Liege-Killer

by Christopher Hinz

  Nick hopped up onto a console beside Begelman’s keyboards. “Yes, sir! The Guardians fail to score. They rumble the ball. E-Tech picks it up on its own five-yard line. E-Tech runs for the touchdown, winning the game with only seconds to spare!”

  The midget smiled faintly. “E-Tech is destined to become the hero of the Colonies. In a short time, your organization will have enough popularity to pass any new legislation it wants, tightening the controls on science and technology for decades to come. La Gloria de la Ciencia will have its fangs pulled. Codrus will be pleased.”

  Rome sat back down on the stool. He felt drained. Does consistency have a source? Yes. There is a beginning for that which does not change.

  But I was wrong when I thought the Irryan Council formed that beginning. We have merely been a tool, hammered and forged by others. We have been pawns in an Ash Ock game.

  His guts unwound. He felt something akin to a sense of elation—an awareness that he had never experienced. It was as if a veil had been lifted; the hard truths, once only peripherally glimpsed, were now exposed to full view.

  He faced Nick. “You said earlier that you had a theory about why this Codrus has done these things. Why has he manipulated us across the generations? Why does he want E-Tech to remain strong?”

  Nick squinted. “What if the Ash Ock have instituted a long-range breeding program? What if there are secret bases where a new breed of Paratwa are being created? Bases that have never known any restrictions on scientific advancement?”

  Haddad spoke with a trace of disbelief. “A breeding program lasting two centuries?”

  “Yes. Remember, the Paratwa are not of our species. Never forget that! And the Ash Ock...” Nick hesitated. “The Ash Ock, in particular, would not grow disenchanted with a breeding program lasting hundreds of years.”

  Rome had the feeling Nick was going to say something else. But Haddad interrupted.

  “Where would such bases be hidden? Not within the Colonies?”

  “Probably not,” said the midget. “Not when there’s a large nearby planet that is virtually uninhabited.”

  “Earth?” Rome shook his head. “Certainly not on the surface...”

  “Underground, at bases prepared by the Ash Ock before the Apocalypse.”

  Haddad gave a thoughtful nod. “It could be. There’s little enough activity on the Earth—our Ecospheric Turnaround facilities, a few Guardian installations, the Church of the Trust burial temples, some specialized industries.” He frowned. “And ninety-one years ago, when the ICN refused to support Earth rejuvenation ... that was done to prevent these secret bases from being discovered?”

  Nick grinned. “If a major Earth rejuvenation had begun, by now the surface would be crawling with Ecospheric Turnaround bases. The Ash Ock facilities might have been accidentally discovered. Codrus could not allow that possibility.”

  “And what about the pirates?” asked Rome. “They’re down there all the time, illegally hunting antiques. Do you suspect the Costeaus of being involved?”

  Nick shook his head. “No. I doubt the Ash Ock could have recruited them.”

  “Pirates awakened Reemul,” Haddad pointed out.

  “Yes, but those pirates worked purely for profit. It was Bob Max who hired them.” Nick flashed a grin. “And there lies our key! Bob Max—the first victim.

  “Begelman and I have compiled a list of about thirty of Irrya’s most powerful citizens, most of whom were at Lady Bonneville’s last night. We are going to begin scanning their pasts, searching for inconsistencies, for signs that a substitution has occurred. But unless this Ash Ock has been incredibly sloppy, the best we can hope for is to narrow down the list, eliminate some possibilities.

  “Bob Max, though, is another story. He’s the one we’ll concentrate on.”

  Nick smacked his hand on the console. “Bob Max was killed because he knew one of Codrus’s tways. I’m sure of it! This Ash Ock cannot dare to have middlemen—the risks would increase geometrically. Our manipulator would deal directly with the humans that he needed to carry out his tasks.”

  Rome nodded. “If that’s true, this Ash Ock would have had to be certain of Bob Max’s trust.”

  “Yes.”

