44
RESOLVENT MIST was an intelligent bioweapon. It registered atmospheric density and confined itself to deploying within those layers of an atmosphere where breathing, living mammals might dwell, rather than floating up to be dispersed in space.
Each spore self-replicated until it reached a certain saturation within an area, and then those spores moved elsewhere to repeat the process in the next accessible area. It “marked” each area it had been so as not to fill the same chamber twice. In such a way, the fatal bioweapon grew denser, thicker until I could not even see anyone else in the Great Heliosphere, and then it thinned.
My eyes picked out Pasus’s fallen servant and the two dead Excess who’d been restraining me. They were both on the ground—blood fountaining from their eyes, their ears, their noses, their mouths, ejected by their lungs as they liquefied.
I propelled back from them and crashed into Tyrus.
His hands caught my waist. “Shh.”
I turned to look at him, and the detached and indifferent Tyrus who’d been pleased to have a nice green shirt, who’d been eager to be rid of me . . . He was gone. Replaced by this person who appeared carved out of stone, even as the last of the bioweapon’s tendrils snaked into the vents.
To general circulation.
Which would expel it everywhere.
Pasus stood paralyzed, looking at the dead Excess. Fustian loosed a cry and dashed for the door. . . .
“I don’t understand. What—” Pasus said.
“I always thought the Emperor Amon had a difficult task, slipping a poison to so many people without being discovered,” Tyrus said to Pasus. “I think we’ve had a few late-night discussions, pondering that. Well, having now secretly distributed a substance myself—a counteragent to those I chose as today’s survivors—I can tell you it’s quite easy. Once the Atlas fattened my pockets, I simply paid people to obtain it and do it for me.”
Fustian began to scream. My gaze shot to him. He was standing before the open door, gazing into the main promenade of the Valor Novus. The murky fog was there now, and through it were faint figures, and so many screams, a virtual cacophony from them.
Sweet Helios, I thought. Fustian closed the door and plunged to his knees, huddled there, murmuring to himself. Tyrus’s cool, appraising eyes were fixed on Pasus, who seemed to now understand the implications of this.
“The entire Chrysanthemum has interconnected atmosphere. You will . . .” Pasus realized it then. He realized that an enormous number of people were about to die. He tore back his sleeve and shouted into his transmitter, “The Emperor unilaterally deployed Resolvent Mist. I don’t know who has fallen. I didn’t plan this. I had nothing to do with it. . . .”
Tyrus stroked a hand through my hair, regarding Pasus with faint amusement.
“. . . bring space-sheaths,” Pasus was shouting, desperate to prove he’d had no hand in unleashing the Mist. “Bring med bots. And . . . and . . .”
“Why waste your breath, Alectar?” Tyrus said. To me: “All this time tying his bonds to me and he thinks he can truly disavow what I’ve done.”
“No. You are going to pay for this, not me,” Pasus said. “This is all on you! Do you know how many masters of those vessels have family here?”
“They don’t anymore,” Tyrus said coldly.
I looked between them, the implications sinking in: those ships were not allies in on a secret deal. Tyrus had not brokered anything in advance, and Pasus was right in thinking they would retaliate. So Tyrus had struck a blow, and now those ships would avenge those who’d fallen about us. Very well.
I could accept doom.
Even take advantage of it.
“Pasus,” I said.
Pasus turned to me. I drove my foot into his groin, doubling him over. My hand tangled in his hair, and I might’ve hurt him in earnest if Tyrus hadn’t said, “Stop!”
“Why?” I almost growled.
“Not yet,” Tyrus said. “Give me his transmitter.”
I drove my boot down onto Pasus’s hand, ignoring his shout, and tore the transmitter off, flung it at Tyrus. Then I let my heel grind those bones. Since I wasn’t at full strength, he managed to dislodge me, to propel me back.
