“The Thrakian League claims it was done by you.”
Jack could not keep the surprise from surfacing. “What?”
“They’ve filed an official protest.”
“We’ve never operated like that. And Harkness’ scow is incapable of such an action. Did they mention the unknown?”
“No. I have only your report that such a vehicle existed and, under the circumstances, it sounds as though you are trying to smokescreen the situation. General Guthul claims that the transport had jettisoned a lifeboat and appeared to be on an erratic course, out of control, coming out of hyperdrive. When he attempted to come to your aid, he was fired upon, missed—and the weaponry used annihilated Opus.” Pepys drummed his wiry fingers on the chair arm. “He has support in the Dominion Congress. He has just enough of the truth to give credence to his claims.”
“A Knight would never jeopardize planetary environment to win a battle.”
“Yes.” Pepys gave him a long, slow look. “Yes, there is that. And, small though it was, you seized a victory for us. I won’t forget that and I won’t let the Congress forget it either.”
“There may be other advantages to the encounter.”
“Such as?”
Jack barely hesitated, then continued. “The Thraks stalking me seemed to have difficulty sensing my armor. If there is an advantage to be had from the encounter, other than beating them at their game, I believe it is the discovery that there is a property peculiar to norcite which baffles their sight.”
“Really?” Pepys’ impatience faded abruptly into curiosity. “Are you asking for permission to research and test this further?”
“I think the project has merits.”
“All right then. Proceed. But obtaining Thrakian subjects for field tests are your responsibility. Brace yourself for a long week. Baadluster has arranged for a visiting senator to oversee the drills.”
“From Congress?”
“Yes.” Pepys looked perversely pleased. “May I remind you that politics has been the death of more good soldiers than war?”
“I’ll try to be discreet, sir.”
“I’m counting on it.” The emperor turned his back on him, and Jack knew he had been dismissed.
Jack left. He knew for certain they had been recorded, for Pepys had feared to ask him the obvious questions. Who was he? Where had he come from? And was he going to try to topple Pepys from his ill-gotten throne?
Chapter 9
Over the years, Emperor Pepys had received St. Colin of the Blue Wheel in many different ways. He’d been hustled in the moment he’d asked for audience, and he’d been ignored for months. He’d been both paraded in and hidden under cover. He’d been received with respect and scorn and, once or twice, desperation.
He’d even been met once by the secret police, their shackles ready.
So he was prepared for almost anything when Pepys summoned him the third day after his return from Bythia.
Raised to conspicuousness from humble beginnings, Colin wore miners’ jumpsuits under his brilliant blue overrobes. He kept the jumpsuit pockets filled with many things: credit disks to satisfy filching hands on the street, religious tracts, a hand beam and even a handgun. Today the palace gate screening discovered the gun, a WP man removed it, examined it critically and gave it back.
“What if I shoot him?” Colin asked mildly.
“Then we’ll know you did it,” the guard answered sourly. “He’s waiting for you in the private audience room.”
As Colin threaded his way through the magnificent, if cold, rose obsidite corridors, he reflected that he knew the private audience room well. The location of their meeting gave him not a clue as to Pepys’ frame of mind. It could not, however, have been good. Colin had been the Ambassador Pro-tem on Bythia. He should have been summoned the first day back, regardless of his age and need to rest.
At that thought, Colin pounded to a stop and harrumphed at himself. Age, indeed. Just a step past middle-aged.
Of course, death throws a long shadow and he’d nearly met it months ago.
As he rounded the bend, he could see that the door to the audience room was thrown open, and golden daylight from outside windows cast a gleam across the flooring, making it the color of a glorious sunrise. He gathered his thoughts and his life in his hands, and entered.
The twilight of the catacombs embraced him as General Guthul listened to the buzz of protest left behind at the end of his address before the councils. They sounded as though they had just left the nest, he thought to himself, even as he arranged his mask into one of triumph and confidence. And they might well be outraged. He had just laid before the League a plan of such outrageous action that they might as easily behead him for treason as rustle their chitin in amusement.
And, if he were very, very fortunate, one or two of them might have the military background to call him genius. It was those one or two upon whom he now staked his whole career.
They clicked him back into the assembly much sooner than he expected, shaking him out of his hum of meditation upon the whole, and he hastily checked to make sure his facial planes were arranged properly before returning.
One or two nearest him took offense at his mask and rattled their bodies angrily, antennae up and trembling. He took no note. They were conservatives, always the first to rattle and the last to take action. They seemed to consider taking alarm part of their contribution to the council. The rest of his peers he found alert and resting on their forearms across their slanted benches, awaiting his next words.
“Continue, general. We have considered your speech and decided that it is not the prattling of a deranged being. We have weighed it and found it worthy, if unorthodox.”
Guthul pulled himself up, aware that he was a fine specimen of military breeding, and he looked about the semicircle of the assemblage. “There is no more to say,” he husked. “I am done. Either back me or court martial me. I demand my due and I demand it now. The time for hesitation is past.”
Another trilling ran through the council. “You suggest putting us well within reach of the enemy if we strike as you demand.”
