The Thousand Emperors

‘And Cripps told you all this?’

‘Once he understood what I’d do to him if he didn’t tell me, yes.’

Luc glanced back at Cripps, then just as quickly turned away when one of the hovering mechants reached towards his eyes with sharp-looking instruments. ‘God in hell, Zelia – you’re telling me what you’re doing to him now is better than what you might have done to him otherwise?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘What I’m doing to him is exactly what I threatened to do.’

Luc felt the blood freeze in his veins. Just a few hours before, he and Zelia had broached some kind of barrier, and he’d caught a glimpse of someone beneath the mask – a living, feeling human being. Now he understood just how badly she had fooled him.

‘So you did it to him anyway, even after he confessed,’ Luc spat. ‘Is that how much anyone should trust you at your word?’

‘He deserves no better. Now listen, so you understand the important facts. Moreland made his way back down from orbit to Temur in just the last few hours.’

‘Do we know exactly what it is he brought back?’

She nodded. ‘Something called a “quantum disruptor”.’

‘A what?’

She glanced back at Cripps with a thoughtful look. ‘Apparently the device can pull time and space apart like moist tissue paper.’

Luc recalled the war he had witnessed when Sachs had taken his hand, and felt his blood chill.

‘So far as I understand it,’ Zelia continued, ‘Moreland is on his way here, to Vanaheim, to present the artefact in person to Cheng – assuming he didn’t get here already. After that, the plan was to pass it on to Cripps so he could take charge of transporting it to Benares. Obviously that isn’t going to happen, but we still have only a short window of opportunity while the artefact is here before Cheng finds someone else to finish Cripps’ job for him. That’s another reason I gathered everyone here – I figured there was at least some chance one of them might turn out to have information that could help us pinpoint either Moreland or the artefact.’ She shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve had no luck so far.’

‘I can find the artefact,’ said Luc. ‘Sachs gave me the means to track it. It’s in Liebenau, somewhere inside Cheng’s Red Palace.’

Zelia stared at him in surprise, then faltered. ‘That’s great, Luc – and I guess there’s nowhere it’d be more likely to be. But it does mean it’s going to be surrounded by Sandoz security.’

‘Those people upstairs – do they have the resources to take Cheng on and win? Do you?’

She regarded him uncertainly. ‘As far as my own resources go, the Red Palace security have their own, dedicated communications network, which means I can’t tie them up in knots the way I can the Sandoz elsewhere on Vanaheim. As for the rest, it depends. Some of them, I think, have been stockpiling weapons against a day like this, but as far as the rest go, all they have are their personal mechants – not nearly enough to take on anyone’s army.’

‘You make it sound hopeless. Is it?’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘I watched your departure from the Sequoia remotely. I saw what happened to that Sandoz platform – was Ambassador Sachs responsible for that?’

‘I did that,’ Luc said quietly. ‘You told me yourself that the lattice in my skull is like no other you’ve seen before, and you were right. Antonov got it from the Coalition.’

‘So the Coalition really have been supplying technology to Black Lotus?’

Luc nodded, and reached a hand towards one of the mechants hovering above Cripps, concentrating. After a moment the machine wobbled in the air, then moved towards the centre of the passageway.

Luc brought his hand sweeping down, and the mechant landed on the dusty flagstones with a thump, becoming dark and silent.

‘How could you do that?’ Zelia rasped, staring at the mechant with wide, frightened eyes.

‘To be honest with you,’ he said, turning back to her, ‘I don’t really know. But I’m pretty sure I can do a lot more than just that.’ He nodded back towards the stairwell. ‘We need to figure out our next move before Cheng has a chance to get that artefact anywhere near Benares.’

The lights dotting the ceiling above them flickered, and they both felt a tremor run through the floor and walls around them, one that had nothing to do with the machinery lurking beneath Zelia’s home. A commotion of voices and screams flooded down from the upper floor.

‘What the hell happened?’ Luc demanded.

Zelia ran towards the stairwell. ‘The networks are down,’ she shouted back at him. ‘I’ve lost control of them again. My guess is that the Sandoz have found us.’

They ascended the steps into chaos. Luc glanced up towards the sky, visible through the ruined ceiling, and caught sight of a couple of fliers rocketing upwards. Zelia’s co-conspirators were making a run for it.

Something huge drifted between the escaping fliers and the clouds, blocking out the sky. A Sandoz cruiser, its underside studded with sensors and defensive systems.