Challenge met, p.16
Challenge Met, page 16
“No. Never mine. First Winton’s and now, I fear, Vandover’s.”
“I be seeing,” answered K’rok. “I have one or two we can trust.”
“Good. Baadluster will be leaving the palace shortly, if he has not already. I want him followed. Recorded, if possible, but probably not—if he wanted to leave himself open to recording, he would communicate from here. No, he’ll probably be shielded, but try anyway.”
“I will have it done,” K’rok rumbled.
Pepys nodded, closing his eyes, his flare of strength ebbing rapidly. His last waking thoughts carried the echo of the Milot’s heavy footsteps leaving the care unit.
***
K’rok trusted the assignment to no one but himself. As torn and littered by warfare as the streets were, he wore armor and easily kept abreast of the vehicle Baadluster ordered up. The hover car wove painstakingly in and out of the warrens of the city while the Milot found the broken concrete canyons to his advantage, keeping to their shadows and barricades. When at last the automated vehicle came to a stop, Baadluster sat in it until another shadow joined him. K’rok keyed open his suit sensors to full capacity and watched his targeting grid in case other shadows thought of besieging him.
“Well done, Naylor,” came Baadluster’s reedy voice. “I thought to wait half the night for you.”
“My bunker’s not far from here. This area isn’t secured, minister. This meeting isn’t safe for either of us.”
“Some risks are worth taking. Pepys is gathering in the reins of power again.”
“Pepys?” Surprise in the other’s voice. “I thought he’d had a severe stroke.”
“It is not well for him, but he doesn’t care if he walks or stands alone, as long as he can continue to govern alone. He will recover.”
K’rok listened to an intake of breath, and then silence. There was then a sound as if something were being exchanged between hands.
“I’ve coded your instructions on this, but all depends on how well you’ve infiltrated the Walkers.”
“You cannot separate one weave from the other.”
Vandover’s voice. “Good! You’ll find this more detailed. Bring them down, lay them open. I want them gutted.”
Disbelief registered in the other’s, this Naylor’s, voice. “The Thraks will sweep through us.”
“Precisely. Keep your men clear when it happens.”
“And what’ll happen then?”
“Then,” answered Baadluster, “then they’ll give me the Triad Throne.”
K’rok’s target grid showed him moving figures to his flank, and there was static over the receivers as the shadowy occupant left the taxi hastily. The Milot withdrew then, knowing he had heard all he could. He pondered his information as he returned to Upper Malthen, sifting through his memory, wondering what he would choose to tell Pepys and what he would not. It was clear to him that the emperor expected treachery. But did he expect collusion with the Thrakian League? In all probability not—or he would not have passed this task to K’rok.
Or perhaps he knew what K’rok had hidden in his own black heart.
Lengthening his stride, the Milot crossed the war zones of the city.
Pepys woke to thunder in the halls again—battle suits running the corridors. His heart took a skip and jump, and he peered through his one clear eye as the saggy one blurred. Dark armor loomed up beside him, and a heavy gauntlet fell upon his shoulder.
“Do not be worrying,” K’rok said in his gravelly voice. Before he could say more, the emergency lights flickered on, and Baadluster swept in, illuminated by the orange glow.
“Arrest him,” Baadluster ordered. His hand shook with fury as he targeted K’rok.
Armor flanked the corridor, but no one moved to do as Vandover ordered. The man looked from side to side as he realized his bidding was being ignored.
“I be thinking not,” said K’rok. “These are Knights. I am a Knight.” Pride echoed in his heavy voice.
“Explain this,” Pepys got out. His voice croaked each word. He did not know if he felt reassured or threatened by K’rok’s presence.
“I have purged your command of the Thraks,” the Milot told him.
“You what?”
The bulky Flexalinked personage of Sergeant Lassaday bulled forward into the doorway. The sergeant cleared his throat. “There ain’t a Thraks left among us. Sir.” If he could have spat, he would have.
Pepys rubbed at his bleary eye carefully as if it might clear his perspective. “What did you do?”
“I be putting them on the shuttle and shipping them back. And I be allowing no further incoming landings.”
Baadluster’s mouth twisted. “Guthul will split a gut. Tricatada will lay waste to the entire planet if she thinks you’ve gone back on your alliance.”
“Or you yours,” Pepys said, watching K’rok intently as the Milot took his helmet off. The shaggy being grinned at him. He felt pleasure surge through him. He had guessed Vandover’s game and here stood K’rok verifying it to him.
The Milot saluted. “I be commander of your Knights, emperor. We will die defending you.”
Vandover gathered himself under his robes. Pepys now turned his gaze on his minister.
“Have you anything to say?”
“I,” Baadluster ground out, “have nothing to say.”
“That is very circumspect of you. I might almost suspect that you are waiting for the Thraks to break through. Would you wish that, minister?”
“They are our allies.”
“Mmmm.” Pepys then ran his hand through his red hair. The fine strands which had lain lankly upon his pillow since he’d been struck down, began to crackle and rise with electricity as though newly invigorated. “Well done, Commander,” he said to K’rok. “Now pray you can hold this island free until Commander Storm returns.”
“Aye,” answered K’rok. “I be praying.”
He remained at Pepys’ side as Vandover left in a swirl of robes and anger, escorted down the corridor by Lassaday and the troops, as if knowing the emperor wished to talk to him privately. When they had been left alone, Pepys merely turned an inquiring stare on the Milot.
K’rok showed his teeth happily. “I be following him myself,” he said. “He met with a Green Shirt by the name of Naylor.”
Pepys sucked in a breath. “Verified?”
