The Thousand Emperors Read Free

with a raised eyebrow and an expression of frank disbelief. Luc heard someone snicker.
    ‘Well, what the mosquitoes can tell us is that we hit this complex a lot harder and faster than either Antonov or any of his Black Lotus fighters were clearly expecting,’ said
Marroqui, turning back to face Luc fully. ‘Chances are we stepped over his corpse on the way in here. If you really want to be of help, you should stay behind and see if one of these bodies
is his. The rest of us meanwhile can scout out the lower levels, and maybe figure out where those missing mosquitoes went to.’
    Luc felt his face colour. You can stay behind and clear up the litter while we do the real work , was what Marroqui really meant.
    It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was desperately unwelcome. His temporary promotion to expedition leader had, he gathered, gone down very badly with Sandoz Command. But without his
presence here, SecInt’s role in tracking Antonov down would be reduced to not much more than a footnote.
    And that would never do.
    ‘Isn’t assuming Antonov’s already dead something of a dangerous assumption?’ asked Luc.
    ‘Haven’t you seen how badly the ‘skeets tore this place up?’ Marroqui protested. ‘Look – even if he somehow survived the initial assault, he’s
powerless. All his men are dead, and we’ve shattered his defences. Whether he’s alive or not, you need to stay back here, and let us take care of things from here on in.’
    Luc fought to keep his voice steady. ‘You weren’t at Puerto Isabel. I was there, with another Sandoz Clan. We had Antonov cornered, along with several Black Lotus agents. I made the
mistake of listening to someone just like you telling me to step back and let them take care of things.’
    Marroqui stared back at him with dagger eyes. ‘And your point is?’
    ‘That he got away ,’ said Luc, enunciating the words as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. ‘I’m not going to make that mistake a second time.’
    ‘If I’d been in charge of that raid, there wouldn’t have been any screw-ups.’
    ‘That’s funny, because I’m getting a powerful sense of déjà vu every time you open your mouth,’ Luc spat back.
    ‘You’re not seriously suggesting Antonov could escape ?’
    ‘Master Marroqui, I’ve spent half my damn life trying to find Winchell Antonov, and there’s no way he’d wind up here without some kind of an exit strategy in
place. Right now, my guess is that your missing mosquitoes have something to do with it.’
    Marroqui’s expression became incredulous. Exit strategy? Luc could almost hear him thinking. Exit to where? Snoop hunters hid in Aeschere’s shadow cone, ready to
challenge anything emerging from the moon’s surface, while a fat-bellied intercept platform orbited above Grendel’s dark side, its deep-range scanners sweeping the whole of 55
Cancri’s inner system. And that wasn’t even counting the autonomous units scattered throughout the rest of Grendel’s moons.
    And yet the fact remained that Antonov had managed to evade capture or assassination for nearly two centuries. Luc wanted desperately to be the one who finally caught the Tian Di’s
greatest fugitive, but the defeats and setbacks he had suffered over the years had taught him the value of caution.
    ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Marroqui said quietly. ‘Of course we can’t hear from all of the ‘skeets; solar storm’s fucking our comms up.’
    Which was entirely possible, and yet Luc couldn’t avoid a nagging doubt that lingered in the pit of his stomach. It might have been safer for all concerned to pull back to the intercept
platform and wait the storm out, but Luc felt sure that Antonov, if he was still alive, was waiting for just such an opportunity to slip past them. They had to make their move sometime in
the next twenty hours, then escape before the storm reached its peak and lashed Grendel and its moons with fiery whips billions of kilometres in length.
    It