“Yes. It is the only way to draw out Commander Storm. The risk is great, the advantage considerable if we can put the commander down now. I must remind you, however, that if we attack on the Dominion fringes, where we are safe to hit and run, we also put ourselves within reach of the Ash-Farel. That the great and ancient enemy is upon us once more.”
Parthos, the newly recalled ambassador to the Triad, opened his face mask and then closed it tightly, a shocking display of emotion and anger. It generated the effect he intended as attention immediately swung from General Guthul to the diplomat. As Guthul was a fine specimen of warrior breeding, Parthos was an equally fine one of diplomatic genetic structure. He snapped his lower mandible into place and the strength of its clack echoed throughout the chambers. “I suggest we vote for Guthul’s plan. I stand in favor of it, knowing that if Guthul is to fail, he will pay the price, and applauding that he is Thrakian enough to risk all.”
As Guthul heard the speech, he was very careful not to let the joy and personal triumph he felt move his mask of leadership. But it was difficult. Very, very difficult.
Now he could contemplate squashing the Dominion Knight like the plasmic worm he was.
The samovar of tea had cooled, cookie crumbs had been swept away, and Pepys’ fine hair had crackled down to a moderate aura before the emperor’s emerald eyes fastened on him with their usual predatory stare. Colin put his cup down. “Animal, vegetable, mineral, or friend or foe?” The emperor rocked back, visibly startled. “What?”
“The game we’re playing today, my friend.” Pepys caught the joke and laughed before putting aside his cup. “Neither,” he said. “You’re here because it was necessary to talk to you before removing you as ambassador.”
“I removed myself, already.”
“So you did. But as my subject, it’s necessary for me to formalize it.” Pepys stayed
lolled back in his chair, watching as Colin rose and strode to the window. The window held a rare view of a singular aspect of Malthen… untamed land ranging over a sere group of foothills. Colin thought of Bythia. He turned round.
“You did me a great disservice, Pepys.” The emperor nodded. “And myself as well.”
“You urged me there, with several hundred of my most militant followers to protect our findings. That gave you leave to send a like number of your Knights, to keep an eye on me. But did you anticipate that my men would be slaughtered and your numbers halved before we got out?”
Pepys put out a freckled hand and played with the gold rim of his teacup. “No,” he said shortly. “Your men, yes; mine, no. I knew the Thraks were playing a deadly game there. I did not know the Bythians were on the brink of holy war.”
“On the brink no more. They blazed through my ranks like wildfire.” Colin sighed. He shoved his hands into his thigh pockets as he leaned against the windowsill. “I know you. I should have seen it coming.”
“The militants were doing you no good, Colin. We weeded them out before. I merely saved you the job of doing it again.”
“Militant or not, they were men with souls! Sometimes I think you think very little of that.”
Pepys did not answer, through the movement of his finger upon the cup’s rim sent out a tiny belling. Finally the emperor looked up and he smiled, a gesture that did not warm his eyes. “Very few men would talk to me as you do.”
Colin ignored the warning. “Very few men have the resources to frighten you,” he responded. He stood up, removing his hands from his pockets, and in one change of posture went from a benevolent, fraternal man to a man of dignity and fathomless potential.
The pupils of Pepys’ eyes widened at the change. The emperor straightened in his chair. He lifted his hand from the teacup. “I want Denaro.”
“What is he to you? He’s only one of a handful you failed to have wiped out.”
“Give him to me,” said Pepys.
“No.”
“Then I’ll take him for treason.”
“You couldn’t prove the charge.”
“No, but I could tie up your time and attention doing so, and have him anyway.”
Colin felt the lines at the corners of his eyes deepen. “What game is this you’re playing?”
“The game of empire. Denaro’s as dangerous to you as he is to me. Give him over and we’ll both have done with him.”
Colin thought deeply. The sunlight at the window had shifted a fraction before he finally answered, “I’ll let you know.” He headed for the audience room door even though Pepys had not dismissed him. He heard Pepys’ voice, at his heels, as the door closed.
“Do that.”
Denaro stood at attention before Colin, his muscular body bulging the seams of his jumpsuit, belying all attempt of the humble cloth to make him seem a simple Walker disciple.
Colin sighed and looked down at the hardcopy Denaro had brought him. The implications were obvious and the man’s request not unreasonable.
Not unless the prelate were to consider Denaro’s militaristic tendencies and the splinter factions threatening to tear the Walker religion apart. Perhaps Pepys had been right in trying to arrange for the collapse of the Walkers. God knew that Colin feared a holy war among the Dominion worlds and other outposts of mankind far more than he feared anything else in his lifetime. If he sent Denaro on his way to set up a dig, the hotblood would be free to build his army as well as set up a frontier outpost to support the Walker investigations. And then, there was Pepys’ request.
The emperor and the reverend had been friends once. Colin had seen his friend grow apart and disappear into a mesh of alliances and entanglements, a web where every word and action tied into another, pulling here and there until he had become an emperor.
