Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

‘There was an inquest, wasn’t there?’ asked Luc, feeling a rush of adrenalin. ‘I don’t recall hearing about any such accusations.’

Offenbach grinned. ‘Then you might also be interested to know that not very long after her relationship with Antonov ended, Placet became Sevgeny Vasili’s lover.’

Luc thought of icebergs grinding together in a half-frozen sea, their vast bulks hidden in shadowy waters. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Vasili has a reputation for being a very private man,’ Offenbach continued. ‘Few people outside of the Temur Council knew about the relationship.’

‘Who made the accusation of foul play?’

‘Vasili did. He never accepted the inquest’s findings. He’s always insisted the flier Placet was in when she died must have been sabotaged or shot down on purpose, and her backups deliberately vandalized.’

Luc stared at him in amazement. ‘Why the hell have I never heard about any of this?’

‘Because it’s inner circle gossip,’ said Offenbach. ‘The kind of thing that rarely trickles down from the Eighty-Five to the likes of you and me. From what I gather, Vasili wasn’t the kind to keep quiet about his suspicions. He was absolutely convinced Placet had been murdered, along with a couple of other passengers unlucky enough to be on board the flier with her at the time. That , I think, is the reason Vasili became so isolated from Cheng and the rest of the Eighty-Five.‘

‘But if that were true, what would be the motive for murdering her?’

‘Assuming all this is true, and Vasili isn’t as crazy as the rest of the Council seem to think he is? I have no idea.’

Luc rubbed at his temple. Antonov, Vasili and Placet. ‘You’ve given me even more than you realize, Jared.’

‘That’s the beautiful thing about data,’ said Offenbach. ‘Things that only at first appear to be unconnected frequently prove, at a later date, to be intimately intertwined.’

I couldn’t have put it better , thought Luc, rising to his feet. ‘Thanks, Jared. I’ll get that Aeschere data through to you as soon as I can.’

‘I can only hope I’ve been able to help,’ replied Offenbach.

Luc headed for the door. ‘More than you can possibly imagine,’ he said as he departed.

SEVEN

In the three days since Jacob Moreland’s ship had crash-landed on Darwin, he had taken to hiding in a deep cave a few kilometres away from where that same craft had quickly set about destroying itself. He sustained himself by sucking brackish moisture from the pocket-like leaves of bushes that grew up the side of the hill below the cave, until it began to rain on the second day, an incessant downpour that continued well into the next evening. He passed the time huddled deep within the cave’s recesses, staring out towards the distant flicker of light that betrayed the presence of Coalition mechants still searching the nearby forest and shore.

They were looking for him, of course. His ship had evaded detection on the way down from orbit by disguising itself as random orbital flotsam, but whoever was controlling the mechants must have realized there was a chance at least one of the spy-ships had made it past their defences.

Jacob continued watching through the night until the lights eventually passed into the next valley, and only then allowed himself the luxury of sleep.

He emerged from the cave at dawn on his fourth day on Darwin, by now ravenous with hunger, climbing to the top of a tree and crouching low on a branch in order to peer out across the forest canopy. He could see that the search for him continued to move further and further away from his hiding place: beams of light flickered across the mouth of an estuary several kilometres to the north.

From time to time, as he waited to be rescued by whichever Tian Di sleeper agents picked up his transceiver alert, he would glance up at the impossibly vast bulk of the world-wheel that straddled Darwin’s equator. Patterns of light danced around the wheel’s inner curve, and up and down the spokes that connected the wheel to the continents and oceans below. From time to time displays of light, not unlike auroras, encircled the wheel like a phantasmagorical wreath, billowing like silk sheets cast into a turbulent wind. Whether it were some strange natural phenomenon, a byproduct of industrial processes, or indeed some form of artistic display, Jacob could not begin to guess.

The search lights finally faded behind a veil of grey rain that tumbled from the sky, blown in from the sea. Jacob returned to his cave and checked the transceiver for what might have been the thousandth time, but there was still no response.

He could not discount the possibility that the agents who had arrived before him might have been uncovered and terminated; but if that were the case, he felt sure their killers would not only have located their transceivers, but used them to track him down the moment he had sent out his distress call. The fact that they had not done so suggested those agents were still out there, somewhere.

Of course, there was always the possibility that if the sleeper agents had been captured, they had first managed to destroy their transceivers, or perhaps . . .

No. He pushed his transceiver back into a pocket of his combat suit. It was too easy to get caught up in paranoid fantasies, isolated and alone out here as he was. If he received no response within the next few days, he’d just have to strike out on his own and take his chances.

He set about foraging in the woods close by the cave, and found some wild nuts that proved bitter but edible. He tried a fruit analogous in appearance to berries, small dark clusters the colour of bruised knuckles, but just one was enough to make him violently sick and leave him with a fever that very nearly incapacitated him. He managed to crawl back inside the cave, where it took the microchines infesting his gut several hours to neutralize the berry’s poison and calm the fever.

When he next emerged from the cave, pale and shaky, night had fallen once more, and he saw a single light flickering through the line of trees dotting the slope below his cave.

They’ve found me , he thought with a lurch. Darwin’s security forces must have decided to renew their search for him. The chances of him surviving any encounter out here, without backup, against whatever mechants the Coalition were now employing, were vanishingly small.

Jacob waited, silent and still, for several minutes, then came to the conclusion that this was almost certainly a lone individual moving through the woods on foot. He could hear them stumbling through the undergrowth, their flashlight swinging this way and that.

Scrambling into the shelter of a tree’s wide, blade-like roots, he waited again.

Before long he saw the figure of a man make its way into a clearing below the cave, nervously clutching a torch in one hand. Jacob studied this individual from amongst deep shadows. The flickering auroras from the world-wheel faintly illuminated the stranger’s face, and Jacob saw that the man’s hair was grey and unkempt, his eyes pale and watery-looking. His mouth moved as if he were perpetually on the verge of saying something but then changing his mind. He was not young, and the lines on his face and the stiffness of his movements suggested he had not made use of any gerontological treatments presumably available to the Coalition’s citizens.

Jacob’s lattice searched its databases for a facial match, and found a near-perfect correlation with a sleeper agent named Melvin Kulic who had been sent to Darwin more than a century ago. The match was not quite perfect, however, suggesting this man was instead a descendant of Kulic’s, born since his arrival on Darwin.