The Thousand Emperors Read online

  ‘Master Marroqui, I’ve spent half my damn life trying to find Winchell Antonov, and there’s no way he’d wind up here without some kind of an exit strategy in place. Right now, my guess is that your missing mosquitoes have something to do with it.’

  Marroqui’s expression became incredulous. Exit strategy? Luc could almost hear him thinking. Exit to where? Snoop hunters hid in Aeschere’s shadow cone, ready to challenge anything emerging from the moon’s surface, while a fat-bellied intercept platform orbited above Grendel’s dark side, its deep-range scanners sweeping the whole of 55 Cancri’s inner system. And that wasn’t even counting the autonomous units scattered throughout the rest of Grendel’s moons.

  And yet the fact remained that Antonov had managed to evade capture or assassination for nearly two centuries. Luc wanted desperately to be the one who finally caught the Tian Di’s greatest fugitive, but the defeats and setbacks he had suffered over the years had taught him the value of caution.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Marroqui said quietly. ‘Of course we can’t hear from all of the ‘skeets; solar storm’s fucking our comms up.’

  Which was entirely possible, and yet Luc couldn’t avoid a nagging doubt that lingered in the pit of his stomach. It might have been safer for all concerned to pull back to the intercept platform and wait the storm out, but Luc felt sure that Antonov, if he was still alive, was waiting for just such an opportunity to slip past them. They had to make their move sometime in the next twenty hours, then escape before the storm reached its peak and lashed Grendel and its moons with fiery whips billions of kilometres in length.

  It was Luc’s call, of course, as expeditionary leader. If he was wrong, he’d pay for it with his career.

  ‘It’s going to be most of a day before the storm reaches its peak,’ said Luc. ‘If we’ve hit him as hard as you say, then we still have time to figure out why we’re having comms problems before we go any further.’

  Marroqui stepped up close enough to Luc that their noses were almost touching. ‘You’re just a bureaucrat,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘No, less than that: a glorified clerk. I have the safety and the honour of my Clan to consider. I say we go ahead and clear this damn place out now.’

  ‘If you go against my orders,’ Luc replied, ‘you’re going to find yourself in a shitstorm of trouble.’

  ‘Like I give a damn,’ Marroqui snapped, turning back to his soldiers and ordering them to split into separate teams, each to make its way down a different shaft before meeting up again at the reactor room.

  Most of the soldiers voiced their affirmatives and made their way back out of the prayer hall, while a few stayed behind. Luc’s hands tightened into fists by his sides, the frustration pooling inside him like a hot lava tide.

  ‘How many of our ‘skeets are primed with explosives?’ Marroqui asked his second-in-command, a pale-skinned woman with a scar on one side of her nose.

  ‘We’ve used up two, but we still have three left,’ the woman replied.

  ‘Fine. Once we’ve established line-of-sight with those missing ‘skeets, let’s send those three all the way down to the bottom and have them focus on taking out any automated defences or hunter-killers Antonov might have left waiting for us.’

  Marroqui glanced back at Luc. ‘You’ll wait here, Mr Gabion. Someone has to monitor the uplink with the lander.’

  ‘Your mosquitoes can monitor things just fine without my help. I’m coming with you and your men.’

  Marroqui regarded him with distaste. ‘You’re from Benares, right?’

  Luc stared back at him. In that moment, he finally understood the reason for Marroqui’s unrelenting hostility. It had nothing to do with the rivalry between the Sandoz and SecInt; it was because he came from Benares.

  ‘I don’t know what they taught you in those combat temples they trained you in, Master Marroqui, but coming from Benares doesn’t make me a traitor.’

  ‘I never said—’

  ‘So you can either take me down there with you,’ Luc continued regardless, ‘or take the risk of having to explain to our superiors why you let Antonov escape a second time, right on the eve of Reunification. Your choice.’

  A muscle in one of Marroqui’s cheeks twitched. For a moment Luc thought the Clan-leader might strike him, but instead the other man nodded curtly, his face impassive.

