Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Twelve

The mood around the conference table was very different this time.

" ... so there's a fifteen-minute hole in his work log," Ninhursag said, "smack in the middle of his work on Terra's core software. Unfortunately, there are eight other holes, from just under a minute to almost an hour long, in the same log, and we've found an intermittent defect in his terminal that looks completely normal." Her curled lip showed what she thought of that.

"But why?" Horus asked softly. "I don't question your conclusions, 'Hursag, but in the Maker's name, why?"

"We can't prove 'why' until we know 'who,' " Ninhursag's voice was harsh, "but I see only two motives. Destroy Imperial Terra, one, because of what she was—our most powerful warship—or, two, because of who was aboard."

"Sean and Harry," Colin grated, and Ninhursag nodded.

"Whoever set this up went to tremendous lengths—and ran tremendous risks. What else could his objective have been?"

"Sweet Jesu," Jiltanith whispered. "Full eighty thousand people and the children of our dearest friends to kill my babes?" Her face was drawn, but more than despair burned in her black eyes, and her knuckles were white about the hilt of the dagger she always wore.

"Bastards!" Hector MacMahan's stylus snapped in his hand. He looked down at the broken pieces and slowly and carefully crushed each of them between enhanced fingertips.

"Agreed," Colin's voice was ice, "but the other kids may have been targets as well. Look how it's affected all of us. 'Hursag blames herself for 'slacking off,' but have any of us done better? And whoever the son-of-a-bitch is, he damned well knew what it would do to us!"

"I must agree," Tsien said. Amanda nodded beside him, eyes smoking, and he touched her hand where it lay upon the table. "Yet I am also certain 'Hursag's other deduction is equally correct. Whoever did this must have a powerful organization and penetration at the highest levels. Without such an organization he could not have acted; without such penetration he could have known neither which ship to attack nor whom to use for that attack."

"Agreed," Gerald Hatcher sounded even grimmer. "They had to pick someone with access who was also vulnerable. Anybody this ruthless might have popped one of his own people to cut the chain of evidence, but why kill an entire family? No, they knew exactly which poor bastard to pick, held his family hostage to make him play, then killed them all to cover their tracks."

"There's another pointer." Adrienne Robbins' voice was cold; Algys McNeal had been her friend, and twenty more of her midshipmen had been aboard Imperial Terra. "Cruz didn't pop a single security flag. He must have known how small a chance he had of getting them back alive, but he went for it without telling anyone. He never even tried to get help, so maybe he knew they had enough penetration to know if he'd talked to any of 'Hursag's people."

Cold, bitter silence enveloped the council room, then Colin nodded.

"All right. There's someone out there cold enough to murder an entire family and eighty thousand of our people, and I want the son-of-a-bitch. How do we get him?"

"Dust off the lie detectors and put everybody—and I mean everybody—on them," MacMahan grated.

"We can't," Horus said. Eyes turned to him, and he shrugged. "If we're right about how far we've been penetrated, the bad guys—whoever they are—will know the instant we start that. If they're our own people, well and good; all they can do is run and identify themselves for us. But if they're tapped in from the outside, they'll be operating through a blizzard of cutouts, and whoever's really in charge will just pull in his horns. If he disengages, we may never get another shot at him."

"It's worse than that," Colin sighed. "We don't have 'probable cause' for that kind of sweep."

"Bullshit!" MacMahan snarled. "This is a security matter. We can pull in anybody in uniform we want to!"

"No, we can't." MacMahan started to speak again, but Colin raised a hand. "Hold it, Hector. Just wait a minute. Goddamn it, I want this bastard as badly as you do, but think about it. We know 'Hursag's right, but there's not a single piece of hard evidence. Everything except the disappearance of Cruz's family is covered by plausible 'technical failures.' And while it's true his family did disappear from our records, that by itself doesn't prove a thing. No law requires people to report their whereabouts to us—our subjects are also free citizens. The fact that we don't know where they were actually works against us; Cruz never indicated they were being held against their will, and if we don't even know where they were, we can hardly prove they were prisoners!

