“Are there any more in the Imperial Palace or Imperial City, Ms. Schneider?” Drake asked.
“Yes, Sire. We haven’t moved against any of them yet, depending on what you want to do. We wouldn’t want to warn Nekrasov or Shubin we have tracked the ring.”
Drake nodded.
“Good. Excellent work, Ms. Schneider.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
“I’ll be back in touch, Ms. Schneider, when the time is right to move against these others.”
“Very well, Sire.”
Drake cut the channel.
Back in the private living room of the Imperial Residence, Drake asked Burke and Ardmore what they thought he should do next.
“I think it’s time to call our friend Tom, Sire,” Burke said.
The Counterattack
Thomas Pitney accepted the meeting invitation from Drake immediately. It was mid-morning in the Mondari Alps and he was up and about. Pitney checked and saw it was late afternoon in Imperial City.
“Good afternoon, Your Majesty.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pitney. I have an assignment for you. Three days ago, a rifle team got into the Imperial Residence and tried to kill me and my successors. They killed four Imperial Guardsman. The attack was thwarted, and the attackers were all killed. We have tracked down who was paying them, and we need to show people this is unacceptable behavior.”
“I understand, Sire.”
Drake pushed across two Imperial death warrants.
“You are to execute Odessa resident Vladimir Nekrasov and Odessa Sector Governor Piotr Shubin, Mr. Pitney. You can kill Nekrasov first in some accidental or medical way to avoid alerting Shubin, but Shubin’s death needs to be very publicly not an accident.”
“I understand, Sire. Concerns about collateral damage?”
“If they’re associates or familiars, Mr. Pitney, I don’t care.”
“Very well, Sire.”
“Will there be any problem carrying out this assignment, Mr. Pitney?”
Odessa is where Pitney had sent Troy Donahue.
“No, Sire.”
“Very well. That is all, Mr. Pitney.”
Drake cut the connection.
“Donnelly,” Donahue said.
“Gilley here,” Pitney said.
“Yeah. Whatcha got?”
“Two fellows who need to be dead. They tried to off the Emperor, and killed four Imperial Guardsmen failing at it.”
Pitney held up the two Imperial death warrants.
“OK.”
“Vladimir Nekrasov is one. Spymaster. Masquerades as a business man. He’s the henchman of Piotr Shubin.”
“Who’s the other guy?” Donahue asked.
“Piotr Shubin.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Pitney said. “People are kind of annoyed with him. You can do Nekrasov first if you want, and have it be an accident or sudden health issue or something, but Shubin’s gotta be splashy.”
“Understood. Better be Nekrasov first then. If Shubin’s first, and it’s obvious and messy, Nekrasov’s gonna disappear.”
“That’s what I figure. But it’s all up to you. How, when, whatever. Collateral damage, if it’s associates and familiars, we don’t care.”
“OK,” Donahue said.
“Oh, and don’t get caught.”
Donahue made a face at Pitney.
“Hey. I’m just sayin’,” Pitney said.
“All right. I got it.”
“See ya.”
Donahue started researching his two targets. Where they went, when, how they traveled. In the immediate aftermath of the failed assassination attempt, he expected them to be laying low, but they weren’t. Probably feeling all secure in their cutouts or whatever. Or maybe they figured if they changed their habits suddenly, it would signal they were guilty.
For whatever reason, they continued their habits unchanged, as near as he could determine. This actually wasn’t going to be that hard.
He watched them for a couple weeks, then moved on Nekrasov.
Vladimir Nekrasov was a big man, in his late fifties, who obviously enjoyed the good life. Beautiful tailored suits and large jewelry combined with his girth to say he was successful, the sort of person who could have what he wanted. He lived in the most expensive condominium building downtown, ate at the best restaurants, and flaunted his wealth.
On Friday nights, he ate at City Lights, a restaurant on the top floor of the Imperial Hotel in downtown Voronezh. He sat at the best table – of course – and was accompanied by two beautiful young women – also of course.
At the end of a sumptuous meal, and looking forward to a night of debauchery ahead, Nekrasov signaled his car to come around to the front of the hotel. He and his companions for the evening got on the elevator to go down to street level. A handsome young man, perhaps in his mid thirties, caught the elevator at the last second. He nodded to his elevator companions and then turned and faced the doors in front of him.
The elevator stopped at several floors on the way down, and more people got on. As the elevator got more crowded, and people pushed back, the handsome young man was jostled against Nekrasov. The pulse injector Donahue had taped to his forearm juiced Nekrasov in the thigh with the same fast-acting, fast-decaying poison he had used on Mort Baker in Heidelberg some months before.
Nekrasov cried out, then clutched at his heart before collapsing on the floor. The young women screamed. The handsome young man turned, curious, to see what was going on. The elevator made its stop on the ground floor and people hurried out of the elevator car, not wanting to be delayed in their evening activities by whatever human tragedy was playing out in the elevator. The handsome young man, too, was swept out in the rush.
