Heirs of Empire

A boot slammed down on his wrist, and he jerked in fresh agony, then rolled his head slowly and stared into the muzzle of an energy gun.

“You just can’t wait to die, can you, you old bastard?” Alex Jourdain hissed. “All right—have it your way!”

His finger tightened on the firing stud … and then his head blew apart and Horus’ eyes flared in astonishment as two bloodsoaked rottweilers and a Marine corporal charged across his body.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

Jiltanith stiffened, then shuddered in relief as she recognized the voice. It was A

She jerked the door open, and Gwynevere shot out it, hackles raised, ready to attack any threat. But there was no threat. Only a smoke-stained, bloodied Marine corporal, one arm hanging useless at her side … the sole survivor of Jiltanith’s security team.

“A

“Your father!” she gasped. “In the foyer!”

Jiltanith hesitated, and the corporal shook her head again.

“My implants’ll hold it, Your Majesty! Go!”

Horus drifted deeper into a well of darkness. The world was fading away, dim and insubstantial as the hovering smoke, and he felt Death whispering to him at last. He’d cheated the old thief so long, he thought hazily. So long. But no one cheated him forever, did they? And Death wasn’t that bad a fellow, not really. His whisper promised an end to agony, and perhaps, just perhaps, somewhere on the other side of the pain he would find Tanisis, as well. He hoped so. He longed to apologize to her as he had to ’Ta

His eyes fluttered open as someone touched him. He stared up from the bottom of his well, and his fading eyes brightened. His head was in her lap, and tears soaked her face, but she was alive. Alive, and so beautiful. His beautiful, strong daughter.

“ ’Ta

It came out in a thread, and she caught his hand, pressing it to her breast, and bent over him. Her lips brushed his forehead, and she stroked his hair.

“I love you, Poppa,” she whispered to him in perfect Universal, and then the darkness came down forever.

Chapter Forty-Four

Lawrence Jefferson gazed into the mirror and adjusted his appearance with meticulous care, then checked the clock. Ten more minutes, he thought, and turned back to the mirror to smile at himself.

For someone who’d seen almost thirty years of pla

He’d gone to considerable lengths to set Brigadier Jourdain up as the fall guy if his plans miscarried, and the brigadier had helped by getting himself killed, which neatly precluded the possibility of his defending himself against the charges. Lieutenant Governor Jefferson had, of course, been shocked to learn that one of his most senior Security men had formed links to the Sword of God and had, in fact, used Security’s own bio-enhancement facilities to enhance his own select band of traitors! The stu

It was a black mark against Jefferson that he’d failed to spot Jourdain’s treason, but the man had been recruited away from the Imperial Marines by Gustav van Gelder (no one—now living, that was—knew it was Jefferson who’d recommended him to Gus), not Jefferson, and he’d passed every security screening. And if his journal rambled here and there, that was only to be expected in the personal maunderings of a megalomaniac who believed God had chosen him to destroy all who trafficked with the Anti-Christ. It detailed his meticulous plan to assassinate Colin, Jiltanith, Horus, their senior military officers, and Lawrence Jefferson, and if it was a bit vague about precisely what was supposed to happen when they were dead, the fact that he’d hidden his bomb inside the Narhani statue suggested his probable intent. By branding the Narhani with responsibility for the destruction of Birhat, he’d undoubtedly hoped to lead humanity into turning on them as arch-traitors and dealing with them precisely as the Sword of God said they should be dealt with.

Jefferson was proud of that journal. He’d spent over two years preparing it, just in case, and if there were a few points on which it failed to shed any light, that was actually a point in its favor. By leaving some mysteries, it avoided the classic failing of coverups: an attempt to answer every question. Had it tried to do so, someone—like Ninhursag MacMahan—undoubtedly would have found it just a bit too neat. As it was, and coupled with the fact that the dozens of still-living people named in it had, in fact, all been recruited by Jourdain (on Jefferson’s orders, perhaps, but none of them knew that), it had worked to perfection. The most important members of Jefferson’s conspiracy weren’t listed in it, and several of his more valuable moles had actually been promoted for their sterling work in helping ONI run down the villains the journal’s discovery had unmasked. Best of all, every one of those villains, questioned under Imperial lie detectors, only confirmed that Jourdain had recruited them and that all of their instructions had come from him.

The clock chimed softly, and Jefferson settled his face into properly grave lines before he walked to the door. He opened it and stepped out into the corridor to the Terran Chamber of Delegates with a slow, somber pace that befitted the occasion while his brain rehearsed the oath of office he was about to recite.

He was half way to the Chamber when a voice spoke behind him.

“Lawrence McClintock Jefferson,” it said with icy precision, “I arrest you for conspiracy, espionage, murder, and the crime of high treason.”

He froze, and his heart seemed to stop, for the voice was that of Colin I, Emperor of Humanity. He stood absolutely motionless for one agonizing moment, then turned slowly, and swallowed as he found himself facing the Emperor, and Hector and Ninhursag MacMahan. The general held a grav gun in one hand, its rock-steady muzzle trained on Jefferson’s belly, and his hard, hating eyes begged the Lieutenant Governor to resist arrest.

“What … what did you say?” Jefferson whispered.

“You made one mistake,” Ninhursag replied coldly. “Only one. When you set up Jourdain’s journal, you fingered him for everything except the one crime that actually started us looking for you, ‘Mister X.’ There wasn’t a word in it about Sean’s and Harriet’s assassination—and the murder of my daughter.”

“Assassination?” Jefferson repeated in a numb voice.

“Without that, I might actually have bought it,” she went on in a voice like liquid nitrogen, “but the megalomaniac you created in that journal would never have failed to record his greatest triumph. Which, of course, suggested it was a fake, so I started looking for who else might have had the combination of clearances necessary to steal the bomb’s blueprints, have it built, smuggle it through the mat-trans, alter the mat-trans log so subsequent investigators would know he had, and get a batch of assassins into White Tower. And guess who all that pointed to?”