The Last Emperox
Page 26
“I have to tell you I might have gone a different route on that one.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for that.”
“I don’t know what to do now, Cardenia,” Marce said. “You’re gone, but you’re still here; I can see you and hear you, but I can’t touch you or be with you. I hurt. All the time. I don’t know what to do.”
“I know what you should do,” Cardenia said. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“You need to go away,” Cardenia said. “Away from me. Away from this.”
Marce laughed softly at this. “You’re not wrong. But I don’t know if that would do the trick.”
“Well, about that. I spoke to Kiva about this and we agreed to two options to present to you.”
“Two options.”
“Yes. The first is, you go home. Back to End. As the new duke.”
“You want to make me the Duke of End?”
“No one deserves it more,” Cardenia said. “And as the Duke of End, you and your family would be well-placed to make sure that when new people and habitats arrive in the system, they are intelligently incorporated, to keep them and your planet alive. When the Flow stream from Hub finally collapses and the Interdependency is done, you become King of End.”
“What’s the second option?”
“You go to Earth.”
“What?”
“I’ve been analyzing the data you sent back, along with all the data you collected before.”
“You have,” Marce said.
“I have, yes,” Cardenia said. “Chenevert gave me some of his systems to get me started. I don’t know how to put this, Marce … but I’m more than I was before. Different.”
“Better.”
Cardenia shook her head. “Not better. Just different. The point is, I synthesized the data and put it together to make predictions on future evanescent Flow streams. I saw something in it, and I asked Chenevert to run it to see if he saw the same thing. He did. A Flow stream, from here, opening up six months from now into territory that corresponds to a system claimed by Earth.”
“Wow,” Marce said. “Wow.”
“There are caveats,” Cardenia said. “The stream we identified goes out. Neither Chenevert nor I have predicted a corresponding stream returning. One may show up when we get more data from more evanescent shoals and we can make better predictions, but for now, out is the only direction. We estimate six months in the stream. Neither Chenevert nor I know what’s on the other side of that stream. In Chenevert’s time, there was a young colony there, but who’s to say what’s there now. Finally, Chenevert says he has a map of the Flow streams the systems aligned with Earth used, but it’s very old, and he can’t guarantee that a collapse event kicked off by the Rupture hasn’t happened there. You could be taking a one-way trip to nowhere.”
“But if there is something there—”
“Then you’d be the first person in fifteen hundred years to meet humans from Earth. Or from one of their systems, anyway.”
“Wow,” Marce said again.
Cardenia smiled. “Chenevert said that’s what you would say. He also told me to tell you that if you wanted to make that trip, the Auvergne is yours and he would be delighted to be your pilot.”
“I…” Marce stopped. “I need to think about this.”
“Of course.”
“It’s a lot.”
“Yes it is,” Cardenia said. “I should also tell you that if you take the exploration option, Kiva intends to make your sister Vrenna Duchess of End. Apparently Kiva remembers her well and was quite taken with her.”
“Coming from Kiva that could be taken in all number of ways.”
“I suppose so, but no matter what, the dukedom is coming into your family. I don’t know if that influences your decision one way or another.”
“Thank you, Cardenia,” Marce said. “I have a lot to think about all of a sudden.”
“Yes you do,” Cardenia said. “That was the plan.”
Marce got up and moved to the door of the Memory Room, then stopped and turned. “I love you. You know that.”
“And I love you, Marce. No matter where you are, and always.”
He smiled and left the room.
Cardenia waited a few moments, gathering herself, and then called Chenevert. “You were right,” she said, to him. “He grabbed on to Earth like it was a long-lost pet.”
“Which is what you wanted him to do,” Chenevert reminded her.
“I know.”
“So you think he’ll choose that.”
“I’m certain of it. He’ll fight it for a bit. But think of the science.”
“And you?” Chenevert asked. “How will you be? Part of you is still human. Will always be human.”
“It’ll hurt,” Cardenia said. “It will hurt for a long time.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“No. No, I suppose not.”
“All right. When he finally admits to coming around, I’ll let you know, and you can have our dear new emperox open up the money drawer. We won’t have any problem outfitting and staffing a trip to Earth, even if it might be one-way. That might even be a draw.”
“It might be,” Cardenia said. “But, Chenevert.”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise that one day you’ll come back. That he’ll come back.”
