to see how things turned out on that score.

  Eventually Kiva was led to a transport hub for overland vehicles, the ones that would travel the surface of Hub on a largely deserted highway connecting the facility to Hubfall.

  To the left you’ll find the guard dressing area, the tablet said. Go in and take the suit marked for Brimenez. It’ll fit you!

  Kiva did as she was told, jamming herself awkwardly into a pressurized suit while the tablet displayed instructions on how to seal the head and wrist gaskets. When she was stuffed into the suit like a fucking sausage, the tablet directed her to a lift that took her to a surface lobby.

  Please wait here, the tablet said. Your ride is arriving shortly! More smooth instrumental versions of popular hits played while Kiva waited.

  And indeed, in just a few moments the massive gate of the facility shifted and opened, and a large overland passenger transport vehicle rumbled through—rumbled because Kiva could feel the vibrations of its treads as it approached.

  Your ride is here! the tablet said. Enter the transport through the airlock at the back. Also, this tablet contains a tracker and movement data, so please place it under the treads of the transport before you board, to destroy evidence. Thank you for participating in this jailbreak!

  Kiva gaped a little at the tablet, then cycled the airlock out of the lobby. She placed the tablet under the front tread of the transport and then walked to the back, lifted herself up to the airlock there, and cycled through.

  To find Senia Fundapellonan waiting there for her.

  The transport moved forward, crushing the tablet, which up until that time had continued playing instrumental hits, for what little effect that would have on an airless planet.

  “You asshole,” Senia said, weeping, once Kiva had unsealed herself out of her suit, and once the two of them had stopped kissing frantically on each other. “You made me think you were dead.”

  “I didn’t make you think that,” Kiva said. “It was our fucking future emperox.”

  “I hate her so much.”

  “There’s a line for that. It’s really long.” Kiva said, and kissed Senia again. “How did you do this? How did you manage an entire fucking jailbreak?”

  “I didn’t,” Senia said.

  Kiva was confused. “Then who did?”

  “I was told by your mother to meet this transport and to wait for additional instructions.”

  “My mother did this?”

  “Would you put it past her?”

  “No, I would not,” Kiva said. “My mother’s fucking awesome.”

  “Once I was on the transport, I was told where I was going and who we were picking up.”

  Kiva looked to the cab. “Who’s driving?”

  “It’s automated.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  Senia laughed. “I have no idea. Probably to see your mother. I don’t really care. You’re back.”

  “I fucked up,” Kiva said. “I didn’t listen to you enough. You tried to warn me about Nadashe, and I thought I was a step ahead of her.”

  “It’s all right,” Senia said. “She’s about to be made emperox. Turns out she was a step ahead of everyone.”

  Kiva looked around the overland transport. “Maybe not everyone,” she said, and then returned her attention to Senia, because they had catching up to do.

  Chapter 23

  It was a beautiful day for an imperial coronation, but then, this was Xi’an and every day was a beautiful day there.

  As the morning of the coronation broke, artificially but even so, there was a large crowd of onlookers and well-wishers outside Xi’an Cathedral. They clustered around the areas below the balcony where the Emperox Nadashe would, after her coronation, appear to her new subjects, to wave and beam and take her first public steps in her new role.

  If any of the spectators had any concern that the bombing that had happened at the last coronation would repeat itself, they kept it to themselves. Well, mostly they kept it to themselves. There were a few wits who suggested that an explosion would be unlikely this time because Nadashe wasn’t a suicide bomber. These “wits” were then mostly told to stop acting like assholes, which made the wits complain that no one could take a joke anymore.

  Other, more serious students of imperial history noted the same thing as the wits, cast somewhat differently. No one denied that the Nohamapetan family, once favored by the imperial house, had in the last few years done a heel turn in its relationship to the Wu family—predicated mostly by a sense of grievance that Grayland II, the former emperox, would not marry a Nohamapetan as previously agreed—and many observers asked whether the Nohamapetan response of attempted assassination and coup was not, in fact, “within bounds” when dynasties were on the line. Or, more succinctly, was anything really off-limits to the royals?

  Still others noted that these spirited and increasingly abstruse discussions of the prerogative of noble houses served the purpose of abstracting the actual crimes of the Nohamapetan family—and of Nadashe herself, let’s not forget—to such an extent that they stopped being considered crimes and started becoming colorful backstory. This in itself added even more layers of abstraction to conversation.

