Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

Neutron bombs were carpet-sewn across city centers and the warehouse worlds' control areas. Instantly, no life—and the blasts did not set off any of the stored AM2. Neither Gregor nor the privy council had thought warnings or declarations necessary preludes to war.

Gregor then made a broadbeam cast for the Honjo to surrender. First mistake: he had vaporized all the Honjo leaders who had the power to negotiate with the Empire. Second mistake: he had scared the Honjo into, he thought at first, paralysis.

Berserker rage can sometimes, on initiation, be mistaken for terror.

Gregor's fleet took up parking orbits and set patrols around the AM2 worlds. Then they brought in the slaved transports that would make up the "spacetrain."

The council had underestimated the supply. The convoy would be at least twenty kilometers from leadship to drag.

And the nightmare began as the Honjo exploded.

There seemed to be no leaders, nor generals. Just—resistance. The workers imported to load the AM2 were as likely to club a guard down and smile in the dying as work. They sabotaged any crane or beltway they got near. Robot systems and computers were crashed.

Gregor tried hostages, reprisals.

None of it seemed to matter to the Honjo.

The Emperor might have been able to tell the privy council that. The Honjo were hardheaded traders, and before they had learned that a contract was sharper than a sword, they had been excessively fond of sharp objects and private settlements of disputes.

The Honjo slave laborers—those who survived—were returned to their home worlds. Fleet sailors were on-planeted and used for the work force.

The situation got worse.

Small strike forces—squads, platoons, companies, irregulars—were landed. A one-sided guerrilla war began. Imperial soldiers and sailors could not open fire in the maze of buildings, each building a monstrous bomb. The Honjo had no such compunctions.

The fleet itself was attacked by such patrolcraft as the Honjo had, those light, boxy transports with three brave men or women at the controls and a bomb in the cargo hold. Kamikaze—the divine wind—worked.

It seemed as if the entire Honjo culture had held its breath for a moment and then heard, whispering from the dim past, a war leader's words: "You can always take one with you…"

It was a siege, but not a siege. The besiegers arrived—and died. A battle, but not a battle. A perpetual series of alley murders. There seemed to be no way of stopping them. Put out destroyer screens to shield the big boys? Fine. The Honjo would attack the destroyers. Even a spaceyacht with a cabin full of explosives was enough to take a destroyer out of combat. Three… or six… or ten such spitkits… and then survivors went on for the battlewagons.

Gregor bleated for reinforcements.

There were none that could be sent.

There were ships—and men—standing by on the depot world of Al-Sufi. All they needed was fuel. Once fueled, they could support Gregor. But Gregor had the fuel…

Men—and ships—died.

Gregor knew better than to abort. The fleet must return with the AM2.

Gregor's officers and long-termers started hearing rumors then. Rumors from the Empire itself. Something was happening. People—leaders—they knew were being relieved and brought to trial. There were whispers of executions. All the deck sailors of the 23rd could do was work in a frenzy and pray that the final cargoes would be loaded before they all died. No one was willing to give odds, either way…

Mavis Sims did not expect a reward for betraying her fellow officers as part of her sworn duty to the Empire.

At best, she knew that her career would be over and her friends would send her to Coventry.

It was worse.

She should have known better. Regicide, even attempted regicide, has its own laws from investigation to punishment, laws limited only by whatever humanity the king chose to allow. Robert Francois Damiens, tortured and torn into four parts by horses, could have shown her that. The Eternal Emperor himself had paid little attention to the statutes in his cleanup after the Hakone plot failed. And the privy councillors were far less saintlike than the Eternal Emperor—or that declining monarch Louis XV either, for that matter.

When Sims had decided she must expose Mahoney's conspiracy she alerted the highest-ranking Intelligence officer she knew and told him of the assassination plan, when and where. No more.

What would happen next… she would not think.

What did happen was that Sims was arrested and her mind systematically ripped apart on the brainscan. The expert "interrogators" had no interest in Sims's survival, either as an alert human or as a brainburn.

Yes… ten other officers at the table. Record faces. Does Sims know their names? Record them. Next meeting. Yes. Here. The amphitheater. Single-vision for this. Who is speaking?

One of the interrogators knew.

"Clottin' Mahoney! But he's dead!"

Continue scan… we'll report as necessary. Now. A party. Dammit… that group in the corner never looked at her. Never mind. They're most likely duped elsewhere.

"Dammit-to-hell! There's Mahoney again."

"Who's that smaller guy in mufti beside him?"

"Dunno. Look. He's talking—and Mahoney's listening."

"Do we have an audio?"

"Negative. Sims was just passing that room when somebody came out and shut the door behind them."

"Get a make on the little one. Anybody your Mahoney shuts up and listens to is somebody the council's gonna want bad."

When it was over, nearly eight hundred of the nearly one thousand conspirators and their aides present for the kriegsspiel had been positively identified. Among them—Mahoney and Sten.

And when it was over, Sims's body was cremated. Her fiche vanished from Imperial records. Five generations of Imperial service ended—in night and fog.

That was the cover name for the roundup operation: Nightfog. Target lists were made and sent out. They were to be implemented not only by Mercury and Mantis operatives, but by the council's private armies as well.

Some of the conspirators were arrested and tried publicly. Some of them, prodded by threats to their families, or more often just drug-programmed, confessed that the Honjo had indeed organized the conspiracy, through an outlaw general named Mahoney. Then they were permitted to die.

Others just vanished.

Innocent or guilty, the Imperial Officer Corps was shattered—shattered in self-image, shattered in fear, shattered in paranoia. All of them knew that Nightfog II… or III… or ? could happen.

There were eight hundred names from Sims's brain-scan, and eight hundred names on the original list.

Later estimates varied, but at least seven thousand beings were killed.

People had personal enemies. Each of the privy councillors, except Kyes, cleared up some of their own problems as the list was passed around—and as it grew.

When the deathlists arrived on the desks of the Security people chosen to make the pickups, it was simple for the officer or thug in charge to make an addition. Or two. Or six.

There were, of course, mistakes.

A writer of children's fiche named White, much loved and respected, was unfortunate to live in the same suburb as a retired major general named Whytte. The writer's house was broken into in the middle of the night. The writer was dragged to the center of his living room and shot. The writer's wife tried to stop the killers. She was shot, as well.

When the mistake was revealed, the head of the murder unit, a Mercury Corps operative named Clein, thought the matter an excellent joke.

Alex saw the beast raise its head from the trencher of meat and fix bloodshot eyes on Sten. The huge brows beetled into a murderous frown. The being wiped the gore from its lips with the long brush-tail beard and grimaced at some foul thought, exposing thick, yellow teeth.