by Sharon Lee
Nothing happened.
The tech touched another switch, invoked a back up screen—
Nothing.
“Check the lines,” she snapped, to this aide. “Recycle the interface,” to that one; and—“Rebooting . . .”
All for naught. The screen steadfastly refused to show any ship flying the Tree-and-Dragon. And the controls remained unresponsive.
Finally, an aide selected the flashing Captain’s Emergency on the auxiliary monitor.
During a Captain’s Emergency control of the planetary defense system is invested in the Captain or assigns. There will be a one minute warning when control is reassigned to the port office.
The master tech went to manual and ordered the nearest defensive device to use a pulse-beam against the fleeing escape pod.
Nothing happened.
“Alert Heart of Solcintra,” she said to the comm-tech.
***
THE MOST POTENT dramliza on the planet stood at bay, cornered in a corridor leading to the sealed rooms. She held in her arms a rather large gray cat. Behind her, leaning against the stainless steel wall for support, was dea’Gauss, shivering.
Agent ter’Fendil had alerted what few fellow Agents remained at headquarters. They’d spread out from the infirmary, in a circular search-pattern, and had also triggered an automated rotating check of the internal sensors that had been turned off to conserve power—and which had ironically permitted the man responsible for the loss of power to escape. And quickly found him.
But not alone. It was obvious that the prisoner could not have risen from his bed without serious assistance from the woman holding the cat. It was equally obvious that, even with that assistance, his strength was fading, and would soon fail.
The woman was far more than the Commander had expected. Despite that she was dressed in the torn remnants of what had been formal Council attire, and that her face was dirty, she stood calm and alert before the not inconsiderable threat of three armed Agents.
She might well, the Commander thought, have a gun beneath the cat, or a bomb, or knife, or only her hands. The fact that she stood in this hallway at all meant that she was competent enough to make it past the outgoing attack teams without attracting notice. Worse, it meant that she had managed to avoid the carefully placed external sensors, and that she had slipped past guards on alert.
This was not someone to trifle with, despite her reported softness.
Without warning, the cat moved, flowing soundlessly out of the woman’s arms—and fled away down the hall.
No one gave chase. They could take care of it later. The problem now was the woman, as she stood, catless, but holding a scout-issue pistol, pointed at the Commander’s mid-section.
He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
She said nothing; the gun remained steady.
***
“DANGER! DANGER! Hostile action on Station Three!”
Fortune’s Reward located the source of the warning, and opened a window in the forward screen, showing Pat Rin an unarmed life pod, tumbling free of that same Station Three.
“Nine wounded, one dead! Hostile action on Station Three! Danger! Ho, the port!”
Tower came on-line, reciting coords for an emergency descent. Pat Rin watched the life pod move, clumsily, into compliance—and the glare of a beam weapon flashed across his screen.
“No!” he shouted, slapping up the magnification.
But, yes. The pod was gone, leaving a slight drift of debris along its descent path. Obligingly, Fortune’s Reward redrew the detail window, tracing the path of the beam back to the originating vessel.
From the closed comm, Andy Mack’s voice.
“I got a clear line to the bastid, Boss.”
Pat Rin nodded. “Fire at will, Colonel.”
***
VAL CON LED, now, Sheather and Nelirikk at his back. The lower service ways were empty, which was not surprising.
The Commander would surely have heard the Passage arrive in orbit, weapons hot and warn-away blaring. From it, he would have deduced Val Con’s presence on-world. Being a bold man, he would have seen this circumstance as opportunity. If the Commander played well and audaciously now, the Department stood to win all: the extinction of Korval and the fruition of the Plan.
The goal was a man-high section of stainless steel access hatches built into the wall of a particular inner corridor. Behind those hatches were the cables, pipes, wires, and comm-fibers that connected and powered the facility and allowed the Commander to reach his hand out to the universe.
That the corridor in question was off one leading to the Commander’s office was beside the point.
The hallway ahead was intersected by another. Val Con checked his inner map, and raised a hand. Behind him, Sheather and Nelirikk halted. Val Con proceeded at a crouch, hugging the wall, slipping his gun from its holster.
