The Court of a Thousand Suns (24 page)

"You once employed a Dr. Hars Stynburn," Sten said, trying the sudden-shock approach. Hakone reacted, indeed, but quite obviously, sending the top of the liquor decanter spinning to the floor.

"Clot! What's the imbecile done now?"

"Now? Sr. Hakone, I must advise you that this conversation is being recorded. You have a right to counsel, legal advice, and medico-watch to ensure you are not under any influence, physical or pharmacological."

"Thank you for the warning, Captain. But I don't need that. Dr. Hars Stynburn did indeed work for me.

For a period of four months—Prime months. At the end of that time I discharged him, without, I might add, benefit of recommendation."

"Continue, Sr. Hakone."

"My household normally consists of between fifty and three hundred individuals. I find it convenient to employ an in-house medico. That was one reason I initially employed Dr. Stynburn."

"One reason?"

"The second reason was that he was, like myself, a veteran. He served in the Mueller Wars, the battle of Saragossa."

"As did you."

"Ah, you've scanned my tapes."

"On précis. Why did you dismiss him?"

"Because… not because he was inefficient or incompetent. He was an extremely good doctor. But because he was a man locked into the past."

"Would you explain?"

"All he wished to talk about was his time in the service. And about how he felt he had been betrayed."

"Betrayed?"

"You're aware he was cashiered from the service? Well, he felt that he was fulfilling the exact requirements of the Empire, and that he was used as a Judas goat after those requirements were fulfilled."

"The Empire generally doesn't practice genocide, Sr. Hakone."

"Stynburn believed it did. At any rate, his obsession became nerve-wracking to me. And so I found it easier to release him at the expiration of his initial contract."

Sten was about to ask another question, then broke off. Hakone's eyes were hooded.

"Locked into the past, I said, didn't I?" Hakone drained his drink. "That must sound odd to you, Captain, since you've reviewed my tapes. Don't I sound the same way?"

"I'm not a historian, Seigneur."

"What do you think of war, Captain?"

Sten's first answer—blatant stupidity—was something he somehow felt Hakone didn't want to hear. He held his silence.

"Someone once wrote," Hakone went on, "that war is the axle life revolves around. I think that is the truth. And for some of us, one war is that axle. For Dr. Stynburn—and to be honest, Captain, for myself—that was Saragossa."

"As I said, I'm not a historian."

Hakone picked up the two glasses, fielded the decanter from the bar, and started toward a nearby door.

"I could tell you, Captain. But I'd rather show you." And he led Sten through the door, into his battle chamber.

The Mueller Wars, fought almost a century before Sten's birth, were a classic proof of Sten's definition of war. The Mueller Cluster had been settled too quickly and was too far from the Empire. The result was a lack of Imperial support, improperly defined and supplied trade routes, and arrant ignorance on the part of the Imperial bureaucracy administering those worlds.

And then war, war by the various worlds, fighting under a banner that might have been headed "Anything but the damned Empire." By the time the Emperor realized that the Mueller Cluster was a snowball rolling downhill, it was too late for any response except the Guard.

But Imperial overexpansion had reached into the military as well. The battles that were fought were, for the most part, on the wrong ground, with the wrong opponent, and at the wrong time.

The Emperor still, when he began feeling self-confident, had only to scroll his own private log of the Mueller Wars to deflate himself to the proper level of humanity. Of all the disasters, before the Mueller Cluster was battered into semi-quiescence, the worst was Saragossa.

Saragossa should never have been invaded. Its isolationist culture should have been ignored until the Saragossans asked to rejoin the Empire. Instead a full Grand Fleet and the Seventh Guards Division were committed. The invasion should have been easy, since it involved landing on a single world, which had only a few low-tech satellite worlds for support.

Instead the operation became a nightmare.

The grand admirals who ordered the assault might have wondered why initial intelligence reported some seven moonlets around Saragossa, and the landing surveys reported only one. But no one wondered, and so nearly a million men died.

The landing plan was total insertion, so the Guards' transports were committed, and the heavy support—five Imperial battleships—were moving toward the ionosphere when the question of the missing moonlets was solved.

