Heirs of Empire

down his cheek.

“I should’ve argued. God, how could I be so stupid! Both of them, and Sandy and Tam—” Hatcher stopped, cursing himself as Colin’s face clenched. Venting his self-hate could only hurt his friends, but he would never forgive himself. Never. Terra had seemed so powerful, so safe … and so he’d let not merely both heirs to the throne but the children of all of his closest friends sail aboard a single ship, never reflecting for a moment that even the mightiest starship might malfunction and die. Of course it was unlikely, but it was his job to expect the unlikely.

“Have you told the others?” Colin asked, and Hatcher shook his head.

“No. I— Well, you and ’Tanni needed to know first, and—”

“I understand.” Colin cut him off softly, hugging Jiltanith as she wept. “It’s not your fault, Ger. I don’t want to hear that from you ever again.” He held the admiral’s eyes until Hatcher gave a tiny nod, then drew a deep, ragged breath.

“ ’Tanni?” His voice was gentle, and Jiltanith raised her face. She stared at him in mute agony, and he remembered the final engagement at Zeta Trianguli as their ship shuddered and bucked under the pounding of Achuultani warheads and Tamman’s Royal Birhat vaporized before their eyes. She’d wept then, too, wept for the friends dying about them, but her commands had come firm and steady through her tears, with all the invincible courage he loved so much. The courage that had broken at last.

He cupped her face between his palms, and her diamond tears wrenched at him, for he understood her too well. She’d been wounded too often in the endless battle against Anu. Her softness had withdrawn behind a fiery temper and a warrior’s armor forged by a lifetime of warfare and lost friends. But it was still there, however hard she found showing it, and when she loved, she loved as she did everything else—with all she was.

“We have to go, ’Tanni.” Fury sparked suddenly within her hurt, but he made himself meet it. “We have to,” he repeated. “They’re our friends.”

She drew a quick, angry breath … then held it and closed her eyes. One hand rose to his cheek, and she nodded and pressed a kiss upon his wrist. Anguish still filled her eyes when she opened them once more, but there was understanding as well. The understanding that she had to go on, not simply because her friends needed her, but because if she didn’t there was nothing left but a dark, bottomless gulf, waiting to suck her under forever.

“Aye,” she whispered, and looked at Hatcher. “Forgive me, dear Gerald.” She held out a trembling hand, and the admiral took it. “Well I know thy grief, sweet friend. ’Tis ill done to heap mine own upon it.”

” ’Tanni, I—” Tears fogged Hatcher’s voice, and she squeezed gently.

“Nay, Gerald. ’Tis no more fault o’ thine than mine. And Colin hath the right. Our dearest friends do need our aid … e’en as we need theirs.” She managed a soft, sad smile and stood. “Let us go to them.”

* * *

A chair squeaked as the man in it finished the report and turned to look out his office window. The Imperium was in mourning, and even the most fiery malcontents were muted by the shock and sorrow of a race. Every flag of humankind flew at half-mast, but there was no sorrow in his heart. The heirs were gone, and the children of the imperial family’s closest friends had gone with them. Grief and loss would weaken them, make them less vigilant, blunt their perceptions and reactions, and that was good.

He rose and walked to the window, hands folded behind him, looking down on the crowds below, then rested his eyes upon the spire of the Cenotaph. The names on the memorial were endless, and once he’d hated every one of them, for they named the people who’d toppled his patron. But he hated them no longer, for in toppling Anu they’d cleared his path to power, and his palms tingled as he waited to reach out and grasp it.

He pursed his lips, pondering his preparations. The gravitonic warhead was almost ready, and so was his plan for delivering it when the time was right. He’d been more worried about that than he’d cared to admit to Francine, but not anymore. It wouldn’t be easy, but with his foreknowledge and the holos of the artist’s sketches he could fabricate his duplicate in plenty of time. And, of course, it would never do to deliver it too soon, anyway. He needed Stepmother closer to operational, for it was essential to reduce delay to an absolute minimum if his coup was to succeed.

And it would succeed. He was like a spider, he thought, weaving his webs at the very heart of empire, unnoticed yet perfectly placed to observe and thwart every countermove even before it was launched. Just as he’d been placed to act on the opportunity Imperial Terra presented.

He smiled again—a thin, triumphant smile. With a little luck, the heirs’ deaths might even drive a wedge between the imperial family and Dahak, for it was Dahak who’d designed Imperial Terra, supervised her construction, and suggested sending them out aboard her. With Cruz and his family dead, no one would ever know what had really happened, and the grieving parents would be more than human if some secret part of them didn’t blame Dahak for their loss.

The time would come. Not this year, perhaps, but soon, and then Colin and Jiltanith MacIntyre would die, as well, in one deadly stroke which would decapitate the Imperium … and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. Nothing at all.

He smothered a soft laugh, savoring the victory to come and the exquisite irony which would make him Colin’s legal successor. He, the Terra-born “degenerate” Kirinal and Anu had despised even while they groomed him as their tool, would achieve what Anu had only dreamed of: utter and complete dominion. And it would all be legal!

A soft sound warned him, and he turned, banishing his smile and replacing it with soft, sad sympathy as Horus walked into his office. The old man’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes were haunted, but like his daughter and son-in-law, he was making himself go on. Making himself discharge his duties, never guessing how futile it all truly was.

“Sorry to bother you,” Horus said, “but I wondered if you’d finished that report on the Calcutta bio- enhancement center?”

“Yes, I have.” He crossed to his desk and handed over the datachip folio from the blotter.

“Thanks.” Horus took it and started back to his office, then stopped and turned as a throat cleared itself behind him.

“I just … Well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Horus. If there’s anything I can do—anything at all—please let me know.”

“I will.” Horus managed a sad smile of his own. “It helps just to know friends care,” he said softly.

“I’m glad. Because we do care, Horus,” Lawrence Jefferson said gently. “More, perhaps, than you’ll ever know.”

Chapter Ten

“I don’t think we’re going to nail it down any closer, Harry,” Sean sighed from the captain’s couch. He rubbed his forehead in a futile effort to relieve the subliminal ache of hours of concentration on his neural feeds, then rose and stretched hugely.

“I’m afraid you’re right.” His sister sat up in the astrogator’s couch and twisted a lock of sable hair around a fingertip.

Sandy lay like a dead woman in the tactical officer’s couch, but Sean was used to her utter concentration on the task in hand. Besides, he could see her breathing. He flipped his feed into her net, nudging her gently, and felt her acknowledgment. She began to disengage from her painstaking computer diagnostics, and he fired another message off to Tamman and Brashan, summoning them from their examination of Engineering for a conference.

He clasped his hands behind him and watched the display while Harriet rose and worked through a few tension-relieving stretches. Israel drifted in interstellar space, drive down while her tiny