The Goda War

by Deborah Chester

  “I was right,” said Brock with growing fury. “All the time when no one else believed it, I was right. You do intend to destroy us, all of us—”

  “It is what you intend for us!” she retorted.

  “No. I meant only to drive your people away, back to your own territory where you belong. That is—”

  “Liar!” She motioned with the disruptor. “Get over to those controls and activate them!”

  “They are dead. I’ve told you—”

  “And I don’t believe your lies!” Her head whipped around. “Egel!”

  The technician glanced nervously up from the scanner he had unpacked. “Power sources are still intact, Colonel. But I don’t know yet how to reach them.”

  “The dire-lord knows.” She almost whispered the words. Her dark slanted eyes glittered at Brock. “And the dire-lord will tell. Is that bracelet you wear perhaps the key we seek?”

  With a shock he realized he was twisting the goda band around and around his wrist. Brock dropped his hand immediately. “I’ll tell you nothing.” He thought of the whips of the magstrusi that had never tamed him, of the fire branding the swirled scar into his flesh and how he had not flinched even the slightest bit, of the terrible rounds of killing in the Chaimu arena in order to learn, in order to survive. The Colonids could never torture a dire-lord enough to make him talk. His chin came up, and he met Falmah-Al’s eyes with a gaze like steel. “You fear us telepaths because you do not understand us. Well, understand this. With my mind I could crush you where you stand.”

  “And I can kill your friends while you threaten me,” she retorted. As she spoke, she aimed her disruptor and fired at Rho, enveloping him in a nimbus of raw energy before he crumpled limply to the ground.

  “No!” cried Brock in a roar and rushed at her. A wall seemed to come out of nowhere, knocking him back. Dizzily he staggered, every molecule suddenly on fire, and through a blind haze glimpsed Millen’s grim face above a blazing disruptor before the world went black and crashed upon him.

  14

  Heat shimmered through him, baking his flesh, searing his entrails, frying the layers of his mind. His nervous system twitched in spasms like shorted-out circuitry. He seemed to be fighting, but he wasn’t sure what. He could not see or hear or feel. He was only aware of the heat, that awful fire which tormented him until he writhed helplessly, crying out without sound. Why was it so hot?

  The scar…they were branding him with the scar! He should be proud. He had worked so hard for it, trained for it, killed for it, and now the white-hot iron was sinking into his flesh. He could smell the nauseating stench of burning meat while the pain exploded through his head. No! He did not want to serve! No!

  “Brock! Brock, my beloved, please. Let me help you. Let me reach you. Brock, please stop fighting me.”

  Gradually he became aware of the words, first as a low hum buried beneath layers and layers of pain and discomfort, then as a louder continuum of sound, then finally as distinct words, recognizable and making sense.

  Ellisne!

  He tried to speak her name and failed, but the effort bumped him through to the upper layers of consciousness. He stirred, blinked open his eyes, and sank down again. Cool hands pressed against his burning face, incredibly soothing. He grasped them, pressing them harder to his flesh.

  “Brock, oh, please…”

  “Ellisne.” This time he said it. Pleased with himself, he tried again to open his eyes, but they were gummy and would not focus. His lids were incredibly heavy.

  “Let me help you,” she kept saying. “Don’t keep me out. I can’t help you if you won’t let me.” Then abruptly she paused. “Have I permission to assist the dire-lord?”

  “Ah…” Something within him relaxed, and her healing strength surged through him like a tide of renewal.

  “Sleep,” she murmured, her relief and joy trembling through him. And with those emotions came her love, a gift as pure and delicate as the finest lattice of ice crystals worked in harmony. Her heart sang to his as he responded, and after a moment she forgot the calm ministrations of her profession and held him cradled tightly in her arms with her soft hair brushing his face as she cried softly over and over: “You’re alive. Oh, my beloved, you’re alive!”

