CHAPTER FOUR
General Gerald was prepared to repel boarders. Crouched in battle armor in the comer of his living room, he smiled at his own strategy, his own cunning. Remote sensors in various parts of the house fed data through his armor and into his optical centers. He scanned them with chill, happy obsession. Maijstral might win— the General was willing to concede that possibility— but he would know he’d been in a fight. Maijstral was going to be in for the battle of his life.
He knew that no thief of Maijstral’s caliber could possibly resist the gauntlet the General had flung in his face. He had threatened Maijstral with death knowing that Maijstral couldn’t possibly pass up that kind of challenge. Hah, Maijstral would think, this old fogey thinks he can tell me what to do. And then Maijstral would decide to teach the old man a lesson and sneak into his house to steal something.
Little did Maijstral know that Gerald was ready for him. He had anticipated his enemy’s reaction and was going to spring an ambush.
It was General Gerald’s misfortune to have spent forty years as a warrior without a war. He had never once been in combat. For decades he had practiced for the inevitable Imperial resurgency, honed his skills, studied enemy tactics, waged endless campaigns for funding and battled the Empire only in simulation and exercises . . . and overnight, it seemed, General Gerald found himself facing retirement without the cowardly Imperial fleet having once shown up for the long-awaited Armageddon. It was more than a patriot could stand.
So now the General waited in his old armor, surrounded by weapons laid out in a semicircle, smiling as he scanned the remotes and felt the suit blowing cool air on his brow. He pictured Maijstral’s entry in his mind, the thief moving in through windows or doors or even through the chimney, unaware that the General had just spent a fortune on detection apparatus and confident that his darksuit would hide him from the avenging ex-marine crouched in the corner. General Gerald would open the conflict with a snare rifle, try to catch the thief in its coils. Maijstral’s darksuit could probably make itself frictionless and thus slip the bonds, after which the thief might well strike out with a chugger or a stunner, which the General’s armor would, of course, repel . . . and then the battle would broaden, higher and higher energies brought into play, disruptors and mappers and spitfires, and then maybe it would even come down to hand-to-hand at the end. General Gerald with his trusty cutlass against Maijstral and his stiletto.
The General pictured his victory, Maijstral prostrate, the General triumphant, the room flaming (what the hell— the house was insured). The first time Maijstral had ever been caught and apprehended, a first-class thief brought down by the General’s foresight and cunning.
Maijstral, the General thought. The Allowed Burglar wasn’t quite the Imperial Admiral of the Fleet, but in the latter’s absence he would just have to do . . .
*
Peleng wasn’t any fun at all.
Sergeant Tvi of His Imperial Majesty’s Secret Dragoons looked at her communications display in speechless despair. The Scholder manse was calling for help. Unmistakably. The Imperial Relic would not be reclaimed tonight.
Tvi’s diaphragm gave a spasm of irritation. She banked her Jefferson-Singh speedster and rose high into the traffic lanes, imitating an ordinary commuter. She glanced over her shoulder at her darksuit and equipment and considered tossing them.
No, she decided. She might yet get a chance to show what she could do.
Sergeant Tvi was, to be blunt, a scapegrace. Her parents had been stodgy Imperial servants, existing in perfect descent from long lines of other Imperial servants, each priding himself on his exemplary dullness. Tvi’s childhood had been a tedious one, full of boredom and fantasy. If she hadn’t had a good imagination she might well have died of ennui. Trapped in one Imperial backwater or another, her horizons limited by the acidic atmosphere of Vanngrian or the endless bleak deserts of Zynzlyp, Tvi had followed the burglar standings, the confidence-racket broadcasts, the exploits of the Human Diadem, biographies of Elvis . . . if only, she’d thought, if only she had the chance, she’d show Geoff Fu George or Baron Drago a thing or two.
Her career as a burglar, unfortunately, had not been graced with success. Two standards ago, she’d had the misfortune to get caught on her first job, and her only refuge from Imperial law had been the Secret Dragoons.
As she had contemplated the service from her prison cell on Letharb and listened to the reproaches of her parents, the new work had sounded interesting, even attractive— the chance to visit far-flung worlds, participate in intrigue intended to further the designs of the Empire, find Romance, Excitement, Danger. Instead, however, she’d been assigned as a junior security officer at various consulates in the Human Constellation, a job that consisted for the most part in dealing with various human cranks. Imperialists mainly, who insisted they knew of plots against the Empire and exactly what she should do about them. Countess Anastasia was yet another in a long line of maladjusted human contacts, and Tvi had begun to despair of the whole race. Were these the same people who had produced Mad Julius and the incomparable Soderberg Vampyre?
