Imperial Twilight

by Eric Thomson

  Once back in the privacy of the imperial apartments, Heloise dropped into her accustomed chair, and studied Marta as she removed her tunic, folded it carefully over the sofa’s back, and sat.

  “Amusing as that was, I think you went just a bit too far in exerting your authority over Custis.”

  “If I’m going to be sovereign of this rump kingdom beset from every side and destined for a dismal future, I should take responsibility for the lives of my people, don’t you think?”

  Heloise inclined her head by way of acknowledgment.

  “Just take care Custis doesn’t rue making you his candidate and puts extra effort in finding Corinne.”

  “After publicly naming me? I don’t think he can manage a switch, especially since he made such a big deal about my being a direct descendant of the last pre-Ruggero emperor. Replacing the empress-designate he toasted in front of the sector’s star system rulers with a Ruggero won’t do much for his credibility with the 16th Fleet. I’m sure you noticed Zahar isn’t blindly loyal to our esteemed regent, and he’s already murdered one viceroy. If the admiral sees issues with my directives from a military standpoint, I’m sure he’ll say so. He might not be in full agreement, politically speaking, but I didn’t order him to place his ships and crews at greater risk than they are now. On the contrary.”

  “I don’t disagree. I merely wished to see if you understood the ramifications of your actions in the briefing room earlier.”

  A mocking smile twisted Marta’s lips.

  “What? You don’t trust your star pupil? I’m crushed.”

  “You’re my only pupil at the moment, so I have no basis of comparison to call you a star. But humor me. I’ve lived two lifetimes to your one, based on our respective ages, and seen many a novice let her newfound self-awareness and mental discipline lead her into trouble, particularly if she, just like you, was one of the rare sisters with the ability to reach out and not only receive.

  “It is possible Custis bowed to your will because he accepted your logic, or perhaps he sensed Zahar and the other flag officers thought the plan a better one than scattering their forces and dying by degrees. After all, you alone from those present could call on extensive knowledge of the past to guess what might happen in the future.”

  “True, but I sense you’re about to drop the other shoe.”

  “Only because you’re becoming perceptive. The other possibility is that you may have unconsciously — and this is difficult to describe with mere words — projected your will at Custis and the military officers, overriding their desire to object. The effect would last only while you were in the room. By now, they could be wondering what happened.”

  “Oh.” A thoughtful expression crossed Marta’s face. “Do you think I may have done so?”

  “I don’t know, child. Since I also belong to the one in a thousand with heightened abilities, I’m immune to another’s mental pressures. But at the time, it did seem they agreed rather more easily than I expected. We shall see in due course, I should imagine.”

  Before Marta could reply, her communicator chimed. She pulled it from her skirt pocket and glanced at the screen.

  “One of my drinking friends tells me the latest dispatches from Mykonos might include an item of interest.”

  “Will you go to the senior non-commissioned officers’ mess right away?”

  “I can’t. It’s too early.”

  “Then I suggest exercise followed by meditation.”

  — 34 —

  Lyonesse

  “And our last item.”

  Centurion Eve Haller, who was chairing the weekly coordination conference, turned away from the briefing board and took her seat at the head of the table.

  “Last week, four visitors claiming to be commercial representatives for a company by the name Universal Exports arrived aboard Avadora along with the most recent bunch of immigrants. I was on operations watch at the time and saw the arrival hall’s video feed, as well as the visitor credentials. It was the duty crew’s general opinion that the four behaved less like civilian merchants than current or former military personnel. One, of them, in Sergeant First Class Eddy Craddoc’s opinion, might even carry a challenge coin familiar to those of us with service in Special Forces units.”

  She gestured toward Centurion Greff, the Rifle Regiment’s operations officer.

  “As Ian knows, Colonel DeCarde asked Colonel Kayne to put eyes from the Rifles’ informal intelligence network on them. Yesterday, those sharp young troopers spotted our visitors behaving rather strangely for commercial representatives.”

  “She’s about to drag out the suspense again, I can sense it,” Centurion Adrienne Barca, B Squadron’s executive officer, grumbled in a stage whisper.

