The Thousand Emperors

by Gary Gibson

  She shook her head in dismay. ‘Poor Sevgeny. So the crazy son of a bitch wasn’t really that crazy after all.’

  Luc sighed and slid out from under her, and began to pull his clothes back on. He turned to look at her, still naked, and felt a touch of amazement at what had just taken place between them.

  ‘But where is this Founder Network gate?’

  ‘It’s in the Thorne system, Zelia. Cheng found it while you were still its Director of Policy.’

  Her face grew fractionally paler. ‘Go on.’

  ‘After you were replaced by Ariadna Placet, she figured out there was a cover-up, and was murdered on Cheng’s direct orders to stop her telling anyone else.’

  Zelia stared at him, clearly outraged. Luc finished dressing, then heard a thump as she picked up one of her boots and threw it towards a wall. It bounced back, somersaulting through the air before rebounding from the ceiling.

  Luc reached out and managed to catch it, handing it back to her.

  ‘I hope you weren’t throwing that at me,’ he said, ‘because if you were, you’re a lousy shot.’

  ‘All right,’ she said at last, her voice flat, ‘I believe you. I don’t want to, but I do. Except there’s one thing that doesn’t make much sense to me – if Cheng really had access to the Founder Network for all this time, why bother sending agents to the Coalition to recover Founder artefacts, if he can just go and get them at the source? And after going all that way, how’s he going to bring them back to . . .’

  She halted and looked at him, then closed her eyes. ‘The new transfer gate.’

  ‘That’s just about the only reason he agreed to let the Coalition bring the transfer gate here,’ Luc confirmed. ‘As for why he’s sending agents to Darwin, the part of the Network he’s been able to access was cleared out long ago by some other long-gone race. He hasn’t been able to find anything he could use as a weapon.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Zelia. ‘Cheng’s data-cache told you all this?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said triumphantly. ‘But Cheng didn’t place it here – Cripps did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maxwell told me before he died that some of the Eighty-Five sometimes hid sensitive or incriminating information in his library, against the day that Cheng might turn against them. Cripps is Cheng’s right-hand man, but I think he knew the day might come when he knew too much for Cheng to want to keep him alive. He placed the data-cache here, without Cheng’s knowledge, against the day he could use it for a bargaining chip. But he wasn’t quite clever enough.’

  ‘Meaning, Antonov found out about it?’

  Luc nodded. ‘The cache might have self-deleted once I’d accessed it, but the evidence is still around, even if it is locked up inside my head. When Cheng first sent those agents to Darwin, it was only intended to be a backup plan in case his reconnaissance teams failed to find an appropriate weapon inside the Founder Network.’

  ‘But he never did find anything, so now the backup plan is the main plan.’

  ‘Which works out better for Cheng, since this way he can lay the blame for Benares on the Coalition as well as Black Lotus.’

  ‘We need to talk to Ambassador Sachs,’ she said, suddenly decisive, ‘and tell him everything you just told me. Maybe his own people can find some way to stop this from their side of the gate.’

  Luc recalled childhood nightmares, of witnessing Benares consumed by flames. He had decided not to tell her what else he had discovered; that everything Antonov and, later, Maxwell had told him was true – Cheng really had ordered the Benares raid that changed his life, in order to discredit Black Lotus.

  And now, with Antonov out of the way, there was nothing to stop Cheng from delivering the final coup de grâce to a world that had offered nothing but resistance since the beginning of his rule.

  ‘The only problem,’ he said, ‘is that we don’t know whether one of Cheng’s agents hasn’t already brought an artefact back from Darwin.’

  Zelia nodded, as if to herself. ‘Perhaps I should go and find Cripps and ask him that question myself.’

  ‘What? How could you—’

  ‘Just leave it to me,’ she snapped, a wild look in her eyes. ‘That man’s had a reckoning coming to him for a long, long time, and I want to be the one who finally gets to deliver it to him.’

  She got up and started to pull on her own clothes.

