Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

Sten cooked, ate, and went to bed just after dusk. He slept dreamlessly, then rose, collected his climbing pack, and headed for the rock.

For a few hours he lost himself in the rhythm of the climb, the feel of the rock under his palms, and the attention to balance. He wedged a nut into a crack, tied himself off, and dug into his day pack for a snack. He looked up. Not bad. He was almost 250 meters up. Maybe he could spot a bivvy site farther up, do a one-man siege later on, and actually get to the summit before his vacation ended. He had already spotted at least six other fascinating routes he wanted to try.

Then he looked down.

Eight faces looked up at him. His bodyguards were sitting in a semicircle near the base of the pillar, doing their job. Hell. Climbing was not a spectator sport.

He thought of throwing a piton or shouting something. Come on, Sten, he told himself. Aren't you being a little childish? However, he found himself climbing down a couple of hours before he had planned, and the descent was not nearly as mind-absorbing as going up had been.

The next day, he tried another route, this one chosen not just for its interest, but because he did not think there was an observation point for his damnably faithful bodyguards.

They found one anyway. He forced himself to ignore them and climbed on. But his concentration, his ability to lose himself, was… not shattered. He still reveled in what he was doing. But he was… aware of other things.

That night, after he had cooked a rather unimaginative, underspiced curry and eaten solo, he found himself sleepless. Across the pond, he could see the low flicker from the Bhor's campsite. They must have found some dry wood and built a tiny fire. He could almost, but not quite, hear voices. Almost, but not quite, hear the crystal chime of a laugh.

Sten swore to himself again. He hunted through his expedition pack and found a bottle. Then he put his boots back on and found his way around the pond to the firelight. There were only four bodyguards around the fire. He tapped the bottle against a tree and stepped forward. Cind and a Bhor came out of the blackness and lowered their weapons.

"What's wrong?" she snapped, eyes sweeping the night.

"Uh… nothing. I… just had trouble getting to sleep. I thought… if I wasn't intruding…"

They welcomed him to their campfire and politely sipped from the bottle of Imperially synthesized "Scotch" Sten had brought along until they could find an excuse to dig out their own supply. Stregg. The Eternal Emperor had once said that stregg was to triple-run moonshine—whatever that meant—as moonshine was to mother's milk.

Regardless, Sten and his bodyguard got royally potted. The quiet alpine meadow was broken by occasional shouts of "by my father's frozen buttocks" and other Bhor toasts. The evening was culminated when three Bhor threw Sten into the pond.

A very juvenile evening, Sten thought confusedly when he woke the next day. Then he hurt too badly to assess the adultness of his situation. He was still in the Bhor camp. His head was pillowed on one Bhor's calf, and another Bhor was using his stomach for a pillow. Sten realized that he was being attacked by lethal air molecules, smashing into his body everywhere.

Cind and a Bhor walked—lopsidedly—into the camp.

"Wake up, you scrots," she snarled. "It's your shift. Oh, Christ, I hurt."

"Hurt quietly then," Sten whimpered. He found the bottle of Scotch that was still unfinished and chanced a swallow. No. No. His stomach tried to climb the distant pillar. He got to his feet. His soles hurt. "I am going to die."

"Do it quietly, then. Sir. Admiral." Turnabout was fair and all that.

By rights, Sten should have proven his ability at command and taken everyone for a five-klick run or something equally Admirally-Heroic. He managed to strip off his coveralls and—clot decency—wade into the pond until the freeze told him that the molecules were not attacking. Then he pulled his coveralls back on and decided to eat something.

There was no climbing done that day.

But from that point, the R&R became something very different from Sten's original plans.

One of the Bhor asked about climbing. Sten showed him some of the tricks on a nearby boulder. Cind had already taken a basic climbing course, although the course had specialized in going up the sides of buildings.

And so it went. Climb during the day. Twice he just went for hill-scrambling around the mountain bases nearby. At night, they ate communally. Sten moved his tent into the Bhor campsite.

He spent a lot of time with Cind.

She was easy to talk to. Sten supposed this was some kind of breach of discipline. What discipline? he asked himself. You aren't even an admiral any more—technically. Even if you are, do you want to be? He managed to get Cind to stop calling him by his rank, and even to drop most of the "sir's" with which she salted her speech.

He told her about the factory hellworld he had grown on. He mentioned—briefly—his family. He told her about Alex Kilgour, and the many, many years they had adventured together.

He did not tell war stories.

Cind, at first, was disappointed. Here was a chance to learn from the greatest warrior of them all. But she found herself listening to other tales—of the strange beings he had encountered, some human, some otherwise, some friendly, some less than that. Again, there was no gore to those stories.

The alpine meadow heard, many times, the chime of crystal.

Cind talked about how strange it had been, growing up as the daughter of the warrior sect of a jihad-prone religion, a religion not only shattered by war but one whose gods had been proven frauds and degenerates. It had seemed natural to her to gravitate toward the Bhor.

"Although now I wonder sometimes. Was I just, going from wanting one kind of belief-shelter"—she used the Talameic word—"to another?"

Sten raised an eyebrow. True or not, it was a sophisticated observation from someone as young as Cind.

He told her about the worlds he had seen. Tropic, arctic, vacuum. The redwoods of Earth. His own world of Smallbridge.

"Perhaps… I could show it to you. One day."

"Perhaps," Cind said, smiling very slightly, "I would like to see it. One day."

They did not sleep together. Cind might have gone to Sten's tent, if he had asked. He did not.

A very odd R&R, Sten mused, as his self-alloted vacation time expired and they loaded the gravcar. Not what I expected…

But maybe what I needed.

The Tribunal was nearly ready to announce its decision. After the last witness had been called and the final bit of evidence presented, the judges withdrew to their chamber. Several weeks of backbreaking clerical work followed as they pored over the mounds of testimony.

At first, Sten felt it was a great privilege to be allowed to watch. He, Alex, and Mahoney huddled in the far corner as Sr. Ecu and the three judges debated the relative worth of every detail. As recorder, Dean Blythe oversaw the efforts to officially document the private proceedings for legal history. Sr. Ecu was particularly wary that whatever the outcome, there would be no oversight anyone could use against them.

The judges assumed their roles with a fury. Warin remained totally impartial. Apus, despite her hatred for the Council, was an ardent defender. Sometimes Sten had to shake himself to remember what her true feelings were. One side of him grew angry when she relentlessly hammered away in the privy council's defense. The other side of him admired her for taking her duties so seriously.

Still, it was hard not to get pissed when things like the information he had retrieved from Lovett Arena were dismissed as nothing but rubbish, a trick of science or possibly even planted evidence.