The Thousand Emperors

TWENTY-THREE

‘Is he awake?’

‘One moment, Father Cheng,’ said a voice in reply.

Light dazzled Luc’s eyes. He tried to squeeze his eyelids shut, but found he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. His eyeballs itched and burned furiously.

There was a faint hiss from close by his face, and cool vapour dampened his skin, dripping down his cheeks like tears. The itching and burning faded a little.

He twisted away from a beam of light bright enough that it felt like it could burn its way through the back of his head. Barely visible in the light were the silhouettes of figures standing around him in an otherwise darkened room. When he tried to move, he discovered his wrists had been secured to the arms of a high-backed chair with heavy straps. Other straps secured his feet to the chair’s legs.

Leaning forward, he could see that he had been stripped naked. He swallowed, pain pulsing around his broken teeth. His mouth was still full of the taste of his own blood.

For some reason, he could neither blink nor close his eyes. The urge to block out the light was maddening, but there was nothing whatsoever he could do to avoid it.

‘Yes, he does appear to be conscious,’ said the second voice.

Luc twisted his head from side to side to try and see who had just spoken.

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ asked the voice of a third man, ‘is what you’ve done to him entirely necessary?’

‘I would say it was absolutely necessary, my dear Meinhard,’ Cheng replied. ‘Didn’t you see what this creature and his accomplice did to poor Bailey? Or are you really suggesting someone guilty of such a crime deserves better?’

Meinhard Carter, Luc realized with a shock: the man Cheng had put in charge of the Tian Di’s deep-space exploration. And the same man with whom Ambassador Sachs had attempted last-minute negotiations over the Founder Network.

‘Of course not, Father Cheng,’ Carter replied with nervous haste.

The pain in Luc’s eyes was becoming extraordinary, maddening. An instant later he felt another burst of cool moisture on his face, reducing the pain and discomfort – but no more than marginally.

‘Reduce that light,’ said Cheng. ‘I want our guest to be able to see himself quite clearly.’

The light dimmed a little, and someone sprayed more moisture into Luc’s eyes. It tasted cool and damp and fresh on his tongue. He swallowed a few drops, filled with a sudden, raging thirst.

‘I think he’s thirsty,’ said another, unidentifiable voice.

‘Maybe we should give him something to drink,’ chuckled yet another. ‘Maybe I should . . . ?’

Luc heard a faint rustle, followed by a stifled giggle.

‘Very droll,’ he heard Cheng reply, with what sounded like faint humour. ‘As you please – but not, I beg you, in his eyes. I don’t want him to end up in so much pain that he can’t talk.’

Something warm and sticky splashed onto Luc’s torso and ran down between his thighs. One of the shadowy figures, he realized, was pissing on him.

He jerked at his restraints and tried to scream, but all that came out of his throat was a hoarse rattle.

‘Enough of this,’ Cheng snapped irritably, and the stream of urine ceased. ‘Let him see.’

Someone turned the spotlight away from Luc’s face, instead focusing it on the ceiling so that he could see his surroundings more clearly.

The room in which they had him was long and low and entirely bare of decoration. The floor had a drain at its centre, while large and unpleasantly sharp-looking hooks hung from the ceiling. A heavily muscled Sandoz warrior stood to one side of Luc, while Cheng, Carter and four others he did not recognize stood facing him. He guessed they were members of the Eighty-Five.

Glancing to his other side, he saw another, unfamiliar man standing immediately next to him. This man’s apparent physical age was much younger, and he wore a plain black tunic, fluted at the waist, that reached very nearly to the ground. His face was gaunt, and devoid of emotion. Lifting a small bulb to Luc’s face, the man quickly squirted moisture into his eyes, one after the other, before stepping back once more.

‘Turn him so he can see her,’ Cheng commanded.

The Sandoz warrior stepped around behind Luc’s chair and, with a grunt, turned it through ninety degrees, the metal legs scraping noisily against the bare concrete floor. Luc found himself facing an identical steel chair, the body of a naked woman secured to it at the wrists and ankles.

Zelia had been so badly beaten he almost couldn’t recognize her. Her face had swollen up, severely distorting her features, her whole body a patchwork of bruises and welts. Although fresh bandages had been placed over her chest wound, there were burn marks all across her breasts and thighs.

But that wasn’t the worst thing.

