The Crown Jewels (8 page)

“I don’t anticipate trouble, my lord.” In what Tvi hoped was a tone of quiet confidence.

Sinn looked at her, his gaze commanding. “Anticipate every possible trouble, Tvi. Then you will be able to cope with each problem as it arises.”

Why did officers always talk like this? Tvi wondered. Nothing a subordinate said was ever quite right. Even expressions of confidence triggered a lecture. Her reply was dutiful.

“Yes, my lord.”

Countess Anastasia stepped from the back of the room and laid a hand on Baron Sinn’s arm. The Baron stiffened.

“Let no one get in your way,” the Countess said. Unlike the Baron, she spoke High Khosali. “This is no time for hesitation or foolish regard for life. There must be no witnesses. You must be prepared to take harsh action.” She held up a clenched fist.

Tvi remained silent. She didn’t have to take orders from the Countess, but the Baron’s group was dependent on the Countess for support on this planet, so there was every reason to treat her with courtesy.

The Fate of the Empire! Tvi thought again. Now there was something worth listening to boring speeches for. She wondered if, in future generations, there would be video programs about Tvi of the Secret Dragoons.

The Countess went on about firmness and the necessity for action. Tvi knew that when her superiors shifted into High Khosali they were trying to inspire her, and she could successfully drowse through it with her eyes open. She therefore stood in a respectful attitude, her ears cocked forward as if she were listening, and in her mind pictured Video Tvi and watched with cool pleasure as the heroine stole documents, battled spies, saved the Emperor’s coffin from sabotage. . . . Then she looked at Khotvinn.

The big Khosalikh was standing with his eyes gleaming, the fur on his shoulders standing. The monster was absorbing the Countess’s words with evident pleasure and anticipation, just waiting for the moment when he could crack bones, snap necks, bruise flesh. In their few days’ acquaintance, Khotvinn had always given Tvi the impression of something that might choose to live in a cave. Now that impression was enhanced. Tvi’s mind snapped to attention. Someone like Khotvinn wasn’t in her mental script. The Khotvinns of the videos always sought employment in the service of villains, and were usually massacred by the heroine just before intermission.

Khotvinn was going to take watching. Tvi knew that now, and knew it for certain.

*

In her darksuit, Tvi flowed like black glass over the rolling yellow hills on the outskirts of Peleng City. Her sense of smell, enhanced by her darksuit attachments, brought her the scent of night-blooming bellseed flowers.

Khotvinn stood by the flier like a monument. Tvi had decided not to use him on her reconnaissance— she considered him clumsy, and she was certain that he had let himself be seen tailing Maijstral’s assistant the day before. Tvi lighted and switched off the suit’s holograph projectors. Khotvinn gave no sign he noticed her presence.

“Navarre’s flier is gone. There are no security arrangements on the house that I can detect.”

Khotvinn was matter-of-fact. “Then let’s go.” His accent was provincial and hard to understand. He flexed his shoulders in a stiff, businesslike way, and Tvi wondered where Sinn had found this one. Half the Secret Dragoons joined the military from jail, and Khotvinn might well be some murderer recruited from the prison planets for the impenitent, one of those who hadn’t had the decency to commit suicide when caught.

She wondered how he could possibly have understood the Countess’s speech. Tvi doubted he could speak High Khosali if it were put to him.

“Not yet,” Tvi said. “Wait for light.”

Khotvinn flexed again, impatient, but said nothing at all through the long purple dawn. He didn’t seem to be much good at conversation.

She sighed. In the vids featuring Allowed Burglars, assistants were polite, amoral technophiles who followed orders with clear-eyed efficiency, always ready to pull some new black box out of a hat. Disappointingly, Khotvinn was out of the wrong mold.

Tvi waited till she saw a few early fliers carrying people about their business. Then she put on a battered jacket over her darksuit and motioned for Khotvinn to join her in the flier. It rose into the morning sky.

“I’ve got a plan,” Tvi said, “Just follow my lead.” Khotvinn gave no sign that he had heard. Tvi chose to assume he had.

She didn’t bother explaining her plan to him. She had tried to picture this discussion to herself, and the picture hadn’t scanned. “We’re going to pretend to be broadcast repair personnel, Khotvinn.” Then, tactfully, “Do you know what broadcast repair personnel are?” No, best let her do the talking. Khotvinn was supposed to be strictly backup, in case of emergencies.

