by Peter David
Nearby was a fountain with a statue of a Danteri warrior wielding a sword. Si Cwan did not hesitate. He lashed out with a powerful thrust of his right foot and slammed into the base of the stone sword where it was held by the warrior. The stone cracked under the impact and shattered, and Si Cwan caught the stone sword with one deft grab. It was far weightier than any real blade, of course, but that was all to Cwan’s liking. If he swung it, anything of flesh and bone that it came into contact with would instantly be crushed by it. Water gurgled out of the broken-open hole.
“Very impressive,” commented Anubis, although he did not sound especially impressed. He was still watching Kalinda warily. “It is a pity. You could have been a most useful ally.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” replied Si Cwan. He swung the stone sword in a leisurely arc, causing the other senators to step further back. It gave Cwan a good deal of pleasure, seeing them hesitate in that way. If there was one thing he had learned long ago, it was that there was far more to dominating a situation than just having superior physical strength. Not that Cwan was ready to concede that they were superior to him. But they were obviously far less anxious to put self-defense capabilities to the test than he was. “I suspect that Kalinda and I would be far too much in the way of independent thinkers to fall in line with whatever it is you’re planning. Which, by the way, would be ... ?”
Anubis made a sound that Cwan suspected was supposed to be vaguely akin to a laugh. But only vaguely. True laughter was infectious. This was a sound that was infectious in the same way that plague was.
“You seek some deep, hidden ‘true plan,’ ” Anubis observed. He was not moving at all now, not flexing so much as a single muscle in his body. If he hadn’t been speaking, he would have looked like a statue carved from ebony. “My clan and I have never been anything less than forthright. We wish to provide ambrosia to bring out a golden age of mankind. My kin offered it to your captain ...” He paused, as if endeavoring to pluck a name out of the ether. “Calhoun,” he said finally, as if someone had whispered it to him as a prompt. “He was encouraged to refuse us. That was ... unwise.”
“Unwise. What are you saying?” Si Cwan’s eyes narrowed, and he gripped the makeshift sword more tightly.
Suddenly he saw movement with his peripheral vision. Without even taking his gaze from Anubis, he whipped the stone sword around under his arm and slammed it into the pit of one of the senator’s stomachs. The man had tried to come up behind him. It had not gone well for him; with one swing, Si Cwan had done the man some serious damage, and he was now on the ground with his arms wrapped around his middle. Si Cwan suspected he might have broken several of the Danteri’s ribs. He did not, however, care. His concerns were focused instead on the implicit threat he had just heard. “In what way unwise?” he continued.
“Let us say they have been dealt with,” said Anubis.
“Let us say more than that,” Si Cwan said dangerously, and started forward.
But Kalinda’s sharp “Don’t move, Cwan” froze him in midstep. He looked at her, scowling, and she met his gaze with a warning one of her own. Immediately he realized what she was trying to put across to him: that continuing this challenge was not the wisest course of action. Anubis had made no further move toward them, but he was still coiled, ready to spring. And the fact that one senator was down with some broken bones and Lodec was just recovering use of his hand didn’t render the other two less dangerous, or the entire situation less fraught with peril. Also, for all they knew, other senators or even soldiers might show up as reinforcements. Matters were being held together at that moment through only the most tenuous of circumstances, and the more they prolonged it, the worse it would go for them.
“Listen carefully,” Si Cwan told everyone standing there, keeping enough edge in his voice to sound as threatening as he possibly could. “We agreed to come to Danter for one reason and one reason only: your desire to create a new Thallonian Empire. You wanted my help for that. But since that time, another ... option,” and he inclined his head toward Anubis, “has clearly presented itself. I would have much preferred that you tell me about it, instead of what you had been doing. The skulking about, the late-night meetings from which I was excluded.”
“We ...” Lodec was trying to push through the pain he was still obviously feeling. “We thought ... you would not understand.”
“Perhaps I would not have. But I understand duplicity even less.” He looked at them for a long moment, and then said to Lodec, “You have a private field, do you not?”
