Empire's End

by Chris Bunch

Chapter Thirty-Three

  THIS is ANOTHER fine fix you've gotten me into, Sten. Here I was, Cind thought, a nice, innocent young sniper. All I ever needed was a bit of adrenaline every now and then when a bullet came too close, a chance to prove I could outsneak whoever sent that bullet in my general direction, and perhaps a small medal and a bonus for encouraging that being on to the next metensomatosis.

  But no. Sten had to come along and encourage me to larger endeavors. Shouting charge, and letting other people go out there and find out if the enemy believes in reincarnation. Sneak down dark alleys that have an absence of the rules of land warfare but a strong presence of thuggery. Declare intent of treason to history's most powerful ruler. Spy, cheat, steal, and assassinate, down in the muck and the mire.

  Tsk, she thought.

  All because you looked at that reputed demigod of a war chief and thought he looked lonely and had a nice butt.

  However, there were, she realized, preening slightly in the mirror, some compensatory factors in irregular warfare.

  Such as the way she looked at the moment. Nose to toes, she oozed wealth from every centimeter. All her clothes and accessories had been custom-made after her surreptitious landing in a city halfway across the world of Prestonpas.

  Kilgour had told her, when you're playing a role, become it, from the mind out. So I settled for the skin out, she thought. Four months' pay for what Sten would, being a man, probably admire as a nice, simple little outfit and pay little real attention to. And as far as the skin? She'd indulged herself with a complete derm treatment, massage, and hairstyling. She noted with amusement that even though her military close-crop didn't give the stylist much room to create, it hadn't affected the size of his bill. But that was one of the prices of being a richbitch.

  Cind lifted her rented Stewart/Henry sporter from where it'd been parked out of the mansion's line of sight, and headed for the entrance to the gates.

  This being rich, she thought—smelling the sporter's creature-hide seats and admiring the hand-rubbed interior of what appeared to be real wood—could become addictive.

  Although there were drawbacks, she admitted. Such as the tiny purse beside her. Once you put in your com, some necessary tools, a recorder, and a handgun, there wasn't room for anything else, really. She guessed one reason the very rich surrounded themselves with retainers was to have someone carry the makeup kit and the gravcar keys.

  She grounded the gravcar in front of the mansion's closed gates. Heavy steel, with stone portals. The annunciator on the post beside it lit.

  "May we be of assistance?"

  "Brett of Mowatt," she said. "Plath Architectural Society. I am expected."

  "We welcome you," the voice smoothed. "Please proceed directly to the main entrance. Someone will be waiting."

  The gates opened, and she sent the gravcar down the long, winding gravelled road, past the freshly polished sign that read SHAHRYAR, past manicured lawns, past perfect topiary, past stone fountains, to the great rearing mansion in the middle of the estate.

  She marveled.

  Not the least of her marvel was the knowledge that this was one of the Eternal Emperor's connecting points. Kyes's computer data, and Mahoney's limited information, said this mansion, and others like it, were dotted around the universe, to serve one purpose and only one:

  When the Eternal Emperor "rose from the dead"—and she shivered slightly, not believing in but still remembering Bhor legends of those who'd passed beyond life—this mansion would be his first stop. Here, assuming Kyes's analysis was correct, he would be brought current with whatever had happened in the Empire during the years since his death/assassination.

  A further marvel to her, and this one in anger, was that once the Emperor felt himself properly briefed, he would leave the mansion—and it would be razed to the ground. What a bastard, she thought. So what if the grounds would be donated to the locals as a park? Sarla, it's just like what Sten told me the clot's done to the province of Oregon on Earth. Okay, everybody away from the river. Abandon your homes, your businesses, your lives. Here. Take money, and don't bother the Emperor. He wants to go fishing.

  She turned her mind back to the task at hand.

  Finding this station, given the initial data, had not been that difficult. Profile: a constantly staffed mansion or its equivalent that purportedly belonged to a family/someone who seldom used it. Yet the mansion would be equipped with a state-of-the-art library computer and personnel, and would receive almost every techno/military/scientific publication.

