The Court of a Thousand Suns

by Chris Bunch

  The heavyworlder's lungs were bursting, but he had managed to get a hand on a frontal ray, and another on a ridge graining upward from the gurion's back. Other rays were closing around him, suckers grasping his thick body. Under the water, Alex saw the blood-red maw, centimeters from his face. He strained mightily, a huge bubble of what little remained of the air in his lungs bursting out. Slowly, very slowly, he began forcing the ray toward the gurion's own stomach-mouth. Reflexively, the needle teeth began swarming as they sensed flesh approaching. Finally, with a last mighty shove, the tip of the ray entered the maw.

  A high whine almost pierced Sten's eardrums. Then the gurion that had Alex rose to its full height out of the water, and Alex kicked off from the creature's body. The gurion had one of its own rays crammed into its mouth and was gobbling it down, shrieking in pain as its own digestive juices and teeth ripped into its own flesh. The animal was devouring itself; and its weird physiology—especially the peristaltic motion of its rows of inward-pointing teeth—would not let it stop.

  Sten felt something thump at his side, and he grabbed into the water for Dynsman. The man was struggling hysterically; Sten felt for his carotid, pinched, and after a few moments Dynsman went limp. Sten began hauling the man to shore.

  "There's more!" Alex shouted.

  About a quarter of a klick away, three more shapes had risen out of the water and were charging toward them. Alex was at his side now, and the two of them grabbed Dynsman by the collar and began wading for their lives.

  On the shore, Chetwynd and the others had been watching the battle with great interest. Chetwynd saw the two Dru guards rescue the little creep they called Dynsman. He glanced lazily over at one of the skiffs. If he gave the word, he and his cronies could rescue the three.

  From many meters away, Sten could read Chetwynd's mind: the other skiffs, just lying there, plenty of hunters, and many makeshift weapons to boot. Even before it happened, Sten knew what Chetwynd was about to do.

  The laugh came from his toes and burst up along his tremendous bulk. Chetwynd had never seen anything so funny. He collapsed to the ground, howling with mirth. Around him, the other prisoners caught the humor of the whole thing. If they didn't help, the guards would die.

  And there was no way Chetwynd and his mates could be blamed. The entire shore rippled with laughter.

  Sten and Alex dug in for one last effort as the water prowed behind them and a gurion closed in. With a final yank, they dragged out of the last few meters of muck and collapsed on the beach.

  Sten lay there for a very long time. He could hear the laughter all around him. He waited there, gathering his breath, his eyes closed. Finally there was silence. He turned over on his back and looked upward. Chetwynd was grinning down at him.

  "Anything I can do to help, mister," Chetwynd said.

  Sten stared up into the mocking eyes. He felt the thin haft of his knife in his hand, and thought about how it would feel to…

  "What the clot!" Sten gasped.

  And the feeling was gone, and Sten found himself convulsed with laughter. All one had to do was to look at events from Chetwynd's point of view.

  The aircar slid across the barren landscape, Alex at the controls. Dynsman was stuffed safely between them and a course was set for headquarters. There was a groan, and Alex glanced down at the stirring Dynsman. "A hard lad to kill," he commented.

  "Yeah, well I guess we can settle that. Gimme."

  He motioned to Alex, and Kilgour fished through a pocket and came up with a tiny hypo. He handed it to Sten, who began peeling up Dynsman's sleeve. The little bomber opened his eyes, spotted Sten, and tried to struggle up. Sten pushed him down with a hard hand and pressed the hypo to his flesh.

  "Sweet dreams, you little clot," he said, and plunged it in.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sten thought it was too easy. The max-variation chip in Dru's central computer that determined the draw of the escort lottery turned out to be near-Stone Age, its random-variable generator only controlled by a pickup that measured the magnetic flux from Dru's sun and the other two worlds in the system.

  His fellow guards didn't.

  "Clottin' hell. I said this man was lucky," a guard marveled. "Not two months on-post, and you get the bag detail."

  "Ah, tha's m'partner Mr. Keet," Alex covered.

  "He cannae play cards worth a whistle, an' his choice on the racin' beasties is horrific.

  "But gie the wee lad a pure-chance game, an' he always walks."