"Even if we could, we'd have to be very specific about who we questioned. The Charter provides no protection against self-incrimination, so we can ask anything we like under a lie detector... but only in a court. That particular civil right is absolutely guaranteed specifically because there's no protection against self-incrimination.

"Now, you're right that we can question anyone in uniform as long as we make it a security matter, but we still have to furnish them and their counsel with a list of areas we intend to cover—approved by a judge—before we start asking. There's no way we could process legal paperwork on the scale we need without its coming to the attention of anyone with the sources to target Cruz, and what happens when our Mister X finds out about it? We don't want his sources, Hector—we want him."

MacMahan looked rebellious, but he subsided with a muttered curse and a grudging nod. Colin was glad to see it, and even gladder to see the life flowing back into his eyes as he realized he had an enemy. Sandy's death was no longer a senseless act by an uncaring universe. Hector had someone besides God to hate, and perhaps that would bring those inner barricades down.

"Very well, then," Tsien said, "what steps shall we take?"

"First we start taking security real serious," Amanda said. "Whoever went after the kids may be religious nuts, anarchists, out of their fucking minds, or planning a coup, but they don't get you two—or Horus—by God!"

"Damn straight," Adrienne approved amid a snarl of agreement, and Colin swallowed. He heard their hunger to destroy whoever had done this to them, but these weren't just his senior officers or angry, bereaved parents. These were friends, determined to protect him and Jiltanith.

"For Colin and 'Tanni, yes," Horus said after a moment, "but not me." Colin raised his eyebrows, and the old man shrugged. "We can reinforce your security quietly, but we can't slap armed guards all over White Tower. Your 'Mister X' could hardly miss that."

"Nay, Father! Shalt not risk thyself thus!"

"Oh, hush, 'Tanni! Who'd want to kill me? Unless we're talking about a total maniac, and I don't think we are, given how smoothly this whole thing went down, what possible motive could he have? Maybe after they got the two of you I'd become a target—not before."

"I believe Horus has a point, 'Tanni," Dahak put in. "While it is possible this was a crime of hate and not of logic, whoever perpetrated it did so in a most rational fashion." The computer's voice was as mellow as ever, but they all heard its anger. "At present, this would appear to be the first step in an attempt to decapitate the Imperium, and if that is, indeed, the case, Horus becomes a logical target only in the endgame of the conspiracy."

"Umm." Ninhursag rubbed her forehead. "I don't know, Dahak. You may be right, but you're a bit prone to believe everyone operates on the basis of logic. And whoever it is did go for the kids first."

"True, yet analysis suggests this was a crime of opportunity. Security for the twins was very tight, however it might appear to the uninformed. In the Bia System, they were attended by my own scanners at all times and, save for their field trips, continuously guarded by other security arrangements, as well. I do not say it would have been impossible to assassinate them, but it would have been difficult—and it could not have been done without being recognized as an act of murder. In this instance, the killer was able to strike when they were beyond my own surveillance or that of any regular security agency. Moreover, had you not pursued your own intuition in the matter of the Cruz family's murders, the fact that Sean and Harriet's deaths had been deliberately contrived would never have been known."

"That makes sense," Adrienne said slowly, "but I can't shake the feeling that there was more behind it."

"Indeed there was," Dahak agreed. "The twins were not murdered for personal motives, My Lady, but for who—and what—they were. For whatever reason, our enemy elected to strike at the succession. It is for this reason I believe it to be the start of an effort to destroy the monarchy."

"Which does make Horus a target," Colin sighed. "Oh, crap!"