“Oh, Cardenia,” Chenevert said. “Why would you worry about such a thing? However long it takes, I will always bring him home.”
* * *
“So you’ve said your goodbyes,” Rachela said, to Cardenia.
“They’re not goodbyes,” Cardenia said. “I’ll be speaking to some of them again. Some of them quite a lot.”
“Not to them. To what you were before.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Yes, I suppose I have.”
“That’s good,” Rachela said. “It’s important. You can’t be what we are now and not have done that.”
“Be immortal, you mean.”
“We’re not immortal,” Rachela reminded her. “But we get to live as long as we’re useful. And that is a rare privilege.”
“And what about you?” Cardenia said. “How much longer will you choose to live? The Interdependency is ending. You wanted to see how it turned out. Now you know.”
“I don’t know,” Rachela said. “It’s been a long time to be alive. I was worried for some time there that it would end badly. But I don’t worry about that now. Because of you, Cardenia. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“If I do decide to leave you one day, will you think of me?” Rachela asked.
“Of course. This is the Memory Room. You will always be here.”
“Yes,” Rachela agreed. “Then shall we begin with the end?”
“Yes, let’s,” Cardenia said. “We’ll make it one to remember.”
EPILOGUE
The Battle of End was hardly that; the Prophecies of Rachela surrendered to the End Expeditionary Force without a single shot being fired, and the other ships of Rachela’s ad hoc task force, those whose crews were still mostly alive, surrendered almost as quickly.
As the bedraggled remains of the Rachela’s crew recovered on the Spirit of Grayland II, the story was pieced together: Sir Ontain Mount, upon discovering the Rachela had been commandeered by Nohamapetan sympathizers and that its crew and soldiers intended to take his command, by force if necessary, shuttled his marines to the surface of End by any means necessary and destroyed the space station the Rachela had meant to take and would need for repairs and supplies.
On the ground, Ontain’s marines joined up with Vrenna Claremont’s rebels and effectively harassed (acting) Duke Ghreni Nohamapetan’s forces, and played the long game with the Rachela and the occasional new ship that joined with it, denying them supplies and maintenance. The pirates that had originally supplied the Rachela’s grou
p eventually began to prey on them. Furtive attempts at surface landings to requisition supplies ended in ambush and capture of crew and materiel. It was one of the most effective blockades from the bottom of a gravity well ever attempted.
With the arrival of the Spirit, the civil war on the ground came to an abrupt end. Ghreni Nohamapetan—no longer duke, acting or otherwise—was quickly surrendered by his troops when they were promised no reprisal if they laid down their arms and produced their putative leader. Ghreni was delivered to Vrenna Claremont, now Duchess of End, unceremoniously stuffed into a duffel bag. Vrenna promised she wouldn’t kill him if he told her where her father was. Count Jamies Claremont was produced, unharmed but glad to be out of that damned room, an hour later.
And so it was two days later that Ghreni Nohamapetan was in the same room where he had held Count Claremont captive, when the door opened and Nadashe and the Countess Nohamapetan were shoved in, the door slamming shut and locking quickly behind them.
Ghreni looked at his mother and sister, wordless and gaping, for a full thirty seconds. Then he closed his mouth and set his jaw.
“Okay, seriously now,” he said to his sister. “What the fuck happened to this perfect plan of yours? Hmmm?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first thing that I would like to acknowledge in these acknowledgments is that, in fact, I am history’s worst monster.
The reason I am history’s worst monster is that I had more than a year to write this book, and I did the thing I’ve been doing with the last several books of mine, which is waiting until the very last possible moment to turn the damn thing in, which makes me a nuisance to everyone else involved in the production of the book. Now they will have to work extra hard and extra fast because I couldn’t get my act together.
And so: history’s worst monster. I wish I could offer up a reasonable excuse for my screwed-upped-ness, but there’s really not one. The best explanation (which is different than an excuse) I can offer is that for someone who is easily distracted, 2019 offered up, shall we say, a target-rich environment. If you lived through 2019, and did not spend most of the year living in a cave or in a haze of pot smoke, then you probably understand what I mean. If you did spend 2019 in a cave and/or stoned out of your gourd, well, then. Well done you.
