by M. K. Wren
The major was talking to the navcomp officer; he looked up, obviously annoyed at the interruption.
“What is it, Leftant?”
“Commander Evret for you, sir. Intership FR310.”
“Oh.” His annoyance vanished as he switched on his headset, turning his attention to the small screen mounted on the arm of his chair. “Major Goring on line. Commander.”
Alexand’s hand went to the console, and his screen went blank, but he neglected to turn off the audio circuit. He was expected to do so. and apparently it didn’t occur to Goring that he wouldn’t. He never checked, and Alexand eavesdropped regularly without a qualm. As he listened, he looked up at the vis-screens lining the curved walls above the arc of consoles.
“. . . on stand-by status, Major. A serious Bond uprising is in progress in the Alber compounds in Canadia. Lord Fallor has requested Confleet forces to stand in reserve.”
Alexand’s eyes narrowed, but there was no other indication of his sick dread. Fallor. That carping fool, Charles Fallor. His future father-in-law, no less.
“Of course, Commander. Is the status critical?”
“The reports are confused, as usual. At least they have some idea what started this one. Some damned Shepherd was executed, and the Bonds went berserk when Fallor’s guards wouldn’t let them have the body.”
Terra’s flat curve bisected the screens; Alexand stared at the image fixedly, the dread turning to anger. Ariad was passing over the Eastern Coastal Wastes of Noramerika, and those millennium-old scars seemed a fitting symbol.
If the Bonds had revolted because they were denied the body of one of their religious leaders, they were justified. The Rites of Passing, the ceremonies surrounding the cremation of the dead, were of profound significance to them; a soul denied these rites might be excluded from the Beyond Realm. And the Galinin Rule stated unequivocally that Bond religious ceremonies were not to be interfered with or curtailed unless they constituted an immediate threat. It was highly unlikely that a threat existed in letting the Bonds carry out the circumspect ceremonies of the Rites.
He knew what had happened. Some officious House guard had taken matters into his own hands and capriciously—or fearfully, out of ignorance—denied the Bonds what they had every right to expect. And by that one mindless act, another holocaust had been unleashed.
He stared up at the cloud-shimmered images on the screens, a lapis lazuli world turning under them, turning toward Alber, while Evret’s voice rasped in his ear.
“. . . five hundred Fallor guards and a hundred Conpol officers, but reinforcements are on the way from Montril. I’ll have orders from FleetComm within ten minutes.”
Alexand turned to the console, apparently reading a status communication, but his finger rested casually on the Intership button. He would have to switch off when Goring did, or the lighted button would betray him.
“. . . only on stand-by, Major, but order your Falcon complement into closed-V formation. We may be making a fast change of course.”
“Very well, sir.”
“That’s all, Major.”
Alexand pressed the button. He expected Goring’s voice next, and he was startled that it wasn’t his.
“Hey, Alex . . .”
The voice was close, low-pitched, carrying a sibilant smirk. It belonged to the man seated next to him, the Ariad’s gunnery officer.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Alex? Just think—a few more hours and you’ll be making it with sweet Julia.”
Any reply he might have made was cut off by Goring’s starchy. “Leftant Selasis!”
Karlis Selasis stiffened and looked back at Goring. “Yes, sir?”
“I will tolerate no idle conversation on this condeck. Leftant Woolf . . .”
Alexand turned. “Yes, Major?”
“Put me on shipboard and complement frequency—and switch in the sig-mod circuit.”
“Yes. sir.”
He moved about the task automatically, his bitter rage in no way evident. The uprising in Alber was foremost in his thoughts. He had no doubt their unit would be called in; he knew Charles Fallor. But, on another level, he was thinking that one day he’d find out who had arranged his assignment to the same unit, to the same ship as Karlis Selasis. There was malicious intent behind that. It couldn’t conceivably be accidental.
2.
Alber was called a compound city, and it was more a compound than a city, housing the twenty thousand Bond laborers who tilled this portion of the earth claimed by Lord Charles Desmon Fallor. And in the waning afternoon light, Alber was a beleaguered island in an endless sea of grain fields golden in the autumn of the northern hemisphere. The final crop of the year was ready for harvest, and it was going up in flames. The Bonds had fired the fields around it.
That had been Alber from the air. From the ground, it was a Stygian world in which masses of men and machines moved in incomprehensible patterns, submerged in a pall of black smoke that confined visibility to a few meters. Alexand felt himself a blind pawn on a trimensional chessboard, his only awareness of the game the movements of the pawns around him and the voices buzzing in the receiver in his ear. He knew they were outside the south gate of Alber, he knew the immediate objective of the 1,600 ’Fleeters of Evret’s unit was to stop the outward flood of Bonds and drive them back to their compounds, but that was all he knew, all that bore any semblance of purpose or rationality.
The sound was staggering: the devouring roar of the fires; the rumble of emergency ’cars overhead, swimming through the smoke, sirens shrilling; the hissing shrieks of compressor nozzles spewing chemicals to contain the ravenous flames; the pounding beat of thousands of booted feet; the ampspeakers erupting with commands and demands; the sound of his own breathing amplified by the filter mask.
