Кристофер Банч: Empire's End

"Yessir."

"Mister Kilgour? Shall we go draw the line with our saber and see if anybody's in an Alamo kind of mood?"

Alex hesitated.

"Sir, i' y' wish. But thae's another wee matter… a matter o' security… Ah think Ah'd best—"

"Oh Christ!"

Suddenly Sten remembered security. He had no idea what Alex was hesitating about—but Sten had recollected two trump cards of his own. If they still held value. He unsealed the front of his combat suit and lifted out the thin pouch that was hung on a tie around his neck. He removed two squares of plas.

"You people stand by," he ordered.

Sten hurried across the bridge to the central computer station. He told the two operators to clear out of the cubicle, pulled a security screen around the station, and slid a keyboard out.

Touched keys.

The station was one of the three on the Victory that could access ALL/UN—the central Imperial computer net that reached every Imperial command on every world and ship of the Empire.

Should , Sten thought, rather than could .

Most likely the Victory had been cut out of any access to anything, just as the Eternal Emperor had cut Sten's usual direct line into his quarters.

Weeks passed. Months. Decades. Sten knew his body could have been carbon-dated before the screen suddenly cleared and ALL/UN blinked at him, then vanished.

Then: ACCORDANZA.

Sten input the Victory's code.

Another long wait.

The next thing he would see would be the simulation of a stiffly extended human middle finger and STATION REJECTED.

Instead: ATELIER.

Sten input the program on the first plas chip. Again, a wait, then, BORRUMBADA. Damn, he thought. They accepted it. Once again: ATELIER. The second chip was fed in. And again Imperial All Units accepted the program. Now we pray a lot, and hope both those little bastards work their magic.

The chips were a gift from Ian Mahoney, Sten's former commander in Mantis, Fleet Admiral, and, for aeons, the closest thing the Eternal Emperor had for a friend. But Mahoney was dead now—accused of treason by the Emperor and executed.

It's a great pity, Ian, Sten thought, you couldn't come up with one of these for yourself—and deploy it before the Eternal Clot killed you. He caught himself. No time for that, either.

Sten pulled the security curtain aside and found Alex waiting. "Ah'm thankin't you f'r warmin't th' chair frae me, boss. Noo, i' y'll get gone?"

"Yessir, Mister Kilgour, sir. Out of the way, sir, right away, sir. Can I have someone send in tea, sir?"

"Clottin' liquid fit only't' flow through th' veins ae sasse-nachs. Ah'll hae a dram in a wee." And Kilgour pulled the curtain closed.

Sten started for one of the slideways connecting the bridge to the battleship's central transit tube and thence to the hangar near the stern. Without orders, the Gurkhas, willyguns at the port, were trotting behind him.

Cind and her Bhor were waiting at a junction. She motioned them, and the Gurkhas, to move on ahead.

For a moment, she and Sten were alone at the bend of a corridor.

"Thanks," she said, and kissed him.

"For what?"

"For not asking."

"Asking what?"

"You are a clot," she said.

"You mean—"

"I mean."

"But I never thought that you wouldn't, I mean—"

"You're right. I stay volunteered. Plus I never took any oath to any Emperor. Besides, I know how to pick a winner."

Sten looked closely at her. She did not appear to be either making a joke or trying to build his morale.

"My ancestors were Jannissars," she went on. "They served tyrants who hid behind the lie that they were the voice of a god they'd made up.

"I swore if I could become a soldier, I wouldn't be like them. Matter of fact, the kind of soldiering I dreamed about was helping get rid of all those bastards like the Prophets. Or like Iskra. Or the Emperor."

"Well," Sten said, "you told me that before. And now I guess you'll get your chance. Or at least a good shot at going down in noble flames."

"Naah," Cind disagreed "We're gonna kick his ass. Now come on. You've got a sermon to preach."

Sten stood on the winglet of a tacship, looking down at the nearly two thousand beings—those sailors of the Victory not absolutely required at weapons stations or to keep the ship alive, plus the remainder of his embassy staff—spread out around him.

He didn't think he was doing a very good job of preaching tyrannicide. He tried not to look up at the hangar's overhead catwalks where Bhor and Gurkha marksmen waited, in case someone planned any nonverbal objections.

"All right," he finished. "That's the situation. I shoved the Emperor's face in it. There's no way he can let me vanish and pretend nothing happened. Which I'm not going to do anyway.

"I won't say what comes next. Because I don't think any of you should volunteer to remain with me. If there's anybody down there who's good at running progs or who stayed awake in battle analysis, it's easy to come up with a prediction.

"I've got the Victory , and maybe some beings somewhere who believe the same as I do. Which is, that it's time to fight back. This, I plan to do.

"I've been serving the Emperor for most of my life. But things have gone nuts. Like the Altaics, for instance. All right, those poor beings were blood-crazed. And have been so for generations.

"But we're the ones who made it fall apart. We're the ones responsible for turning turmoil into bloody chaos."

Sten caught himself. "No," he said, his voice dropping so that those in the back had to listen hard. "I shouldn't say 'we.' You, me, all of us, did our best.

"But our best wasn't good enough. Because there was one being who was running his own program. The Emperor. We followed his orders—and look what it produced. And I was not going to let it be covered up with a planetbuster.

"That's all I think I should say. We'll have the captain's own boat ready in a bit. It'll cross-connect to the rest of the fleet. You've got about one ship-hour to collect your gear and board.

"Do it, people. You'll live a lot longer if you stay with the Emperor, no matter what he is and no matter what he does. I have no other choices left. You do.

"One hour. Get yourselves out of the line of fire. Now. Anybody else, anybody who's had enough of serving a madman who's hellbent on turning the Empire into chaos, like the chaos we just left—move over against the hangar baffle.

"That's it. Thanks for helping. Thanks for your service. And good luck to all of you, no matter what you choose. Dismissed."

Sten turned away. He pretended to be busy talking to Cind, but his ears were full of the low rumble of voices, and then the clatter of bootheels on the decking.

Cind's eyes weren't on him, but beyond, watching for a potential attacker.

Then the voices and movement stopped.

Sten made himself turn around. He blinked in astonishment. Before he could ask, Cind told him.

"The first people to move were your staffers. I'd say, maybe nine out of ten will stick. You've really corrupted them."

"Hell," was the best Sten could manage.

"No drakh," Cind agreed. "Plus you have what I'd estimate is two-thirds of the swabs. I thought nobody in the navy ever volunteered. But I think you got a whole bunch of prospective rebels."

Before Sten could do anything—like fall on his knees and thank a couple of the Bhor gods that the Victory had been blessed/cursed with over a thousand brain-damaged crewmen—a com blared:

"Sten to the bridge! Sten to the bridge!"

There was a slight note of emotion in the talker's voice—which meant that almost certain and immediate catastrophe loomed.

"These six screens are patch-ins from the Bennington's internal com. They came right after the first contact."