  Haddad frowned. “How do we know that it is only Codrus we are faced with? Could not all three of these Ash Ock have survived the Apocalypse? Perhaps all three have used sapient supersedure to infiltrate our society?”

  Nick nodded. “Probably all three of them did survive. The other two—Theophrastus and Sappho—could be alive down on the planet. Or they could be in stasis. But the nature of the manipulation we’ve uncovered suggests that we’re dealing with just one Ash Ock—Codrus.

  “Codrus’s job would be to hinder the growth of the Colonies until the Ash Ock were ready to release their newly bred army of Paratwa. The Ash Ock would want to make certain that human society was stable enough before their new generation of conquerors took control.

  “The Ash Ock would have learned from their mistakes. The final days would have reinforced the lesson that a stable society is far easier to control than a culture where scientific advancement is running wild, where the social fabric is being sheared by constant change.”

  The Apocalypse never really ended, thought Rome. It was merely postponed.

  He was surprised by the strength of his own voice. “We’ll need hard facts to back up all these allegations. We’ll need ammunition to throw before the Council and the Senate.”

  Nick patted Begelman on the shoulder. “We’ll get it. Like I said, Max is the key. Somewhere, somehow, Bob Max is connected to this Ash Ock. When we find that connection, we’ll be able to act.”

  Rome nodded. “E-Tech will do whatever is necessary.”

  “You’ll end your surveillance of me and allow Gillian to do his job?”

  “Yes.”

  “But trust has two directions,” pointed out the Pasha.

  “Yes, it does,” said Rome.

  The midget shrugged. “You’re right. I’ve been holding things back all along. I’ve still not told you everything.”

  Rome said, “You can start with your conversation last night with the Lion of Alexander.”

  “Ahh, that! I just wanted to find out why the Lion came to Lady Bonneville’s party after having turned down invitations for years.

  “He’s a shrewd old man. He wouldn’t tell me exactly why he was there. But I got the strangest feeling that his suspicions are similar to ours. The Alexanders also believe that someone in high places is controlling Reemul’s reign of terror. The Lion came to the party to see if he could learn anything.”

  “And the second computer program?” Rome demanded.

  Nick’s eyes pleaded. “I’ve got to ask you to trust me a while longer on that. There’s a reason.”

  Rome stared at him for a moment. “All right. A while longer. But there will come a day...”

  “There’ll come a day when you’ll learn everything.” Nick’s expression darkened. “But on that day, you just might wish for the relief of ignorance.”

  O}o{O

  “The Achilles’ heel of the Paratwa can best be understood by analogy.”

  Gillian spoke from the center of a spacious mat-covered arena—a brightly lit corner of the same Irryan gym that he and Nick had used to test Haddad’s volunteers fifteen days ago. Gillian had ordered changes throughout the rest of the gym. A low drop ceiling of unlit strip panels and a series of movable wall grids combined to produce twisting corridors and a potpourri of enclosed spaces. Sparse lighting cast heavy shadows; against the warm amber glow of this training arena, the adjoining bedrooms and halls remained wells of darkness.

  In the center of the training arena stood Aaron, Grace, and Santiago, attentive and wary. They had good reason to remain alert. Over the past four days, Gillian had been slowly introducing them to the rigors of the Shane-Ammon technique—an instructional program practiced by the old Earth Patrol Forces. Long dry lecture periods were broken up by unexpected atta
cks. Done correctly, Shane-Ammon training produced unusually alert fighters. And the technique weeded out trainees who suffered from easily frayed nerves.

  There were no problems in that regard. The pirates accepted extremes of tension as a way of life. They had adapted quickly to Gillian’s techniques.

  In the back of the gym, on a high stool, sat Nick. He wore a bright yellow jumpsuit. A remote terminal was strapped around his neck. At his side, Pasha Haddad, stone-faced, still masking his displeasure at the presence of the pirates, observed. Haddad was cooperating only because Rome Franco had ordered it. The Pasha still did not fully accept the unsuitability of his own Security people. For the fourth day in a row, he was here to see why the pirates were different.