They'd been exploded, quite carefully, so the fragments maintained planetary orbit. And then any fragment larger than a baseball had been manned with Saragossans who were less interested in living than keeping the Empire away. Imagine trying to push a landing force through an asteroid belt that is shooting back.

The first battleship was holed and helpless more than three planetary units offworld. The admiral in charge of the landing—Fleet Admiral Rob Gades—transhipped with what remained of his staff to a command ship in time to see his other four battleships explode into shards.

At that point it was too late to recall the troopships. Even before the ships split into capsules, most of them were destroyed. The landing caps that entered atmosphere without support lasted bare seconds under the ravening fire from the surface.

That, Hakone explained to Sten as he swung ships through the battle chamber, was when his own probeship was destroyed. He never saw the end of the battle. What ended it was Admiral Gade's order—
sauve quipeut
, save what you can. One third of the assault fleet was able to pull off Saragossa.

"One third, Captain," Hakone said, as he shut down the battle chamber. "Over one million men lost. Isn't that enough of an axle?"

Sten flashed briefly to the livie he'd undergone before basic training—experiencing the heroic death of one Guardsman Jaime Shavala—and his subsequent decision that he had less than no desire to see what a major battle felt like, ignored his gut agreement, and used the safe answer of stupidity. "I don't know, Sr. Hakone."

"Perhaps you wouldn't. But now do you understand why I hired Stynburn? He went through the same hell I did."

Sten noticed with interest that Hakone, while he'd been sitting behind the control chair of the chamber, had gone through half the decanter of Scotch.

"By the way, Captain, do you know what happened to Admiral Gades?"

"Negative."

"For his—and I quote from the court's charge—retreat in the face of the enemy, he was relieved of command and forcibly retired. Do you think that was fair?"

"Fair? I don't know what is fair, Sr. Hakone." Sten brought himself to attention. "Thank you for your information, Seigneur. Should we have any other questions, may I assume your further cooperation?"

"You may," Hakone said flatly.

Sten was about to try a wild card and ask if the phrase Zaarah Wahrid meant anything to Hakone.

Instead, he shut off his recorder, nodded, and headed for the exit.

If he had left a few seconds earlier, he might have caught one of Hakone's men clipping a tiny plas box to the underside of Sten's gravsled.

Hakone walked out of the battle chamber, back into his library. Colonel Fohlee was waiting, and looking distinctly displeased.

"You think I erred," Hakone said.

"Why were you giving him all that, dammit! He's the Emperor's investigator."

"I was fishing, Colonel."

"For what?"

"If he'd shown one iota of understanding—one flicker of what is important—we might have been able to make him one of us."

"Instead you ran your mouth and got nothing."

"Colonel! You are overstepping."

"Sorry, sir."

"As a result, I found that this Captain Sten is unreachable. I have a tracer attached to his gravsled. Put a team of the deserters after him. Track the sled until we have the location of the safe house he's using for his investigation. Then kill this Captain Sten. That is all!"

Fohlee found himself saluting, pivoting, and exiting, and never wondered why he had that response to the command voice of a man who had not worn a uniform for almost a hundred years.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The vid-screen glowed in the darkened room. In one comer, the computer held its target: the phrase zaarah wahrid. The rest of the screen was filled with line after constantly changing line of information. At the moment, the computer was postulating that the phrase meant some kind of commercial product. It was searching the Imperial patent office for everything registered since the department was founded.

Liz Collins, the hunter, tried to keep her eyes glued to the screen, looking for some kind of connection or vague reference. As each line rolled up the screen, her eyes followed, and then automatically clicked down a stop for the next. At the moment, she was scanning a catalogue of household bots, almost all of them a century or more out of date.

She had to fight to keep her brain on her job. Steady on, woman, she thought to herself. If you think this is boring, guess what comes next. Then she groaned as the finis asterisks rolled up and the next and a worse category came up: Defense.

The air stirred behind her and then she heard the door open and soft footsteps pad in. She turned to see Alex standing behind her, two mugs of frothy beer in his hands.

