Empire's End Read Free Page B

through the crowd at full tilt. Leaping across openings. Forcing gaps where none existed before. AH the while she kept her eyes focused on her eventual goal—the enormous doors leading into the Arundel Castle pressroom.
    At the door she was brought up short by a black uniformed mountain. The golden insignia on the guard’s sleeve was an ornate / with an 5 twisted around it like a snake. Wonderful, her mind snarled… Internal Clottin‘ Security.
    She flashed her sweetest smile. Guaranteed to melt the hearts of most reasonably heterosexual males. “Excuse me, please…” Ranett started to duck under his arm and slip into the pressroom. Inside, she heard a briefer’s dry voice. The clots have already started, she thought. I’ll skin somebody’s hide for this.
    Again, the IS man barred her way. “Press only,” he snarled.
    Ranett kept the sweet smile pasted on. “Then, that means me.” She whipped out her credentials and held them steady for the big stupe’s beady eyes. He looked closely at the credentials, then at her face. Taking his damned good time.
    “Looks like you, all right,” he said. Then he gave her a malicious grin. Double wonderful, Ranett thought. A media hater.
    “You still can’t go in.”
    “Why the clot not?”
    The IS man jolted. The sweetness on Ranett’s face was gone now. Her tone dripped icicles. But after the moment’s hesitation, the guard failed to take warning.
    “Orders, that’s why,” he growled. “The briefing’s already in progress… No one may enter or leave until it’s over.”
    A heartbeat later his self-satisfied smile was replaced with a look of pure terror as Ranett unleashed her pent-up fury.
    “Get out of my way, you pumped-up little scrote,” she snarled. “You let me in there this instant, or I’ll fry your pubes for breakfast.”
    She let him have it for a full one and a half horrible minutes. Scorching him and the wall on either side with blasphemies and foul threats equal to anything the IS man had ever heard—up to and including introducing him to the Emperor’s chief torturer.
    As each second of the ninety dripped away like a full year, the name on the press ID started registering in his tiny brain. TTie woman flaying him alive was a legendary newsbeing. Ranett had covered the Tahn wars from the front. Survived the nightmare years when the privy council ruled. Produced prizewinning livie documentaries that even he had watched in awe. Mighty government and corporate chieftains had been known to flee like small boys caught in dirty little acts when she showed up with her recording crew.
    When she paused for breath—or new inspiration—the IS man did his best to ooze out of her way. He was busy deserting his post—he’d rather face his hyena-voiced sergeant than this woman—when he heard the big doors hiss open, then closed. He looked behind him. Managed a breath… long and shuddering. Ranett was inside. He was safe until the press conference was over. And clot his orders.
    Fleet Admiral Anders—Chief of His Majesty’s Naval Operations—did a little mental swearing of his own when he saw Ranett duck into the crowded room and cozen some young fool out of an aisle seat.
    Up until now, the thing had gone perfectly. When he had first gotten news of the drakh that had hit the fan in the Altaics, he had put his press crisis officers into motion before he had even gotten orders from the Emperor.
    The admiral’s critics—all silent now—believed him far too young for his post. Also too consciously handsome and smooth. A man who had climbed quickly to the top through political talent, rather than military. In fact, his combat medals had all been won by staged fly-ins to recently cleared enemy territory. He had fired many shots in anger, but all skillfully executed memos and press releases.
    His first act as Chief of Naval Operations had been to create the emergency press-pool system the beings before him were operating under. The rules were simple: (1)