After Baron Sinn had claimed her for a special mission, her chances had seemed a bit brighter. The situation had been promising. She would be engaged in a race against the clock with the Fate of the Empire at stake, and her competition was none other than Drake Maijstral— he was in the top half of the standings, and furthermore had style and promise. And now it appeared that Tvi had arrived too late.
Damnation. Now things would most likely be turned over to that unspeakable mug Khotvinn, and she’d find herself playing second fiddle in some sordid job of skull-tapping or breaking-and-bashing.
Drat. Peleng was no fun at all.
*
Behind Sergeant Tvi, Paavo Kuusinen’s matte-black speedster rose into the sky. The Khosali commando’s flier was a clear blip on his screens.
Kuusinen had followed Nichole’s advice and got a new jacket cut in the local style, the better to blend in. He was, as he had told Nichole, a student of human nature; he was also, as he told Maijstral, visiting Peleng on business.
That afternoon he had been combining both occupations— he was trying to follow Maijstral. To his surprise he’d discovered that Maijstral was being followed by someone else, the Khosali female. Maijstral had dutifully given her the slip earlier that evening, losing Kuusinen at the same time, and Kuusinen had since been following the Khosali in hopes she’d locate Maijstral again. Instead, the small female had gone off on a pointless excursion into the outback only to turn around abruptly and head back to Peleng City.
Did these people have any idea what they were doing? Kuusinen was beginning to suspect not.
The whole situation was quite bewildering. All he wanted to do was keep an eye on Maijstral, and to his amazement half the Imperial Diplomatic Service seemed to be engaged in the same errand.
There was clearly a mystery here. And, Kuusinen decided, he was just the man to unravel it.
*
Countess Anastasia contemplated her stiff-shouldered image in the reflection of her apartment window. She was dressed in a soft black dress that left her shoulders bare, and billowed around her ankles in a cascading wave of darkness. She touched the skirt, picked at an imaginary bit of lint— how dare common detritus adhere to her clothing. Neuralgia danced in her spine, and consequent irritation whispered in her mind. Maijstral, the whisper said, and her ears flicked downward. She really did disapprove of the man.
“That Gregor person was asking about Jensen and her cohort. Maijstral’s given us the slip. Your burglar Tvi reports that alarms are going off all over the Scholder house. How much more do you need in order to act?”
Baron Sinn’s sharp-faced silhouette appeared next to hers in the reflective surface. He, too, was smoking, the cigaret hanging from the end of his muzzle. It was a vice he normally avoided, but which he indulged in for Anastasia’s sake, an old-fashioned courtesy she seemed to appreciate. “I have only two personnel,” he said. “Maijstral has servants here, and connections. If he has the Imperial Relic he’s probably gone to ground.”
“Damn him, anyway. Why didn’t he take the bribe?”
“Perhaps he does not share his father’s convictions.”
Anastasia sneered. Smoke streamed from her nostrils in elegant little white traceries, and she admired the effect in the glass. “He simply takes pleasure in being wayward,” she said. “That’s why he took up burglary and that unspeakable Nichole woman, just to annoy the family. I always told his father to be firm with the boy.”
“Too late now, my lady.”
Her lip curled. A bit of tobacco, she noticed, was adhering to one bright tooth. “It’s never too late for firmness, my lord Baron,” she said. It was one of the rules by which she lived, but the maxim was spoiled by her having to pick the tobacco fleck off her smile.
Sinn remained silent.
“That Nichole,” Anastasia told the glass. “Nichole and the Diadem. The height of Constellation culture. People whose sole profession is to be gossiped about. Can you imagine it?”
Sinn moved the cigaret to the comer of his mouth with his lolling tongue. “We were speaking, Countess, about Maijstral and this Jensen woman.”
“Firmness,” she said, remembering her earlier tack.
Neuralgia stabbed her neck. “If Maijstral is in the public eye, and might be missed, Jensen is not. If Maijstral has no one to deliver the Imperial Relic to, then . . .”
“Quite so.”
