CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

"Fare thee well, you banks ae Sicily, fare thee well, thee brooks an' dells, frae thae's noo Scots soldier thae's mourn th' last of ye," Alex hummed from memory, thinking fondly of a very tall brew as soon as the fleet was absolutely clear of anything, including vacuum, that resembled the Altaic Cluster.

He was idly punching through various public channels being cast from the Imperial worlds ahead. Nearby, Sten was collapsed in the Victory's CO station—but no one asked him to move. Both of them still wore their torn, filthy combat uniforms.

The bridge was near-silent—probably because no one thought they would actually have gotten away with this one.

"Sports," Kilgour muttered, finding another cast. "Ah dinnae ken whae thae's bein's thae think thae's virtue in puntin' a wee sack ae leather frae one chalk't line t' another.

"Reminds me," he said to Freston, who sat near the console, "ae th' time thae tried t'

make m' play a clottin' sport ae gentlebein'ts call't crickit. First Ah thinks thae's mad, goin't chirp—"

And his mouth snapped closed.

No one exactly remembered what the liviecaster on-screen was saying. But it was very clear:

Disgrace… once hero of the Tahn war… Governor General… supreme penalty… Ian Mahoney… name to be stricken from all records and monuments… traitorous…

Sten was standing beside him. His face was white.

"That's torn it," he whispered.

Kilgour started to say something, then shook his head. He swallowed.

He heard the snarl from the watch officer behind him: "Watch your screens, mister.

What's that com that just ran?"

"Uh… sorry… it's coded."

"I can tell it's coded," the watch officer said. "Who's it to? Who's it from?"

"Sir… I think… Prime. And… and it's intended for the Caligula … I think."

"Don't think, mister. Know!"

"Sir…we don't have the code. It's not indexed."

Sten forced shock and anger about Mahoney's murder away. "What is the signal?"

"We don't know, sir. From Prime to Caligula , sir."

"I heard that. Patch me to Mason."

"Yessir."

Caligula, this is Victory, over.

… This is Caligula, over.

This is Victory. What was the transmission you received?

Wait one… signal being decoded…

"How th' clot," Kilgour wondered, hair on the back of his neck starting to lift, "d'

thae hae' th' code an' we dinnae?"

"Sir! The Caligula's broken contact."

"Reestablish."

Caligula, this is Victory, over. Caligula, this is Victory. Do you receive this transmission ?

"Sir, the Caligula's broadcasting."

"GA."

"Not to us, sir. To its DD screen. Burst transmission. I didn't get it."

Sten was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Then he noticed the main maneuver screen.

The Caligula had broken fleet formation, together with the four destroyers that normally screened the battleship. It set a new course…

"What's the Caligula's new orbit?"

"Wait one, sir… it appears to be a near-reciprocal track from the fleet's.

Straight—I'm estimating—back toward Jochi!"

There was a rumble of surprise.

"Quiet on the bridge."

Sten forced his mind to function. What the clot was going on? He found he had spoken aloud.

"Sir?" It was Freston. "I think I might know."

"One ray of light. Talk to me!"

"Uh… sir, before I was assigned to you, I was com officer on the Churchill. And the captain had been given a private code when he took command. There was another copy in the ship's safe, to be given to the XO or whoever took over if the CO was a casualty.''

"GA. But why the clot would the Caligula—or Mason—have a code that we don't?

We're the flagship."

"Yessir. But—but we're not carrying a planet buster."

Of course. The Empire did not like even to admit that it had weaponry heavy enough to shatter a planet. But it did. Planet busters were never used—even during the height of the Tahn war they had not been launched.

For the Emperor, it had little to do with morality. Genocide made lousy politics, he used to say. That had been the Emperor's view. Apparently, went Sten's grim thoughts, the Eternal Emperor had changed his mind. Perhaps it had never been a moral issue for the Emperor. But it certainly had been for Sten.

"Is the Caligula answering?" Sten asked.

"Negative, sir."

"Commander, do you have a tacship flight on standby?"

"Of course."

"I want one ship. The best pilot on the Victory. Kali-armed. Launch time as soon as I get to the hangar deck."

Kilgour was on his feet, starting for the companionway.

"Alex! I want you here on the bridge. I'll be broadcasting from the tacship, but I want the com linked to the Victory.''

"Y' dinnae need me frae that, skip."

"And I want a synth that'll match analysis."

"Right. Ah hae it noo. Away wi' y' lad."

