The Thousand Emperors

been wasted chasing the wrong people. ‘Do you know Cheng sent agents all the way to Coalition space, on ships that took decades to get there? He wanted them to find some artefact the Coalition had recovered from the Founder Network, so he could use it to wipe out every living thing on Benares.’

Zelia stared at him. ‘But . . . why Benares? What possible benefit is there to doing any such thing?’

‘Apart from it being a hotbed of anti-Council sentiment? Once he’s dealt with Benares, he’s going to blame Black Lotus for its destruction. He’ll say the Coalition supplied them with advanced weapons technology, but they screwed up, destroying Benares by accident instead of Temur.’

Her expression now shifted from indignant disbelief to outright horror. ‘Please tell me you’re lying,’ she said.

‘After that,’ said Luc, ‘he’ll close down the Darwin gate forever, declare martial law throughout the Tian Di, and use the Sandoz to assume total power prior to dissolving the Council. And then there won’t be a Thousand Emperors of the Tian Di – just one.’

Zelia stared past him as she worked through the implications. ‘He’s trying to turn the clock back, to the days of the Schism.’

‘That’s not even all of it,’ Luc continued. ‘Cheng’s been playing a very, very long-term strategy ever since the idea of Reunification was first mooted. Once he realized he had no choice but to go along with it, he started laying the groundwork for a plan that wouldn’t just wipe out Benares, but would have the whole of the Tian Di begging him to stay in power.’

‘What else did you find?’

‘More than you ever wanted to know.’ No wonder Vasili had been so frightened. ‘Back at that funeral service, Ruy Borges came up to you, and mentioned a rumour about Cheng being in negotiations with the Coalition. Remember?’

Zelia nodded. ‘Well, they weren’t just rumours,’ he continued. ‘Before Cripps murdered him, Javier Maxwell told me the reason the Coalition Ambassador had been to see him was to prevent a war with the Coalition – and it has to do with a second entrance to the Founder Network, discovered decades ago, here in the Tian Di.’

‘No.’ Zelia shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Ever since, Cheng’s been sending teams of Sandoz in through that entrance, to carry out secret explorations of the Network.’ He shrugged. ‘We always knew there were gates leading inside the Network scattered all over time and space. It’s hardly surprising that Cheng, or exploration teams working on his behalf, stumbled across another in one of our own systems.’

‘I would have . . .’ her words drifted off.

‘You’d have known about it?’ he guessed. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

She didn’t meet his eyes.

‘Cheng even kept it secret from most of the Eighty-Five,’ Luc continued, ‘restricting the knowledge to a very few members of his inner circle. Vasili was as in the dark about all of this as you or anyone else, at least until Antonov persuaded him to come here and open that data-cache. And that’s where Ariadna Placet comes into it.’

‘In what way?’

‘She found out about the secret entrance to the Network, and Cheng had her murdered before she could tell anyone else what she knew.’

She shook her head in dismay. ‘Poor Sevgeny. So the crazy son of a bitch wasn’t really that crazy after all.’

Luc sighed and slid out from under her, and began to pull his clothes back on. He turned to look at her, still naked, and felt a touch of amazement at what had just taken place between them.

‘But where is this Founder Network gate?’

‘It’s in the Thorne system, Zelia. Cheng found it while you were still its Director of Policy.’

Her face grew fractionally paler. ‘Go on.’

‘After you were replaced by Ariadna Placet, she figured out there was a cover-up, and was murdered on Cheng’s direct orders to stop her telling anyone else.’

Zelia stared at him, clearly outraged. Luc finished dressing, then heard a thump as she picked up one of her boots and threw it towards a wall. It bounced back, somersaulting through the air before rebounding from the ceiling.

Luc reached out and managed to catch it, handing it back to her.

‘I hope you weren’t throwing that at me,’ he said, ‘because if you were, you’re a lousy shot.’

‘All right,’ she said at last, her voice flat, ‘I believe you. I don’t want to, but I do. Except there’s one thing that doesn’t make much sense to me – if Cheng really had access to the Founder Network for all this time, why bother sending agents to the Coalition to recover Founder artefacts, if he can just go and get them at the source? And after going all that way, how’s he going to bring them back to . . .’

She halted and looked at him, then closed her eyes. ‘The new transfer gate.’

‘That’s just about the only reason he agreed to let the Coalition bring the transfer gate here,’ Luc confirmed. ‘As for why he’s sending agents to Darwin, the part of the Network he’s been able to access was cleared out long ago by some other long-gone race. He hasn’t been able to find anything he could use as a weapon.’

‘Dear God,’ said Zelia. ‘Cheng’s data-cache told you all this?’