The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  You made your choices long ago. Now live by your choices. Go! To the combat bays. Now! Go!"

  By now, both Hatch and Lupus had clamped their hands to their ears to muffle the force of that onslaught. Paraban Senk was booming like a thunder-god.

  "You have your orders!" said Senk. "Go!"

  Hatch saw he was going to be shouted down if he tried to protest further, so he fled. All the way to the combat bays he swore savagely. Senk had set him up nicely. By making this a combat of MegaCommand Cruisers, Senk had doomed Hatch to defeat.

  And by giving Hatch command of a mutinous Nu-chala-nuth MegaCommand Cruiser, Senk had underlined Hatch's responsibility

  for the realworld revolution now taking place in Dalar ken Halvar itself.

  "Bitch of a bastard!" said Hatch.

  Then gained his chosen combat bay. Its door hardened to kaleidoscope. He slammed his fist against the door. Savagely.

  Testing it. The door held. Very well. Hatch dropped himself into the initiation seat. Paraban Senk's face appeared on the combat bay's display screen.

  "How do you feel?" said Senk.

  "How do you think I feel?" said Hatch. "You want to kill me, don't you?"

  "I am obedient to my priorities," said Senk. "My ruling priority is simple. I must train Startroopers. Lupus Lon Oliver can assist me with that task. You cannot."

  "I can," said Hatch.

  "How so?" said Senk.

  Hatch was on the spot. Unless he could talk his way out of this one, he was going to be defeated in battle, he was going to be expelled from the Combat College in consequence of his defeat, and he would be killed in Dalar ken Halvar by those who saw him as being responsible for the revolution in that city.

  "I can help you," said Hatch, "Because I'm politically astute enough to take control of the Nu-chala-nuth. To lead the revolution."

  Even as he said it, it sounded like madness. But what alternative did he have? Senk had publicly linked Hatch with the Nu-chala-nuth. Senk had named Hatch as the person responsible for the revolution. Senk had seated him on a tiger, and now he must ride it or be eaten.

  "You'd what!?" said Senk. "You'd lead a religious revolution?

  I couldn't permit such a disaster."

  "On the contrary," said Hatch. "You must permit exactly that.

  Because - because a revolution led by the Nu-chala-nuth is your sole chance of survival."

  "That's a nonsense," said Senk.

  "Is it?" said Hatch. "The physical fabric of the Combat College is starting to fall apart. One of the airlock doors is gone. Most of the combat bays don't work any more. The cafeteria food is questionable. You won't be able to work unassisted. Not for much longer."

  "I'll do my best," said Senk. "The Free Corp will help me."

  "Ah," said Hatch. "But what's the Free Corp's motivation?"

  "The Free Corps," said Senk, "is motivated by loyalty to the Nexus. If you've got a point, then make it quickly, Hatch. Lon Oliver is asking me why there's a delay."

  "Then let him audit this conversation," said Hatch. "Senk, listen to me. The Free Corps is dominated by submission psychology. The Free Corps gives you its loyalty because you're the biggest, strongest, most powerful thing around."

  "The Nu-chala-nuth are ruled by a similar psychological priority," said Senk.

  "Ah," said Hatch. "But you're doomed to fail, and publicly.

  Your doors are breaking down, your functions failing. Soon you'll need active human help to accomplish your mission. The Free Corps won't help you when you're a cripple."

  "That's debatable," said Senk.

  "But the Nu-chala-nuth will!" said Hatch. "If you ally yourself with the Nu-chala-nuth, then you can make yourself the temple of the religion, the repository of holy knowledge. You can teach the Motsu Kazuka, teach the purity of the truth."

  "Nu-chala-nuth is too dangerous to deal with," said Senk.

  "Is it?" said Hatch. "You'll have the whole of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga to deal with unless the Silver Emperor shows up. Will the Free Corps fight the entire Empire? Senk, Nu-chala-

  nuth is a crusading religion. It can conquer the entire continent for the Nexus."

  "I am not here to accomplish acts of conquest," said Senk.

