Requiem for the Conqueror

  "If you're not man enough to handle your own Council, you're not man enough to be Emperor."

  "Indeed."

  "Then what need have we to worry if we make love on the steps of the Imperial Regan Council buildings?" she whispered hotly as she brought his masculinity to life.

  After she left him spent and exhausted he ran his fingers through her black hair and down to trace the bones of her shoulders and chest, circling those full breasts and massaging the nipples lightly. Her belly rippled with muscle as she moved.

  "Tell me, Ily, what do you know of Staffa kar Therma? Tell me about your secret knowledge. Who is he? What's he like? What do we really know of him?"

  She turned her head, cheek pillowed in the glossy blackness of her spilled hair. "The Lord Commander? Not much. He's one nut I'd love to crack Emperor of mine. Originally I thought he had a soft spot for Myklene and the Praetor.

  Hah! Fallacy laid to rest! Though they feared his power and banished him, they still put him in business. Gave him a ship and sent him off to prey on others.

  Yet he killed the Praetor—who made him what he is—with his bare hands."

  Her eyes lost focus and her voice dropped to a mumble. "Killed the one who gave him everything. Indeed, I'd like to know what motivates a man like that."

  "You've spoken to him. You must have some impression." Tybalt recalled images of the Lord Commander— deadly gray eyes, constantly controlled features never shadowed by emotion ... a deadly human fortress.

  She shifted next to him in the dim light. "I think he's the most fascinating man I have ever known."

  "Present company excepted?" he asked, realizing the answer was oddly important to him.

  Her eyes met his, black, bottomless, knowing. "Present company included."

  No matter what I do, what I wear, how I attempt to dominate the situation, he always dwarfs me. ould that I could ever change myself, it is he I would emulate—and how I hate myself when I think that! No action would provide me more pleasure than the feel of an energy knife slipping through Staffa's heart.

  Shamed, he clamped his jaws tight. Her honesty stung. "I could kill you for that, Ily."

  "You won't though." Her heart-shaped face remained serene. "You value my skills too highly in the first place. in the second, you relish my company, for I'm the only other person in all of the Regan Empire who treats you like an equal and doesn't quail in their boots at your power. And lastly, you appreciate my honesty and candor."

  How true. He could hate both Staff a and Ily for that— and he needed them both despite the fact that one day, each might have to be destroyed. No matter the cost. Ultimate power—and its preservation—was a lonely business.

  "Perhaps you're right, dear Ily. Perhaps you are." But I don't want to dwell on that now, my hot bitch. "Then tell me, what do we make of Staffa and the Sassans?

  She stretched her tawny body, working each muscle before she sat up and crossed her legs. She shook black hair over pae shoulders and propped her chin in her palms. "He's the key to the future With him, we can control all of Free Space. Perhaps with that control we can even marshal enough strength to challenge the Forbidden Borders.

  "On the other hand, if he contracts to the Sassans, we'll lose in the end. We have no way to counter his strike capabilities. Nothing we put up will stop him."

  He nodded, barely containing a belch. "My thoughts exactly." He crossed his arms loosely over his ample belly. "I have an idea." He searched her face intently as he spoke. "We'll make the Lord Commander the best offer we can . . . and I want you to take it to him."

  "The head of Internal Security?" She cocked her head, perfect face lining as she turned it over in her mind.

  How far can I trust you, Ily? Ah, see your eyes lightin? Indeed, you see the opportunities! What a delight you are, my sweet Cytean cobra. An explosive vixen in my bed, a constant foil in my Empire, you alone of all women are worthy of me.

  "Why not?" He flicked his hand absently. "I have my reasons, Ily. As you so ably articulated, I trust your honesty and candor. You're a beautiful woman; he might not suspect your intricate competence. See Staffa. Woo him to me. You know what's at stake. A discreet assassination, a bribed or compromised individual here or there, perhaps something more drastic might be called for.

  I leave it to your instincts."

  And I shall take my own steps, my sweet lust. Though it grieves me, I must enslave you, turn you into a true tool.

  "And I have a final reason for sending you, Ily." Her eyes were bright on his as she slowly smiled. "Yes, indeed, my love. In the event that all else fails, you may be able to assassinate the Lord Commander—and remove his threat for good."

