Heirs of Empire

shoved him back towards the console.

“You take care of the computer,” she told him grimly. “We’ll take care of the Guard.”

“Sandy, I—” he began helplessly, and she squeezed his arm.

“I know,” she said softly, then turned and ran for the hatch. “You, you, and you,” she told three of the Malagorans. “Go watch the arch. Tam, over here! We’ve got company!”

“Here they come!” someone shouted, and Crown Prince Sean Horus MacIntyre closed his eyes and inserted his neural feed into the console.

Chapter Forty-One

Ninhursag MacMahan rubbed weary eyes and tried to feel triumphant. A planet was an enormous place to hide something as small as Tsien’s super bomb, but there was little traffic to Narhan, and most of it was simple personnel movement, virtually all of which went by mat-trans. Her people had started out by checking the logs for every mat-trans transit, incoming or outgoing, with a microscope and found nothing; now a detailed search from orbit had found the same. She couldn’t be absolutely positive, but it certainly appeared the bomb had never been sent to the planet.

Which, unfortunately, made Birhat the most likely target, and Birhat would be far harder to search. There were more people and vastly more traffic, and swarms of botanists, biologists, zoologists, entomologists, and tourists had fanned out across its rejuvenated surface in the last twenty years. Anyone could have smuggled the damned thing in, and Maker alone knew where they might have stashed it if they had.

Of course, if it was in one of the wilderness areas, it shouldn’t be too hard to spot. Even if it was covered by a stealth field, Imperial sensors should pick it up if they looked hard enough. But if Mister X had gotten it into Phoenix, it was a whole different ball game. The capital city’s mass of power sources was guaranteed to confuse her sensors. Even a block-by-block or tower-by-tower scan wouldn’t find it; her people would have to cover the city literally room by room, and that was going to take weeks or even months.

But at least they’d made progress. Assuming whoever had the thing didn’t intend to blow up Earth herself, they’d reduced the possible targets to one planet. And, she thought with a frown, it was time to point that out.

* * *

“No.”

“But, Colin—”

“I said no, ’Hursag, and I meant it.”

Ninhursag sat back and puffed her lips in frustration. She and Hector sat in the imperial family’s personal quarters facing Colin and a Jiltanith whose figure had changed radically over the past few months. Tsien Tao-ling, Amanda, Adrienne Robbins, and Gerald Hatcher attended by hologram, and their expressions mirrored Ninhursag’s.

“ ’Hursag’s right, Colin,” Hatcher said. “If the bomb’s not on Narhan, it’s almost certainly here. It’s the only thing that makes sense, given our estimate of Mister X’s past actions.”

“I agree.” Colin nodded, yet his tone didn’t yield a centimeter. “But I’m not going to have myself evacuated when millions of other people can’t do the same thing.”

“I’m only asking you to make a state visit to Earth!” Ninhursag snapped. “For Maker’s sake, Colin, what are you trying to prove? Go to Earth and stay there till we find the damned thing!”

“If you find it,” Colin shot back. “And I’m not going to do it.”

“The people would understand, Colin,” Tsien said quietly.

“I’m not thinking about public relations here!” Colin’s voice was harsh. “I’m talking about abandoning millions of civilians to save my own skin, and I won’t do it.”

“Colin, you are being foolish,” Dahak put in.

“So sue me!”

“If I believed it would change your mind, I would do just that,” the computer replied. “As it will not, I can only appeal to the good sense which, upon rare occasion, you have exhibited in the past.”

“Not this time,” Colin said flatly, and Jiltanith squeezed his hand.

“Colin, there’s something neither ’Hursag nor Dahak have pointed out,” Amanda said. “If, in fact, Mister X killed the kids, and if he’s the one who has the bomb, and if he’s put it on Birhat, then you and ’Tanni are the reason. If you’re not here, there’s no point in his setting the thing off. By that standard, your moving to Earth might be the one thing that would keep him from detonating it before we find it.”

“Amanda raises a most cogent point,” Dahak agreed, and Colin frowned.

“Both Dahak and Amanda are correct,” Tsien pressed as he sensed Colin weakening. “You are the Imperium’s head of state, responsible for protecting the continuity of government and the succession, and if you and Jiltanith are ‘Mister X’s’ targets, you may provoke him into action by remaining on Birhat.”

“First,” Colin said, “you’re assuming he has some means of setting this thing off at will. To do that, he’d have to have someone here to transmit a firing order, which would just happen to kill whoever transmitted it. I’m willing to concede that he might have set up a patsy without telling the sucker what would happen, but Mister X himself certainly won’t sit around on ground zero. That means he’d have to get the firing order to his patsy by hypercom, and ’Hursag and Dahak are monitoring all hypercom traffic. It’s still possible he could sneak something past us, but, frankly, I doubt he’d risk it. I think the means of detonation are already in place with a specific timetable.”

“I could take half of Battle Fleet through the holes in that logic,” Adrienne said grimly.

“Maybe. I think it’s valid, but you may have a point—which brings me to my second point. You’re right about protecting the succession and the continuity of government, Tao-ling, but I don’t have to go to Earth for that.”

“Nay, my love!” Jiltanith’s voice was sharp. “I like not thy words—nay, nor thy thought, either!”

“Maybe not, but Tao-ling’s right, and so am I. One of us has to stay, ’Tanni. We can’t just run out on our people. But if we send you to Earth, we protect both the government and the succession.”

Jiltanith looked into his face for a moment, pressing a hand against her swollen abdomen, and her eyes were dark.

“Colin,” she said very quietly, “already have I lost two babes. Wouldst make these yet unborn the pretext for my loss of thee, as well?”

“No,” he said softly. His left hand captured hers, and he cupped her face in his right. “I don’t intend to die, ’Tanni. But if there’s any chance Mister X will hold his detonation schedule unless he can get both of us, then one of us has got to go. All right, I’m selfish enough to be glad of an excuse to get you out of the danger zone and protect you. I admit that. But you’re pregnant, ’Tanni. Even if I do die, the succession is safe as long as you’re alive. I’m sorry, babe, but it’s your duty to go.”

“ ‘Duty.’ ‘Protect.’ ” The words were a harsh, ugly curse in her lovely mouth. “Oh, how dearly have those words cost me o’er the centuries!”

“I know.” He closed his eyes and drew her close, hugging her fiercely while their friends watched, and one hand stroked her raven’s-wing hair. “I know,” he whispered. “Neither of us asked for the job, but we’ve got it, love. Now we’ve got to do it. Please, ’Tanni. Don’t fight me on this.”

“Did it offer chance o’ victory, then would I fight thee to the end,” she said into his shoulder, and her voice was bleak. “Yet thou’rt what thou art, and I—I am duty’s slave, and for duty’s sake and the lives I bear within I will not fight thee. But know this, Colin MacIntyre. The day these babes draw breath do I leave them in Father’s care and return hither, and not thou nor all the power of thy crown will stop me then.”