And what had Colin stayed behind to become? A minister, thrust into sainthood by a miraculous action he could not explain and had, only once since then, been able to duplicate. If he had not become a saint, would the Walkers have held together? A question he could not answer and yet asked himself time and again. Should he, as Denaro and others insisted, pull together the strands of their influence and make a genuine empire of their doctrines or should he continue to hold those strands loosely and let fate bear them where it would? He knew Pepys spied upon him as a rival.
However, it was Denaro’s chafing that occupied him at the moment.
Colin rubbed at his weary eyes. He did not have the energy of his youth, and the incident at Bythia had drained him far beyond expectations. It was worth it to have healed the heroic Rawlins, but Colin wondered if he would ever regain his own vigor. Perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps this was the price God extracted from him for resurrection. If so, then the next would be his last… if ever there was a next.
The hardcopy report fell into his lap. Colin shook his head. “No, Denaro, I do not think this outpost a fit assignment.”
The youth said nothing at first, but a nerve jumped along the thick sinews of his neck. As the silence drew out, Denaro broke it. “Doubtless,” he said, “your eminence has some other position in mind for me.” He showed his surprise as Colin smiled kindly at his words.
“As a matter of record, I do,” the older man said. Lines of character deepened in his cheeks and about his eyes. “Come with me.”
Chapter 10
Communion. Storm watched the troops moving below and moved as one with them, and Bogie overrode his thoughts until the blending edge between his personality and the alien’s disappeared for a moment. He brought himself back with difficulty.
*We’re ready, Boss.*
“To fight? Nearly.”
The being responded with surprise. Jack shifted inside the Flexalinks, saying, “First we must have an enemy.”
*Thraks!*
“Maybe.”
Another thrill of surprise from the deep warrior voice echoing inside his mind. Jack smiled widely in spite of himself, a grim smile. “We’re waiting for them to declare themselves.”
There was a split second of humbled silence, then Bogie rumbled, *Thraks declare themselves the moment they crawl out of their crèche.*
“Yes.”
*You fence with words.*
“Sometimes it’s all that keeps us from being as savage as the enemy.”
* Sometimes being as savage as the enemy is all that will allow you to defeat them.*
Jack made no answer to that, and Bogie’s mindspeech lapsed as if the being knew he wished to be alone with his thoughts.
He’d had precious little time to be alone with himself the past few days. Around them, the equipment shops and immense hangars being erected for staging filled the training grounds with such a din of noise it was only possible to find quiet with a helmet on and the mikes off.
There was a muffled vibration behind him. He turned and saw Colin entering the bridge, his grayed and balding head bowed against a wind only the Walker prelate seemed to feel. Jack took off his helmet and closed the observation booth windshield, baffling the sounds so they could talk. The reverend carried a report under his arm, plastic edges ruffling as he walked. He straightened, saw Jack watching him, and came to a halt, wearing a calm if worried expression.
“What brings you here,” Jack said, “past security points that ought to have stopped you.”
“I have friends in many places,” Colin chided him. He looked down off the bridge. Jack, following his gaze, saw Rawlins at the gates looking up to make sure that Colin had reached his goal before re-securing the grounds.
The two men looked at one another. “There’s a story between you and Rawlins,” Jack said.
“Perhaps. He saved my life. That sort of action often forms a bond.” Colin set his lips together and made it apparent he was not going to say anything further.
Jack looked back to the grounds. Below, armor flashed, glinting in the Malthen sunlight. Colin seemed content to let him watch the drilling for a few minutes, then ther
e was a rattle of papers. Jack turned back.
“What can I do for you, Colin? I’ve got an appointment in a few minutes.”
“Then I’ll get to the point, Jack. Take Denaro in as a Knight.”
His newly fashioned composure as a commander broke. “You want me to what?”
“Accept Denaro into training.”
“As a Knight? Or as a Walker?”
“Both. Denaro is willing to swear allegiance to Pepys. But I feel that… that in the undertakings ahead of us, we are wise to have formally trained personnel. Bythia would not have been the disaster it was if the men we’d had posted there had been trained militarily as well as spiritually.”
“Pepys would never allow it.”
Colin looked past Storm’s broad shoulders to the training grounds. “He has already given me permission.”
Jack thought he knew a lie when he heard one, but he had never heard Colin lie before. “Impossible.”
“No. Not really.” Colin smiled. “I quote, ‘It’s better to have your enemy under your nose than a galaxy away.’ He said you would find the quotation familiar.”
Jack made a noise at the back of his throat. His armored presence dominated the control booth, but Colin did not seem intimidated. Jack had a sour taste burning in his throat. “If the emperor has given his permission, then you don’t need to talk to me.”
“No need perhaps, but I wanted to.”
“To explain why you’re handing me a live wire?”
“That. And,” Colin handed him a copy of the printout he held, “this.”
Jack took it in his gauntlets, handling the plastic copies as deftly as with his bare hands. He skimmed it. “Looks like a survey report.”
“It is.”
“Anyone else seen this yet?”
“No. Walker surveys are quite confidential.”
Alien Salute Page 8
