The Court of a Thousand Suns (Sten #3). Allan Cole

him, a little bit amazed, and then relaxing into humor. Sten felt himself flush in embarrassment. He stiffened to attention, giving himself a mental kick in the behind. He was still a little too Mantis hair-trigger for palace duty.

      The Emperor laughed. “Relax, Captain.”

      Sten slid into a perfectly formal “at ease.”

      The Emperor grinned, started to make a joke about Sten’s way-too-military understanding of the word “relax,” buried it to save Sten further embarrassment, and turned away. Instead, he plucked at the party clothing he was wearing and sniffed distastefully. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to change out of this. I smell like a sow in heat.”

      “Everything’s fine, sir,” he said. “Now, if I may be dismis —”

      “You disappoint me, Captain.” The Emperor’s voice boomed back from the changing room. Sten flinched, running over his potential sins. What had he missed?

      “You’ve been on the job now — how long is it?”

      “Ninety-four cycles, sir.”

      “Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, ninety-odd days of snooping around my rooms, getting on my clotting nerves with all your security bother, and not once — not once have you offered to show me that famous knife of yours.”

      “Knife, sir?” Sten was honestly bewildered for a second. And then he remembered: the knife in his arm. “Oh, that knife.”

      The Emperor stepped into view. He was already wearing a gray, nondescript coverall. “Yeah. That knife.”

      “Well, it’s in my Mantis profile, sir, and — and . . . and . . .

      “There are a lot of things in your Mantis file, Captain. I reviewed it just the other day. Just double-checking to see if I wanted to keep you on in your present position.”

      He noted Sten’s look of concern and took pity. “Besides the knife, I also noticed that you drink.”

      Sten didn’t know how to answer that, so he remained wisely silent.

      “How well you drink, however, remains to be seen.” The Eternal Emperor started for the other room. He stopped at the door.

      “That’s an invitation, Captain, not an order. Assuming you’re off duty now.” He disappeared through the door.

      Sten had learned many things from Mantis Section. He knew how to kill — had killed — in many ways. He could overthrow governments, plot strategic attacks and retreats, or build a low-yield nuclear bomb. But one thing he had learned more than anything else: When the CO issues an invitation, it’s an order. It just so happened that his current CO was the Big Boss Himself.

      So he made an instant executive decision. He throat-miked some hurried orders to his second and rostered himself off duty. Then he braced himself and entered the Eternal Emperor’s study.

      * * * *

      The smoky liquid smoothed down Sten’s throat and cuddled into his stomach. He lowered the shot glass and looked into the waiting eyes of the Emperor. “That’s Scotch?”

      The Emperor nodded and poured them both another drink.

      “What do you think?”

      “Nice,” Sten said, consciously dropping the sir. He assumed that officer’s mess rules applied even with the Eternal Emperor. “I can’t figure why Colonel — I mean General — Mahoney always had a problem with it.”

      The Emperor raised an eyebrow. “Mahoney talked about my Scotch?”

      “Oh, he liked it,” Sten covered. “He just said it took getting used to.”

      He shot back another glass, tasting the smoothness.

      Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t take any getting used to at all.”

      It was a nice thing to say, at that point in the conversation. The Emperor had spent years trying to perfect that drink of his youth.

      “We’ll have another one of these,” the Emperor said, pouring out two more shots, “and then I’ll get out some heavy-duty spirits.”

      He carefully picked up Sten’s knife, which was lying between them, examined it one more time, and then handed it back. It was a slim, double-edged dagger with a needle tip and a skeleton grip. Hand-formed by Sten from an impossibly rare crystal, its blade was only 2.5 mm thick, tapering to a less-than-hair-edge 15 molecules wide. Blade pressure alone would cause it to slice through a diamond. The Emperor watched closely as Sten curled his fingers and let the knife slip into his arm-muscle sheath.

      “Clotting marvelous,” the Emperor finally said. “Not exactly regulation, but then neither are you.” He let his words sink in a little. “Mahoney promised me you wouldn’t be.”

      Sten didn’t know what to say to this, so he just sipped at his drink.

      “Ex-street thug,” the Emperor mused, “to Captain of the Imperial Guard. Not bad, young man. Not bad.”

      He shrugged back some Scotch. “What are your plans after this, Captain?” He quickly raised a hand before Sten blurted something stupid like “at your Majesty’s pleasure,” or whatever. “I mean, do you really like all this military strut and stuff business?”

      Sten shrugged. “It’s home,” he said honestly.

      The Emperor nodded thoughtfully.

      “I used to think like that. About engineering, not the clotting military, for Godsakes. Don’t like the military. Never have. Even if I am the commander in clotting chief of more soldiers than you could . . . you could . . .”

      He left that dangling while he finished his drink.

      “Anyway. Engineering it was. That was gonna be my whole life — my permanent home.”

      The Eternal Emperor shook his head in amazement at this thousand-year-old-plus memory.

      “Things change, Captain,” he finally said. “You can’t believe how things change.”

      Sten tried a silent nod of understanding, hoping he was doing one of his better acting jobs. The Emperor caught this, and just laughed. He reached into the drawer of his antique desk, pulled out a bottle of absolutely colorless liquid, popped open the bottle and poured two glasses full to the brim.

      “This is your final test, young Captain Sten,” he said. “Your final, ninety-cycle-on-the-job test. Pass this one and I okay you for the Imperial health plan.”

      The Emperor slugged back the 180-proof alcohol and then slammed down the glass. He watched closely as Sten picked up the glass, sniffed it briefly, shrugged, and then poured white fire down his throat.

      Sten set the glass down, then, with no expression on his face, slid the glass toward the bottle for some more. “Pretty good stuff. A little metallic . . .”

      “That’s from the radiator,” the Emperor snapped. “I distill it in a car radiator. For the flavor.”

      “Oh,” Sten said, still without expression. “Interesting . . . You wouldn’t mind if I tried some more . . . ?”

      He poured two more equally full glasses. He gave a silent toast, and the Emperor watched in amazement as Sten drank it down like water.

      “Come on,” the Emperor said in exasperation. “That’s the most powerful straight alcohol you’ve ever tasted in your life and you know it. Don’t con me.”

      Sten shook his head in innocence. “It’s pretty potent, all right,” he said. “But — no offense — I have tried something stronger.”

      “Like what?” the Emperor fumed.

      “Stregg,” Sten said.

      “What in clot is Stregg?”

      “An ET drink,”