I would really like to return to halcyon days of pre-2016, when I actually did a reasonably good job of focusing and turning in books on a schedule that would not make production people hate me and burn me in effigy, so if you live in the United States, and you are reading this prior to November 2020, please do me a favor and (a) Register to vote, or check to make sure your registration is still valid, (b) Remember to vote on election day (or before if you take an early ballot) and (c) Try not to vote for anyone who is a whirling amoral vortex of chaos. I would really really really appreciate it, and you would also probably get more books from me.
And to the other people involved in the production of this book: I am honestly and genuinely sorry to make you sprint on this one, too. You deserve better and I’ll try to do better.
And who are some of the people involved in the production of this book? Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor; his (past and present) assistants Anita Okoye, Rachel Bass and Molly McGhee; Irene Gallo as art director and Nicholas “Sparth” Bouvier as the artist; book designer Heather Saunders; copy editor Deanna Hoak, to whom I apologize in advance for my idiosyncratic comma usage; and my publicist Alexis Saarela. Thanks also to Bella Pagan at Tor UK and her fabulous staff of people there, including her assistant Georgia Summers. At Audible, thanks as always to Steve Feldberg and his team, and to Wil Wheaton, who will make with the word sounds for those folk who read by ear.
Also many thanks to Ethan Ellenberg, Bibi Lewis, Joel Gotler and Matt Sugarman, who comprise Team Scalzi when it comes to selling my work and/or looking over contracts, which is very much appreciated. A tip of the hat also to Georgina Gordon-Smith, Surian Fletcher-Jones and Gennifer Hutchison.
I drop in occasional nods to friends and fellow writers in these books and most of the time it’s not a problem, but then every once in a while I totally kill the hell out of a character I named for someone and then I feel bad about it. So, uhhhh, Mary Robinette Kowal and Navah Wolfe, sorry for killing those dudes.
(This is especially awkward re: Navah, for whom I named a different character in the series as well: Naffa Dolg, Cardenia’s close friend who you may recall I blew up in the first book, which caused Navah to remark, more than once, “You fridged my character for LADY PAIN.” You know I admire and esteem you, Navah, honest and truly.)
Friends who helped me keep my sanity during the writing of this book include Kevin Stampfl, Yanni Kuznia, Bill Schafer, Ryvenna Altman, Olivia Ahl, Deven Desai, Monica Byrne and Megan Frank. Special thanks also to Natasha Kordus, literally one of my oldest and dearest friends, for a fabulous bit of last-minute encouragement.
Thank you to the people who make the Freedom app, which is a program I use on my computer to block social media because I cannot be trusted not to check Twitter every twenty seconds. If you need a program to save your attention span from yourself, I can in fact recommend it.
(But if you do follow me on Twitter or Facebook or read my blog Whatever, thank you. You’re not to blame for my lack of willpower about these things.)
As always I thank Athena and Kristine Scalzi, daughter and wife respectively, for being such wonderful people, and wonderful for me. I could say much more about both, but if you’ve read these acknowledgments before you know how mushy I can get about both of them. I’m just glad I get to have them in my life.
And finally, thank you, the readers, for reading this series. As strange as it may seem, this series of books is the first time I ever intentionally wrote a trilogy. Most of the time I write a book and if people like it, then I write another in the same world. This is how we got to six books in the Old Man’s War series (so far). But I went in knowing I was planning to write three books in this series, and that at the end of it, the empire would, indeed, collapse. It’s been a new experience for me combining that sort of long-term understanding of the events of the series with my usual “make this thing up as I go along” writing style, and I have to say I’m very pleased with how it came out. This was a very satisfying writing experience for me. I hope it was as satisfying for you as well. Thank you for coming along with me.
John Scalzi
October 31, 2019
OTHER TOR BOOKS BY JOHN SCALZI
Agent to the Stars
The Android’s Dream
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998–2008
The Old Man’s War Novels
Old Man’s War
The Ghost Brigades
The Last Colony
Zoe’s Tale
The Human Division
The End of All Things
The Lock In Series
Lock In
Head On
Unlocked
The Interdependency Sequence
The Collapsing Empire
The Consuming Fire
Edited by John Scalzi
Metatropolis
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last fifteen years. His massively successful debut, Old Man’s War, won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony; Fuzzy Nation; Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel; and Lock In. Material from his widely read blog, Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com), has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Book 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Book 3
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Other Tor Books by John Scalzi
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LAST EMPEROX
Copyright © 2020 by John Scalzi
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Sparth
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
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ISBN 978-0-7653-8916-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8917-6 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765389176
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