  “Ellisne.” His fingers slid up the loosely woven sleeve of her cloak. Her voice was louder. He could hear other things now: the scrape of her shoe upon the floor, the little choke in her throat, his own breathing. He realized he was lying on the floor. It was a stone floor, very hard and cold. He concentrated on the comfort of that coldness, letting it seep through him to gradually dissipate the lingering fire of the disruptor. Brock frowned as memories came rushing back to him. Disruptor…Millen firing at him…

  “Rho!” he said in anguish, jerking upright despite her attempt to hold him down. His eyes met hers, searched them.

  “He is dead,” she said softly, her beautiful eyes darkened with sorrow. “I offer thee my grief, beloved. There was nothing I could do for him.”

  Squeezing her hand, Brock averted his face to hide the savagery of his anger from her. He remembered it all now: Falmah-Al’s duplicity, her threats, her cold-blooded aim at Rho. He never had a chance. True, faithful Rho, a Heldman to the last, shot down on a madwoman’s burst of spite.

  “Barbarians,” he whispered, his voice raw with hatred. Crimson stained his mind, filtering down through his vision, and making Ellisne gasp. Deep inside came the thrumming of Chaimu war chants, ancient, alien, yet disturbingly compelling to that portion of life force which was ancient within himself. He remembered the nights in the grottos beneath the training arena when those who had been selected to duel the following morning squatted around blazing fires, Chaimu scales glistening as slaves poured warm oil upon muscled bodies. The rooms glowed red from the baleful heap of coals and the hallucinogenic smoke until only the gleam of the brightly polished weapons remained clear in the haze.

  Brock shook his head as though fighting that dizzy influence once again. He had not been able to kill until his trainers finally managed to fill him with the drugged smoke.

  “Brock!” said Ellisne sharply, giving his hand a shake. “Come back. You have slipped so far away. I cannot feel you.”

  His eyes lifted to hers, but he did not see her. He saw instead Falmah-Al’s face, grimly smiling as she shot Rho down. He saw old battle scenes on the fringe worlds, where Colonid forces butchered Held shock troops and were mowed down in return. The killing did not ever stop. The Colonids did not know how to stop it, or themselves. They did not even know that they should try.

  “All the stories are true,” he said hoarsely. “All the old tales of the atrocities, the cruelty, the unspeakable disregard for life…they’re all true. She’d won, Ellisne. She’d forced us, tricked us into bringing her here. We gave her a goda, the ultimate weapon of the galaxy, and it was not enough for her. She enjoyed killing him.”

  “Brock, don’t.”

  “I saw her face. She wanted to kill. She wanted to hurt me in here.” He pressed a fist to his chest. “What if she had shot you instead?”

  “Hush!” Ellisne’s arms held him tightly. “Brock, do not torment yourself in this way. I am safe. You are safe. It is enough.”

  “No, it is not enough!”

  Thrusting her away, he levered himself unsteadily to his feet and took two swift strides across the tiny cell of stone which held them. It had been a storage area of some kind. A short stack of dust-covered cubes still stood in one corner. Others had been dragged outside, judging from the trail left in the dust on the floor. He struck the closed door with his fist, and Ellisne jumped to her feet.

  “Brock, do not let this fury eat at you. You must rest. There is nothing we can do now. She has tricked us. It is over—”

  “Never!” he snarled. “Not while there remains breath in my body.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. Her face was a peculiar color in the light shining from the halon lamp designed more for preservation of perishabl
e chemicals than for illumination.

  “What are you going to do? What can you do?”

  “We’re getting out of here. And then I’m going to stop her.”

  “Brock!” Ellisne grasped his arm. “How can you? She has too many guards. They’ll kill you.”

  “No, I’m not going to jump her here. We’ve got to get away. Find another goda.” As he spoke Brock was examining the door. He touched the latch. Unlocked. His brows shot up. “Well, now. They must have thought they’d killed me too.”

  “They nearly did. Brock, please try to think rationally. We can’t get away. The only way out is through the control room and back up those steps. They’d see us.”

  “I don’t think so.” Brock grinned at her and gripped her by the arms. “Remember my ability to blank myself out? I think I can blank you as well.”