  Of course, yours shall be an Imperial symbol of authority. A badge perhaps?

  Yes, an unlimited credit and authority badge. Oh, delightful, Tybalt! How diabolically ironic. As I am bound to my power, so shall you be chained to yours, Ily. Caress it, sweet lover, for it is also death!

  Oblivious, her smile grew, dimpling the smooth skin of her face. Slowly her white teeth began to show and her perfect breasts heaved with stifled laughter. "My Lord, Tybalt," she chuckled, "you have chosen better than you know. Staffa kar Therma is mine!" .

  As you are now mine! Tybalt smiled his agreement, allowing his fingers to trace the ines of her incredible body.

  The wall beside Sinklar's shoulder exploded, the concussion slapping him out into the narrow alley. Only blind instinct made him crawl into the shadows as his stunned mind sought to compensate. Jangled nerves in his ears shrieked.

  Through the fog left of his senses, he could hear MacRuder's and Gretta's weapons ripping the air with their cackling discharge.

  A hand patted his foot; a vaguely discerned voice caled to him through the haze; he barely reacted as hands grabbed him and pulled him up. His stumbling feet seemed to work of their own volition.

  "What?" he asked, thinking it odd that his own voice scarcely penetrated the shimmering fog. "What? Where are we? What's wrong?"

  He remembered a doorway, steps that he suffered to climb in a dark winding staircase, supporting arms, and a small room behind a shattered door. He remembered wanting to vomit, dizziness, falling . . . and never hitting the bottom.

  Sinklar lay on a slab of freezing marble. He couldn't turn his head because someone was sawing his skull open to get at the brain, but he knew that his beautiful mother lay on one side, his father on the other. His body trembled with the vibration of the saw and he looked up—into Anatolia Daviura's wondrous blue eyes.

  POK-BAAM! Concussion and falling dust brought Sinklar back from the muzzy gray dreams. The vibrations that his dream interpreted as a saw came from the floor he lay on.

  "Damnation!" A sharp male voice stirred his memory as he fought to open eyes glued tight with rheum. Something sounding like tearing linen identified itself in his mind as a blaster being fired: Air molecules reacting with particles.

  Silence.

  He rubbed his face with encrusted fingers and rolled over, hearing grit crunch under his armor. Every bone felt pulled out of joint. The dull ache that had filled his dreams shot hot and angry through his head.

  "Rotted Gods," he gasped. "What the . . ."

  "Shut up," a woman's voice hissed from somewhere.

  He blinked into the gloom to clear his sight. Rain pelted through half a roof to spatter on splintered timbers, crumbled masonry and sagging flooring. One ear seemed dead. Targa! The bombing, the flight through Kaspa to try and find their forces, the ambush ... it all came back.

  So black. A fragment of his memory stimulated him to reach for the IR visor.

  It slid halfway down and caught, leaving the world eerily half-visible. He had to tug it the rest of the way; but he could see. MacRuder huddled near a wrecked window, assault rifle ready, searching the blackness and storm. Gretta crouched by the blasted doorway, covering the stairs as she squinted down the sights of her assault rifle.

  His bladder angrily demanded to be emptied.


  A lance of violet light erupted from the stairway and out through the missing portion of roof. Sinklar understood. The Targans had blown it away. Gretta waited.

  He tried to swallow. His tongue stuck in the dryness and gagged him. He felt for the water flask and pulled the flattened pieces from his belt. That was when he noticed his combat armor—blood caked, horribly battered with bits of metal and masonry siding sticking out at angles. The armor had saved his life.

  Unabashed, he moved to the depths of the room and urinated against the remaining wall. MacRuder's rifle spurted a short rip into the darkness.

  He crawled over to where rain had collected on the dirty floor and sucked up as much as he could from the pool that had formed. Grit stuck in his teeth; a foul aftertaste slimed his tongue. But soothing moisture trickled down his raw throat.

  He rolled onto his back and let the rain wash his hot fevered face.

  "How you feeling?" MacRuder asked, voice flat, emotionless.

  "Like somebody pulled me through a singularity—sideways," Sinklar rasped.

