Vortex (39 page)

Venloe just grunted.

"Come now," Iskra pressed. "Surely I deserve at least a small compliment for my handling of this crisis?''

"Not my job description, professor," Venloe said. "Besides, you've got a big enough cheering section."

Iskra was enjoying himself too much to be angry. "That's all right. I don't expect compliments from the ignorant."

Venloe thumbed at the vidscreen. "You think that's genius?"

"What do you call it, my uneducated friend?"

"Crazy," Venloe snapped. "Or just plain stupid."

"My, my. Humanity bleeds in that cold heart."

"Don't mistake professional opinion for a warm and cuddly nature, professor," Venloe said. "It should be obvious to anyone other than a pedantic fool that you're just making things worse. This is all not only unnecessary, but dangerous. Every time you do something like that"—he jabbed a finger at a picture of a soldier hammering a lagging refugee—"you make yourself five or six more enemies."

"This isn't a popularity contest," Iskra said with a laugh. "Besides, I would think you'd be pleased. After what happened at the barracks, I'd think you'd be delighted that I'm revenging your poor, dead Guardsmen."

"Don't put it on us," Venloe warned. "You were never requested to take this kind of action. Don't drag the Emperor into this thing."

"But he already is," Iskra purred. "And quite vocally. Why, the entire Empire knows how important I am to him." He gestured at the vidscreen. "Just as everyone in the Altaics will soon know that it is in his name all these sacrifices are being made."

Venloe's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"This is just the beginning." Iskra laughed. "Oh, it will take much more work to purify the Altaics."

"Meaning?"

"Watch my next vid cast," Iskra said. "I think even you will be impressed at my new emergency decrees."

Venloe looked away from Iskra's sneer. On the vidscreen he saw a refugee break out of the crowd. The being quickly unfurled a handmade banner.

He had just time to make out the words on the banner before the man was hammered down by soldiers: WHERE IS THE EMPEROR?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"T
here's no way, Your Highness, anyone could have foreseen what Iskra has become," Venloe said, adding one milliliter of concerned sympathy to his tone, "let alone yourself. The last time I checked, you had to worry about an entire Empire."

To Venloe's concealed astonishment, a flickered expression crossed the Eternal Emperor's face. Surprise that anyone should care? Venloe could not—would not—interpret what he had seen on the screen. The Emperor's countenance swiftly reverted to calm authority.

"Yes," the Emperor said. "You're right, Venloe. You understand a bit of the reality of ruling. I can see why Mahoney thought highly of you, even though you were on opposite sides."

It was now Venloe's turn to poker-face. Ian Mahoney had, in fact, not only refused to touch palms with him as a gentleman should have when the game was over, but had said he would like to kill Venloe. Slowly. Venloe had believed him. Absolutely.

The Emperor didn't appear to have noticed Venloe's studied lack of reaction.

"These latest actions of Dr. Iskra and his regime that you, Sten, and… other agents have reported are completely psychopathic," the Emperor continued. "So we must deal with the problem directly and immediately."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you for clarifying the situation. I'm afraid I was confused about which option should be used," Venloe lied, deliberately laying it on a trifle thick, trying to see at what point the Emperor's famous antisycophant snarl would cut in.

The Emperor, however, was looking off at another screen Venloe could not make out. "I've called up," the Emperor said, "the fiche you prepared on what we called the fallback option. A thorough job, Venloe. My compliments."

"Thank you, sir."

"I will tell you which option I want implemented shortly. One thing, though. There'll be a change to the one I'll order. I wish you to be directly involved. It isn't enough to control the exercise at long range. There must not be—cannot be—the slightest error."

Venloe bristled a bit. "Your Highness, my operations have been uniformly successful, and I've always kept one thing foremost in my planning."

"Which is, that if the drakh comes down, you're safely on a stage headed out of town."

"I've never before been accused of being a coward, sir. The reason I prefer to work by remote control is to keep my client's hands clean. If the operative is caught and then plays true confessions, it doesn't matter, because no one beyond a field agent or two, who's been deliberately given misinformation, will be caught in the net." Venloe thought, but certainly didn't say, that his clotting plans worked well enough to have speared the biggest fish of all: the clotting Eternal Emperor himself. But he was hardly suicidal.

