Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  “Right when the doors open, Rag?” the other leader asked. He was toying with the safety of his own weapon in a way which would have terrified anyone in the van with better sense.

  “Well, I . . .” Ahwas began.

  “Of course not, you buffoons!” snapped Ballenger. “Is this Slade going to be the first person out the door?” Several guards frowned in an attempt to answer the question. “Of course not!” the steward repeated in fury. “So if you shoot this one when the doors open, you’ll warn the other, won’t you? Won’t you? So wait till the other one comes out of the Hall, then kill them both.”

  Ballenger paused, breathing hard.

  “Right, that’s just what the master told me to have done,” Ahwas lied. He took off his cap and wiped his face again, darkening the bright scarlet with his sweat.

  “Sir,” called the driver who monitored the instruments from the cab. “There’s a couple supply trucks coming in.

  “That’s correct,” the steward said primly. “There’s to be a celebration banquet in Slade House this evening. They’ll be bringing additional specialties.”

  The armed liverymen were beginning to file out of the van. Ahwas watched them with a glum expression. “Won’t help us a bit, though, will it?” he said. “Now that we aren’t allowed in the House anymore.”

  Ballenger opened his mouth in an amazement that was only partially feigned. “That isn’t a problem anymore, don’t you see?” he said to the guard. “After the meeting, we own Slade House. We own Tetkys. In just a few hours.”

  He continued to shake his head in wonder as the last of the gunmen trooped out of the van.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Even the Hall had shrunk, thought Don Slade. That was not because of how he had grown since his memories of the building, but rather because of what he had seen on other worlds.

  The Council Hall was a ferro-concrete A-frame thirty meters to the roof peak and a full hundred meters along that beam. It had been designed to hold the original population of Tethys—had done so for a day and two nights during the Swarm of Year Three. The Hall remained the planet’s largest building now because it was an anachronism—and in his youth, Slade had found very little use for anachronisms.

  Communications among the estates scattered across the planet were excellent and trustworthy. Physical assembly of the Council was needless. Because it was also relatively dangerous, the practice had been abandoned by the time the twins were born. Slade’s father had reinstituted the practice on an occasional, ceremonial basis. Tom had apparently amplified ceremonies for his own reasons. The Council, with increasingly little of substance to debate after the life and death decisions of the first generations, was willing and more to fall in with the practice.

  Beverly Dyson would have seen to it that this occasion was face to face, no matter what had been the practice of the immediate past. His triumph demanded that.

  “Mistress,” said a Slade Houseman. He bowed low as he never would have done under other circumstances.

  Don’s father had filled the great room with auditorium-style seating at an expense the Old Man had sneered at. All that was gone, now. It had been replaced with wooden benches and wood-paneled enclosures to waist height. The panels separated the areas assigned to the various Council Islands, formalizing a practice which had some historical support.

  The wood, however, was a matter of insanity rather than nostalgia. What Tom—it must have been Tom—was thinking about was wholly beyond his twin. The only trees on Tethys were those carefully nurtured from imported stock, and the gravelly soil tended to stunt even those. Every scrap of these fittings must have been shipped from off-world. Gold would have been cheaper. Sea-mining at least produced an indigenous supply of gold.

  As the Houseman straightened, he swung inward the low gate of the enclosure and collided with his fellow. This was not the sort of thing they had practiced often enough to get right. The whole business was a little pathetic. The Slade enclosure would have seated two hundred. The five of them were lost in it.

  Some of the other Councilors had as many as forty in their present entourage, but even those enclosures looked empty. The day for which the Council Hall was built would never return. If Don Slade had more affection for the old barn than he ever in youth had thought probable, it was because he now realized that he too belonged in the Settlement, two centuries before his birth.

  The Houseman looked askance at Slade when he followed Edward and Marilee into the enclosure. The big man smiled at the liveried pair and asked, “I believe you boys have something for me? Major Pritchard left it with you.”