But I smiled in savage promise at Pasus’s chalky white face, as Tyrus’s voice rippled out behind me:
“This is your Emperor. I see you have heard Senator von Pasus’s transmission and you are moblizing in response.” He looked at those ships, so vast in number, so overwhelming. They could have formed their own superstructure with that power among them. “What the Senator told you is true. I have just killed a massive number of people. Stand down and retreat, or join them.”
The words were an empty threat. The ships did not withdraw, but were close enough now that I could pick out the individual lights of windows from even the farthest of the ships. Soon they’d fire tethers into the Chrysanthemum, force open the airlocks, spill in wearing space-sheaths, armed and ready to take revenge.
“Oh well.” Tyrus tossed aside the transmitter. “I tried.”
My blood raced with fire. Heady anticipation mingled with fear for him, and I moved to his side. “We will grab weapons. We’ll fight to the end. We can take many of them with us. But first . . .” I cast Pasus a ferocious smile. “I will enjoy knowing you meet the same fate we do.”
“I disavow this,” protested Pasus. “I had nothing to do with it. Surveillance will show them as much! They watched it through their windows. They must have seen my surprise!”
“No, they saw you covered in fog,” I said with cruel enjoyment. “They saw you standing after it cleared.”
“They will see reason,” Pasus insisted.
Tyrus regarded him with icy amusement. “You put too much faith in the rationality of human beings.”
“I put too much faith in yours!” spat Pasus. “The Venalox was supposed to remove that foolish sentimentality. . . .”
“Ah, and it did,” agreed Tyrus, prowling toward him. “I once had such hopes for this Empire. I would unite people to address a common existential threat. Now I see those were childish delusions. People do not unite for a common cause when faced with disaster. No. That’s the last resort. That’s what happens only after they’ve clambered over each other to loot the corpse of their civilization.”
“There is no saving you.”
“I believed that for a while,” Tyrus said. “Then I broke the hold of the Venalox—exactly as I told Nemesis I had in the oubliette—and I saw clearly at last your desperation for validation only I could give you. I used it. I embraced you. I invited you to dwell in the Imperial Chambers. You were so taken, you made every transmission, conducted all your business, right within my reach, right where I could see your every movement and gather every weapon I needed. Alectar: I watched your back-and-forth with the vicars. I learned all their identities through you.”
Pasus drew a sharp breath.
“Men and women of faith,” jeered Tyrus,” but their Living Cosmos could not protect them from the question I had put to them: lose a head, or lose a hand? And what do you know—those vicars always preferred to lose a hand! The very one with the diode that gave them power over my scepter, allowing those diodes to be reimplanted in any mercenary I chose. Those mercenaries were glad to speak any words I wished for a cut of the Atlas’s profits.”
“You can claim the scepter,” I breathed.
Tyrus traced his finger over his arm, just where he’d placed that sliver of metal. Outside the starship, the vessels were aiming their tethering guns. “I already have. A bead of blood in the oubliette, and I’ve felt it growing louder in my mind with every heartbeat since. Shall we test it now?”
A frantic hope soared in my heart, for he could make these ships come to a dead stop now. . . .
Tyrus flicked his hand. The lead vessel of the armada flared into a brilliant ray of light . . . as though it powered up for a hyperspace jump. Then it split open. It was no explosion. A crack, a rupture speared out from it like the space had been sliced open by some invisible hand. The fault line snaked in all directions and each vessel in its path spilling shining innards into the pitch black of the void, fire flowering out from its engines, but not receding. . . . No. Thickening the gash of light until it grew so bright it left an imprint on my eyes. The wound rippled, blossomed, heaved, devouring more and more. . . .
I was aware of Pasus’s cry, of my heart thundering in my ears. A ribbonlike gash of white began to assume a horrifyingly familiar form.
Pasus stumbled back from the window, but Tyrus just stepped closer to it.
He placed his hands on the window. His silhouette was stark black against the great rupture gulping the starships now trying to fly away, failing.
Stars save us all.
Tyrus had just created malignant space.