The Empire of Ruin

by Robert I. Katz

  Not a fool, no, but perhaps a traitor. “You’re going to have to prove that,” Michael said.

  The governor gulped. He set his lips in a thin line and gave an abrupt nod.

  Actually, he already had proven it. Michael’s enhanced senses had no difficulty in detecting the physiologic changes associated with lying. The Governor’s heartbeat had increased but not markedly so. His scent was the scent of nervousness but not fear. It was possible for a trained agent to control these responses. Michael could do so, himself, but this was a minor functionary on a minor planet, whose history was boring and well known. Governor Novak was exactly what he seemed.

  The Governor’s Security Chief was named Mitchell Whelan. He had served three terms with the Imperial Marines, wandered from world to world for a few years, met a woman he liked, decided to stay and accepted a position as Deputy Chief of Police in Dubrovnik City, and then proceeded to rise through the administrative ranks. He had been head of the Governor’s security for nearly five years. Mitchell Whelan had a comfortable job that paid a good salary and only occasionally offered undue excitement. He liked his life just the way it was.

  “Gottfried,” Whelan said, “or maybe Tomas.”

  “You’re sure?” Anson asked.

  Whelan shrugged. “They’re the most likely.”

  In the end, it was Tomas, a lanky, blonde young man with watery, light blue eyes. He was shaking as soon as he was shown into the interview chamber. Michael, Anson and Mitchell Whelan sat on one side of the table. The room was bland, with light tan walls, a cold wooden floor and no windows.

  “Sit down,” Whelan said. Michael and Henrik Anson sat back and said nothing. This was Whelan’s show, his men and his responsibility, and Anson and Michael were content to let him handle it.

  Tomas sat. He visibly trembled. Whelan sadly shook his head. “How much were you paid?” he asked. They had already accessed his account. They knew exactly how much he had been paid.

  Tomas gulped. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Whelan narrowed his eyes, glanced at Michael and Anson. “Don’t be a fool. Minor corruption carries a fine and reduction in rank. Treason against the Empire will mean the death penalty.”

  Tomas stared at them. Whelan gave him a thin smile. “So, I’ll ask again: how much were you paid?”

  “Fifty credits,” Tomas said. This was correct.

  “To do exactly what?”

  “Give them a call when a major operation was about to go down.” Tomas hung his head. Whelan looked grim. “Who is ‘them?’”

  “Fischel,” Tomas said.

  “Eric Fischel?”

  Tomas nodded.

  “Eric Fischel is a small time hood,” Whelan glanced at Michael and Anson. “He runs an extortion racket on small businesses in the East Side of the City.” He turned back to Tomas. “How long have you been on the payroll?”

  “Two years.” Tomas looked defeated. He slumped down in his chair and stared at the floor.

  “Who else is involved?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Tomas shrugged.

  Michael rose to his feet. “We have no idea who else in your command might have been compromised. Keep this idiot in isolation. We’ll take care of this, ourselves.”

  The Marine Sergeant was a grim, well-built man named John Knowles, who had initially been almost as reluctant as Henrik Anson to split his command and serve under the Illyrians. Knowles had quickly changed his mind, however, the first time Dustin Nye outflanked him during an infiltration exercise and then cut his team to ribbons.

  Concealed by its cloaking, the London hovered over a small building on the East Side of Dubrovnik City. Dressed in black armor that blended with the night, four marines and three Illyrians floated down from the ship onto the building’s roof, broke a lock that led into a stairwell and started down.

  They were too late.

  Knowles voice crackled over the com. “You might as well come down here,” he said. “They’re gone.”

  Anson sighed. He and Michael stepped out of the airlock and floated gently to the roof.

  According to the information supplied by Whelan, Eric Fischel lived on one entire floor of the building. His offices occupied the floor below. The spacious apartment was empty. The offices were trashed, papers scattered over the floor. Filing cabinets lay on their side. The building was deserted.

  “So, where are they?” Michael said.