  ‘Listen,’ said Luc, suddenly feeling awkward. ‘I . . .’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she replied without meeting his eyes. ‘It was just something that happened. Besides . . . it wasn’t really about you.’

  ‘It was about Antonov.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘maybe you should stay up here on this station until it’s all over. There’s air, and even if there’s not enough food, I can send another flier with supplies up to you. At least until all the fighting is over.’

  ‘No, Zelia. I’m not going to let you cut me out of the picture again.’

  Her face coloured. ‘Damn it, Luc, don’t you understand? This isn’t your war any more. Whatever Cheng or Cripps have done, you still serve the Council, and that includes me. Wait here until it’s safe for you to pass through the Hall of Gates, then let me and the rest of the Council take care of this.’

  ‘And once I’m home, what do I do?’ he asked her, ‘wait until I die from another seizure?’

  ‘I told you already I’d help you—’

  ‘No,’ he reminded her, ‘you said you’d try and help me, but I don’t think you have any idea what you’re doing. Antonov told me Ambassador Sachs has some way to save both of us. I’m going to find the Ambassador and tell him everything I just told you, and maybe this time he will help me.’

  De Almeida looked more tired than angry when she next spoke. ‘Damn you, Gabion—’

  He stared at her adamantly. Her nostrils flared, and for a moment he thought she might do something, perhaps attack him or hit him or, worse, order her mechant to do it for her. But in the next moment something changed in her demeanour, as if all the fight had gone out of her. For a moment, she looked all of her many, many years.

  ‘Then go find Sachs, if you must,’ she said, her tone weary. ‘Do you even know where to look?’

  Luc checked. ‘If things are as bad as you say they are down there, I’m going to guess he’s probably back on the Sequoia. And you?’

  ‘I’ll take a look at the list of Tian Di envoys who’ve travelled back through the transfer gate from Darwin. It’s possible one of them could have brought something back they weren’t supposed to.’

  ‘What happened to you, Zelia?’ Luc asked her. ‘You, and the rest of the Council. What went wrong?’

  ‘Hang around a couple more centuries,’ she said, ‘and you can answer the question yourself.’

  Luc turned away from her then, making his way back through the station to the flier that had brought him there.

  TWENTY

  Any nagging doubts Luc had about the Coalition Ambassador’s location slipped away once he arrived in the vicinity of the Sequoia, and found it under attack from Sandoz forces.

  An image of the Sequoia floated before him in the cockpit of his flier, rendered in real-time. One of its several domed arboretums dotted around its exterior had been torn open and exposed to vacuum, and as a result a glittering halo of debris and frozen atmosphere now surrounded the station, while here and there attack-pods of Sandoz design had locked onto the hull like so many fat metal leeches.

  Something shot out of the darkness as Luc watched, striking the station’s primary hub and sending more glittering fragments spinning outwards. A dark shape silhouetted against the planet below proved, upon magnification, to be a Sandoz orbital platform, emitting a steady stream of heavily armed mechants making their way across the intervening gap.

  Luc watched all of this with a terrible sinking feeling, debating whether it might be wiser to turn back.
But if he could see the Sandoz forces attacking the Sequoia, then they undoubtedly could see his flier decelerating towards the station on an approach vector. Even if he chose to turn back, by the time he managed to accelerate away they would already be on his tail, and the chase would be as good as over.

  That left him with only one choice: to go forward. He maintained his course, despite the awful tightness in his throat, and the growing conviction that at any moment kinetic slugs would rip his little craft to shreds.

  In the last moments before the flier finally docked with the Sequoia, Luc allowed himself to believe he might actually escape the assault unharmed. He was rewarded with a stream of fire that scored the flier’s hull, shattering most of its external sensors.

  For several seconds more than was good for his mental health, Luc found himself cut off from the outside world, unable to verify if the craft had even made it to the relative safety of the station’s dock. Then the emergency systems activated, and the flier informed him in cool machine tones that the external air pressure had equalized, and he could now disembark.

