The Thousand Emperors (33 page)

Lastly he checked his suit’s integrated systems, making sure they were all fully functional. He’d already checked and rechecked those same systems many times since his arrival on
Darwin, but he did it one more time anyway.

The world-wheel grew from a thin line of silver to a mottled band of grey and white, studded with countless brightly glowing lights. The flier soon merged into the local traffic, most of it
unmanned and flying within a dozen kilometres of the wheel’s inner surface as it moved from destination to destination. Jacob caught sight of zero-gee parks and urban centres embedded in the
inner rim. His sense of anticipation grew, and he practised the breathing and meditation exercises he had been taught when young.

The minutes and seconds drew out interminably until the flier finally dropped its velocity almost to zero relative to the world-wheel. He waited until the local systems had accepted
Jacob’s faked authorization, then set the flier to dock automatically.

Activating his suit’s defensive systems, he disembarked into a wide, deserted boulevard within the world-wheel’s outer shell. Sillars’ research had shown this part of the
world-wheel to be deserted, and it appeared to still be so.

Abandoned or not, Jacob knew there was no way to predict just how long it might take the local security networks to reroute themselves around the aggressive countermeasures his suit was already
broadcasting. After that, he would have to think on his feet.

As it turned out, the security networks recovered in less than a minute. Jacob had been hoping he might have rather more time than this, but his training had taught him the value of
adaptability.

Within seconds, a mechant more astonishingly complex than any he had ever encountered before, even on the killing fields of Benares, appeared from an aperture in the ceiling and came rushing
towards him. He took it out with a single shot from his beam weapon, and watched it shatter into a thousand white-hot fragments.

He walked briskly onwards, his suit informing him he was close to the physical location of a junction connecting together several local data-hubs. Pausing just long enough to break open a
circuit-panel set into the wall of the boulevard and insert a wave-scrambler, he then continued along the boulevard. The scrambler rapidly integrated with the dedicated networks responsible for
coordinating data traffic in this part of the world-wheel, spreading chaos.

Jacob had taken no more than a couple of paces before the lights lining the boulevard began to flicker spasmodically, then faded altogether. Another few seconds passed before aged emergency
circuits kicked in. Vermilion emergency lights embedded in the floor of the boulevard and integrated into the walls now illuminated the way, lending a claustrophobic quality to his
surroundings.

Less than thirty seconds after Jacob had placed the scrambler, emergency evacuation alerts began forming in the air up and down the boulevard, rippling softly as he passed through them. AI
systems for a hundred kilometres in either direction proceeded to spontaneously reboot, only to be issued with new algorithms provided by the scrambler.

The effect could only be temporary; according to Sillars, Coalition technology was astonishingly flexible when faced with the unexpected. He had nonetheless discovered that a very few parts of
the world-wheel, such as this one, had not been improved or upgraded to any significant degree in centuries.

In truth, much of Darwin’s world-wheel had become a relative backwater, the majority of the action having long since moved into the frozen depths of the outer system and the dark masses
scattered throughout the Oort cloud. The wheel had been reduced to the status of a dusty attic, into which unwanted possessions could be thrown against the day when they might – just might
– be needed.

It was a vulnerability waiting to be exploited. And in order to maximize that vulnerability, it was necessary to cause the greatest damage possible.

After another minute, just as Jacob approached a door that marked the end of the boulevard, gyroscopic motors designed to coordinate and balance this segment of the world-wheel proceeded to
power down for the first time ever.

Jacob felt a faint but distinct tremor running through the floor of the boulevard. His lattice informed him that within the hour, oscillations normally dampened by the gyroscopic systems would
destabilize this part of the world-wheel, and ultimately tear it apart if drastic countermeasures were not taken by Darwin’s authorities.

The door slid shut at Jacob’s approach, barring his way. He stopped to contemplate his next step. Things had been going almost too well up until this point.

He sensed, rather than saw, defensive mechants emerging from slots in the walls of the boulevard behind him.

