“I already know your spiel, Your Majesty. I’m not going to answer your questions.” Bronze was, if anything, almost insultingly cocky.
“And die instead, Mr. Bronsky?” The Empress, by comparison, was cool and reserved.
“Why not? You’re going to kill me anyway,” Bronze pointed out. “There’s nothing left in it for me but to deny you what you want.”
The Empress shrugged.
“I’ll get the answers anyway.”
“No, you won’t. One-word answers won’t tell you what you really want to know. You know it and I know it. Make me a better deal, Your Majesty.”
Ashton tried not to gape at the unmitigated gall of the man.
“I cannot allow you to run free in the Empire, Mr. Bronsky,” the Empress countered.
“I don’t want to die, but life in prison doesn’t thrill me either, Your Majesty.”
“Then we are at an impasse, Mr. Bronsky.”
“Not necessarily, Your Majesty. Isn’t banishment one of the traditional punishments in a system of high justice?” Bronze was negotiating for his life, gambling that the Empress didn’t really want another death such as Kaplan’s, and Ashton was abruptly reminded of his conversation with Cally regarding Bronsky’s gambling lifestyle, and the very nature of his life.
“You mean exile, Mr. Bronsky?”
“No, Your Majesty. Banishment,” Bronze clarified. “Put me on a passenger ship to some other polity. Let me be their problem. If I am ever caught in the Empire again, it is an automatic death penalty.”
The Empress considered for a long moment.
“Very well, Mr. Bronsky. If you answer my questions honestly and completely, banishment it shall be.”
Then she rose and left the room.
But for all his smooth negotiation, his high-stakes gamble, he misread the abilities of the parties assembled against him.
“Damn,” Ashton grumbled quietly, in the back of the observing room, “has he said anything truthful yet?”
“Not much,” Lieutenant Cox noted, keeping an eye on the readings from the chair. “What say you, Dr. Galway?”
“You nailed that one,” Galway agreed. “He committed to an agreement with Her Majesty to save his life, but he’s not fulfilling his end of the bargain. He just wants us to think he is.”
Abruptly the Empress spoke.
“Lieutenant Cox, please tell Captain Mercer to pause the questioning. Dr. Galway, come with me. Bring your bag. Major Dunham, would you attend?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came the chorus of response.
A grim Empress Ilithyia II rose and left the room, accompanied by Major Dunham and Dr. Galway.
The door to the interrogation room opened abruptly, and the Empress entered, accompanied by the physician.
“I’ve heard enough,” she declared in a disgusted tone. “You’ve been watching the doctor’s notes, Captain Mercer?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And you know where he’s been lying, Captain Mercer?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Very well, Captain Mercer.” She gestured to Dr. Galway. “Drug the correct answers out of him, then execute him.”
“WAIT!” Bronsky cried, shocked, even as the Empress turned to leave. She paused in the door and looked back at him, raising a sardonic eyebrow.
“Yes, Mr. Bronsky?”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said, sounding borderline desperate to Ashton’s ear. “Ask me the questions again.”
“No, Mr. Bronsky.” She shook her head. “I’ll not give you a chance to lie more artfully. We may not be able to detect it.”
“But you can’t do this!”
“Why not? Mr. Bronsky, are you under the illusion that I’m one of the good guys? That you can trifle with me, because I’m naïve? I assure you, I am neither. I am the Empress of Sintar. I am pledged to protect my subjects in this, my Empire. There are no rules, no morals, no code of honor to which I adhere other than that one overriding purpose. You sat down by mistake at a very high stakes table, Mr. Bronsky, and you’re playing out of your league.”
Bang, Ashton thought. House wins. Game over.
In short order, under the influence of Dr. Galway’s drugs, the matter had been laid out. Stanley “Stash” Gorecki, the IPD’s hired enforcer, a man with whom Ashton was entirely too familiar, had hired Bronze for numerous hits, including several that Ashton had laid out in his profile, as well as the Medved woman. Based on prior knowledge of the man, Bronze had assumed certain references that Gorecki had used meant he was doing the bidding of members of the Imperial Council and their underlings.
Damn, a fifty-thousand-credit fee ain’t small potatoes, either, Ashton realized, as he listened to Bronze spilling his guts under the influence of the drugs. No wonder he got himself a nice expensive lifestyle once he started working for ‘em regularly. Then wasted it. He shook his head in disgust.
In the end, it only took about another hour to milk Bronsky dry. When he had answered every question put to him – including a number that Gorski and Ashton sent to Mercer through VR about the other murders in Ashton’s profile, and gotten confirmation on all of them – Mercer turned to Galway.
“All right, Doctor. Carry out the execution.”
Galway injected one more drug, and ten seconds later, Josip Bronsky, alias Joey Bronze, alias ‘JB,’ slumped in the chair, dead.
“And that takes care of that,” Gorski said.
Looking for Trouble
“Time for one more, Nick,” Gorski said the next day. “Are you up to it?”
“Sure am, sir,” Ashton replied. “You know me by now.”
“You know that you were seen arresting Bronsky, right?”
“So?” Ashton shrugged. “What else is new? By who?”
“Imperial Police stooges, like usual. You’ve been made. Again. They’re looking for you. Word on the street confirms it.”
“Aw, shit. Hey, it wasn’t like I was alone in the doing.”
“No, but we gave you the chance to show your stuff by putting you in the lead. And it was obvious, you were
