Heirs of Empire

“Us? You mean someone waxed Terra just to get at us?” Tamman clearly disliked that thought as much as Sean did.

“Harry’s right,” Sandy said. “I wouldn’t want us to get swelled heads, but it’s the only answer that makes sense. Although,” she added more thoughtfully, “I doubt they were after all of us. More likely they were out to get Sean and Harry.”

“Oh, shit,” Tamman breathed. He scratched an eyebrow, frowning at the deck, then sighed. “Yeah, it makes sense. But, Jesus, Sean, if they could do that, who knows what else they can do? And nobody back home knows what happened. If these creeps—whoever they are—try something else, nobody’ll be expecting a thing!”

“I fear Tam has a point,” Brashan murmured, and Sean shrugged.

“So do I, but I don’t see what we can do about it. We don’t have a hypercom, and there’s no way we can build one.” A hypercom massed five times as much as Israel’s entire hull and required synthetic elements they couldn’t possibly fabricate from shipboard resources. “All we can hope for is that the star system we head for was, in fact, inhabited. If it was, we may find an orbital yard we can kick back into operation, and then we can build one.”

All five of them shuddered at the thought. With only five sets of hands, the gargantuan task of reactivating even one of the Fourth Empire’s heavily automated fabrication centers, while not exactly impossible, would take years. On the other hand, Sean reflected mordantly, it wasn’t like they’d have anything else to waste their time on.

“But getting back to what happened,” Harriet went on, “Terra was set up to destroy herself and make sure no evidence ever turned up. That has to be why she took herself way out here first. But I’ll bet you that was her idea. Whoever programmed her expected her to scuttle herself while she was still in hyper, in which case there wouldn’t have been any n-space debris at all. That’s how I would’ve handled it.”

“Me, too,” Sean agreed. “And the reason she didn’t do it?”

“Dahak,” Harriet said with utter certainty. “You know how he looks out for us. Whoever sabotaged Terra had to be working inside her Alpha programming, and that means whatever caused her not to kill us was also buried in her Alpha priorities. And who do we know who worries about us and has the capability to get in and out of any computer ever built?”

“Dahak.” It was Sean’s turn to nod.

“Exactly. We’ll probably never know, but I’ll bet anything you like whoever set up the sabotage program ordered Terra to make sure there was no evidence but never specifically told her to actually kill her crew. Lord,” Harriet turned to Sandy and rolled her eyes, “can you imagine what would’ve happened if they’d tried? They’d have hit so many Alpha overrides against harming humans Comp Cent would’ve burned to a crisp!”

She crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

“Whoever did this was slick, Sean,” Harriet said soberly. “Real slick. Even a simple self-destruct command would’ve hit—I don’t know. Nine overrides, Sandy? Ten?”

“Something like that.” Sandy frowned as she ran over a mental checklist. “At least that. So they had to cut and paste around them. And those’re hardwired.” She frowned harder. “I couldn’t have done it even if you gave me a couple of years to work on it. It would’ve taken somebody pretty darn senior over at BuShips to get away with it.”

“Well, of course,” Tamman said. Sandy looked at him, and he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter how sneaky he had to be, Sandy. He had to have access.”

“Oh, sure. Well,” Sandy’s sudden, unpleasant smile reminded Sean very forcefully of her mother, “that’s nice to know. Whenever we do get back in touch with Bia, Mom’ll be able to narrow it down mighty quick. Can’t be more than twenty or thirty people. Probably more like ten or fifteen.”

“So we’ve got an order to blow herself up and hide the evidence,” Sean mused, “but not an actual order to kill her crew.”

“Yep,” Harriet said, “and that’s why we’re still alive, ‘cause Dahak parked his own Alpha command somewhere in Comp Cent and instructed Terra to keep an eye on us. On us, specifically—the five of us. Mom and Dad’d probably have killed him if they’d known, but thank God he did it! Terra couldn’t blow herself without getting us out first without violating his commands, and whoever set her up never guessed what he might do, so there was no way they could counter it. That, people, is the only reason she came out of hyper at all. And, now that I think about it, it’s probably why we wound up way out here. She couldn’t hide the evidence in hyper without killing us, but she could sure put us somewhere no one would think to look!”

“Makes sense,” Sean agreed after a moment, then shivered. It hadn’t felt nice to realize how close they’d come to dying, but it felt even less nice to know eighty thousand people had died as a casual by-product of an effort to murder him and his sister. The hatred—or, even worse, the cold calculation—of such an act was appalling. He shook himself free of the thought and hoped it wouldn’t return to haunt his nightmares.

“All right. If that’s what happened—and I think you and Sandy are probably right, Harry—then we shouldn’t run into any more ‘programs from hell’ in Israel’s software. On the other hand, the trip’s going to take long enough I don’t mind spending a few days making certain. Do any of you?”

Three human heads shook emphatically and Brashan curled his crest in an equally definite expression of disagreement. Sean gri

“I’m glad you agree. But in the meantime, it’s been over six hours since everything went to hell. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

The others looked momentarily taken aback by his prosaic remark, but all of them had young, healthy appetites. Surprise turned quickly into agreement, and he smiled more naturally.

“Who wants to cook?”

“Anyone but you.” Sandy’s shudder elicited a chorus of agreement. Sean MacIntyre was one of the very few people in the universe who could burn boiling water.

“All right, Ms. Smartass, I hereby put you in charge of the galley.”

“Suits me. Lasagna, I think, and a special side dish delicately spiced with arsenic for Brashan.” She eyed Israel’s youthful commander. “And maybe we can convince him to share it with you, Captain Bligh,” she added sweetly.

Chapter Eleven

The Emperor of Mankind opened his eyes at the desolate sounds, and for just a moment, as he hovered on the edge of awareness, he felt only anger. Anger at being awakened from his own tormented dreams, anger that he must find the strength to face another’s sorrow. And, perhaps most of all, anger that the sobs were so soft, so smothered, so … ashamed.

He turned his head. Jiltanith was curled in a wretched knot, far over on her side of their bed, arms locked about a pillow. Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed into the tear-soaked pillowcase, and waking anger vanished as he listened to her sounds and knew what truly spawned his rage. Helplessness. He couldn’t heal her hurt. Her grief was nothing he could fight. He couldn’t even tell her everything would “be all right,” for they both knew it wouldn’t, and that tormented him with a sense of inadequacy. It wasn’t his fault, and he knew it, but the knowledge was useless to a heart as badly wounded by the anguish of the woman he loved as by his own.

He rolled over and wrapped her in his arms, and she drew into an even tighter knot, burying her face in the pillow she clutched. She was ashamed, he thought. She condemned herself for her “weakness,” and another flash of irrational anger gripped him—anger at her for hurting herself so. But he strangled it and murmured her name and kissed her hair. She clenched the pillow tautly an instant longer, and then every muscle unknotted at once and she wept in desolation as he gathered her close.