Behind the Throne
Page 38
Laabh was calm, his dark eyes still burning with fanatical hatred when they met mine. Ganda was less calm, her eyes darting around the room and her breath coming high and fast in her chest as the table was tilted slightly up.
Judge Claremont turned to look at the prisoners behind the glass. “You have both been found guilty, through evidence and your own confessions, of waging war against the state, direct participation in regicide, attempted regicide, and treason. Your right to trial was dismissed at the empress’s pleasure. It is the empress’s wish that on this day you take your last breaths and let the Dark Mother have her justice over you.”
Ganda flinched. Laabh remained perfectly still.
“Your Imperial Majesty, is there any mercy in you for these two traitors?”
I’d known the judge’s question was coming. The palace had been inundated with calls and messages about the execution. I’d read most of them, and answered several of the calls personally. The Amnesty Galactic one had been the most interesting.
In the end, I couldn’t let much of it influence my decision. We had written confessions from each of them about their involvement in the deaths, and no matter my personal feelings on the matter that was enough to condemn them.
Plus I knew better than to leave a live enemy behind me. I’d learned that lesson the hard way from Po-Sin, the gunrunning gang leader and my former employer.
“There is not.”
“Very well.” Judge Claremont nodded. “Do the condemned have anything to say?”
“I did what I had to for the good of the empire.” Ganda’s voice didn’t ring with the same conviction as my mother’s Ekam when he’d claimed the same thing. “The empress turned us belly-up to the Saxons and drove this empire into the ground. Now you’ll all allow that trash upon the throne. A criminal, a self-admitted gunrunner! She’s not worthy of your respect or your loyalty!”
I kept my face blank as she railed. I wasn’t ashamed of the things I’d done after I left.
“If you didn’t want me to come back, Ganda, you shouldn’t have killed my sisters. Cire should have been empress, or her daughter, or even Pace. All of them would have been a better choice than I am. It’s your conspiracy, your treachery that put me here.”
“No.” Ganda shook her head, tears rolling down her face, but she didn’t have any argument to make that would have swayed anyone’s sympathy.
Laabh lifted his chin, the haughty look unable to fully hide the fear in his eyes. “You will all regret this,” he said. “We see farther than you can imagine, and our plans are far more glorious than this piddling empire. You won’t live through the next spin of the planet around the sun, you gunrunning whore.”
There were gasps of outrage in the room. I crossed my arms over my chest and met Laabh’s glare with a cold smile. “You won’t live to see them fail,” I replied.
Whatever he shouted in reply was cut off by Judge Claremont’s quick gesture. The comm system was deactivated and the two technicians in the room donned their helmets as the tables were lowered once more.
Nitrogen asphyxiation had been the preferred method of execution in the empire for thousands of years. It was a quick and painless method, but as I’d pointed out to Leena, it was still taking another human life.
The lights on the wall of the chamber flashed, and at Judge Claremont’s nod the technicians threw the switch. The air circulators in the chamber filled it with pure nitrogen as they sucked the oxygen out.
Laabh was unconscious in under a minute with Ganda quickly following suit as the oxygen in their lungs and then their blood was replaced with nitrogen. The hypoxia that followed would cause brain death in a matter of moments.
I’d seen messier deaths and been directly involved in more than a few of them myself. This wasn’t even the first time I’d stood on the other side of a glass window and watched people die, but there was undoubtedly something cold about these quick and silent deaths. It felt weird, clinical, and made me uneasy.
I watched their chests rise and fall, breaths growing shallower as the heartbeats on the monitors above the tables slowed. Laabh convulsed, and Leena’s choked sob echoed through the room.
“Take her outside, Will,” I murmured without looking away from the people dying in front of me.
The shrill tone of the flatline filled the air only moments after Willimet ushered Leena out the door, as first Laabh’s and then Ganda’s hearts gave out. The masked techs moved around the tables, efficiently checking their patients and passing the information along to Judge Claremont.
“Heart death confirmed,” she announced. “Brain death to follow in approximately ninety seconds.”
The flatline tone had been turned off with the confirmation so we all stood in silence again as we waited for the final words from the techs. The one at Laabh’s side turned and nodded once, but I didn’t release the breath I was holding until Ganda’s tech nodded also.
“Brain death confirmed. Execution sentence carried out at 2253 Capital Standard Time. Let the record reflect that justice has been served.”
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CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EXTRAS MEET THE AUTHOR
INTERVIEW
A PREVIEW OF AFTER THE CROWN
ORBIT NEWSLETTER
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Katy B. Wagers
Excerpt from After the Crown copyright © 2016 by Katy B. Wagers
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover images © Arcangel and Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wagers, K. B. author.
Title: Behind the throne / K. B. Wagers.
Description: New York : Orbit, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016006484 | ISBN 9780316308601 (paperback) | ISBN 9781478938477 (audio book downloadable) | ISBN 9780316308595 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Space colonies—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / General. | GSAFD: Space operas | Adventure fiction
Classification: LCC PS3623.A35245 B44 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016006484
ISBNs: 978-0-316-30860-1 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-30859-5 (ebook)
E3-20160709-JV-PC