“We knew they weren’t there,” Marc heard Zorge explain. “But, following orders, we planted a small bomb anyway and annihilated the place with fire.”
Zorge paused at that point. When Marc turned to stare at him, the Nari spymaster was looking for the right words. Something that would get to the heart of the matter, without offending the crazy human boss who had cut such a bloody swathe across the Accord.
The group had taken over a small resort on the outskirts of the city of Uwethis, on Kani. It was about as far from the civilized core of the Accord as one could get and still have indoor plumbing, as the joke went. Planetary population still under a half billion souls, but a good mix of species in the city. And one of the lowest rates of cops to citizens in known space. A safe enough place to hide while he rebuilt the organization.
Marc relaxed on an overstuffed chair done in green, while the Nari was on an equally-over-stuffed couch in gray and yellow squares. Hideous, but he wasn’t an interior decorator.
“Why? you were wanting to ask?” Marc smiled as the pause stretched.
“Something like that, yes,” Zorge replied defensively.
“They weren’t there, but had been,” Marc explained. “The criminal underground on Churquark isn’t as well organized as Zathus had been. Not as powerful either, relying too much on corrupt politicians and mid-level folks to get by. They might have considered letting things slide.”
“So bombing the place sends a message?” Zorge asked. “To whom?”
“Everyone,” Marc actually felt a smile on his face. Those were rare, these days. “It tells those two that I can find them, and that I won’t accept their apologies. It reminds the local underworld that anyone wanting to shelter the two lizardmen will be dealing with me, personally. It tells the Constabulary that things are more rotten than they think, so they’ll concentrate more effort on Churquark than they had been.”
“Net result, drive Morty and Xiomber off planet, right about the time the cops drop a ton of bricks on the place,” Zorge concluded. “They escape the dragnet, and nobody else?”
“Exactly,” Marc said. “Think of it as a shell game. Everyone will be looking on Churquark, where the marble is not hiding. I don’t know where they’ll go, but we’ve made the rest of the people around them unwelcoming, so they’ll have no choice but to run. Eventually, we’ll find them. Or the cops will.”
“Won’t they talk?” Zorge asked. “Tell the cops everything they know, trying to buy a reduced sentence?”
“Everything they know doesn’t include what I’m up to now,” Marc smiled. “You’re still thinking defensively.”
“And we’re rebuilding, while bringing down all the other gangs,” Zorge breathed. “But won’t that make it harder for us, if they start bringing in honest politicians? Or clean up the local police departments?”
“For a while,” Marc said. “I’ve been studying the Accord’s history, and one thing is clear. The structure they built was never going to last forever. Too fragile. The Vanir might be all law-and-order as a rule, but their place at the top of the hierarchy of things tends to rub a lot of the other species the wrong way. And so you get an underclass that don’t see how they can get ahead when the Vanir are so dominant.”
“Which breeds resentment, and creates the conditions for the underworld to thrive,” Zorge agreed.
“And I don’t see that pattern changing,” Marc said. “At least not for several more centuries. At some point, the Chaa might just have to come back and fix things if they want to go back to the old days, but I’m here now, and nobody’s done anything about it, so either they don’t see me as a threat, or, more likely, they don’t care.”
“And you plan to be around for that long still?”
“Correct,” Marc said.
He studied the Nari closely, but the man didn’t have any obvious qualms. Of course, without Maximus protecting him, the man would be a cell quickly enough. They were all in the chute now, and they knew it.
Victory or death.
Zorge shrugged.
“So I have my teams watching for all the key players,” Zorge continued. “Grodray and Baker disappeared for three days last week, but they’re back on Hurquar now, working to unravel everything there.”
Marc nodded.
“My theory is that they went to visit Gareth Dankworth, wherever he had been hidden,” Marc replied. “Now they’re getting desperate enough to use him.”
“Should we target him for anything?”
“No,” Marc said firmly. “Just watch him for now. Perhaps he’ll lead us to Morty and Xiomber. If he does, we’ll sweep them all up, but I need better weapons, if I’m going to take on a star dragon.”
“That’s Maiair’s department,” Zorge said.
“Indeed,” Marc agreed. “Anything else? Then send her in next.”
“Yes, sir.”
And the Nari spymaster was gone.
Marc looked around the room. Not bad, as resorts in the middle of nowhere went. Wood paneling on the walls made them feel small and intimate. Strange knick-knacks seemed to cover every free space on the abundant bookshelves, although he had no interest in ever reading the vast array of cozy mysteries and romances that the Accord writers seemed to generate on an annual basis.
He had a small front room with the couch, the overstuffed chair, and a writing hutch that could fold down. Down a short passageway was a tiny bathroom on the left, a kitchenette at the end, and a sleeping room barely big enough for the bed on the right. But this wasn’t a place tourists stayed all day.
They were close to a variety of what Marc would have called nature preserves back on Earth. Places to hike and camp, all a short ride away. The resort had a kitchen and a small bar up in the main building, but Marc had arranged to rent the entire facility for a month. It was the off-season on Kani, not far past the middle of winter at this latitude, so the owner had made them a great deal, especially when Marc didn’t need staff on hand for cooking and such.