  Interesting, Cind thought, and the basic thinking is worth study. This is an almost-totally-secure path he's designed. Secure because, just as Alex has said, no one looks at the rich too closely. He said that Ian Mahoney had put it best: "You want to run a safehouse, run a drop, have a team on standby—or anything else nefarious? You don't find a warehouse in the slum, unless you're an amateur or a criminal. Find yourself a nice, rich, bohemian, if possible, neighborhood, where nobody knows or cares who's coming or going…"

  That gave total security. It was totally secure because, to consider the possibility of something like this mansion even existing, you have to accept the premise that a dead man can come back.

  This was only the third mansion that had come close to Cind's profile, and, whereas the first two had a prob of less than 50 percent, this one touched 93 percent. The cover story was—and it was a curiosa item every now and then on the Prestonpas livies—the Shahryar family were ex-traders, who were eccentrically devoted to wandering ways. They would buy an estate on some world they had only heard about, fully equip it, and maybe not visit it for a generation or even longer. And when—or if—they visited it, they would demand complete secrecy.

  A woman was waiting for Cind outside the huge entrance to the central house. Either the portal was counterbalanced or else the woman had a Bhor or a heavy-worlder on standby just to open and shut the clotting thing, Cind thought. The woman, Ms. Analiza Ochio, as expected from Kyes's analysis, was the estate's librarian. She would be an innocent, absolutely believing the Shahryar cover story, and had been recruited for her technical skills, her liking for a semisolitary life, and probably a certain naivete.

  She was familiar with the Plath Institute and its fiches. Would, umm, what is the correct way to refer to you, m'lady?

  "Just Brett." Cind smiled. "Titles are something that get you a better table at an overpriced restaurant, and that's it. Sometimes."

  Ms. Ochio, asked her in. Refreshments? Of course. We have almost everything. It may be a solitary life, but it's a very comfortable one. Perhaps some caff. No, I had lunch before I left my hotel. They chatted for a while, then:

  Now, if you'll give me the details, Brett? I'm very curious as to what your interest is in this estate.

  Cind explained. The newest series Plath was publishing was to be on the residents of the fabulously wealthy. Not just the flash and filigree of how large the dining hall is, or how many worlds the crystalline chandelier came from, or what rare mineral the swimming pool is surfaced with—although that will be in them, and probably what will make the hoi polloi buy the fiches—but how practical are these grand palaces? Each fiche would contain not only a full floor plan, but livie-portrayals of each room. On a B-track, the occupants or staff of the mansion would discuss how well planned and laid out the mansion was, and on a C-track, one of Plath's resident architects would provide an analysis.

  Ms. Ochio's smile had vanished.

  "Every room?"

  "Well," Cind said, "I don't think we would be interested in all the bathrooms, unless they're something unique."

  "Sorrow," the woman said. "That just won't be possible. The grounds… some of the outbuildings… the first and most of the second floor, and the library are quite open. We had one of the local garden societies tour a portion of the house just three weeks gone. You would be welcome to record them.

  "But the rest of the building, particularly the residential areas upstairs? No. The Shahryar family
is very protective of their privacy, I was told when I accepted my contract, and was given quite explicit instructions. So… if those are your plans, I fear you may have wasted your trip."

  "Could you communicate with the family? To make sure?" Cind asked. "Oh yes. I forgot. Most reclusive. Oh well. Thank the powers I'm not working on piece rates."

  She stood.

  "Might I refresh myself? Then, perhaps, you'll show me, just for my own personal curiosity, the parts of the house that the public is allowed to see?"

  "Pleasure. The facilities are just beyond the library doors," Ms. Ochio said.

  Cind opened the door and stepped through. As she did, she flicked a small object back, onto the table, in front of the librarian, closed her eyes, and ducked, shielding her face against the blueflash.

  Ochio had time to puzzle at the tiny ovoid—and then the bester grenade went off. She slumped. Two E-hours would pass before she came back to the world, completely unaware of the time loss.

  Cind patted the woman down. No vital-signs indicator that would set off an alarm—she had bumped Ochio a couple of times entering the room and had been pretty sure she was clean. No com, no panic button, no nothing. Cind dragged her behind one of the sitting room's small couches.

  Two hours .

  Gun out, but half-concealed, she slipped out the door into the great house.