" 'Bout that drink, lass?" he said softly. "Ah whidny be disturbin' y' noo, would Ah?"

"Oh, my god, yes," she said, meaning the drink. Then she caught Alex's crestfallen face and corrected herself. "I mean, no. No, I mean… right, I could use a drink."

She palmed the computer to automatic, setting up the search alarms, and then rose to take a glass out of Alex's hand. She took a small sip and gave a bit of a start. "This isn't just beer!" She grinned. And then she noticed the shot glass sitting in the bottom of the mug.

"A wee boilermaker," Alex explained. "Beer and a good single-malt Scotch that'll oil th' bubbles."

Liz took a long, slow swallow. "Mmmm, I don't mind this at all."

She crossed over to the fur-covered couch and sat down, crossed her legs, then started to tug her uniform skirt down over her knees. She stopped when she saw the wistful look in Alex's eyes as the slight flash of thigh started to disappear. "What the clot." She patted the place next to her. As if almost suddenly coming awake, Alex shook his head then took the few steps required to reach the couch and sank hesitatingly down beside her. He carefully studied the wall opposite them, afraid to meet her eyes.

"So," he finally said, "do y' think we'll be finding this Zaarah whatever it is?"

Liz remained absolutely silent. She just took another sip of her drink.

"Ah mean, y' been workin't your pretty, beg your pardon, y' been workin't hard, lo these many—"

"Alex," Liz whispered, breaking in.

He turned and looked directly at her for the first time since he entered the room. "Yes, lass."

"Do we have to talk?"

"No, lass."

"Well, then…"

Alex finally got the point. He reached out his arms to enfold her, and he felt the muscular but somehow so soft arms go around him. Slowly they sank down into the couch.

Once again, Liz didn't bother about the flash of thigh as the uniform skirt rose higher and higher and…

Unnoticed by them, the computer screen began winking red. It sat patiently, pulsing that it had found it…

found it… found it…

The screen read:

ENT: JANES, Historic Records. BATTLESHIP: ZAARAH wahrid (Flower class—14 constructed).

The entry went on, covering the ship's dimensions, crew, armament, launching date, and history, ending with the information that
Zaarah Wahrid
had finished her illustrious career as flagship on the Saragossa invasion during the Mueller Wars. The ship was totally destroyed, with a loss of 90 percent of its crew…

Fortunately for the lovers, it would be many hours before they read the entry. Because once again the case had come full circle.
Zaarah Wahrid
was a ship that no longer existed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sten lifted the gravsled away from Hakone's mansion and set his course directly from Soward across the city of Fowler toward the Imperial palace.

Once past the city limits he dropped the sled's height to 50 meters. Thus far, he was doing exactly what Hakone had predicted, and would next set his course for the safe house in Ashley-on-Wye.

But several hundred people, were they not deceased, might have advised Kai Hakone never to predict Sten's actions.

The gravsled may have appeared standard Imperial issue, but it was not. The man who planted the tracer on the sled should have noticed its fairly elaborate com gear. But he didn't.

So while Sten put the sled's controls on auto, and hung the aircar in a slow orbit over the trees, he checked himself and his vehicle for bugs. At 22.3 Hz, his detector sounded off like a banth in heat. Sten unhooked the directional transponder from the board and went over the sled. It took only a few seconds to find the tracer unit.

Sten went back to the controls and considered the various possibilities. He decided, turned the sled onto manual, and lifted it to 1000 meters. Then he set a new course, directly for the Great South Sea. This was, on compass, 80-plus degrees, magnetic, away from his proper destination, the Blue Bhor. Sten had no idea what the tracer was intended for, but he had decided to play the hand, at least for a few thousand kilometers.

It didn't take that long.

Sten's prox-radar blipped at him and advised that an object was rapidly approaching from his rear. He turned and scanned through the sled's binocs.

Ignoring the modifications, Sten's gravsled was a standard combat car: McLean-generator-powered, ten meters by five meters in dimension, seating four people in the open. The object coming toward him was also a standard Imperial combat vehicle, about twice the size of Sten's gravsled, and intended for a combat platoon of twelve or so beings.