Chris Bunch & Allan Cole - Sten 6 - The Return of the Emperor

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The Return of the Emperor

by Chris Bunch & Allan Cole

Note

The titles of Books One, Two, and Three are the official ranks Augustus won from

the Roman senate to become Emperor. Princeps means "Leading Man." Imperator,

"Military Commander." This word is the Latin root for Emperor. Pater Patriae means

"Father of the Fatherland."

The title of Book Four translates as "We About to Die Salute You." It was the famous

cry of the gladiators as they paid respects to their emperor before engaging in the

bloodbaths of the ancient circuses.

BOOK ONE

PRINCEPS

CHAPTER ONE

The ship bulked monstrous. Each of the decahedron's sides measured nearly a square

kilometer.

There was but one man on board. He floated, motionless, in a shallow pool that

curved in the center of one compartment. His eyes opened. Blue. Incurious, like a newly

born child. Some time passed.

A valve activated, and the liquid drained out of the pool. One side dropped away.

The man sat up and lowered his legs to the deck, moving slowly and carefully like an

invalid testing himself after a long time bedridden. The deck was warm.

He might have sat there for a moment, an hour, or a day before a voice spoke. It

came from everywhere.

"There is food and drink in the next chamber."

Obediently the man pushed himself to his feet. He swayed, then recovered. On a

low stand beside the pool/ bed was a blue coverall. He glanced at it briefly, then walked

to a wall. It was smooth and blank except for a circular palmswitch. He touched the

switch.

The wall became a screen. Vid? Imaging radar? Computer simulation?

Outside lay space/not space. It was black, and it was all colors. It hurt the man's

eyes. He palmed the switch once more, and the screen became a wall.

Still naked, he padded through a doorway.

A table was set for one. The dishes were covered. The man lifted one cover and

scooped food up with his fingers. He chewed, then swallowed. His expression was still

unchanged.

He wiped his fingers on his thigh and walked into another compartment, where he

saw a reclining chair with a steel-gleaming helmet on it. Odd tendrils curled from the

helmet.

The man sat down and put the helmet on.

There were other people in the room. No. He was outside. He was wearing

clothing—some kind of uniform. The other people were all smiling and laughing and

trying to touch him. He let them. He heard himself saying words he did not yet

understand.

He noted one person amid the throng. He had a very pale face, and his eyes

gleamed. The pale-faced man stretched out his hand to shake. Suddenly he drew

something metal-shining from his clothing.

The man felt blows in his stomach. Felt himself falling backward. Felt pain. Pain

rising until… until everything stopped.

The man took off the helmet. He was back in the compartment, back in the

reclining chair.

The voice spoke again. "E-time since deactivation: six years, three months, two

days."

The man's expression changed slightly. A thought drifted through his mind: Wrong.

Five years late. Then the thought was discarded as meaningless. What was "late?" He

rose.

"You have ten ship-days before departure."

The man nodded once. He returned to the mess compartment. He was hungry

again.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a quiet little planet in a nondescript system overseen by a dying yellow star. The

system had no particular history, was well off any major trade or tourist routes, and

rarely had any visitors.

Many E-years before, an Imperial Survey Mission had made a desultory study and

found little of interest. The science officer had duly noted that it was about .87 E-size,

had commensurate gravity, E-normal atmosphere, and sat three AU from its sun. The

climate was tropical to subarctic, and the planet supported any number of thriving life

forms. The top predator on land was a shy, catlike creature that proved to be of no

danger to anyone.

There were also "No beings of higher development observed."

The planet was dubbed Survey World XM-Y-1134. And for several hundred years,

that was its sole name—although it was unlikely anyone ever asked.

It got a proper name of sorts from a restless entrepreneur who built a mansion in

the temperate zone for himself and his hangers-on, then briefly toyed with the idea of

turning it into a remote resort. To this end, he had constructed a state-of-the-art

spaceport. Whether or not the idea had merit, no one would ever learn. The

entrepreneur lost three or four fortunes and came to an obscure, rather sad end.

But the planet didn't mind. It hummed and wobbled busily about its orbit as it had

done for several billion years, scratching its fur against a cosmic stump every few

hundred millions of years or so—and wiping out any life-forms that had become too

prolific and giving another group a start.

The planet's new name was Smallbridge. The source for that name was buried along

with the entrepreneur and his conceit.

