The Thousand Emperors

Luc shook his head. ‘I don’t recall speaking to anyone from the Sandoz.’

‘They sent one of their own here to interrogate you without getting our clearance first,’ Lethe explained. ‘You were still only half-conscious at the time. One of the medicians told me it’s unlikely you’d recall any of it. I filed a protest and managed to get the details of what you told the investigator. So Antonov – was he still alive?’

Luc nodded. ‘He was, yes.’

‘You also told him Antonov compromised Marroqui’s mosquitoes.’

‘Also correct.’

‘Mostly correct. It turns out those mosquitoes were still transmitting some data back to the orbital platform parked around Grendel.’

Luc sat up with extreme care. ‘So you managed to recover at least some data?’

Lethe nodded. ‘Enough to prove your version of events. Up to a point.’

Up to a point. ‘Go on,’ said Luc, sensing Lethe was leading up to something.

‘Your CogNet link stopped recording just before you reached the lowest level of the complex, and didn’t start again until you contacted Master Siedzik. That means we have no idea what happened during the period it wasn’t functioning.’

‘You think Antonov compromised it in some way?’

Lethe ignored the question. ‘Apparently you told this investigator that after your encounter with Antonov, you headed straight for the cryo units, but not before sending a warning to Siedzik. Why?’

‘Antonov told me he was going to destroy the complex. He even told me the cryogenic pods were my best bet at staying alive.’

‘Let me just be clear on this. Antonov told you he was going to trigger a detonation?’ asked Lethe.

Luc shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a bomb or anything like that. Antonov had a transfer gate set up down there on the lowest level, connected to a ship orbiting close to 55 Cancri’s photosphere. He set the ship to dive into the sun before knocking me out. When I woke up he was dead, and I checked the readings in one of the navigation booths for just long enough to see he hadn’t been lying.’

They both stared at him like he’d started barking profanities.

‘Didn’t I tell the investigator . . . ?’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Lethe, looking outraged. ‘A transfer gate? How the hell could Antonov get his hands on technology like that?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Luc, ‘but I swear to you it’s the truth. He was badly wounded, dying.’

Luc stopped, his head throbbing with sudden, unexpected pain. It wasn’t hard to guess Lethe didn’t believe a word.

‘How badly wounded?’ asked the Director.

Luc swallowed with some difficulty. Sharp spikes of pain radiated from inside his skull, getting worse with every passing second. ‘He had a deep chest wound. At first I thought he was too weak to be any danger. But he fooled me. He managed to dose me, then drag me through to the ship’s bridge.’

‘Why in Heaven didn’t Antonov just kill you?’ asked Lethe. He had a look on his face like a man trying to figure out a particularly intractable puzzle, one he was sure contained some central flaw that, once identified, would cause all the rest to fall apart.

‘I don’t know. By the time I came to, he was dead and the ship was locked into its course. All I could do was get the hell out. I made my way back through the gate and up to the higher levels.’

‘And the rest of Antonov’s people?’ asked Eleanor. ‘The Black Lotus insurgents?’

Antonov put something inside my head, Luc wanted to say, but as soon as the thought crossed his mind, sweat burst out all over his newly-minted skin, the pain in his skull doubling.

It felt almost like something was trying to stop him talking about it. He gripped the bed sheets, twisting the soft cotton around his fingers.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Eleanor, stepping around the side of his bed and placing one hand on his upper arm. The sensation of her fingers against his skin was almost unbearably sensual. She glanced back at Lethe. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t . . .’

‘No,’ Luc gasped. ‘It’ll pass.’

He saw Eleanor and Lethe exchange a look.

‘Look,’ said Lethe, ‘if we go to an investigative committee and try and tell them Antonov had transfer gate technology without any proof, there’s going to be hell to pay. There are already questions about how badly you might have been affected by the trauma of what happened to you.’

‘You don’t believe me,’ Luc said hollowly.

Lethe sighed. ‘It’s not a question of whether I believe you or not.’

‘Just other people.’

‘Even if there really was a transfer gate down there, Aeschere’s got a low enough average density that the