by Chris Bunch
In spite of the defense counsels' howls about star chambers, ninety-five percent of the conspirators were found guilty—and treason and attempted regicide were still capital crimes.
Even the acquitted five percent weren't free of the Emperor's vengeance. Just the day before a small item on the vid reported that a recently freed industrialist's yacht had exploded with him aboard… Haines closed down that line of thought. She was contemplating perfection, and to her even Imperially ordered assassination was still murder.
The sun was slowly moving her toward sleep, and she was musing on casually lustful thoughts when a flit hummed nearby. She forced herself awake and up, reaching for a wrap. Then she recognized Sten in the flit and lay back, her thoughts becoming somewhat less casual.
Sten tied up to the houseboat, wandered through the kitchen, fielded a beer, and joined her on the deck.
"How'd it go?" she asked.
"Hell if I know," Sten said. "Better and worse."
"Shed and tell, Captain."
"Uh… well, that's part of the good news. I just got promoted."
"Well pour the bubbly and get naked, Commander." Sten followed orders, stripped, and lay down beside her. He grunted in animal satisfaction. Haines waited as long as she could.
"Come on, Sten. Talk to me!"
The day had, indeed, been better and worse than Sten expected.
After the Normandie returned to Prime, while Sten had been retained as commander of the Gurkhas, he'd actually been detached for special duties, which included the endless appearances in court.
The Gurkhas had been built back up to the strength and were headed by Subadar-Major Chittahang Limbu, even though he was still technically recuperating from his wounds.
Sten had only been in the palace to eat and sleep, and the few hallway encounters he'd had with the Emperor had been worrisomely formal and brief.
Until the day's Imperial summons.
When Sten entered, saluted, and reported, the Emperor had been sitting, completely still, behind his desk.
Long moments passed before he spoke.
Sten had been expecting several things to be said. None of them were right.
"Captain, are you ready to go to war?"
Sten blinked, found that all his potential responses sounded dumb, and stayed silent.
"I will make a prediction, Captain. Ex Cathedra Eyes Only. Within five E-years we will be fighting the Tahn."
The Emperor took slight pity. "At ease, Captain Sten. Sit down."
Sten was somewhat relieved. He didn't figure that the Emperor ever busted somebody out of the service if he allowed the clot to be seated first.
"Well, Captain? Your thoughts?"
Sten was perplexed. Like any professional military man, he truly believed the somewhat contradictory line that a soldier's job is to avoid war.
The Emperor seemed to be slightly prescient. "It's gonna be a bitch when it comes.
"By the way. No way am I wrong. Intelligence says that every Tahn shipyard has converted to warship construction. The Tahn are buying up every particle of AM2 they can get, no matter what the price.
"Also—and I'm keeping this off the vid—there've been a whole clottin' group of skirmishes with my normal patrol ships around the Tahn worlds. Aw hell. Why am I lying to you? Every spy ship I send in they send back full of holes."
The Emperor then took out a flask from his desk. Sten felt slightly more relieved—first sit down and then maybe a drink. Maybe he would keep his captain's bars. "The reason I have been avoiding you, Captain, is that this whole sorry-ass mess is something I've been trying not to think about.
"So anybody who had anything to do with it was on my drakh list, frankly. Being an Emperor means never having to say you're wrong if you want things that way."
He poured into two small metal cups, and Sten recognized the smell of Stregg.
"This stuff gets to you after a while," the Emperor said, but he made no move to offer a cup to Sten. "Remember when we got loaded on Empire Day?"
Sten did.
"Remember what I told you?"
Sten remembered.'
"Well, I took the next step for you." The Emperor took from his desk drawer a set of orders and tossed them on his desk.
"Don't bother reading them now. You're reassigned. Flight school. Oh yeah. By the way. That chubby thug of yours?"
"Sergeant Major Kilgour?"
"Him. You wonder where he is?"
Sten had. Alex had disappeared most mysteriously a month or two earlier.
"Yeah. I lifted him because he was actually applying through channels to get married. To some cop or other.
Clottin' idiot. Neckbreakers like him shouldn't ever get married. Anyway, he's now learning how to make like a big bird, too.
"Also he ain't a sergeant major anymore. I kicked him up to warrant officer. If he's gonna be in the clottin' navy, at least he won't have to put up with their silly class system."
The Emperor picked up and fingered his cup. "Captain, you might want to return to some kind of position of attention."
Sten was standing, locked and rigid in an instant.
"The other thing"—and the Emperor reached into his desk yet again and took out a small blue box—"is you're now a commander. Here's your insignia." He shoved the box across to Sten. "Now, pick up that cup."
Sten obeyed.
"I'm gonna call the toast—it's to you, Commander. Because no way I'll ever see you again."
The Emperor stood. "To your health, Commander Sten!"
To Sten, the Stregg tasted very odd indeed.
Haines was running all this input—less the Emperor's certainty of imminent war, which Sten had not mentioned—as Sten finished his beer, went back into the boat, and got another.
"Another thing I picked up," he went on after he sat. "You're going to get some kind of promotion, too."
But Haines was considering something else. "So you're going to go off and become a junior birdman. When?"
"That's the rest of the good news," Sten said. "It seems, uh, I've come into some money." Ida's illicitly acquired and invested funds had finally caught up with him, and Sten was sitting on more credits than he believed existed.
"Also me and you're on long leave before we report to our new duty stations."
Haines smiled, took a sip of her drink, and then winked. "Hey sailor. You want to fool around?"
Sten started laughing and knelt beside her. She pulled him down, and he felt her breasts and her lips, and then there was nothing but the blinding warmth of the sun itself.
About The Authors
CHRIS BUNCH is a Ranger—an airborne-qualified Vietnam vet—who's written about phenomena as varied as the Hell's Angels, the Rolling Stones, and Ronald Reagan.
ALLAN COLE grew up in the CIA in odd spots like Okinawa, Cyprus, and Taiwan. He's been a professional chef, investigative reporter, and national news editor of a major West Coast daily newspaper. He's won half a dozen writing awards in the process.
BUNCH AND COLE, friends since high school, have collaborated on everything from the world's worst pornographic novel to over seventy-five television scripts, as well as a feature movie. This is their third novel.