  "But you may find yourself embroiled in war regardless," said Hatch. "The Silver Emperor has guaranteed the peace of Parengarenga by treaties maintained by the prestige of his magic.

  With the emperor missing, maybe kidnapped, maybe dead, war inevitably follows. Can the Free Corps secure you against the wrath of an entire empire? That I don't know, but I know full well that a militant religion like Nu-chala-nuth can conquer Parengarenga and more. Think about it, Senk."

  There was a pause, then:

  "I'm sorry," said Senk. "It's too late to do a deal. It's the MegaCommand now. Lon Oliver is better than you, Hatch. He'll beat

  you. You can't win."

  "But if I win?"

  "You can't."

  "Try me," said Hatch.

  "Very well, then," said Senk. "You will be tried upon the field of combat. Let battle begin!"

  And already the world was wavering. And when the world steadied, Asodo Hatch found himself standing on the bridge of a MegaCommand Cruiser.

  Caught unawares, Hatch tottered, and had to take a half-step forward to steady himself.

  "Sir?"

  Hatch realized he was being addressed by the Officer of the Watch.

  "It is nothing," said Hatch.

  "Sir," said the Officer of the Watch.

  Then that officer said nothing more as Asodo Hatch scrutinized the bridge. Slowly. Taking his time. Thinking things through. Now what was the name of the Officer of the Watch? The software constructs available to the illusion tanks were limited in number, and Hatch had long ago met all those software constructs which masqueraded as MegaCommand officers and crew.

  - Never mind the name.

  - It will come.

  Directly in front of Hatch was what looked like a widespan window, or an enlarged version of the Eye of Delusions, but which was in fact the MegaCommand Cruiser's gigantic main battle display

  screen. Hatch glanced from that main display screen to the main command console. Green green and green. Constellations of green lights glowed in the security of their peace. Safe safe safe. Only one light was orange: the battle-readiness indicator.

  "Situation report," said Hatch.

  In response to that order, the Officer of the Watch began his report:

  "Sir. There is a probability disruption field between us and a hostile Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser. The estimated decay time of the disruption field is three arcs. Your orders, sir."

  Hatch turned his full attention to the gigantic main battle display screen. He stared at the patterns made by the disruption field. Nothing could cross that zone of instability. While the disruption field survived, Asodo Hatch and Lon Oliver could do nothing but stare at each other, like two fighting cocks separated by a sheet of armored glass. But once that field collapsed, then war would begin.

  - So what are my options?

  Hatch could run. He could order his MegaCommand Cruiser to flee at full speed, leaving a variety of booby traps in its wake.

  But Lupus would hunt him down. So. Hatch could use the ship's power to generate another probability disruption field like the one presently separating the two ships. But wasting power on such a temporary expedient would leave the ship weak and vulnerable when battle was finally joined.

  - Time, time!

  Hatch longed for time, more time to think. He imagined Lupus Lon Oliver, the perfect citizen of the Nexus, organizing his great machine for combat. The Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser: the ultimate war machine which Lupus knew so well.

  And what did Hatch really know? Only the bloody warfare of the desert. He felt an old scar across his ribs aching again. The scar was an illusion: but the body generated by the illusion tank echoed his realworld body, and the scar held the truth of a real memory. Hatch wish
ed ....

  Hatch wished he could have shifted the scene of this combat from deep space to desert. He wished he could have made the weapons not MegaCommand Cruisers but swords. Himself against Lupus. Sword against sword.

  In the desert he was at home, but he had always felt out of place on the MegaCommand Cruiser, and never more so than now.

  While his skills with the singlefighter were indifferent, he nevertheless was happy enough to fly the thing, but the MegaCommand was so inhuman in its scale and complexity that Hatch had always felt dwarfed by it: inferior, primitive, outclassed.

  Lupus, on the other hand, identified totally with the works of the Nexus. Lupus never felt out of place on the MegaCommand: he loved it. And knew it better than Hatch. Lupus was the better starwarrior. Was younger, faster, smarter, slicker.

  More ruthless.

