* * * * *
AN IMPERIAL DEATH
by
Rob Shelsky
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Rob Shelsky on Smashwords
Smashwords ISBN: 978-1-4523-6802-3
An Imperial Death
Copyright © 2010 by Rob Shelsky
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
* * * * *
There is one person I’d especially like to thank, because I owe him so much.
George Kempland, I wish to acknowledge you for your loyalty, dedication, mountains of help, and always just being there for me. Again, thank you, so very much.
* * * * *
AN IMPERIAL DEATH
* * * * *
Prologue
“Once, before there was an Empire…” Jebella said this in a voice that had gone sand-whispery with age. This made her hard to hear. Perhaps this was partly on purpose. Jebella often commanded with quiet where others tried to dominate with noise.
We ceased our frolicking. One by one, we drifted over toward her and knelt in the long blue grass there. We formed a tight cluster near the base of the moss-spattered bench upon which the Great Lady sat. So still was she, this last descendant of the Marcher Lords. With skin like ivory parchment and hair of alabaster, she looked as if she were some sculpture carved of marble, just a mere extension of the very stone supporting her.
We waited, strained to listen over the gentle breeze that blew so constantly here in this valley on the Planet Tiartha, for it was rare these years when Jebella spoke of such ancient things as empires. It was rarer still when she would speak of those times before such times.
“…and before the Sacred Moonflower bloomed for the Imperial Vasilovs,” she now continued. It was as if there had been no pause at all in her speech while we had gathered.
“In the days when aliens still troubled humanity and those others known as the Elders ruled all. Humanity labored under the grave oppression of the Status Quo. Our own distant forebears, Kavin Dubaire, and his beautiful wife, Deidre von Holstead, were the ones tricked into lifting that burden, but it was at such a terrible price…”
Chapter 1
A strident hissing, one dopplered with urgent warning, like a viper’s angry sound before fangs sought flesh, came from out of the darkness.
“Ssshh,” the older of the two men whispered. “We have company.”
Kavin nodded, not knowing if his uncle could see the gesture in such dim light, but he dared not speak. Melkor Shin-Jo was not one for needless theatrics. This caveat was real.
Kavin heard the reason for the warning. Voices wafted from the adjacent balcony. Although he could clearly hear them, Kavin could not see who was speaking. The privacy partition hid the participants in anonymity, despite their being just a few feet away from them.
“Magnus, dear, I said not now! Somebody might come out and see us.” It was a woman’s voice, low and plaintive. Kavin heard what sounded like clothing rustling and then a low throaty moan escaped into the night.
“But I need you. You know how much I need you.” This was a man speaking. He sounded muffled, as if he buried his face into the woman’s neck, or elsewhere…
A high-pitched laugh, a brittle one, floated to them on the air.
“You need me or just my money and connexions? I’m inclined to think it’s both of those last, Magnus, my dearest.”
There was a moment of loaded silence, a premonitory stillness.
“All of them,” the man admitted at last. “Why should I lie about it? I need and want it all, including the seat in the Grand Assembly you promised me. Will you deliver it?”
“Ah, now we get to the truth. So that’s why you dragged me out here. And all this time I thought it was because you wanted to have your way with me.”
“Oh, but I do.” His voice was a gruff rumble, as if filled with a bowstring-taut, sexual tension. “You know how I always do.”
“Of course, but I don’t think we’re talking about sex now, are we?” There came a melancholy sigh. It carried on the darkness to the two listening men.
“Very well,” the woman said, “you shall have what you want within the month. I suppose, considering everything, you’ve earned it well enough. Besides, I’ve already set the wheels in motion and called in a few favors. So you see, you didn’t have to go through this elaborate charade of pretending to want to seduce me. You needn’t have wasted your time.”
“I happen to like seducing you.”
“Do you, Magnus? Why don’t I quite believe that?”
“You doubt me?”