"That's not a concern here," the Emperor said. "And that was an order. I want you on-scene and capable of personally rectifying any error, if an error is made."

"Yes. Sir."

"Very well. I've told you that Mahoney has been assigned to the Altaics, and in what capacity. He knows nothing of this plan, by the way. And I want you to extract yourself from the Altaics as soon as possible—after the operation has been completed. Now, adding Mahoney to the equation, your option must accomplish several things.

"First. Dr. Iskra is to be killed. Instantly. He must not be allowed to suspect anything before the moment of removal."

"Obviously, sir."

"Second. In view of Mahoney's orders, his task will be made much easier if some of these lightweights who've been flocking around Iskra, those ineffectual power-seekers Sten has mentioned in his reports—it would be well if some of them ceased to exist. The confusion of their replacement is desirable, in the eyes of the Empire."

"That would suggest that Your Highness will order either Option C or R."

"Correct. And you will know which of the two when I give you the final condition.

"The Empire cannot be implicated in this matter. Not even in whispers or the vaguest of paranoiac rumors. And the best way I can see for us to remain beyond suspicion is if one of our most highly respected and honored servants is unfortunately killed in the debacle."

"The—ambassador? Sir?"

"Yes," the Eternal Emperor said. "We all exist but to serve. And this will be his greatest service to me.

"Sten must die."

BOOK FOUR
VORTEX

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

V
enloe foresaw no major problems carrying out the Eternal Emperor's orders—at least as far as the murder of Iskra and any other Jochi politico who could be decoyed into the trap.

He wasn't especially in love with killing Sten to cover up the conspiracy. Not because he had any feeling for him—Sten and Mahoney had, after all, tracked Venloe to his hiding place and forced him to undergo the racking brutality of a brainscan—but he thought the Emperor was planning a flight when no one would pursue.

Venloe did not think that anyone in the Empire outside the Altaic Cluster would care if a slimeball dictator was assassinated. Many would even cheer a little, even if they suspected the Eternal Emperor had masterminded the killing.

But he had his orders.

So Sten would die.

It might, the more he considered it, be beneficial to Venloe himself. Sten was too slippery, too good at the double- and triple-think of intelligence ops. If he were in his meat locker, that might make Venloe's extraction less risky.

Venloe was still angry at the Emperor's orders that he, himself, had to be part of the murder plot. Stupid. And it showed a measure of distrust. But he eventually shrugged and forgot it. The Eternal Emperor wasn't the first to require the absurd—and he certainly was the biggest client Venloe had ever worked for and must be kept satisfied.

So the Emperor wanted Venloe to go back to the days of his youth and show his talents as an iceman once more. So be it. Venloe added an extra E-hour to his day's normal physical conditioning while he pondered where he would actually station himself on the day.

He was too wise to ignore the Emperor's orders. Most likely the Emperor's mention of "other agents" in the Altaic Cluster was bluff—but why take the chance?

One—or a dozen—more corpses didn't matter to Venloe. After some thought he had figured out his back door. It was a simple and clean Break Contact and Exit, which meant it would work. Occam's razor also cut in wet work.

Once away from the butcher's floor, all Venloe had to do was get off Jochi and out of the cluster. Fine. He had had a private yacht secreted on an auxiliary field outside Rurik within two weeks of his arrival on-planet with Iskra.

Venloe, someone had once said, didn't even use a latrine without making sure there was a way out—even if it meant jumping directly into the drakh below. Venloe had chosen to take the statement as a compliment.

Having figured his egress, he also knew what weapon he would carry. He would have preferred an Imperial-made weapon for its quality, but since he planned to abandon the tool at the site, he thought it better to procure one of local manufacture. Since Venloe prided himself on his taste, he preferred even his murder weapon to not be an off-the-shelf item. He ended up with the perfect device: an obsolete sporting arm that had been custom-built a century before, to slaughter a wild animal that was now extinct. He had found a bullet mold and cast new bullets and then hand-loaded propellant into shell casings for the weapon.