  What made the discussion ultimately irrelevant was that the Wu family, the imperial family, had been the ones to offer this compromise, to honor the deal made by Attavio VI and broken by Grayland II, and that the other noble families had fallen so quickly into line. The ascendance of Nadashe Nohamapetan was not a trick or a coup, informed observers noted. It was a carefully negotiated peace treaty. There had been nothing like it in the history of the Interdependency, and that in itself was exciting, and in being exciting, was good.

  There had been some hiccups on the way to the coronation, of course. Archbishop Korbijn’s sudd
en resignation had ground things to a halt while the selection of a new archbishop was made, and that selection process both took far longer than anyone expected, and resulted in a compromise archbishop that no one was particularly happy with, apparently not least of all including Archbishop Cole himself.

  Nadashe, at least, did not let the time go unmarked. With these interstitial weeks prior to the coronation, the incoming emperox launched a charm offensive with a series of carefully managed presentations, appearances and interviews designed to show her softer and more compassionate side. In the interviews in particular, Nadashe did not shy away from the controversies surrounding her selection or the troubling recent actions undertaken in the name of the House of Nohamapetan, but gently guided everything toward the promises of the future, as all the noble houses worked together in harmony to deal with the Flow crisis for the benefit of all the citizens of the Interdependency.

  For a number of these interviews, Nadashe was accompanied by her new fiancé, Yuva Wu, a pleasant-looking young man who looked slightly dazed most of the time and who answered most questions with politely meandering answers that went nowhere. The couple sure looked great in pictures, however, and Nadashe was happy to speak glowingly about their future together and the children they would have—probably soon so as to avoid any problems with succession in the future.

  Not everyone was taken in by this publicity push, but everyone, from the highest of nobles to the lowest of hoi polloi, felt the fatigue of years of violent palace intrigue. Nadashe Nohamapetan might have entire rolling carts-worth of reputational baggage to her name, but once she was installed everyone could simply stop thinking about all this nonsense.

  Grayland II—weird, strange, unexpected Grayland II, she of the religious visions and the grandstanding proclamations as she was arresting half of the nobles in the system—had been liked, and it was a good bet that history would love her. She was quirky enough for that. But as a practical matter, she and her rule were tiring. She was hard to wrap one’s head around. Nadashe Nohamapetan, now, that was someone who really held no surprises. She was standard-issue grasping noble front to back, and smart enough to try to hide it with a little bit of public relations. The Interdependency had been here before, with so many of its emperoxs. And that was, strangely enough, restful.

  Nadashe Nohamapetan herself could not give a good goddamn at this point if she was restful or contentious or smoothly charming or whatever, she just wanted this coronation done and over with. Archbishop Korbijn’s retirement—and the attendant nonsense that followed, with the selection of a new archbishop—had really messed with Nadashe’s schedule, and Proster Wu had demanded that Nadashe take the interim to work on her image.

  Personally Nadashe had found the image rehabilitation exercises maddening. She understood their need and grudgingly accepted that Proster Wu was right, that they made the people more comfortable with her. But fundamentally Nadashe didn’t care if the people liked her. She wasn’t planning to be an emperox of the people. This emperox was relocating the Interdependency wholesale, and most of “the people” wouldn’t be coming. So sitting there for endless rounds of interviews, trying to look engaged and empathetic, was just a waste of her time.

  This was especially the case when she was required to spend any time with Yuva Wu, Proster’s pretty but aggravatingly dim-witted nephew, whom Nadashe was already planning to rid herself of at the earliest possible convenience after a child was born. Nadashe had already tried Yuva Wu out in bed to see what he was like. The answer was: simple. At least he was quick about it.

  All of the lead-up to the coronation had been a waste of Nadashe’s time—the only thing she had truly enjoyed was zip-tying Kiva Lagos to a fucking chair and watching the woman spit attitude for several minutes. Kiva had been correct that Nadashe had no intention of honoring the deal, although Nadashe had to admit she found it aggravating that Kiva had seen through it so quickly and had played with her as much as she was playing with Kiva. Kiva had always been too smart for her own good.

  Nadashe decided that one of her first acts as emperox would be to solve the problem of Kiva. She was … troublesome. Nadashe was aware that there had been a riot at the Emperox Hanne II Secured Correctional Facility, where some inmates had been injured and a few others went missing and were presumed dead. She decided there should be another riot there in the near future, with more definite casualties.

  The good news was, all of the waiting was behind her now. All the vapid interviews, all the enervating “discussion” of royal politics, all the dealing with the increasingly demanding Proster Wu on this or that point, all of the shit—all of it would be a thing of the past very soon now. All she had to do was bow, kneel, say a few words and it was done. The ceremony was to be short, very short, because Nadashe had agreed not to take on the various lesser titles that would go to Yuva first and then to their child once it was born and Yuva could be shuffled off; Yuva would have his own, smaller ceremony later in the week. Archbishop Cole likewise would become Cardinal Cole at a different ceremony, which Nadashe had no plan to attend.

