Кристофер Банч - Revenge of the Damned

Tanz Sullamora stood there for a frozen moment, shaken at being so close to violence, even though it was of his own making. Then he turned and started to drop to one knee before the Emperor's body.

There was only a small bloody splotch on the Emperor's dress uniform to mark where the bullets had penetrated, and for a moment Sullamora was not sure if he had even been hurt.

A minute later, the worry was over. The Eternal Emperor was dead.

Then the privy council turned up the joker in the Emperor's deck.

The bomb implanted in his body exploded. The size of the blast had been determined thousands of years before. Sullamora died. And the Gurkhas. And the sobbing crowd. And anyone and anything within a precise one-eighth of a kilometer.

Odd things happened in all explosions, and that one was no exception. A week later, a tech from the pathology lab found Chapelle's face. That was all—just his face. There was not a blemish or a mark on it.

Chapelle's face was smiling.

Mahoney pressed his thumb against the print sensor, and the door to the Eternal Emperor's study hissed open. He hesitated before he entered. This would probably be his last time. There were only a very few beings the sensor would pass, and for an hour or two more Mahoney was one of them.

After that, the memory would be wiped and a new order of permitted presences would be installed. Mahoney knew there was no way his name would be on that exalted list, just as he had known there was something very wrong almost as soon as he had scattered his handful of dirt on the Eternal Emperor's coffin and stepped back to let the others pay their last respects.

The five surviving members of the privy council stood slightly apart from the other mourners on a small grassy knoll, just beyond the screen of rosebushes the gardeners had hastily planted to fulfill the Emperor's burial wishes.

But there was only one rose blossom on the entire span of bushes. It had no hidden meaning, but Mahoney found it strangely apt, and as it drew his attention, he made note of the presence of the Council of Five.

They stood together, but at an apparent measured distance, as if they were afraid to be too close. Not a word was whispered between them, and their faces were stony and guarded. It was as if they had something to feel guilty about, Mahoney thought; then he wiped away the thought as a product of Mick romanticism.

But the image nagged at him, and when he saw the news feed that night, he marked the announcement that an emergency session of Parliament had been called. Now, what could be odd about that, my friend? Mahoney thought. This is an emergency, isn't it?

Sure it is, Ian, but bless your sweet dumb Irish behind, don't you see it? The session was called by the privy council. Mahoney did not have to be a legal scholar to realize that such an action was well beyond their constitutional authority. All right. So why didn't any member of the Parliament complain? Or, better yet, refuse? Simple. Because it was wired, dear Ian, dear Ian, wired.

The Emperor had been murdered, and Mahoney knew who had done it, and it was not the poor mad fool the livies were going on about in their endlessly recycled analysis. It was not Chapelle.

Sure, Chapelle had pulled the trigger. But the real guilt rested with the five lone figures on the grassy knoll. And there was not a thing Mahoney could do about it because, even if he wanted to, he would not be part of the new order. Just as he knew that the hero of Cavite had better get on his horse and haul butt out of town before they came to really thank him.

Mahoney stepped into the clutter of the Eternal Emperor's study for the last time. He was not sure why he had come, except for the mad hope that there would be some clue about what to do next.

He was so used to his old boss having every base covered that it had not quite sunk in yet that this was one contingency that had been impossible to plan for.

Mahoney looked in dismay at the many scattered books on the shelves, some lying open just as the Emperor had left them as he searched for some arcane fact or other.

The study was jammed with the idiosyncrasies of his old boss: from ancient windup toys that clattered about with no purpose but to amuse to experimental cooking tools, plas bags of spices he was considering, scattered notes and scrawls, and even music sheets crammed with marginalia. An entire division could not have found a clue there in half a thousand years.

So Mahoney decided to have a drink. What else could he do?

He walked to the Emperor's desk and slid out the drawer where the boss kept his Scotch. He noted that the seal on the bottle was unbroken. That was strange. The Emperor never put an unsealed bottle in his desk. He always took a snort first. Mahoney shrugged, pulled out a shot glass, and reached for the bottle.

As he picked it up, something small and white came unstuck from the bottom and fluttered to the floor. Mahoney stooped over to see what it was. When he saw the scrawling on it, he almost let it drop from his fingers in shock.

Mahoney dropped heavily into a chair. He held the piece of paper before his disbelieving eyes. His face was flushed, sweat leapt from his forehead, and his pulse rate jumped into triple time.

The message was for him. From the Eternal Emperor. And this was all it said:

"Stick around, Ian. I'll be right back."