  She looked at the library's doors. Maybe. According to the input on Kyes's computer, gotten from the debriefing of another of the Emperor's librarians, there'd be two sysop stations for it. One would be the central station for the library, the other was code-sealed and could access certain unknown files. Files privy to the Emperor-to-be.

  If she had time, and wasn't blown by then, she would take a stab at a little intrusion. But that wasn't the intent of her mission.

  She went up the stairs, ignoring a gravlift for fear it'd alert someone there was an interloper loose in the house, and headed for the top floor. From what Ochio had said, that would be the most likely place for what she wanted.

  There had been nothing on the roof her preliminary overflight suggested might be a 'cast antenna. So it would either be in a room or—she grimaced—tucked away somewhere under the mansion's eaves. Oh well. It would not be the first set of creepy attic critters she'd crawled through. If she still struck out, she would have to chance combing through the outbuildings. Which would mean a good shot at encountering security—in her overflight she'd seen uniformed guards walking the grounds.

  She went through the mansion's top floor in a blur—checking/cover/checking in the blur of a highly trained security specialist. Clear… clear… clear…

  All the rooms appeared quite innocent—furnished as if expecting the momentary arrival of the obviously extended Shahryar family and their equally huge staff of retainers.

  Clean. Bright. Sparkling.

  Cind went in a door, next to a stairwell curve, glanced around—Kholeric, this bedroom's got to be for the third-ranking apprentice scullery maid, and she'd have to be a little person, nothing interesting—and back out…

  She stopped before the door could close.

  Looked up and down the hall. At the stairs. Either whoever had laid this floor out was drunk, or else incompetent. Or else I did even worse at geometry than I thought. Back inside. No—the room was still too tiny for the amount of space it evidently occupied. Or maybe, she thought, this room's intended for somebody with a major anal fixation, because nobody needs a fresher that big.

  The bathroom door was locked. Cind took two of the "nee-essary tools" from her purse. With the first, she swept the door and jamb. The little "bugeater" told her there appeared to be no security monitors on the other side. The second tool went against the pore-pattern "lock"—odd thing to lock the outside of a bathroom. The slimjim hummed, analyzed, and the lock clicked open. Cind pushed the door open. Y-reka.

  The com station was elaborate, and automated. Cind ran through the checklist Freston had dummied up for her and, recorder humming, set to work. Not being a commo specialist, she wasn't sure she was getting what she came for—but the registry/control/tracker for the antenna array, evidently secreted in another part of the house or estate, surely looked as if the com was "aimed" to receive a tightbeam signal from somewhere.

  A somewhere that might be the Emperor's sanctuary.

  She checked the transmitter nearby. It was completely automated, and she was afraid to mess with it. Most likely the transmitter was intended to send out a "Don't come here" to the Emperor-in-transit if the mansion's purpose was exposed.

  She had—she hoped—what she came after. And she'd left no trace, having plas-coated her fingertips and palms so that any dusting would produce no identifiable prints on the few things that she'd actually touched. She relocked the door behind her.

  Now for some cake icing.

  She still had just under an hour, and so far had heard no alarums and excursions from downstairs. If necessary, she could always drop back into the sitting room and blank Ochio for another two hours.

  The antechamber was still deserted. Cind cracked the library doors. The huge gallery rose to an arched, clear skylight/ceiling. Fiches/reels/files and even books were stacked on the shelves that ran from the floor up ten meters to the ceiling. Now this, she thought, is the kind of library Sten would like to have. When this is all over. If this is ever over.

  She looked for life. Nothing.

  Cind went in. Near the door was one sysop station. Ochio's. Now where was the other? The one with all those interesting eyes-only files.

  She spotted cables—cables, which meant someone was very worried about transmission security—that ran out through one wall.

  Cind exited the library and found another unobtrusive room, this one with its wall in common with the library. She popped the door and went in.

  Joy, joy, joy, she thought, looking at the computer station. I don't know what I am doing. When in question/Or in doubt/Run in circles/Hack and shout, and she sat down at the keyboard. A keyboard, for heaven's sakes. And the computer will be coal-fired, and the screen will be monochromatic. They laughed when I…

  She touched a blank key. The screen lit.