  Marilee looked back to see why Slade was not immediately behind her. The servants had started to whisper to one another. One promptly turned to the woman and said, “Mistress, your guest left a, an object with us which this—person—says is for him.”

  “Well then, give it to him,” Marilee replied in a venemous tone. It was the first evidence Slade had seen that she was tight as a cocked pistol herself, ready to blast petty officiousness for fear of the real dangers that had drawn her so taut.

  The Housemen scrambled to obey. They collided once more and almost got into a tug of war over the remote unit, hidden under one of the empty benches.

  Marilee looked puzzled. The object was nothing she recognized. Edward was not so much bored as anesthetized by—fear was too blunt a word, but fear would do to describe the emotion.

  “Yeah . . .” the big man said, “thanks.”

  His head still felt light, airy, as he hooked the unit onto his belt. There was a surge of warmth also, however. Slade had grasped a floating spar; and while that did not itself preserve him from the maelstrom, it at least made preservation conceivable. He was beaming as he sat beside Marilee on the front bench of the enclosure, facing the podium across another low wooden barrier.

  “What is that?” the woman whispered. “Holt?”

  “Oh,” said Slade. “A, well, commo unit, you’d say.”

  He could have carried the remote unit into the Hall himself; it was genuinely no more of a weapon than was his mastoid implant. It was barely possible that somebody would have recognized the object, however. If there were trouble, it was best that Danny be the one to field it. His status as representative of Friesland did not give him total immunity, but it would carry him further than anything Don Slade had to offer.

  The doors shut with the solidity of a natural force. A riffle of air was driven before them into the Hall.

  Whispering by less than a thousand people could no more fill the Hall than sunlight could fill a bucket. Still, hushed voices hissed and quivered between the slanted concrete slabs which were roof and walls in one. Through the whispers rapped the boot heels, Beverly Dyson’s and those of the three men in lock step a pace behind him. A squad of crimson liverymen guarded the doors they had just closed from the inside. Twenty more men rose to their feet in the Dyson enclosure. These retainers were unarmed, at least in so far as the detection cabinet had shown; but they were scarred, solid men.

  When Dyson’s own men stood, there was a hasty clatter throughout the Hall. Rising for the President had been no part of the plan. The Council was by history a gathering of equals—in form. But no one wanted to be the last to honor Beverly Dyson, especially when the toughs in the Dyson enclosure were turning to stare back into the Hall.

  The two Slade Housemen popped to their feet from where they sat by the central aisle. Marilee held to an icy indifference. Her eyes were on the podium and the President’s chair only two meters in front of her. Edward caught the movement, however. His face blotched angrily and he started to lunge toward the servants.

  Don Slade touched the youth’s shoulder and held him down without effort. Slade was smiling at the Housemen. One of them glanced around surreptitiously. He saw the smile and edged back onto his bench. The first servant tugged at his fellow’s sleeve. The other man looked back in surprise. He also sagged as if shot, just as Dyson strode down the aisle past him.

/>   Slade released his nephew.

  Someone began to clap. The sound was nervous in the great building. Dyson’s liverymen did not take it up, and the attempt collapsed save for its rustling echoes.

  Beverly Dyson mounted the four steps onto the podium with stiff-backed grace. It was four paces more to the President’s chair, off-set as it was to the Dyson side of the aisle. The three liverymen of the Councilor’s personal staff looked clumsy by contrast as they followed their master onto the podium. They arranged themselves behind the chair, standing formally as they had before on the roof of the van.

  A handsome bastard, Slade thought as he watched his enemy sit down. Cold as iced steel, but with the sort of slim good looks that aged better than fuller features did.

  Dear Lord, who stood with our forefathers through storm and beasts, be with us now.

  Beverly Dyson laid the commo-control board across the arms of his chair. He touched a switch, his own, the red one second from the upper left corner of the forty possibilities. Staring past the Slades and out over the Hall like a hawk sighting prey, he said, “As President, I call to order the Council of Tethys in this, its third formal meeting in the two-hundred and twelfth year of settlement.”

