CHAPTER TWELVE

Earth (Sol III), 4331 C.E.

Panic stalked the corridors of Damiano Chewning's subterranean command center.

Grand Admiral Kirpal strode through it all, sparing only an occasional contemptuous glance for the huddled groups of frightened functionaries. He didn't even try to halt the occasional loot-burdened figure that slipped furtively past. What was the point, now?

He reached the door he sought. Its human guards were gone, and the electronic ones opened it at the touch of his palm to the ident-pad. The outer offices were in disarray from the haste with which they'd been deserted. He proceeded inward until he'd reached a monumental doorway surmounted with the Imperial dragon.

The room beyond had the overdone ornateness typical of the late Emperor Oleg, who'd built this facility along with so much else on Old Earth. Curtained alcoves alternating with pilasters lined the side walls, flanking a gleaming conference table. The man seated at the table's head, alone in the room, looked up as Kirpal entered unannounced.

"Well, Admiral?"

Kirpal came to what resembled a position of attention but had no respect in it, just a need to hold himself physically in check. He forced his words past clenched jaws. "Nothing you don't already know . . . Your Imperial Majesty. Our main force under Admiral Tellefsen arrived from Mars just in time to be caught up in the collapse of Romaine's fleet. Brady-Schiavona's arrival took Tellefsen even more by surprise than it did Romaine, since he had been led to believe that Brady-Schiavona was dead."

"Ah, yes." Damiano Chewning sighed. "I thought it best to suppress the news of our ambush's failure. Bad for morale. But what is our current status, Admiral?"

"Tellefsen is dead; Romaine is reported to be. The survivors are still straggling in. Brady-Schiavona's fleet will soon be in orbit around this planet, and our orbital fortresses are already signaling their surrender . . . Your Imperial Majesty." If possible, Kirpal's pause was even longer than it had been before.

"Brady-Schiavona would never bombard the mother world," Chewning opined.

"No. He'll send his Marines down, and we can't hope to resist them. Unless . . ." Kirpal's harsh features formed an unaccustomed expression as he made the request that had been his reason for coming here. "The comm net is still functioning. If you'd make a personal planetwide appeal, we might be able to organize a defense."

Chewning shook his head with a vigor that set the rabbitlike cheeks wobbling. "No. I have no interest in leading a hopeless charge. I'm afraid there's no option left but surrender."

Kirpal barked a laugh. All pretense of deference was now gone. "Do you actually think Brady-Schiavona will accept your surrender, after your attempt to kill him?"

"My attempt? Oh, no, Admiral. As Admiral Brady-Schiavona will learn, you and the other members of your military clique discovered at the last minute my plan to slip off-world and give myself up. You placed me in confinement. But you thought his understanding with me presented a golden opportunity to trap him. After the defeat of our forces and Romaine's, loyal personnel freed me . . . but died doing it, in a firefight which, regrettably, also claimed your life."

Kirpal's dark face darkened still further. "You little maggot! I've done your dirty work—I set up Krona to be destroyed—I even stayed with you after you'd taken up with that other piece of filth, your lover Liang."

"You had nowhere else to go." Chewning sounded bored.

"But I do now! I'll deliver your corpse to Brady-Schiavona!" Kirpal reached for his sidearm . . . and remembered that he had, by sheer habit, come unarmed into the Emperor's presence. With a roar, he flung himself around the table, hands outstretched and formed into claws.

There was a sharp crack! as a small glass sphere broke mach, and a tiny flash of plasma as air friction whipped away the ferrous coating that had allowed it to be electromagnetically accelerated to six thousand meters per second. Passing at that speed through a rigid container like a skull, it was enough to induce massive hydrostatic shock. The top of Kirpal's head came off, and its contents geysered upward. His body collapsed to the floor amid a spatter of falling gore.

Vladimir Liang stepped out from behind one of the alcove hangings, pocketing his bead gun and giving that which lay on the floor a look of fastidious distaste. "Animal!" he sniffed. Then he turned to Chewning. "What are we going to do now?"

"Surrender, of course . . . and tell the story I just outlined to him."

"Won't they wonder why you didn't warn them about the alliance with Romaine when you made your offer to secretly surrender, if that offer was sincere?"

