Conrad asked Epher what was in the two cases he and Increase Revelation were carrying, and was satisfied to learn they contained sacraments. “We would like you to join us in our last service aboard this ship,” Increase said. “It will be a fitting tribute to the ending of this long voyage.”
“Too bad the others won’t join us,” Conrad said as he stepped into the shuttle.
“Oh, they are holding their own service elsewhere,” Revelation said.
“In another section of the ship,” Benediction added.
As they rode the shuttle toward the Cambria’s power plant, Conrad rattled on and on about his readings in the Bible. He was particularly struck by the seventh verse of Chapter Twenty-two of Revelation: “Behold, I come quickly.”
“Yes, Brother Conrad, He will come quickly,” Benediction intoned somberly from just behind where Milch was sitting in the tiny shuttle car. “Maybe even today.”
“In a blaze of glorious light, I bet!” Conrad enthused.
“Yes, yes, I am sure,” Benediction responded, raising his eyebrows at Revelation. They smiled.
The shuttle docked at last and its hatches popped open. Conrad stepped out, followed by his two passengers.
“Conrad, you ass, what the hell is this?” the assistant engineer on duty barked. “Damnit, we have to start the goddamned power-down sequence and you’re bringing tourists down here?”
Epher Benediction sat his case carefully on the deck, drew a hand weapon and shot the man in the forehead. Blood, brains, and bone splattered over his instrument console.
Conrad gaped. Increase Revelation, standing just behind him, placed the muzzle of his own weapon at the back of the engineer’s head and fired. Conrad’s gray matter splattered over the opposite bulkhead of the power plant. The two bodies flopped and thudded on the floor for a moment before lying still, tendrils of blood forming into pools on the deck plates.
“What a mess,” Epher Benediction sighed as he shifted to avoid a long rivulet of blood creeping toward where he stood. He began to unpack the bomb.
Jennifer Lenfen, Lewis Conorado, and James Palmita stood in a loose semicircle around Captain Hank Tuit’s command chair.
“I’ve looked into what went on down there this morning, Palmita, and you were out of line,” Tuit began.
“Captain, I am a diplomat and I have immunity from—”
“Not while you’re on my ship, sonny.”
“Then when we get to Luna—”
“You ain’t getting’ off my ship when we get to Luna, not until I say so! And when and if you do get off this ship, you’re going off with your tail on fire, boy.” He turned to Conorado. “And you, Captain. Don’t you think I know what you and Lenfen have been up to? Your conduct as an officer and a married man has been disgraceful. It’s been the talk of the ship, goddamnit! I’da let it go, until you two idiots started beating each other up in front of everyone.” The three stood silently in front of him. Jennifer hung her head; Conorado just stared at a point an inch above the captain’s head; Palmita glared at the captain with his one good eye. Inwardly, Tuit smiled. Conorado had done a job on that boy! It’d be months before that eye could be replaced.
“Okay, Jennifer, what should I do to our ‘diplomat’ here?”
“Sir?”
“Well, you’re the ‘offended’ party, girl! Do you want me to turn him over to the port authority on Luna for—for—oh, aggravated sexual assault or whatever? Come on, come on, speak up! We dock in two days!”
Jennifer’s face turned red. She was sorry the incident had happened, but at the same time she was proud of Conorado for having defended her. “I just want to forget about it all, sir,” she stammered.
“What? What did you say, Lenfen?”
“He’s lost his eye. That’s enough, Captain. I won’t press any charges.”
“Oh, you won’t, huh?” Tuit leaned back in his chair. He picked up the stogie he’d been smoking and puffed on it assiduously, producing a fine cloud of blue smoke. He regarded the three balefully through the cloud. It was clear to them that he was enjoying this. “Well, it’s my decision anyway. And I haven’t made it yet. I’ll let you know after we’ve docked. In the meantime, you three,” he jabbed the glowing cigar end at them, “will, I repeat, will have no contact with each other. Now there’s one more thing—”
“Emergency, emergency! Attention all personnel!” Minerva shrieked. “Fire on board! Fire on board! There are fires in the lifecraft! Repeat; fires in the lifecraft! Sealing all compartments and initiating suppression sequences!”