Donahue ditched the pulse injector as well as the handsome young man image before returning to his hotel. It was a typical tired middle-aged businessman who walked across the lobby to the elevator bank in the Capital Tower Hotel later that evening. The change was little more than posture, attitude, and a change of tie. People saw what they expected to see.
“Dammit, I told Vladimir there’s only so much eating, drinking, and fucking you can do before it catches up to you,” Odessa Sector Governor Piotr Shubin said. “His nanites couldn’t keep up with his lifestyle.”
The autopsy had found a high blood alcohol level, as well as the presence of a drug said to improve sexual performance in his bloodstream. He had also just eaten a heavy meal. Between his overweight, the drug, the alcohol, and the heavy meal, his heart had said, ‘Enough.’ The conclusion was death by natural causes, due to his overweight condition and his alcohol and drug abuse.
“What do we do now, sir?” his chief of staff asked.
“We’re going to have to see if one of his lieutenants can pick up his activities. Sonuvabitch. Why did it have to be now, with everything else going on?”
“Stress was probably a contributing factor, sir.”
“I suppose.”
Shubin shook his head.
“Poor Vladimir. Well, I warned you, you dumb bastard.”
Shubin sighed.
“Are we ready for the trip out to the country house?”
“Yes, sir. We’re all packed. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Good. I need to get out of the city for a while. This place is driving me crazy.”
Shubin’s security wasn’t as tight as it should be, Donahue reflected. He did use three identical armored cars when he moved from his city house to the country house for the weekend, to hide which car he was in. He also turned off his VR system. He did not use a VR suppressor, though, and military sensors could pick up an idle VR system, though not at quite the range of an active one. It meant Donahue had to be close.
He also used the same route every trip. That made Donahue cluck his tongue and shake his head. That was rookie stuff. Perhaps he thought the armored car would protect him.
The ancestor of the modern rocket-propelled grenade was an ancient weapon, dating back to the Panzerfaust of
the German Army during the second half of the Great War of the twentieth century. That was a ballistic projectile, but later rocket-propelled designs were similar.
Modern RPGs had much longer range and greater penetration than their ancestors and were the bane of such armored vehicles as the APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) and M15 main battle tank of the Imperial Marines.
An armored limousine presented no obstacle to such a weapon.
The motorcade slowed for the corner where they made the turn onto the highway leading out of downtown and toward Shubin’s country estate. Detecting which car hid the sector governor and his inactive VR system, then hitting that car with the RPG, would be much simpler when the motorcade slowed for the corner.
The motorcade came down the side street, slowing for the corner. They didn’t have to stop, because the police had stopped traffic at intersections along the route. Donahue waited in the dark side street across from the oncoming motorcade. The street light that would have lit his location was shot out by some punk – actually Donahue – the night before. It usually took city maintenance workers a couple days to repair such vandalism.
“There you are,” Donahue said as the locator showed him the inactive VR systems of Shubin and his three companions this evening.
The RPG shot out from the darkened side street and caught the first of the three armored limousines in the rear passenger door. A one-inch-diameter jet of molten copper shot through the side door of the limo and splashed over everything and everybody inside.
The big car coasted to a stop and caught fire, but the five occupants – Shubin, his wife, his son, his chief of staff, and his driver – were already dead.
The police motorcycle escort in the rear of the motorcade veered off down the side street looking for the attacker. They found the launch tube for the RPG, but they didn’t have the proper equipment for an infrared imaging search, and the attacker had simply disappeared.
Donahue’s report to the Department was brief: ‘Mission accomplished.’
The Imperial Palace issued a terse press release.
PRESS RELEASE
– For Immediate Release –
IMPERIAL PALACE – The Emperor Augustus VI issued Imperial Death Warrants against Odessa Sector Governor Piotr Shubin and an assistant, Vladimir Nekrasov, for an attack on the Imperial Palace last month that left four Imperial Guardsmen dead. Both death warrants have been executed.
The seven remaining de facto leaders of the sector governors were meeting in VR.
“Well, we wondered what His Majesty would do if Piotr struck against him,” Gaskin said. “Now we know.”
“There is an old saying that if one is going to strike at the king, one had better be successful,” von Hesse said.
“An RPG to his armored limousine,” Porter said, and shuddered. “That’s pretty extreme.”
“At least it’s quick,” Smith said.
“This press release is pretty terse,” Karlsson said. “I wonder what happened with the attack on the Palace. We didn’t really hear any detail about it.”
“The guy in the Imperial Press Office has a sense of humor, though,” Conway said. “’Both death warrants have been executed.’ Nice double-entendre there.”
“I hardly think this is a time for levity, Norm,” von Hesse said.
“Why not?” Conway asked. “If you can’t laugh at a fool getting what he deserves, who can you laugh at? It’s not like you didn’t warn him.”
“Indeed I did,” von Hesse said. “And now we have a sector governor opening. Any ideas there?”
“His son was killed, too,” Porter said. “I wonder how much that was part of the plan and how much it was just dumb luck.”
“Yes, so it isn’t a matter of simply nominating the next in line,” Gaskin said. “That was his only son.”
“Grandson, perhaps?” Karlsson asked.
“He’s ten years old,” Gaskin said.