"Simple: it was Kirpal who arranged the alliance. I never knew about it. The late Chairperson Romaine is in no position to contradict this version of events. So the story ought to hold up well enough to qualify me for Ivar's famous clemency."

"But what about me?" Liang quavered.

"That does present a problem, doesn't it? Any Emperor is apt to take a dim view of the murder of another Emperor. Bad precedent, you see. We may discover the limits of Ivar's sense of humor." Chewning eyed Liang, and his look did not match his voice's bantering tone.

Liang gazed back expressionlessly, and made a movement with his right arm which, while barely perceptible, sufficed to remind Chewning that he had never let go of the now-pocketed bead gun.

"But," Chewning resumed smoothly, as though the byplay had never occurred, "it should be possible to come up with a story that will satisfy Ivar. He really is determined to be merciful and conciliatory. Let's see. . . . We'll explain that Oleg and his family were killed by overzealous subordinates, acting without your orders, and that afterwards you were unable to publicly repudiate their actions because they were too influentially connected."

"You really are good at this kind of thing, aren't you?"

Chewning waved away the flattery. "It needs refining," he admitted modestly, "but we'll have a little while to work on it. Mind you, Ivar still won't be happy. In fact, he'll despise you. But it will enable him to justify sparing your life and keeping his reputation for mercy. At the very least, it will gain time."

"Time for what?" Liang wanted to know.

"Oh, who's to say? `King Louis may die. Or I may die. Or the horse may die. Or . . . the horse may talk.'"

"What?" 

"Sorry, a very old story. The point is that one never knows what's going to happen, but must always be ready to take advantage of it. We'll keep our eyes open and see what develops—and who we come into contact with."

"Another important prisoner, Commodore Marshak?" Rear Admiral Teodor Brady-Schiavona's preternaturally handsome face formed an undeniably charming smile in the comm screen. "I'll have a full bundle of miscreants to deliver to His Imperial Majesty."

Corin had never met Roderick's older brother in person. He'd heard that the Emperor had entrusted him with various minor commands, in which he'd performed acceptably. And in the absence of demonstrated incapacity, the fact that he was his father's son had made it impossible not to promote him rapidly. His most recent task had been to bring a convoy to Sol, with the additional security and administrative personnel his brother's provisional military government needed. Now he was preparing to return to Sigma Draconis, taking Damiano Chewning and Vladimir Liang to receive the Emperor's justice.

"Yes, Admiral," Corin affirmed. "The doctors hadn't thought they'd be able to release this prisoner in time for your departure. But they changed their minds at the last possible moment. We were barely able to rendezvous with you in time."

"And a very smart bit of astrogation it was. But now, I see you're almost in range."

"Yes, sir. I'll have the prisoner on the transposer stage by then."

"We'll be ready, Commodore. Signing off." Teodor's features seemed to linger for a moment, Cheshire-catlike, on the blank screen.

Corin turned aside. "Well, shall we go inform the prisoner?"

"Right." Janille fell in beside him as they left Valiant's flag bridge. "I still don't understand why the admiral sent us out here to make this delivery. A frigate or even a pinnace would have served."

"Not all the enemy ships have been accounted for. There might be a few still skulking around the outer system. So he decided an escort was in order. Also . . . I think he felt it was fitting, somehow. A matter of rendering proper courtesies."

"Is that why we're paying this call, and not just sending some corporal?"

"I suppose," said Corin, who hadn't really thought about it.

They proceeded through the battlecruiser's passageways until they'd entered an area where they didn't often go. Security scanners passed them without comment, and they came to an expanse of bulkhead guarded by two entirely superfluous Marine sentries—observing the forms again. In the same spirit, Corin signaled for admission before gesturing to the senior Marine, who touched a control on his belt. Without any movement that the eye could observe, the nanoplastic of the bulkhead—as hard as low-tech steel—was no longer there, and a doorway stood open to the compartment beyond.