  “Yes, but that won’t help. Their scanners might not register us, but their eyes would.”

  “They have to sleep sometime, and I can take care of the guard on watch.”

  “Brock, you mustn’t kill!” she said in alarm. “Their atrocities do not free you to imitate them.”

  “Ellisne,” he said sternly. “When we first shared, you learned what manner of creature I am and have been. You know what I have done.”

  “But you need not continue. You are not dire-lord now. Your suprin is dead. That released you from your duty.”

  “I am not free until I carry out his last command,” said Brock grimly. “Don’t you see? I’ve handed a goda to Falmah-Al! Do you think we’ve come through every horror of war imaginable in the past few years? Just wait until she activates this thing. She’ll command the galaxy. She can even hold her own Collective in her power if she so chooses.”

  “But why are you so certain she will activate it? You said yourself that it’s dead. It’s too old. The machinery no longer functions. Her technicians may never discover—”

  “And what if they do?” he shot back. “Egel has already said that the power banks are still intact. All they have to do is decipher the controls. Not such a difficult task for a people whose technology currently outstrips the Held’s own. Egel.” Brock scowled. “I wish I had let him fall to his death. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts? I knew I should not trust her!”

  Brock lifted his head, and his eyes bored into Ellisne. “We must go to Felca. I thought—I hoped—that the responsibility had been lifted from me. But it hasn’t. I can no longer avoid it.”

  “But if you activate another goda, what is left but complete annihilation?”

  Is this my destiny? he wondered with a stab of pain. To destroy all existence? Is this why the magstrusi tried so hard to cripple me? Was their wisdom greater after all?

  “But what if I don’t?” he asked quietly, feeling a great weariness invade his soul. “Is Rho’s death to mean nothing? Is it to have no vengeance? Falmah-Al will put the Held under a reign of terror greater than any history has ever known.”

  “Just as the Held did to the Imish Collective.”

  “It isn’t the same. The Held never carried out its threat.”

  “But the chance was always there.”

  “Was it?” His eyes met hers. “Then why didn’t the suprin order activation when the Colonids destroyed Mabruk? What greater provocation could there be? The death of billions of innocent people, most of them children. The destruction of irreplacable genetic banks. It is a crime beyond comprehension, and surely one undeserving of mercy. Yet no action was taken. Do you think, had the positions been reversed, that the Colonids would have forbore the ultimate retaliation?”

  She caught her breath sharply. “Brock, please. I understand what you are trying to say. But there is a flaw in your logic. You have forgotten that the suprin did order retaliation. You have been trying to carry it out ever since he died.”

  Brock lifted his hands, then let them fall helplessly to his sides. She was right. Her thinking was flawless, pointing out all the errors in his own. And yet, his heart told him he was right.

  “There is a time, Ellisne,” he said slowly, “when logic becomes so absolute it creates an aberration in what is just. Whatever reasons and motivations have been mixed together, I know only that until this time I was never entirely certain within myself whether I would commit destruction.”

  “On the scoutship you had decided only to bluff,” she said. “You had made your decision, Brock. Are you going to undo it now?”

  “Falmah-Al has changed the circumstances. You heard what she said. You know what she intends. If you doubted my ability to remain uncorrupted by the power of commanding a goda, what do you think of hers?”

  Ellisne’s face clouded. “Brock, I—”

  “Goda Prime is the closest to where we are now. It is our only chance of stopping her. Ellisne, I can’t fight you. If you go against me, then I—”

  His voice faltered and he put out a hand to the wall to steady himself.

  “You ask me to decide?” Her voice was shrill. “You wish to include me in this responsibility? But you know my opinion.”

  “Yes, but opinion and decision are not the same.”

  She sighed. “You sound like Magstrus Olbin. Oh, Brock, why do you torture me so? You know I cannot fight you. I will not fight you. That is finished. We are one.”

  He held out his hand. “Then help me.”

