Flandry's breath was harsh in his throat. He glared through the drifting red streamers of fog, seeking to understand what went on. His men were outnumbered still, but that was being whittled down. The Donarrian hurled Merseians to earth, tossed them against rocks, kicked and stamped with enough force to kill them through their armor by sheer concussion. The Gorzuni stood side by side, a blaster aflame in each of their hands; no metal could long withstand that concentration of fire. The Scothanian bounced, inhumanly swift, his wrecking bar leaping in and out like a battle axe—strike, pry, hammer at vulnerable joints and connections, till something gave way and air bled out. And the humans were live machines, bleakly wielding blaster and slug gun, throwing grenades and knocking Merseian weapons aside with karate blows. Two of them were down, dead; one slumped against the dome, and Flandry heard his pain over the radio. But there were more enemy casualties strewn over the crater. The Terrans were winning. In spite of all, they were winning.
But—
Flandry's eyes swept the scene. Someone, somehow, had suddenly realized that a band of skilled space fighters was stealing under excellent cover towards the dome. There was no way Flandry knew of to be certain of that, without instruments he had not seen planted around. Except—
Yes. He saw the tall gaunt figure mounting a cliff. Briefly it was etched against the bloody sun, then it slipped from view.
Aycharaych had been here after all.
No men could be spared from combat, even if they could break away. Flandry bounded off himself.
He topped the ringwall in three leaps. A black jumble of rocks fell away before him. He could not see any flitting shape, but in this weird shadowy land eyes were almost useless at a distance. He knew, though, which way Aycharaych was headed. There was only one escape from the nebula now, and the Chereionite had gotten what information he required from human minds.
Flandry began to travel. Leap—not high, or you will take forever to come down again—long, low bounds, with the dark metallic world streaming away beneath you and the firecoal sun slipping towards night again: silence, death, and aloneness. If you die here, your body will be crushed beneath falling continents, your atoms will be locked for eternity in the core of a planet,
A ray flared against his helmet. He dropped to the ground, before he had even thought. He lay in a small crater, blanketed with shadow, and stared into the featureless black wall of a giant meteor facing away from the sun. Somewhere on its slope—
Aycharaych's Anglic words came gentle, "You can move faster than I. You could reach your vessel before me and warn your subordinate. I can only get in by a ruse, of course. He will hear me speak on the radio in a disguised voice of things known only to him and yourself, and will not see me until I have been admitted. And that will be too late for him. But first I must complete your life, Captain Flandry."
The man crouched deeper into murk. He felt the near-absolute cold of the rock creep through armor and touch his skin. "You've tried often enough before," he said.
Aycharaych's chuckle was purest music. "Yes, I really thought I had said farewell to you, that night at the Crystal Moon. It seemed probable you would be sent to Jupiter—I have studied Admiral Fenross with care—and Horx had been instructed to kill the next Terran agent. My appearance at the feast was largely sentimental. You have been an ornament of my reality, and I could not deny myself a final conversation."
"My friend," grated Flandry, "you're about as sentimental as a block of solid helium. You wanted us to know about your presence. You foresaw it would alarm us enough to focus our attention on Syrax, where you hinted you would go next—what part of our attention that superb red-herring operation had not fastened on Ymir. You had our Intelligence men swarming around Jupiter and out in the Cluster, going frantic in search of your handiwork: leaving you free to manipulate Ardazir."
"My egotism will miss you," said Aycharaych coolly. "You alone, in this degraded age, can fully appreciate my efforts, or censure them intelligently when I fail. This time, the unanticipated thing was that you would survive on Jupiter. Your subsequent assignment to Vixen has, naturally, proven catastrophic for us. I hope now to remedy that disaster, but—" The philosopher awoke. Flandry could all but see Aycharaych's ruddy eyes filmed over with a vision of some infinitude humans had never grasped. "It is not certain. The totality of existence will always elude us: and in that mystery lies the very meaning. How I pity immortal God!"
Flandry jumped out of the crater.