“Field?” Lodec, still rubbing the rejoining place of his hand, looked blank for a moment. Then the confusion evaporated. “Oh. A landing port.”
“Correct.”
Slowly Lodec nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He was speaking slowly and a bit sheepishly, as if chagrined that he had been screaming in such an out-of-control manner earlier. “It’s ... one of the perks of being the—”
“I do not care,” Cwan interrupted. “You will bring us there. You will give us the fastest shuttle off this rock. And you will allow us to leave unmolested.”
“And if they do not?” inquired Anubis. He seemed most intrigued to hear Si Cwan’s response.
“Then,” said Si Cwan unflappably, waving the stone sword in a decidedly menacing manner, “we shall see if we have a god who bleeds.”
A long silence followed, and then came another of those frightening laughs from Anubis that made the listener feel as if bugs were crawling beneath his skin and lodging in various important organs. “Lodec,” he said after a moment more. “Give him what he wants.”
“But High One!” Lodec began to protest, until a single fearsome glance from Anubis silenced him.
Anubis turned back to Si Cwan as if Lodec no longer mattered to him ... which was, very likely, the case. “Believe it or not, Thallonian,” Anubis said, “you were of interest to me. I sought to test your mettle. I am ... unimpressed.”
Si Cwan bowed mockingly. “I shall endeavor to live with the disappointment of failing to impress you.”
Paying no heed to Si Cwan, Anubis shifted his gaze to Kalinda. “She, on the other hand, has potential. Vast potential. It might be best for you to remain here, young Kalinda.”
“I go where Si Cwan goes,” she said defiantly.
He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “That is your choice, child. I think it an unfortunate one, but I will not tamper with your free will. None of my brethren will. We are gods, not monsters.”
“Despite all appearances to the contrary,” Si Cwan said sharply. “And you won’t tamper with free will? From what you’re saying, you attacked friends of ours simply because they were exercising their free will in deciding not to trust you and your ... ilk.”
Anubis’ teeth flashed. For half a heartbeat, Si Cwan thought he was going to have a fight on his hands, and he wasn’t ecstatic about the likelihood of triumphing in it. But Anubis promptly calmed himself; it happened so quickly that very likely Cwan and Anubis were the only ones aware of the flash of temper. “There is free will,” he said in a soft voice that sounded much like a growl. “And then there is lack of respect. Blasphemy, if you will. All living creatures have the gift of free will. But we need not tolerate blasphemers. Any more than you, ‘Lord’ Si Cwan, tolerated insurrection in your days as a noble of the Thallonian Empire.”
“You know nothing of me, nor of what I did or did not tolerate.”
“A pity,” said Anubis, his eyes blazing brighter, “that we will not have the opportunity to learn. Know one thing, however,” and he shifted his gaze toward Kalinda, “my scythe must be returned before your vessel will be permitted to leave. It is my property. You may not depart with it.”
“Odd,” commented Kalinda, “that you don’t try to come and take it back yourself.” She idly whipped the blade through the air.
“Odd to you. Not to me. But then ... we have been known to move in mysterious ways.”
And with that comment, Anubis turned his back to them a
nd walked away as if they were no longer of any interest to him. Si Cwan watched him go. He did not move like anything remotely human. Indeed, it almost seemed as if he had no mass whatsoever. For an instant, Si Cwan wondered if perhaps Anubis wasn’t there at all. Perhaps he was a hologram of some sort. But he quickly discarded the notion. Si Cwan had spent a good deal of time on the holodeck of the Excalibur, running through various combat scenarios. And no matter how realistic his opponents had seemed, his senses were never deceived. He was able to discern between that which was living and that which was manufactured. If nothing else, they tended to move with machinelike perfection. No matter how sophisticated the computer program, there were still limits as to what it was able to replicate in terms of movement.
Anubis, no matter how bizarre his appearance, was definitely living. A living what, Si Cwan could not begin to say.