  RECEIVING. ENTER CURRENT DATE AND STATION.

  Cind guessed as to the last, and hit keys. The date, and SHAHRYAR.

  SYSOP LOGGED ON. ENTER CLEARANCE.

  Oh clot.

  Uh… Emperor. No. Empire. No. Oh. Wait a minute.

  ENTER CLEARANCE. YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE ALARM.

  The name bubbled up in her mind. Saying a small prayer, she keyed… RASCHID.

  CLEAR. SYSTEM PRIVILEGE GRANTED.

  No way. It could not be this easy. But:

  REQUEST COORDS, TRANSMITTER TO SHAHRYAR RECEIVER. PLEASE WAIT.

  A light began blinking.

  I'm in, she exulted, then, hearing the scuffle of feet outside, rolled out of the chair, and the two security techs burst through the door. They wore gas masks and body armor, and it mattered little as Cind snap-shot them both below their faceplates, and sent two rounds into the lying computer screen, and then dived out the door, bellyfirst.

  She hit, skidded, rolled, and dropped the covering guard beside the door, and shot twice at another one coming down a stairway—dammit, I missed, but I sure whitened your hair, woman.

  Cind, wanting heavier artillery, shoved her pistol in her suit's waistband, grabbed the dead guards' rifle—an Imperial-issue willygun, she noted, and shame on breaking your cover—thumbed the safety down to autofire, and sent a burst shattering the doors into the library.

  And now the alarms were howlingroaringscreaming, and there were shouts, and Cind saw a face peering around a corner. She sent a burst in its general direction, another burst blowing out a huge window, grating, alarm wires and glass and all, and dived through her newly created exit.

  Hell, just like a clotting infil course, she thought, turfing down across a bush, feeling that ultraexpensive suit rip and tear, siderolling down to the ground, burst… b
urst… burst…

  There, that's got them pinned down or at least thinking for a minute; after all, they may be Imperial-trained, but their reflexes are a little slow, and why the clot can't I find the car key.

  She found it, as she slid behind the controls of the Stewart/Henry… POWER ON… GENERATOR TO SPEED… WAITING COOLANT FLOW… Come on, I really don't give a damn if your luxury handbuilt engine cooks off like a teakettle… READY… READY…

  Full lift, full drive, and the passenger door and some of that hand-rubbed dashboard exploded, and the gravcar was airborne, straight ahead, screw the twisty path, for those gates, and she rolled out of the gravcar, three meters in the air, hit turf at twenty kph, rolled a PLF, and was behind some stupid bush carved to look like some clotting animal, and then running, scuttling low, unseen, using every bit of cover.

  The Stewart/Henry flamed, ten meters short of the gate, and about fifteen in the air—bastards must've had some kind of antiaircraft capability in that goddammed gate—and plowed into the manicured lawn.

  The fence… not yet… wait a second, woman…

  Come on, you stupid gravcar…

  The demo charges she had thoughtfully left in the spotter's trunk blew up, sending the stone portals and metal gates pin-wheeling up, around, and then down in a ball of fire.

  Cind blasted the fence's alarm system and the jagged glass it was topped with in an obvious distrust of anything electronic. They'll think it's part of the general defunct-o as everything's hemorrhaging.

  I hope. Up, up, and away.

  Exactly like an infil course, she thought, rifle across the walltop, slither on side, roll down, hit in firing position.

  Nothing to shoot at.

  She doubled away, into the surrounding brushland, grateful that the Emperor not only secured his mansions with a lot of grounds, but had them built way out in the country.

  It would be a three-klick cross-country run to where she had her backup hidden—a bottom-of-the-line utility gravsled bought on the local graymarket.

  She surveyed damage—mission, not costume or scrapes. Negligible, she decided. Since the Emperor and his people were operating on the basis that Sten was dead, and she herself wasn't a known entity to the Empire, or so rebel intelligence indicated, the most logical interpretation was that some high-credit computer criminal had tried a speculative B&Eing. And if someone in Internal Security added things together, and got a worst-case explanation—well, she'd asked Sten about that, and he said it was all to the good if the Eternal Emperor got the idea that some unknown hellhound is on his trail.