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

scrap of truth to this—but it worked.

      Except for the last czar, who was openly disdainful of his people.

      “That’s why he was the last,” the Emperor once told Mahoney.

      It was just one of those little lessons of history that the privy council was unaware of. Although if they had known of it, it was doubtful if they would have understood it. Very few business beings understood politics—which was why they made terrible rulers.

      Another enormous, festering problem was how to deal with the Tahn.

      To Kyes, the Kraa twins, and the others, it was simple. The Tahn had been defeated. To the victors go the spoils, and so on.

      To that end, the privy council had gutted all their systems. They had hauled off the factories for cannibalization or scrap, seized all resources, and beaten the various populations into submission and slave labor. They also spent a great deal of credits they didn’t have to garrison their former enemy. The rape of the Tahn empire produced an instant windfall. But before they had time to congratulate themselves for their brilliance, the privy council saw all that gain going over the dike in an ever growing flood.

      The Eternal Emperor could have told them that tyranny was not cost efficient.

      An economic miracle was what the Emperor had in mind. At least, that was how he would have portrayed it. Certainly he had reprisals in mind. The purge would have been massive and complete. He would have wiped out all traces of the culture that had bred War into the war-loving beings.

      But he would have replaced it with something. The will to fight would have been harnessed to the will to compete. Aid every bit as massive as the purge would have been provided. In his thinking, such single-minded beings as the Tahn would eventually produce credits in such plenty that they would soon become one of the most important capitalist centers in his empire.

      They would have made wonderful customers of AM2.

      Which brought the dilemma of the privy council to full circle.

      Where was the AM2?

      CHAPTER FIVE

      KYES SAW THE storm warnings before his ship touched down at Soward.

      Prime World’s main spaceport was nearly empty. A five-kilometer comer was a jumble of tugs, and from the pitting and streaks of rust on their bulky sides, they looked as if they had been idle for months.

      The few liners he saw were pocked with the viral scale that attacked all deep-space ships and ate steadily away at them if left untended. He saw no work crews about. The once vital, bustling heart of the Empire looked like an ancient harridan who had lost even dim memories of lovers past.

      A glistening phalanx of military vehicles was waiting for him. They were in stark contrast to the degeneration afflicting Soward. The tall, silvery being with the red mark of his kind throbbing angrily on his smooth skull slid into the seat of his official gravcar. He motioned the driver to proceed.

      As the gravcar and its escorts hummed toward the entrance, they skirted the gaping black roped-off crater torn out by the bomb blast that had taken the Emperor. There had been a serious proposal to build a memorial to the Eternal Emperor at the site. Kyes himself had pressed the measure—as a gesture to the being whose memory he and his colleagues based their own authority upon. There had been no argument. Funds had immediately been approved and a designer set. That had been during his last visit, more than a year ago. As yet, not one iota of work had begun.

      He was greeted by more squalor as they cleared the port gates. Empty warehouses. Closed businesses, boarding hanging from the vacant eyes of their windows, where gleaming goods had once enticed an affluent population. Unlicensed beggars and crowds of idle beings eyed him as he passed. A shambling tub of a lout, wearing the rags of a loader, glared at the flags of office fluttering on Kyes’s transport. She looked him straight in the eye, then spat on the broken pavement.

      Kyes leaned forward to his driver. “What’s happened?” He waved at the desolation around them.

      The driver needed no further explanation. “Don’t bother yourself with them, Sr. Kyes,” she snarled. “They’re nothing but slackers. There’s plenty of jobs, but they won’t take ‘em. Just want to suck on the public tit. Now they’re whinin’ and groanin’ ‘cause decent, hard-workin’ folks are tellin’ ‘em: ‘No work, no credits.’ If the Eternal Emperor—bless him—were still around, he’d straighten ‘em out fast.”

      The driver stuttered to a stop as she realized that Kyes might take her comments as criticism of the privy council. Then she recovered. A toady’s smile wreathed her broad face.

      “Not that alia yuz ain’t doin’ best ya can. These’r terrible times. Terrible times. Wouldn’t take on yer job for a fistful a credits. I was tellin’ me hub just the other...” The driver droned on. Condescension heaped upon forced humility. Kyes shut her out. He also made no objection to her talking, much less the language. It marked her as on the payroll of the Kraas. There were few things the twins even bothered being subtle about.

      The reason Kyes was on Prime World after so long an absence was that he had been called to an emergency session of the privy council. The chief of the AM2 commission was scheduled to reveal the full details of his committee’s study on the fuel situation. More to the point, he was to spell out exactly when the search for the Emperor’s hidden resources was to be concluded.

      Kyes hoped there would be better news here than the depressing report he had received shortly before he left for Prime World.

      A crucial mission had been blown. That a number of military operatives had been killed in the process didn’t concern Kyes. An important confidant of the Eternal Emperor’s—one Admiral Sten—and his longtime aide, Alex Kilgour, had eluded the net spread for them.

      The idea that had launched the hunt for all of the beings who had been close to the Emperor had not originated with Kyes. Possibly it had been the Kraa twins. It didn’t matter. Kyes had immediately seen that it could be a shortcut solution to his own dilemma. Round them all up, put them under the brainscan, and voila! All the Emperor’s secrets would come tumbling out.

      It had taken many, many months to lash that idea into action. Kyes had done the lashing. His plight was far more desperate than the others. It still amazed him how much inertia had to be overcome when dealing with a five-member ruling board. He and his colleagues were used to running their own shows, without compromise or consultation. But finally, the Mantis teams had gone out and quickly returned, prey kicking and mewling in their nets. The result: Zed. Zero. Not one tip or hint on the source of the AM2... or anything else.

      Kyes had analyzed the long list of suspects, and more and more he had come to admire just how close-mouthed the Emperor had been. Although his analysis came after the fact, it became apparent that only a very few beings might be able to help. None of those had been among the Mantis teams’ catches. Two individuals stood out.

      One was retired Fleet Marshal Ian Mahoney. He was officially listed as dead. Kyes had reason to doubt that. He had several reasons. The most important was the gut feeling he got studying the man.

      The Mercury Corps files pertaining to Mahoney revealed an exceedingly canny individual who would have had no difficulty at all in staging his own demise and remaining out of sight for as long as he thought necessary. The only flaw Kyes could find was his unwavering loyalty to the Emperor, a flaw that made Mahoney potentially dangerous—if he was alive. Assuming the death was a cover, that could suggest only one motive for Mahoney’s actions: The fleet marshal suspected the privy council of assassinating his old employer.

      The second most likely suspect was Admiral Sten, a man who had once commanded the Imperial bodyguard, the Gurkkhas—who, oddly, had all resigned their positions immediately following the Emperor’s death and returned to their homeland of Nepal on Earth. Sten had been an important but shadowy figure during the Tahn conflict. Kyes had also personally reviewed Sten’s files. There were enormous gaps. Very strange. Especially since the gaps seemed to have been ordered by the Emperor himself. Adding to Kyes’s suspicions was that