Aycharaych's weapon spat. Flame splashed off the man's armor. Reflex—a mistake, for now Flandry knew where Aycharaych was, the Chereionite could not get away—comforting to realize, in this querning of worlds, that an enemy who saw twenty years ahead, and had controlled whole races like a hidden fate, could also make mistakes.
Flandry sprang up onto the meteor. He crashed against Aycharaych.
The blaster fired point-blank. Flandry's hand chopped down. Aycharaych's wrist did not snap across, the armor protected it. But the gun went spinning down into darkness. Flandry snatched for his own weapon. Aycharaych read the intention and closed in, wrestling. They staggered about on the meteor in each other's arms. The sinking sun poured its baleful light across them: and Aycharaych could see better by it than Flandry. In minutes, when night fell, the man would be altogether blind and the Chereionite could take victory.
Aycharaych thrust a leg behind the man's and pushed. Flandry toppled. His opponent retreated. But Flandry fell slowly enough that he managed to seize the other's waist. They rolled down the slope together. Aycharaych's breath whistled in the radio, a hawk sound. Even in the clumsy spacesuit, he seemed like water, nearly impossible to keep a grip on.
They struck bottom. Flandry got his legs around the Chereionite's. He wriggled himself on to the back and groped after flailing limbs. A forearm around the alien helmet—he couldn't strangle, but he could immobilize and—his hands clamped on a wrist. He jerked hard.
A trill went through his radio. The struggle ceased. He lay atop his prisoner, gasping for air. The sun sank, and blackness closed about them.
"I fear you broke my elbow joint there," said Aycharaych. "I must concede."
"I'm sorry," said Flandry, and he was nothing but honest. "I didn't mean to."
"In the end," sighed Aycharaych, and Flandry had never heard so deep a soul-weariness, "I am beaten not by a superior brain or a higher justice, but by the brute fact that you are from a larger planet than I and thus have stronger muscles. It will not be easy to fit this into a harmonious reality."
Flandry unholstered his blaster and began to weld their sleeves together. Broken arm or not, he was taking no chances. Bad enough to have that great watching mind next to his for the time needed to reach the flitter.
Aycharaych's tone grew light again, almost amused: "I would like to refresh myself with your pleasure. So, since you will read the fact anyway in our papers, I shall tell you now that the overlords of Urdahu will arrive here for conference in five Terran days."
Flandry grew rigid. Glory blazed within him. A single shellburst, and Ardazir was headless!
Gradually the stiffness and the splendor departed. He finished securing his captive. They helped each other up. "Come along," said the human. "I've work to do."
XVIII
Cerulia did not lie anywhere near the route between Syrax and Sol. But Flandry went home that way. He didn't quite know why. Certainly it was not with any large willingness.
He landed at Vixen's main spaceport. "I imagine I'll be back in a few hours, Chives," he said. "Keep the pizza flying." He went lithely down the gangway, passed quarantine in a whirl of gold and scarlet, and caught an airtaxi to Garth.
The town lay peaceful in its midsummer. Now, at apastron, with Vixen's atmosphere to filter its radiation, the sun might almost have been Sol: smaller, brighter, but gentle in a blue sky where tall white clouds walked. Fields reached green to the Shaw; a river gleamed; the snowpeaks of the Ridge hovered dreamlike at world's edge.
Flandry looked up the address he wanted in a public telebooth. He didn't call ahead, but walked through bustling streets to the little house. Its peaked roof was gold above vine-covered walls.
Kit met him at the door. She stood unmoving a long time. Finally she breathed: "I'd begun to fear you were dead."
"Came close, a time or two," said Flandry awkwardly.
She took his arm. Her hand shook. "No," she said, "Y-y-you can't be killed. You're too much alive. Oh, come in, darlin'!" She closed the door behind him.
He followed her to the living room and sat down. Sunlight streamed past roses in a trellis window, casting blue shadows over the warm small neatness of furnishings. The girl moved about, dialling the public pneumo for drinks, chattering with frantic gaiety. His eyes found it pleasant to follow her.
"You could have written," she said, smiling too much to show it wasn't a reproach. "When the Ardazirho pulled out o' Vixen, we went back to normal fast. The mailtubes were operatin' again in a few hours."