The woman within put down the book she'd been reading and rose to her feet. She wouldn't have been able to do that a short while earlier. The Marine boarding party had found her aboard the wreck of her fleet's flagship, in not much better shape than the elderly civilian gent whose rapidly cooling body she'd been holding. But regeneration therapy had worked its accustomed wonders, and the doctors had pronounced her able to travel. They hadn't been able to eliminate all the marks of what she'd been through; an expanse of shiny-pink freshly regenerated flesh marred her left cheek and temple, and the hair on that side of her head was still an iron-gray stubble. But none of that could banish Lauren Romaine's stateliness, even though it was now only a husk containing dead despair. "Yes, Commodore . . . ?"

"Commodore Marshak, ma'am." Corin had decided earlier on the mode of address, since "Madame Chairperson" or the like was out of the question. "And this is Lieutenant Colonel Dornay."

"Colonel." Romaine nodded to Janille. Then she turned back to Corin, and recognition seemed to awaken. "Oh, yes . . . Marshak. I understand you were quite the hero in the recent battle. It seems you saved Roderick Brady-Schiavona's life."

"I played a role, ma'am—but so did Lieutenant Colonel Dornay, and many others."

"No doubt. I've heard a lot about it." Romaine's gray eyes hardened. "It's also been brought to my attention that the Federated Republics collapsed at the news of the outcome here at Sol, and are offering no real resistance to the forces Ivar Brady-Schiavona has sent to occupy Ursa Major."

Janille flushed. Romaine's guards were Marines. "Have any of my people been taunting you, ma'am? If so, I'll have their . . . uh, hides."

"No, no. I can't claim I've been maltreated in any way. One hears things, that's all—even when in captivity. And it's nothing I didn't expect to hear." Bleakness settled over the tall, dignified woman like a shroud of snow. "I knew I was wagering everything on one throw of the dice. And I lost. I regret that. But I don't really regret having gambled. If I hadn't, the Federated Republics would have lost their one chance of long-term survival."

"Now they're falling in the short term," Corin couldn't stop himself from saying.

"True. But the outcome is the same in the end."

"Still," Corin persisted (perversely, for he knew that getting into a debate was as inappropriate as it was pointless), "you've sacrificed a lot of human lives to an abstract political theory."

Romaine's eyes held the final glare of dying embers. " `Abstract political theory'? You wouldn't call it that if you were from Ursa Major. If you'd experienced what the people of that region were put through to service a pointless war against a nonexistent threat—"

"Actually, ma'am," Corin interrupted, suddenly uncomfortable, "I served in the last Ch'axanthu war."

"Then you understand—or ought to understand—the accumulated disgust and revulsion against a system that perpetrates such grandiose folly to gratify the megalomania of a single individual!" Romaine stopped for breath. "Oh, I know the received idea: the Empire is so diverse that it can't function without a human symbol of unity—the most basic common denominator of human association. But the pendulum has swung away from that before. In the last couple of centuries before spaceflight, they got away from a theory called the `divine right of kings'—"

"And, as I recall, replaced it with the divine right of political careerists."

Corin expected a snarl from Romaine. He got a smile. "You don't fit my preconception of military officers, Commodore—it doesn't include an interest in history. I'd enjoy discussing the subject with you. But I'm sure that's not the purpose for which you came."

"No, ma'am." Corin donned formality like a cloak. "I am under orders to transfer custody of you to Rear Admiral Teodor Brady-Schiavona, who will convey you to Sigma Draconis. We're approaching our rendezvous with his flagship. Please accompany us to the transposer stage."

Romaine gave a complex chuckle and shook her head. "Another Brady-Schiavona! Well, at least I'll get to meet Ivar."

"His Imperial Majesty," Janille piped up, "is noted for his leniency toward former . . ." Her voice trailed to a miserable halt.

"Rebels and traitors," Romaine finished for her helpfully. "Well, I have no personal effects. Shall we go?"

They proceeded to the chamber that held a raised dais containing a powerful link. Valiant, like all warships lacking transposers of their own, had facilities like these to facilitate focusing by the transposers of ships which did have them, like the battleship Indefatigable that Teodor Brady-Schiavona rode. Romaine mounted the stage. Then, as they awaited confirmation that the other ship was ready to transpose, there was an awkward silence. Corin sought for something to fill it. Then, at the last minute, he remembered something he'd meant to ask Romaine.

"One thing I still don't understand. What did you expect to accomplish by allying yourself with an adventurer who didn't even subscribe to your political philosophy?"