  Hatch, who had long possessed a grossly exaggerated sense of his own antiquity, felt himself to be an old man facing a young man and doomed to die. So what could he do but go down in style?

  Still, he knew he must not show despair, for a real world audience was watching, and any distress he evidenced would in turn distress his daughter Onica, and most likely Talanta and the Lady Murasaki too.

  As Hatch watched the disruption field disintegrating, he wished he could talk with his wife, wished he could hold her and comfort her, easing the impact of the strangeness which confronted her. Then he decided that ... why, he would talk to her! Holding he could not do, but talking he could, even if the conversation was doomed to be strictly one-way.

  "I wish to address the crew," said Hatch. "Briefly. Set it up."

  San Kaladan - yes, it came to Hatch now, that was the rightful name of this Officer of the Watch - issued crisp orders.

  Soon, throughout the MegaCommand Cruiser, everyone was poised to hear a speech from their captain. The crew was a thousand strong, but everything Hatch said would be heard not just by them but also by the people in Forum Three.

  So Hatch could send a message to Talanta.

  But Hatch realized there was nothing he wanted to say to Talanta in front of all the people in Forum Three. He was a Frangoni, and the Frangoni were guarded when it came to expressing intimacies in public. If he spoke of his wife or family he would end up expounding the pieties of propaganda.

  - So.

  - Forget it.

  When he was alone with Talanta, when he had peace and privacy, then he would speak his heart. But right now ....

  Why, there was still an audience to be addressed.

  "I wish to make the briefest of speeches before the coming battle," said Hatch. "Let me say just this. We fight for the greatest cause. We are the warriors. We were made for this battle.

  We were made for this war. Remember that. Remember that, and I will give you the death of your enemies. That is all."

  Hatch finished his little speech and smiled tightly. It was not a great speech but it had served its purpose. Regardless of what it might have done for his phantom crew, it had certainly focused his own mind on battle. On victory.

  He would win.

  Or die trying.

  But how?

  Already, Lupus would be planning battle tactics, his mind all on the MegaCommand, his mind all on the coming battle. And what strategies could Hatch possibly find to compensate for his enemy's greater talent?

  "Sir," said the Officer of the Watch. "With respect, sir. The estimated decay time of the disruption field is less than three arcs. As yet you have issued no battle orders, sir."

  Hatch knew what this was leading to. If he did nothing, then very shortly the Officer of the Watch would place him under arrest. That was standard operating procedure on a Nexus warship, and Hatch had no reason to think that standard operating procedure

  would be any different even though the ship he presently commanded was in revolt against the Nexus.

  Hatch looked at the disruption field. At the cold white stars. And thought of Lupus, the bright-brave conqueror of stars.

  Lupus would win. Would triumph. And ... and ...

  And the probabilities were that Asodo Hatch would die in the dust outside the gates of the Combat College, going down to his death with the Lady Murasaki, and with his wife, his poor Talanta, once so sweetly beautiful. And - worst and cruelest of all deaths - his daughter Onica.

  "A boy," said Hatch to himself. "A brute in his boyhood. I wish I could meet him face to face. Face to face and kill him."

  A thought occurred to him. A thought from Dith-zora-ka-mako,

  the Mystical Way of the Nu-chala-nuth:

  - To drink the sea, you must first set your lips to the water.

  "Sir?" said the Officer of the Watch, the restrained and professional San Kaladan.

  Hatch turned to him. He drew his sword, a short and brutal sword, part of the uniform Hatch had long ago specified for all his MegaCommand illusion tank battles.

  "What is this?" said Hatch, brandishing the sword.

  "Sir?" said the Officer of the Watch.

  "This!" said Hatch, giving the sword a shake, as if it was Lon Oliver's throat.

  "Sir. It is a sword, sir."

  "What is its purpose?"

  "It is a weapon of death, sir. A weapon of war. But, sir, I doubt it a weapon suited to our present purpose."

  "All war is a unity," said Hatch.

  Grinning in something close to triumph. Because now he had the answer. Now he knew!