Jennifer leaped to her console; Tuit was right behind her, knocking both Conorado and Palmita out of the way.
Dense, acrid smoke began spiraling up from a spot on the navigator’s console. The crew member on duty there leaped backward to avoid the superheated droplets that began to splutter away from the glowing ball affixed to the console. It grew in size as he stared at it.
Palmita shoved the man aside and grabbed the glowing ball in his hand. He shrieked in agony as the stuff burned through the fingers of his hand, exposing the bones. He shook his hand violently to get rid of the stuff and a big glob dropped onto his chest, where it instantly ate through his shirt. He screamed terribly and beat at the glowing spot. This only caused the substance to spread from his chest to his hands and arms. He fell to the deck, writhing in agony. A crewman dashed over with an extinguisher, but the substance continued to burn its way through Palmita’s flesh. He went silent at last, but only after Conorado grabbed the extinguisher and smashed it several times onto Palmita’s head. After a few seconds the stuff burned completely through his body and several millimeters into the steel plating of the deck underneath him before dying out.
“I guess—I guess I’ll let that boy off after all,” Tuit whispered.
“Navigation’s out,” the navigator reported. “There was enough of that stuff left to burn through.”
“No function at all?” Tuit asked.
The navigator checked his instruments. “We have some lateral vernier jets still operating, Captain, but that’s all.”
“What the hell is going on?” Tuit whispered. Then: “Minnie! Damage report!”
“All fires extinguished, Captain. Hull integrity maintained at one hundred percent. Lifecraft propulsion systems destroyed. Captain? Two of the crew in the power plant are no longer operational.”
“What?”
“They are dead, sir. They were killed by two passengers.”
“Give me video, Minnie!”
“The video system in the plant has been disabled.”
“Jennifer, send a distress message to all ships and stations—”
“That is not permitted, Captain,” Sabbath Lordsday said from the bridge hatch.
“Captain!” Minerva shouted. “There are armed intruders on your bridge!”
CHAPTER
* * *
NINETEEN
“I think you did it, Ted.”
Brigadier Sturgeon slowly nodded. “It does appear possible, Jay,” he agreed. It was evening and the two of them, Brigadier Sturgeon and Ambassador Spears, along with the chief-of-station, Prentiss Carlisle, were relaxing over drinks in Spears’s quarters.
Spears cocked an eyebrow. He’d heard a hint of doubt in Sturgeon’s tone. “It’s been a week since you beat them in the swamp, and there have been no more contacts by your Marines, or reports from anywhere on Kingdom. According to Archbishop General Lambsblood, they never went this long without raiding somewhere before.” Spears said “they” because he wasn’t yet ready to concede that “they” weren’t rebels.
Carlisle kept quiet. He did believe “they” were aliens, but didn’t feel like making a point of it with his boss with an outsider present, no matter how well his boss and the outsider seemed to know each other.
“That’s not all,” Spears said with a grimace. “I had a command audience with Ayatollah Jebel Shammar this morning—you know, the chairman of Convocation of Ecumenical Leaders. The ol
d boy’s unhappy. The Convocation met yesterday and demanded to know why an infidel army is still garrisoned on Kingdom after it defeated the ‘demons.’ I wasn’t able to convince him it’s a good idea for you to be here until we can be positive the threat is over. He demanded that you depart immediately.”
Sturgeon leaned back for a moment in thought. As commander of the expeditionary force it was up to him to decide when the mission was complete. The Grandar Bay would remain in orbit until he ordered his Marines back aboard or until a higher authority gave him orders to pull his Marines out. He straightened and said briskly, “We don’t know how many of them there were, how many might still be out there, or where they came from. For all we know, they’re just sitting back, waiting for complacency to set in before striking again. Is it really safe for us to leave now?”
Spears nodded. “I agree with you, Ted. The Convocation is making a serious mistake, a potentially disastrous one, if they send you away before you’re convinced the threat is past. But they’re adamant. As the ranking Confederation officer present, I have no choice but to require you to comply with the Convocation’s wishes.”