There came a shrill laugh. It pierced Kavin’s ears, had a desperate and brittle note to it.
“Magnus, not only do I doubt you, but what’s more, I don’t trust you--not at all. I never have. And I assure you, I never will.”
“Then why are you so willing to do all this for me?” The voice sounded genuinely surprised, confused.
There was another pause. Again, the two men heard the faint sound of clothing rustling, then the deep throaty groan of male pleasure.
“This is why, Magnus. Oh, darling, how excited you are! Whether or not you ever make it big in politics, you’re already quite big enough for me in other respects. I like that--a lot. Probably, too much, I know.”
“Well, you know what they say; those that can, do, and those that can’t, watch porn of those that can. Why don’t you let me give you a live demonstration?”
“Yes, of course, but not here. Someone might come out.” Her voice sounded breathless now, flustered. “And you must keep your word. My Cluster must never know, not now, not ever. Betray me in this one thing and you've betrayed yourself, because I promise you, you will lose all support from me, and gain my enmity.
“Now,” she added. “Let’s go back inside. We’ll separate for a short while and then I’ll meet you in the Great Foyer. I think we can manage an hour or so alone together somewhere without anyone noticing. There are so many people here tonight. We shouldn’t be missed.”
“It is quite the party.”
“Let’s make one of our own later, shall we?”
“You’ve got it, milady.”
“Not yet, Magnus, but I do intend to have it.” Another laugh came, a resonating, dirtier-sounding one. It faded away into the distance, as the two hidden ones must have left the balcony. Then, except for the faint sigh of the cool evening breeze, an uninterrupted silence followed.
“Well, that was interesting,” Melkor said at last, and in a too-hearty tone of voice. “For all their electronic suppressants, it never occurred to them that some good old-fashioned lurking and eavesdropping would give them away. What a titillating tidbit. I can use this to good advantage.”
“Was that the Lady Astora Canady?” Kavin was curious. “It sounded like her.”
“Oh, yes, it was she. There’s no mistaking that particular voice! And in all her animal glory, the corrupt bitch! More importantly, the man with her was Magnus Vasilov. I recognized his voice immediately, too. He's heir apparent to the Vasilov Cluster, for what little that's worth these days. At least, he will be if he gets his way, and judging by what we’ve just heard, I think he will.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of him, or his Cluster, for that matter. Should I have?”
The older man's teeth flashed a white smile into the darkness.
“Ah, Kavin,” he said, “I sometimes forget how naïve and innocent you are. That’s why I couldn’t convince my fellow Shin-Jo’s to union with you. Pity, that was. I think you’d have made a fine addition to our family.”
“So now I’m too innocent to be a Shin-Jo, and here I thought it was just my undesirable family connexions holding me back.”
Melkor gave a vague shrug, one mostly lost in the dim light. “It’s many things, I’m afraid, Kavin,” he said. “The Cluster wants only those they feel are truly useful. They have no time for the marginal, the unknown quantities. But I think you’re better off this way, truly. Our Cluster is doing well now, but I’m afraid that won’t be so for much longer. Events are becoming unpleasant, to say the very least. A crisis approaches--a major one--for all of us, I fear. And this bit we just overheard is symptomatic of that.”
“So I’m better off without the Shin-Jo Cluster, is that it--easier for me to face such a looming crisis on my own then, without anybody at all to aid me?” Kavin’s tone held a sullen bitterness, an almost childish sulkiness, he knew.
Melkor moved forward out of the
deep shadows of the balcony’s corner.
The moon had cleared a
bank of thick clouds just moments before. So now, wan moonlight
silvered him, frosting what little hair the shorter man still had. In
stark relief, the argent light also carved out the crevices made by
the many wrinkles in his face, etching them deeper and darker, making
Melkor appear even older than he actually was.
He rested a hand on one of his nephew’s shoulders.
“Yes, Kavin,” he said. “I truly think you are better off this way. But you won’t be alone. You know you can always count on me being there for you, don’t you?”
