Heirs of Empire

He hated the people he worked for. Hated all the bright-eyed, smiling people reaching out for the new world which had robbed him. He had to hide that, but not for much longer. Soon what he’d wrought would—

He looked up in surprise as the office door opened, for it was after midnight. The well-groomed young woman in the doorway looked at him with an odd little smile and raised her eyebrows.

“Dr. Gretsky?” He nodded. “Dr. Darin Gretsky?” she pressed.

“Yes. What can I do for you, Ms.—?” He paused, waiting for her name, and she reached into her outsized purse.

“I have a message for you, Doctor.” Something in her voice set off a distant alarm, and his muscles tightened as the door opened once more and four or five men stepped through it. “A message from the Sword of God.”

He leapt to his feet as her hand came out of the purse, but the last thing Darin Gretsky ever saw was the white, bright glare of a muzzle flash.

Lawrence Jefferson closed the report and leaned back in his swivel chair with a thoughtful expression. Over the past decade he’d assumed ever more of Horus’s day-to-day responsibilities, freeing the Governor to concentrate on policy issues, and Gus van Gelder reported directly to him on routine matters now, which was a very useful thing, indeed.

He swung his chair gently from side to side, considering his strategy yet again in light of the latest report. The Sword of God was becoming quite a headache, he thought cheerfully. They were growing bolder, applying all the lessons of the terrorist organizations Colin MacIntyre and his fellows had smashed, and they were far harder to destroy. These terrorists knew the strengths—and weaknesses—of the Imperial technology opposed to them, and none of the security people trying to defeat them suspected their most priceless advantage. Knowledge was power, and through Gus van Gelder, Lawrence Jefferson knew exactly what moves were being made against his tools.

For example, he knew Gus was getting uncomfortably close to Francine. Gus didn’t know it yet, but Jefferson did, and so Bishop Hilgema

It was all very touching, and it had Gus a bit confused, since he didn’t know about the conduits through which she directed those same zealots. What Gus hadn’t quite grasped yet was that the Sword no longer required the infrastructure of the Church. No doubt Gus would figure it out, but by then it should be too late to find any institutional links to Bishop Hilgema

Security Councilor van Gelder nodded to the Marine sentry as the elevator deposited him on an upper floor of White Tower. He walked down the hall and knocked on the frame of an open door.

“Busy?” he asked when the man behind the desk looked up.

“Not terribly.” Lieutenant Governor Jefferson rose courteously, waving to a chair, then sat again as van Gelder seated himself. “What’s up?”

“Horus still on Birhat?”

“Well, yes.” Jefferson leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin, and raised his eyebrows. “He’s not scheduled to return until tomorrow night. Why? Has something urgent come up?”

“You might say that,” van Gelder said. “I’ve finally got a break on the Sword of God.”

“You have?” Jefferson’s chair snapped upright, and van Gelder smiled. He’d thought Jefferson would be glad to hear it.

“Yes. You know how hard it’s been to break their security. Even when we manage to take one or two of them alive, they’re so tightly compartmented we can’t ID anyone outside the cell they come from. But I’ve finally managed to get one of my people inside. I haven’t reported it yet—we’re playing her cover on a strict need-to-know basis—but she’s just been tapped to serve as a link in the courier chain to her cell’s main intelligence pipeline.”

“Why, that’s wonderful, Gus!” Jefferson cocked his head, considering the implications, then rubbed his blotter gently. “How soon do you expect this to pay off?”

“Within the next few weeks,” van Gelder replied, smothering a small, familiar spurt of exasperation. Jefferson couldn’t help it any more than any other bureaucratic type, but even the best of them had a sort of institutional impatience that irritated intelligence officers immensely. They couldn’t appreciate the life-and-death risks his field people ran, and a “why can’t we move quicker on this?” mind-set seemed to go with their jobs.

“Good. Good! And you want to report this directly to Horus?”

“Yes. As I say, I’ve been ru

“I see. Do you have a formal report for him, then?”

“Not a formal one, but—” van Gelder reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small security file “—these are my briefing notes.”

“I see.” Jefferson regarded the security file thoughtfully. Such files were keyed to randomly generated implant access codes when they were sealed. Any attempt to open them without those codes would reduce the chips within them to useless slag.

“Well, as I say, he won’t be back until tomorrow night. Is this really urgent? I mean—” he waved his hand apologetically at van Gelder’s slightly affronted expression “—are we facing a time pressure problem so we have to get the word to him immediately?”

“It’s not exactly a crisis, but I’d like to brief him as soon as possible. I don’t want to be too far from the office in case something breaks, but maybe I should mat-trans out to Birhat and catch him there. If he agrees, I could brief Colin and Jiltanith, too.”

“That might be a good idea,” Jefferson mused, then paused with an arrested air. “In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think we ought to get it to him ASAP. It’s the middle of the night in Phoenix right now, but I’m already scheduled to mat-trans out tomorrow morning their time. Could I drop your notes off with him, or is he going to need a personal briefing?”

“We do need to discuss it,” van Gelder said thoughtfully, “but the basic information’s in the notes… In fact, it might help if he had them before we sat down to talk.”

“Then I’ll take them out with me, if you like.”

“Fine.” Van Gelder handed over the file with a grin. “Never thought I’d be using a courier quite this secure!”

“You flatter me.” Jefferson slid the file into his own pocket. “Does Horus have the file access code?”

“No. Here—” Van Gelder flipped his feed into Jefferson’s computer and used it to relay the code to the Lieutenant Governor, then wiped it from the computer’s memory. “I hope you don’t talk in your sleep,” he cautioned.

“I don’t,” Jefferson assured him, rising to escort him to the door. He paused to shake his hand. “Again, let me congratulate you. This is a tremendous achievement. I’m sure there are going to be some very relieved people when they get this information.”