"I'd decided reunification of the Empire was unavoidable," Romaine said from the stage in an uninterested voice. "So the most we could hope for was an Empire restructured along more democratic lines. I agreed to the alliance in exchange for a promise of such reforms."

Janille shook her head. "I'm surprised Kirpal would even make such a promise."

Romaine gave her a puzzled look. "Who? Oh, yes—the thug Chewning made Grand Admiral. What does he have to do with it?"

"Huh?" Corin shook his head as though to clear the confusion from it. "But wasn't he the one you negotiated the alliance with?"

"Nonsense. I dealt directly with Chewning."

"What? You mean Chewning wasn't just a figurehead for Kirpal's military clique?"

Romaine laughed bitterly. "Is that what he told you?"

"Commodore," came the comm officer's voice, "Indefatigable is ready to transpose."

"Tell them to wait!" Corin snapped. Then he turned and addressed Romaine. "Ma'am, this is very important! When you get aboard Indefatigable, ask to speak to Rear Admiral Brady-Schiavona. Tell him what you just told us."

Romaine, visibly slipping back into fatalism, bobbed momentarily back to the surface. "Why?"

"They say they don't want to wait any longer, sir," the comm officer interjected.

"Stall them!" Corin spoke to Romaine hurriedly, for she needed to know that Chewning and Liang were her fellow passengers. "Aboard the same ship, Rear Admiral Brady-Schiavona is taking—"

There was no warning. There never was with teleportation—or with the artificial duplication of it the transposer produced. One instant Romaine stood on the stage, and the next instant she didn't. There wasn't even a pop of air rushing into a sudden vacuum, for an equal volume of air from Indefatigable's transposer room now filled the space that had contained her.

"So Chewning was really behind it all?" Aline Tatsumo shook her head. "And we sent him back to Sigma Draconis to tell his story to the Emperor!"

She sank into a chair facing Corin, Janille and Garth. She still wasn't entirely comfortable with them, but her attitude had improved markedly. Saving Roderick's life, it seemed, covered a multitude of sins.

They sat in Sol's late-afternoon light, on the terrace of the officers' lounge in the Imperial administrative facility that squatted like a titanic alien intruder in this ancient city. No, Corin reminded himself, it isn't really ancient. It's just meant to look that way. 

Armand Duschane had begun the restoration of Old Earth. Oleg had pressed it forward with his usual impatience and embellished it with his characteristic fancies. To repopulate it, he had traced the history of colonial migration and assigned the resettlers to what he'd convinced himself were the wombs of their origin. They'd been brought in from Sigma Draconis to the lesser land mass to the west of here across the planet's smaller ocean—the Atlantic, Corin reminded himself; from Delta Pavonis to the island that lay to the north across a narrow slip of water; from certain worlds in the Serpens/Bootes region to the vast plains to the east . . . and so on, around the world. Just how meaningful a connection the modern gene pool of any colonial world had to any particular Old Earth locale was, to put the matter with exquisite tact, debatable. But nobody said so very loudly, for Oleg had been very proud of himself for his commitment to authenticity. His tame historians had also produced images of the dawn-cities the Zyungen had obliterated . . . and edited them to reflect Oleg's preconceptions, theories and whims. Programmed with these, the nanoconstructors had run up replicas of those cities on their original sites—to the inexpressible (in both senses) disgust of the archaeologists who sought to tunnel down through the strata of ruins that underlay those sites. The periods represented by those strata tended to mingle oddly in the reconstructions above. Corin wondered how the ancient inhabitants of this city would have thought of the medieval-looking fortress that reared its battlements beyond the soaring tower of early-industrial iron latticework. Still, to anyone but a history buff, the two were essentially contemporary, far back down the dim echoing corridors of antiquity.

At least this place wasn't as bad as some Corin had seen on the excursions he'd managed to take—like that temple of Thoth-Ammon in the Nile valley, the one with minarets. In fact, he liked it. After his time on Neustria, it had a familiar feel, for its people had come from Epsilon Eridani. Oleg had liked it too, which was why it played host to the colossal truncated pyramid from whose sloping side this terrace was cantilevered. Even here there was a half-hearted and foredoomed effort to partake of the artificial local color—the terrace held a scattering of round tables shaded by red-and white umbrellas with black lettering in an old-fashioned form of an alphabet still widespread in the Empire. Corin wondered what "Cinzano" meant.