Sten liked it fine. He had spent more than five years exploring Smallbridge's

beaches, marshes, broad plains and deserts, forests and ice floes, sometimes with eager

companions, sometimes alone. There had been a few adventures—and more than a few

trysts with lovely women. But nothing had stuck. He had encountered no one like the

steel-willed Bet of his youth. Or the relentless Lisa Haines. Or the fiery gambler, St.

Clair.

In the last year or so, he had found himself just going through the motions of living.

He had fallen into a dark mood he couldn't shake.

During rational moments, he would rouse himself. Give himself a good talking to.

Call himself all kinds of a rich fool of a clot.

He had everything any being could want, didn't he? Gypsy Ida, his old Mantis

teammate, had seen to that. He and Alex Kilgour had exited the Tahn POW camp

wealthy beyond their dreams. While they had languished in the Heath slammer, Ida

had rolled their ever-growing back pay into one investment after another until the

result was two not so smallish fortunes.

Besides the money, Kilgour wound up with the poshest estate on his heavy-world

home of Edinburgh.

Sten got his own planet.

Thanks a clot of a lot, Ida. Now, what?

Come on, don't blame the Rom. As Mahoney would have said: "Don't be kicking

over the milk the cow gave." Mahoney would have reminded Sten that he had plucked

him off the factory world of Vulcan, a young Delinq half a breath from being

brain-burned. Mahoney would sneer and point out that Sten had crawled through the

mud and worse to rise from the ranks as an infantry grunt to a deadly Mantis operative

to commander of the Emperor's personal bodyguard to hero of the Tahn wars—and

finally to admiral. He would brush over the oceans of gore Sten was personally

responsible for and tell him that he was still a young man and just needed to pluck his

finger out and get back to business.

But Mahoney was dead.

Sten's old boss, the Eternal Emperor, would have laughed at him, poured a double

shot of stregg to put blood in his eye, and sent him off to face a suitable enemy. It

wouldn't matter much who the enemy might be. It would be enough that the beings

were threatening the peace and security of an empire that had thrived for nearly three

thousand years.

But the Emperor, too, was dead.

The last time Sten had seen the Emperor, he had sworn to the man that his career in

the military was over. This despite promises of many honors and much important work

to come in the aftermath of the Tahn conflict that had nearly bankrupted the Empire.

The Eternal Emperor had scoffed and said Sten was just weary, and understandably

so. He said to look him up when he tired of the peaceful life. The Emperor had

estimated it would take no longer than six months.

It was one of those rare times when the Eternal Emperor had been wrong. Almost

six months to the day, Sten had looked up from blissful idleness in his mansion at

Smallbridge, patted the curvaceous naked form nestled against the pillow next to him,

and whispered "no clottin' way" to his absent boss.

A week later, the Eternal Emperor had been assassinated.

It had been one of those stupid things that Sten had dreaded when he commanded

the Emperor's bodyguard. No matter what precautions were taken, there was no such

thing as absolute safety for a man as public as the Eternal Emperor. Even the fierce

loyalty of his Gurkha guards was not complete protection. The little men with the long,

curving knives who had kept the Emperor's foes at bay for nearly thirty centuries were

helpless under certain circumstances.

The Emperor had returned to Prime World the conquering hero. Billions upon

billions of beings across his far-flung empire had watched on their livies as he stepped

from his royal ship and advanced across the tarmac to the phalanx of waiting gravcars

that would whisk him home to Arundel.

Tanz Sullamora, the great ship-building industrialist and most trusted member of

his privy council, was at his side.

Sten remembered watching the screen in the mansion's vidroom. The newscaster's

voice was hoarse from describing the triumphant return. The schedule, he said in a

raspy whisper, called for no ceremonies at that moment. The Emperor would board the

waiting craft and head for a well-earned rest. In a week or so, a grand celebration of the

victory over the Tahn was planned. Beings from all over the Empire would gather to

honor their leader. There would be no recriminations, it was said, even against the

shakiest of the Emperor's allies.

Sten didn't believe a word of that. He knew his boss too well. There would be a

purge. But it would be swift, sure, and hardly a bubble of interruption as the Emperor

turned his attention away from war and back to the business of being the chieftain of

the greatest capitalist system in history.

But it would still be a good show. The Emperor was master of dazzle and triple

speak.

Idly, Sten noted the small group of spaceport employees gathered far to one side of

the screen. They were drawn up in what was obviously a receiving line, waiting to shake

the hand of the Emperor. Sten was glad his old boss was heading in the opposite

direction. Not that there was any real danger. What would be the point of attacking the

Emperor now that the war was over? Still… His instincts always fought his common

sense in such situations. Once among the press of flesh, it would be impossible to totally

protect the man.