  Anson shrugged. “Maybe Whelan can tell us.”

  Whelan couldn’t. Eric Fischel and all of his men had vanished. None of their family or contacts had heard from them in the past two days.

  “It’s a small world with only one port,” Michael said. “They have to be someplace.” Though an actual port was entirely unnecessary. A ship could land and take off on any level, dry piece of dirt, particularly if it didn’t need to re-fuel. There were small towns and empty fields extending hundreds of kilometers from Dubrovnik city, all over the planet, really. Michael shook his head. “They could be anywhere.”

  “That’s just great,” Anson said.

  “We’ll keep an eye out for them,” Whelan said. “They may turn up.”

  “Sure,” Michael said. “You do that. One way or the other, let us know.”

  Fat chance, Michael thought. Fat, fucking chance.

  Chapter 10

  The Second Interstellar Empire as it currently existed comprised over five hundred worlds and was nearly five centuries old, and yet in the arc of human history, the Empire was still almost young, almost a new thing on the galactic stage. Humanity had been travelling between the stars for more than six thousand years. The Empire had risen and fallen and risen again and this time, was determined not to fall.

  The Empire might not have a choice, however, since men had competing agendas and no political system that humankind had ever devised was perfect. Every one that had been thought of had been tried and sooner or later, they had all, in the end, come to ruin. A political philosopher of ancient times would perhaps have been amazed, and probably appalled as well, but a constitutional monarchy with clearly defined limits to authority, an independent judiciary and guaranteed rule of law seemed to work the best, better than most at any rate.

  The requirements of human nature were not as mutable as those ancient philosophers might have preferred to think. Most human beings need a leader to follow, to believe in, and the idea that one’s privileges could be inherited, that certain select families (assumed, however undeserved, to possess a genetic predisposition for wisdom and leadership) would always be there, dependable as the sea and the stars, seemed to provide a calming outlook on otherwise revolutionary impulses. Aristocracy gave the people something to strive for, a reason to support the system, so long as those people knew that they, too, had a chance to ascend to the highest levels of society if they had the talent, the luck and the motivation, and their children and their children’s children would continue to reap the rewards of their own success, down through the generations. It seemed counter-intuitive, even stupid, even unjust…but it had worked in the past and it was working now.

  Throw a little democracy into the mix, but not enough to allow the majority to tyrannize the minority. A little autocracy, just enough to get things done, but not enough to dictate the shape of peoples’ lives, not enough to deprive the people of independent action or to take away their choices, not enough to leave the common man without a sense of dignity, worth, and hope. All of these predictably added up to a socio-political system that allowed humanity to flourish, or at least to survive.

  Hope was a fragile thing and hard to measure but without hope for the future, hope for a better life for the next generation and the generation beyond, people simply stopped breeding. Their societies became extinct.

  Civilization after civilization had vanished. They rose, they flourished, they diminished and they died. The glorious city-states of Sparta and Athens had stopped having children, and were conquered by the younger, more virile Romans. And then the Rom
ans had suffered the same fate in their turn. Caesar Augustus had decreed that Roman citizens had an obligation to reproduce but by then, it was already too late. They grew old, there were not enough young to replace the old and the Gauls and the Goths and the barbarian hordes stormed the gates of the Holy City. The Chinese, with their one child policy, realized too late the existential mistake that they had made, and by then, nothing could save them. There were many, many others.

  Such at least was the theory.

  It was not theory, however, that the Empire was under siege. Michael sat back on a couch in the lounge of one of the most advanced spaceships ever devised and thought about the transient nature of everything that lived, everything that existed. The Universe would end, perhaps a trillion years in the future, in a long, slow slide into endless, eternal cold, as entropy ground on, reducing everything that existed to sub-atomic dust and ghostly neutrinos. And then, maybe, almost at the end of time, a collapsing singularity would cause a new big bang to arise somewhere, somehow, and the Universe would start anew, but by then, mankind and all of his works would be long gone. Or perhaps, as seemed to the case in the pocket Universe orbiting Electra, the density of space would steadily decrease as the Universe expanded, until the whole thing ripped itself apart.