  "What's the situation?"

  " 'Bout as good as last time. Bad. We're up here and they can't get us until they bring up some heavy stuff. I don't think that'll be long either.

  Something's moving around down there." MacRuder didn't take his eyes off the streets below.

  "They tried the steps twice," Gretta added. "I taught them better."

  "This is a tower of some kind?" Sinklar asked, seeing bits of roofs through the blown away sections of wall.

  "Yeah, take the high ground." MacRuder ran a muddy hand over his IR visor to smear at the rain. "Another great military axiom from Academy."

  Sinklar crawled over to look. Their tower stood at the point of a V-shaped block. Across the street from them, and down, rain slashed the slanted roof for a subterranean warehouse access. Two poles supported a drooping banner advertising storage rates and the comm number to contact for information.

  "What kind of night vision are they using? Active or passive?" Sinklar began pulling at his equipment belt. The concussion had hopelessly smashed most of the gear.

  "Passive. Must be some sort of light amplifying system."

  "Got a grenade left?"

  "One. Why?"

  "Want to get out of here before they set up whatever they've got that's big enough to blow us away?"

  "You bet your rosy red rectum, scholar. What you got in mind this time?"

  "Simple physics."

  "Like what?"

  "Like I'm hoping gravity still works. Only we have to create a diversion and blind them for at least thirty seconds."

  "I see, passive night vision, huh? And I'll bet you can swipe a flare from Gretta, too."

  Sinklar checked his ruined equipment and cursed under his breath. Scrambling, he crawled painfully to where Gretta Artina crouched to cover the stairway. "I need your flare unit and your survival cable."

  "Got a plan? Heard you whispering with MacRuder over there. How you feeling?"

  She barely took time to glance at him before she sighted down the black stairwell again.

  "They don't make words that gruesome," he whispered, taking the articles she pulled from her belt. "One ear doesn't work. Shattered the tympanic membrane, I think. That and I feel like I've been strained through a Myklenian wine filter. Everything aches."

  "Yeah, well—listen, get us out of this mess, and I'll massage every square inch of your body." She gave him a quick grin and a wink.

  "Maybe we'll just settle for dinner, huh?" he added lamely, aware of how unsettled he was by her attention.

  "Just dinner?"

  "Well, it's that I. ... You see, I was always involved with my studies and.

  ..." He didn't need this—not now! He turned to scuttle away only to feel her hand on his arm.

  "Rotted Gods! You're a virgin

  "Shhh! Someone might hear. Besides, what about MacRuder?"

  "We'll talk about that later, scholar. For now, I like your style. You go to work. If we live through this, I'm going to turn your starship inside out!"

  She slapped him on the elbow to get him moving.

  His muscles were trembling in protest by the time he made it back to MacRuder's crumbling window.

  "Virgin, huh?"

  "Why me? Here, hold onto this." He handed one end of the survival line to MacRuder. "She didn't have to bellow it all over the Gods' cursed city!" He made a knot and tied MacRuder's end off to one of his belt grapples. An angular chunk of mortar gave him the weight he needed and he used a piece of loose wire to bind it to the grapple.

  "Now what?"

  "Now I wish I'd spent more time at apple ball than at books." Sinklar frowned across the distance.

  "So, what do you need? I used to pitch six-forty in league play."

  "I should have known. Throw it over and between those poles." Sinklar handed him the grapple-wired mortar.

  MacRuder made a perfect toss. The mortar carried the grapple across the space and tore loose from the thin wire when the line snapped taut. The grapple fell neatly behind the banner. Reeling the line in, it caught in the bottom of the fabric.

  "Hope it don't tear," MacRuder grunted.

  "Makes two of us," Sinklar agreed. "Get ready. Lift your IR visor or it will blind you just as bad as them when I light the fire. Understand the principle?"

  "Yeah."

  Crawling to the stairway, Sinklar sent Gretta after MacRuder. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his rifle and fired a series of bursts down into the blackness, blowing out the few bits of wall left from Gretta's defense.

  Blasting the mortar away opposite him, he prayed the roof wouldn't fall in and tossed the grenade out on a fifteen second fuse. He ripped his IR visor up, plucked up the flare pistol, and shot each of the flares up through the holes in the roof as he ran.