Baron Sinn looked at the human woman and restrained his diaphragm from an irritated spasm. She was an ally, he reminded himself, and even if she was a grotesque crank she was a rich grotesque crank who had personally financed Imperial Party activities here in the Constellation. . . .
He dropped his cigaret into an ashtray. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll have to call Khotvinn into it. We’ll pick up Jensen as soon as she’s alone. She seems to be entertaining someone named Navarre right now— he’s in the service and we don’t want complications.”
Anastasia stalked to him and put her arm through his, her palm stroking the smooth dark hair on his upper arm. “Lovely,” she said. Her mouth open, her tongue lolled: Khosali good humor. The glitter in her eyes was appalling. “Firmness at last.”
Politics, the Baron quoted to himself, oft consists in ignoring facts.
He considered himself a practical person and rarely resorted to maxims. It was a measure of how she strained his nerves that he was thinking in clichés at all.
*
Lieutenant Navarre thought of Amalia Jensen as his flier arched across the night sky. An interesting woman, he decided. Dedicated to preserving the Constellation in her own chosen fashion, and with the facts and intelligence to back up her opinions, she’d proved a most stimulating companion for the evening. Head of a political organization, a third degree black sash in pom boxing, an expert conversationalist... Odd, given all that, she’d turn out to be a garden person. Her house was filled with plants and flowers, all lovingly tended.
Still he was a bit uneasy about turning down an invitation from Nichole. How often did a man, particularly an officer from Pompey, get a chance to be photographed with a member of the Human Diadem? Unfortunate that he’d not been in a situation in which he could escape the commitment with grace.
The communicator on his flier gave a discreet chirp, and he frowned. Who would be calling at this hour? He pressed a button and answered.
“Navarre.”
“Sir? This is Officer Pankat of the Peleng Police. Apparently your late uncle’s house was broken into tonight.”
Navarre was astonished. “Really?” he asked. And then, “But why?”
*
“Upon the success of your actions in the next few hours,” Baron Sinn declared, “may depend the Fate of the Empire.”
Well, thought Sergeant Tvi, how much better than this can it ever get? The Fate of the Empire— her heart beat faster as the words rang in her mind like bells. This was a definite improvement on spending one’s life in the civil service, gazing out the window at the endless deserts and intractable inhabitants of Zynzlyp. Even Khotvinn’s dark, looming presence— he was a head taller even than Sinn— seemed less than its usual sinister self.
“Khotvinn will be under your orders,” Sinn went on. “If there is trouble, he is trained to get you out of it.”
“I don’t anticipate trouble, my lord.” In what Tvi hoped was a tone of quiet confidence.
Sinn looked at her, his gaze commanding. “Anticipate every possible trouble, Tvi. Then you will be able to cope with each problem as it arises.”
Why did officers always talk like this? Tvi wondered. Nothing a subordinate said was ever quite right. Even expressions of confidence triggered a lecture. Her reply was dutiful.
“Yes, my lord.”
Countess Anastasia stepped from the back of the room and laid a hand on Baron Sinn’s arm. The Baron stiffened.
“Let no one get in your way,” the Countess said. Unlike the Baron, she spoke High Khosali. “This is no time for hesitation or foolish regard for life. There must be no witnesses. You must be prepared to take harsh action.” She held up a clenched fist.
Tvi remained silent. She didn’t have to take orders from the Countess, but the Baron’s group was dependent on the Countess for support on this planet, so there was every reason to treat her with courtesy.
The Fate of the Empire! Tvi thought again. Now there was something worth listening to boring speeches for. She wondered if, in future generations, there would be video programs about Tvi of the Secret Dragoons.
The Countess went on about firmness and the necessity for action. Tvi knew that when her superiors shifted into High Khosali they were trying to inspire her, and she could successfully drowse through it with her eyes open. She therefore stood in a respectful attitude, her ears cocked forward as if she were listening, and in her mind pictured Video Tvi and watched with cool pleasure as the heroine stole documents, battled spies, saved the Emperor’s coffin from sabotage. . . . Then she looked at Khotvinn.
The big Khosalikh was standing with his eyes gleaming, the fur on his shoulders standing. The monster was absorbing the Countess’s words with evident pleasure and anticipation, just waiting for the moment when he could crack bones, snap necks, bruise flesh. In their few days’ acquaintance, Khotvinn had always given Tvi the impression of something that might choose to live in a cave. Now that impression was enhanced. Tvi’s mind snapped to attention. Someone like Khotvinn wasn’t in her mental script. The Khotvinns of the videos always sought employment in the service of villains, and were usually massacred by the heroine just before intermission.