  Their shift sergeant was more then irked.

  "Mr. Keet. Mr. Ohlsn. I find it upsetting that you two new assignees to Dru are this lucky."

  "Yessir," Sten said. He and Alex, in formal grays, were locked at attention.

  "Consider this, gentlemen. While you're escorting this prisoner's body back to Heath, I plan on a full investigation."

  "Investigation? A' wha?" Alex said.

  "Of… we'll just call it luck. But I expect, when you two return here, there shall be great surprises."

  "Aye, Sergeant," Alex put in fervently. "When next y' see us, surprises will be all around."

  Before Alex could continue, Sten side-kicked him into silence, saluted, and the two about-faced and exited.

  The robot ship, just out-atmosphere, automatically shut off the Yukawa drive and kicked in the AM2 drive for the stars.

  Alex and Sten had already broken the lock to the control chamber and were standing over the pilot.

  "Th' Tahn dinna be a' bright a' they think," Alex said. "This autopilot's a' easy to reprogram a' bacon through a goose." And Alex busied himself at the tapeplotter, changing the ship's course. "Dinna y' want to be unfreezin't wee Dynsman?"

  "Why bother," Sten said. "A dead villain's not a worry."

  "Aye. Time enow to lazarus the lad when we rendezvous."

  Rendezvous was with a superspeed Imperial destroyer lurking just outside the Tahn sector, with instructions to monitor a given wave frequency for pickup. Once Alex and Sten were picked up, the robot ship would be returned to its old course for Heath. But a spacejunk fragment lay in its future. The robot ship would never arrive at its destination.

  "W hae our mad bomber, w' hae our health, wha' more could a man want?"

  "A good healthy drink," Sten offered, and headed for the guards' living section to see if anybody had been humane enough to pack a liter or so of alk.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The blue panel on Ledoh's desk began blinking. Ledoh quickly shut down the inconsequential conversation he'd been having with the Imperial Commissariat, hit the buttons that locked the entrance to his office, and set off the conference lights. He crossed to the doorway into the Imperial chambers and tapped with a fingertip, then entered.

  The Emperor had his chair swung around and was staring out at the parade grounds as Ledoh entered. Two full flasks sat on the Emperor's desk, one of what the Emperor called Scotch, the other—Ledoh shuddered when he recognized it—pure medical alk.

  Without turning, the Emperor growled, "You feel like a drink, Admiral?"

  "Uh… not particularly."

  "Neither do I. What's the worst thing that's happened to you this shift?"

  Ledoh sifted through unpleasantries. "The Tahn Embassy's Principal Secretary expressed dissatisfaction with the meetings."

  "He thinks he's dissatisfied!"

  "To continue, sir. His dissatisfaction has been communicated, through the usual channels, to the Tahn lords. I, uh, have here their response."

  "Go ahead. Ruin my day."

  "The communiqué is on my desk, if you'd like the exact wording," Ledoh said. "No? Roughly, in view of the situation on the Fringe Worlds, the Tahn lords would like to meet with you."

  "Is that all?"

  "Not quite. Because of the death of Alain, they are reluctant to meet here on Prime. They request a meeting on neutral ground in deep space, further conditions, to include the proper security by both sides, to be negotiated. Said meeting to occur within one Prime ye
ar."

  "Clot, clot, clot. They are shoving it in my face."

  "Yessir."

  "What about the riots on the Fringe Worlds?"

  "Four capitals overrun. No word from provincial capitals. Guard support units are moving into position. Casualties? We have an estimate of somewhere approaching twelve thousand. On both sides."

  "You know," the Emperor said evenly, "at one time I figured that any problem I faced could be met with sweet reason, the Guards, or enough alk to blind me out. Turns out I was wrong, Admiral. This appears to be one of those situations. I'll summarize. See if you agree: Fact A: The Tahn worlds are using the death of Alain to pressure me. They want the Empire to back out of the Fringe Worlds. Correct?"

  "Very possibly," Ledoh said.

  "I pull out—and that'll leave those settlers who moved in dumb, fat, and happy on the assumption that the Empire will protect them forever and ever amen swinging in the wind, lm-clottin'-possible, even if I could convince those yokels to uproot and haul.

