She racked the captain up against the wall. "Now, get that buttwipe veep on the line. You hear?"
The captain heard.
She started with the veep and worked her way up to the president of the shipping line, scorching space from the Altaics to Prime in the process.
It was hopeless.
As the freighter turned maddeningly around and set off on its return journey, Ranett learned two things: The shipping line was as upset as she was at the action—there was an expensive and perishable cargo aboard the freighter. And the order had been initiated outside the company.
Meaning it was political.
Meaning the action could only be aimed at her.
Someone real important wanted to stop Ranett from getting the story on Jochi.
And there was nothing she could do.
Her editor was equally irked. "Nobody will admit it, but this has Imperial interference written all over it," he fumed on the deep-space hookup. "I jerked chains all the way up to Arundel, but it's no good. Everybody's scared."
"How'd they find out I was on the way?" Ranett asked.
"Snoops. Bugs. What else? I'm having our offices swept by security right now."
"What's our competition doing?" Ranett wanted to know.
"That's the only good news," the editor said. "It's not just us. Nobody but nobody with press credentials gets to the Altaics."
Enough details did leak out, however, to put the Emperor into a high rage. barracks bomb toll soars, read one vid screamer, shame on the altaics, read another. And there were many, more:
GUARDSMEN'S FAMILIES IN SHOCK... TRAGIC IMPERIAL FOUL-UP on rurik... The more thoughtful vid casts weighed in with: ALTAIC TURMOIL TIED TO ISKRA... QUESTIONS RAISED ON EMPEROR'S CHOICE OF OBSCURE PROFESSOR... ISKRA: THE SCHOLAR TYRANT.
"Next time I write a constitution,'' the Emperor railed, "I want an Official Secrets Act with real damned teeth in it. I want prison terms. I want firing squads-I want clottin' torture chambers, dammit!"
The woman with the lush young figure and old pol eyes applauded. "No problem with that drakh," Avri said. "Last polls I ran on the media showed the rubes are with ya, boss. Ten percent think a free press is important. Sixty-five percent say kick those rabble-rousers off the sleigh. And the other twenty-five percent were so dumb they thought the Evening News was a livie sitcom.''
The Emperor's rage turned to booming laughter. "That's what I liked about you from the start, Avri," he said. "You always cut to the chase."
"I got my masters in scalp hunting on Dusable," she said. "But I got my Ph.D. watching you in action... sir." Avri looked the Emperor up and down in frank admiration. "I never met or heard of a politician living or dead who coulda pulled what you pulled."
The Emperor made humble noises. "I didn't invent anything. I just stole from the masters." He gave Avri a wolfish grin. "Of course, I put a few new twists on the rules."
"I'll say you clottin' did, uh, sir."
"Knock off the sir," the Emperor said. "When we're in private, of course. There's no room for respect in a business that votes graveyards."
The Emperor had met Avri on his long road back from death to the Imperial crown. He had needed to fix an election on Dusable, and she was handling the perfect candidate for the job: an empty-headed pretty boy who would sit and heel and fetch in those votes like a good little political doggy.
At the time, he had mainly appreciated Avri's crooked brain. But as he looked at her now, poured into a black body suit, other areas of interest came to mind. Avri caught the look. She gave him a "don't mind at all" smile and stretched back in her seat to give him a better view. The Emperor felt a stir. He put it aside for a while. Let it age in the cooler.
"How are things lining up in Parliament?" he asked.
"Real nice," Avri said, a bit disappointed. But she brightened quickly as she took up her favorite game: counting yeas and nays. "Tyrenne Walsh has been practicing that speech we worked up for him. The dumb clot doesn't understand a word he's saying—but he sounds positively yummy.'' Walsh was the pretty boy Avri and the Emperor had put into the top job on Dusable—toppling one of the canniest and dirtiest old political bosses in the Empire, while they were at it.
Now the Emperor had called in Avri to launch his plan to turn the independent Imperial provinces into under-his-thumb dominions.
"Here's how I have it mapped," Avri said. "Walsh gives the lead-off speech, just like you said. He makes with the high-minded buzzwords to start: duty, loyalty, patriotism... all those words that hit the symbolism buzzer hard."
The Emperor nodded. "Fine. Fine. Then he makes the big statement, right?"
"That's what you wanted,'' Avri said, "but I think you're moving for the bottom line too fast. I mean, we don't want him to sound like your stooge."
The Emperor chuckled. "Heaven forbid."
"Well, that's how it'll sound," Avri said. "What we want him to do is announce that he's going to be the first big boss to turn over his system to you."
"You mean, to become one of my dominions," the Emperor said.
"Sameo, sameo," Avri said. "Of course, in Walsh's case it don't matter. He's already being run. By yours truly. But some of the other types are used to calling their own shots. They're not gonna go that easy."
The Emperor saw her point. "What did you have in mind?"
"A hero sandwich," Avri said. "If we put enough garbage in this bun, nobody'll notice how thin the slices of ham and cheese are. And they'll have voted and be halfway home before the heartburn cuts in."
"Go on," the Emperor said.
"Okay, so we wave the flag like you said." Avri made a crude pumping gesture with a closed fist. "Then we lay on some personal suffering biz. You know: the letter from the little old lady who's sending in her last credit to help bail out the Empire. And I did a vid layout on some starving infants. Good creepy drakh. Orange hair. Swollen bellies. Real neato heart ruggers."
"Blood, sweat, and baby urine," the Emperor said. "It always works."
"Sure. With your left hand. Okay, now get this. While they're still gaggin' on the screwed up kids, I wanna smack 'em good with an old soldier's routine I worked up."
"This is getting pretty interesting," the Emperor said. "I might vote for this thing four or five times myself."
"You better," Avri said. "You need margin on this sucker... Now. I dug up some old general of yours. Been retired thirty some years. More dirt in his head than brains. I got him all worked up about the quote 'plight of the Empire' end quote. Got him good and weepy. At the end, he struggles to his feet—I put him on crutches—and calls on all the beings in your Empire to pull together.
"He does a terrific unity whine. Says this is the greatest emergency in his lifetime. And that no sacrifice is too great to ratchetaratcheta—it'll work like a charm. I guarantee it. Laid it on a test group last night. Not a dry eye in the house. Best of all, the audience emptied its pockets for the Imperial relief fund. Best bucks per capita those frauds have ever seen."
"Then Walsh makes the announcement?" the Emperor asked.
"Then Walsh makes the announcement."
"Great job," the Emperor said. "But I have one wrinkle to add to your problem."
"What's that?"
"That boost I'm planning in the AM2 tax?"
Avri nodded. "Yeah. Good idea. Scare clot out of the holdouts. What about it?"
"I want to make it retroactive. To all the AM2 since the end of the Tahn war.''
Avri whistled. "Might scare 'em too much."
"Sorry. You're going to have to work around it, somehow."