Kavin nodded slowly, reluctantly. “I suppose, I do.” He was aware he sounded reluctant to admit this, as well.
“And will you be there for me if I need you?”
“You know that I will be.”
“Then why, my boy, do you insist on going off to bloody Tiartha? That planet is much too far away. How can you be of a help to me there? Besides, I’ll never get to see you.”
Kavin breathed a sigh at hearing his uncle’s oft-repeated lament of late about his leaving Earth. He leaned his lanky frame out over the railing. He gripped its blue steel with strong hands; ones he now noticed had tension-whitened knuckles. He was too often tense these days. Kavin knew this.
He stared down at the sea far below them, seeking some sort of mental surcease. The water glinted like beaten pewter in the light of an ancient moon. The waves appeared frozen in place by that hoary glow, solid ripples warping a vast sheet of polished metal. The Canady House Complex, if Kavin had any sense of direction, was drifting toward the east.
“We’ve been over this before,” he said, finally. “I have to go. There’s no future for me here. There might have been if I could’ve unioned with the Shin-Jo’s, but it’s hopeless without them. Everything on Earth seems to have to do with one’s connexions these days. You know this, Uncle Melkor, more than anybody knows, so don't pretend with me otherwise. But on Tiartha, I just might be able to succeed without those connexions. I hear they aren’t nearly so important there.”
“With your new Tyrian farm? Yes, I suppose you could do well.” Then Melkor shook his head, before adding, “God knows, the stuff is popular enough right now. All the women and half the men are wearing fabrics dyed with it. You’re lucky no one’s found a way to synthesize it.”
“Yet,” Kavin said, emphasizing the word that he knew completed his uncle’s unspoken thought.
“Do you need credits?”
Kavin shook his head, perhaps a little too emphatically. It was in an angry negation of the offer of this minor help, when the major aid had already been denied him.
“No,” he said. “Dad’s trust fund left me enough for the autofarm and a little extra besides. It will serve as a cushion. But, thanks for the thought.” He sounded a shade cynical, he knew, but couldn't help it.
His uncle seemingly ignored this. He squeezed Kavin's shoulder in a familiar gesture of real affection.
“Any time, Kavin. Now, I’m afraid I must get back to the party. It doesn’t do to be gone from these things for too long. One misses too much.”
Kavin turned to him. He grinned before saying, “You mean all the gossip about others, no doubt?”
Melkor Shin-Jo gave a loud snort at this, shook his head. “Hardly--that I already know. In any case, I’m betting I’ve spread most of it, and quite deliberately, I might add. No, I want to find out what they're saying about me!” Now it was his turn to grin.
Then, in a suddenly more sober tone of voice he said, “A word of warning, Kavin. Stay away from that Magnus Vasilov. He's nothing but trouble. Rumor has it that he leaves a trail of bodies behind him wherever he goes.”
Kavin felt his gray eyes widen at this. He couldn't know, of course, how his uncle saw them, how large, how limpid they appeared by moonlight.
“Why hasn’t he been arrested,” he asked.
Melkor gave an elaborate shrug. Then he frowned, deeper wrinkles forming at the corners of eyes already buried in epicanthic folds of skin.
“It’s a corrupt society we live in nowadays, Kavin. Blame the Five Races and their damnable Status Quo, but it's true--we are corrupt. I have it on good authority Magnus makes others do his dirty work for him. He distances himself from the actual deeds, stays just out of the law’s reach. So you do me a favor and stay well away from him. Don’t make him your enemy.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. In any case, I’ll meet you at the port tomorrow to say goodbye. Now, we had better go in.”
“You go ahead,” Kavin told him. “I’d like to stay here a while longer, if you don’t mind. I’ve some thinking to do and this seems like a good place for it.”
His uncle again shrugged. “Suit yourself. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow it is. Goodnight, Uncle Melkor.”