  The bright light left him squinting. Gretta took hold and jumped, sliding down the line. MacRuder gripped the cable,

  swallowing hard. The flares lit the surroundings, exposing running figures in the street.

  "Go!" He shoved MacRuder out and grabbed the line. He made sure his rifle was slung and umped out into open space, feeling friction from the line heating his gloves.

  Gretta caught MacRuder and pulled him onto the narrow roof. Sinklar slid down on top of them. At that instant the grenade sundered the top of the tower, showering debris on the streets below. Angry shouts carried in the night. In a split second decision, he raised his feet, plowed into both of them, and they all slid, clattering down the rain-wet tin roof in a tangle of limbs as blaster fire ripped the night. One of the poles holding the tattered banner shattered.

  "Run!" Sinklar growled, grabbing Gretta's hand and pounding off across the roof, jumping cable housing, ventilation pipes and recirculation fans. He could hear MacRuder thudding along behind. At each step, his head threatened to explode. Lances of agony tore up his frayed nerves and seared the bottom of his brain.

  The clouds grayed with dawn, casting weak light where they huddled, shivering, on a mining laser supply company roof. They waited, belly down, mostly covered by a brick chimney. Cold, wet, and hungry, Sinklar studied the faces of his companions. "Hell of a rescue."

  "Think they'll ever come to get us?" Gretta wondered, eyes baggy. Her face had streaked with mud and grime, etched by the places where sweat had run from beneath her helmet. A tangle of curly brown hair hung to one side of her face.

  Almost enough to mar her beauty—almost.

  "Been two days," MacRuder sighed, red-rimmed eyes haggard. "That long since the bastards hit us."

  "I'm out of charge for my rifle," Gretta said, curiously unconcerned.

  "I'm close to out," MacRuder confided. "Maybe a shot or two left."

  "And here comes trouble." Sinklar struggled weakly to get his rifle up as men streamed out along one side of the building. His first shot took a man's leg off.

  MacRuder got a hit as the pursuers went to ground. "That's it. Gun's dead!"

  "I'll hold th
em while I can." Sinklar squinted, seeing how perilously low his own weapon registered.

  "Hey, Sink," MacRuder called. "I know I gave you a lot of grief for being . . . well, you know, different. I mean all your book learning kept us alive.

  Thanks, buddy."

  Gretta added with a grin, "Get us out of this alive, Sinklar, and I swear, I'll kiss you on the spot and marry you to boot!"

  "Yeah, right!" He blew a vent tube apart and killed the man hiding behind it.

  A whiff of smoke went up. Something in his mind reacted to that. What was it he should know about. . . .

  "Mac? Stil got your flare unit?" A sudden thought began to nag at him. Yes, that was it. Just a chance to even the odds a little. . . .

  "Here." He felt the flare unit pressed into his hand. Blaster bolts and the eerie tingle of pulse beams whirring around his head, Sinklar settled the flare tube on his rifle and fired a phosphorous flare into the exposed roof lining. Immediately, it began to billow black smoke as yellow flames licked out of the burning chemical. The roofing crackled and ignited.

  "So they get us," Sinklar declared dully. "We'll keep them occupied for a while."

  He got two more before they pulled the circle tight. A blaster bolt clipped his helmet and stunned him. Gretta and MacRuder tried to burrow into the roof, knives in their hands in the off hope anyone proved stupid enough to get close.

  The roof jumped from a thundering blast. Big stuff here already? What for?

  Three marines with empty assault rifles?

  A man screamed. The roof jumped and heaved again.

  Ready to die, Sinklar blinked his eyes and swallowed dryly. Dazed from the hit to his helmet, he roared his rage and stood. Reeling on his feet, he sprayed blaster fire across the roof as men ran through swirls of smoke. Huge sections of the burning roof ripped and tore under heavy blaster fire. He was still bellowing, unaware his rifle had emptied, when the patrol craft settled next to him.

  He turned, trigger still pressed to charge the armored vehicle—only to have MacRuder pull him down, shouting in his good ear, "It's one of ours! Sink, they're on our side! They saw the smoke and came to investigatr'