“Fools!” Carlisle snorted. He glanced at the other two. “Not you, them. Kingdom was just invaded by an off-world force,” finally saying what he’d been holding back. “Even if you Marines did totally defeat the invaders, who’s to say that wasn’t just a preliminary raid? For all we know, a larger force is on its way right now. Instead of sending you away, they should be requesting a navy shield to stop an invasion fleet, and an army force planetside to combat anybody who gets through the blockade.”
“Very good thinking,” Sturgeon said. “My thoughts are much the same. Whoever they are, wherever they came from, that fight in the swamp isn’t the end of it. Battle has been engaged. It hasn’t been ended.” He shrugged. “The complicator is, we have no idea whether they want to take and hold Kingdom, or if they have other designs that will have them striking elsewhere next.”
Spears chose to ignore the implications of what Sturgeon and Carlisle had said. He didn’t want to get into a discussion about the origin of whoever “they” were. “Regardless of what might well be excellent military considerations, the fact remains that the Convocation demands that 34th FIST leave.”
Sturgeon gave a wry smile. “A sign of a good guest is being ready to leave when you’re no longer welcome. I’d prefer sticking around for a couple more months, but . . .”
“You don’t have to leave tomorrow, of course. Take your time.” Spears grimaced. “They need to have their noses tweaked.” He took a drink. “They also want the string-of-pearls gone.”
Sturgeon’s smile became less wry. “They’re afraid we’ll find out things about how they run their world that’ll shock and offend the rest of the Confederation.”
Carlisle barked out a laugh. “It doesn’t take spy satellites to do that.”
“True believers are the same throughout all of human time and space,” Sturgeon said. “It’s their way or be damned. The biggest difference among them is whether they first try to convert those who don’t agree or simply kill them. But that’s not a problem my FIST can address.”
Spears sensed a reluctance in Sturgeon, a powerful desire to remain. “I’ve seen your Marines,” he said. “They seem unhappy.”
Indeed, morale had suffered in the infantry battalion. Even though the FIST won the fight in the swamp, it was the Raptors that won it while the infantry suffered the casualties. Sturgeon kept them busy enough that they had neither the time nor energy to dwell on their loss, but constant patrolling without result wasn’t actually a morale builder.
“There’s no place on Kingdom where they can vent,” Spears went on. “They need to raise some hell, get drunk, and get laid.”
“They do,” Sturgeon agreed. “They can’t do that here, but they can back at Camp Ellis.” He sighed. Spears was right. The Convocation demanded that they leave. Since they weren’t actively engaged with the enemy and had no proof the enemy was still present, he knew he had no choice.
“I’ll order my people to saddle up and the Grandar Bay to pull in its string-of-pearls. You can tell the Ayatollah we’ll be gone in a few days.”
“He’ll want to know why it takes a few days to leave when you arrived in a matter of hours,” Carlisle said.
Sturgeon looked at him levelly. “When we arrived, we had to be ready for immediate action. We don’t have that same time pressure now. We can take enough time to make sure we leave in good order.”
The Great Master was old. The covers of his gill slits had partially atrophied from lack of use since the last time he breathed water. When he chuckled, the sound rasped from his sides as well as from his mouth. No one dared say where he could hear it—or hear of it—that they found the rasping disturbing. The Great Master knew the underlings found it disturbing, so he chuckled more frequently than he would have had he not rasped. It was good to keep underlings disturbed and frightened—it made it easier to keep them firmly under his control.
The Earthman Marines were departing. His scouts reported the jubilation displayed by the Marine fighters as they boarded their shuttles. He looked forward to reports of their dashed hopes when they discovered they were not leaving after all, that they had to face more death at the hands of his Fighters.
“Launch Moonlight Stroll,” he rumbled.
“It is done, Great Master.” The Over Master in command of that phase of the operation bowed low and backed away from the Grand Master’s presense.
Hetman Bulba looked out over the fields of his host, saw his people working them, and knew they were good. Most of the vegetables were already harvested. In a few more days it would be time to harvest the grain. This harvest was so rich they could stint on their tithing and the Convocation would never guess.
