The Thousand Emperors Read online

More mosquitoes emerged from the gloom up ahead, but they scuttled backwards at his approach, clearing the way.

  ‘Are you there?’ Luc shouted again. ‘Show yourself, Goddamn it! Show your fucking face!’

  Turning a corner, he found himself at the entrance to a cavern dug out of the rock, a deactivated digging machine at the far end sitting next to a mound of excavated rubble. He swallowed in the dry air, then set his eyes on something that took his breath away.

  A transfer gate, embedded into one wall of the cavern.

  At first Luc couldn’t quite convince himself it was real. A thick metal torus surrounded the mouth of what might otherwise have been nothing more than the entrance to a passageway, leading him to wonder if it had only been tricked up to look like the mouth of a transfer gate. Any other conclusion meant accepting the notion that Black Lotus now had access to the kind of technology that permitted the construction of stable, linked wormhole pairs – the same technology that enabled passage between the worlds of the Tian Di.

  He stepped up to the gate and saw it consisted of a short cylindrical passageway, no more than a couple of metres in length, a metal walkway suspended over its floor. He gazed into the interior of a room on the far side. The floor of the room was at an angle with respect to the cavern in which he stood, indicating that the gate and its opposite end had not been correctly aligned. Dense metal plating hid the wormhole’s horizon, the tori ringing each mouth of the gate shielding a core of highly exotic matter without which the wormhole could not exist. And if all that wasn’t evidence enough, he could feel the hairs on his arms and scalp standing up, an epiphenomenon caused by inadequate shielding on the containment fields.

  It was real, all right. That room might be located in another part of the complex, or might be light-years away, in some entirely different star system. There was, after all, no limit to how widely separated the two mouths of a wormhole could be.

  Luc stepped onto the walkway and felt even Aeschere’s minimal gravity drop away once he was halfway across, meaning the far end of the gate was almost certainly on board a spacecraft of some kind. He stepped off the walkway at the far end, drifting through the air until he came to a stop against the wall opposite.

  This, then, was Antonov’s exit strategy. Luc couldn’t help but feel a little awed at the scale of the man’s planning.

  He heard laboured breathing from behind, and turned to find Winchell Antonov propped against a bulkhead to one side of the gate entrance, one of his hands pressed over a dreadful chest-wound, his skin pale and waxy. His breath came in long, drawn-out gasps, and his thick, dark beard glistened with sweat.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he grunted, fixing his gaze on Luc. ‘Really, I am.’

  Winchell Antonov: once the Governor of Benares, later the leader of Black Lotus, the single greatest threat the Temur Council had ever faced. In that moment he looked small, despite his nearly six and a half foot frame.

  ‘It’s over, Antonov,’ Luc heard himself say, his voice ragged. ‘It’s time to give up.’

  Antonov chuckled, then drew his breath in sharply, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching at his wound.

  Something click-clacked from nearby. Luc turned to see that several mosquitoes had hopped onto the walkway bridging the wormhole, their tiny needle-like weapons aimed towards him.

  ‘I fear,’ grunted Antonov, ‘that we find ourselves at a mutual impasse.’

  ‘There’s nothing left to fight for,’ said Luc. ‘Even if you kill me, the Sandoz are going to tear this place apart until they find you.’

  Antonov squinted up at him, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards in a grin. ‘Aren’t you the least bit curious why you’re still alive?’

  ‘You want to know what I care about?’ asked Luc. ‘I’m from Benares. Black Lotus carried out an orbital assault on Tian Di forces stationed there on your orders.’

  ‘Ah.’ Antonov nodded. ‘The Battle of Sunderland, you mean.’

  ‘That decision wiped out half a continent. My parents, my brother and sister – they all died in that attack, along with almost everything I’d ever known. Since then, the only thing I ever really gave a damn about was finding you. You took my life away.’

  ‘Then you might be interested to know that Black Lotus never carried out that assault,’ said Antonov, his voice growing weak. ‘Father Cheng ordered that attack, and blamed it on us.’

  Luc wanted to tear that deathless smirk off Antonov’s face with his bare hands. He was the devil made flesh, the Prince of Lies embodied in a man who’d been on the run for longer than Luc had even been alive.

  Again, the metallic click of a mosquito manoeuvring on some surface.

  He glanced up to see his own face staring back at him from the mirrored carapace of a mosquito clinging to the ceiling overhead with needle-like limbs.

  Something stung his neck and he reached up to slap it. A moment later he felt a sudden, numbing coolness spread across his chest, quickly penetrating his skull.

  The room reeled about him, his legs giving way beneath him as he collapsed.

  Luc opened his eyes to the harsh actinic glare of overhead lights and found himself bound by a length of cord into a chair on the spacecraft’s bridge. He had been stripped of his powered suit, and wore only the thin cloth one-piece overall given him by Sandoz technicians prior to boarding the lander. Projections hovered in the air all around him, and when he tried to move, his body obeyed only with extreme sluggishness. Whatever drug he’d been shot full of was clearly still working its magic on him.

