Sword of the Lamb

by M. K. Wren

  Rich sipped at his brandy; it seemed bitter on his tongue.

  “Alex, it hasn’t been much of a leave for you, between House affairs and social obligations. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Rich. It’s enough to be away from that damned Academy and to have a little time with you. You restore my soul, you know, and it needs it.”

  Rich met his brother’s eyes, for once unmasked, if only briefly. “You know any soul restoration I offer is only a matter of reciprocation. But speaking of House affairs, what about your conference with Father and Grandser this afternoon?” Alexand laughed, the mask of cynicism falling into place again as he raised his glass, swallowing the brandy without savoring it.

  “My conference? Rich, I was only there as an observer—as usual. Trevor Robek was there, too, by the way. Grandser intends to present the G-W-R resolution to the Directorate again. They were discussing some compromises he’s written into it since its last defeat.”

  Rich leaned forward attentively. G-W-R was a shorthand designation popular with newscasters for the Galinin-Woolf-Robek resolution, a canon of rules for Bond treatment that would be enforced by an agency of the Concord rather than individual Houses. Its standards for living conditions and general treatment were only decently humane, yet, since its introduction seven years ago, it had been voted down four times by the Directors on the grounds that it invited interference with internal House affairs.

  “Holy God, Alex, I hope it passes this time. Did you—I mean, was anything said about a system of appeals courts for the Bonds?”

  Alexand put his glass down on the table by his chair, then rose, and moved restlessly to the window.

  “Yes, something was said. I said it, to Father’s chagrin. I keep forgetting I’m still supposed to be seen and not heard.” Rich was chilled by the bitterness in that, and wasn’t deceived by the smile that accompanied it.

  “What was the reaction to it?”

  “Mixed. Grandser was interested. In fact, he’d already given some thought to expanding the existing judicial system to include Bonds. Trevor was . . . shocked, I think. His liberalism has its limits.”

  Rich waited, then asked, “And Father?”

  “He was dubious. He was concerned that Bonds might abuse the privilege, that it would undermine discipline in the compounds, and, as he pointed out, a concept so . . . so radical would guarantee failure of the resolution.”

  Rich nodded numbly, staring at his brother’s taut, aquiline profile. “Were you satisfied with that?”

  “Do you mean, was I satisfied with Father?” Alexand turned, his gaze direct and intent. “It isn’t my prerogative to demand satisfaction of him. He’s First Lord of the House.”

  “And you?” Rich held his breath.

  “I? I’m an abstraction of sorts, something existing only in potential. Perhaps my problem is simply that I had Theron Rovere as a teacher and have Richard—” He started to say Richard Lamb, but caught himself, “—and a sociologist for a brother. I see the problems—the crises—and I know something must be done about them, but nothing is being done. And Father . . . five years ago he spoke of the resolution in terms of basic humanity. Today he talked about giving the Concord a means of ‘policing’ Bond compounds. But this wasn’t the right time to discuss it further, and there’ll be no time in the near future. This is one aspect of this Confleet business I hadn’t considered—its effect on my relationship with Father.” He left the window and returned to his chair. “We can’t talk freely about House or Directorate affairs via vidicom from Sidny; the risk of monitoring is too high. But there’s no way around Confleet, so it’s futile to complain about it.”

  Perhaps, Rich thought, but it was impossible not to resent it, as he knew Alexand did, as he himself did. He didn’t pursue the subject, letting a silence grow, and at length Alexand turned and looked at him with a smile devoid of cynicism.

  “Rich, we’ve had so little time together this week—I meant to ask if you had a copy of your last thesis for me.”

  He nodded. “I have it taped. You can take it back with you tomorrow for whatever leisure Confleet allows you.”

  “There’s enough between the drills and strat exercises. Is this the one on master/slave group interactions?”

  “Yes. Lector Canzor approved it, but he suggested I present it to the Board of Censors as a Pri-Two document.”