"I was busy," he said.
"An' you're through now?" She gave him a whisky and sat down opposite him, resting her own glass on a bare sunbrowned knee.
"I suppose so." Flandry took out a cigarette. "Until the next trouble comes."
"I don't really understan' what happened," she said. "'Tis all been one big confusion."
"Such developments usually are," he said, glad of a chance to speak impersonally. "Since the Imperium played down all danger in the public mind, it could hardly announce a glorious victory in full detail. But things were simple enough. Once we'd clobbered the Ardazirho chiefs at the nebula, everything fell apart for their planet. The Vixen force withdrew to help defend the mother world, because revolt was breaking out all over their little empire. Walton followed. He didn't seek a decisive battle, his fleet being less than the total of theirs, but he held them at bay while our psychological warfare teams took Ardazir apart. Another reason for avoiding open combat as much as possible was that we wanted that excellent navy of theirs. When they reconstituted themselves as a loose federation of coequal orbekhs, clans, tribes, and what have you, they were ready enough to accept Terran supremacy—the Pax would protect them against one another!"
"As easy as that." A scowl passed beneath Kit's fair hair. "After all they did to us, they haven't paid a millo. Not that reparations would bring back our dead, but—should they go scot free?"
"Oh, they ransomed themselves, all right." Flandry's tone grew sombre. He looked through a shielding haze of smoke at roses which nodded in a mild summer wind. "They paid ten times over for all they did at Vixen: in blood and steel and agony, fighting as bravely as any people I've ever seen for a cause that was not theirs. We spent them like wastrels. Not one Ardazirho ship in a dozen came home. And yet the poor proud devils think it was a victory!"
"What? You mean—"
"Yes. We joined their navy to ours at Syrax. They were the spearhead of the offensive. It fell within the rules of the game, you see. Technically, Terra hadn't launched an all-out attack on the Merseian bases. Ardazir, a confederacy subordinate to us, had done so! But our fleet came right behind. The Merseians backed up. They negotiated. Syrax is ours now." Flandry shrugged. "Merseia can afford it. Terra won't use the Cluster as an invasion base. It'll only be a bastion. We aren't brave enough to do the sensible thing; we'll keep the peace, and to hell with our grandchildren." He smoked in short ferocious drags. "Prisoner exchange was a condition. All prisoners, and the Merseians meant all. In plain language, if they couldn't have Aycharaych back, they wouldn't withdraw. They got him."
She looked a wide-eyed question.
"Never mind," said Flandry scornfully. "That's a mere detail. I don't suppose my work went quite for nothing. I helped end the Ardazir war and the Syrax deadlock. I personally, all by myself, furnished Aycharaych as a bargaining counter. I shouldn't demand more, should I?" He dropped his face into one hand. "Oh, God, Kit, how tired I am!"
She rose, went over to sit on the arm of his chair, and laid a palm on his head. "Can you stay here an' rest?" she asked softly.
He looked up. A bare instant he paused, uncertain himself. Then rue twisted his lips upwards. "Sorry. I only stopped in to say goodbye."
"What?" she whispered, as if he had stabbed her. "But, Dominic—"
He shook his head. "No," he cut her off. "It won't do, lass. Anything less than everything would be too unfair to you. And I'm just not the forever-and-ever sort. That's the way of it."
He tossed off his drink and rose. He would go now, even sooner than he had planned, cursing himself that he had been so heedless of them both as to return here. He tilted up her chin and smiled down into the hazel eyes. "What you've done, Kit," he said, "your children and their children will be proud to remember. But mostly... we had fun, didn't we?"
His lips brushed hers and tasted tears. He went out the door and walked down the street again, never looking back.
A vague, mocking part of him remembered that he had not yet settled his bet with Ivar del Bruno. And why should he? When he reached Terra, he would have another try. It would be something to do.