At the intersection of the hallways, he eased the safety off, and listened. He heard nothing but the hum of the air purification system, yet his hunch was that there was . . . something in the hall beyond.
Moving so slowly he scarcely seemed to be moving at all, he leaned forward, peering ’round the corner—
Directly into a pair of yellow eyes.
“Merlin?” Val Con breathed.
The yellow eyes blinked, happily, and Merlin burbled. Tail held high, he danced forward, stropped Val Con’s leather-clad knee once, and strutted away importantly, pausing only once to look over his shoulder and be sure Val Con was paying attention. Since he was leading in the direction they needed to go, they followed, with Sheather drawing a long crystal blade as he hurried along.
***
THE LIFEBOAT was gone, vaporized.
Miri was bent over the schematic, swearing softly and continuously. She had an ID on the murderer—one Heart of Solcintra, claiming to be a freighter—but no clean shots. No shots at all, really, unless she wanted to go through a scout ship, a can carrier and a Juntavas courier to get her target, which did sorta seem a waste of allies and innocents.
A detail window blossomed in the corner of the situation screen—at least someone had a clear shot! The debris and gases of the lifepod lit in a lambent glow, and the destroyer itself was illuminated in a rush of scintillant brilliance. There was a flare then as the destroyer’s shield went up and Miri could trace the beam to its source—one of the four monstrosities Jeeves assured her were nothing more exotic than asteroid miners.
There was sudden glare as the destroyer’s shields were overwhelmed, and an odd coruscating flash as the mining beam oscillated the length and breadth of the target. The ship’s hull expanded, peeled away, dissolved into a plasma of metal, evaporated before the beam, and then the seven decks could be seen clearly for a moment, as in some illustrator’s cut-away of a slowly rotating warcraft. Multiple internal explosions speckled the obscuring mist and in one last flicker of the planet-killer ray—
Heart of Solcintra was gone.
***
“OF COURSE you realize,” the Commander said, “that this cannot last long. We are several, you are one—and time sides with us. We merely need wait until your qe’andra collapses.”
“Perhaps you overestimate your advantages,” Anthora yos’Galan said, and her voice was soft and husky.
“Commander!” The aide’s voice preceded her around the corner—she stopped, amazed at the tableau before her.
“Report!” the Commander ordered.
She bowed, hastily, one eye on the woman with the gun. “The planetary defense grid has been subverted by Korval.”
Of course. Commander of Agents pointed at Agent of Change bin’Tabor.
“Give the command for the air units to attack Jelaza Kazone at low level. Detach a ground force to—”
“Give no command,” said Anthora yos’Galan, her voice firm and gentle.
The Agent stood as if rooted.
“I command it,” Commander of Agents snapped, and saw the man stir. “Bring in the air u
nits and—”
“Be still,” said Anthora yos’Galan; and the Agent froze.
“I see,” said Commander of Agents, and raised his gun.
***
THERE WERE VOICES ahead, and a better lit corridor. Merlin strolled on, unconcerned. The rest of the invasion force shrank back into the plentiful shadows.
Came the hurried clatter of someone who was not an Agent in the halls. They remained in the shadows, despite a complaining burble from Merlin—and then moved, cautiously, on.
“Commander!” came the call from the hallway they approached; the answering voice sent a thrill down Val Con’s spine.
“Report!”
The words grew indistinct and the invaders, weapons ready, ghosted quickly to the intersection. Val Con spied ’round the corner, and swallowed hard against a surge of sheer horror.
His sister Anthora, trapped by two Agents and the Commander himself, using her body to shield one who could only be Mr. dea’Gauss, but a dea’Gauss diminished and desperately ill. She held a gun, true enough, but so did her opponents. If all fired at once, even a dramliza—
The Commander raised his weapon. The Agents raised theirs. The aide gasped and bolted.
From the shadowed floor leapt a large gray cat, wrapping itself around the Commander’s arm, pulling the gun down. A pellet whined by Val Con’s ear as he jumped forward, his own gun out and up . . .