  Nick and Haddad wore active crescent webs; the faint hums were clearly discernible throughout the quiet gym.

  Gillian continued. “Our analogy is the magnetic compass. It was a common Earth tool until the more sophisticated directional sensor made it obsolete. Are you all familiar with it?”

  The pirates glanced at one another, making sure that their attentions never completely shifted away from Gillian. Aaron expressed the group answer with a sharp nod.

  Good, Gillian observed. They function more and more as a unit. Four days of intense training had gotten across to them the overriding importance of teamwork.

  “Now imagine a compass having two needles perpendicular to one another; one of them north-south, the other east-west. Consider a Paratwa assassin in terms of this special compass. One tway is the north-south needle and the other is the east-west. This perpendicular relationship is analogous to the way in which a Paratwa actually functions. The very nature of the interlace that forms the Paratwa’s single consciousness prescribes that the tways are ninety degrees out of phase with one another.

  “Applying this special compass analogy to the realm of combat, we can imagine the Paratwa as two wildly spinning compass needles—always perpendicular to one another but forever in motion, the needles always pointing in different directions, not limited to north-south or east-west. In addition, although the needles rotate synchronously, they are given to abrupt changes in speed and direction. The only constant is that ninety-degree relationship between the two needles.

  “To effectively fight a Paratwa, we must stop those compass needles from moving, freeze their motion so that the needles align themselves north-south and east-west. We must directionalize the assassin. In theory, this is very simple: we protect ourselves against the creature’s first violent assault. Then at the earliest opportunity, we align ourselves so that we attack one tway and defend against the other.”

  He watched their reactions, saw the tattoo ripple over Aaron’s frown, saw Santiago drift into an uneasy smile. Grace allowed contemptuous disbelief to play across her angled cheekbones.

  “Attack one tway,” he repeated. “Defend against the other.

  “In theory—simple, in practice—difficult to accomplish without being killed.”

  Only Santiago laughed.

  “If the Paratwa can be directionalized—forced into a situation where one tway must defend while the other’s only option is to attack—then the assassin’s greatest single advantage is effectively neutralized. The Paratwa, able to fight from two locations at the same time, is in essence forced to respond as two separate creatures. One tway has no choice but to defend itself against the attackers; the other tway automatically becomes the aggressor, but discovers that the enemy is not fighting back.” Gillian permitted himself a faint smile. “We are merely defending ourselves.

  “The assassin has been directionalized. An option that makes the Paratwa such a deadly opponent is bypassed: it cannot shift offensive-defensive tactics from tway to tway, confusing us. Also, half of its arsenal is hopefully put out of commission. The tway under attack cannot use its Cohe wand and thruster with any degree of accuracy, providing our attack is fierce enough.”

  Aaron chuckled. “This, Gillian of E-Tech, is your great secret? This is what we’ve waited four days to hear?”

  “Yes. This is the Achilles’ heel of the Paratwa.”

  Grace and Santiago laughed openly. Pasha Haddad frowned. Nick ignored the commotion, burying his face in the viewscreen of his portable terminal.

  “Of course, this technique is not very effective unless someone—in this situation, me—can match the attacking tway’s skill with the Cohe wand. Even one tway with a Cohe can wreak terrible havoc.”

  Gillian smiled at their disbelief. Then he drew his thruster and fired at Aaron.

  Three sets of jaws clamped down, three crescent webs ignited. Aaron tucked his arms behind his protective shield and took Gillian’s shot without flinching. Even without a web, the controlled discharge was barely potent enough to knock a man off his feet. For training purposes, they used only low-power thrusters.

  Santiago and Grace tucked close together, drew their weapons and fired at Gillian. His own web easily repelled the double blast.

  “No!” he shouted, reholstering his thruster. “I told you before. For today’s session, you are to consider me as one tway and Nick as the other!” He pointed to the back of the arena. Nick held up his hand and gave a friendly wave.

  “Attack one tway—defend against the other! Since I, the Paratwa, initiated the attack, your only option was to flow into the nature of my assault. The parameters of my attack were very clear. I was firing at you; therefore you should have put your shields to me and fired at Nick, who was only defending!