Khotvinn was going to take watching. Tvi knew that now, and knew it for certain.
*
In her darksuit, Tvi flowed like black glass over the rolling yellow hills on the outskirts of Peleng City. Her sense of smell, enhanced by her darksuit attachments, brought her the scent of night-blooming bellseed flowers.
Khotvinn stood by the flier like a monument. Tvi had decided not to use him on her reconnaissance— she considered him clumsy, and she was certain that he had let himself be seen tailing Maijstral’s assistant the day before. Tvi lighted and switched off the suit’s holograph projectors. Khotvinn gave no sign he noticed her presence.
“Navarre’s flier is gone. There are no security arrangements on the house that I can detect.”
Khotvinn was matter-of-fact. “Then let’s go.” His accent was provincial and hard to understand. He flexed his shoulders in a stiff, businesslike way, and Tvi wondered where Sinn had found this one. Half the Secret Dragoons joined the military from jail, and Khotvinn might well be some murderer recruited from the prison planets for the impenitent, one of those who hadn’t had the decency to commit suicide when caught.
She wondered how he could possibly have understood the Countess’s speech. Tvi doubted he could speak High Khosali if it were put to him.
“Not yet,” Tvi said. “Wait for light.”
Khotvinn flexed again, impatient, but said nothing at all through the long purple dawn. He didn’t seem to be much good at conversation.
She sighed. In the vids featuring Allowed Burglars, assistants were polite, amoral technophiles who followed orders with clear-eyed efficiency, always ready to pull some new black box out of a hat. Disappointingly, Khotvinn was out of the wrong mold.
Tvi waited till she saw a few early fliers carrying people about their business. Then she put on a battered jacket over her darksuit and motioned for Khotvinn to join her in the flier. It rose into the morning sky.
“I’ve got a plan,” Tvi said, “Just follow my lead.” Khotvinn gave no sign that he had heard. Tvi chose to assume he had.
She didn’t bother explaining her plan to him. She had tried to picture this discussion to herself, and the picture hadn’t scanned. “We’re going to pretend to be broadcast repair personnel, Khotvinn.” Then, tactfully, “Do you know what broadcast repair personnel are?” No, best let her do the talking. Khotvinn was supposed to be strictly backup, in case of emergencies.
She’d do it all herself. She was Tvi of the Secret Dragoons, on her first real mission, and the Fate of the Empire . . . oops.
She had overshot Amalia Jensen’s house. She turned the flier in a long loop, making it seem as if the oversight had been a deliberate attempt at reconnaissance. Khotvinn said nothing, assuming he’d even noticed. She dropped the flier onto Jensen’s flat roof.
The edge of the roof was decorated with long planters and bright blossoms. A robot was moving from flower to flower with a watering can.
The robot was an ordinary all-purpose domestic, combining the functions of maid, butler, doorman, telephone answering machine, and cup-bearer. It rolled toward the flier. The watering can, Tvi noticed, was painted with little yellow daisies.
“May I help you, lady and sir?” the robot asked.
What Tvi planned to say was this: “We’re from Peleng Independent Broadcasting. We’ve had reports of interference in your neighborhood, and we’d like to check out your sets.” What she said instead was: “Khotvinn! What in hell are you doing?”
For the giant had leaped from the flier, not even bothering to open the door, and felled the robot with a single kick. It went sprawling, its arms flung out, the water can clattering across the roof. Khotvinn leaped into the air, then landed on the robot with both feet. More clattering.
Tvi was jumping too, for the black boxes in the back seat. She triggered them— just in time, she suspected— and saw the little gauges flicker as they began intercepting communications. The robot was alerting the household even as Khotvinn picked it up and began smashing it against one of the planters.
“Sir!” the robot chirped. “Can’t we just talk about it like reasonable beings?”
Tvi knew exactly how the robot felt. Khotvinn tore one of the robot’s arms off.
Panic thudded beneath Tvi’s ribs. The Fate of the Empire, she recited to herself. Et cetera. Do something.
She jumped out of the flier and dashed to the roof entrance, then pressed the down button. “ACCESS DENIED,” the door reported in four commonly-used scripts.
“Thagger,” Tvi swore. She was going to have to get in the house some other way.