Training had prepared Agent ter’Fendil to face an opponent with a blade, a gun, or even a security dog. The apparition attacking the Commander bore no relationship to training—and he dared not fire again for fear of endangering the Commander. He reversed his gun, meaning to club the thing—
“Hold!” Anthora shouted, her voice a-glitter with power. “Do not move!”
Val Con kept moving, firing into the face of an Agent. Merlin snarled and dug his claws in the harder.
Everyone else in the hallway froze in place: ter’Fendil with his gun reversed, Sheather, his blade raised as if to behead him; Nelirikk, aim locked on the Commander.
The Commander struggled, as pain overrode the compulsion to stillness. But for Merlin’s growls, there was silence in the hallway. The sound of dea’Gauss collapsing to the floor was loud—and so, too, was the sudden wail of alarms, and the sound of running feet.
Sheather shook himself; lowered his blade, and bowed in Anthora’s direction.
“As you say.”
***
THE MURDERER was gone; destroyed at his word. For the second time in his life, he had killed a ship. Pat Rin touched a switch, opening the comm line between himself and those sworn to serve him.
“Well done, Colonel,” he said calmly.
“Thank you, sir,” Andy Mack replied formally.
“First class shooting,” Dostie chimed in, just ahead of Bhupendra’s satisfied, “we teach the enemy to fear us.”
“Which ain’t exactly,” Cheever McFarland added, “an unmixed blessing.” He paused. “How many of them ships out there can we count on as back up, Boss? The battlewagon?”
Dutiful Passage, that would be, and a question near to his own heart and peace. That it was captained by Priscilla Mendoza, Shan’s first mate and longtime lover, was . . . disturbing. And yet . . .
Pat Rin leaned to the comm. “I shall attempt to ascertain, Mr. McFarland. In the meanwhile, do me the kindness of speaking with the High Judge, as my deputy.”
“Will do,” Cheever said, as easily as if he spoke to such august persons daily, and signed off.
Pat Rin did the same, and sat for a moment, hands folded, as he gathered his courage—though what had he to fear? Priscilla Mendoza was well-known to him as a kind and generous lady. He had no need nor reason to fear her. Indeed, he could be certain that she would tell him, at long last, the truth.
The truth.
He reached to the board once more, fingering the keys with care, accessing the most secret Korval band . . .
“Well met, kinsman!” Shan’s voice flowed cheerily into the cabin, as clear as if his cousin sat in the co-pilot’s chair. Pat Rin closed his eyes, fingers gripping the edge of the board.
“Well met,” he answered, shakily, knowing Shan would hear the tears in his reply, and caring not at all. “How fares the clan?”
“As it happens, we thrive—the more so now that the one who had fallen off-grid is returned to us. You must tell me all about your holiday—later. For the moment—rest assured that the Passage stands at your back as you speak for Korval. Oh, and check in with Jeeves, will you?”
“Jeeves?” Pat Rin cleared his throat. “Yes, I will. Shan—”
“Softly,” his cousin interrupted, not ungently. “We cannot know that the line remains secure.”
“Of course.” He drew a careful breath. “Until soon, cousin.”
“Until soon, Pat Rin. Stay the course.”
The connection light went out.
***
“HOW FARE we, my brother?” Sheather inquired from his position as guard over the Commander, who lay unconscious, savaged hand hastily wrapped in a shirt.
Val Con was rapidly divesting Agent ter’Fendil of the tools of his trade: knives, smoke-gas pelletts, garrotte, capsules filled with poison, cunning button-sized explosives; the wallet, with its generous destructive possibilities; the boots, the interesting little blade under the sock, various guns in a diversity of calibers . . .
They had concealed themselves in the Commander’s office—a questionable solution, at best. The advantages of the situation included a door that would not yield to the searchers, and access to the Commander’s files, computers and comms. That there was no easy escape was . . . annoying.
Val Con removed a selection of pins and wires from the seams of Agent ter’Fendil’s vest.