He could have the place to himself for a while, cheap, and let his people work. Singles and doubles coming and going wouldn’t excite any gossip with the locals. They had been given a cover story of a small religious group on a retreat, so they could be self-contained.
Let the storm blow over the Accord right now, while he was sheltered. The fundamental mechanics had not changed, so all Gareth and the Constables could do would be to imprison the current batch of criminals, until Marc could bend the new batch to his will.
It might take a decade, but Vanir were long-lived folk to begin with, and he had plans for upgrading this body.
Emperor Marc. Not even Marc the First, as he planned to live as close to forever as medicine and genetics would allow, so he would give up the throne when it was taken from him in death, or when one of his sons finally impressed him enough to take over.
God/Emperor. Yes, that sounded more accurate.
A knock at the door, and then Maiair entered a moment later. Her crimson headcrest was carefully at half-mast. Unsure but firm and proud. Not challenging his authority, but not backing off of her own.
Good.
He had been afraid that the stress of the last month might have ground the Warreth woman down. Used her up. Broken her.
He could see he had been wrong.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked in a voice that found that perfect spot between subservient and sarcastic.
“Yes,” he smiled at her, gesturing to the sofa for her to sit. Hopefully, she would be at ease.
Like Zorge, she was poised at the edge of the seat rather than putting her weight back.
“Things are beginning to move,” Marc began. “Shortly, all of the enemy pieces will be on the table again, and we can begin our more complex gambits.”
“What do I need to concentrate on?” she asked, her headcrest perking up some, fluffing a little as she grew more confident in the direction of the meeting.
“Gareth St. John Dankworth is a wild card, Maiair,” Marc said quietly. “Zorge has his people trying to get me information from the Constables, as to what his capabilities truly are, but without Liamssen’s notes, we’re only guessing. I need you to find me a competent geneticist that we own, or can turn.”
“Kidnap?” she hazarded.
“No,” Marc replied flatly. “I’ll be putting my life in his hands, so I want one with a god complex and so much intellectual arrogance that he sees me as a challenge for his brilliance, rather than as an opportunity to destroy me in one shot.”
“They come in flavors,” she observed. “What kinds of upgrades were you needing for yourself? Liamssen was among the best as a generalist, and the rest are being prodded enough by the Constables enough to be looking over their shoulders constantly.”
“I am bigger and stronger than most Vanir,” Marc noted. “Smarter than just about all of them, as well. But Dankworth and the others didn’t stop there. He can turn into a flipping dragon, for God’s sake. I need something to counter that, but I’m not sure what, yet.”
“Draco-form?” she asked carefully.
“This is a genetic change, Maiair,” he replied. “If Dankworth ever had children with a Vanir woman, it would probably be a trait that was passed down. If the Accord isn’t ready for humans, they really won’t be able to deal with lycanthropic dragons. No, I’m looking to found a dynasty, so I need to get as close to immortality as we can get, which won’t be that hard, but I want to be able to do something nobody else in the Accord can do.”
“Which is?” she hesitated, sensing something that left her nervous.
More nervous than she already was.
“Breed with other species,” Marc replied carefully, almost tenderly. “There’s no reason all my children should be Vanir, Maiair.”
She sucked a nearly-silent gasp and froze perfectly still, like a rabbit in the grass hearing an owl’s cry.
Marc left the silence hanging. She had hinted at such things earlier, but she probably never realized that Marc Sarzynski was capable of going there intellectually. The various species of the Accord of Souls had been fixed in place by the Chaa when most of them were Uplifted, and the Vanir became Those Left Behind. They could marry and live happy lives, but never cross-breed.
Hell, most of them had different chromosome counts, so fertility was truly impossible.
But if he told a conference of geneticists that something was simply impossible, a few would stand up and challenge him. Those were the ones he wanted. Immortality wasn’t a red flag they could look at on a readout. It had to be inferred from a host of indicators all being too healthy at the same time.
Perhaps one who would make him immortal, and a second who could help Marc create a whole series of ruling castes over the current species. He had been serious about bringing in a few humans and adding them in as dons and capos. And his own children would probably require fifty years before they were stable enough as a royal family.
But Marc was measuring time in millennia.
“You’re sure?” she finally spoke.
Her headcrest had nearly collapsed, but now it had risen again. Puffed out feathers around her head had relaxed as the moment of shock passed.
“We have the opportunity to reshape the Accord of Souls, Maiair,” Marc almost whispered. “I see no reason to limit things to the Vanir. The Warreth should have a chance to shine, as should the Nari and even the Grace. I’m less confident in some of the other species, but we can look. Can you find me the right doctor?”
He paused again. This was where things got tricky.
On the one hand, she knew he was going to create a ruling caste of humans, led by a royal family of heavily modified Vanir. On the other, he had just offered her the chance to place her own offspring into that level of power as well.
Permanently.
And the best part? All of his children would not be bound by the Accord of Souls, so he would have a permanent underclass of peons that were generally incapable of doing the kinds of violence necessary to stop him.
He would only have to worry about the humans he brought over, and his own children.
And Gareth St. John Dankworth.