My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (50 page)

“So why, then, are you going?” I said to my reflection.

“Because I said I would,” I saw the reflection say back. And I hadn’t even been drunk when I said it. “You have to go with her, you know,” the reflection said. “You’re too in love with her to let her go alone.”

Funny, but I had never used that “L” word, even in my head, until that moment. I had always found a euphemism. Just like a goddamn Imperial. I shook myself and marched out to the main compartment.

Jaenna was waiting there, ready to go. I assumed she had changed back into the gray shipsuit, but it was impossible to be certain because she had pulled her cloak completely around herself. I guessed that there was more than just the shipsuit under that cloak.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Unless I can talk you out of it.”

“No. If it’s true, then I am going to confront my father myself, not hope that the Fleet somehow, somewhen, takes my revenge for me. And if it is not true, I won’t have rumors like that doing Carrillacki’s work for them.”

Well, sorry about the last, I thought. Harvangi had his orders about that message and they weren’t going to be changed. Norboh’s story rang true to me, and I had seen enough of Carrillacki to want to be sure about spiking their schemes.

There was no problem finding an aircar at the terminal, as almost everyone who had planned to go to the Residence had already passed through. As before, the pilot dropped us at the outer perimeter. I spent part of the flight worrying whether we would be challenged at the perimeter because of my blaster. They hadn’t scanned us there before and I had seen weapons around the Residence, so it seemed unlikely that we’d have trouble, although it was impossible to convince my stomach of that. In the event, there was no challenge. The perimeter station wasn’t there to prevent hand weapons from coming in, only to prevent overflights. The hovercar took us from there, back up to the front door. Jaenna stopped in front of the door and put a hand on my arm.

“We’ll need to split up for awhile,” she whispered. “There is a special passage to that auditorium that is keyed only to family and close household that I’m going to use. There is no scanner there. You will have to use the regular entrance.”

It figured there would be a bolt-hole like that. It was the splitting up I didn’t like. “Why can’t you bring me through that way also?”

“It won’t work, Danny. That route is very thoroughly alarmed.”

“Are you sure it’s still keyed to you?” I asked.

“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take. It was a day ago, there is no reason to believe it has been changed and I cannot be scanned.”

Inside, the Residence was silent and apparently deserted. We walked together for a while until, at an intersecting corridor, she tapped my arm and turned away. I continued to the auditorium. The door would have done justice to a bank vault. The sliding panel was at least a foot thick and the walls around it looked similarly sturdy.

In front of the door, a full squad of Haranyi’s guards had set up a checkpoint. From the instant I caught sight of them, I worried that Haranyi would have somehow known or guessed the truth of the previous night’s events. If he had, my name might well be on their arrest, or shoot-on-sight, list. Sweating about it once I was in sight, though, was futile. Trying to walk as if I was innocent of all sin, I went straight to them.

They did sit up and take notice of me, every last one of them. One guard spotted me, pointed and then called to his fellows. I thought I was cooked. Reflex made me want to go for my blaster, an utterly stupid instinct that I barely managed to repress. I had their attention all right, but it was the uniform that did it, not my face. Once I realized that, I was able to bring my pulse down before it blew off the top of my head. I was late, they told me, but not too late. The actual signing ceremony, for which the door would be closed and sealed, hadn’t taken place. They would let me in. I wondered if Jaenna had planned on that door being closed by the time I arrived. If so, it was a very thoughtful gesture.

They were willing to let me in but, judging from the ordnance that lay carefully tagged at their station, they were not willing to let me in armed. Not surprisingly, when I refused to turn over my sidearm, the squad leader was unhappy. Very unhappy. I remembered Donnar’s words, so I decided to bluster at the guard.

“It is not done,” he insisted. “Not to a signing.” Which I figured was probably true. Fleet officers didn’t attend these ceremonies, except for their own. Maybe there was a correlation between the two.

“Do I have the right?” I asked, and tried to put an edge into it as though they, and not I, were outnumbered.