  "Fact B: Alain's dissidents, who never got the word that unification with the Tahn worlds would probably mean their instant demise or at least the destruction of everything they're fighting for, are equally beyond reason. Check me, Admiral."

  "You are making no mistakes that I can see."

  "So the only solution that I've got is to figure out who murdered Godfrey Alain—and it better be nobody Imperial—and then go off and meet with these Tahn. On their turf. And eat a measure of drakh. Is that the only way out?"

  "No comment, sir."

  "You are a lot of clottin' help. Mahoney would have had an idea." The Emperor glared at Admiral Ledoh, and then his expression softened. "Sorry. That was a cheap shot.

  "What I'm thinking is that, way back when I was a ship engineer, I had another solution to things."

  "I'm very interested in hearing it."

  "That was to drink all the alk in sight and then punch up everyone involved."

  "Very humorous," Ledoh said.

  "You are a clottin' heap of help," the Emperor snarled as he got up and headed for the door into his private chambers.

  Ledoh, before he left, carefully replaced both flasks in their cabinet.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The gurion rushed straight for him, its blood-red stomach brushing across his face, leaving a trail of digestive saliva that burned through the first layer of skin. Dynsman screamed in horror and hurled himself backward. From the corner of his eye he saw the Dru guard plunge a pole into the creature's maw, and then the boat flipped over against the combined weight of the gurion and Dynsman's panicked attempt to escape.

  He clawed his way to the bottom. He was in total hysteria, breath bursting out of his lungs, yet too frightened to surface. Blindly, he grabbed hold of a razor-sharp outcrop and felt the edges bite deeply into his hands. Despite the pain, he held on as long as he could. He could feel the awful roil of the water and taste the rusty sweetness of blood. Something hard touched him and Dynsman screamed again, losing the little hold he had over his sanity. Water rushed into his lungs and he battled his way to the surface. A huge whoosh of air knifed in, and Dynsman saw the guardsman closing on him, gore dripping from a slim flash of silver in his hand. Dynsman struck out at the man in a panic. In slow motion the knife hand reached toward him. Dynsman was helpless, and watched in awful fascination as the knife slid into a mouth beneath the arm, and then the hand shadowed past his head. There was a sudden heavy pressure between his shoulder blades and neck, and Dynsman felt himself… dying… dying… dying…

  His body flopped against its restraints on the table. A huge flipper appeared and just barely touched the slide-pot, and soothing sedative trickled into his veins. Dynsman's body went very still again.

  Rykor's face was a portrait of odobenus-contemplation. She woofed at her dripping whiskers and then daintily brushed them aside with a front flip. Rykor sighed and leaned back into her gravchair. The bot mechanism shrilled in complaint as it tried to adjust itself to her enormous bulk.

  "It's difficult, young Sten," she said. "The man keeps replaying the same memory patterns."

  Rykor was one of the Empire's chief psychologists, specializing in the Imperial military. Her subspecialty, never publicly mentioned, was screening people for the Guard's Mercury Corps—intelligence—and for the secret Mantis teams. She also handled the occasional special project, such as Dynsman's in-progress brainscan. But Dynsman's brain was locked in trauma and insisted on rerunning the moments of his near-death.

  Sten glanced at the helpless bomber, almost obscene in his nakedness, dripping with a myriad of probes and intersyn connects. He had seen Dynsman relive the moments a dozen times, and so far nothing went past the gurion attack. Even the moment when he came awake on the flit was a ghostly instant that flashed back again and again to the terrible moment of the gurion.

  Sten rose and walked to Rykor's side. She reached out an affectionate flipper and gently caressed him. "You were always one of my… special people," she said softly.

  Sten ran his hand across the bulk that was her shoulder.

  Rykor brought her mind back from the Dynsman place. "Do you still have the knife in your arm?" she asked suddenly.

  Sten just grinned and kept patting, bringing her down from the link.

  Rykor hoisted herself up suddenly, the gravchair groaning. "We must go deeper. Smash past the trauma block."

  "It's important," Sten said. "Others have died."

  Rykor nodded and eased back into a full rest. She concentrated fully on the brainscan and gave the slidepot a heavy tap. Dynsman moaned.