“We are in some disarray, I fear,” he said to Sheather. “Behind enemy lines, burdened by prisoners and casualties . . .” He glanced over his shoulder to the place where Anthora kept watch over their two injured—an old man and an ancient gray cat—and returned to his task.
“On the whole, it would be best if we simply melted away into the night . . .”
As if to underscore the whimsy of that expressed desire, the loudspeaker in the ceiling gave tongue: “Intruder alert! Multiple intruders on Level Seven . . .”
“Enough.” Val Con pushed the Agent against the wall, under Sheather’s watchful blade, and edged past Nelirikk, who was happily removing the travel packing from their supply of explosives.
At the Commander’s desk, he sat, and reached for the comm.
The access codes changed frequently, according to a pattern imbedded in the Loop of every Agent. Val Con frowned at the comm, trying to reconstruct the barely-glimpsed pattern—and, suddenly, gently, in the space behind his eyes that had previously been reserved for Loop display, there hung an access code.
***
SOMETHING HAD GONE terribly wrong.
Ren Zel felt himself a man of two separate but equal parts.
One part sat his board on the bridge of the Dutiful Passage, attending the minutia of piloting, monitoring the various bands that told of mayhem and dismay on the nearer stations, and minding his shields most closely.
The second part knelt next to Anthora on a cold metal floor, one hand on the chest of an old and fragile man, the other on the laboring side of a valiant gray cat.
“What’s amiss?” he asked and felt her sigh.
“Mr. dea’Gauss must have a ’doc—and that soon. Merlin—he has been shot. I cannot—quite—understand how badly he is wounded. If I could but take both home . . . I have tried bespeaking the Tree, and there is no answer. We are trapped here.”
“Are you?” He glanced around the cold metal room, seeing the golden lines running pure and true. “Perhaps not.”
***
FINGERS POISED above the comm, Val Con considered the access code hanging just behind his eyes.
“Brother!” Anthora’s voice was sharp with urgency.
He spun, heart clenc
hed in fear of hearing the old man’s death—but no. His sister was standing tall, face animated—even eager.
“I require aid,” she said quickly. “Do you put dea’Gauss on my back and I shall take him to Jelaza Kazone.”
He blinked. Anthora was a wizard of some note, true enough, but . . .
“Will you walk through walls?” he asked.
She nodded. “I will. Assist me.”
In the end, it required Nelirikk to gently lift dea’Gauss onto Anthora’s back. Val Con lashed the man’s wrists together on her breast, and used a length of fuse to tie them both ’round the waist.
“If I am able to return, I will do so,” she said, breathless with bearing the unaccustomed burden. “Merlin . . .”
“If you make it to safety, you will remain there,” Val Con said firmly. “We shall care for Merlin—and ourselves.” He stepped back, waving at Nelirikk to do the same.
“If you are able, now is the time,” he murmured.
“Yes.” Slowly, awkward with the added weight, she walked directly toward the wall.
There was a flash of golden light, and an instant when the metal went to fog—then Anthora, and Mr. dea’Gauss, were gone.
“Jela’s blood produces many wonders,” Nelirikk commented, and returned to the unpacking of explosives.
After a moment, Val Con went back to the comm, and tapped in the code he had been given.
The unit light went from red to green. Scarcely daring to breathe, Val Con punched in the code for Jeeves’ private line.
“Jelaza Kazone.”
Val Con sat down in the Commander’s chair.
“This is Korval,” he said, keeping his voice steady, despite his foolishly pounding heart. “Pray confirm my ID. Also, please put a tracer on this call. Let Miri know that we are well, at liberty, but . . . contained. How stands the action?”
“ID confirmed. Miri will be informed. Working. How wide a theater?”
“Entire.”
A small pause.
“The planetary defense net is ours,” Jeeves said. “We control near space. A warship of the Department of the Interior has been destroyed by one of Lord Pat Rin’s vessels. Dutiful Passage has been pressed into service for back up and link duty. Scout and Juntavas forces are prepared to allow Tree-and-Dragon central command if action is necessary.”