Then he saw Sullamora catch the Emperor's attention and nod to the waiting line.

Sten let out an automatic groan. Tanz would be pointing out, he knew, that the

spaceport group had been waiting for hours to greet their ruler and should really not be

disappointed.

Sure enough, after a moment's hesitation, the Emperor's party turned toward the

assembled group. They were moving fast. The Emperor obviously wanted to get this bit

of duty over with as quickly as possible. The Gurkhas hustled on stubby legs to keep

the shield up.

Then the Emperor was going down the line in that smooth, graceful way he had

among his people: the charming, fatherly smile fixed on his young features; the tall,

muscular body bounding along from being to being; one hand coming out to shake, the

other going for the elbow for a warm double-grip that also moved the greeter swiftly

aside, so the next hand could be taken.

Sten had seen a blur of motion. What was happening? He heard the distinctive crack

crack crack of pistol fire. And the Eternal Emperor was falling back. The camera swirled

into mass confusion. Then it cleared—but just for a moment.

He saw the Emperor lying on the tarmac. Sten's heart was still. His breath caught

somewhere in his chest. Was he… dead?

Then the screen turned to pure burning white, and Sten heard the beginnings of a

mighty explosion.

Transmission was cut.

When it was finally restored, Sten had his answer.

The Eternal Emperor had been assassinated.

By a madman, it was said. Some malcontent named Chapelle, who had acted alone

out of some insane motive—revenge for an imagined slight, or ambition for an odd sort

of immortality.

Along with countless billions of other beings, Sten had been a numb witness to

what followed.

It was inconceivable that the Emperor was gone. Although there were few who

believed that any living thing could be immortal or even close to it. There were a few

odd cells—usually particularly virulent things that destroyed their host, hence

themselves—that could theoretically live forever, as well as a few dwellers of the seas

and upper atmospheres. But that was nit-picking. For all things, to be alive meant

eventual death.

For human beings, this was particularly so. And the Emperor was a human being.

There was no dispute on that and never would be.

But as long as anyone could remember he had always been there. Whether one

agreed or disagreed with his policies, the Emperor was a comforting and permanent

presence. Even the most bitter and radical scholars gnashed their teeth as they tracked

his reign back century after unbelievable century. It was no accident that the word

eternal was the official preface to the Emperor's title.

It was also something one didn't dwell on. An ordinary human might live for two

hundred years if he were lucky. To think of someone vastly older was frightening.

Sten had personally known the man a great deal of his own allotted span. In

apparent age, the Emperor was no more than thirty-five or so. His eyes were youthfully

bright. He even made occasional mocking references to his great age. But there was little

the Eternal Emperor didn't mock. Nothing was holy to him, especially himself.

Sometimes, however, Sten had seen him overtaken by a great and terrible

weariness. It had happened more often toward the end of the Tahn debacle. Deep lines

would be etched on his features, and his eyes would suddenly grow so distant that

anyone looking believed for a moment that the man had seen and been places far

beyond any being who had ever lived. And somehow one was sure he would remain

long after one's own memory was lost in distant time.

Two days after the assassination, the members of the Emperor's privy council had,

one by one, mounted the stage hastily set up in the great grounds around the ruins of

Arundel Castle. Only one member did not appear; Tanz Sullamora. Faithful servant to

the last, he had died in the explosion that had also wiped out everyone within the

one-eighth-of-a-kilometer kill zone. Why Chapelle had found it necessary to set off such

an enormous explosion after he slew the Emperor, no one could say. Except that it was

the act of an insane man. All else remained part of that mad puzzle, because Chapelle

himself had been one of the first victims of his actions.

The five lords of industry stood before the vast throng assembled on the grounds.

Prior to their entrance, it had been explained in great detail exactly who and what they

were.

There was Kyes, a tall, slender, silver being, who controlled most things involving

artificial intelligence. He was a Grb'chev, a vastly bright race, and appeared to be the

chief spokesbeing of the privy council. Next was Malperin. She ruled a gargantuan

conglomerate that included agriculture, chemical, and pharmaceuticals. Then there was

Lovett, scion of a great banking family. Finally, the Kraa twins—one grossly fat, the

other painfully thin—who controlled the major mines, mills, and foundries in the

Empire. Besides Sullamora, there had once been another member of their group. But

Volmer, a media baron, had died in some silly mishap just prior to the end of the war.