She’d do it all herself. She was Tvi of the Secret Dragoons, on her first real mission, and the Fate of the Empire . . .
oops
.

She had overshot Amalia Jensen’s house. She turned the flier in a long loop, making it seem as if the oversight had been a deliberate attempt at reconnaissance. Khotvinn said nothing, assuming he’d even noticed. She dropped the flier onto Jensen’s flat roof.

The edge of the roof was decorated with long planters and bright blossoms. A robot was moving from flower to flower with a watering can.

The robot was an ordinary all-purpose domestic, combining the functions of maid, butler, doorman, telephone answering machine, and cup-bearer. It rolled toward the flier. The watering can, Tvi noticed, was painted with little yellow daisies.

“May I help you, lady and sir?” the robot asked.

What Tvi planned to say was this: “We’re from Peleng Independent Broadcasting. We’ve had reports of interference in your neighborhood, and we’d like to check out your sets.” What she said instead was: “Khotvinn! What in hell are you
doing
?”

For the giant had leaped from the flier, not even bothering to open the door, and felled the robot with a single kick. It went sprawling, its arms flung out, the water can clattering across the roof. Khotvinn leaped into the air, then landed on the robot with both feet. More clattering.

Tvi was jumping too, for the black boxes in the back seat. She triggered them— just in time, she suspected— and saw the little gauges flicker as they began intercepting communications. The robot was alerting the household even as Khotvinn picked it up and began smashing it against one of the planters.

“Sir!” the robot chirped. “Can’t we just talk about it like reasonable beings?”

Tvi knew exactly how the robot felt. Khotvinn tore one of the robot’s arms off.

Panic thudded beneath Tvi’s ribs. The Fate of the Empire, she recited to herself. Et cetera. Do something.

She jumped out of the flier and dashed to the roof entrance, then pressed the down button. “ACCESS DENIED,” the door reported in four commonly-used scripts.

“Thagger,” Tvi swore. She was going to have to get in the house some other way.

Khotvinn tore off the robot’s remaining arm and began beating the machine with it.

Tvi snapped on her darksuit and pulled its hood over her head, giving her mental control of its devices. She triggered the hologram and, a miniature black cloud, floated away from the mayhem on the roof and dived over the edge of the building. She reached for a microcutter on her belt and began slicing at the first window she came to. As she popped the window out and began to drift through it, she realized she was entering Amalia Jensen’s bedroom.

Darksuits are useless camouflage during the day. The black holographic cloud obscures the figure, of course, but it may be argued that a black cloud floating through someone’s window may call more attention to itself than a person doing the same thing. And of course if you happen to be halfway through a window, your darksuit could be projecting the chorus from
Aida
and you’d still be an easy target.

The first glimpse Tvi caught of Amalia Jensen was as the human female popped out from behind her waterbed and lobbed overarm a heavy vase that caught Tvi squarely between the ears. Stars exploded in Tvi’s vision. She decided to get out of the window as fast as possible, and accelerated straight across the room.

Unfortunately her depth perception was still numb and she smashed headfirst into a closet door.

Jensen, seen by Tvi through her rear projectors, continued to hurl weighty household objects into the darksuit screen. A heavy ashtray caught Tvi between her shoulders. A vase detonated over her head.

Enough was enough. This was Khotvinn’s department. Tvi flew down the hallway to the living room and unlocked the roof entrance. The amplified scent of flowers warred with pain in her skull— the place was full of plants. Khotvinn came slowly down the a-grav elevator, a robot arm in one hand.

“What took you so long?” he snarled.

Tvi willed her hologram projectors off and pointed numbly toward Jensen’s bedroom. “That way,” she said. Khotvinn flung the robot arm into a corner— there was a crash that echoed endlessly in Tvi’s skull as the arm destroyed a porcelain planter— and then the giant began to lope at a ground-shattering trot toward the bedroom.

Unfortunately Jensen had changed position. She came flying out of a connecting bathroom, a green-and-white striped towel blossoming from one hand. The towel draped nearly over Khotvinn’s head just as Jensen’s foot planted itself in his midsection. The air went out of Khotvinn in a rush.