  On exiting the flier, he briefly surveyed its cracked and burned hull with dismay. He didn’t need an expert to tell him it would very likely disintegrate if he tried using it to escape back down to Vanaheim’s surface. If he was ever going to get back off the Sequoia again, he’d have to find some other mode of transport.

  On the other hand, if the Ambassador was hiding somewhere on the Sequoia, there must be a second flier somewhere. He made haste, exiting the dock and moving down the station’s long, central hub as fast as he was able.

  Luc didn’t get far before a low, rattling boom travelled the length of the hub. After a moment, he found himself drifting slowly to one wall. Whatever had just hit the Sequoia had pushed it into a slow spin that he suspected was outside of its design limitations.

  His bowels turned to water when the walls and bulkheads around him screamed in protest, and he felt the irrational yet nearly overwhelming urge to turn back. But after another minute the station’s gyroscopic systems appeared to reassert themselves, halting the spin. He pushed on, travelling along the length of the hub with the help of rungs embedded into its cylindrical walls.

  A thin wail echoed down the hub, and a breeze tugged at him. Grabbing onto a rung, he realized it was getting harder to breathe. Up ahead, he saw an emergency pressure-field pop into existence.

  And flicker out again.

  And back again.

  Clearly, the station was in bad need of maintenance.

  In that same moment, several mechants, all with Sandoz livery, came rocketing out of a side passageway. Luc froze for a moment, then looked around for some kind of hiding place.

  More mechants came hurtling after the first group, these ones lacking markings of any kind. They engaged the Sandoz mechants in a blur of clashing steel and directed-energy fire.

  Luc scrambled for the meagre shelter of a flange that joined two sections of the hub, then cautiously peered over the top of the flange, watching through splayed fingers as the carapace of a Sandoz mechant turned first orange, then white, before exploding messily and sending molten steel and plastic spraying in all directions. He ducked back down, squeezing his eyes shut.

  The next time he looked, Ambassador Sachs had appeared from the side passageway. Most of the Sandoz mechants had been destroyed, but the remainder appeared to sight Luc when he popped his head up, accelerating towards him.

  Then something very remarkable happened.

  One of the Sandoz mechants aiming straight towards Luc halted abruptly, its limbs weaving spastically for a moment before it began to drift, out of control, striking the flange behind which Luc hid before rebounding and drifting back towards the centre of the hub.

  The same thing happened within moments to each of the two other surviving Sandoz mechants. They span out of control, apparently lifeless.

  Luc stared over at the Ambassador, who gestured to him to come out of hiding. His unmarked mechants set about finishing off the enemy machines with their energy weapons.

  Somehow, Luc knew Sachs had stopped the mechants with his lattice. He wondered if anyone in the Tian Di realized just how powerful the Ambassador apparently was.

  ‘Over here, Mr Gabion,’ Sachs called to him, his voice sounding thin and far away, as if he was shouting to Luc across mountaintops. The malfunctioning pressure-field continued to flicker on and off further down the hub.

  Luc didn’t need any more encouragement and kicked himself across the hub, black dots swimming at the edges of his vision as he struggled for breath. He grabbed onto a handhold and pulled himself inside the passageway, following the Ambassador as he turned, passing through yet another pressure-field.

  Suddenly Luc’s lungs were filled with moist, scented air. The Ambassador’s mechants followed them through the pressure-field moments before heavy doors swung into place behind them, blocking access to the hub.

  Luc slumped against the side of the passageway, almost drunk on oxygen, while Ambassador Sachs regarded him from nearby, one gloved hand casually slung through a wall-rung.

  ‘Mr Gabion,’ the Ambassador said with wry humour, ‘we hope this wasn’t just a social call, because your timing is terrible.’

  Luc followed Sachs along the passageway and into one of the arboretums with feelings of deep trepidation. These feelings only increased when he saw through its streaked and filthy transparent panes the battle that still raged beyond the fragile dome. He followed the Ambassador over to a low stone bench near the centre of the dome, where tall ferns spread broad leaves above their heads.