  Slowly, almost hesitantly she took his hand. “Blanking exhausts you with the tremendous energy it requires. Why can’t I simply flick us—”

  “No! This place is lined with ungstan carbonix. It’s too unstable here.” He expelled his breath harshly. “We’ll have to do it the hard way.” He listened a moment, letting his mind quest lightly beyond the door of the storage cell. “Come. I think it’s time to try.”

  He opened the door just far enough for them to slip through and bowed his head as he focused hard on blanking himself and Ellisne. He wasn’t sure he could project sufficiently to conceal her as well as himself, but as soon as he made the effort of slipping his mind out of time sync with reality he found it much easier than it had been the first time. It was almost like flicking mentally instead of physically. The problem was, of course, that previously there had been no physical effort required of him, and this time he had to navigate a stealthy path through the control room and back up the steps. That required conscious, active thought. Would it register on the scanners? He still had to try.

  Already his energy was draining rapidly as he projected the shields around himself and Ellisne and slipped through the door with her hand grasped tightly in his. The storage room had been carved from a natural fissure in the stone, and it was set slightly back from the curve of the control room walls. Porta-lamps dimmed down to a mere glimmer of light provided the only illumination. Monitors rotated the room on auto-alert. Designed to be heat sensitive, one skimmed the air right over Brock’s head as he and Ellisne froze but its scanning field was not triggered. Brock smiled briefly to himself as he noted the deficiency in their security systems. Until the Colonids completely adapted to dealing with non-human life forms, the Held still had a few advantages.

  His breathing pattern changed, and with a jolt he realized his concentration had slipped. Angry at himself, he focused down again. As soon as he had himself back under control he eased forward again with Ellisne drifting like a shadow behind him. She was helping by sliding herself slowly back and forth between dimensions. It did not take so much effort to blank her out that way.

  Another monitor circled overhead, pausing near Brock and Ellisne to extend an antenna. Why were they so cautious, he wondered, then shut off the thought hurriedly. Speculation could come later. He stepped carefully over the legs of a guard snoring on a thin pallet spread out on the cold stone floor. Most of them were asleep in the center of the control room, huddled together beneath the orange glow of a small heating unit. Who had gone back for all the equipment? Some of the guards, obviously. There were not as many in evidence now as there had been before.

  Three of
the panels were open beneath the control boards, and circuit boards hung outside by their multicolored wires like entrails spilled from a dead body. Tools littered the floor. Brock was surprised that Falmah-Al wasn’t working her technicians on continuous shifts.

  Slowly, taking his time, Brock edged around the sleeping bodies, ignoring the urge to eliminate Falmah-Al and her henchmen now while they were helpless. This goda was no longer a secret. Other Colonids would come to replace Falmah-Al and her ambitions with ones equally dangerous. He moved past the outermost sleepers on silent feet, not even daring to breathe. No one appeared to be on sentinel duty; the monitors were serving that function. Ten steps to the exit. Eight steps…four…

  The soft chink of metal upon stone and the scrape of a foot froze Brock. Ellisne’s dismay was a sob in his mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, his whole body tensed, Brock turned his head to look back over his shoulder. Egel was rising from where he had been crouched out of sight by one of the control panels. His face could barely be seen in the inadequate illumination. He held a pair of needle pliers suitable for work on delicate glass and microsine fibers in one hand. His eyes blinked once, twice, three times in the pale blur of his face. Brock stared back, Ellisne drifting slowly into solid form at his side. Seconds blurred by, stretching the suspense to an intolerable level before Brock realized that Egel wasn’t going to sound the alarm. Suppressing a sigh of accute relief, Brock continued on to the exit and took the steps quickly, two at a time, until his breath was short and fast, humming in his ears, and his heart thudded beneath his atrox.

  Then, and only then, did he pause to rest and let his mind slip out of its careful discipline.

  “Brock!” Ellisne’s whisper was no louder than a breath of air. “He let us go! Isn’t he the one you saved from falling?”

  “Yes.” It was one very good way of saying thanks. Brock closed his eyes a moment in the complete darkness, then started on up the steps.