Now, for his assassin.

Assassins, since the Emperor wanted the biggest bang for his buck.

That, too, was simple.

He started with Dr. Iskra's Special Duty units. Every dictator, public or corporate, that Venloe had ever worked for or heard of had his own private thuggery, with its own label—from the Fida'is to the Einsatzgruppen to CREEP to Mantis to the Emperor's newly formed Internal Security to this unit of Iskra.

Venloe didn't think much of them. He referred to them publicly as "beards," or "bearded ones," and refused to explain why.

Actually, Venloe was making a private reference to one of the least-competent murder organizations of all time, far back on ancient Earth.

The first and—so Iskra had thought it—preeminent cell of these Special Duty units, this one a deep-cover team, had been vanished from its supposedly secure safe house in a mansion outside Rurik. There had never been any rumors, nor had any of Jochi's other private hit teams claimed credit for the deed. Venloe had wondered idly, since that cell had been assigned to harassing the Imperial Guard battalion and had almost certainly been responsible for the barracks bombing, if Sten hadn't given himself a little private pleasure and obliterated them.

Regardless, the effect was immediate—and chilling. Several entire "units" of Special Duty people requested reassignment to active duty status on other worlds, perhaps to fulfill duties against the Bogazi, Suzdal, or Torks. Still other cell members went inactive. That ended when beings still loyal to Iskra hunted them down and dealt with the traitors.

In any event, the Special Duty units were, to Venloe, a joke. But that didn't mean he could not use them. He had enquired of their "Supreme Intelligence Leader" what beings, now serving in the Jochi armed forces, were considered potentially traitorous and capable of armed resistance that the Special Duty teams hadn't gotten around to dealing with yet.

That got him one list.

He got a second list from the army's own Counter Subversion Department. A list that was a little less hysterical.

Any name that was on both lists Venloe put on his own roster of possibly dangerous service types. He could not believe how big this short list was—hell, Iskra wasn't even all that good at purges.

Which gave him the direction for his final cut—anyone who had been friendly with or assigned to the same unit as any of the beings Iskra had purged when he arrived on Jochi, beings Iskra still swore were imprisoned in Gatchin Fortress. Venloe knew better, but had not bothered to find out where Iskra had disappeared the bodies to, so long as no trace could ever be found.

This final list he was quite pleased with. He was still more pleased when he found that some of these beings, all of whom had excellent reason to hate Iskra, had been carefully applying for assignment to certain units.

Venloe positively beamed, and permitted himself a single glass of Vegan vintage wine that night. The only thing more perfect than creating a false conspiracy was finding one already extant that could be used for his own purposes. Then he sent two of his most trusted free-lance aides into the field, to find out who was running this conspiracy a-birthing.

The answer was four young officers. None of them appeared to have any idea on what specific mission their conspiracy would take—but it would be used, and used soon, to destroy Iskra. They weren't particularly clever or Machiavellian. If Venloe hadn't found themselves, they would undoubtedly have been picked up by Counter Subversion or the Special Duty teams and body-bagged.

There were thirty of them he could use, he finally decided. Very good. The murder technique that would be used on the day, Venloe kept mentally filed as Crimson Ratpack. He collected, using Iskra's never-to-be-questioned authority, their dossiers from the counter-intelligence unit, and burned their files. They now owed him greatly. He had saved their lives. The least they could do now was sacrifice themselves, but this time to fulfill their dreams instead of ending as futile cinders at the Killing Wall.

His two aides approached the four officers, without saying that Iskra's behind-the-scenes adviser was planning to cut his boss's throat. Venloe had been right—they were more than happy to volunteer for the sacrifice.

Venloe had half of his players. Now all he needed was the other half—the victims.

And a theater.

That, too, was simple.

"I do not see," Dr. Iskra said, having scowled his way through Venloe's memorandum, "what purpose this farce would have. What will I—which means the government of the Altaic Cluster—gain?"