The Thallonians were escorted to the landing port by a stonily silent group of senators. Lodec was still waggling his fingers, obviously to make certain that they were fully functional. Every so often he would toss an angry glance in Si Cwan’s direction. Cwan resisted the temptation to put his fist through Lodec’s face ... particularly considering that it wasn’t long before that Lodec had been lifting him off his feet as if he were a child. Truth to tell, he wasn’t all that anxious to have another run at Lodec; not until he had a clearer idea of just what had happened and how it had come to pass. His only priority at that moment was getting Kalinda out of there.
There were several vessels sitting in the port, and Lodec made a sweeping gesture. “Choose one,” he said, his voice even. “If I select one, you may suspect some sort of treachery.”
“Don’t concern yourself about that, Lodec,” replied Si Cwan. “At this point, no matter what you say or do, I will suspect treachery ... very likely because you are, in fact, a traitor.”
“Why? Because circumstances caused me to break my word to you?” He made a scoffing noise. “A traitor is someone who acts contrary to the best interests of his own people. You are simply put out because I acted contrary to your best interests. That does not concern me in the least.”
“Concern yourself over this, then, if you wish.” He leaned in toward Lodec, keeping a firm grip on the stone sword. “This is not over.”
“I hope not,” replied Lodec with a very unpleasant smile. “I would dearly love to have a rematch with you, Si Cwan ... preferably without your little sister to step in and save you.”
Reflexively Si Cwan started to take a step forward, but Kalinda put a firm hand on his arm that stopped him. He forced a nod in acknowledging that departure would serve them far better than continued conflict. He chose a runabout at random and then had Lodec start it up. The reason for his caution was obvious: Lodec might have some sort of fail-safe built in that would cause the thing to blow to bits if anyone other than Lodec endeavored to depart with it.
Lodec then stepped out of the runabout, but turned and called, “Lord Cwan! I believe you have something that the great Anubis requested be returned to him.”
“Oh yes. So he did.” Standing in the entrance to the runabout, Si Cwan extended a hand to Kalinda. She hesitated briefly, but then handed the scythe over to her brother. He held it a moment, feeling the heft and balance. “An impressive implement,” he said ... and then with a quick, smooth motion he sent it hurtling at Lodec.
The Danteri senator let out a shriek but was rooted to the spot as the blade whipped through the air at an angle. It landed exactly where Si Cwan intended it to, thudding into the ground directly between Lodec’s legs. Lodec looked down at the still quivering handle, the blade buried in the ground.
Si Cwan grinned broadly, and then turned and saw the disapproving scowl on Kalinda’s face. Without a word he pushed the button that caused the door to iris closed. “That was unnecessary,” she said as Si Cwan went straight over to the guidance consoles.
“I found it to be very necessary.”
The runabout lifted off and seconds later the small craft was angling skyward. Si Cwan was watching the sensor readouts carefully, concerned that Danteri vessels would be launched in pursuit with the intention of blowing them out of the sky. Kalinda obviously shared the concerns as she asked, “Are we being followed?”
“Not so far,” said Cwan. He shook his head. “This is going to be embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” Kalinda said in bewilderment. “How would it be ... ?” And then she realized and, despite the seriousness of their situation, she couldn’t help but smile. “Ahhh ... Captain Shelby.”
He nodded. “She’s going to laugh in my face. She tried to warn me. She cautioned me against accepting the Danteri offer. It was my own ego running rampant.”
“She said that?”
“No, I said that. That is, I say that.”
“Oh, Cwan.” She went over to him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You did what you thought was right. All the reasons you gave her were good ones. We are who we are. We are Thallonians, the last members of our line. All during our time on the Excalibur, you’ve put yourself forward as ‘Ambassador,’ but really, that’s just been a polite fiction. The truth is, you haven’t been representing anyone or anything except yourself and your own interests. The Danteri offer was simply too good to pass up.”
Slowly he nodded. “And would you mind saying all that to Captain Shelby?”
“Out of the question. She’d laugh in my face.”