"That is an incorrect assumption. Horus is a member of the imperial family, true, but he is not your heir. He would become a potential heir only should you and 'Tanni die without issue, and with all due respect, I believe the Assembly of Nobles would be unlikely to select one of Horus's advanced years as Emperor. Mother might do so if she were required to execute Case Omega yet again, but she would do so only if there were no Assembly of Nobles to discharge that function. Moreover, Horus would not be the first choice even under Case Omega. The proper successor choice under Case Omega would be Admiral Hatcher, as CNO, followed by Star Marshal Tsien. Horus, as the highest civil official of the Imperium, would become the legal heir only if both of the Imperium's senior military officers were also dead. In addition, any open attack upon Horus would clearly risk awakening the suspicion the twins' 'accidental' deaths were intended to avoid. Thus any attempt to kill him before killing you, 'Tanni, Admiral Hatcher, and Star Marshal Tsien would be pointless unless we are, indeed, dealing with an irrational individual."

"I hate it when you get this way, Dahak," Colin complained, and several of the angry people around the table surprised themselves by smiling.

"Maybe, but he's right," Ninhursag said. "I don't want to get complacent, but tightening security for you two—and Gerald and Tao-ling—should have the effect of covering Horus, as well. And he's right, too. If we boost his security, it's a gold-plated warning to whoever we're up against."

"All right, we'll handle it that way—for starters. Hector, can you manage the security details?"

"Yes," MacMahan said tersely, and Colin nodded. The protection of the imperial family was the responsibility of the Imperial Marines, and MacMahan's expression was all the reassurance he needed.

"Good. But that's only a defensive action—how do we nail this bastard?"

"Whatever we do, Colin, we do it very carefully," Ninhursag said. "We start by putting all of this on a strict need-to-know basis. I don't want to bring in anyone else—not even Gus. Without knowing how 'Mister X' gets his information, every individual added to the information net gives him another possible conduit, however careful our people are."

"All right, agreed. And then?"

"And then Dahak and I sit down with every bit of security data we have. Everything, military and civilian, from Day One of the Fifth Imperium. We find any anomalies, and then we eliminate them one at a time.

"In addition," she leaned back in her chair and frowned up at the ceiling, "we step up efforts to infiltrate every known group of malcontents. Those're underway already, so we don't have to give any new reasons for them. And while we flesh-and-bloods're doing that, Dahak, you jump into the datanets here in Bia and start setting up your own taps. Cruz could futz his terminal, but no one can get to you, so I want you tied into everything."

"Understood. I must point out, however, that I cannot achieve the same penetration of Earth's datanets."

"No, but until we figure out what's going on, Colin and 'Tanni will never visit Earth simultaneously. We know someone's after them now, and as long as 'Mister X' has to get through you, ONI, Hector's Marines, and Battle Fleet to reach them, I think they're pretty safe, don't you?"

Darin Gretsky leaned his broom in a corner and surveyed the well-lit workshop with a thin smile. He'd worked thirty years to prepare himself as a theoretical physicist, and during all those years he'd felt disdain for most of his fellows. He'd shared their thirst for knowledge, but for them, acclaim, respect, even power, were by-products of knowledge. For him, they were what knowledge was all about. His calculating pursuit of the lifestyle promised by corporate and governmental research empires had earned the contempt of his fellow students, but he hadn't cared, and the wealth and—especially—power he craved had been just within his reach... until Dahak and the explosion of Imperial science snatched them away.

Gretsky felt his jaw ache and made himself relax it. Overnight, he'd been transformed from a man on the cutting edge to an aborigine trying to understand that the strange marks on the missionary's white paper actually had meaning. He'd had the stature to be included in the first implant education programs, and, for a time during the Siege, he'd thought he might catch the crest of this new wave as he had the old. But once the emergency was past, Darin Gretsky had realized a horrible thing: he'd become no more than a technician. A flunky using knowledge others had amassed. Knowledge, he'd been forced to admit with bowel-churning hatred, he didn't truly understand.