The older man squeezed his shoulder once more, as was his usual habit. Bony fingers probed younger, firmer flesh.
“Goodnight, my boy.” With that, Melkor left.
Alone now, Kavin turned back to regard the view. He leaned farther out over the railing than he had before, as if trying to escape the balcony altogether, as if intent upon leaping from its narrow confines. He stared out at the night’s vistas. His guess had been correct. They were heading east.
Below and just coming into view, were the rusting skeletal fingers of what remained of Old New York’s once mighty skyscrapers. Built long ago in a bolder time, but now abandoned to an encroaching sea, those crumbling edifices reached up from the placid ocean. They seemed to grasp in vain for the dark sky, clawing ineffectively for it, as if striving for something they could never quite reach.
Kavin gave a mental shrug at this image. It just came too close to how he felt. Something was missing in his life, he knew. Kavin had a deep suspicion it wasn’t just wealth, but something far more basic, but exactly what, he couldn’t have said.
He shook his head. There was no point in dwelling on this subject yet one more time. The important thing now was that the Canady's antigravity complex was drifting over North America.
Well, what better place was there for him to disembark from this wafting aerial compound than here? He had a starship to catch and the shuttle for it left from Denver. He would leave the Solar System aboard that bigger vessel, Sojourn, and head out for 70 Ophiuchi-A. The star system was some seventeen and three-tenths light years from Earth. Kavin intended settling on its one barely habitable planet, Tiartha, which circled that distant blue-white star. There he would become a farmer…of sorts.
Kavin's overriding fear was not the perils of the coming trip. These days, those were minimal, mundane, and even wearisome. No, it was not out of fear of the trip itself, but rather the secret dread he held that Tiartha might become his new home for a long time to come, longer than he intended, anticipated, or wished. Kavin didn't know it then, but this was the briefest flash of a very real premonition.
Chapter 2
“Paradise, is where she’s from and she's only just arrived on Earth. She’s a sweet little thing, definitely a blueblood. She was even a debutante at a coming-out cotillion, no less.”
“Her name?” Magnus Vasilov looked annoyed as he asked this, but then Oliver felt he always looked annoyed, if not outright angry.
“Will you tell me or are you going to make me guess?”
Now Oliver was irritated. Every time Magnus spoke to him, the man’s tone dripped a malicious sarcasm, a malevolent superiority.
“Von Holstead,” he said. “Deidre von Holstead, your new aide de camp. Try to be nice to her, won’t you?”
Magnus looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Too hot in the kitchen for you these days, is it, Ollie? What’s the matter, do I intimidate you too much? Is that why you’re leaving me?”
Oliver Frankel stared back at him from where he stood before Magnus’ desk. He knew his brown eyes reflected a bleak disapproval of the man seated behind it, but couldn't help it, so great was his distaste for him. This was Oliver’s trouble. He knew he was poor at concealing his emotions. Oliver also knew this meant he would never make a great politician, but he no longer cared. Now he just wanted out of it all, to return home to Mars.
“Hardly, Magnus,” he said, deciding not to mince words. “It’s neither the heat nor the kitchen that’s the problem for me. I’d say it was more the company I’ve had to keep that’s at issue. But don’t worry. Ms. von Holstead isn’t like me. She’s young and malleable. That’s the sort you like as an intern, isn’t it, on both counts? Or, is it? Maybe you just like trying to break people’s spirits for the sheer hell of it?”
Now Magnus’ blue eyes held a hard and dangerous glitter to them. “Do be careful, Ollie. It wouldn’t do to make a real enemy of me.”
Oliver gave a snort. “When I’m afraid of a junior assemblyman, Magnus, I’ll let you know. I’ve been here at the capital too long to be afraid of the likes of you. I’ll be blunt. You’re the one who had better watch out for enemies. The way you bulldoze your way around the Grand Assembly, you’re making a lot of them.