  "San Kaladan," said Hatch, addressing the Officer of the Watch by his rightful name.

  "Sir."

  "Order all hands to suit up for close quarters battle."

  "Sir?"

  "We will fight the enemy at close quarters and I - I will hack off my enemy's head."

  Thus spoke Asodo Hatch. And back in Forum Three there was a great stir of speculation amongst the assembled Startroopers, Combat Cadets and Free Corps graduates of the Combat College, for the order Hatch had just given was a nonsense. MegaCommand Cruisers fought with the Weapons Major of the Nexus: heavybattle weapons which manipulated probability, warped space and wrecked

  matter down to the constituent parts of its atoms.

  A battle of MegaCommand Cruisers could be a brutal clash of force against force, shield against shield. Or it could be a subtle duel of wits as the commanders slid their ships in and out of local space, probing, laying traps and seeking to subvert each other's instrumentation. But one thing was for certain: swords, and the hacking off of heads with the same, had no part to play in such warfare, and never had, and never could.

  The consensus in Forum Three was very simple: Asodo Hatch was stark staring raving mad.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Asma: computational machine of the Nexus which, as an intelligent and self-aware observer, is capable of manipulating the probability structure of whichever universe it finds itself in, and hence of altering reality.

  The technic of the Nexus is largely based on such manipulation of probability, a process which is fraught with peril. Such manipulations strain the very structure of reality itself, and the history of the Nexus records catastrophic disasters in which an entire cosmos, overstrained, has disintegrated into Fundamental Chaos.

  Breath within breath the dark

  By boot and bruise creates

  The armies which by whisper stumble

  Toward the crack which breaks the night from day:

  A scalpel, and a line of liquid red.

  Hatch stood close to the Officer of the Watch, close enough to kiss or kill. The man was sweating. The MegaCommand Cruiser was cool, yet San Kaladan was perspiring like a sledgehammer laborer at high noon on the thirstiest day of the year.

  "Field collapse imminent," said San Kaladan.

  "Count," said Hatch, speaking in the curt and brutal Code Five, the military dialect of the Nexus Ninetongue.

  His clipped one-word order had a specific meaning. In the course of his training, Hatch had memorized seven dozen such orders. This one told San Kaladan to give him a countdown to
the point where the probability disruption field would collapse.

  At that point, battle would be joined.

  "Twenty," said his subordinate, watching the command console.

  "And. Nineteen. And. Eighteen. And. Seventeen. And."

  "Instigate one," said Hatch. "Now."

  San Kaladan broke off the count and pressed a button to instigate the first series of preprogrammed ship commands.

  There was no sense of acceleration, for the MegaCommand Cruiser had state-of-the-art effect insulation technology. The ship commanded by Asodo Hatch could have blasted through space under an acceleration of a thousand gravities and he would never have felt a thing. It was a world away from the rough and tumble of a Scala Nine singlefighter.

  But the command console told the story.

  The ship bearing Asodo Hatch to his destiny was now accelerating directly toward Lupus Lon Oliver's vessel - and toward the disintegrating probability disruption field - at three gravities.

  "Count," said Hatch.

  "Field collapse in twelve," said his subordinate, watching the command console. "And. Eleven. And. Ten. And. Nine. And."

  And.

  And Asodo Hatch, watching the disruption field collapse, thought briefly of Dalar ken Halvar and of the Arena which, in the Season, became the burning focus of the life of the City of Sun.

  Hatch touched a hand to the hilt of his sword.

  - My father.

  His father had fought. His father had died. And now Hatch in turn was facing his Season in this strange Arena where he must meet Lupus Lon Oliver in a combat which would decide whether he lived or whether he died.

  "And. Three. And. Two. And. One. And. None."

  An immaculate countdown.

  On the word "none", the probability disruption field collapsed entirely. A few wisps of purple light smoked briefly in the vacuum of interstellar space then vanished.

  "Instigate two," said Hatch. "Now."

  The Officer of the Watch, the impeccably correct San Kaladan, pressed the instigation button a second time.