  ‘You follow every order I give you while we’re down there, instantly, and without question, until the moment the lander comes back to pick us up. Is that clear?’

  Luc nodded. ‘As crystal.’

  ‘Shit. We’ve lost another mosquito,’ said Marroqui’s second in command, waiting by the entrance. ‘No, hang on . . . that’s another three out of contact, all in just the last minute.’

  ‘What about the rest of the ‘skeets?’ asked Marroqui.

  ‘They all check out,’ she replied.

  ‘We’d better get moving,’ said Marroqui, abruptly businesslike. ‘Anything out of the ordinary’ – and with this, he glanced reflexively towards Luc – ‘report it immediately.’

  The entire complex turned out to still be pressurized. By the time they reached one of the shafts, mandalas and statues had given way to rough undecorated surfaces barely visible in the near-lightless gloom. Luc’s IR filters showed an open elevator platform dead ahead, ringed by a steel rail. According to the map, the shaft went straight down for almost a kilometre. A faint breeze drifted up from below.

  ‘How come these are working when the power’s out?’ he asked.

  ‘They run on localized emergency power supplies,’ said Marroqui. ‘They have to, or there’s no way out during a power failure. We shouldn’t have to worry about getting down or back up.’ He nodded to another woman, with chestnut skin, who had bent down on one knee to examine the interior of a control panel embedded into the wall close by the rail. ‘How’s it looking, Triskia?’

  The woman made some final adjustment and snapped the panel shut before standing once more, her suit’s servos whining faintly. ‘It checks out, sir. No sabotage. We’re good to go.’

  Luc tried not to think about the Stygian depths beneath them as he followed Marroqui and four others onto the elevator platform. Even so, his heart nearly skipped a beat when the platform began its descent with a sudden, jerking motion.

  Halfway to the next level down, updates from the mosquitoes flowed in through Luc’s CogNet interface. His maps automatically reconfigured themselves according to their incoming data, displaying rooms and corridors that had clearly not been part of the original complex.

  ‘Any idea what Antonov might have been building down there?’ Marroqui asked, referring to the new layout.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Luc replied.

  ‘Could be weapons caches,’ suggested the woman called Triskia. ‘Maybe he’s still planning on fighting his way past us.’

  Marroqui shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’d need bigger fabricants than the ones our mosquitoes have seen so far. If he’s still alive, he’s down to light weapons, nothing more.’

  ‘Two of the other teams just called in, sir,’ said one of Marroqui’s men. ‘They’ve reconnoitred at the reactor room, so they should be able to get the power going any—’

  As if in answer, rows of lights stretching the length of the shaft blinked into sudden life. Luc squinted, bright phantoms chasing each other across the back of his eyelids. The next time he managed to open them properly, Marroqui and the rest were grinning and chuckling. As far as they were concerned, this was going to be a cakewalk.

  The platform slowed, and Luc felt a tightening in his chest. He had the uncanny sense they had passed beyond some undefined point of no return. He glanced down through the metal grille beneath his feet, seeing twin rows of lights racing to meet each other in the shaft’s murky depths.

  They disembarked into a corridor leading deep inside Aeschere’s bowels. Something whirred past Luc, and he jerked around in time to see a mosquito come to a nimble landing on the floor a me
tre or so from him.

  As he watched, translucent plastic wings retracted into the machine’s carapace. It turned this way and that, its movements jerky and curiously comical.

  ‘It’s one of ours,’ he heard Triskia say. ‘Why’s it—?’

  Triskia never got to finish her sentence. Luc watched with horrified anguish as she staggered, blood and bone misting the air as the back of her helmet exploded outwards.

  Luc kicked out at the mosquito with one booted foot, sending it crashing into a wall. Marroqui screamed an order, and the air filled with noise and fury as his remaining men opened fire on the machine. By the time it was over, the mosquito lay still, its mirrored carapace blackened and ruined.

  Marroqui knelt down beside the dead woman’s prone form, swearing under his breath. He passed a finger over her forehead and muttered something that sounded like a prayer. One of the Sandoz’s endless rituals, Luc guessed.