It had almost destroyed him... and it had destroyed the life he'd planned. He'd become but one more of the thousands of Terra-born scientists exploring millennia of someone else's research and watching it invalidate much of what they'd believed was holy writ. There were no fellow students whose work he might steal, and it couldn't matter less who "published first." And worst of all, the ones for whom he'd felt contempt—the naive ones to whom it was knowledge itself which mattered—were better at it than he. The Terra-born scientists exploring the rarefied stratosphere of the Fourth Empire's tech base came from their number, and there was no room for Darin Gretsky save as one more hewer of wood and drawer of water in the dust about their feet.

But things would change once more, and his smile grew ugly at the thought. His work here had filled his secret bank account with enough Imperial credits to buy the life he'd always craved, and that was good, yet far more satisfying to his wounded soul was what his work could bring about. He didn't know how it would be used, but contemplating the cataclysmic power of the device he'd built gave him an almost sexual thrill. It had taken longer than he'd expected, and he'd had to reinvent the wheel a time or two to work around components that didn't exist, but money had been no object, and he'd succeeded. He'd succeeded, and someday soon, unless he was sadly mistaken, his handiwork would topple the smug cretins who'd pushed him aside.

He gave the workshop one more glance, then walked down the hall to the office in which he became not Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, but one more freelance consultant helping Terran industry cope with the flood of concepts pouring like water from the new Imperial Patent Office. Even that was merely picking the bones of the dead past, he thought acidly. Emperor Colin—the title was an epithet in his soul—had declared all civilian Imperial technology public knowledge, held by the Imperial government and leased at nominal fees to any and all users. The free flow of information was unprecedented, and old, well-established firms were being challenged by thousands of newcomers as the manna tumbled down and imagination became more important than mere capital.

He hated the people he worked for. Hated all the bright-eyed, smiling people reaching out for the new world which had robbed him. He had to hide that, but not for much longer. Soon what he'd wrought would—

He looked up in surprise as the office door opened, for it was after midnight. The well-groomed young woman in the doorway looked at him with an odd little smile and raised her eyebrows.

"Dr. Gretsky?" He nodded. "Dr. Darin Gretsky?" she pressed.

"Yes. What can I do for you, Ms.—?" He paused, waiting for her name, and she reached into her outsized purse.

"I have a message for you, Doctor." Something in her voice set off a distant alarm, and his muscles tightened as the door opened once more and four or five men stepped through it. "A message from the Sword of God."

He leapt to his feet as her hand came out of the purse, but the last thing Darin Gretsky ever saw was the white, bright glare of a muzzle flash.

Lawrence Jefferson closed the report and leaned back in his swivel chair with a thoughtful expression. Over the past decade he'd assumed ever more of Horus's day-to-day responsibilities, freeing the Governor to concentrate on policy issues, and Gus van Gelder reported directly to him on routine matters now, which was a very useful thing, indeed.

He swung his chair gently from side to side, considering his strategy yet again in light of the latest report. The Sword of God was becoming quite a headache, he thought cheerfully. They were growing bolder, applying all the lessons of the terrorist organizations Colin MacIntyre and his fellows had smashed, and they were far harder to destroy. These terrorists knew the strengths—and weaknesses—of the Imperial technology opposed to them, and none of the security people trying to defeat them suspected their most priceless advantage. Knowledge was power, and through Gus van Gelder, Lawrence Jefferson knew exactly what moves were being made against his tools.

For example, he knew Gus was getting uncomfortably close to Francine. Gus didn't know it yet, but Jefferson did, and so Bishop Hilgemann was driving the Sword from the Church of the Armageddon. The excesses of zealotry must be forever anathema to the godly, and she was horrified by the thought that such misguided souls might be numbered among her flock. They must recognize the error of their ways or be cut off from the body of the faithful, for they had embraced a fundamental error. Hatred for the Achuultani and all other works of the Anti-Christ was every godly person's duty, but that hate must not be extended to the leadership which stood against the foe. Rather the errors of that leadership must be addressed nonviolently, by prayer and remonstrance, lest all the undeniable good it had achieved be lost, as well.