Khotvinn tore off the robot’s remaining arm and began beating the machine with it.
Tvi snapped on her darksuit and pulled its hood over her head, giving her mental control of its devices. She triggered the hologram and, a miniature black cloud, floated away from the mayhem on the roof and dived over the edge of the building. She reached for a microcutter on her belt and began slicing at the first window she came to. As she popped the window out and began to drift through it, she realized she was entering Amalia Jensen’s bedroom.
Darksuits are useless camouflage during the day. The black holographic cloud obscures the figure, of course, but it may be argued that a black cloud floating through someone’s window may call more attention to itself than a person doing the same thing. And of course if you happen to be halfway through a window, your darksuit could be projecting the chorus from Aida and you’d still be an easy target.
The first glimpse Tvi caught of Amalia Jensen was as the human female popped out from behind her waterbed and lobbed overarm a heavy vase that caught Tvi squarely between the ears. Stars exploded in Tvi’s vision. She decided to get out of the window as fast as possible, and accelerated straight across the room.
Unfortunately her depth perception was still numb and she smashed headfirst into a closet door.
Jensen, seen by Tvi through her rear projectors, continued to hurl weighty household objects into the darksuit screen. A heavy ashtray caught Tvi between her shoulders. A vase detonated over her head.
Enough was enough. This was Khotvinn’s department. Tvi flew down the hallway to the living room and unlocked the roof entrance. The amplified scent of flowers warred with pain in her skull— the place was full of plants. Khotvinn came slowly down the a-grav elevator, a robot arm in one hand.
“What took you so long?” he snarled.
Tvi willed her hologram projectors off and pointed numbly toward Jensen’s bedroom. “That way,” she said. Khotvinn flung the robot arm into a corner— there was a crash that echoed endlessly in Tvi’s skull as the arm destroyed a porcelain planter— and then the giant began to lope at a ground-shattering trot toward the bedroom.
Unfortunately Jensen had changed position. She came flying out of a connecting bathroom, a green-and-white striped towel blossoming from one hand. The towel draped nearly over Khotvinn’s head just as Jensen’s foot planted itself in his midsection. The air went out of Khotvinn in a rush.
There followed a good deal of confused thumping and thrashing. Jensen was aided by another small household robot that clung to Khotvinn’s knees and tried in a fairly incompetent way to harm him. Tvi wasn’t certain what she was watching, not being an aficionado of the martial arts— a proper burglar disdained violence— but it seemed as if honors were about even. Both fighters were breathless and bloody before Jensen broke off the combat and retreated back into the bathroom. Khotvinn, ignoring the clawing robot and a bottle of shampoo that bounced off his chest, marched in pursuit.
Tvi leaned against an overstuffed chair, holding her head. “Hey,” she said as the thrashing started again, “use your stunner, why don’t you?”
The household robot came flying out of the bedroom door and smashed into bits on the opposite wall. Amalia Jensen, crouched low, followed the robot out of the door— apparently she’d just ducked from the bathroom into the bedroom— and began backing toward Tvi. Tvi reached for her stunner.
Then Khotvinn appeared, brandishing a towel rack. Jensen reached for a flowerpot and let fly. Tvi lowered her weapon. The wide-beam stunner would get them both if she fired it.
The combat demolished most of the living room. Tvi floated up near the roof in her a-grav harness, trying to get in a clear shot, but Khotvinn kept blocking the way.
“Earth slime!” Khotvinn bellowed.
“Inhuman scum!” Amalia Jensen retorted through bloody lips.
Fate of the Empire, Tvi thought resignedly, and wondered how well her black boxes were doing without supervision.
Do something.
She floated over Khotvinn, grabbed his scruff with one hand, and yanked back, turning her a-grav up to max. Khotvinn flew backward, his arms windmilling, and landed on a glass table that shattered with a sound that rattled in Tvi’s head like snapping thunder. Jensen cackled triumphantly and prepared her coup de grace. Tvi, now having a clear shot, fired and dropped Jensen in her tracks.
“No!” Khotvinn roared. He was having trouble disentangling himself from the table frame. “She was mine!”
“Idiot,” Tvi said. Her skull was splitting. “You were just supposed to stun her. Pick her up and let’s go.”
“No fair,” Khotvinn muttered sulkily.
Fate of the Empire, Tvi thought as chimes clanged in her skull. Next time the Empire offered her its fate, it could jolly well go hang.