Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Thirty-Four

Lieutenant Carl Bergren was grateful for his bio-enhancement. Without it, he'd have been sweating so hard the security pukes would have arrested him the moment he reported for duty tonight.

His adrenaline tried to spike again, but he pushed it back down and told himself (again) the risk was acceptable. If it all blew up on him, he could find himself facing charges for willful destruction of private property and end up dishonorably discharged with five or ten years in prison, which was hardly an attractive proposition. On the other hand, it wasn't as if anyone were going to be hurt—in fact, he was going to have to separate any passengers from the freight—and it wasn't every night a mere Battle Fleet lieutenant earned eight million credits. That payoff was sufficient compensation for any risks which might come his way. He told himself that firmly enough to manage a natural smile as he walked into the control room and nodded to Lieutenant Deng.

"You're early tonight, Carl." Deng had learned his English before he was enhanced, and its stubbornly persistent British accent always seemed odd to Bergren coming from a Chinese.

"Only a couple of minutes," he replied. "Commander Jackson's on Birhat, and I stole her parking spot."

"A court-martial offense if ever I heard one." Deng chuckled, and rose to stretch. "Very well, Leftenant, your throne awaits."

"Some throne!" Bergren snorted. He dropped into the control chair and flipped his feed into the computers, scanning the evening's traffic. "Not much business tonight."

"Not yet, but there's something special coming through from Narhan."

"Special? Special how?" Bergren's tone was a bit too casual, but Deng failed to notice.

"Some sort of high-priority freight for the Palace." He shrugged. "I don't know what, but the mass readings are quite high, so you might want to watch the gamma bank capacitors. We're getting a drop at peak loads, and Maintenance hasn't found the problem yet."

"No?" Bergren checked the files in case Deng was watching, but he already knew all about the power fluctuation. He didn't know how it had been arranged, but he knew why, and he damped another adrenaline surge at the thought. "You're right," he observed aloud. "Thanks. I'll keep an eye on them."

"Good." Deng gathered up his personal gear and cocked his head. "Everything else green?"

"Looks that way," Bergren agreed. "You're relieved."

"Thanks. See you tomorrow!"

Deng wandered out, and Bergren leaned back in his chair. He was alone now, and he allowed a small smile to hover on his lips. He had no idea who his mysterious patron was, nor had he cared... until tonight. Whoever it was paid well enough to support his taste for fast flyers and faster women, and that had been enough for him. But the services he'd performed so far had all been small potatoes beside tonight, and his smile became a thoughtful frown.

He hadn't realized, until he received his latest orders, how powerful his unknown employer must be, but pulling this off required more than mere wealth. No, whoever could arrange something like this had to have access not simply to highly restricted technology but to Shepard Center's security at the very highest levels. There couldn't be many people who had both those things, and the lieutenant had already opened a mental file of possible candidates. After all, if whoever it was had paid so well for relatively minor services in the past, he'd pay still better in the future for Bergren's silence.

A soft tone sounded, and he shrugged his thoughts aside to concentrate on his duties. He plugged into the computer net and checked the passenger manifest against the people actually boarding the mat-trans. Two of them were technically overweight for their baggage, but it was well within the system's max load parameters, and he decided to let it pass. He made the necessary adjustments to field strength and checked his figures twice, then sent the hypercom transit warning to Birhat. An answering hypercom pulse told him Birhat was up and ready, awaiting reception of the controlled hyper-space anomaly he was about to create, and he sent the transit computer the release code. The control room's soundproofing was excellent, but he still heard the whine of the charging capacitors, and then his readouts peaked as the transmitter kicked over. Another clutch of bureaucrats, temporarily converted into something they were no doubt just as happy they couldn't understand, disappeared into a massive, artificially induced "fold" in hyper-space. The waiting Birhat station couldn't "see" them coming, but, alerted by Bergren's hypercom signal, its receivers formed a vast, funnel-shaped trap in hyper-space. At eight hundred-plus light-years, even the vastest funnel was an impossibly tiny target, but Bergren's calculations flicked the disembodied bureaucrats expertly into its bell-shaped mouth. In his mind's eye, the lieutenant always pictured his passengers rattling and bouncing as they zinged down the funnel and then—instantaneously, as far as they could tell, but 8.5 seconds later by the clocks of the rest of the universe—blinked back into existence on distant Birhat.

Now he sat waiting, then nodded to himself as Birhat's hypercommed receipt tone sounded seventeen seconds later. He noted the routine transit in his log and checked the schedule. Traffic really was light tonight, and it was getting lighter as the hour got later. Shepard Center Station was only one of six mat-trans stations Earth now boasted, and it handled mostly North American traffic, though it also caught a heavier percentage of the through-traffic from Narhan to Birhat and vice versa. The receiving platforms were far busier than the outbound stations, but, then, it was midmorning in Phoenix on Birhat and only early evening in Andhurkahn on Narhan. He had a good five minutes before his next scheduled transmission, and he returned once more to his speculations.

