Кристофер Банч - Empire's End

"Aye."

"You know, killing me won't stop the Empire."

"Aye?" Kilgour asked, in polite disinterest. "Thae's noo m' plan. Y'r noo f'r th' big sleep, unless y' do someat daft, like cryin' oot.

"First, y'all step awa' frae th' bar, turn wi' y'r back't' me, kneel, an' clasp y'r hands behin' y'r head. Move!"

Poyndex turned. Started down, then stopped.

"The thought just struck me," he said. "If you're not on a personal vendetta… is Sten still alive? Did he order this operation?"

"Ah said," Kilgour repeated, still in a near whisper, "Ah wan' y' doon ae y'r knees, mate. Noo—"

Poyndex began to kneel… and lifted his arms, toward the back of his head. Alex's free hand came forward, the tiny bee sting of the narcdispenser ready. Poyndex's right hand shot out toward the bar.

Kilgour's reflexes cut in.

The heavy-worlder's left hand dropped the syringe, curled to hammerstrike, flashed out.

And struck. Just to the right side of Poyndex's neck. The snap was loud. Poyndex's head dropped to an impossible angle… and his body fell forward. Alex caught him by the collar before he could crash into the bar, and eased him down to the carpet.

Knowing he was wasting his time, he checked pulse. Rolled Poyndex over and peeled an eyelid back. Even, stupidly, held his ear to Poyndex's mouth, hoping for the slightest breath.

Nothing.

Y' clot, his mind savaged. Y' know bettern' thae! Are y' sarkers? Cannae y' control y'self? I' dinnae matter i' this i' th' lad whae killed Mahoney, or helped th' Emp slaughter who knows how many?

Y'r noo a professional, he thought in disgust. And started to get up.

Then his eye caught the button, mounted in the base of the bar. He looked closer. Nothing in the bar front. There. Above him. A snapaway panel, just like they showed him in training. Behind it would be what? A gun? A gas dispenser? An electrified net? Linked to a panic siren? Whatever it was, it would've been disaster.

Noo, did Ah really o'erreact… or did th' corner a' m' eye spot the switch? Balls, he thought. Kilgour resolutely refused to believe in any sense beyond the common. Then he realized, for the first time since that sleepless night on the battlements of Otho's castle, the night so long ago when Cind had been named to speak for the Bhor, that feeling of doom was gone.

By th' Stuarts, he thought. Ah been carryin't this deathsense wi me f'rever, stumblin' like a 'cruit i' th' Selection March ae Mantis. An' it's vanished, wi' Poyndex's dirty soul.

Are y' suggestin' his mind snickered, thae y' sensed thae wae a death owed? An' thae either you, or Poyndex, wh'd hae't' pay the price? Clot off, he thought. Ah hae noo time f'r Highland devils an' goblins.

Th' real question i' whae d' th' milkmaid do, whae she's kick'd o'er th' bucket, an' th' missus a' th' house dinnae hae a cat?

He had it.

He shouldered Poyndex's body and went into the bedroom, back through the panel into the secret passageway.

Feeling bulletproof, he trotted rapidly down it, to where that huge flagstone was. Noo, i' it's nae boobytrapp'd or alarm'd, he thought, Ah'm home free. He dropped Poyndex's corpse on the stone.

It fell away, and the body dropped into darkness.

No sirenscreech. No scurry of guards, if there'd been a silent alarm.

Just a thud. Silence. Another thud. Another silence, even longer. A splash, finally, as the late Poyndex hit bottom. Kilgour wondered, once again, just what was at the bottom of the shaft? He shone his tiny flash down into blackness. Nothing.

He touched the flagstone, and it smoothly swung back into place, waiting for the next weight to land on it.

Was it a garbage disposal? A sewer?

Alex shook his head.

He would never know.

He considered what had just happened and, after some reflection, nodded thoughtfully.

Assuming Poyndex's body wasn't discovered, at least for a while, what would the effect be? On Internal Security and, most importantly, the Emperor himself?

A wee bit scary, Kilgour concluded. I' fact, all thae's been sacrificed by giein' Poyndex a braw clout i' y'r original dreamscheme wi' th' brainscan.

Nae a bad night's work, he thought. Ah'm noo th' gowk Ah thought, a few min ago.

He allowed he deserved a pint and a dram. And perhaps a wee walk in the moonlight with Marl and Hotsco.

Feeling romantic—and thirsty—Kilgour headed for home.

THE CREATURE EYED Sten through its enormous compound eyes for a very long moment. Sten remained motionless, lying on his belly on the ocean's floor. Three meters above him, waves crested and crashed against a rocky island.

The animal had a three-segmented body, with hard jointed segments extending off in all directions. It looked hostile, but then, anything over a meter long with pincer-jaws usually was logged as unfriendly by Sten. Especially when it was about twenty centimeters from his face.

Eventually, some sort of sitrep was achieved by what passed for the creature's brain: You are the biggest thing in this ocean. No, you are not. There is something that is bigger than you. It is sitting just in front of you. You are a predator. You can devour anything that is in this ocean, No, you cannot. You tried to snag a morsel off this creature. Your pincers did not snag a morsel. This is not a familiar situation. You are in trouble. You should go somewhere, somewhere this creature is not.

The huge "trilobite," or so Sten had labeled him, flurried its "legs," and was gone, vanished into a floating drift of algae.

Very good. Sten resumed his final mental briefing before he charged wildly off in all directions. It wasn't that the arthopod was any danger to Sten—especially since Sten was wearing a spacesuit. But those clotting pincers snapping on his faceplate made it hard to think.

That transmission beam that had almost been missed, 'casting from the mansion, had led the Victory farther out into the back of beyond, into barely explored space. It intersected no system or object for light-centuries.

But then there was a solar system. Three worlds, one moon, and a sun. Not a dead system, like the relay station Kyes had discovered, the relay station that had self-destructed on him. Life was just creating itself here.

Sten had kept the Victory on the solar system's fringes, terrified that one mistake would snap the thin lead, like so many others had before. Then, they would have to find another one of the luxury safehouses/way stations, and attempt to duplicate Cind's success. Or else follow that other beam far out into the unknown. It would probably take no more than a lifetime or two to find whatever pot of gold was at the end of that nearly infinite straight-line rainbow.

Preston again returned to his first skill, the com board. He had absolutely guaranteed Sten that the com beam from the mansion impacted on the second world from the sun.

Sten transferred Freston, Preston's com specialists, Hannelore La Ciotat, and himself to the Aoife , and again remoraed La Ciotat's tacship to the destroyer.

Very slowly, the Aoife closed on 'the world. Very young, indeed. Continents slowly sinking, seas shallowing and spreading across the world. Cambrian was the description, or so Cind informed him, suggesting that he might wish to take some basic geology courses one of these centuries, in his spare time.

They looked hard. Visually, electronically, actively, passively. It took an E-week before Freston had something. He had picked up some odd indicators from the coast of one of the small subcontinents in the southern hemisphere. Something was down there, something that appeared artificial, but every surface scan, from IR to scope, said the area was just one more rocky outcropping on the still-sterile land.