The Thousand Emperors

stretching tired limbs and massaging the muscles in his thighs. Kulic meanwhile guided his horse to some long grass, looping the animal’s reins around a low branch. Jacob watched as the old man then stepped over to the well, staring down into its inky depths.

Jacob came up beside him. ‘What we’re looking for is down there?’

‘It is,’ Kulic replied, reaching down to grab one end of a frayed-looking rope that hung over the lip of the well. He began hauling on it, hand over hand, in much the same way he had retrieved his father’s transceiver from the depths of a barrel. He struggled, however, and Jacob ended up doing most of the work, feeling the rope tremble and sway as something heavy connected to its other end swung from side to side in the depths below.

A large bundle, wrapped in more waterproof oilskins and bound up in rope, emerged into the evening light. They heaved it up the rest of the way, manhandling it over the lip of the well and onto the weedy flagstones by their feet.

Jacob glanced back down the well, thinking.

‘What is it?’ asked Kulic, seeing Jacob’s attention was elsewhere.

Jacob bent at the knees, picking up a rock and dropping it into the well. Several seconds passed before he heard a splash.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Jacob, glancing at the sodden rope tightly bound around the oilskin-wrapped bundle. ‘Do we have anything that can cut this rope?’

‘Just a moment,’ said Kulic, returning to his horse and producing a long knife from his saddle-pack. He used it to saw through the ropes, then stepped back so that Jacob could peel away the oilskins, revealing a heavy wooden chest.

Jacob opened the chest, lifting out some of the precious gifts that lay inside; various pieces of modular equipment and, most importantly, a plastic case containing another pin-sized transceiver, which sprang to life as soon as he picked it up.

He nodded with grim satisfaction at the new data the transceiver contained. Clearly, Sillars had been hard at work prior to his murder at the hands of his fellow agents. Indeed, given what the transceiver was telling him, Sillars had more than made up for the failings of his compatriots.

Jacob pulled off the ragged shirt and trousers given him by Kulic, wadding them up and dropping them into the well. Then he placed the miniature transceiver back in its case and pocketed it, before studying the rest of the chest’s contents. He discovered several pocket-sized A-M mines, each of which could gouge a crater a mile wide, along with a collection of slim metallic components that, separately, did not appear to have any immediate use but, when snapped together in the right order, comprised a powerful beam-based weapon scarcely less devastating than the mines. It was designed to be broken into parts that would each fit in the pockets and hidden recesses of his combat suit.

He quickly packed the contents of the chest about his person before standing and nodding towards the ruins surrounding the well.

‘There’s a cellar under this building,’ he announced to Kulic.

The old man peered towards the ruins, seeing only weeds, rotted wood and a few bricks outlining the position of the building’s foundations. ‘How do you know?’

‘Sillars left a message when he buried all this,’ Jacob explained, unconsciously brushing one hand against the pocket in which he had placed Sillars’ transceiver. He then stepped amongst the ruins of the building, pushing past a tangle of sharp-bladed bushes until he came to some half-rotten floorboards, which he stamped on with one foot until one of them cracked, fragments of it dropping into the darkness below.

Jacob pulled on a pair of gloves and began tearing away the clumps of bush and weed around him until more planks were exposed. He could just make out a dim shape in the darkness of the cellar beneath him, hidden under half-rotten rags that had been draped over it.

‘Give me a hand,’ Jacob grunted, bending down to lift one end of a plank.

Kulic stepped gingerly over, helping to clear away some more of the weeds covering one end of the plank. The plank shattered unexpectedly, the end Jacob was grasping nearly catching him under the chin as it angled upwards. Jacob batted it away, watching it drop into the space below.

They worked like this for several minutes, smashing or lifting planks, although Kulic proved too weak and slow to be of any real practical use. But he worked uncomplainingly, for which Jacob was grateful, until the cellar had been exposed sufficiently that Jacob could drop down into the darkened space below.

‘What is that thing down there?’ Kulic called down, his voice querulous.

‘A flier,’ said Jacob, stripping away the rotting sheets covering it.

The machine was a product of Coalition science, easily more advanced than even the starship that had brought him to Darwin. Its hull still gleamed despite its long years buried in dust and filth, and when Jacob reached out to touch its smooth hull with his bare fingertips, it shivered almost as if it were alive.

In a sense, the vehicle was alive. According to Sillars’ own memories, encoded within his transceiver, the distinction between organic and inorganic technology within the Coalition had by now become entirely academic. The flier could think and feel, after a fashion, and as his fingers brushed its skin, Jacob could sense something very much like loneliness radiating from it after so many long decades of waiting.

Jacob climbed back out of the cellar and dusted himself off with a grimace, before using the last of Kulic’s beer to wash the worst of the filth from his hands.

‘Step back,’ Jacob told him.

Kulic goggled as a low, grating hum began to resonate through the air, more dirt and wood tumbling into the cellar as the hum grew. The flier rose slightly from its resting place, pushing against those few planks that still remained in place. They soon snapped under the strain, tumbling down or