As soon as the grains were reaped, they would celebrate. In his mind he already smelled beeves roasting over fire pits. Already he could taste the fresh baked breads and pastries the women of his host would bake. He thought of the fresh beer he would drink. And the women. Ah, the women!
Yes, the valley of the Pripyat—he was glad he’d led his host to this place. It would do for another two years, then he would lead the Yar host of the Kzakh to a new land. Just then, the Pripyat was as near to Paradise as he wished to imagine.
He turned his pony and gazed at the village. His chest swelled as it always did when he saw what his people had built in so short a time. It was not only their own houses and silos and craft shops that made him proud, but the magnificent church with its colorful onion domes, and the priest house, which equaled his own in size and splendor. God smiled on the Yar when he caused Bulba to be made hetman. Hetman Bulba would see to it that the priest celebrated a fine High Mass to begin the harvest celebrations. Everyone would receive the bread and wine of Our Savior’s body and blood. Then to the beeves and the bread and the squash. And the beer and the women. Ah, the women!
Distant cries and rifle shots came to his ears, and he turned his pony toward them.
The raid into the valley of the nomads was commanded by a Senior Master. Under him were four Masters, a dozen Leaders, and more than two hundred Fighters. It was small enough a force that a senior among the Masters could have been in command, but there were strictures the Over Master was most concerned about, so he deemed a Senior Master should command the raid. Even lacking swamps and caves, infiltrating the valley was child’s play. The nomad guards, prancing so proudly on their ponies, presented no obstacle to the Senior Master and his force. The guards’ eyes were set on the horizon; they could easily see anyone who approached on horseback or walked openly across the hills. They paid scant attention to the small copses that dotted the hills and the valley floor, and almost none to the narrow streamlets that drained those hills into the river. Had he chosen to, the Senior Master could have led his raiders down the river, and the nomads would be none the wiser until his Fighters arose in their midst. But the strictures could be better met if he came from the
side of the valley and struck the outskirts of the settlement first.
The Senior Master smiled when he considered the confusion and fear his Fighters were about to unleash on these transplanted Earthmen. He briefly studied the data display his aide held before him, tapped a spot on the schematic, and said, “Now.”
Fifteen dun-uniformed Fighters hunkered in the shadows of a copse. They watched a group of mounted Earthmen parading nearby and waited patiently for their Leader’s order. If he commanded them to kill the Earthmen, they would do so immediately. If he did not so command, they would remain patiently hunkered until he ordered them to do otherwise. The Fighters didn’t mind—they were bred to have little will of their own.
The Leader watched almost as patiently. He did have will of his own, but he knew well how limited was his freedom to act in the absence of orders. The order for which he waited came at last. He looked at the passing parade and saw that the nomads were already almost within range of his Fighters’ weapons. He shrilled a command, and the Fighters bounded to their feet and ran in pursuit of the nomads.
One of the nomads heard the Leader’s shrill command. He didn’t recognize the sharp sound as the cry of a bird or beast of the Pripyat valley, so he casually looked back. The sight of the racing men who didn’t quite look like men startled him, so he didn’t react immediately. When he did, it was to ask one of the other riders, “Who do you think they are?”
By then the Fighters were in range of the rearmost nomads, and the Leader blew a signal on his whistle. The Fighters pointed the nozzles of their weapons at the nomads and fired. The rearmost nomads screamed surprised agony when the greenish fluid hit them, and fell from their mounts as the ponies reared and bucked and fled in their pain.
The rest of the horsemen scattered forward several meters before they spun about to face the unexpected danger. They would have laughed at the small manlike figures with tanks on their backs and hoses in their hands had not their own companions been writhing in agony in the grass—those who were moving at all. They snapped their rifles to their shoulders and fired. Six of the strange manlings tumbled to the grass, but the others continued their charge, firing as they ran. The horsemen fired again and again, but by then the strange creatures were close enough for their weapons to reach, and their fields of fire were very effectively laid out.
Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Page 20