  “Another one? Your alter ego believes in living dangerously. And your methods of collecting data—”

  “Please, Alex.” Rich laughed, trying to dispel his brother’s concern. “You know I’m in no danger from the Bonds. In fact, ironic as it may seem, they regard me as a sort of holy man; one of the Blessed.”

  “It isn’t the Bonds that worry me.”

  “Then what? I have official sanction through the University to enter most of the compounds.”

  “Most of them.” He eyed Rich doubtfully. “Does that include the Selasid compounds, for instance?”

  “Well, no, but I have means of getting into them safely. Besides, safety isn’t all important. You must understand that and accept it, and you must have enough faith in me to realize that I don’t take unnecessary risks.”

  His acquiescence first took the form of a long, resigned sigh, as it usually did; this wasn’t the first time the subject had been discussed.

  “All right, Rich, but you must understand if I worry about you. What exactly are your ‘means’ of entering compounds unofficially?”

  Rich felt a brief mental disequilibrium. He knew its cause, and it didn’t bother him except that it would be evident to Alexand in a fleeting blankness of expression. Then he surrendered to a sigh of relief at the chime of the pager.

  Alexand rose, his frown of annoyance hiding something close to dread. “Damn. That means Mother and Father are ready to leave.” He went to the dressing room and emerged with his cloak, tossing it carelessly around his shoulders. “Don’t wait up for me. It will undoubtedly be a long night.”

  Rich activated the chair and accompanied him to the door. “It will only seem long to you. I’ll probably be awake anyway when you return. Alex . . .” He paused, at a loss for words. So little time, and so much to be said; so much that couldn’t be put into words.

  Alexand reached out for his hand. “If you aren’t awake, I’ll roust you out. After all, tomorrow my incarceration resumes.”

  “I’ll be awake.”

  3.

  “Satya!”

  But the Shepherd was gone, back into the compound; the grate over the storm drain barred an empty darkness. Rich sagged against the compound wall. It seemed to be shaking, and he stared across the pedway channel to the opposite wall, then above to the elevated ’ways, rattling with the pounding footfalls of squads of brown-and-green-clad Selasid guards rushing toward the compound gates at the head of the channel. The walls would fall, he’d be trapped, buried alive. . . .

  Screaming—or was it only the sirens shrieking in mad disharmony? No, he could hear the screams of agony and terror from behind the walls. Or perhaps they were only echoes out of his memory.

  “Oh, Holy God . . . help me. . . . Alex, where . . .”

  He couldn’t even hear his own words in the rending roar of sound—men and machines pounding toward the compound, making devastation of disaster. It was so dark, and yet it had been midafternoon when he sat in Satva’s chapel only . . .

  Only minutes ago?

  Smoke. It was the smoke that eclipsed the light, welling out over the walls, pooling in this narrow channel. He was coughing, eyes burning, running with tears. The transit plaza at the open end of the channel—he must reach it somehow. His hands shook on the grips of the crutches. They were already on maximum lift, but his muscles were trembling uncontrollably. He lurched a few steps toward the plaza, staggered against the wall. Dark shapes were moving toward him; at first he c
ouldn’t make sense of them. A Conpol squad, an agglomeration of black shapes, white helmets bobbing in the haze. They passed him as if he didn’t exist, and he himself wasn’t sure of his own existence except for the pain that bound every shivering muscle.

  He slid down against the wall, his legs wouldn’t hold him; he crouched there, fumbling under his cloak for his pocketcom. He couldn’t die here.

  Alexand . . . help me. . . .

  No. Fenn. It was Fenn Lacroy’s voice he heard now faintly on the ’com. It took so long to explain, to get the words out and make them understandable.

  But he would be here. Fenn would come, would help him.

  Rich huddled against the wall, racked with pain and grief. Satva . . . the old man would never survive this.

  But Richard Lamb would. Alexand was coming.

  No—Fenn. Fenn was coming.

  Alexand was in Sidny, hundreds of kilometers away.

  4.