  Dyson’s voice rang out through over a hundred speakers mounted overhead on the sloping walls. The lag between the nearest speaker and those further away created a dynamic echo throughout the Hall. Because the units were in phase, however, the result was clearly audible and not cacaphonous.

  “The business before this Council today,” the man in crimson continued, “is the choice of guardian for the Slade heir until his majority. No other business will be considered at this time.”

  It was one of the paradoxes of formal Council meetings that the Hall was too big for face to face contact and hugely too big for unaided speech. When they were scattered across the planet, the Councilors could see each other and speak simultaneously, using satellite relays and large split screens. In the Hall, Councilors could only be glimpsed when they chose to rise. All discussion was channelled through the board in the President’s lap, which in turn fed the speakers overhead. Marilee and the thirty-eight Councilors, all but Dyson himself, held short batons. Thumbing the end of a baton would set a corresponding switch in the President’s array alight. Not until the President threw that switch, however, would the baton glow and the Councilor’s words be broadcast to the Hall. There was one exception to that general rule.

  “I will now entertain a motion on the stated question,” said Beverly Dyson. His words marched through the Hall with the sonorous majesty of a coronation parade.

  Marilee was furiously pressing her baton. Dyson looked directly at her for the first time since he entered the Hall. He smiled and said, “The chair recognizes Councilor Hauksbee.”

  Clipped to the left epaulette of Slade’s tunic was what looked like a standard microphone/loud-speaker, the sort of miniature unit issued to troops where the expense of mastoid implants was not justified. It had a simple mechanical key which Slade clicked home as he stood.

  Who the hell did they think had built this place, anyway? Dysons?

  “By custom of this Hall,” the tanker said, “the first speaker on any question is a Slade. That’s what my grandfather taught, and I never heard anybody call the Old Man a liar.”

  His voice rolled through the building. There was no immediate consternation, for the audience expected words. The import of the words which came was not immediately absorbed. The Old Man had liked hardware. He never presided over a meeting in the Hall, but it was with glee that he had demonstrated to young Donald the override which locked out the commo-control board. The override had still been in the Old Man’s room, waiting for Don’s need with the pair of remote units.

  Somewhere toward the back of the Hall, Councibr Hauksbee’s unaided voice was being swallowed by the space around it. Beverly Dyson was stabbing at the control board. His expression was one of furious incredulity.

  Slade swung over the waist-high panel before him. He cocked his right knee, then, and mounted the low podium without bothering with the steps.

  The Hall came alive with nervous exclamations, but the big man rode them down with the amplifiers as he said, “Today I’m the first speaker. And if there’s anybody out there who hasn’t guessed by now—I’m Don Slade, and I’ve come here to get justice for my nephew Edward.” He paused. Very faintly through the facade of the Hall came the sound of what was happening in the courtyard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Hey, what’d those trucks do?” demanded one of Ahwas’ men. “Give us the slip and go round the back way?”

  “Bloody well better have,” said another with a nod back toward the north wall of the courtyard. The wrecked cars had been removed, but the gravel was still enlivened by scorch marks and bright debris. The van had been parked outside the complex until the present dawn. It was easy enough to imagine the effect another out-of-control supply truck could have on Dyson’s expensive scarlet vehicle.

  The gate squealed inward before the cab of a truck. The leaves scraped as the vehicle edged them open, but that did no apparent harm to the battered skirts.

  “Thought those gates were supposed to be locked,” muttered Ahwas.

  He wished the Master would give an order about this.

  Danny Pritchard’s mouth was filled with a dry vileness, as if someone had stuffed a used tennis ball into it. He was too old for this. He had been a curst fool to give up the body armor which alone had been his chance of living through the next hour. He was a tanker, by the Lord, and he went into the battle wearing only tinsel that would burn like a torch when he was killed!