He turned to face them. To call them mechants, he decided, was to do them slim justice. They constantly reshaped themselves with an organic fluidity he had never witnessed before as they
bulleted towards him.

Jacob felt subjective time slowing down as his lattice took full control of his body. He swept his hands outward, causing microscopic darts tipped with infinitesimal quantities of antimatter to
erupt from his gloves, fanning outwards and tearing the mechants apart in a blaze of destruction that would have blinded him if he hadn’t immediately rolled into a ball and covered his eyes.
His suit became as rigid as steel, protecting him as the force of the blasts picked him up and smashed him against the wall of the boulevard.

When he looked back up, the blasts had wrecked much of the boulevard and shattered the doorway that had previously been barred to him. There was little left of the mechants beyond some fragments
of white-hot metal.

Jacob stood with care, testing his muscles and bones and finding he had suffered a few minor fractures. Under the circumstances, he could count himself lucky.

Flexing his hands, he continued on through the doorway, stepping around a corner – only to find himself face-to-face with something from his deepest nightmares. Its features flowed like
mercury, jaws distending as it reached out for him with a thousand spiny fingers.

He recognized it as another defensive procedure, albeit immensely more sophisticated than any of those he had so far overcome: the monster wasn’t real, but was instead a virtual rendition
of deadly software countermeasures designed to burn the lattice in his skull and render him mindless in moments.

The passageway in which Jacob had been standing disappeared, and he plummeted down an abyssal well that reminded him uncomfortably of the fate to which he had assigned Kulic. The monster was
there, swimming through the air towards him.

He reached out both hands, brightly glowing katanas emerging from his fists, and slashed out at the monster’s throat. It died screaming, its corpse disintegrating into a jumble of
subroutines and hopelessly scrambled cognitive algorithms.

As suddenly as it had vanished, Jacob found himself back in the passageway, hands clenching swords that were no longer there.

The emergency lights flickered, then momentarily brightened before fading altogether, leaving Jacob in pitch darkness. The artificial lenses in his eyes compensated immediately, rendering the
corridor in pale and ghostly shades.

He stood straight and flexed his hands before advancing, his suit feeding him a message that it had fought off a counter-attack by the local security networks. There was no need to worry about
any further countermeasures – at least, not for another few minutes.

A final door opened at his approach with a satisfying rumble. He stepped inside and found himself within a vault crammed full of Founder artefacts, either suspended within slow-time fields or
flickering in and out of shadow-parallels; empty universes into which they could be permanently banished should they somehow be accidentally activated.

It took Jacob moments to locate the quantum disruptor he had been sent to retrieve: a dark, fan-shaped thing no more than a few inches in width, and somehow difficult to look at directly. The
disruptor was held within its own slow-time field that, in turn, was contained within a kind of barred metal container, scarcely larger than one of Jacob’s fists.

He picked the container up and placed it in a zipped pocket of his combat suit, before jogging back down the silent and devastated boulevard, every piece of sub-molecular circuitry for
kilometres around by now scrambled beyond repair.

Bottomless grief knotted every muscle in Vasili’s body. Every night for the past several days had been long and sleepless, every thought wracked with remorse.

It was more than Luc could bear. He let go of the book Maxwell had left him with and fell back in his seat, the breath shuddering in his throat.

The library around him was silent and still. Maxwell hadn’t returned yet, and Luc was starting to get the feeling he might not be back for a while.

He took a breath, and again pushed his fingers against the pages.

Bright sunlight illuminated the spines of the books all around Vasili where he stood in his library. Winchell Antonov stood with his back to the patio doors, his small, inquisitive eyes set
above a thick black beard. Only the faint rainbow shimmer of light around his outline revealed the renegade to be a data-ghost. Some flaw in the projection made him appear to be hovering just a
fraction above the floor.

‘I’ve already proved to you that Ariadna was deliberately murdered,’ said Antonov. ‘That is what you wanted, isn’t it? Proof.’