  Outside the control booth the darkness was absolute except for the red and blue lights weaving their intricate patterns. The only sounds were the humming and ticking of instruments, and at irregular intervals voices emerging from the earpiece of his transceiver headset, and the sound of his own voice as he spoke into the disk connected to it by a fine, curved rod and poised a few centimeters from his lips. In the black void outside, the lights had definite forms: the bristling spheres of deep-space Troop Carrier Corsairs, the flagships; the elongated shark-shapes of Corvets, spiked along their flanks with X7 gun-mounts; the sleek, darting arrows of Falcons. Alexand’s voice was quiet, as mechanical as the instruments surrounding him.

  “Rank 2 Falcons, deploy on tangent vectors. Rank 3, hold your positions relative flagship.” His eyes flicked up from the stat screens as ten red lights moved under the impetus of his command. A voice buzzed in his ears even as he saw the flash of white light.

  “Falcon R2-A on line to Red flagship. R2-C is hit.”

  A V-shaped wedge of lights was taking shape near the Blue Corsair flagship. Alexand glanced at the position screen and the navcomp board and spoke into the mike again.

  “Red flagship to Corvets 2,3, and 6. Move out at arc vectors 45°/30°/70° RF. Stand by for attack on Blue Falcon wedge. F-R2-A, close in on Corvets in guard formation at Blue flagship.” The blue wedge was moving toward the red flagship, but the red Corvets were arcing behind and holding. “Rank 3 Falcons, move out to radial shield formation at fifty kilometers RF. F-R3-A, prepare to close with Blue attack wedge on my order. Flagship artillery, deploy mine screen at forty kilometer radius.” He looked up and saw the tiny fireflies exploding from the Red flagship.

  Then another voice, “F-R3-A on line to Red flagship. Blue Falcon attack wedge now within range.”

  “Stand by, R3-A. Flagship to Falcon Rank I and Corvets 1, 5, and 9. Close in on Blue flagship. Fire at will.” A series of white flashes erupted in the darkness. “Hold strike reports until further notice.”

  The Blue flagship was under attack, but its protective complement of Falcons was almost entirely concentrated in the attack wedge aimed at the Red flagship. If the Blue commander ordered a retreat, Alexand knew his forces would be dangerously divided. He smiled faintly as the wedge drove steadily toward the Red flagship. No retreat would be ordered; his strategy was based on that assumption.

  “Flagship to F-R3-A. Close in on Blue wedge. Corvets 2, 3, and 6, proceed with flanking attack. Falcon Rank 2, hold your positions.” He paused, watching the lights. The Blue wedge was under heavy attack, but it didn’t turn back. “R2-A, deploy three Falcons to support attack on Blue flagship. You will hold your position with the remaining two Falcons. Flagship open for strike reports.”

  He listened intently, his eyes shifting constantly from the monitors to the lights. The mine screen was taking its toll now, and the Blue wedge was crumbling. A moment later he saw a white flash at the Blue flagship and the strike reports were overridden by another voice.

  “Red Corvet 5 to flagship. Blue flagship has been hit.”

  Alexand leaned back, taking a deep breath. The sound screen clicked off, and he heard a murmur of comment; the holojector chamber became only an open space as the lights came on, a circular area surrounded by a row of seats occupied by thirty black-uniformed cadets. He removed his headset and looked across the circle to the other control booth—to the “enemy.”

  From the beginning, Cornel Tomas Vincen had taken a sardonic delight in pitting his two high born students against each other at every opportunity. Again, Alexand found himself matching wits with Karlis Selasis.

  Cornel Vincen rose from his monitoring console midway on the circle between Alexand and Karlis.

  “Well, Corpral Woolf, that was rather well executed. Corpral Selasis, I hope you’re aware of the error that gave Woolf his advantage?”

  Karlis shot a venomous glance across to Alexand, then turned to Vincen attentively. “Of course, sir.”

  “And your error, Corpral?”

  “Uh—well, I assume you mean the . . . attack wedge.”

  “Exactly. You left your flagship exposed. However—” He turned to Alexand. “You took a great risk, Corpral. Had Selasis elected to retreat, most of your ships would’ve been trapped between his flagship and the Falcon wedge.”