The guard looked uncomfortable, and understandably so. Donnar’s commission and the Fleet Command ribbon had let me put the guard in a bind. Law said I could carry the weapon, custom said I could not. The guard had probably never been confronted with such a situation before and the only people with the authority to decide were on the other side of the door. He could hardly interrupt them to ask.

Finally, he ground out, “You have the right.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Please be assured that if there is any trouble from breach of custom I will take responsibility for it.” The look on the guard’s face told me that if such came to pass, he would take pleasure in administering the responsibility personally.

Inside, the hall was packed with Imperials. I looked them over as the door closed behind me. There were a great many gray uniforms, marked with every different insignia I could think of, but no plain-gray aside from my own. A group wearing Carrillacki insignia, stood to my left near the rear. Thirty strong, they looked suitably grim for a faction that was publicly getting the short end of the stick. Were they really grinning inside?

Front and center was a riot of bright color where the emperor’s representative and his delegation were placed. Other splotches of color, scattered amidst the background of gray, marked merchants and other civilians important enough to be invited.

On the dais, Valaria sat between Tyaromon and an older Srihani wearing gray with an unfamiliar insignia. That had to be the head of Duromond. Above the dais, seemingly in midair, was a projection showing the first page of the terms of the tie. Those would be read aloud while the projection scrolled and, at the end, all three would attach their electronic seals. The computer would send the file to a printer (really a miniature chemistry lab) that would reproduce it as a sheet of polymers, complete to the writing and the seals. Once the seals were verified, the tie was officially made. Tyaromon announced that they were ready to begin and the other Srihani gave his assent. Where was Jaenna?

I looked around the hall a couple of times before I saw the small form, near the front, working her way toward the aisle that ran straight to the dais. No one seemed to pay any attention to her. I moved into the aisle myself and hustled down to meet her. My footfalls, as I rushed, drew attention where hers had not. By the time I reached her, we had scores of eyes on us. One pair belonged to Tyaromon, and they were not friendly. They focused entirely on me, ignoring Jaenna.

“It is forbidden by custom to bring a weapon into the room used for a signing. That is true anywhere, whether the tie is between the families of small shopkeepers or Imperial governors.” His words lashed out at me, hard and cold. It was impossible to say whether there was any meaning behind them other than the literal one. “I would not expect a freebooter to know anything, or care anything, for civilized customs,” and his tone changed to sarcasm, “but my daughter should. But, if she had any intelligence, I would not expect her to bring a freebooter dressed as a Fleet captain and herself wrapped in an old gray rag to a ceremony of this importance.” Tyaromon was rapidly working himself into a towering rage. “You mock me in front of the empire!” he shouted.

“No, father, I’m not here to mock you,” she told him. “Only to ask you a question that I thought should be asked in front of witnesses.”

“Are there enough witnesses here for you?” Tyaromon demanded. “Or do you also require the emperor in person?” When Jaenna said nothing, he nearly shouted, “Ask it then!”

“I have heard that you arranged for my ship to be attacked, to get me out of the way, to allow this tie to proceed without anyone worrying if my brother might be leaning on his little sister. I want to know if that is true.”

For an instant, I saw Tyaromon relax, as a man might when the punch he is expecting doesn’t come. Then he nodded in assent. “You should know, if you have half the intelligence that your teachers told me you did, that in politics one does what one must. There is no head of household of any rank who would not have done the same.”

The expression on Jaenna’s face was unreadable, and I could understand why. Tyaromon was a grandmaster in the game of politics. Where strategy or administration was concerned, I doubt Jaenna would have thought to best him. But, in a family matter, in a matter of public embarrassment, she had managed to anger him and that had dulled his thinking just a bit. Just a bit, but it was just enough.

It is a well-known truism that if you have something to hide, something big, it is best to plead guilty to something minor when the questioning starts. That was where Tyaromon fell into the trap. By Imperial standards, judging from the reaction in the hall, Tyaromon was right. It was an unfortunate thing to do, but anyone in his position would have done the same. No big deal. Except, if Tyaromon had seen to the attack on the ship, we knew from Norboh that he had also seen to it that Jerny was on that ship and murdered during the attack.
Quod erat demonstratum
.