Lawrence Jefferson sat in his private office at home. His split-image com screen linked him to another mat-trans half a planet from Bergren's—half showing the installation's control room; the other half a huge, tarpaulin-covered shape waiting on the transmission platform—and he poured more sherry into his glass as he watched both images. No one at the other end knew he was observing them, and he supposed his high-tech spyhole was a bit risky, but he had no choice, and at least the Lieutenant Governor of Earth had access to the best technology available. His link had been established using a high security fold-space com that bounced its hyper frequency on a randomized pattern twice a second. That made simply detecting it all but impossible and, coupled with the physical relays through which it also bounced, meant tapping or tracing it was impossible. Besides, anyone who happened to spot it would report it to the Minister of Planetary Security, now wouldn't they?

He chuckled at the thought and sipped sherry as he watched the purposeful activity in the control room. No one—aside from the men and women who'd built and staffed it for him—even knew it existed, and all but three of them were on duty tonight. The three absent faces had been killed in a tragic flyer accident almost two years previously, and though their deaths had been a blow, their fellows had taken up the slack without difficulty. Now his carefully chosen techs checked their equipment with absolute concentration, for the upcoming transmission—the one and only transmission the installation would ever make—had to be executed perfectly.

It would never have done for Jefferson to admit he was nervous. Nor would it have been true, for "nervous" fell far short of what he felt tonight. This was the absolutely critical phase, the one which would make him Emperor of Humanity—if it worked—and anxiety mingled with a fierce expectation. He'd worked over a decade—more than twenty-five years, if he counted from his first contact with Anu—for this moment, and even as a part of him feared it would fail, the gambler part of him could hardly wait to throw the dice.

It was odd, but, in a way, he'd actually be sorry if it worked. Not because he didn't want the crown, and certainly not because he regretted what he had to do to get it, but because the game would be over. He would have carried out the most audacious coup in the history of mankind, but all the daring, the concentration and subtle manipulation, would be a thing of the past, and he could never share the true magnitude of his accomplishment with anyone else.

He shook his head at his own perversity, and a small smile flickered. The curse of his own makeup, he chided himself, was that he could never be entirely content, however well things went. He always wanted more, but there were limits, and he supposed he'd just have to settle for absolute power.

Bergren straightened in his chair as five Narhani entered the outbound terminal with a huge, tarpaulin-draped object on a counter-grav dolly. The centaurs fussed with their burden, placing it carefully on the platform and taking their places about it in a protective circle, and, despite all his implants could do, the lieutenant swallowed nervously as he flashed a mental command to the power sub-net. It was a routine testing order, but tonight it had another effect, and he winced as the induced surge flashed through the gamma bank of capacitors and an audio alarm shrilled.

The Narhani on the platform looked up, long-snouted heads twisting around in confusion as the high-pitched warble hurt their ears, and Bergren sent quick, fresh commands to his computer to shut it down. Then he leaned forward and keyed a microphone.

"Sorry, gentlemen," he told the Narhani over the speakers in the terminal area. "We've just lost one of our main capacitor banks. Until we get it back, our transmission capacity's down to eighty percent of max."

"What does that mean?" the senior Narhani asked, and Bergren shrugged for the benefit of the control room security recorders.

"I'm afraid it means you're over the limits for our available power, sir," he replied smoothly.

"May we shift to another platform?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't matter, sir. As you know, this system is very energy intensive. For this much mass, any of the platforms would draw on the same capacitor reserve, so you might as well stay where you are."

"But did you not say you cannot send us?" The Narhani sounded confused, and Bergren hid a smile.

"No, sir. I just can't transmit the entire load at once. I'll have to send your freight through in one transmission, then send you and the other members of your party through in a second, that's all."

"I see." The Narhani spokesman and his companions spoke softly and quickly in their own language. Bergren didn't know what the object they were accompanying was, but he knew they were a security detachment, and he forced himself to sit calmly, hiding any trace of anxiety over what they might decide. After a moment, the spokesman looked back up and raised the volume of his vocoder.

"Can we not send at least one of our number through with our freight?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. We'll be right at the limits of our available power, and Regs prohibit me from sending passengers under those conditions."

"Is there risk to our freight?" The question was sharp for a Narhani.

"No, sir," Bergren soothed. "Not if it's not alive. The regulations are so specific because a power fluctuation that won't harm inanimate objects can cause serious neural damage in living passengers. It's just a precaution."

"I see." The spokesman looked back at his companions for a moment, then twitched his crest in the Narhani equivalent of a shrug. "We would prefer to wait until your power systems have been repaired," he told Bergren, "but our schedule is very tight. Can you assure us our freight will arrive undamaged?"

"Yes, sir," Bergren said confidently.

"Very well," the Narhani sighed. He spoke to his companions in their own language again, and all five of them stepped off the platform and moved back behind the safety line.

"Thank you, sir," Bergren said, and his fold-com implant sent a brief, prerecorded burst transmission to a waiting relay as he began to prep for transmission.