There followed a good deal of confused thumping and thrashing. Jensen was aided by another small household robot that clung to Khotvinn’s knees and tried in a fairly incompetent way to harm him. Tvi wasn’t certain what she was watching, not being an aficionado of the martial arts— a proper burglar disdained violence— but it seemed as if honors were about even. Both fighters were breathless and bloody before Jensen broke off the combat and retreated back into the bathroom. Khotvinn, ignoring the clawing robot and a bottle of shampoo that bounced off his chest, marched in pursuit.

Tvi leaned against an overstuffed chair, holding her head. “Hey,” she said as the thrashing started again, “use your stunner, why don’t you?”

The household robot came flying out of the bedroom door and smashed into bits on the opposite wall. Amalia Jensen, crouched low, followed the robot out of the door— apparently she’d just ducked from the bathroom into the bedroom— and began backing toward Tvi. Tvi reached for her stunner.

Then Khotvinn appeared, brandishing a towel rack. Jensen reached for a flowerpot and let fly. Tvi lowered her weapon. The wide-beam stunner would get them both if she fired it.

The combat demolished most of the living room. Tvi floated up near the roof in her a-grav harness, trying to get in a clear shot, but Khotvinn kept blocking the way.

“
Earth slime
!” Khotvinn bellowed.

“
Inhuman scum
!” Amalia Jensen retorted through bloody lips.

Fate of the Empire, Tvi thought resignedly, and wondered how well her black boxes were doing without supervision.

Do
something.

She floated over Khotvinn, grabbed his scruff with one hand, and yanked back, turning her a-grav up to max. Khotvinn flew backward, his arms windmilling, and landed on a glass table that shattered with a sound that rattled in Tvi’s head like snapping thunder. Jensen cackled triumphantly and prepared her
coup de grace
. Tvi, now having a clear shot, fired and dropped Jensen in her tracks.

“No!” Khotvinn roared. He was having trouble disentangling himself from the table frame. “She was mine!”

“Idiot,” Tvi said. Her skull was splitting. “You were just supposed to stun her. Pick her up and let’s go.”

“No fair,” Khotvinn muttered sulkily.

Fate of the Empire, Tvi thought as chimes clanged in her skull. Next time the Empire offered her its fate, it could jolly well go hang.

CHAPTER FIVE

Roman flew alone in Peleng’s ruby morning sky. He found it encouraging that he hadn’t been followed today— perhaps the two Khosali tags were thrill seekers after all, and had got bored.

He had spent the previous evening being a decoy, trying to give the impression that he and Maijstral were having an ordinary evening. He had taken a bouquet of flowers to Nichole at her residence. It had been delightful seeing her again, as she was one of Maijstral’s friends of whom he could actually approve. At Nichole’s, Roman had left word with the household robots to expect Maijstral later that night, laying a false trail just in case the small female Khosalikh who had been following Roman all evening should ask. . . . Roman had then ordered a meal for three from Chef Tso’s Exquisite Mesa Catering, and picked up the laundry. At some point during these more mundane errands, Roman’s tail had vanished, just dropped from sight.

This morning Roman had performed various evasions and escapes just in case, but he’d become certain before very long there was no one after him. Buoyed by the knowledge, he finished his evasions anyway, for form’s sake. He hoped the rest of the day would be as free from aggravation.

Seen through the viewscreen of his flier, Peleng City’s low pastel buildings, all surrounded by bright ornamental trees and blossoms, resolved from an early morning mist. Roman’s heart gladdened. He put the flier on a landing spiral that would place it on the flat roof of Amalia Jensen’s small white house. His ears turned down as he thought of Humanity Prime, and then his diaphragm spasmed once in resignation. If Maijstral was going to engage in an irregular occupation, he would inevitably deal with irregular people— Roman could only wish there were more like Nichole and fewer like Jensen and her friends.

The flier settled on the roof like a leaf on a spotless green lawn. The edge of the roof was decorated with planters and bright blossoms. Roman felt buoyed; he liked having living things around him. Enjoying the plants in spite of himself, Roman got out of the flier and headed toward the roof entrance. The first thing he saw was a dead robot. Suspicion hummed in his nerves. He checked that his gun was loose in its holster and wished he had brought some of his darksuit attachments that would allow him to see behind his back.

Carefully Roman examined the robot. The machine had been torn apart— arms and legs ripped off, command unit excavated and thrown across the roof. The destruction was wanton, far more than would have been necessary to disable the machine. And whoever had done it had been very strong.