And as they moved deeper into the blackness, a sound that seemed born of the stifling smoke, that seemed only an accident of nature, like the whining of wind.
A chorus.
It was only a vague moaning at first, but as they marched inexorably closer—a long black line echoing the advancing lines of the fires across the fields—it resolved itself into a wordless threnody of abject terror.
Alexand’s own terror at that sound was irrational and atavistic. It was a primeval sound, all the more awesome because it seemed to have no tangible source.
He marched into the darkness, muscles registering the cadenced impacts of his footfalls, but his body seemed no longer his own. He was only part of a larger entity, that long black line. Orders crackled in his ear, and if they were for him, he obeyed; if they were for others, he ignored them. The stubble crumbled under his boots like fine bones, the heat from the fires came in searing waves, and, even with the goggled filter mask, the smoke burned his eyes and throat.
The wailing chorale was louder, and still he could see nothing beyond the black line except black smoke. His body moved, part of the line, his footfalls part of the rhythmic thudding. He wondered how many kilometers they had crossed, or how many meters; how many hours they had marched, or how many minutes. Through the narrow field of his goggles, he saw shapes materializing ahead as if newly created out of the bitter black clouds, and he heard the disembodied voices from the ampspeakers: “Attention! All Bonds return to your compounds. All Bonds return to your compounds. Attention! All Bonds return to your compounds . . . .”
It went on and on, a meaningless litany serving as a counterpoint to the pounding fugues of equally meaningless sounds. The shapes resolved as the black line advanced: X4 gun crews; two men to each gun. Miniature cannons, floating lightly on their nulgrav mounts, directed into the smoke.
X4s against unarmed Bonds?
It didn’t make sense. He expected the guns to vanish if he looked closely; they could only be nightmare illusions. But they became more real with every step, and rage assumed solidit
y in his mind in direct ratio, an intensely personal sensation that severed him from the long black line.
Yet he still reacted when the voice in his ear commanded a halt behind the gun crews. He still responded with every other man in the line when he was ordered to unholster his X2 and attach the shoulder brace. He obeyed when he was told to bring the gun into firing position, and felt the brace against his shoulder like an iron hand.
The spectral chorus howled behind the smoke, and he wondered if those wails, waxing and waning like tide-drawn waves, weren’t born in his own mind.
Until the wind changed.
It shifted with the caprice of natural forces that only the human mind could interpret as purposeful; the darkness faded to a dull, reddish glow, and finally he saw the source of the wailing chorus, and his breath stopped with nausea.
Thousands. He could only think thousands. Thousands of nebulous figures coalescing out of the carmine haze; thousands of milling, scrambling, trampling, reeling Bonds, like leaves tossed and tumbling in the wind. White and blue, their tabards, tinted blood brown and ash gray in the murky light. Men and women, young and old. And children, some clinging to a mother’s hand or clasped in her arms, more running aimlessly, lost, abandoned. He could hear the gasping and coughing now. They had no filter masks; they were running blind, choking for breath. The stubble was strewn with dead and dying, victims of the smoke or the panic of the mass.
“. . . return to your compounds immediately. Attention! All Bonds return to your compounds . . .”
The ampspeakers boomed their mechanical, unheeded commands; Alexand stood transfixed, hearing the chorus suddenly mount, seeing a change in the random movements, the beginning of a concerted movement in a single direction.
The turning of the wind . . .
That wayward shift had opened what must seem to the Bonds a corridor of light out of darkness, out of the lethal smoke. They were beyond realizing that the light led them away from the compounds in defiance of those monotonously repeated commands, that it led them straight toward the long black line and the X4s.
“Turn back! Attention Bonds! To your compounds!”
Even the voice of the ampspeakers changed pitch. Alexand felt the tension shivering through the black line and the wrenching acceleration of his pulse. Out of that disordered mass another multicelled entity with a collective will was emerging, an entity driven by savage desperation.
For the first time he felt fear in more than an atavistic, generalized sense. He was afraid for his life. That despairing, mindless mass was rolling toward the black line with a rumbling roar and the implacable momentum of an avalanche, and for an endless moment it seemed inconceivable that any human power could stop or withstand it.
But only for a moment.
He heard an order, but his mind was still automatically sorting the buzzings in his ear; it wasn’t for him. It was for the X4 gun crews.
“Fire!”
He was encompassed in whining lightnings, and his mind sorted a new buzzing in his ear.
“Ariad crews, prepare to open fire.”
The answer to the lightning wasn’t thunder, but an explosion of shrieks born of something more than terror; born of agony. And he wondered why his vision was suddenly so clear, why no protective mechanism switched on to numb his senses.
“Guns at ready . . .” He obeyed, gloved hands locked on cold metal.
Why he could watch an X4 beam slice through a man’s body and hear that one, individual scream so clearly; see a woman tumble to the ground, her legs cleanly severed, watch her insensate thrashings, and pity her that she still lived.
“Gun safeties off . . .” And again he obeyed.
Why he could watch the first rank falling into the black stubble, shuddering, maimed bodies smeared with soot and earth, and see every face in sharp detail. Why he could watch the next rank falling over their bodies, living and dead, and every gaping mouth had its own timber, each voice as distinct, as tangible as a knife blade.
