The Emperor of Everything

When they arrived, he was forced to surface in order to enter the lagoon. He unshuttered the sub’s blast louvers as the murky waters flowed away from the armorglass ports. Immediately he saw that something was wrong. The lagoon was nearly deserted, though a few burned hulks lay awash in the far end. Most of the lights were dark, but several of them had been replaced by jury-rigged glarebulbs, which cast a harsh blue light on the landing and on the phalanx of killmechs that now guarded the entrance. The entrance was a tangle of torn metal around a jagged hole.

Ruiz’s heart jumped up and wedged itself into his throat. Something was terribly wrong. He latched up his armor as the sub slammed roughly into the quay. Before the sub had latched itself to the mooring toggles, he was undogging the dorsal hatch.

“Watch him closely,” he told Albany. “If he does anything you don’t understand immediately, kill him. Don’t worry about me — I’ll be out of range; besides, I may have just lost my best reason for staying alive. If you hesitate, we’ll probably both die anyway, so don’t hesitate.”

He climbed out. As he was lowering himself down the ladder to the quay, he heard Publius start to say something in a brightly inquisitive voice. He hoped Albany was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

He landed on the quay and raised his empty hands in a gesture of peaceful intent. The nearest killmech blurred across the landing and seized his wrists in padded clamps. “Your business here?” it asked in an unmodulated mechanical voice. It extruded probes, and inventoried the weapons he carried.

“I have property within,” Ruiz said. He noticed that the mech bore the colors of one of the great pirate houses. Glancing about, he saw that most of the lords had sent killmechs to guard the pens. What could have happened?

“Unforeseen events have occurred,” said the mech. “Your property may be damaged or unavailable.”

Ruiz felt his knees wobble; his muscles threatened to turn to water. “What unforeseen events?”

“We are not authorized to discuss these events. You may retrieve your property if it is available. If not, you must speak with the manager.”

It released his wrists and moved aside. He nodded and walked inside, as though in a slow nightmare.

The pens had obviously been the site of a bloody engagement. The corpses of the combatants were gone, but here and there were splashes of brown blood, and everywhere was the smell of recent carnage: an odor of decay, feces, urine, and the persistent reek of discharged energy weapons. Ruiz hurried, faster and faster, until by the time he reached the cells where he had left Nisa and the others, he was running as fast as he could.

The doorways were open and dark, twisted by the same energies that had destroyed the front doors of the pen. Oddly, the doors appeared to have been blasted open from the inside.

He skidded to a stop, gasping for breath, though he shouldn’t have been at all taxed by such a short sprint. He could not immediately force himself to enter her room.

An android stepped from the cell where Ruiz had left Dolmaero; it wore the silver and blue uniform of the Diamond Bob Pens. “These were yours?” it demanded.

“Yes,” Ruiz answered, in a voice that shook slightly.

The android froze for a moment; apparently it was too primitive a model to be capable of smooth transitions between attitudinal modes. Then it smiled, a grotesquely artificial expression. “Come,” it said. “Diamond Bob will want to speak with you.” It pointed down the corridor, deeper into the pens.

“Wait,” said Ruiz. “Where are my properties?”

“Gone. So sorry. Diamond Bob will discuss the matter at greater length.”

Ruiz pushed past the thing into Nisa’s cell. It attempted to bar his way, though with no great determination, plucking ineffectually at his armor. “Please,” it said. “Diamond Bob urgently requests your attention.”

Ruiz ignored it. He roamed around the small room, looking for any indication of Nisa’s fate. The door to the common area was also burned open, but carefully, as if the person who had wielded the graser had not wished to injure the person within. Obviously, the attackers had come from the common area, had broken through the cells and gone on out. Had they taken Nisa and the others with them? Inside her room, he found no bloodstains, nor any sign that lethal weapons had been used — and his heart lifted slightly. He imagined that there still lingered a trace of Nisa’s scent, under the stinks of the ravaged pen. He picked up her pillow, held it to his armored chest. “When did it happen?” he asked the android, who stood in the doorway, wringing its hands in a mechanical approximation of anxiety.

“Diamond Bob will be happy to make full disclosure,” it said. “Please, our customers’ satisfaction is our paramount concern. Diamond Bob will try to compensate you for your losses — though you must realize that Diamond Bob has sustained heavy losses also.”