  Antonov stood by the chair, one hand still clutched to his injured chest as he gazed down at Luc. Even so, Antonov didn’t look nearly as weak as he had in the moments before Luc had lost consciousness.

  Behind Antonov, Luc could see a single mosquito, balanced on a railing on the opposite side of the bridge, peering back at him with mindless intent.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded through lips that were half-numb.

  ‘Quiet now,’ Antonov muttered, leaning in towards him. Luc saw for the first time that the Black Lotus leader was clutching something in his free hand that squirmed as if alive. ‘This is going to be tricky.’

  Antonov lifted his other hand away from his chest wound and winced, then used it to tug Luc’s head back against the chair’s headrest, holding it there. Luc found himself staring almost straight up at the ceiling of the bridge.

  Breathing hard, afraid of whatever it was Antonov was about to do to him, Luc twisted his hands and feet in their restraints to no avail. However, he had the sense that whatever paralytic Antonov had hit him with was slowly starting to wear off.

  ‘Careful now,’ Antonov warned, giving him a reproachful glare. ‘I can knock you out again if you keep struggling, but you really need to be conscious during this. Otherwise there’s a serious risk of brain damage.’

  Brain damage? Panic tightened Luc’s chest. He could just about see the squirming thing in Antonov’s hand from out of the corner of one eye, struggling to escape. It was clearly a mechant of some kind, not unlike a segmented worm in appearance but barely the length of a finger. Its body glittered in the light.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ Luc managed to gasp.

  ‘This,’ said Antonov, with apparent pride, ‘is a delivery system for the greatest gift I could possibly give you.’

  Luc had a sudden intuition of what Antonov might be about to do to him, and tried to twist free. The heavy cord binding him to the chair creaked loudly, but did not give.

  Antonov slapped him hard across the face, and Luc grunted with shock.

  ‘I told you,’ said Antonov, ‘keep still. For your own sake, do not struggle.’

  Antonov next stepped behind Luc, wrapping one meaty forearm around his head and rendering him more thoroughly immobile. Luc’s nostrils filled with the scent of the other man’s unwashed skin, and he wondered how a man so badly injured could still have so much strength.

  Something cold squirmed against Luc’s upper lip, then ja
mmed itself hard inside his right nostril.

  The pain that followed was indescribable. He could hear a sound like chewing, as if something were forcing its way through the gristle and bone of his skull. He screamed, jerking and twisting in his restraints, jaw locked in a rictus grin of terror.

  As terrible as it was, the pain faded to a numb ache after another minute. His body spasmed a few times, then became still. Sweat cascaded across Luc’s skin, his chest rising and falling with the nervous energy of a hummingbird.

  Antonov stepped back in front of him, looking noticeably paler than he had a few moments before. ‘I suppose you’re wondering just what a transfer gate’s doing here,’ he said, and let out a weak chuckle. ‘That’s the understatement of the year, right? Well, now that we’re the only ones left alive down here, I don’t see any reason not to tell you why.’

  Antonov moved to lean against a nearby console, his face very nearly bone-white. ‘We’re on board a spaceship, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. We kept it in close orbit around 55 Cancri, since the photosphere of a star often proves to be a good hiding place. Once we knew the Sandoz were on their way here, we plotted a course to slingshot this ship towards the outer system, but even that wasn’t enough to give us the velocity we needed to get out of range of your intercept missiles. They’re chasing us right now, and they’ll catch us sooner or later.’

  ‘Where’ – Luc swallowed, feeling like he hadn’t uttered a word in a thousand years – ‘where are you taking this ship?’

  ‘We have other redoubts,’ Antonov replied, ‘scattered throughout this system and in others. We would have severed the wormhole link once we were all on board except now, it appears, I’m the only one left alive.’

  ‘Then it’s over,’ Luc managed to croak. ‘This isn’t how you want it to end, Winchell.’

  Antonov shook his head with evident amusement. ‘What’s the alternative? Surrender myself to you, so Father Cheng can orchestrate my execution on the eve of our glorious Reunification with the Coalition? I’d rather choose my own fate – and with that in mind, you might care to know I’ve set the ship on a course that will send it plunging back into the heart of the star it so recently orbited.’

  Luc stared at him, speechless.

  ‘Now, I don’t know just how au fait you are with wormhole physics,’ Antonov continued, his face twisting up in pain as he spoke, ‘but they’re surprisingly robust under certain conditions. Once this ship’s descended far enough into 55 Cancri’s photosphere, the shielding will give way and the transfer gate linking it back to Aeschere will be destroyed. However – and this is the theory – the wormhole should maintain coherence just long enough for a great deal of superheated plasma to come rushing into the complex.’

  ‘Why? Why not just . . . surrender?’

  ‘For many reasons, Mr Gabion, but chiefly because Cheng would never let me live, knowing the things that I know.’

  Luc shook his head in incomprehension. The inside of his head felt as if it had been hollowed out. ‘What things?’

  Antonov chuckled. ‘You need,’ he said, ‘to make your way back up to that control room where you left your friends, back on the other side of the transfer gate. There are cryogenic units there – do you understand?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, but I think you do. Get yourself inside one of those units, and you should have a decent chance of surviving the inferno.’