  Alexand only nodded respectfully. “Yes, sir.”

  Vincen addressed the class as a whole now. “This was a relatively simple exercise: two forces of equal armament in an open field. The problem was at the outset in that the Blue forces were lying in ambush for Red’s emergence from SynchShift. Corpral Woolf’s gambit in sending the Scout out of SS first was good, but I might add seldom effective in actual battle conditions.”

  Alexand took note of that last phrase, and it had a hollow ring. Confleet had no enemies to engage on this scale or on these terms. It was all a game, a dogmatized fallacy that served no purpose except its own perpetuation.

  “But all factors considered,” Vincen was saying, “both contenders in this exercise conducted themselves well. Now, our next exercise—” He stopped, frowning in annoyance at a soft buzz. He took out his pocketcom. “Cornel Vincen on line.”

  The cadets concentrated more attention on this interruption than on his previous remarks, and when Vincen looked across at Alexand, their eyes also shifted to him.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll send him down immediately.” Alexand felt a premonitory chill as Vincen put away his ’com, paused a moment, then said, “Corpral Woolf, there’s an emergency message for you in the comcenter. Report immediately to Leftant Ames.”

  Alexand came to his feet and somehow managed to bring his right hand to his left shoulder in a salute and get out the expected, “Yes, sir.”

  It took more time to traverse the few kilometers from the Confleet IP port in Concordia to the Estate than it had to reach the city from Sidny. Hilding was waiting at the port with a House Faeton-limo and had an express grid priority clearance, but the tangle of traffic still kept them hovering with no forward movement for minutes at a time.

  Hilding glanced back into the passenger compartment. “I’m sorry, my lord. There’s been an uprising, you know. The Selasid Estate compounds.”

  Alexand only stared resentfully out the window at the snarled confusion, noting the high concentration of black Conpol ’cars. The uprising was of no interest to him except that it was responsible for this delay.

  His father’s message had been terse and to the point. Rich had collapsed at the University this afternoon. Alexand had been granted an emergency leave, and Confleet was providing transportation to Concordia.

  Collapsed. What did that mean?

  But Alexand hadn’t asked for an explanation. His only thought had been to get home to Rich as quickly as possible, but it was nearly dark when Hilding set the Faeton down on the private roof off the family wing. Alexand didn’t expect anyone to be waiti
ng for him there, and particularly not Fenn Lacroy. But it was Fenn who hurried toward him as he left the ’car. Alexand waited for him, finding a new source of anxiety in his tense posture and worried frown.

  “Fenn, how is Rich?”

  Lacroy glanced back at the guards at the entry, keeping his voice low. “He’ll recover, my lord, but he wanted me to tell you what happened. Rich didn’t tell your parents the whole story. He didn’t want to—to worry them.”

  “What whole story? What happened?”

  Lacroy hesitated; he seemed to have a hard time putting the words together. “Well, it’s true he ’commed me to pick him up this afternoon when he . . . got sick, but he wasn’t at the University. He was outside the Selasid compound where the riots broke out.”

  “Fenn, was he . . . inside the compound when the uprising began?”

  He nodded bleakly. “Yes, my lord. The Bonds got him out safely before the compound was sealed off, but it was . . .” He averted his eyes, his ruddy features unnaturally pale. “He—he just seemed to break down once I got him into the ’car. He was . . . weeping.”

  Alexand had to fight the urge to double over, as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach. He turned blindly toward the entry, almost stumbling in his haste and with the dizziness that made the ground move under his feet. He hardly gave the doors time to open, and a hapless guard had to move quickly to avoid a collision, nor did his pace abate until he turned into the corridor on which the anteroom into his and Rich’s suites opened.

  The crowd gathered there making him pause, if only briefly. They were all Bonds, perhaps twenty of them, waiting silently, patiently. He recognized Tuck, and Gillis, Rich’s valet. And Harlequin sitting cross-legged against the wall, the electroharp in his lap, his hands resting on the mute strings. None of them spoke, or seemed to move; they only watched Alexand pass with eyes full of silent questions.