  ‘Why the hell do you want to talk here?’ Luc yelled after him. ‘One of the other domes is already cracked open and you’re losing atmosphere all over the station. If the Sandoz target this dome, we’re dead!’

  At first, instead of responding, Sachs turned to face him, pushing back his hood to reveal a close-shaven skull. Then he pinched the front of his mask with two fingers, deftly peeling it away to reveal a mouth that was little more than a lipless line below a pair of indents where a nose should have been. His eyes were wide, and entirely black. Luc stared back at him in shock.

  ‘Contrary to appearances,’ said Sachs, ‘we are quite human. This body is optimized for survival, and can function in vacuum for short periods if required. In answer to your question, it is our belief the Sandoz forces are intent on capture rather than execution. That is why they are being so cautious.’

  Luc laughed weakly. ‘You call what happened back there cautious?’

  ‘They could have destroyed this station in seconds,’ the Ambassador pointed out, ‘something they have manifestly not chosen to do. And that other arboretum was accidentally destroyed by one of our own mechants during an exchange of fire.’

  This is crazy, Luc wanted to yell, but managed to hold it back.

  ‘All right,’ he said instead, ‘then you should be aware that I know you visited Javier Maxwell in his prison, because I visited him there myself not long after. I learned more about what’s been going on than I ever wanted to.’

  The Ambassador regarded him with surprise. ‘How did you know we were there?’

  ‘By keeping a close eye on you after my previous visit here. When you disappeared from Zelia’s surveillance networks, we realized the nearest thing to your last known location was Maxwell’s prison.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ the Ambassador conceded. ‘We assume you want to know what we were doing there.’

  ‘I already have a pretty good idea what. I know Vasili was killed because he’d found out about Cheng’s secret entrance into the Founder Network.’

  ‘And how did you come by this information?’

  Reaching inside his jacket, Luc withdrew one of the two books, holding it up before the Ambassador.

  ‘Ah,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘We should have guessed. But why bother coming all this way, just to tell us things we already know?’

  ‘Because there’s still something I don’t unde
rstand. Whether or not Cheng was exploring the Founder Network, that in itself still isn’t sufficient reason for the Coalition to threaten war against the Tian Di. So what is the reason?’

  A dull boom directly overhead made them both look up at the same time. Luc could just make out something with multiple arms pressed up against the dome’s exterior, twisting around as it engaged at close quarters with a second mechant. The two machines suddenly pulled apart, and for a moment Luc almost imagined they were caught in some complicated dance.

  A moment later one of the mechants darted away, disappearing from view in a flash. The second mechant launched itself away from the dome in the next moment, presumably giving chase.

  The Ambassador brought his gaze back down to Luc. ‘We see no reason why we should discuss confidential affairs of state with a member of what is, as you yourself pointed out on your last visit, an enemy civilization.’

  ‘I can give you something in return,’ said Luc. ‘Something you don’t know.’

  ‘A moment,’ said the Ambassador, who then gazed blankly over Luc’s shoulder. He sat like this, unblinking, for several seconds, then returned his gaze to Luc. ‘We agree to your proposal, but request that you share your information first.’

  ‘And then you’ll answer my question?’

  ‘That depends on the usefulness of your information.’

  ‘All right,’ said Luc. ‘Cheng sent agents to the Coalition, to retrieve some kind of artefact your people recovered from your part of the Founder Network, and they’re going to try and bring that artefact back through the Darwin–Temur gate, assuming they haven’t done so already. I can’t tell you anyone’s name, or anything like that, but whatever it is Cheng sent them to look for is a planet-killer, the same kind of thing that brought about the Abandonment.’

  ‘And you learned this from where?’

  ‘Your turn,’ said Luc.

  He waited, and the Ambassador’s shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.

  ‘Well?’ Luc demanded. ‘Or did you already know everything we just told you?’

  ‘No, we didn’t, Mr Gabion. Although it makes sense of certain recent events back on Darwin.’