  Lieutenant Commander Ann Creswell’s foreshortened holographic projection chuckled. Vanquish’s combat systems officer, like the other warship representatives, attended the weekly meetings remotely from orbit when they weren’t on wormhole terminus picket duty.

  “Be merciful. Working in a clifftop aerie doesn’t give poor Eve much scope to stretch her acting muscles.”

  “Or any other muscles for that matter, and that’s why you might find me in the HQ gym at oh-six-hundred every morning if you bothered to get up that early, Adri.”

  Barca gave her friend a wicked grin.

  “Everyone with a shred of pity for Defense Force HQ chair warmers, raise your hand.” When no one moved, she sat back and said, “There you go. Now speak so we can be about our business. Some of us are in the middle of field training exercises and need to return before our COs come up with ideas that’ll give us XOs fresh stomach ulcers.”

  Haller raised both hands in surrender.

  “All right. Two of the visitors were seen snooping around the university and showed a special interest in the library annex where the Void Brethren are working. The other two spent most of the day watching Severin Downes, whom you’ll remember for his charming personality and larger-than-life sense of entitlement. They took up residence in a lease by the week apartment near the river docks.”

  “Which is both smart and dumb. They traded a hotel’s surveillance suite for the beady eyes of wharf rats able to smell trouble a parsec away,” Barca replied. “Perhaps the Lannion cops can chat up their informants. And since I’m probably not the only one who hasn’t seen what those people look like, could you put their mugs and ID data up on the main display, Eve? Let’s see if Eddy Craddoc can still dig up suspicious characters.”

  “You didn’t read the relevant daily digest?” Haller asked in an arch tone.

  “So I’m running behind. That’s what happens when your CO’s enthusiasm at planning an exercise on a new planet with plenty of unexplored potential for mischief needs reining-in.”

  “Want the full video from immigration?”

  “Might as well,” Barca said to unanimous nods of agreement.

  When the video died away, and the foursome’s ID pictures replaced it, Haller noticed something was bothering Barca.

  “You recognize one of them, Adri?”

  Barca bit her lower lip before shrugging.

  “Only the dark-haired woman Eddy Craddoc figured might be one of our sort—”

  “Jaimee Markov.”

  “Right. Her face is annoyingly familiar. She reminds me of someone I was close to years ago when we were both sergeants in the 2nd Battalion. Same phenotype, but with subtle differences. Moves like her too, or at least the way I remember her moving. Krystal Sandt. She left the 21st and transferred to a line regiment not long after our relationship turned sour. I’ve not seen her since that day.”

  Haller’s forehead creased in a frown as she rifled through her memory.

  “Krystal Sandt? The name rings a bell, for sure. But I can’t remember much. Definitely not what she looked like. I was in the 4th Battalion before taking my commission and rarely spoke with anyone in the 2nd outside of the sergeant’s mess.” She glanced at the
other Pathfinders around the table. “Any of you remember her?”

  When they shook their heads in turn, Haller said, “Pass the picture around your squadrons, and see if anyone other than Adri comes up with a possible ID.”

  “Will you let the colonel know?”

  “That’s not optional. If four military-looking offworlders, one of them potentially a Pathfinder, are snooping around the university end of the admiral’s knowledge vault and taking an interest in Lyonesse’s biggest pain in the ass, we might have a problem.”

  A grimace twisted Barca’s lips.

  “If you ask me, there’s no might about it. Those people are on a recon mission. I think they’re looking for Tanith, considering the interest in Severin Downes.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll make sure they’re under constant observation,” Centurion Greff offered. “Some of my budding counterintelligence agents can afford to skip classes for a few days. And I’ll speak with the Lannion Police chief of detectives. He’s an old drinking buddy of mine.”

  “Thanks, Ian. If there’s nothing else, we’re done here. Since you’re about to head into the wild sierras where the condors roam, Adri, how about we see if the colonel has a minute. That way, you won’t need to return from the backwoods when she decides your past relationship with someone who resembles a woman overly interested in the knowledge vault could be important.”

