Кристофер Банч - Revenge of the Damned

"Look. When I get back is when the real work starts," the Emperor said, "and I'm gonna need some help."

Sten saw his freedom vanishing.

"I've had to rebuild this whole shebang more than once," the Emperor said, "but I don't think things have ever been this bad. Don't get me wrong. I know what to do. But after this war I'm short of talent to help out.

"Sullamora and his boyos won't do much more than get in my way. All they can see is bottom-line profits. Funny about those types. They have some minor money-making abilities—if you call pirating business savvy. The thing that bothers me is that they don't seem to have any fun doing it.

"Bunch of gloomy clots. And they don't help my mood at all. All right. Forget them. I bring in some young, spirited types like yourself. We bust our scrotums for just fifty or sixty years, and maybe we end up with something looking kind of nice. Something we can be proud of."

If Sten had been uneasy before, when the "we" crept into the conversation, he really started getting worried.

"Excuse me, sir," he broke in, "but I'm not sure how I can fit into all this."

The Emperor waved that away. "You're not to worry about it," he said. "I've got some pretty good ideas."

"It's not that," Sten said. "And I don't mean to sound ungrateful. But…" He hesitated, then took the plunge. "You see, I've got some pretty severe doubts about where I want to be in those next fifty or sixty years. And right now, the military doesn't feel like it. Like you said, it feels like a pain in the behind—although mine isn't royal."

The Emperor laughed. "So, what are you thinking?"

"I'm not sure," Sten said. "I've got leave coming to me. Probably a couple of years' worth if I totted it all up. I thought maybe I'd just kick back and see what happens."

The Emperor gave Sten a measuring look. Then he smiled and shook his head. He tilted his glass at Sten in a silent toast. The audience was over. Sten drained his glass and got up. He set down the glass and gave the Emperor what he hoped would be his last salute. The Emperor returned it, very formal.

"Within six months," he predicted, "you'll be bored out of your skull. I should be back home by then. Look me up."

Believing that the Emperor was wrong on all counts, Sten wheeled and was out the door.

The Eternal Emperor clumped down the ramp of the Normandie , his Gurkha bodyguards pressed tightly around him. He paused at the bottom, then breathed a silent sigh of relief. As per his orders, there were no welcoming crowds at Soward, Prime World's main spaceport. Instead, a short distance away, there was only his personal gravcar and its escort to take him back to his dreary makeshift quarters beneath the ruins of Arundel.

He would have to do something about that, he reminded himself. Time to give the rebuilding program a boot in the butt. It was not the image of pomp and splendor he missed but the carefully built-in comforts and, above all, privacy. Just to be alone for a little while with one of his nutball projects—like reinventing the varnish used on a Strad violin—would be an immense relief.

At the moment he felt that if one more being asked him for a decision or brought some trouble to his attention, he would break down and sob. The problem was that emperors who sobbed publicly were never eternal. Still, that was exactly what he felt like doing. Just as his face felt as if it was going to fall off from smiling at vidcameras, and his ringers were bleeding from shaking the hands of so many grateful subjects. They were all anxious to tell him what a hero he was.

He thought of another hero and winced, with a small smile. After a decisive battle, one of the man's aides had told him what a great hero he had become. Sure, the new hero had observed. But if I had lost, I would be the greatest villain in our nation's history. What was the guy's name? Who knows. Probably something Prussian. So much for clottin' heroes.

The Eternal Emperor pulled himself together and headed for his gravcar. A few years earlier he would have slept the clock around three or four times, then donned his Raschid identity and gone on a long drunk at the Covenanter, with maybe a tumble with Janiz for old time's sake. But the Covenanter was gone because of treachery. As was Janiz. Both gone, and it was his fault, dammit! He had let it get away from him somehow.

The master of doublethink. Bah! Maybe that's your problem, Engineer Raschid. You overclottin' complicate every clottin' thing. Keep it stupid, simple, and a whole lot of folks might still be breathing—instead of dead or, worse, on their knees, praising your name.

The Eternal Emperor was feeling every year of his 3,000-plus span as he reached the car. Then he saw Tanz Sullamora's smiling face, and he groaned and almost groaned again as Tanz stuck out a hand to be shook. Instead, he took it—gingerly.

"Welcome back, Your Majesty," Sullamora gushed. "We're all very proud."

Sure you are, the Raschid side of him thought. You just can't wait to figure out how to intrigue me out of a few more warehouses full of credits. But the Eternal Emperor side of him made him merely smile and mutter a polite thanks.

"I have one small request," Sullamora said. "I know you're anxious to get home, but…"

The Emperor raised an eyebrow. He was about to be put out. He was too tired to speak, so he just motioned for Sullamora to continue.

"It's the spaceport employees," Sullamora said. "They've been waiting for hours and…"

He glanced over where Sullamora was pointing and saw a small mixed-uniform crowd near the main gate. Oh, no! More smiling. More hand shaking. More… Ahhh…

"I can't handle it, Tanz," the Emperor said. "Get Mahoney to do it. He's back on the Normandie taking care of some last-minute business. He'll be out in a sec." He stepped to the door of his gravcar.

"It won't be the same, sir," Sullamora insisted. "It's you they want to see. I know these beings aren't real fighters and all. But they have done their best in their own ways. So, won't you please…"

The Eternal Emperor resigned himself and changed direction for the gate. He wanted to get it over with, so he picked up speed until he had his Gurkhas trotting on their stumpy legs to keep up.

The little crowd broke into cheers as he approached them, and the Emperor, who was too professional to disappoint under such circumstances, painted on his most Imperial smile and started shaking hands. He made sure he asked each being's name as he took the outstretched hand with his right and clasped the elbow with his left. It was a handshake guaranteed to generate warm feelings, and at the same time he could use the elbow hold to move them gently to the side as he pulled back his shaking hand and stepped to the side to take another.

He was about a third of the way down the line when he came to the man with the pale face and too-bright eyes. The Emperor asked the man's name and went into his hand shaking act. He could not make out the nervous mutter he got back so that he could repeat it, so he just grinned more widely and started to withdraw his hand and pass on.

The hands stayed clasped.

The Eternal Emperor had only a heartbeat to puzzle at what was going wrong, and then he saw the pistol coming up in the man's other hand. And he was falling back, trying to get away, but he could not let go as the pistol went crack-crack-crack-crack and he knew he was hit but could not feel a thing except maybe that his stomach was bruised and—

The Gurkhas were on Chapelle, slashing with their deadly kukris, and the man was dead even as his trigger finger kept pulling in reflex and the gun was clicking empty. It happened so fast that only then the crowd began to get the idea that something awful was occurring. The first screams began.