Kyes had a dry, light, pleasant voice. It was somber now as he explained that

Parliament had cast a unanimous vote urging the five lords to rule in the Emperor's

place during this terrible emergency. None of them had sought this awful burden, and

none of them certainly felt worthy of the trust beings everywhere were placing in them

at that very moment.

But they had been convinced that for the time being there was no other choice.

Order must come out of this awesome chaos, and they pledged to do their very best to

govern wisely and fairly until the proper moment came—very soon, he hoped—when

free elections could be held to determine how exactly the Empire was to be led without

the presence of His Majesty, their martyred ruler.

Kyes said he knew this was a weak solution at best, but all of them had racked their

brains for tortuous hours and could find no other way out. A commission was being set

up—as he spoke, in fact—to study the situation and to make suggestions. He and the

other members of the council awaited word from this eminent body of scholarly beings

as eagerly as anyone watching and listening. But he had been told that what they were

attempting to accomplish had never been done before and might take a great deal of

time and reasoned debate.

Kyes counseled patience, then pledged he would carry on in the spirit of the great

man who had rescued them all from the threat of enslavement under the Tahn.

One by one the others stepped up to make similar remarks—and to add a bit of

detail, such as the date of the funeral, which would be vaster and richer than any

funeral that had gone before. New honors were announced to be posthumously

bestowed on the Emperor, and a year of mourning was declared. Sten palmed the

button that blanked the screen and sat back to reflect.

He did not need his Mantis psywar training to know that he had just witnessed a

power grab.

So. The privy council would reluctantly govern until free elections could be held.

Sten had propped up a few despots in his time with similar empty pledges. He

wondered how long it would be before the first coup attempt. And which one would

eventually be successful. And then the one after that. And the other—on and on until

the entire system collapsed. He supposed there would be constant warfare of greater

and greater intensity for the rest of his life.

Ultimate power was at stake. He who controlled the Empire determined the flow of

all the Anti-Matter Two—AM2—the fuel upon which civilization everywhere was

based. It was the source of cheap power, the key to all major weaponry, and the sole

practical means of interstellar travel. Without AM2, trade would be almost entirely

reduced to intrasystem lumbering about on the infinitely practical but painfully slow

Yukawa drive engines.

But there was nothing Sten could do about any of it.

The Eternal Emperor was dead. Long live the Emperor.

He would mourn him. Not as a friend. No one could call the Emperor friend. But,

as—well, a comrade at arms, then. Sten got drunk and remained drunk for a month,

switching from Scotch to stregg and back again—the Emperor's two favorite drinks.

Then he tried to get on with his life.

Sten didn't pay much mind to the chaos the Empire fell into. He only coppered his

bets by purchasing all the AM2 he could lay his hands on, and it wasn't long before the

shortages began and he was congratulating himself on his foresight. The why of the

shortages didn't concern him. He assumed the privy council—in its infinite

wisdom—had determined such a course to further line their already heavy pockets.

He dabbled a bit in business, found it far from his liking, then was reduced to an

endless series of momentary enthusiasms. Not unlike the Emperor, who had a host of

hobbies always in progress. He became a fair cook, although he knew he would never

be the Emperor's match. He honed his skills with tools and building things. He took a

fling at a few of the lusher fleshpots. When he wearied of that—a little too quickly for

comfort, he sometimes thought—he explored and improved Smallbridge.

He and Alex corresponded, always swearing to get together soon, but soon never

came. And as the controls on AM2 tightened, travel became more and more

impractical, and before he knew it "soon" wasn't even mentioned in any of their letters.

Ian Mahoney—his only other real friend—quietly retired to the life of a military

historian, then died in some silly accident. Sten had heard that he had drowned and

that the body had never been found. He supposed there was some irony in such a

meaningless death for a man who had managed to survive against impossible odds so

many times before. But he didn't see it, or he was too depressed to examine it.

The final year of his self-imposed exile was proving the worst. His bleak moods were

constantly on him, as well as a gut-itching paranoia. Whom he should fear, he had no

idea. He had no suspects. But he became paranoid just the same. Every residence he set

up on Smallbridge was enclosed with increasingly sophisticated and—he had to admit

it—eccentric security devices, including some nasty, being-devouring plants he

imported from some hellhole whose name he had easily forgotten. They had taken off

like mad in the nonthreatening environment of Smallbridge. Every once in a while he

had to set the perimeter on fire to keep the grove under control.

