“That fool! I’m in my office. Where else would the chief councillor be at a time like this? Take the stairs. You’ll find me on the other side of the building.”
“I’m on my way,” Michael shouted, elated now. He had him. The blood roared in his ears. “And when I get to you, I’ll blow your goddamned head off.”
“Now, now,” Polk chided. “Let’s not be too hasty.”
“Just watch me,” Michael muttered, half convinced that he had slipped into a crazy parallel universe where enormously powerful men like Polk sat alone amid the ruins of empire even as retribution bore down on them.
It was insane. If the Hammer of Kraa was good at anything, it was producing fanatics, so where were they all? Surely Polk could have scraped up a few to protect him.
Michael started up the stairs, nerves jangling in anticipation. Reaching the top, he checked every door and every passageway with care to make certain he was not walking into an ambush. But still there was no sign of life.
There was no mistaking Polk’s offices when he came to them. The embossed gold sign was hard to miss. Michael moved past the security desk and into a sprawling reception area studded with chairs and low tables. He walked on and into a second reception room. This one was smaller, more intimate, the lighting soft. He followed a short corridor with rooms off to both sides, some elaborately furnished and some set out as simple meeting rooms. The corridor led to a sprawling open-plan office. It was as stark and functional as the public rooms had been relaxed and comfortable. Michael headed for a door on the far side. He eased it open with the toe of his boot.
Instinct had Michael’s rifle up before his brain had worked out that the man waiting inside posed no threat. “You!” Michael hissed between gritted teeth.
It was Polk.
He held his arms out wide, hands empty, a disarming smile on his face. He was smaller than Michael remembered, his lean, wiry body dressed in a pale gray one-piece jumpsuit and sporting a small Hammer sunburst in gold on his lapel.
“Oh, for Kraa’s sake,” Polk said, “put that gun down. Come into my office. Come on, Michael. It’s over, so let’s at least try to be civilized.”
“On your face, Polk, with your arms out, and do it unless you want me to shoot you.”
Polk sighed. “You’ll find I’m clean,” he said, dropping to the floor.
“We’ll see.”
Polk lay there in silence while Michael searched every last square centimeter of the man’s body, ignoring Polk’s muffled protests. “Okay,” he said finally, “you can get up.”
“I told you I was clean,” Polk said, getting back to his feet and brushing himself down. “Come on; my office is through here. We can talk. I’d like that.”
“Go through. I’ll be right behind you, and if I think you’re about to pull anything, I’ll blow your brains out.”
“Michael!” Polk protested. “Please relax.”
An enormous plasglass window dominated the chief councillor’s office. It looked out across luxuriant gardens below a dust-filled afternoon sky thick with towering columns of smoke. It was sparsely furnished: a desk empty of anything but a comm box, two armchairs flanking a coffee table, a pair of Hammer flags, a wall-mounted holovid screen, a small coffeebot in a recess. Nothing personal, Michael noted: no memorabilia, no paintings, no pictures. It was strange. It looked as if Polk rented the place by the hour.
“What’s through there?” Michael said, pointing to a door in one of the walls.
“My private rooms, the VIP entrance, and the elevator. Up to the lander pad. Down to the garage, war room, and emergency shelters.”
“Show me.”
Again Polk sighed. “There’s nobody out there. Everyone’s gone. It’s just you and me.”
“Move!”
Polk was right. The place was empty.
“Okay,” Michael said. He allowed himself to relax a fraction. There might be fifty Hammers holed up in a room he hadn’t spotted, but there were limits to what he could do on his own. “Let’s go sit down. No, not your desk- there.” He pointed to one of the armchairs. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Fine, but first some coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Michael said, struck by the sheer absurdity of it all. Coffee and small talk with a power-crazed lunatic. It was beyond absurd. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?” he asked as Polk placed two steaming mugs on the table and sat down.
“Of course,” Polk replied. “You want to kill me.”
“I do, and I will. I wanted to look you in the face first.”
“Well, we’ll see.” Polk paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “I had it all, you know,” he went on, “the chief councillorship, my councillors where I wanted them, you Feds on the ropes.” He stopped and shook his head. “You know,” he said a moment later, “I’ve never met anyone quite as stupid as that Ferrero woman. Did she ever stop to think what she was doing, what she was risking?”
“I don’t think she did.”
“No, she didn’t. We were only months away from getting our new antimatter plant. Nothing could have stopped the Hammer of Kraa. I was going to be humanspace’s first emperor, you know. I got so close … and then you came along.” Polk’s face, which had been animated up to then, soured into a bitter scowl.
“You give me too much credit.”
Polk shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. You were the catalyst. Without you, the Feds and the NRA would have screwed around until it was too late. You made things happen. That’s your genius.” He stopped, a faraway look in his eyes. “I would have destroyed the Federated Worlds, you know. I’d already given the orders. The operation was scheduled for December. Did you know that?” Polk’s eyes glittered. He had a half smile on his face; his tongue flickered across thin, bloodless lips. “The Hammer fleet would have reduced your planets to smoking wastelands.”
For the first time, Michael saw the evil in the man. It was a terrifying sight. With sudden certainty, he knew he would not live to see Anna again. Polk’s depraved soul would never allow it.
“I’d have enjoyed that,” Polk went on. He shrugged as if the destruction of an entire system and the deaths of millions were matters of no great import. “I hate you Feds. I always have.”
“You’re mad.”
Polk laughed. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” he said. “But I’m not. After we’d dealt with the Federated Worlds, how much of a fight do you think the rest of humanspace would have put up? I’ll tell you: none. They’d be on their knees begging for mercy, which I, Emperor Jeremiah the First, would of course have been happy to grant.”
“Emperor Jeremiah the First,” Michael said; he shook his head. “You really are mad.”
“I’m the madman?” Polk said. He waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t think so. I’m not a Fed renegade sitting alone in the office of the Chief Councillor of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds. Oh, no; you’re the one’s who is mad. And for Kraa’s sake, stop pointing that rifle at me. Put it away! It’s no good to you.”
“I don’t think so.”
Polk’s eyes scanned the room. “Let me see … Yes, there are twelve lasers pointed at you right now, and they will kill you the instant your finger tightens on the trigger.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should. My laser system is very good. It was a present from the Pascanicians. It’d take a battalion of marines to get past it.”
“Your lasers didn’t stop me from getting to you.”
“You idiot! That’s because I let you walk in. You are no threat to me. From the moment you walked up to the building, your life has been in my hands. Now I decide whether you live or die.”
Michael’s stomach knotted, his every instinct saying that Polk was telling the truth. “Okay, so you have lasers on me,” he said, tapping the butt of his rifle, “but I can still blow your damn head off before they get me.”
Polk shrugged. “I doubt it. The system has motion sensors, and it monitors heart rate, blood pressure, brain