  ‘Shig,’ said Marroqui, looking back up at one of his men, ‘what the hell just happened? Was that one of our ‘skeets?’

  ‘It was,’ Shig replied, his face pale with shock. ‘I don’t understand why it . . .’

  His voice trailed off.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Marroqui, standing back up and looking around. His previous swaggering bravado had all but deserted him now. ‘There’s no way Antonov could have compromised our comms encryption . . . is there?’

  ‘It might explain why you lost contact with some of your mosquitoes,’ said Luc, his voice cracking slightly.

  Marroqui’s hands twitched spasmodically at his sides. ‘Impossible.’

  Luc nodded down at Triskia’s still form. ‘Ask her if she agrees.’

  ‘Ramp up your personal countermeasures,’ said Marroqui, his voice edged with steel. ‘Fire on anything that comes within range.’

  ‘I think,’ said Luc, ‘this might be a good time to reconsider falling back. We can work out a new strategy—’

  Marroqui turned to regard Luc, his nostrils flaring. ‘No, Mr Gabion. We’re Sandoz. Turning back at this point isn’t an option.’

  ‘Even if it means refusing my orders again?’

  ‘Even then,’ Marroqui muttered, hoisting his weapon and motioning to his Clan-members to move on.

  Luc recalled what little he knew of the Sandoz credo, especially their refusal to surrender. It was going to be the death of them all.

  Within the space of a few moments, the shadows and long, bleak reaches of the tunnels beneath Aeschere’s surface had become infinitely more menacing. They passed shadowed cells, the walls around them marked with ancient graffiti. Despite the occasional distant buzz of plastic wings, the mosquitoes kept their distance.

  Communications with the rest of the Clan, scattered throughout the complex, became increasingly sporadic. At one point they all heard a momentary burst of static from their comms, interspersed with screaming and what sounded like heavy weapons fire. After that, silence.

  Marroqui still refused to turn back. They moved rapidly, reaching the fusion plant just a few minutes later. Once there, Luc almost stumbled over the corpse of another of Marroqui’s men. The rest lay scattered around, their bodies and the walls surrounding them blackened from plasma fire.

  ‘I still can’t raise anyone else,’ said a man with freckled skin, looking pale and terrified. Alert symbols drifted on the periphery of Luc’s vision as he spoke.

  ‘Is there any way we can reboot communications?’ asked Marroqui. ‘Or maybe reroute them?’ His voice had become flat and emotionless, and Luc suspected this was the first time the Clan-leader had ever tasted defeat.

  The other man laughed shrilly. ‘Sure – standard operative procedure in a scenario like this is to route all our comms through the mosquitoes, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

  ‘One of us could still head back up top,’ suggested one of the others. ‘That way we could try and contact the lander by line-of-sight and ask for help.’

  Marroqui shook his head wearily. ‘It’s a good idea, except that you’d have to wait for nightfall, and that isn’t due for a few more hours.’ He glanced at Luc. ‘On the other hand, Mr Gabion, you really might be better off out of this. I could have one of my people escort you back up there and you can wait it out in that prayer room. I can’t make any guarantees it’s going to be any safer up there, but it might.’

  Luc shook his head. ‘I have to be there when you find Antonov.’

  The Clan-leader’s face reddened. ‘The situation’s changed, can’t you see that? We’re professionals, we know how to deal with this kind of situation. If you get killed down here, you’re dead forever.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Luc replied, holding the other man’s gaze until Marroqui finally looked away, shaking his head.

  ‘The control room for the entire complex is right below us on the next level down,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Before they dropped out of contact, the ‘skeets reported Antonov was using it as a command hub.’

  ‘If someone’s controlling our mosquitoes, that must mean there’s someone still alive down there,’ said another.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Marroqui. ‘We can’t rule out the possibility they’re just running on automatic.’

  ‘Or maybe your mosquitoes were compromised from the moment we walked in here,’ Luc suggested.

  They all stared at each other.