Her eyelids had been cut away, along with her nose. Luc slowly understood that the same had been done to him, that this was the reason he could neither blink nor close his eyes. A second Sandoz warrior stood by Zelia, occasionally squirting moisture onto her exposed eyeballs, to prevent them from drying.

‘Zelia has been most helpful,’ said Cheng, stepping up beside Luc and nodding towards her, ‘if initially uncooperative. But thanks to her wise decision to work with us, we now understand the full extent of your involvement in Winchell Antonov’s revolution, as well as the nature of the Coalition technology inside your head.’

Cheng turned to the man in the dark tunic beside Luc. ‘Jacob,’ he said with a gesture, ‘if you please.’

Jacob squirted more moisture onto Luc’s face, regarding him with pitiless eyes.

‘Jacob Moreland,’ Luc managed to rasp.

‘I understand,’ said Moreland, ‘that you came here hoping to prevent me from completing my mission. Don’t you understand that everything Father Cheng does, he does out of love?’

It took an effort for Luc to say anything more, his tongue sliding across the ragged ruins of his teeth. ‘Ambassador Sachs told me everything,’ he said, spitting the words at Cheng and ignoring Moreland. ‘You’d kill a whole world, rather than risk falling out of power.’

Cheng smiled sadly. ‘It’s a terrible price for so many people to pay, I agree entirely. But do you think I would do any such thing, if I really believed there could be any possible alternative?’

‘Alternative to what?’ Luc rasped. ‘The Coalition are going to wipe you out. Don’t you understand that?’

‘Regardless of whatever offensive action the Coalition are planning, our Sandoz forces are well equipped to engage them.’

‘You’re insane. The Inimicals—’

‘—are a product of Ambassador Sachs’ imagination,’ Cheng snapped. ‘They do not exist. Jacob, please tell Mr Gabion what we’re going to be doing here today.’

‘The plan,’ said Jacob, squirting more moisture onto Luc’s naked eyeballs, ‘is to perform a live dissection, starting with the lattice inside your skull. You’ll be kept awake and conscious throughout, in order that your responses may be measured and assessed.’

A door slid open, and a mechant floated into the centre of the room. Razor-tipped instruments glinted from its underbelly.

‘The artefact,’ Luc rasped. ‘I know it’s close to here.’

‘Now do you see how badly we’ve let things slip over the years?’ Cheng declared, turning angry eyes on those of his advisors who were present. ‘Do you see how much this man knows?’

They all glanced away, as if the walls around them were of sudden and unexpected interest.

‘Father—’ one of the men tried to say.

‘Shut up!’ Cheng shouted, his face twisted in fury. ‘You’ve failed me. You’ve all failed me. I should send you all to the same hell as these two. Do you understand?’

‘The artefact is here, yes,’ Moreland told Luc with a smirk. ‘But not, I assure you, for much longer.’

Luc laughed, the sound descending into violent, hacking coughs. His eyes were becoming painfully dry once more, but Moreland made no move to squirt more moisture onto them.

He looked back over at Zelia. He tried to script to her, but got no answer. She gazed dully back at him.

‘I’m sorry, Zelia,’ Luc whispered. ‘I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you might stop me.’

Her lips moved fractionally, and a faint mumble emerged from the bruised wreckage of her mouth.

‘What was that?’ Cheng demanded sharply.

Luc licked dry, cracked lips, and shuddered with relief when Moreland finally stepped forward and sprayed moisture onto his eyeballs.

‘When I met Ambassador Sachs that last time on the Sequoia,’ Luc said to Cheng, ‘he gave me the means to track the artefact Moreland brought back here. But on the way here, I realized he’d given me much more than just that.’

‘I am not in the mood for speeches, Mr Gabion,’ said Cheng, sounding irritable. ‘Please get to the point, and all this unpleasantness will be over that much sooner.’

‘At first I wondered, why me? But then I realized he didn’t see it as being a decision he could make. The choice had to be made by someone from the Tian Di – someone like me.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ demanded Cheng, his tone suspicious.

‘I realized the Ambassador had given me a way to control the artefact, not just track it down.’ Luc smiled through cracked and broken teeth. ‘Even activate it, should it happen to be within sufficient proximity.’

Cheng gaped at him. They all did.

‘Kill him,’ Cheng barked. ‘Now.’

‘Too late,’ Luc whispered, and triggered the artefact.