  Michael shook his head and sipped from a goblet of excellent brandy and listened with half an ear as Richard Norlin played a slow, melancholy piece on his keyboard and the rest of his crew played a game of cards around the table.

  Kodiak, Helios, Illyria, the Rift and now the very minor world of Dubrovnik: these were only the few that Michael had seen with his own eyes, but military intelligence knew of dozens more…petty criminals or a slowly invading, remorselessly infiltrating horde? The enemies of the Empire of Mankind had burrowed their way into many worlds, it seemed. Mostly, they were a nuisance, barely noticed by the Empire as a whole, parasites sucking blood from an enormous beast, but parasites, if there were enough of them, could kill.

  Were they all a part of one enormous conspiracy? The raiders of Helios had constructed a formidable base near the torus, inside the Rift, and then destroyed it rather than surrender to Imperial Forces. The extent of their resources and capabilities was still unknown.

  Ruefully, Michael wondered how he, citizen of an Empire two thousand years in the past, had come to care so much, but really, it was not so very strange. All of us live—and die—in the now. This, for better or worse, was his life. The past was vanished and gone. The Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind had arisen from the ruins of its predecessor, and if those men who were capable of preventing it refused to do their part, the Second Empire could fall just like the First.

  Michael was tired of playing catch-up. He was tired of always being one step behind.

  Upon arriving back at Terra Nova, Luciano Barrad resumed his dissolute lifestyle, wandering from party to race track to casino to elegant, expensive restaurant, usually accompanied by the beautiful, attentive and mostly silent Gloriosa. He spent days lounging in private cabanas at private beaches, drinking cocktails made with exotic ingredients from all over the galactic arm, gently resisting the veiled suggestions of courtesans and hangers-on looking for their next score.

  It was good to be rich, except that while Michael Glover actually was fairly rich (if not so rich as the Imperial aristocrats among whom he was spending his time) Luciano Barrad was pretending to be destitute while keeping up the façade of being very rich indeed. For those who cared to look into such things, Luciano Barrad’s store of credits was steadily shrinking.

  Solomon Towne contacted him a week after the London’s return. He requested a meeting for that evening. Michael was to come to his offices, alone. Michael frowned at the vid screen, then breathed a small sigh of relief, shrugged and agreed.

  Finally.

  Towne’s offices were located in a row of three story brownstones on a hill near the beach, an expensive but quiet neighborhood. Michael showed up at the appointed time. Towne’s secretary, young, pretty and tanned, gave him a dazzling smile with very white teeth, showed him into an inner office and then withdrew, closing the door behind her.

  “Luciano,” Towne said, “please sit down. I’ll be right with you.”

  The office was comfortable and plush, the chairs solid and covered in brown leather. Towne’s desk was enormous, with a scattering of papers on its dark wooden surface. An oval shaped window covered one wall behind the desk, looking down on the blue waters of the harbor. Towne signed two pieces of paper, briefly read through a third, then put it aside. He sat back, seemingly deep in thought, his pen idly tapping on the sheet of glass covering the desk, then he gave a minute shrug and allowed his eyes to meet Michael’s.

  “So,” Towne said, “thank you for coming.”

  Michael gave a stiff nod, at which Towne grinned. “Drink?” he asked. “Coffee, tea, Roobios, something stronger?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Towne abruptly nodded. “Have you ever been to the Solheim Republic?” he asked.

  Michael frowned. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it.”

  “Dreadful place. A series of slums, really, but they’re very proud of having maintained what they like to think of as the spirit of the First Empire. This spirit consists of painting their bodies blue three times a year and dancing around a campfire, while pledging themselves to the Imperator’s eternal glory. Then they fight each other in arenas, crown a series of champions and celebrate by ingesting alcohol until they vomit.”

  “That sounds strenuous,” Michael said doubtfully.

