The Return of the Emperor (Sten #6). Allan Cole

the particulars of Volmer’s murder, the recruiting of Chapelle, and the subsequent death of the Emperor remained unknown to the other conspirators.

      The members of the privy council watched the events at the spaceport unfold on their vidscreens along with the rest of the Empire. And there were no more fascinated viewers. They saw the royal party veer to the receiving line at Soward. They cheered Sullamora as their private hero. They waited in anticipation for the fatal shot. The tension was incredible. In a moment, they would be kings and queens.

      Then the Emperor died.

      Mission accomplished!

      The explosion that followed surprised them as much as anyone else. The bomb might have been a nice touch. But it was inconceivable that Sullamora would commit suicide.

      The council members assumed the madman, Chapelle, was merely making sure of his target. Oh, well. Poor Sullamora. Drakh happens.

      Although it meant there were more riches to divide, they honestly mourned the man. As the chief of all transport and most major ship building, Tanz Sullamora could not be easily replaced. They also badly needed his skills at subterfuge, as well as his knowledge of the inner workings of Imperial politics.

      His death meant that they had to learn on the job.

      They didn’t learn very well.

      The Emperor had stored the AM2 in great depots strategically placed about his Empire. The depots fed immense tankers that sped this way and that, depending upon the need and the orders of the Emperor. He alone controlled the amount and the regularity of the fuel.

      Defy him, and he would beggar the rebel system or industry. Obey him, and he would see there was always a plentiful supply at a price he deemed fair for his own needs.

      The privy council immediately saw the flaw in that system, as far as their own survival was concerned. Not one member would trust any other enough to give away such total control.

      So they divided the AM2 up in equal shares, assuring each of their own industries had cheap fuel. They also used it to punish personal enemies and reward, or create, new allies.

      Power, in other words, was divided four ways.

      Occasionally they would all agree that there was a single threat to their future. They would meet, consider, and act.

      In the beginning, they went on a spending spree. With all that free fuel, they vastly expanded their holdings, building new factories, gobbling up competitors, or blindsiding corporations whose profits they desired.

      The Emperor had priced AM2 on three levels: The cheapest went to developing systems. The next was for public use, so that governments could provide for the basic needs of their various populaces. The third, and highest, was purely commercial.

      The privy council set one high price to be paid by everyone, except themselves and their friends. The result was riches beyond even their inflated dreams.

      But there was one worm gnawing a great hole in their guts. It was a worm they chose too long to ignore.

      The great depots they controlled had to be supplied. But by whom? Or what?

      In the past, robot ships—tied together in trains so long they exceeded the imagination—had appeared at the depots filled to the brim with Anti-Matter Two. Many hundreds of years had passed since anyone had asked where they might come from.

      An assumption replaced the question. Important people knew—important people who followed the Emperor’s orders.

      Like all assumptions, it rose up and bit the privy council in their collective behinds.

      When the Emperor died, the robot ships stopped. At that moment, the AM2 at hand was all they possessed. It would never increase.

      It took a long while for that to sink in. The privy council was so busy dealing with the tidal wave of problems—as well as their own guilt—that they just assumed the situation to be temporary.

      They sent their underlings to question the bureaucrats at the fuel office. Those poor beings puzzled at them. “Don’t you know?” they asked. For a time, the privy council was afraid to admit they didn’t.

      More underlings were called. Every fiche, every document, every doodle the Emperor had scrawled was searched out and examined.

      Nothing.

      This was an alarming state of affairs, worthy of panic, or, at least, a little rationing. They only panicked a little—and rationed not at all.

      They were secretive beings themselves, they reasoned. It was an art form each had mastered in his or her path to success. Therefore: An emperor had to be the most secretive creature of all. Proof: His long reign—and their momentary failure at figuring his system out.

      Many other efforts were launched, each more serious and desperate than the last. Real panic was beginning to set in.

      Finally a study committee had been formed from among their most able executives. The committee’s objectives were twofold. One: Find the AM2. Second: Determine exactly the supplies on hand and recommend their disposition until objective number one had been reached.

      Unfortunately, the second objective obscured the first for more than a year. If the Emperor had been alive, he would have howled gales of laughter over their folly.

      “They tried that with the Seven Sisters,” he would have hooted. “How much oil do you really have, please, sir? Don’t lie, now. It isn’t in the international interest.”

      The council would not have known what the Seven Sisters was all about, or the terrible need to know about something so useless and plentiful as oil. But they would have gotten the drift.

      When asked, each member lied—poor-mouthed, as the old wildcatters would have said. The next time they were asked, they were just as likely to inflate the figures. It depended upon the political winds about the conference table.

      What about the rest of the Empire? After they had been treated so niggardly, what would the truth gain the council?

      Actually, the first outsider who had been questioned soon spread the word. Hoarding fever struck. There was less readily available AM2 than ever before.

      Adding to the council’s dilemma was a whole host of other problems.

      During the Tahn wars, the Emperor constantly had been forced to deal with shaky allies and insistent fence sitters. When the tide turned, all of them swore long and lasting fealty. That, however, did not remove the cause for their previous discontent. The leaders of many of those systems had to deal with unruly populations; beings who had never been that thrilled with the Imperial system and became less so during the war.

      Peace did not automatically solve such doubts. The Eternal Emperor had just been turning his attention to these matters when he was slain. The problems would have been exceedingly difficult to solve under any circumstances. It was especially so for his self-appointed heirs. If those allies of the moment had not trusted the Eternal Emperor to have their best interests at heart, than who the clot were these new guys? The council ruled by Parliamentary decree, but most beings in the Empire were cynical about the Parliament. They saw it as a mere rubber stamp for Imperial orders.

      The Eternal Emperor had never discouraged that view. It was one of the keys to his mystique.

      The Emperor had been a student and admirer of some of the ancient czarist policies. The czars were among the last Earth practitioners of rule by godhead. They had millions of peasants who were brutally treated. The czars used the members of their royal court as middle beings. It was they who wielded the lash and kept the rations to starvation level. The peasants did not always submit. History was full of their many violent uprisings. But the peasants always blamed the nobility for their troubles. It was the noble corpses they hung on posts, not the czar’s.

      He was a father figure. A kind and gentle man who thought only of his poor subjects. It was the nobility who always took advantage of his nature, hiding their evil deeds from him. And if only he knew how terrible