  “You failed to directionalize your enemy. You allowed Nick and me to determine the nature of the combat. All of my options were left open while yours were severely limited.”

  The pirates lowered their webs. Grace scowled. “I do not see the necessity of...”

  “Quiet! You made a mistake. Don’t attempt to rationalize it! In combat against a Paratwa, you would be dead.”

  Her eyebrows flared, her jaw tightened with anger.

  Grace is the weak link, he reminded himself again. There is rage bubbling within her. It could erupt and defeat the mind-body rhythms at a critical time.

  Four days ago, as their shuttle headed here from Sirak-Brath, Gillian had spoken to Aaron in private and had broached his doubts about Grace. It had been a weird discussion, out of sync and eventually maddening.

  At first, Aaron had made things sound very simple.

  “She is my sister. She is of the clan. You will train her along with Santiago and me. She will be there when we earn our vengeance and destroy Reemul.”

  “Your sister may not be suitable,” he had argued.

  “How can she not be suitable? She is of the clan.”

  “I was speaking in terms of temperament.”

  “So was I.”

  Gillian had tried another tack.

  “Grace seems to anger easily. It’s possible that during combat she will allow her rage to run wild. She could lose her sense of discipline and become a threat to the stability of the team.”

  “Her rage is a part of her,” Aaron granted. “But lose her sense of discipline?” He had laughed. “She might. And maybe your leg will fall off during combat. Who can say?”

  “I’m talking about something very real, Aaron. Your sister could end up destroying all of us.”

  “So could you.”

  “I don’t want her on the team,” he had said with finality.

  “That’s obvious.”

  “There must be other clan members who would gladly take her place.”

  “Yes, many of them.”

  “Then it’s settled. Grace is out. You’ll call your leaders, have a batch of recruits sent to train with us in Irrya.”

  Aaron had displayed puzzlement. “Why would I call my leaders? And why would we need a batch of recruits? You’re only asking to replace Grace.”

  “We would screen your people, pick out the best candidates.”

  “Grace is the best.”

  “Aaron, you’re just saying that because she’s your sister.”r />
  “Of course.”

  He had kept his own anger carefully under control.

  “I do not want her on the team. She is out. I will not train her.”

  Aaron had finally become perturbed. “You come to us, ask us for help. You talk of teamwork, yet you try to divide us.”

  “I am trying to put together the best possible team. I am trying to ensure our survival.”

  “You have the best possible team. You have Grace, Santiago, and me.”

  “Are you saying that I either train the three of you or none of you will cooperate?”

  “How could it be any different?”

  “How do I know that the three of you are the best possible teammates without seeing other Costeaus?”

  Aaron had shrugged. “If you wish to go elsewhere, go. You asked us for help—we accepted. I do not see what is so difficult to understand about this.”

  And that had been Gillian’s first real lesson in clan etiquette. The pirates remained firmly bonded to the overall goals of the Alexanders while maintaining a strong sense of individuality.

  Reemul had tortured and murdered eleven members of their society. The entire clan was sworn to vengeance. But Gillian had only convinced Santiago, Grace, and Aaron to help him. Therefore, only Santiago, Grace, and Aaron would help him. He had not earned the assistance of the clan of Alexander, but merely of three individual members. Even Aaron and Grace’s other two crewmen, whom they had been forced to strand on Sirak-Brath, were not involved in this pact.

  He sighed, returned his full attentions to the arena. I am stuck with Grace. I must temper my criticism, help her to control her anger.

  He continued. “Grace, Santiago—though you did not directionalize me, you did act swiftly. Aaron—never forget that whenever possible, tuck into line with the team. Remember that the Cohe wand can whip at you from any direction. With active crescent webs, each of you has two weak areas—your left and right side portals. With webs touching, two people effectively eliminate half of their four target areas.

  “Also, remember to practice shifting your thrusters from hand to hand. You must become fluidly ambidextrous.