  Barca sighed.

  “I suppose.”

  “Not a good break up?” Creswell asked.

  “Are any of them?”

  “I suppose not. Until next week, then.” Her hologram winked out, along with those of Myrtale’s and Narwhal’s combat systems officers.

  **

  DeCarde sat back in her chair, fingers tapping the metal desktop in a rhythmic tattoo when Haller and Barca finished speaking.

  “If we’re indeed talking about Krystal Sandt, a former noncom in the 2nd Battalion, 21st Pathfinder Regiment, masquerading as Jaimee Markov, putative commercial representative, I agree we might have a problem. We need to find out why they’re here and who they work for.”

  “There’s one way of finding out, sir. I could always confront Markov and see how she reacts. If that’s Krystal and not a distant cousin who shares her genetic makeup, she won’t be able to hide anything from me.”

  “If we’re at that stage,” Haller said, “we might as well haul them in and ask Sister Gwenneth for one of her human lie detectors.”

  “On what grounds?” DeCarde’s fingers stopped moving. “Did they break any laws?”

  “National security?”

  “That’s a slippery slope, Eve. What waits at the bottom of it wouldn’t be pleasant for the society we’re trying to build. The admiral’s vision might even take a hit if we turn Lyonesse into something that smells like Dendera’s bloody police state. Our first and most important job is protecting the knowledge vault, and that means shielding the host planet from its own worst instincts.”

  “Then we’re back to Adri’s suggestion, sir. We can keep Colonel Kayne’s irregulars on their butts from sunset to sunset and be none the wiser if they’re here on a recon mission.”

  DeCarde stood and walked to her office’s single window overlooking Lannion Base.

  “You didn’t part on good terms, I gather. Tell me the story.”

  “There isn’t much to tell, sir. I was a command sergeant working as the A Squadron operations noncom and Krystal was a buck sergeant working as D Squadron’s intelligence analyst when we met and hit it off. Same mess, different chain of command, no problems, right? We moved in together. But with the squadrons on different deployment schedules — you probably remember the entire regiment was busy eight or nine years ago — we spend half our time apart, the other half making up for lost time.”

  “Burning the candle four times as fast.”

  “Six or eight times, sir, if not faster. Krystal figured out pretty quick the Pathfinder lifestyle wasn’t what she wanted in the long run. But leaving the 21st for a line regiment at the other end of the empire meant we’d never see each other again unless we transferred together.”

  “And you wanted to stay.”

  “Being a Pathfinder was my life, Colonel. Leaving the 21st wasn’t an option, no matter how I felt about Krystal. She didn’t understand, and the relationship flipped one-hundred and eighty degrees from really good to really ugly. We both felt a lot of hate, the sort that leaves a permanent scar. I moved back into the command noncom quarters on base, and she made like I no longer existed. Eight weeks later, Krystal transferred to the 55th Marine Regiment on Yotai.”

  Upon hearing the name of the Coalsack Sector’s capital, DeCarde whirled around to face Barca.

  “Yotai. That’s where Grand Duke Custis ended up after his minions sprung him from Tanith’s stasis pod farm. Which means if Markov is Krystal Sandt, and she’s still a member of the 55th, Viceroy Custis is her ultimate boss.”

  Eve Haller let out a low whistle.

  “I think we just found a good reason for military spies to visit Lyonesse.”

  After a heartbeat, Barca whispered, “Corinne Ruggero, better known, or rather unknown as Sister Incognito of the Lyonesse Abbey. That’s why they’re interested in Downes. Tanith might be gone, but he’s the most visible of the stasis stiffs who traveled with Corinne and Custis. Someone on Arietis told Custis’ people about the prison ship mated to Narwhal, so here they are. Nice way to repay us for giving their militia a leg up.”

  “We didn’t exactly hide Tanith, Adri,” DeCarde dropped into her chair. “And if we’re on the right track, Markov and company are trained operatives. Didn’t you say Krystal worked as a squadron intelligence sergeant? She’ll have learned the basics. And who knows what the others are behind those fake names and faces. Do you know what her assignment in the 55th was?”