For so very long, Vasili had been convinced of a cover-up over Ariadna’s death. The inquest had been filled with flawed and circumstantial evidence, while the final verdict implied she
had been careless, ignoring and failing to take action on priority alerts issued by the very flier she had died in.

But the more he had learned, the more convinced he had become that the verdict was a crock of shit. There were too many unanswered questions over how the flier’s navigational systems
could possibly have failed without it alerting anyone else to the danger, and that led in turn to the suspicion that its programming had been deliberately altered – in other words, sabotaged.
And on top of
that
, an overseer responsible for the maintenance of many of Thorne’s fliers had died under equally mysterious circumstances before he could provide vital expert witness
testimony. Vasili’s own private researches had uncovered yet further, damning evidence.

But who would have the motive or reason to bring about her death?

Ariadna had been a Lost Russian like himself, part of that generation growing up on what had been the Russian Federation’s Pacific coast, prior to the Chinese occupation. Much, much
later, long after she had become estranged from Winchell, and on the very day the Coalition’s occupation of Newton crumbled under the sustained assault of Cheng’s guerrilla armies, they
had become lovers. Until then they had been only comrades in arms, working on strategies to trigger shutdowns in enemy military networks, their relationship up to that point purely
professional.

The first time they made love, by the light of burning furniture tossed from the windows of a Coalition barracks, it had been a spontaneous act brought about by their shared revolutionary
fervour. He remembered the triumphant shouts of their compatriots filling the air, the sweet ecstasy of victory mixing with the pleasure of Ariadna’s aroused flesh.

‘Proof.’ Vasili licked his lips, unable to keep a slight tremor out of his voice. ‘This was all so much easier when everybody thought I was insane.’

‘You weren’t insane,’ Antonov replied gently. ‘For a long time I hated you for taking Ariadna from me, but then I realized it was I who had pushed her away.’ He
shook his head sadly. ‘When I found out what had happened to her, I instigated my own investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death, but it took a very long time to bear fruit.
For a while I foolishly believed that you yourself might be her murderer, but my jealousy for your long life with her had blinded me. For that, I ask forgiveness. By asking as many difficult
questions as you did, Sevgeny, you proved to me that you are an honourable man, and for that you have my respect, however much we might disagree on other matters.’

‘They told me I had lost my senses,’ muttered Vasili. ‘That I was unable to . . . to accept there was no meaning to her death.’

‘But you never stopped being suspicious, did you?’

‘Of course not,’ Vasili snapped, slamming one hand against a bookcase, taking a certain relish in the sudden burst of pain.

He could hardly believe he had consented to this meeting. Antonov represented everything he stood against – an enemy of order and sanity, a man who had proven himself more than willing
to risk bringing the same destructive forces that had once destroyed the entire Earth raining down upon the colonies.

And yet here Antonov was, in his very home, offering answers to questions he had come to believe would never be answered. Ever since that terrible day when Ariadna had died, he had focused on
his work as a way to avoid the despair of grief, fulfilling his duties both to the Council and to the Tian Di to the utmost. But it still had not been enough to prevent his slow abandonment by
Cheng, a man he had once considered the closest thing to a friend.

‘I’ve already given you a taste of what I know,’ said Antonov, his voice calm and steady and infuriating in equal measures. ‘Your wife was asking too many questions
for the comfort of certain of your fellow Eighty-Fivers.’

Vasili’s thoughts flashed back to a few days before, when an anonymous and heavily encrypted message had been delivered by a decrepit mechant, its hull pitted and rusted, its livery
indicating it had belonged to Antonov prior to his fall from grace. God only knew where on Vanaheim Antonov had secreted it all these years.

Despite considerable misgivings, Vasili had loaded the message into his sensorium, curiosity overcoming his normal caution. He soon found himself watching shaky footage from the point of view
of a Sandoz missile flying low across Thorne’s rock- and boulder-strewn landscape, before homing in on a single flier as it passed over a range of crater-pocked mountains.