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

Bar in Century City, California. There they discovered the wonders of Stregga, the Italian liqueur. It means witch in Italian. Here’s the secret to making your own Stregg: mix one part Stregga with one part white Tequila. Drink straight, or pour over ice. Some like to add a little simple syrup. We didn’t.

      Note

      The titles of Books One, Two, and Three are the official ranks Augustus won from the Roman senate to become Emperor. Princeps means “Leading Man.” Imperator, “Military Commander.” This word is the Latin root for Emperor. Pater Patriae means “Father of the Fatherland.”

      The title of Book Four translates as “We Who Are About to Die Salute You.” It was the famous cry of the gladiators as they paid respects to their emperor before engaging in the bloodbaths of the ancient circuses.

      BOOK ONE

      PRINCEPS

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE SHIP BULKED monstrous. Each of the decahedron’s sides measured nearly a square kilometer.

      There was but one man on board. He floated, motionless, in a shallow pool that curved in the center of one compartment. His eyes opened. Blue. Incurious, like a newly born child. Some time passed.

      A valve activated, and the liquid drained out of the pool. One side dropped away. The man sat up and lowered his legs to the deck, moving slowly and carefully like an invalid testing himself after a long time bedridden. The deck was warm.

      He might have sat there for a moment, an hour, or a day before a voice spoke. It came from everywhere.

      “There is food and drink in the next chamber.”

      Obediently the man pushed himself to his feet. He swayed, then recovered. On a low stand beside the pool/ bed was a blue coverall. He glanced at it briefly, then walked to a wall. It was smooth and blank except for a circular palmswitch. He touched the switch.

      The wall became a screen. Vid? Imaging radar? Computer simulation?

      Outside lay space/not space. It was black, and it was all colors. It hurt the man’s eyes. He palmed the switch once more, and the screen became a wall.

      Still naked, he padded through a doorway.

      A table was set for one. The dishes were covered. The man lifted one cover and scooped food up with his fingers. He chewed, then swallowed. His expression was still unchanged.

      He wiped his fingers on his thigh and walked into another compartment, where he saw a reclining chair with a steel-gleaming helmet on it. Odd tendrils curled from the helmet.

      The man sat down and put the helmet on.

      There were other people in the room. No. He was outside. He was wearing clothing—some kind of uniform. The other people were all smiling and laughing and trying to touch him. He let them. He heard himself saying words he did not yet understand.

      He noted one person amid the throng. He had a very pale face, and his eyes gleamed. The pale-faced man stretched out his hand to shake. Suddenly he drew something metal-shining from his clothing.

      The man felt blows in his stomach. Felt himself falling backward. Felt pain. Pain rising until... until everything stopped.

      The man took off the helmet. He was back in the compartment, back in the reclining chair.

      The voice spoke again. “E-time since deactivation: six years, three months, two days.”

      The man’s expression changed slightly. A thought drifted through his mind: Wrong. Five years late. Then the thought was discarded as meaningless. What was “late?” He rose.

      “You have ten ship-days before departure.”

      The man nodded once. He returned to the mess compartment. He was hungry again.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS A QUIET little planet in a nondescript system overseen by a dying yellow star. The system had no particular history, was well off any major trade or tourist routes, and rarely had any visitors.

      Many E-years before, an Imperial Survey Mission had made a desultory study and found little of interest. The science officer had duly noted that it was about .87 E-size, had commensurate gravity, E-normal atmosphere, and sat three AU from its sun. The climate was tropical to subarctic, and the planet supported any number of thriving life forms. The top predator on land was a shy, catlike creature that proved to be of no danger to anyone.

      There were also “No beings of higher development observed.”

      The planet was dubbed Survey World XM-Y-1134. And for several hundred years, that was its sole name—although it was unlikely anyone ever asked.

      It got a proper name of sorts from a restless entrepreneur who built a mansion in the temperate zone for himself and his hangers-on, then briefly toyed with the idea of turning it into a remote resort. To this end, he had constructed a state-of-the-art spaceport. Whether or not the idea had merit, no one would ever learn. The entrepreneur lost three or four fortunes and came to an obscure, rather sad end.

      But the planet didn’t mind. It hummed and wobbled busily about its orbit as it had done for several billion years, scratching its fur against a cosmic stump every few hundred millions of years or so—and wiping out any life-forms that had become too prolific and giving another group a start.

      The planet’s new name was Smallbridge. The source for that name was buried along with the entrepreneur and his conceit.

      Sten liked it fine. He had spent more than five years exploring Smallbridge’s beaches, marshes, broad plains and deserts, forests and ice floes, sometimes with eager companions, sometimes alone. There had been a few adventures—and more than a few trysts with lovely women. But nothing had stuck. He had encountered no one like the steel-willed Bet of his youth. Or the relentless Lisa Haines. Or the fiery gambler, St. Clair.

      In the last year or so, he had found himself just going through the motions of living. He had fallen into a dark mood he couldn’t shake.

      During rational moments, he would rouse himself. Give himself a good talking to. Call himself all kinds of a rich fool of a clot.

      He had everything any being could want, didn’t he? Gypsy Ida, his old Mantis teammate, had seen to that. He and Alex Kilgour had exited the Tahn POW camp wealthy beyond their dreams. While they had languished in the Heath slammer, Ida had rolled their ever-growing back pay into one investment after another until the result was two not so smallish fortunes.

      Besides the money, Kilgour wound up with the poshest estate on his heavy-world home of Edinburgh.

      Sten got his own planet.

      Thanks a clot of a lot, Ida. Now, what?

      Come on, don’t blame the Rom. As Mahoney would have said: “Don’t be kicking over the milk the cow gave.” Mahoney would have reminded Sten that he had plucked him off the factory world of Vulcan, a young Delinq half a breath from being brain-burned. Mahoney would sneer and point out that Sten had crawled through the mud and worse to rise from the ranks as an infantry grunt to a deadly Mantis operative to commander of the Emperor’s personal bodyguard to hero of the Tahn wars—and finally to admiral. He would brush over the oceans of gore Sten was personally responsible for and tell him that he was still a young man and just needed to pluck his finger out and get back to business.

      But Mahoney was dead.

      Sten’s old boss, the Eternal Emperor, would have laughed at him, poured a double shot of stregg to put blood in his eye, and sent him off to face a suitable enemy. It wouldn’t matter much who the enemy might be. It would be enough that the beings were threatening the peace and security of an empire that had thrived for nearly three thousand years.

      But the Emperor, too, was dead.

      The last time Sten had seen the Emperor, he had sworn to the man that his career in the military was over. This despite promises of many honors and much important work to come in the aftermath of the Tahn conflict that