  ‘But why?’ Luc demanded. ‘Why—’

  But before he could say anything further, Antonov reached out to touch the side of his neck with something cold and sharp, and he lost consciousness once more.

  Listen to me, Luc. You’re still asleep.

  Antonov’s voice sounded like it came from everywhere and nowhere. Luc found himself afloat in a dreamless void, unable to determine where he was, or how long it had been since he had been knocked out. His limbs felt like a distant memory.

  You’re going to wake up soon, he heard Antonov continue. There’s a lot you don’t understand yet, but you will, given time. But first, you must deliver a message for me.

  What message? Luc tried to say, but he couldn’t feel his lips or his tongue.

  The answer came a moment later:

  After they come and rescue you, I want you to access Archives through your CogNet link. Then open a record with the following reference: Thorne, 51 Alpha, Code Yellow. Do you understand?

  No, Luc answered. I—

  Once you’ve done that, add the following statement to the text file contained within it: ‘I’m calling in my favour.’ Five words, Luc. That’s all I ask.

  I don’t understand, Luc shouted into the abyss.

  Someone did something a long time ago they shouldn’t have, said Antonov, his voice slowly fading. And now they’re going to repay me for keeping it quiet all these years. Remember what I said, Luc: ‘I’m calling in my favour.’

  As if a switch had been thrown, Luc had control of his limbs once more, and could feel something hard beneath his back. His eyes flickered open in the same moment he realized his CogNet link was live once more, and he discovered more than four hours had passed since he had first entered the complex in the company of an entire squadron of Sandoz. Night would by now have fallen across the crater, meaning it was safe to go back out onto the surface.

  Even more importantly, he was free. The tangled loops of cord that had bound him now floated loose around the chair in which he was still slumped.

  Reaching up, he tentatively touched his head, exploring the contours of his skull. There had been something dreamlike about the whole encounter with Antonov, as if it hadn’t really happened, but when he touched fingers to his nose he found it crusted with dried blood.

  Updates flooded in through his now-active CogNet: he learned that two more Sandoz squadrons had already entered the complex’s top level, and were working their way down towards him without meeting any resistance, machine or otherwise.

  Luc pulled himself out of the chair, then stopped, seeing Antonov slumped against the railing on the far side of the bridge, head bowed forward. Luc kneeled before him and touched fingers to the rebel leader’s wrist. Dead.

  Then he glanced towards the main display and felt a chill form around his heart.

  he sent via the CogNet.

  someone replied.

  Luc responded.

  Siedzik didn’t reply for some time, and Luc guessed he was conferring with his superiors on the orbital platform.

  Siedzik sent back.

  That, Luc knew, was because he was no longer beneath the surface of Aeschere, but on board a starship some millions of kilometres distant. The only reason they could converse at all was because the ship’s communication network was automatically bouncing his CogNet link back through the connecting gate. But there wasn’t the time to try and explain all that to Siedzik, even assuming he’d believe one word of the explanation.

  Luc replied after a pause.

  Siedzik commanded.

  Luc sent back.

 

  Luc replied, cutting the connection before Siedzik could demand any more details.

  He pulled himself into a navigation booth surrounded by interface and astrogation gear. The ship linked into his CogNet just long enough for it to
work out he didn’t know how to operate the navigational systems, and replaced most of the scrolling data surrounding him with a series of simplified questions and help menus.

  It didn’t take long for Luc to work out that Antonov had not, in fact, been lying: the ship had already dipped into the turbulent upper reaches of 55 Cancri’s photosphere, and the external temperature was already a couple of thousand degrees beyond the craft’s design parameters. He had minutes, perhaps only seconds, before it shattered under the strain.

  He stood jerkily, skin clammy with sweat, and pushed himself towards the exit from the bridge. It took another couple of minutes of fumbling and swearing in the zero gee before he managed to navigate his way back to the bay containing the transfer gate.

  Luc sailed through the gate and back into Aeschere’s hollowed-out heart, sidestepping millions of kilometres in the blink of an eye. The little moon’s gravity took hold of him as soon as he was through, tugging him down towards the dusty floor of the cavern. Without the benefit of his spacesuit, it was numbingly cold, every breath filling his lungs with icy daggers.

  An icon blinked in the corner of one eye: Siedzik.

  Siedzik sent as soon as Luc activated the link.

  Luc sent back.

  Luc caught a brief flash of Siedzik’s visual feed, and saw Siedzik and several more Sandoz warriors making their way towards an elevator platform at the far end of the complex.

  Siedzik responded.

 

  He stumbled back the way he had come, towards the nearest shaft and another elevator platform. His legs were still half-numb from Antonov’s paralytic, making it hard to run, and he caught sight of several mosquitoes lying inactive in the dust, their legs neatly folded beneath their tiny bodies.

  The air misted white as he panted for breath, the cold sinking deeper and deeper into his flesh. It was almost funny; even if he managed to avoid being engulfed in white-hot plasma, he’d still be running a serious risk of hypothermia.