Janille's voice brought him back to the matter at hand. "After we told the admiral what we'd learned from Romaine, he naturally sent a message to the Emperor," she explained to Tatsumo, who had only just returned from a lengthy inspection of various installations around the Sol system and was hearing this for the first time.

"But," Garth put in, "that will need to be corroborated by Romaine in person."

"She's probably done it already," Tatsumo said with satisfaction. "Shouldn't they be at Sigma Draconis by now?" The tachyon beam array had made the concept of simultaneity meaningful across interstellar distances, however much the theoretical physicists might huff and puff.

"Right," said Corin. "In fact, the admiral says the message confirming their arrival is overdue." He leaned back in his chair and blinked against the sunlight—it was early summer in Old Earth's northern hemisphere, and this was a clear day. "I never got a chance to tell her she was going to be traveling with Chewning and Liang."

"So what?" Janille queried. "It might make for some awkward moments if Teodor lets them mingle. But, to repeat, so what?"

"I don't know. It just bothers me, somehow." Corin sat up straighter and reached for his wine. It was a cosmopolitan brand, but here it came in basketed bottles like the ones that sat on the tables with half-melted wax candles stuck in them. "Anyway, she's at Sigma Draconis, and her testimony will—"

"No, it won't."

They all started at the voice and began to rise to their feet. Roderick gestured them back to their chairs and pulled up one for himself. "I just got the word from Sigma Draconis. Ted has arrived there—but Romaine hasn't."

"Sir?" Tatsumo's voice was a rising squeak of incredulous inquiry.

"It seems that in the course of the voyage she went crazy—grabbed a guard's weapon and used it to kill the guard . . . and then herself. Ted is overcome with regret."

Janille found her voice, and spoke as though what she'd heard was too absurd for indignation. "Sir, we're talking about an elderly woman, with little anagathic bonus and no combat training. You're telling me she disarmed a Marine?"

"No. I'm telling you that was what I was told." Roderick let them chew on the implications of that phraseology for a heartbeat or two before continuing. "We're getting this news somewhat late because a blackout was put on it. But that didn't stop it from leaking to the Ursa Major region."

"She was widely beloved out there," Corin said, barely hearing his own voice in his stupefaction. "In fact, she was probably the only thing holding the Federated Republics together. They won't like this."

"Hardly. They're saying we murdered her. And they're rising furiously against our occupation forces. A walkover has turned into an insurgency that may take years to suppress." Roderick looked like he was in physical pain. "Our pacification of the Empire isn't complete, not by a long shot. We've still got warlords and rebels to deal with in the Serpens/Bootes region and beyond. We don't need this."

"Sir," Tatsumo spoke up hesitantly after a moment's heavy silence, "you obviously don't believe the official story. But what do you think happened?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Janille snapped. "Chewning and Liang knew she'd expose them as liars. So they killed her to shut her up."

"But how? They were prisoners themselves. How could they have arranged it?"

"Maybe they weren't the ones who did." All heads turned at Garth's subterranean rumble. But he met only one pair of bluish-gray eyes.

"What are you suggesting, Colonel?" asked the owner of those eyes.

"Sir," Garth replied in a voice that did not waver, "by the time Romaine arrived they had already been aboard Indefatigable for some time. They had the opportunity to get to Rear Admiral Brady-Schiavona first."

The silence was like a wire drawn to the snapping point, as the unsayable thing that had just been said dissipated on the wind.

Roderick was the first to breathe. Then he started to open his mouth. But then he closed it, and ceased to meet Garth's eyes.

Abruptly, Corin stood up, walked to the railing and stared sightlessly out at the vista of high-tech phoniness that surrounded them.

He'd only met Lauren Romaine once. And he couldn't really quarrel with her self-description as a rebel and a traitor. So, he asked himself, why does the news of her death affect me this way? 

Could it be that I may have signed her death warrant by telling her to blurt out her story to Teodor Brady-Schiavona? Maybe if she'd kept her mouth shut until they'd gotten to Sigma Draconis, and then told Ivar, she'd still be alive. 

Or maybe not. 

I'll never know, will I?