  ‘Fuck it,’ said Marroqui, breaking the silence and stepping over one of the blackened corpses on his way back into the corridor. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  They made for another elevator platform, checked it for possible sabotage, and then climbed on board, riding it down in silence before disembarking on the next level down. Luc glanced over at one of Marroqui’s squadron, hearing him mutter something repeatedly under his breath that sounded a lot like a prayer.

  Marroqui had Luc keep to the rear as they advanced down a high-ceilinged passageway lined with tables and benches. They saw the bodies of more Black Lotus fighters, slumped across tables or curled up on the ground as if they were sleeping. The first wave of mosquitoes had killed them all.

  They crowded through a narrow doorway and into the control room. An isometric plan of the entire complex hovered above a dais at the room’s centre. All it took was a quick glance to see that it matched the updated version they had received from the mosquitoes.

  The bodies of more of Marroqui’s men were scattered around the dais, their faces contorted in death. Luc tasted the acid rush of bile as it surged up the back of his throat.

  He glanced down, seeing through the steel grid flooring on which they stood that another room lay immediately below this one. Just visible were cryogenic pods of a design he recognized, lined against a wall: emergency medical units, designed for deep-space retrieval; almost tiny spaceships in their own right. Their status lights were dark, indicating they were empty. Clearly, Antonov’s men had been slaughtered with such rapid efficiency, they had not even had time to place any of their injured inside the units.

  They all heard the faint echo of something scuttling along the corridor beyond the control room entrance. Luc watched as Shig ducked outside for a look.

  ‘Here they come!’ Shig yelled, pulling the lower half of his body back around the door frame, then leaning out into the corridor and opening fire. A moment later he made a grunting noise, his feet giving way beneath him as he flopped backwards in the low gravity, red mist staining the air behind him.

  Luc twisted around in mindless desperation, searching for another exit. He glanced back down through the thick metal grille and saw a ladder reaching down to the floor of the room below. Dropping to all fours, he peered through the grille. The top of the ladder terminated somewhere on the far side of the control room, hidden behind tall banks of equipment.

  He ran past the dais and around the side of a tall steel cabinet in the same moment that Marroqui and his surviving Clan-members opened fire on something behind him. Set into the floor above the ladder wa
s a flat metal hatch, but before he could reach down to pry it open, something picked him up and slammed him against the nearest wall.

  He hit the floor a moment later, ears ringing, and felt it lurch beneath him like the deck of a ship caught in a storm. He had just enough time to work out there had been an explosion before the steel panels comprising the floor came apart from one another, sending him tumbling down into the room below, along with the contents of the control room. He just barely managed to scrabble out of the way of the steel cabinet before it landed on him. Someone’s torso, still encased in plastic and metal armour, rolled and bounced as it hit the ground, coming to a halt just centimetres from his nose.

  When he looked back up at the ceiling of the ruined control room, he saw several mosquitoes gazing back down at him with insect-like eyes.

  Managing to pull himself upright, he stumbled towards dim light spilling through a nearby doorway, squeezed past the dais from the upper floor, which had landed on its side, then ran blindly down a passageway until he stumbled across another elevator platform. He slammed the control panel with his fist and gripped the railing like a man adrift in a storm as it carried him down to the lowest level.

  The platform came to a jerky halt at the bottom of the shaft, two rough-walled tunnels angling away from it in different directions. Luc headed down one at random, but didn’t get far before more mosquitoes emerged from the gloom, tick-tacking through the still silence towards him. He retreated back the way he’d come and headed down the other tunnel instead, with the uncanny sense that he was being herded in one particular direction – proof, if any were still needed, that Antonov must still be alive.

  ‘I’m here, Antonov!’ he shouted, and heard the hysteria creeping into his voice. Grabbing a metal bar from a pile of junk, he wielded it like a weapon, then laughed at the ridiculousness of it. He couldn’t possibly defend himself from mosquitoes while armed with nothing more than a chunk of scrap metal, but there was something comforting about the feel of it gripped in his armoured fist nonetheless.