“What about Provincial Governor Nikolai Golubkin?” Smith asked. “I think he would suit our purposes.”
“Yes, I think he’s pretty good,” Conway said.
“Are we agreed, then?” von Hesse asked.
There were nods around the table.
“Very well. I will send our nomination on to His Majesty.”
Ardmore, Burke, and Drake were at breakfast in the Imperial Residence. Things had settled down quite a bit since the attack.
Housekeeping had removed all the flechettes from the walls, and replaced the furniture and carpeting in the elevator lobby and part of the hallway. They had also repaired the walls and replaced the doors Burke had shot through during the attack.
There were new pieces of furniture in the hallway, large and heavy enough to give cover to Imperial Guardsmen if needed. Some of them had steel plates installed on the elevator-lobby side to insure cover rather than mere concealment. They also held hidden cabinets in the other side, with VR locks accessible to the Guard, which held M55s, magazines, and drones.
The Emperor had resumed going in to the office four floors below during the business day.
“Now we have a sector governor opening to fill,” Drake said. “How should we proceed with that? The sector governors are likely to send me a nomination for the position.”
“I think now is a good time to break that little tradition as well, Jonah,” Burke said. “They’re unlikely to argue with you this month.”
Ardmore nodded.
“Agreed. I have found evidence in the Emperor’s records there was a program, written by the new ideas group during the reign of Trajan, that analyzed data about provincial and planetary governors and provided a list of people likely to be successful from the Emperor’s point of view.”
“Excellent, Jimmy. I’ll set Mr. Pestov the task of tracking that down.”
“Yuri, we’ve found the program,” said Olivia Darden, the head of the Zoo. “That’s not a problem. The issue is it works against a database of the personality and biographical characteristics of each of the provincial and planetary governors. There’s over half a million people to go into that.”
“How much of that can be done by an automated search of Imperial records, Olivia?”
“About half. The program actually includes that part of it. We ran it and have our database seeded with all that already.”
“Excellent,” Pestov said. “I think His Majesty’s immediate purpose is to find an appropriate person for Odessa Sector Governor, and that is almost surely a provincial governor. Let’s completely fill out the two thousand or so entries for the current provincial governors and get His Majesty a recommendation for Odessa.”
“All right, Yuri. And the planetary governors?”
“We can make that a longer-term project. I would think we should do the planetary governors of sector and provincial capitals first, then take the rest in order of population, biggest first.”
Darden nodded.
“We can probably leave out those over seventy years old as well,” she said. “They’re unlikely to be appointed to a new post.”
“I agree with that, Olivia. So let’s do it that way.”
“All right, Yuri. We’re on it.”
Ardmore, Burke, and Drake were at lunch in the Imperial Residence.
“The new ideas group has come back with their ranked listing of candidates for the Odessa Sector Governor position,” Drake said.
“How do they look?” Burke asked.
“Really good, actually. None from Odessa sector, naturally. Over the years, Shubin had replaced all the provincial governors with his acolytes.”
“Did the sector governors nominate a candidate, Jonah?” Ardmore asked.
“Yes, Jimmy. I got a note from Manfred von Hesse nominating one of Shubin’s provincial governors. The worst one, of course, from my point of view, anyway.”
“How did you respond to that, Jonah?” Burke asked.
“Tersely,” Drake said.
“’I do not require your assistance in carrying out my Imperial
duties,’” Conway read von Hesse’s push of the Emperor’s message aloud. “Well, he’s not mincing words.”
“Who did he appoint?” Gaskin asked.
“We just got news he named Greta Feick to the position,” von Hesse said.
“Oh, God,” Conway said.
“What are you complaining about, Norm?” Karlsson asked. “That gets her out of your hair, and it gives you a provincial governor opening to fill.”
“The Emperor has a veto over my choice,” Conway said. “What are the chances he would approve anybody I would want to appoint?”
“Slim to none, based on his choice of Feick for Odessa,” Gaskin said.
“Actually, you might ask him for recommendations, Norm,” von Hesse said.
“Really?” Conway asked.
“Of course,” von Hesse said. “I for one am very unlikely to want to irritate His Majesty for the next several months.”
Von Hesse looked around the table, then back at Conway.
“He doesn’t seem to be in the mood for it.”
The Competition
When Ardmore had uncovered that all the best recent graduates they might consider for forming a technology consulting group were being gobbled up by Galactic Holdings, Drake had talked to Franz Becker. The Emperor had ended up hiring three of Galactic Holdings internal groups to work on secret projects. Becker had recommended them as the best, most intellectually agile, groups he had.
They had set the teams in competition with each other on a single question: If the Emperor and one group of sector governors went to war with another group of sector governors to impose Imperial authority on rebellious factions, how would that war be fought? What weapons would one use? What new weapons could be developed for the purpose?
They had been working on the problem for over two years.
Becker had not actively managed them, had not, in fact, managed them at all. He had set them the problem as their only assignment and let them go. Ultimately the time came to hear presentations from them about their progress and their proposals. Becker alone was their audience, at least as far as the presenters were concerned.
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