  Blood and Martyrs. Dyson’s liverymen were in scattered clumps across the enclosure. They were either still gossiping among themselves or watching a second truck follow the first through the gate. They knew the meeting would last a minimum of two hours. The only business had been transacted months before, and the formalization required only minutes. All the Councilors would speak, however, both to praise Beverly Dyson out of fear and to hear the sound of their own voices in public.

  There were forty-five Dyson liverymen in sight, plus one or more additional within the van to Pritchard’s left front. The five observers were still loosely grouped where the detection cabinet had been set up. The specialist was wheeling his gear toward Slade House at something more than a normal pace.

  There was Coon Blegan; and Danny Pritchard; and the Lord be praised! men in blue coveralls were climbing out of the back of the leading truck as it halted near the gate!

  No rest for the wicked. Danny gripped the safety switch at the back of the gun housing. He swung it live in a hundred and eighty-degree arc. The drone quivered in a puff of dust and gravel as its systems came up. Pebbles pinged the skirt of its mate across the doorway. No one noticed because of the commotion at the gate.

  Pritchard stepped away from the quivering drone. It was already beginning to drift because its drive fans were out of alignment. A bit of rock spanged from the second drone and rapped Pritchard’s instep. He ignored it as he jumped to the second drone’s back deck and threw its safety also. Then he dropped to the ground again as the air around the House doorway filled with grit and the sound of fans.

  Somebody had noticed after all. Subiyaga flattened himself beside his equipment, twenty meters short of the House and safety. Pritchard did not have to see the specialist’s expression to know it for one he had worn himself often enough, when it was about to drop in the pot and you could only hope the splash would miss you.

  Both supply trucks were disgorging men, dozens of them. Each man gripped the bulky rocket gun of his trade. Liverymen who had started toward the trucks in curiosity now scrambled away. Submachine guns were being pointed from all around the yard.

  When the drones were switched on, Danny Pritchard had no reason to stand in the open. He gripped the yoke handles of the remote unit, knowing that the hologram display it threw up for his eyes would be the same whether h
e stood in the courtyard or behind the concrete facade of the House.

  But what the Hell. The drone to his right moved as he twisted the controls. The orange pipper on the display skidded across a monochrome landscape to its target. Don Slade was home, but a lot of Danny Pritchard was home again also.

  Ballenger flung open the side door of the van. “Hey!” he cried. His loud-hailer had a remote link and belt hooks, but he had not taken time to arrange them. “You fishermen,” his voice boomed.

  “Get those filthy trucks out of here at once! Don’t you realize that the Council will be processing through here in—”

  The anti-tank gun on Pritchard’s drone ripped the van the long way.

  The cyan flash was narrow and intense, but its reflection seemed to fill every angle of the yard. The high-intensity 10 cm gun could knock out the heaviest tanks. On Tethys, it had been used for single-shot kills on creatures large enough to be mistaken for islands when glimpsed from the air. Like any powergun, it liberated most of its energy on the initial impact, but the charge was heavy enough that a hole puffed in the back wall of the van even as the cab exploded in the flames of its own vaporized components. The fireball pitched Ballenger onto the shingle. The skin of the Steward’s back was unharmed, but his hair and livery were afire.

  “Now listen up,” roared the loudspeakers on the drone. The vehicle slid away from the spot in which it had been parked for a generation. There were occasional sparks where the left skirt continued to drag the gravel. “All Dyson servants, drop your guns. You will not be hurt. Drop your guns at once.”

  Several cases of ammunition in the van went off. Seams leaked blue-green light for an instant as the walls bulged. Then the rear of the vehicle sucked itself flat so abruptly that even the fire in the cab was beaten down for a moment. Subiyaga swore and began to scuttle toward the moaning steward.

  The gun drone pivoted on its axis. “You will not be hurt,” the loudspeakers repeated dissonantly.