  Enter the cathedral, kneel for fifteen minutes, say a few words, rise an emperox. And then, finally, real work could be done.

  Then it would truly be a beautiful day for Nadashe Nohamapetan.

  * * *

  They had almost gotten through the ceremony, almost gotten to the point where she would be, in fact, Emperox Nadashe I, when the ghost appeared.

  Nadashe heard the mutterings and too-loud whispers before she saw the ghost. She had been kneeling, knees on the marble, eyes tracing one of the veins in the stone, when the whispering began, immediately followed by the sound of Archbishop Cole no longer uttering, in his entirely grating monotone, the words of the coronation rite. It was the hitch in Cole’s speech that finally made Nadashe look up, to see Cole looking directly behind her with an expression of confusion. She followed his gaze and finally saw the ghost of Grayland II.

  Her first thought was, Someone’s getting fired. From her point of view, looking up at Grayland, Nadashe could see the projectors firing beams of light down to build the image of the former emperox directly behind where she was kneeling. Either someone had accidentally projected an image of Grayland, which was a fireable offense, or they were doing it intentionally as a prank or statement, which was not only fireable but possibly ejectable. Nadashe would not object to the prankster sucking vacuum for a few very painful seconds before death came for them.

  Her second thought was, She’s looking right at me.

  And indeed she was. The projection of Grayland II was staring, not only at Nadashe, but directly into her eyes. It was eerie as hell.

  Then the projection spoke.

  “Hello, Nadashe,” it said. “Nice day for a coronation.”

  The muttering of the crowd became louder. When Grayland spoke, Nadashe heard it projected directly at her, but she knew it was also being projected to the entire cathedral.

  The sound person is getting fired too, Nadashe thought.

  “This isn’t amusing,” Nadashe finally said.

  “I’m not here to be amusing,” the projection said. “I’m here for a coronation.”

  “You’re not you,” Nadashe said.

  “I’m not who?”

  “You’re not Grayland. You’re someone playing a prank with a projected image and a voice simulator.”

  “You’re sure of that.”

  “Of course I’m sure. Grayland is dead.”

  “Yes,” agreed the projection. “I am dead. You should know—you’re the one who killed me.”

  The murmurs became shouts at that.

  “The Countess Rafellya killed Grayland,” Nadashe said, turning to the ghost.

  “She brought the bomb that killed me into the palace, yes,” the apparition said. “But you were the one who gave it to her. You told her it was a listening device. You didn’t tell her what it would really do. You didn’t tell her that she was going to die along with me.”

 
; Over the speakers of the cathedral came two voices, one Nadashe and the other Countess Rafellya Maisen-Persaud, discussing the music box. The countess was expressing concern that the listening device would be discovered. Nadashe replied that it was designed to appear perfectly innocent and that as a backup she had paid an imperial security guard to alter one of the scanners by a software upgrade. Nadashe named the guard specifically so that the countess should go to him directly for service.

  The audio cut off. Nadashe stared at Grayland, stunned. Grayland smiled. “You shouldn’t talk treason in front of a tablet microphone, Nadashe.”

  “It’s not true,” Nadashe whispered.

  The cathedral was alive with the sound of phone and tablet alerts going off. “The full audio transcript of your conversation from your tablet, Nadashe,” Grayland said. Another set of pings. “The audio transcript from the countess’s tablet.” More pings. “The testimony of the bomb-maker you paid for the bomb.” More pings. “The testimony of the security guard you paid to compromise the scanner and to deal with the countess.” The cathedral echoed with the pings.

  Grayland smiled again at Nadashe. “All that just went to every tablet and personal device on Xi’an, by the way. And of course all of this”—Grayland indicated the coronation ceremony—“is being broadcast live here on Xi’an and on Hub.”

  Nadashe gaped.

  Members of the cathedral congregation began to get up and head to the exits. Grayland turned to face them. “Sit down,” she said, and her voice boomed through the sound system. “All of you. We’re not done here. Now, be quiet. Listen.”

  The congregation quieted. In the silence a high whistling came from air vents.

  “The designer of this cathedral worried that fire would damage it,” Grayland said. “He made it so the air in the cathedral could be emptied into space in less than two minutes. If you want to test this proposition, try to leave before I am done speaking.”

  There was dead silence, save for the whistling. Then the whistling stopped.