"Alert signal," a woman said quietly in the control room on Jefferson's screen. The two men at the main console nodded acknowledgment without ever opening their eyes, and one of them activated the stealthed sensor arrays watching Shepard Center from orbit.

"Good signal," his companion announced in the toneless voice of a man concentrating on his neural feed. "We've got their field strength. Coming up nicely now."

"Synchronizer on-line," the third tech said. "Power up and nominal. Switching to auto sequence."

Carl Bergren watched his readouts through his feeds. This was the tricky part that was going to earn him that big stack of credits. The settings had to be almost right, and he straightened his mouth as he felt it trying to curl in a grin of tension. The power levels were already off the optimum curve, thanks to the failure of the gamma bank, and he very carefully cut back the charge on the delta bank. Not by much. Only by a tiny, virtually undetectable fraction. But it would be enough—if whoever was in charge of the other part of the operation got his numbers right—and he sent the alert signal to Birhat and waited for the response.

Lawrence Jefferson leaned towards his com, clutching his wineglass, and his heart pounded. This was the moment, he thought. The instant towards which he'd worked so long.

"Their field's building now," the sensor tech murmured. "Looking good... looking good... stand by... stand by... coming up to peak... now!"

Carl Bergren sent the release code, and the capacitors screamed. The shrouded object on the platform vanished as the mat-trans sent a mighty pulse of power into hyper-space, and he held his breath. The transmission he'd sent out was almost precisely four millionths of a percent too weak to reach Birhat. It would waste its power twenty light-minutes short of the funnel waiting to catch it for the reception units, but no one would ever know if—

The control room on Lawrence Jefferson's com screen was silent, its personnel frozen. Not even a mat-trans was truly instantaneous over an eight-hundred-light-year range, and Jefferson held his breath while he waited.

A soft tone beeped, and Carl Bergren let out a whooshing breath as the Birhat mat-trans operator acknowledged receipt. He'd done it! The person at the other end of the hypercom link didn't realize someone else had invaded the system. He thought he'd just received Bergren's transmission!

The lieutenant suppressed an urge to wipe his forehead. Deep inside, he hadn't really believed his employer could pull it off, and it was hard to keep his elation out of his voice as he activated his mike.

"Birhat has confirmed reception, sir," he told the Narhani spokesman. "If you'd step onto the platform, I can send you through now, as well."

"We did it!" someone shouted gleefully. "They accepted the transmission!"

The staff of Jefferson's illicit mat-trans whistled and clapped, and the Lieutenant Governor checked the computer tied into his com. Good. The exact readouts of the transmission, which just happened to carry the same identifier code as Lieutenant Bergren's system, had been properly stored. He'd have to wait until the regular Shepard Center data collection upload late next week to exchange them for Bergren's actual log of the transmission, but that part of the pipeline had already been tested and proved secure. It was inconvenient, since he would have preferred to make the switch sooner, yet there was nothing he could do about it. The mass readings of the transit would prove the statue Birhat had just received had not, in fact, been the solid block of marble Bergren had just destroyed, and for his Reichstag fire to work, it was vital that Battle Fleet itself discover that fact when the time came.

He smiled at the thought, then looked back at his link to the hidden control room and its celebrating personnel. Two of them had cracked bottles of champagne, and he watched them pouring their glasses full while they chattered and laughed with the release of long-held tension. They'd worked hard for this moment—and, of course, for the huge pile of credits they'd been promised—and the Lieutenant Governor leaned back in his chair with a sigh of matching relief. They deserved their moment of triumph, and he let them celebrate it for another few minutes, then pressed a button.

Half a world away, the explosive charges three long-dead technicians had installed at his orders detonated. One of the control room personnel had time for a single scream of terror before the plunging roof of the subterranean installation turned him and all his fellows into mangled gruel.

Carl Bergren dutifully logged a full report on the capacitor bank failure and completed his shift without further incident. He turned over to his relief at shift change and signed out through the security checkpoints, then walked slowly to his parked flyer while he pondered the entire operation. Whoever had arranged it, he thought, had to have incredible reach and command equally incredible resources. He'd had to gain access to the routing schedules weeks in advance to be sure Bergren would be on duty when the transmission came through. Then he'd had to get someone in to sabotage the capacitors, and he'd had to make sure the sabotage was untraceable. And he'd had to have the resources to build his own mat-trans and find a way to monitor the Shepard Center system precisely enough to time his own transmission perfectly.

It was big, Bergren told himself as he unlocked his flyer, climbed in, and settled into the flight couch. It was really big, and there couldn't be more than a dozen people—probably less—who could have put it all together. Now it was just a matter of figuring out which of those dozen or so it had really been, and little Carl Bergren would live high on the hog for the rest of his natural life.

He smiled and activated his flyer's drive, and the resultant explosion blew two entire levels of the parking garage and thirty-six innocent bystanders into very tiny pieces. Forty minutes later, an anonymous spokesman for the Sword of the Lord claimed responsibility for the blast.