The response prompted a genuine chuckle from Si Cwan, but it died in his throat as the warning lights suddenly snapped on and a shrill alarm sounded within the runabout.
“We have a problem,” grated Si Cwan.
“What is it?!” Even as she asked, Kalinda was clambering into a seat and strapping herself in. But the response was forthcoming before Si Cwan could respond as the runabout shuddered violently. “Did we hit something?”
“No, something hit us,” he shot back. “Their ground cannons, most likely. We’ve been targeted. Apparently Lodec desired to give us a parting gift.”
“I don’t think Anubis is going to like that.”
The runabout trembled once more under another violent impact. “His likes and dislikes will be somewhat moot if we’re smashed to bits.”
“Does this vessel have shields?”
“The standard astro-nav shields to deflect debris and particles. Nothing meant to withstand the direct pounding of surface-to-air weaponry.” His fingers flew over the controls and the runabout banked sharply.
“What are you doing?!”
“If we can’t survive direct hits, then the best thing to do is be where they’re not shooting until we’re out of range.”
Under Si Cwan’s deft handling, the runabout darted to the right and left. Ground blasts erupted in the air around it, the shock waves battering the ship mercilessly even when the cannons missed. The higher into the atmosphere they went, the thinner the air became and the less of a problem the near-hits were. But Si Cwan wasn’t thrilled with the way the runabout was maneuvering. He suspected that some of the guidance systems had been damaged by the assault. He didn’t tell Kalinda that, however, seeing no point in worrying her.
Reaching escape velocity, they pulled free of the gravity of Danter, and Si Cwan and Kalinda shot each other a look of relief just before one final, stray shot slammed into them squarely, sending all their nav systems completely off line and the runabout whirling helplessly into the depths of space.
EXCALIBUR
I.
“I CANNOT DETERMINE a cause of death.”
In the sickbay of the Excalibur, Mackenzie Calhoun stared with incredulity, first at Dr. Selar and then at the unmoving, charred body of Mark McHenry, laid out on a diagnostic table, and then back to Selar. “What the hell do you mean, you can’t determine it?” demanded Calhoun. “Look at the man! He’s got a burn mark through his chest the size of a cannonball!”
Selar frowned. “The size of a what?”
Calhoun was about to reply, and then though
t better of it, particularly since he saw that others in the sickbay were reacting with surprise to his raised voice. They looked bedraggled, shell-shocked. Sickbay was crammed to overflowing with the injured; everyone from every shift, and everyone who had ever wielded any sort of medical instrument in their life, had been pulled in to deal with the damage the ship had sustained in the battle with the Beings. People were battered, burned, moaning and waiting for painkillers to kick in. They were lying there waiting for skin grafts to take, or sleeping and in stasis, waiting for their bodies to stabilize so further work could be done on them. And everyone, everyone who was conscious was looking at him, and he felt as if there were accusatory stares ... or hopeful? Or desperate? Looking to him for salvation or explanation or something, anything. What the hell do they want from me? What am I supposed to be? Made of stone? Then he drew in a deep breath, steadied himself, found a calm center, and focused once more on Selar. As frustrating as Vulcans could be at times, he had to admit that their capacity for maintaining calm in the face of difficulty was something he occasionally envied. “I’m simply asking,” he said, “how it could be unclear what caused Mr. McHenry’s ... demise.”
“Because I am not entirely certain that he is dead.”
Once again Calhoun found himself staring at Selar in total confusion. “I would have thought,” he said, “that the lack of life signs in his readings would have been sufficient to establish that.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But Mr. McHenry is ... less than ordinary. And more.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the onset of a thumping headache. “That much, I’ll agree with. So lay it out for me, Doctor. What are you saying?”
“There’s no deterioration of his cells,” she said, circling the bed on which McHenry was stretched out. “No cellular degeneration. Oh, there’s been catastrophic damage to his body, there is no disputing that. But ...” She paused and then looked up at Calhoun. “You will think I am joking.”