“Aim . . .”
Why his sense of smell was so heightened; why he could distinguish the odor of burning stubble from that of burning flesh, and both from the pervading stench of fear. And still they kept coming out of the smoke, rank on doomed rank.
“Fire!”
He heard the hot whines of laser beams around him, but his gun was at his side. He stood motionless, silence moving through his veins.
How many had already died here on the fields of Alber for the body of a Shepherd? He would not add to the toll.
“Leftant Woolf! Didn’t you hear my order?”
This voice wasn’t in his ear ’ceiver; it was behind him and less than a meter away. He turned slowly, the images lingering on his retina, and looked through that tumbled, bloody montage to Major Goring. He had stripped off his mask, as if his outrage wouldn’t tolerate that barrier to expression; he was shouting against the roaring and shrieking, but his anger had nothing to do with the carnage.
“Leftant—I gave the order to fire!”
Alexand methodically removed his own mask. The capricious wind was still blowing; the veils of smoke eddying around him had the clean bite of a cauterizing agent.
“I chose to disregard it.”
“You—you chose!” Goring seemed to swell with the rush of blood to his face as he became aware of the curious glances from the other men. “By the God, when I give an order, Leftant, you’d damned well . . . better . . .”
Goring would always wonder how he did it, how, with the slightest lift of his chin, a subtle change of expression, Leftant Woolf silently reminded him that he wasn’t giving orders to a raw cadet fresh out of the Academy; he was giving orders to the Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf. The reminder came as a shock. Leftant Woolf had played the game up to this point, had been a model officer.
But it was the Lord Alexand who said tersely, “You’ll find me in my cabin, Major,” then turned on his heel and walked away into the fog of smoke toward the ships. Goring’s hands knotted into fists. He pivoted to face the staring ’Fleeters, insect-like behind their masks.
“Back to your positions—all of you!”
They obeyed, but with a hint of reluctance. He strapped on his mask and activated the mike, concentrating on the pressing mob beyond the Confleet line.
“Guns at ready!”
The response was quicker, a concerted snapping motion.
“Aim . . .”
Again, a unison response. He watched it with grim satisfaction. But one man was slower than the others, and Goring swore inwardly, reading the open contempt in the goggled eyes.
Karlis Selasis.
As if one Lord’s son wasn’t enough.
“Fire!”
The lightning sprang from the muzzles and the air shivered with a new onslaught of shrieks.
Two sons of Lords, And not just any Lords’ sons—the first born of Woolf and Selasis.
“Guns at ready . . .”
3.
“My lord . . .”
The guard at the entrance to the family wing hesitantly raised a hand. Alexand paused, watching his gaze falter. He knew. No doubt all Concordia knew by now, and to a Fesh House guard, that fruitless revolt on the fields of Alber must seem an incomprehensible act of treason or cowardice.
“What is it, Ket?”
“Uh—your lord father asked me to tell you he wishes to speak with you at your earliest convenience.”
Which meant immediately. The Plaza ceremonies would begin in an hour.
Alexand nodded and walked away down the empty corridor, listening to the regular thuds of his booted feet, a tangible reminder of his own existence here, in this hall—home. He still carried the smell of smoke and burned flesh in his cloak.
The Lord Woolf would, no doubt, be impatient. But Alexand went to his own suite f
irst. His bedroom was lighted and furnished with fresh flowers; that would be at his mother’s behest. Tuck was waiting for him, and so was the dress uniform.
“Welcome home, my lord.”
Tuck was standing by the open dressing room door. The black, gold-embellished uniform hung on the rack inside, multiplied by the mirrored walls. Tuck’s usually cheerful features were drawn with uncertainty.
He knows, too, Alexand thought, and almost laughed. It didn’t surprise him that the news was already out. He’d returned to Concordia aboard the flagship, enduring a long monologue from Commander Evret. The flagship was the last of the fleet to touch down, and Karlis Selasis, aboard Ariad, had arrived well ahead of him.
“Thank you, Tuck. It’s . . . good to be home.” Alexand took off his cloak and handed it to him, glancing toward Rich’s room, seeing the welcoming light within it. Thank the God Rich was home.
“Will you be dressing for the evening now, my lord?”
“No, not yet. I’ll page you later.” He stripped off the jacket, tossing it on the bed as he crossed to Rich’s door.
The long months of absence seemed to dissolve. It was as if Rich had always been here, waiting for him. They’d both been through experiences in the last half year that had inevitably changed them, but some things were immutable.
Rich was at his desk console. When Alexand came in, he waved off the reading screen and turned the nulgrav chair to face him. An empty chair was placed nearby, and on the desk was a decanter and two crystal glasses. Rich reached for the decanter as Alexand went to the empty chair, feeling the quivering of his taut muscles as he sank into it. He took the glass Rich offered and tasted the brandy, holding it on his tongue to mask the clinging taste of smoke, and studied his brother’s almost translucent face, the eyes that were warm as a summer sky, but too large, too intensely alive for that thin face. Yet he looked well. He’d lost a little weight, but his color was good.
“Rich, how are you?”