  Towne snorted. “They believe in free markets. Their bio-agents are valuable. We would like you to go there and pick up a shipment.”

  “Oh.” Michael pretended bewilderment. “Why me?”

  Towne gave him a wide smile and leaned forward. “We thought you might appreciate the opportunity to help out your friends.”

  Michael blinked at him and said nothing.

  Towne let the silence linger for a second, then said, “And, of course, this venture has the chance of making a significant profit. Your friends thought that you might appreciate that, as well.”

  Michael allowed a smile of his own to creep across his face. “It’s good to have friends,” he said.

  Towne sat back in his seat and nodded. “Isn’t it?”

  Chapter 11

  “I don’t like this,” said Anson.

  “Me neither,” Michael replied. “So what?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  The Solheim Republic occupied a single medium-sized planet fifty-four light-years from Dancy. The world had been settled during the last three centuries before the First Empire’s fall, had settled into relative poverty during the Interregnum, but maintained, as Solomon Towne had indicated, a tradition of martial rectitude. The world had gladly joined the Second Empire upon initial contact, only two decades before, and nearly all of their young men and women entered into Imperial Service upon their seventeenth birthday.

  Solomon Towne’s sarcasm regarding the native practices and customs turned out to be greatly exaggerated. They did dance in the nude, though they did not paint their bodies blue, in solemn ceremonies meant to glorify the strength and beauty of youth and the transient nature of life. They did compete frequently in athletic contests of all types and they did tend to celebrate their victories with alcohol and other drugs as well, but they rarely drank enough to make public spectacles of themselves and if they were vomiting, it was most often in the privacy of their own homes.

  Michael liked them. He felt comfortable with them. They believed in service to the Empire, lived a simple, uncomplicated life, maintained a cheerful outlook, tended not to dwell on their problems and enjoyed a party.

  The London was carrying a cargo of wooden crates supposedly filled with textiles and basic AI components, devices smaller than a hand that could be linked together to form Brains. They had opened three of the crates and determined that the cargo was indeed what it was supposed to be. N
ow they waited. They were scheduled to meet a ship called the Golden Queen, due to arrive in three days. Meanwhile, Michael and the crew wandered the city of Solheim, seeing the sites (a small museum of natural history, a zoo, a cavern system filled with jeweled stalactites and strange rock formations and an opera house, plus the usual sense-stim travelogues) and tried to relax.

  Michael and Anson were sitting in a bar the night before the Golden Queen was scheduled to arrive, drinking beer and eating a meal of the local specialty, something called Ploughman’s Pie, which consisted of a layer of cheese over a second layer of root vegetables and a third layer of spiced ground meat, a rustic masterpiece, in Michael’s opinion. The beer was excellent, as well.

  Anson, since Michael’s relatively mild chastisement, had become more amenable, almost pleasant. In a strange way, Michael found that he enjoyed Anson’s company. They were both soldiers, after all, even if Anson didn’t know it. Their background and experience were similar.

  The rest of his crew were so very young.

  “We’re wasting time,” Anson said.

  “You have any better ideas?”

  Anson looked grim. He stared into his glass, took a healthy swallow and wiped his upper lip. “We have enough to arrest Solomon Towne, at least, and probably Devlin as well. Then there’s Lydia Prescott Jones and her very devoted servants. I would love to get them into an interview.”

  Anson’s idea of ‘interview’ involved electric shocks and rubber hoses. Michael preferred a slightly more subtle approach but he had to admit that Anson’s way often cut through the bullshit. “It may come to that,” he said.

  If it did, the chances of success were doubtful. These people were rich and they all had excellent lawyers. There were a lot of shortcuts around due process when you worked for the Imperial Service, but still, the very rich had ways of avoiding accountability; and of course, if they did arrest Lydia Prescott Jones or Solomon Towne or Lord Benedict Devlin, the rest would no doubt bury all the evidence and wait for as long as it might take for the storm to blow over.