velvet pants whose cuffs were tucked into embroidered red leather boots. He had a
pointed leather cap, trimmed with white fur, on his head, and a scimitar-whose handle
was really a disguised blaster-at his belt. An enormous gold medallion covered most of
his chest like a shield.
The decor of his office matched his presumed persona. The walls and ceiling were
draped with a red brocade fabric to resemble a Mongol tent. His desk was carved ebony
with brass fittings. Oriental rugs covered the floor, and a profusion of silk pillows was
scattered about the room. Shen and Lady A were seated on two of the office’s
camel-saddle chairs, which were more striking than comfortable.
Shen’s extravagances might become tedious once Lady A’s regime was firmly
established over the Empire-but until then, his military expertise made him indispensable
to her cause.
Perhaps Shen realized that as well. He was more flippant with her than she usually
allowed subordinates to become. She decided to let his remark remain at face value. Let
him have his little jests for now, she thought.
“The `but’ in this case is tolerable-so long as you learn your lesson from it and see that
the mistake isn’t repeated. One of your ships, the Lucinda. was captured last week when
it tried an abortive raid on a Navy decoy ship.”
Shen shrugged his massive shoulders. “We’re in a war. We have to expect casualties
from time to time. A ship or two is hardly a catastrophe-unlike what happened to Ling.”
Shen shivered slightly. “That could have really been fatal if you’d actually implemented
Operation Annihilate. We’d have been counting on those ships, and we’d have been
slaughtered.”
The incident to which he alluded had occurred several months earlier. Operation
Annihilate had been ready to go into action, awaiting only the word from Lady A-or the
mysterious C-to unleash it. The conspiracy’s forces had gathered in the depths of
interstellar space, waiting at several strategic points to descend upon Earth and capture
the heart of the Empire in one bold stroke. The cue was to be the assassination of
Emperor Stanley Ten and Crown Princess Edna during the Princess’s wedding at
Bloodstar Hall. With the two best claimants to the Throne dead, the Imperial Navy would
be demoralized-and the subsequent bickering over succession would have allowed a
strong outside force-namely the ships of the conspiracy to sweep in and assume
command.
That, at least, had been the theory. In actuality, the assassinations that were to have
triggered the plan never came about, thanks to the superhuman efforts of some agents
of the Service of the Empire. Their last-second interference saved the Emperor’s and
Princess’s lives, causing Lady A to postpone Operation Annihilate.
But, at that same time, her conspiracy suffered another blow when the Imperial Navy
raided one of the pirates’ space bases run by Captain Ling, destroying or capturing all
the ships waiting there to take part in the attack. Even Lady A, who claimed to know so
much of the government’s inner workings, had been surprised by the raid, leaving her to
wonder whether her own organization’s security had been breached; but when more time
passed and none of the other bases were hit, she and C came to the conclusion that this
one raid had been a fluke. Either the Imperial Navy or the Service of the Empire must
have learned of the base through outside sources and acted against it on an impromptu
basis. C had said he’d be checking out the details further. But for now, Ling was dead
and any mistakes he’d made to reveal his location to the Empire had died with him.
Lady A was never one to dwell on past failures, except to make them object lessons for
the future. “The loss of the Lucinda doesn’t trouble me greatly,” she said. “As you
yourself pointed out, a few losses are inevitable. But aboard the Lucinda, the Navy found
the body of Karla Jost-a woman who was exiled to Gastonia twelve years ago and who,
as far as the Empire’s official files went, was still there. Up until that time, the
enforcement arms of the Empire had not suspected our Gastonian operations; now they
do. Karla Jost was supposed to remain here with you. What was she doing on the
Lucinda?”
If the implied charges of malfeasance bothered Shen, he did not let his feelings show.
“She was going to be one of my wing commanders,” he explained coolly. “Yet she hadn’t
been aboard a ship, except to come here from Gastonia, in a dozen years. I don’t know
about you, milady, but I don’t want to put someone in a position of command until they’ve
proven they can handle it. Jost was on a shakedown cruise, to regain her space legs and
get the feel of command. It was only bad luck that her ship was the one the Navy
snatched.”
“Bad luck is the excuse of incompetent planners.”
Shen smiled disarmingly. Not even Lady A could force him to lose his composure. “Quite
so, but we’ve all had our share of it, eh? What about your government contacts? Couldn’t
they have hushed the matter before it reached SOTE’s ears?”
Lady A frowned. “Unfortunately, by the time it came through official channels there was
little we could do. There is a point of no return, after which an attempted coverup only
makes matters worse rather than better. Covering up would have meant too many
corpses, too many transferred personnel, too many falsified records-and if anyone had
caught wind of that, they might realize how well organized our forces are. We decided it
best to leave SOTE with the impression we’re more fallible, to lull them into a false sense
of security. In fact, we’re working on a plan to turn the error to our advantage.”
She stopped abruptly. “But that’s not your concern. Whether we can profit by our
mistake is immaterial; the fact remains that the mistake should never have been made in
the first place.” She did not have to say more. Her words implied strongly enough that
Shen was to avoid such occurrences in the future. If he was not smart enough to read
the implication, she would soon have a new admiral.
“I agree,” Shen said amiably. “But here we run into a problem of morale. That first false
alarm dashed everyone’s hopes; sitting here on a jungle world, parsecs away from
civilization, with nothing to do all day but polish the ships’ noses is having a bad
psychological effect on my people. We can’t make the mistake of giving them too much
time to think; who knows what dangers that might lead to? I must give them something to
do. I’d rather send them out on their occasional piratical jaunts and risk losing a ship
every so often than have them sit around and grumble and grow discontented. That’s no
way to win a war, milady.”
Lady A nodded slowly. However insubordinate Shen might be, he knew his job. “I am not
asking you to abandon your raids; you’re your own master there. But I do ask that you
pick your targets more carefully. And for your sake-for all our sakes-don’t use so many
ex-criminals. If they’re caught, they can give away the scope of our endeavor.”
Shen smiled. “You need both cons and piracy to make a conspiracy.”
There was a pause of two full beats before Lady A said, “I will not dignify that with a
response.”
“I didn’t think you would. Would you care for an inspection tour instead?” – Lady A
agreed, and followed her admiral around the base, giving it a thorough examination.
Shen’s comment about bad luck happening to all of them had hit her harder than she
would ever have admitted. Although the Service of the Empire had stumbled across the
conspiracy very late in the game-too late, she was sure, to stop it effectively-they had
scored a few lucky successes lately against her… too many. They had not yet even
scratched the frost on the tip of the iceberg, but they were becoming annoying. The
Service and its agents were like an insect bite, an itch she couldn’t scratch-hardly fatal,
but they did distract her and take some of her concentration away from more important
matters.
She dismissed the thought from her mind. Plans were afoot to deal with SOTE, to use
the very cleverness of its own agents against itself. All would be taken care of in good
time, and Operation Annihilate would soon be in action once more. She did not bother
telling Shen any of this, however; it was never a good policy to let an inferior know any
more than he needed to operate efficiently.
Chapter 2
Luna Base
Luna Base was the central command headquarters of the Imperial Navy. At the very
formation of the Empire of Earth, the decision had been made that the control center of
the Empire’s armed forces should be located far from any inhabited regions; that way, in