  “No, but since Krystal’s secondary occupational specialty was battlefield analyst, she probably didn’t end up humping a plasma rifle.” An air of pained indecision crossed Barca’s square features. “If you want me to chat up this Markov and find out if she’s Krystal, I’ll do it. Hell, if it’s a matter of protecting the vault, I might even make nice to her. I might need to spend time with Sister Katarin afterward, purging my soul. But as they say, duty first.”

  “You can always apply to join the abbey as a novice when your time with the regiment is up,” Haller said in a flippant tone.

  Barca gave her a weary smile.

  “A life of contemplation and service to others seems pretty damn good right now.”

  “I wouldn’t have taken you for a believer in the Almighty.”

  She gave DeCarde a droll smile.

  “I’m like most Marines, Colonel — I want the Almighty watching over me when I’m ducking enemy fire, not when I’m evading angry lovers. So what’s the word?”

  “If I may,” Eve Haller said, “I can ask Sergeant Kuryakin to put you in touch with the Rifle Regiment’s spook chasers. Do a couple of surveillance shifts and see if you get that feeling in your gut. You know the one I mean.”

  “Sure. When your heart drops into your stomach and splashes starship reactor acid all over your insides. What about the squadron field exercise?”

  “I’m sure your squadron sergeant major would love to play executive officer and keep Bowdoin from having too much fun,” Haller said. “What do you think, Colonel? As a first step, I mean? No laws broken, no slippery slope. If Adri doesn’t feel weak in the knees, we switch to another line of thinking. If she does, then we can discuss an oblique approach.”

  DeCarde’s eyes shifted from Haller to Barca and back, trying to gage the latter’s reaction.

  “Adri seems torn between a hearty yes and hell no. Am I right?”

  Barca nodded ruefully.

  “You are, sir. Some memories never go away, and Krystal’s one of them. If she’s hiding behind Jaimee Markov’s identity, one look into her eyes will do the trick.”

  “That’s
all I need. Give me a yea or nay with ninety-nine percent confidence, and I’ll bring it to the admiral. If we’re being scouted by one of Grand Duke Devy Custis’ recon teams, he’ll want to make the final decision. Will you be okay letting Bowdoin know you’re on temporary detachment at my orders? I’ll speak with Piotr Salmin the moment we’re done here to close the loop.”

  “No problems, Colonel.”

  “In that case, go make friends with Matti Kayne’s irregulars. When this is over, I’d like your opinion on whether they’re candidates for our proposed counterintelligence unit. So far, the admiral’s been thinking about creating a military police company. But if the warlords of this galaxy keep sending us spies, we’ll need more than just our own law enforcement.”

  Haller and Barca shot to their feet.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Enjoy.”

  — 35 —

  Yotai

  Marta, wearing loose dark clothes, made her way down one of the viceregal palace’s service staircases, tailed by the ever-present Heloise. A rabbit warren of well-lit passages brought them to the senior non-commissioned officers’ mess open side door. Marta stuck her head through and caught the eye of the nearest Marine command sergeant, a member of the 55th Regiment’s guard detail, silently asking for permission to enter.

  When he gave her the nod, she left Heloise in the corridor to stand watch and slipped into the mess. An assemblage of half a dozen large, interconnected rooms, it was paneled in dark, rich wood harvested from a species of Yotai tree analog similar to oak. A wall-length bar backed by mirrored shelves holding bottles of every alcoholic drink known to humanity dominated one side of the main room. The bar itself was topped by a polished sheet of metal supposedly taken from the hull of a downed reiver starship five hundred years earlier, though time and use had worn off any identifying marks.

  Plaques, souvenirs, images, and bladed weapons of every sort covered the walls while old banners, many of them captured in battle, hung from blackened ceiling beams. The heavy furniture scattered in random groupings was milled from the same native wood as the wainscoting. But unlike the wall coverings, it shone under the soft lighting thanks to a varnish capable of resisting just about anything short of a blaster’s plasma bolt.