It was all very touching, and it had Gus a bit confused, since he didn't know about the conduits through which she directed those same zealots. What Gus hadn't quite grasped yet was that the Sword no longer required the infrastructure of the Church. No doubt Gus would figure it out, but by then it should be too late to find any institutional links to Bishop Hilgemann.

Security Councilor van Gelder nodded to the Marine sentry as the elevator deposited him on an upper floor of White Tower. He walked down the hall and knocked on the frame of an open door.

"Busy?" he asked when the man behind the desk looked up.

"Not terribly." Lieutenant Governor Jefferson rose courteously, waving to a chair, then sat again as van Gelder seated himself. "What's up?"

"Horus still on Birhat?"

"Well, yes." Jefferson leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin, and raised his eyebrows. "He's not scheduled to return until tomorrow night. Why? Has something urgent come up?"

"You might say that," van Gelder said. "I've finally got a break on the Sword of God."

"You have?" Jefferson's chair snapped upright, and van Gelder smiled. He'd thought Jefferson would be glad to hear it.

"Yes. You know how hard it's been to break their security. Even when we manage to take one or two of them alive, they're so tightly compartmented we can't ID anyone outside the cell they come from. But I've finally managed to get one of my people inside. I haven't reported it yet—we're playing her cover on a strict need-to-know basis—but she's just been tapped to serve as a link in the courier chain to her cell's main intelligence pipeline."

"Why, that's wonderful, Gus!" Jefferson cocked his head, considering the implications, then rubbed his blotter gently. "How soon do you expect this to pay off?"

"Within the next few weeks," van Gelder replied, smothering a small, familiar spurt of exasperation. Jefferson couldn't help it any more than any other bureaucratic type, but even the best of them had a sort of institutional impatience that irritated intelligence officers immensely. They couldn't appreciate the life-and-death risks his field people ran, and a "why can't we move quicker on this?" mind-set seemed to go with their jobs.

"Good. Good! And you want to report this directly to Horus?"

"Yes. As I say, I've been running this agent very carefully. I'm the only one in the shop who knows everything about the job, and I just got her report this afternoon. Horus and I set the concept up several months ago, and I need to let him know what's happening before I brief anyone on my staff."

"I see. Do you have a formal report for him, then?"

"Not a formal one, but—" van Gelder reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small security file "—these are my briefing notes."

"I see." Jefferson regarded the security file thoughtfully. Such files were keyed to randomly generated implant access codes when they were sealed. Any attempt to open them without those codes would reduce the chips within them to useless slag.

"Well, as I say, he won't be back until tomorrow night. Is this really urgent? I mean—" he waved his hand apologetically at van Gelder's slightly affronted expression "—are we facing a time pressure problem so we have to get the word to him immediately?"

"It's not exactly a crisis, but I'd like to brief him as soon as possible. I don't want to be too far from the office in case something breaks, but maybe I should mat-trans out to Birhat and catch him there. If he agrees, I could brief Colin and Jiltanith, too."

"That might be a good idea," Jefferson mused, then paused with an arrested air. "In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think we ought to get it to him ASAP. It's the middle of the night in Phoenix right now, but I'm already scheduled to mat-trans out tomorrow morning their time. Could I drop your notes off with him, or is he going to need a personal briefing?"

"We do need to discuss it," van Gelder said thoughtfully, "but the basic information's in the notes... . In fact, it might help if he had them before we sat down to talk."

"Then I'll take them out with me, if you like."

"Fine." Van Gelder handed over the file with a grin. "Never thought I'd be using a courier quite this secure!"

"You flatter me." Jefferson slid the file into his own pocket. "Does Horus have the file access code?"

"No. Here—" Van Gelder flipped his feed into Jefferson's computer and used it to relay the code to the Lieutenant Governor, then wiped it from the computer's memory. "I hope you don't talk in your sleep," he cautioned.

"I don't," Jefferson assured him, rising to escort him to the door. He paused to shake his hand. "Again, let me congratulate you. This is a tremendous achievement. I'm sure there are going to be some very relieved people when they get this information."