34 On Thin Ice in Thin Air #2
The count laughed. “Bribe me? I have everything I want. Selnikov has given me a seat at his right hand, a position in his court, and several star systems to add to my collection. He’s even elevating me to a prince. What can you offer me which could outweigh those rewards?”
I slid the zeroblade under his chin. “Your life.”
Zukov smiled knowingly. “Ah, threats. A language I understand.”
“It’s hard to enjoy rewards if you’re dead,” I said.
“It’s almost as hard to enjoy them from the catacombs of a gulag asteroid,” Zukov countered.
“Prisoners have been pardoned before. I do have some standing with the Emperor. Answer my questions, tell me where she is, and if she lives, I guarantee you can keep your eight favorite fingers.”
“Eight?” Zukov asked.
I shrugged. “I assume Astrid will want her pound of flesh. Eight is the best I expect to do. So, will you talk?”
“I owe you nothing. You’re no demon, you have no standing in the Empire.”
“I am still the Emperor’s Consort until such time as you see fit to execute her. Isn’t that your law? The Emperor is the Emperor until they are no more? And as the Emperor has not removed me from my position, I outrank you. Now tell me what I want to know,” I demanded.
Zukov chuckled. “It won’t work. You’ll fail, and you’ll die.”
“Then there’s no reason not to tell us. We’re dead men, what secrets could we spread?” I replied. “Besides, wouldn’t the honorable thing be to tell your foe why you betrayed them? I know you Imperials go in for that sort of thing.”
With another chuckle, Zukov said, “All right, why not? Ask me your questions, little corpse. Let’s see if my answers are to your liking.”
“Where is the Emperor?” I asked.
Zukov clucked his tongue. “Too soon. Rest assured she’s safe for now. We haven’t decided on the best way to kill her yet.”
“Why do you want her dead?”
“Your Emperor was murdering our society. We simply wished to return the favor.” I cocked my head, and Zukov explained further.
“Since the coup, the Emperor has been instituting reforms, inspired no doubt by her time spent in your wretched little nation. Some modernization may have been necessary, but the Emperor was changing too much. She disrupted our society, disrespected our culture, threw aside millennia-old traditions for no reason other than she thought she knew better than generations of our forebearers. We had to stop it, so we had to stop this war.”
Despite my efforts, I know my confusion showed on my face. “What does the war have to do with it? I thought attacking the Royal Commonwealth and Urgan Despotate was as traditional as a demon could get.”
Count Zukov grinned, enjoying leading me about by the nose.
“She’s using this war to eliminate her detractors.
The traditionalists and warriors, they all went to fight, and they died, leaving the Emperor with none but her reformist allies at home.
Fortunately, we saw the trap and forced several members into her court, but if the Emperor won her war, even the staunchest war hawk would fall in line.
She would have all the support she needed to push through her infantile reforms. We could never hope to overthrow a victorious Emperor and gain the people’s support, so we had to stop her from winning. ”
“Why not assassinate her? Why this shadow play with the Fall device?” I asked.
“We don’t just need her dead, we need her discredited.
Your lover has made herself quite the little hero with this war of hers.
The young lords and warriors adore her. They worship her every word.
If she died now, public sympathy for her cause would be unstoppable.
Reveal her to be another bloodthirsty tyrant, or worse, a genocide, and they would see her message as the pile of rotten lies it is,” Zukov said with a snarl.
“How did you get a Fall device on New Melbourne?” I asked.
“It was already there. We took it from some cowardly Despotate soldiers, in horrible disrepair, but not beyond our engineers’ capabilities. We’ve been ready to activate the Fall device for years. All we needed was the activation codes.”
“And that’s where the Noble Federation comes in.” I phrased my question like a statement.
“Very good, Captain.” Zukov smiled. “Our spy reached out to their Federation contact, and a few weeks later, they delivered the codes to us. You have no idea the satisfaction of having your enemy hand you the key to their own destruction, but let me tell you, when we destroyed that planet and everything spiraled into our hands, it was orgasmic.”
“How’d you do it? Get the Federation to betray their allies?” I asked.
“We’ve been watching the Federation for some time, learning their culture.
We knew we could make them an offer so profitable, they’d betray their own mothers and thank us for the opportunity.
Convincing them to betray you was child’s play.
It’s how we’ll destroy them when the time comes, offer half of them whatever they want to turn on the other half, then do the same to the survivors until we dispense with the pleasantries and conquer them outright. ”
“Like you did with Yezhidia to destroy the League,” I commented. I heard the archduke stiffen behind me, and Zukov’s eyes flicked to him.
“No. To the Yezhidians’ credit, they came to us, asking for help defending themselves against one of their so-called protectors since the Commonwealth abandoned them to their fates,” Zukov drawled.
I hesitated before asking my next question, not certain if I wanted to know the answer, but something compelled me to ask, “Ankhelina, the Champion, said you told the Emperor I had died years ago.” Zukov waited for me to ask a question as I wracked my brains for the right words. In the end, I only needed one. “Why?”
Zukov shifted. “My spies brought me your government’s report of your death…”
“Cut the crap, Zukov. Your Commonwealth Basic is too good to mistake Missing in Action, presumed Dead, with Killed in Action,” I said, my voice hot.
Zukov settled back, grinning as if relieved of a great weight. “You were a distraction we could not allow. For the Empire to progress, we need a strong Emperor devoted to the Imperial good. You needed to be removed from the Emperor’s hopes for the greater good of the Empire.”
“But why the lie? Why not say I was married or transferred, or anything else?”
“I did not need you married or transferred away. I needed you dead. The Emperor was considering halting the offensive to search for you. I could not allow that. We could not afford to have her distracted by a foreign affair then, and we cannot now, not when we are so close to victory. Besides, I did not lie. I merely told the truth prematurely.” He glowered.
“Considerably more prematurely than I’d have liked, but I am sure someone will help me fix that inconsistency.
If you had died when you were supposed to, I may not have needed to depose the Emperor. ”