And Sten was running for the Victory's hangar.

The tacship flashed out from the Victory's port and, barely clear of the mother ship, went to full AM2 drive.

"What's the IP?"

La Ciotat didn't need to look at a screen.

"Fifty-three… fifty-one minutes, sir."

"Fine." Sten sat at the weapons officer's station, adjusting the control helmet to his own head.

"Here's the drill. The Caligula is headed back for Jochi. It's going to launch a planet buster."

La Ciotat, priding herself on her poker face, wasn't able to control her expression.

"But what—is Admiral Mason mutinying, or—"

"You do not need to know, Ms. I want you to hold a closing course on the Caligula and have your com person keep an open link to the Victory. I want you to notify me when we're within… five minutes of the Caligula . Do you have any trouble with those orders?"

"No, sir."

"Keep us from getting tagged by the destroyers. I'm pretty sure they'll have orders to stop us."

" That's not even a concern. Sir."

Sten almost smiled—it sounded like La Ciotat was drakh-hot.

" Caligula , this is Victory. Admiral Mason, this is Sten, over."

"Still no response."

" Caligula , this is Sten, over. Patch me to your Six Actual. That is an order, over.''

"Seven minutes to intercept, sir."

"Goddammit…"

The screen on the tacship suddenly cleared, and Sten saw Mason's face.

Mason—or so Sten hoped, at least—would be seeing Sten, or a computer synthesis of Sten, back on the bridge of the Victory and never think that his response had been almost immediate and that he was, in fact, aboard a tacship bare minutes behind the Caligula .

"Admiral Mason, I think I understand your mission," Sten began.

"I am under orders, sir, to not discuss my assignment with anyone."

"I am not interested in discussing, Mason. This is not a de-Dating society. And I know that you've been told to bust Jochi.

"You can't do it."

"I have my orders, sir."

"Did you verify them? Mason, do you want to be the first man in—who the hell knows how long?—to wipe out a planet? Not everybody down there's loony, Mason."

The on-screen figure made no response.

"I see no point in continuing this transmission," Mason said finally, mechanically.

"Mason… stand by for one moment…"

Sten closed his mike and pulled the weapons helmet down over his head. "Ms. La Ciotat, I am launching the Kali."

"Yessir. At full drive… IP will be one point three minutes… ship IP is now two minutes."

Sten touched the red key on the weapons panel—the only physical act that he needed to do.

The monstrous missile was launched from a tube that was the tacship's spine. It was twenty meters long, and its warhead was a sixty-megaton deathstrike.

The missile spat out from the tacship, and Sten aimed it through the helmet at the rapidly closing tiny constellation that was the Caligula and her escorts, holding at three-quarter drive.

He opened his eyes, and Mason ghosted at him on-screen.

"This is my last attempt, Admiral Mason. You know you're working for a madman.

We just heard—the Emperor had Mahoney shot."

Mason's eyes flickered, then he became the automaton once again.

Sten tried once more—knowing it was futile. "Look, man. Do you want your name to go down like this? Mason the planet-killer?"

Mason suddenly almost-smiled. "Sten, that is the difference between us. You think that you have some sort of god-given privilege to judge what orders you should or should not obey. That's seditious behavior, and you know it. Maybe that's why Mahoney was executed. Did you ever consider that? I'm following direct Imperial orders, mister. No, Sten, I'll not be the traitor. Mason, clear.''

The screen was blank.

Sten closed his eyes and became only the Kali. He hit full emergency.

"Closing… closing…" he dimly heard La Ciotat's chant.

"You are spotted… you broke a DD's screen… I have a Fox-launch… closing… prog cannot intercept… Closing… Target impact… Mark!"

Sten's world fireballed.

He pulled the control helmet off and saw, on screen, the Caligula cease to exist.

There had been a hint of an explosion, and then simply nothing. The screen might as well have been trying to look into a black hole. He wondered if the Kali had sympathetically detonated the planet buster.

He guessed the Caligula's destroyers would still be trying to launch countermissiles, if any of them had survived—the screen stayed dark, overloaded.

He didn't care. Evading them was La Ciotat's job.

"That's it, Ms.," he said, tiredly. "Back to the Victory."

Mason died as he lived—following orders.

Sten did not give much of a damn about that.

But more than three thousand beings had died with him—and Sten doubted there would ever be a monument to them, out here, in the darkness and silence of interstellar space.