With a swift move, Jaenna threw her cloak back over her shoulders and confronted him, hands on hips. “Well, father,” her voice rang out, “it seems that for once I am appropriately dressed.”

There was a gasp from the throng. Jaenna had come dressed to kill. Her jeweled blaster hung at her right hip, another was slung low on the left thigh. There was a dushuku buckled at the front of her belt, the hilts of two others peeked above her boot tops and on her left forearm was the shroud of the rocket launcher. Tyaromon was obviously having trouble controlling his face, but he managed to demand an explanation.

“Simple,” she said. “I accuse you of being the traitor who sold the emperor to Carrillacki at Albane!”

Tyaromon didn’t move, but his eyes flicked, ever so briefly, to the back of the hall. Jaenna saw it too.

She turned, drawing both blasters as she did. Two guards were moving along the back wall, their weapons coming free of their holsters. Jaenna fired both blasters. The guards fell, one burned through the head, the other the chest. The second one managed to fire as he went down, but his beam went far wide, slashing into the crowd.

Instantaneously the hall was chaos, full of shouting, shrieking guests scrambling for cover where there was none. I turned to protect Jaenna’s back and saw movement at the sides of the dais. I fired, dropping one guard with a burn in his shoulder. A second fired at me, missed and killed a Srihani wearing Tomarillio insignia. I burned him down before he could correct his mistake.

Behind me I heard Jaenna fire twice, then saw a beam pass me, fired from behind, and strike into the crowd. So much for the ban on weapons, I thought. I took a quick look around and saw Jaenna fire at a guard with a drawn blaster who had surfaced among the guests. He fell also. Bright-red arterial blood spurted across two dandies from the emperor’s delegation.

That look almost cost me, but a beam meant for me struck an older Srihani who stood up at the wrong moment. In a way, it was the guards’ training, as much as luck, that saved us. Drilled incessantly to assume armor, use the highest power setting and shortest cycle, they didn’t sweep us with low-power beams. Instead, they aimed and, thank God, missed. The guests tried to rush the back door, but it had been sealed for the signing and would not open. In the press, they tangled up most of the remaining guards, some of whom turned their fire on the guests in an effort to fight clear.

That just made them easier targets for Jaenna and me. Jaenna swept her beams, right to left and left to right, across the struggling mass, burning down guards and guests alike.

A scream arose behind me. It was Jaenna. She was on her knees, a frightful char marking her right arm. Both her blasters clattered to the floor as she reached for the injury with her other hand. I searched for the source of the shot, fully expecting to be burned first. Then, I saw it. A guard with a medium blaster had come out onto a small balcony, above and to the right of the dais.

He hadn’t fired at me, though, because he was slumped back against the wall, burned through his chest. I wondered if there was a God in heaven who had sent that bolt, when I saw another guard emerge onto the balcony. Before I had a chance to aim, a beam took him in the gut and he sprawled at the balcony’s edge. Then I saw my deliverer amidst the crowd. Haranyi! He did not long survive his victims. Just as I recognized him, flame burst from his chest and he fell. The beam had come from the dais. I turned and found myself staring straight into a blaster held by Tyaromon. I looked into the hard, black eyes, saw the slightly glowing tip of the blaster, and knew I was a dead man.

“No, father!”

At the shout, Tyaromon looked away from me. What he saw froze him. It would have frozen me, too. Jaenna had regained her feet, her right arm hanging limp, blood rolling down it and dripping off the fingers. She stood straight, though, left arm out with the missile ready and aimed at Tyaromon.

“If you shoot, father, or if you try to turn, I will open my hand and the missile will launch. You know as well as I that I will not miss.”

For someone on the wrong end of a high explosive warhead, Tyaromon sounded very controlled as he said, “If you are going to do it, you might as well go ahead. I won’t move, but soon the guards will be through that door. Then, what will you do?”

Jaenna said nothing. She just stood there, teeth clenched, trying to keep her arm steady. Come on, girl, do it, I prayed at first. Then, I realized why she did not. In the time it took the missile to ignite and launch, Tyaromon could burn me down. She was passing up her opportunity in order to keep me alive. I wished she had still been holding a blaster instead. What would we do when the door opened?