But it was annoying. Sometime, during this conference, he would ask one of his superiors to talk to the clot and tell him to get a new chatterbox.
He went back to his main task, ensuring that the link between the picketboat and the newly installed apparatus aboard the Normandie was functioning perfectly.
The Eternal Emperor took Avri twice, in the manner that pleased him most. The woman bit hard into the pillow. A scream at midnight would be ignored by sensible beings if it came from the Imperial quarters in Arundel, but here on Seilichi an unnecessary and foolish alarm might be raised.
The Emperor went to the fresher, then stopped by a case and took a tiny object from it. He returned to the bed, ran his hand down Avri's close-cropped hair in what might have been a caress, and, as the injector's tip touched the woman's medulla oblongata, he pressed the bulb.
Avri slumped into deep unconsciousness.
It would be her last sleep.
The Emperor rose and put on a black coverall from his baggage, a coverall that had built-in climbing harness bonded into it, and thin, rigid-sole rock-climbing shoes. He pulled a mesh vest over it and closed its fastenings. He wished again for a pistol, but he knew that there had been little chance of getting a firearm through the Manabi's automatic security devices. This would be enough.
He flexed his knees. He pushed the double windows onto the balcony open. Far below him, in the crater's center, was Sten's ship, his own Normandie, and the picketboat. It was very dark, and very quiet. He thought he saw die single sentry posted at the Normandie's ramp walk out into the open, about-face, and pace back. He didn't matter. The day the Emperor could not slip past a gate guard was the day he was ready to admit to being the fool that Sten, and it seemed the rest of the Empire, considered him.
To either side of this apartment his aides and supposed confidantes slept. Dream on, my servants, he thought. For now you are performing the finest duty to the Empire you could dream of. And your sacrifice will not have been in vain.
He looked at the naked sleekness of Avri. A slight feeling of pity crossed his mind. But not for long. The only way for a sacrifice to be convincing is when something important is really given away.
Besides, she had started to bore him.
He had already begun to consider other, more skilled women who had drawn his eye.
He unclipped a can of climbing thread from the vest, touched its nozzle, and the end of the single-molecule chain bonded to the edge of the balcony. The Emperor slipped his hands into special jumars—trying to climb down the thread barehanded would be exactly like trying to climb down a flexible razorblade.
The Eternal Emperor slid over the edge of the balcony and, nerves thrilling and blood singing as had not happened in years, went down into the night.
Kilgour was quite comfortable. He had one toe on a firm stance almost three centimeters wide, a safety loop around an outcropping, and one arm around it as well.
He could have danced.
He kept watch, a great spider, invisible, as his phototropic uniform was now on exactly the color and pattern of the false rock the Manabi had built the Guesting Center from.
A bit below him, halfway across the crater, he saw movement. He focused the night glasses more exactly and zoomed in.
Th‘ Emp's apartment, aye. And one lad comin' oot.
Luck, eh? P'raps th‘ worst. Good luck—an impossibility— would have been Alex spending a cramped night out here with nothing happening, and the conference beginning as expected.
Noo. Who's th‘ wee lad danglin' frae th‘ rope o'er there? Th' Emp his own self?
Alex frowned, reanalyzing his various progs of possible Imperial blackguarding.
He had anticipated some kind of double-dealing here on Seilichi, but none of his plans matched what seemed to be occurring.
Back aboard the Victory, following the final briefing with Sten, Alex had led Cind and Otho to his own quarters. That was the only place on the Victory that he knew was unbugged by anyone, not Preston, not Sten. Especially not Sten. Although, from the look the boss had given him, Kilgour was pretty sure Sten knew what was going on.
"Whae we're on th‘ ground," he'd started, "Ah'll wan' you't‘ be standin't by. On command frae me, or frae Sten, or i' th‘ event com is lost wi' us, y're't‘ take th' bridge, an‘ read an' follow th‘ orders Ah'll hae gie'en y' afore we depart. E'en i‘ thae means relievin' Cap‘ Freston i' he gets arg'ment'ive.
"Ah knoo ‘tis a hard thing't' ask, but Ah'll hae't‘ request y' to oath me thae y'll follow th‘ 'structions wi'oot fail. Trustin‘ me thae Ah hae noo but th' best ae intentions frae Sten, an‘ frae this clottin' rebellion thae's likely't‘ cause th' death ae us all.
"I‘ y' trust me, I‘ y' trust Sten... y'll do as Ah'm desirin't."
Cind and Otho had considered. Cind had been the first to nod. Besides, she had suspected that Alex was planning for what had become Cind's worst nightmare—a nightmare she saw herself not being able to end, save in a suicidal battle royal. Then Otho had grunted. He, too, would obey.
Kilgour expressed pleasure in their confidence. Sent them out.
He had reflected... Glencoe... An eerie, narrow, rain-dripping desolate valley on old Earth, whose laird had delayed taking an oath of allegiance to the usurper king until the last minute, and then had been further prevented from an unpleasant if necessary duty by winter storms.
The laird had not considered that the usurper would have a pol named Dalrymple who wanted to make an example of someone who'd failed to sign, nor that there was a treacherous clan named the Campbells, all too willing to garner favor from the sassenach William.
Campbell soldiers appeared in the glen, and were given traditional Highland hospitality. Treachery was in their heart, treachery they did not wait to implement. That night, fire and the ax came to Glencoe, and women and children went howling into the snow and ice and frozen death.
Glencoe, Alex had thought. Aye. Sometimes, contrary to whae all th‘ finest planners think, treachery dinnae wait till th' perfect mo, i‘ th' dark ae th‘ moon whae th' raven rattles its deathcry.
And so he came to Seilichi prepared for the Emperor to double-cross them, from the moment the liner he'd cozened from the Zaginaws landed, till now, when he saw that man in black, who appeared to be the Eternal Emperor himself, abseil out the window.
He already had the corridor outside the Imperial apartments covered with a mechanical sensor, and Alex knew any movement from any of the Emperor's retinue would be met with alarms from the Manabi who, though no warriors, kept a cautious watch through the night.
Alex puzzled one more moment, wishing desperately he had somehow been able to wangle a sniper rifle onto Seilichi—an‘ then we'd ken whae a real expert ae duplic'ty's capable of, aye? Then he thought he had figured the Emperor's scheme and touched a switch at his wrist. Then Alex went back up his own climbing thread like a spider fleeing the flame, a flame Kilgour knew would be real in moments.
The Internal Security technician was sound asleep, far from his instruments. He never knew that the annoying static, that buzz, stopped the instant Alex touched his handitalki. The static was a deliberate broadcast.
There are at least two ways to broadcast a warning. The first and most common, is to start a commotion when trouble threatens. The second, and sneakier, is to have a commotion stop at the sign of danger.
Like Sherlock Holmes's famous dog, which did nothing in the nighttime, the end of the deliberately generated static from Kilgour's com was a tightbeam alarm linked to two spaceships.