  Above him, the screen came to life again. First it was in black and white, and then a swirl of color bars. The bars fuzzed together and formed a picture. Softness at first, and then the gurion threatened for an instant, and then gradually collapsed against a persistent crease of yellow. Stan watched as Dynsman relived his life, in full color.

  The tall slender man with the thick shock of gray hair leaned a narcobeer across the table. Dynsman's screen hand reached in and pulled it forward.

  "Next shout's on me," Dynsman's voice echoed.

  The man smiled into the screen at "Dynsman," and from the monitor's empathy-banks Sten could tell that it was a smile Dynsman didn't quite trust. In fact, he was more than a little frightened.

  "… If you don't mind, Dr. Knox," Dynsman continued, his voice trembling a little.

  The gurion extended a long ray toward Dynsman, and he shrieked as he felt the cold band whip around his neck—

  "Stop!" A shout from Sten.

  Rykor took one look at the frozen horror on the screen and leaned her flipper onto the slidepot. Dynsman's body relaxed on the table. Rykor waited for Sten's instructions.

  "Knox," Sten said. "Enhance."

  The mind-vid screen blanked then blurred as it reversed itself to Knox. It held there as Sten studied the figure. "That's our boy," he said. "Fits the hospital description. Now, what else can we find out about him? Smell? Any special scent he uses."

  Rykor keyed in the sniffers. "Nothing at all," she said. "Quite out of the ordinary for a man who obviously cares so much about his appearance." She ran her cursor up to his carefully coiffed hair for an example.

  "As a matter of fact," she said, after studying her monitors, "there is nothing about this man at all—except for his visual appearance—that should attract any being… smell, no register… voice, firm, but no register… aura press, no register…"

  She turned her head lazily toward Sten. "Nothing marks this human at all. Highly suspicious. Body motion empathy… verbal… forget it. It's all zed, zed, zed."

  Sten studied the frozen picture that was Dr. Knox. At the moment, Knox was the complete cutout man. No one, except a superpro, is completely two-dimensional. Then Sten noticed something: a dull of yellow on Knox's left hand.

  "Enhance, left hand," he told Rykor.

  The hand filled the brainscan screen. The dull yellow was a ring, with a very clear emblem stamped
on its flat surface. Sten peered at it, knowing what it was, but not quite believing it. The stamped emblem was a foot, elongated with its emphasis on the heel. And on the heel…

  "Magnify," Sten said.

  Blossoming from the heel were two wings.

  Sten groaned and relaxed back into his chair. Matters had gotten even worse than he had expected.

  Even Rykor was a bit overcome. She sneezed loudly. "Mercury Corps," she said, puffing through wet whiskers.

  "Yeah," Sten said. "And I hope to god he's just a renegade."

  The gurion's ray encircled Dynsman's neck… nestling, and then with a sudden burst, pulling him close. Dynsman felt his lungs collapse and saw the last precious stream of air explode outward. And then a knife hand—Sten's?—swept into view… and…

  "The rest of the way!" Sten ordered.

  Rykor's flipper paused at the slidepot. She glanced over at Dynsman's flopping body, where he was reliving the horror again and again. Her empathy glands were weeping at the edges of her eyes.

  "I don't know if I can," she said.

  "Do it!" Sten said.

  And Rykor startled, sliding the pot full on. The brain-scan flurried far ahead…

  The holograph to one side of the screen that was Dynsman's brain was the body of a curling worm. On its main body, winking colors of blue and red and yellow, mapped the parts that Sten and Rykor had already explored. The gurion marked the only red. The blue points were connected by thin capillary pink. Those blue spots already touched were blinking at them.

  "Where?" Sten urged. "Where?"

  Rykor studied the holograph. An infinite number of blue spots to go… empathy… empathy…

  "There," she breathed. And Rykor wept as she zeroed in.

  The image of the bar that was the Covenanter filled the screen. The laser brights of the sign were swallowed by the fog that drifted in from the nearby spaceport. Dynsman didn't know the scientific reason for it, but at night, many kilometers surrounding the main port were surrounded by fog. And, this was a special night. He was waiting for…

  "This is a busto bum go," Dynsman's thoughts whispered across the screen to Sten and Rykor.