THE
WARRIORS FROM NOWHERE
—————————
"Crime," said Captain Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire's Naval Intelligence Corps, "is entirely a matter of degree. If you shoot your neighbor in order to steal his property, you are a murderer and a thief, subject to enslavement. If, however, you gather a band of lusty fellows in the name of honor and glory, knock off a couple of million people, take their planet, and hit up the survivors for taxes, you are a great conqueror, a hero, a statesman, and your name goes down in the history books. Sooner or later, this inconsistency seeps into the national consciousness and produces a desire for universal peace. That in turn brings about what is known as decadence, especially among philosophers who never had to do any of the actual fighting. The Empire is in this condition, of which the early stages are the most agreeable period of a civilization to live in—somewhat analogous to a banana just starting to show brown spots. I fear, however, that by now we are just a bit overripe."
He was not jailed for his remarks because he made them in private, sitting on the balcony of a rented lodge on Varrak's southern continent and finishing his usual noontime breakfast. His flamboyantly pajamaed legs were cocked up on the rail. Sighting over his coffee cup and between his feet, he saw a mountainside drop steeply down to green sun-flooded wilderness. That light played over a lean, straight-boned face and a long hard body which made him look like anything but an officer of a sated imperium. But then, his business was a strenuous one these days.
His current mistress offered him a cigarette and he inhaled it into lighting. She was a stunning blonde named Ella Mclntyre, whom he had bought a few weeks previously in Fort Lone, the planet's one city. He had learned that she was of the old pioneer stock, semi-aristocrats who had fallen on times so bad that at last they had chosen by lot some of their number to sell as "voluntary" slaves. That kind of sacrifice was not in accordance with law or custom on Terra, but Terra was a long way off and its tributaries necessarily had a great deal of local autonomy. Flandry had wangled an invitation to the private auction and decided she would be a good investment. She could have far worse owners than himself, and when he resold her—at a profit—he'd make sure the next one was a decent sort too.
He sipped, wiped his mustache, and drew breath to continue his musings. An apologetic cough brought his head around. His valet, the only other being in the lodge, had emerged from it. This was a native of Shalmu, remarkably humanoid, short, slender, with hairless green skin, prehensile tail, and impeccable manners. Flandry had dubbed him Chives and taught him things which made him valuable in more matters than laying out a dress suit.
"Pardon me, sir," he said. His Anglic was as nearly perfect as vocal organs allowed. "Admiral Fenross is calling from the city."
Flandry swore. "Fenross! What's he doing on this planet? Tell him to—no, never mind, it's anatomicall
y impossible." He sought the study, frowning. He wasted no love on his superior, and vice versa, but Fenross wouldn't contact a man on furlough, especially in person, unless it was urgent.
The screen held a gaunt, sharp countenance with dark-shadowed eyes. Red hair was dank with sweat. "There you are!" the admiral exclaimed. "Code 770." When Flandry had set the scrambler: "All leaves cancelled. Get busy at once." His voice broke across. "Though God knows what you or anyone can do. But it means all our heads."
Flandry took a drag of smoke that sucked in his cheeks. "What do you mean, sir?"
"The sack of Fort Lone was more than a raid—"
"What sack?"
"You mean you don't know?"
"Haven't tuned the telly for a week, sir. I'd better occupation." Beneath the drawl, the carefully casual manner, Flandry's skin prickled.
Fenross snarled something and said thickly, "Well, then, for your information, Captain, yesterday a barbarian force streaked in, shot out what defenses the town had, landed, looted, put the place to the torch, and were gone again in three hours from first contact. They also took about a thousand captives, mostly women. No Naval base here, you know, as thinly populated as this globe is. By the time word had gotten to the nearest patrol force and it had arrived, they were untraceable."
"You happened to be with it, sir, and have taken charge?" Flandry asked. He knew the answer; he was merely stalling while his mind regained balance and got into karate stance.
Barbarians—Beyond this Taurian sector of the Empire lay the wild stars, ungarrisoned, virtually unexplored; and among them prowled creatures who had gotten spaceships and nuclear weapons too soon. Raids and punitive expeditions had often gone back and forth across the marches. But an assault on Varrak? Hard to believe. Predators go for fat and easy prey.
Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra Page 25