Lately, he had taken up residence in the northwestern sector of the second largest

land mass in the temperate zone.

Temperate was a weak, nondescript word for this place beside the chain of four

mighty lakes. The winds always blew fierce and cold there. The snow lay deep on the

ground and bowed the trees of the forest for many months of the year. But for some

reason it had a powerful attraction to him—just as it seemed to have for the

being-devouring plants, which thrived in the cold, wet climate.

Sten had built several frontier-style domes in the cluster by one of the lakes. One

was devoted to a kitchen and pantry where he prepared and stored food, butchered out

a little game, or cleaned the strange, bullet-shaped but tasty dwellers of the lake. He

grew vegetables in the hydroponic tubs that took up all of one side. The second dome

contained his workshop and was crammed with tools and building materials of every

variety. He also kept and worked on his weapons there, as well as the snooping devices

he was always toying with. The last dome held his living quarters and gymnasium. He

spent hours in the gym and outside in the cold, endlessly practicing and honing his

Mantis skills.

He lined the walls of his living quarters with real wood cut from his own forest. He

built bunks and cabinets and all sorts of things from the same material. When he was

done, it looked so homey that he was pleased with himself. Still, something seemed to

be missing. He scratched his memory until he came up with an "aha." It wanted a

fireplace. After several smoky and tortuous attempts, he finally had it. And it was huge,

big enough to take a two-meter log. It drew like clot and gave off a wonderfully cheery

glow.

A woman who had stayed with him a few months said it reminded her of

something she had seen before but couldn't quite make out. Sten pressed her, but all

she could remember was that it had involved some item at a shop where "less expensive

things" were sold. From the tone in her voice, Sten got the drift she meant garish and

sentimental.

He was so lonely, he let it pass.

A week or so later, he was returning from some errand in the forest. It was a

beautiful, gray day, and a light snowfall was drifting down from the skies and through

the trees.

Sten hailed the dome, and the woman opened the door to greet him. She was

framed in the doorway, with the glowing fire lighting her from behind, and Sten knew

then what she had been thinking of. Because now he remembered, as well.

A long time before, his mother had extended her contract for six months to buy a

muraliv. A country girl completely lost and out of place in the workshops of Vulcan,

she had deeded half a year more of her life for what she believed was a work of art.

It was of a snowy landscape on a frontier world. He remembered the snow drifting

down on the little cluster of domes, and the door that always swung open to greet the

returning workers from the forest and field—and the bright cheery fire the open door

had revealed. It was his mother's dearest treasure. In eight months, it had gone quite

still.

Sten had unconsciously recreated the mural.

He made some excuses and hustled the woman on her way. It was silly to blame her

for a slight she couldn't know she was committing, but he couldn't bear to have her

around anymore.

That was when the gloom reached its absolute bottom. Month after month, he

pricked at the wound. He didn't need the walrus-psychologist Rykor to tell him what he

was doing. Sten knew. But he did it just the same. He even named the four lakes after

his long-dead family.

The largest lake, where the domes were clustered, he named Amos, for his father.

The next in the chain became Freed, for his mother. Then Ahd and Johs, for his brother

and sister.

When that was done, he sat and brooded, hoping his condition was no more than a

lingering fever that had to be endured until the viral tide shifted and the fever broke.

Five hundred miles to the north, a bright light winked into being and arced down

through the night skies. It steadied a moment above the frozen ground, then sped

toward the lakes and Sten's retreat.

Then a globe appeared, hanging amid the stars. Powerful jamming devices hummed

into life, bathing Smallbridge in an electronic blanket that comforted and coaxed Sten's

alarm system into believing all was well.

A light very much like the first separated from the globe, then sped off in the same

direction.

A few klicks from the domes, the battered little space-boat came to ground, a black

splotch against the snow. The port groaned open, and a dark figure exited. After

dragging on cold-weather gear and snapping snowshoes to his feet, the man

straightened, then hesitated, scanning the skies, an immense, bulky figure, sniffing the

air for danger very much like a big Kodiak from distant Earth. Suddenly he saw a light

pop above the horizon. It was the other ship, coming fast.

The man turned and hurried across the snow, moving like a nullgrav dancer despite

his bulk. He scanned the ground ahead with a practiced eye, setting a zigzag course and

not bothering to obscure his tracks. There wasn't time.

Occasionally—for no apparent reason—he sidestepped little pimples in the snow.

Chris Bunch & Allan Cole - Sten 6 - The Return of the Emperor

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