Кристофер Банч - Empire's End

"I must now advise you that this conversation is being recorded. You have a right to counsel, legal advice, and medico-watch to ensure you are not under any influence, physical or pharmacological."

"I understand, and thank you for the dual apologies," Ecu said. "But for me, at present, there is nothing but time. Shall we begin?"

He carefully began his story. He would tell it very slowly, with great exactness, and the tale would take several days.

And at the end of each day he would carefully check his story, Kenna's reactions, and what should come next with his own mentor, hidden far below the conference room in one of the Manabi's laboratories.

Rykor.

Chief (Investigative Division) Lisa Haines came suddenly awake—but made no move whatsoever.

First… ears.

Nothing.

Smell. Nothing.

What, then?

Motion. Her entire "houseboat" moved slightly.

She opened her eyes a pinhole.

Moonlight filled the large single room of her home—a McLean-powered barge moored several hundred meters above one of Prime World's forest refuges.

The room was empty.

Her husband, Sam'l, snored gently beside her.

Haines's hand slid to the side of the bed. Down the side of the watertube mattress. Touched the butt of the miniwillygun. The always-loaded gun was in her hand and the safety slid off.

Again, the houseboat swayed.

Someone trying to climb up one of the mooring cables? Yes.

Haines was in bed/Haines was suddenly crouched, naked, combat stance, in the middle of the floor, gun ready. Confirmed. She was alone.

She snaked to an armoire, took out and pulled on a one-piece phototrophic coverall. The coverall, like the pistol, was strictly Imperial-issue, and not even a police chief like Haines was entitled to own either one. But, as always, cops don't follow the laws they enforce.

Haines had been expecting this.

Now to confirm.

She slid to the door leading out to the houseboat's deck, and opened it a notch. Then she took a pair of light-amplifying goggles from a hook beside the door and pulled them on.

Daylight. A little green, but daylight.

Out, onto the deck.

The houseboat swayed again.

Not yet. First worry about… she scanned the darkness of the hillside across from her. Nothing. She switched modes, into thermal imaging, and looked again. Ah. A tidy little glow over there. Several beings.

The command post, she speculated. That's what it would be, if what she had been anticipating was in fact happening.

Or else the kingpins, allowing for the other possibility—that some of the gangsters she had harassed and crucified regularly over the years were coming to wreak revenge. Unlikely. Crooks only looked for nonprofitable vengeance in the livies.

Haines switched the goggles back to light amplification, went flat, and slid forward, peering over the edge.

Quite correct.

Someone… three someones… were coming up the mooring cable. Skilled climbers—but as they climbed, the cable unavoidably swayed, and the houseboat jerked minutely. All three someones wore identical phototropic coveralls, combat vests, and holstered pistols. Some kind of special-ops team.

All right, Haines thought. What you were hoping wouldn't happen is happening. You've worried about it from the time you heard Sten was named traitor—she came close to goddamning her ex-lover—and there is no way you are going to stand still for a brainscan or any of the other lovely devices you have heard Internal Security is using for "deep interrogation." Not you. And by God , not Sam'l.

A whole clotting lifetime being on the right side of the law, and just because of a minor love affair—all right, a major love affair—way back when and you're now a crook.

A completely unknown fragment drifted through her mind, translated from some long-forgotten tongue: "… where every cop is a criminal/and all the sinners saints…"

She shot the first climber in the face.

The crash of the detonating round echoed into the stillness, and the man dropped soundlessly, straight down, cleaning off the second infiltrator as he fell.

A scream, and Haines was rolling back to the doorway, flipping open the cover of what appeared to be an outdoor power socket but was a switch, switch closed, and… thank the Lord for the blessing of paranoia—the three saddle charges blew her mooring cables in half.

The third climber shouted in surprise, then fell silently to his death as the houseboat, unanchored, lifted like a balloon under the power of its antigrav generator.

Now, Haines thought, let us hope these 'nappers didn't want to disturb my neighbors' sleep with nasty old overhead aircraft, because we're screwed if there's top cover.

Inside, she heard grunts as Sam'l woke, crashed to his feet, and evidently walked straight into a side table.

"What the hell… ?"

He was no Sten, no cop, no soldier, took half an hour to grunt awake enough to be able to hit the ground with his hat, and Haines loved him for all of those reasons… and a lot of others.

The nightwind caught the houseboat and sent it spinning over the forest. Haines heard crashes from inside as paintings came off the wall and plates shattered. She went inside, one hand steadying against a wall as the boat started drunken sashays through the air.

"A kidnap team," she announced, even though in his present stupor it would probably take Sam'l several minutes to define kidnap. "All of them in uniform. Imperial thugs."

Sam'l, astonishingly, was suddenly quite alert.

"Oh," he said. Then nodded.

"Well, I suppose it had to happen," he said. "Although I wish we could think of something more… active to do than just running."

"First we run," Haines reminded him. "Then we hide. We'll have all the time in the world to figure out paybacks."

She crossed to a chest, opened it, and took out two personal "chutes"—steady-drain McLean packs with harness that would drop an average-weight human safely from any distance up to two kilometers before the batteries went dry.

When the houseboat hit about four klicks altitude, they'd go out the door and free-fall half the distance to the ground, targets too tiny—she hoped—to be picked up by Imperial sensors. Sam'l was the one who'd taught her that sport.

Time enough for paybacks. Yes. With luck there would be, she thought, but didn't say it aloud as she helped Sam'l into his rig.

Even now, even in the darkest part of the night, the tower still was a muted rainbow at the end of the gorge.

Inside, Marr and Senn slept uneasily, curled around each other. They looked almost the same age as they had been years earlier, when they were the Imperial caterers and Sten a young captain, in charge of the Emperor's Gurkha bodyguard. Perhaps their fur had darkened slightly, to a deeper gold. But nothing else had changed. The two Milchen, financially stable in their retirement, still loved beauty and love itself. The lovers were not only Sten's friends, although it had been years since they had seen him, but they had thrown the Grand Party after which Haines and Sten had become lovers.

Marr suddenly woke. Sat up. Senn whistled questioningly, huge eyes blinking.

"It was but a dream."

"No. A gravcar. Coming up the valley."

"I see nothing. You were just dreaming."

"No. There. Look . It's coming without lights."

"Oh dear. I feel those fingers touching my soul. Cold. Cold. At night, without lights. If it stops, we do not answer."

Marr didn't respond.

"I said, we do not answer. In these times, with the Emperor not as he was, only a fool goes to the door after midnight. Those who move by night are not friends."

Silence. The gravcar had stopped outside.

"The cold is stronger. Don't you feel it?"