“Voice print ident.”
“All right. Go on. I ordered him to do that.”
“They met in under-Malthen, near the firing zones. He be ordering Naylor to abandon the Walker lines, leaving them open to Thrakian attack. He be thinking grateful Thraks would make him emperor.”
“He’s probably right, too. The Thraks abhor weakness. My… infirmity… would lead them to this, and Vandover would take advantage of it. Why didn’t you come to me first?”
K’rok’s shoulders rolled in an eloquent shrug. “You probably not be allowing me to do what I did.”
Pepys gave a dry laugh. “Probably not,” he agreed. “I owe you one.”
“More than one, emperor. Shall I tell you the price now?”
They were alone in the shadowed hospital wing. Pepys suddenly felt cold, and shook it off. It would be better to know, he told himself. “All right.”
“Who ruled Milos?”
“Your people did, under the aegis of the Triad Throne, of course—that’s what we were doing there fighting, protecting you and the considerable Dominion investments.” Pepys reflected that the loss of those investments were what had given him financial sway over the Dominion, which was in part why he and Winton and Baadluster had arranged the military defeat there, but he had no intention of telling K’rok that.
“And if the Thraks left Milos now?”
“Milos is sand, dammit, you thick-headed woolly. What use is it to anyone, even if the Thraks did pull out?”
“It’s my home,” K’rok rumbled.
The emperor heard the edge in his words. “Yes, I understand that. What are you asking of me?”
“I want to go back. I want to go back as governor and ruler of Milos.”
Pepys shook his head. “Oh, please. I have no control over this—”
“The sand is failing. Did Storm not tell you?”
“No. No, he didn’t. And how do you know?” K’rok’s eyes shone. “I never forget my home. Queen Tricatada is most distressed over Milos’ failure. Sand comes from the first nest. It has never failed before. But now it has. She has thinned it too much, perhaps, overswarming. She does not know. I do not know, though I guess much. Milos will be abandoned. As long as you hold the Triad Throne, it is yours. Give it to me, Pepys. That is my price.”
“As long as I hold the throne,” Pepys repeated. “Done, Commander. Milos is yours if the Thraks should abandon it. More than that I cannot promise you.”
The gauntlet squeezed tight on his shoulder. “That be fine. I will take care of the rest. Now we wait for Jack to come back.”
Chapter 27
She awoke in fear and hunger, pain cramping in her stomach, her hands digging into her flesh as if she could knead it out. Agony lanced through her temples as her dreams leeched away into wakefulness amid the awful echo of Baadluster’s laughter. She panted once or twice to clear her thoughts, but he’d been in them again and the smutty residue she could not cleanse.
A crowded room, an argument, a stern looking woman pointing at the man dressed richly in robes of crimson and gold, and the weapon of her mind lashing out… She wouldn’t do it again. Couldn’t. She’d do whatever she had to, to keep Jack safe. Milady. A last, sickening jab from Baadluster and then he was gone for the moment. Her torment slowly ebbed away. The Thrakian hammock twisted about her as she got out, finally dumping her on the floor with a thud. Amber sat in the dim light. It was almost her turn on watch, anyway, and she knew that sleep was impossible now. She was getting to be like Jack, she thought ironically.
The hunger she could handle. They’d all eaten lightly for dinner, bypassing what the Thraks had stocked for meat. But there were legumes and dried fruits and even breads aplenty, so she picked out an assortment of baggies to take with her to the deck. There was no sense in shorting herself, the stores had been packed for a full crew and Jack figured they’d be pulling out of FTL and turning the corner for Claron within the next twenty-four hours. The three of them practically rattled around in the Thrakian cruiser.
Jack turned his head as she padded softly on deck and came to rest at his shoulder. He was getting used to her sleeplessness. The week or so they’d been aboard, she’d been early for every watch.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he answered, turning his attention back to the screens. “We’ll be going into decel and turning the corner in about nine hours. You’d better buckle up after you get off watch.”
Amber made an “ummm” sound in her throat as she nodded. The lighting from the panels was subdued and had an odd coloration that she had no description for because it was in the visual spectrum of the Thraks. It cast an eerie glow over Jack’s features, highlighting the strain in them.
“Bad night?” she said, leaning close.
“Ummm.”
“Which one are you?”
“I’m always me. What happens now is like a drift, a daydream. It’s a mask that someone drops over me. If I’m lucky,” and Jack leaned back in the chair to look her in the face, “I remember Mom making cookies while I chop vegetables for a salad. Or I’m fighting with my brother or we’re getting homework off the tutor. But if I’m not… then I’m fighting sand.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
He inhaled deeply and she knew he was breathing in the fragrance of her hair and skin. The corner of her mouth quirked as he answered, “Nothing that wouldn’t make Rawlins awfully uncomfortable.”
She pouted at him. “The problem with being one of the boys is that I have to act like one of the boys.” She smoothed his hair from his forehead. “It’s my watch.”
He got to his feet. “Let me know if anything happens.”
Amber made no answer but watched him leave the deck. She wondered if he would be any more successful than she at getting some sleep. She sat down in the warm chair he’d just vacated. Constructed for a warrior Thraks, it dwarfed her lithe form. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, mopping up a dewy film of sweat. Damn Vandover. She could not sleep, she could not wake from the nightmare, and it took all her discipline to keep from flinching when someone like Jack was near. How could she ever tell him what had happened… how could she ever take comforting from him if she could not bear for anyone to touch her. Dark child, she thought. How do you grow in my mind?
There must be that within her which was very fertile.
She shivered away from those thoughts and forced her attention to the screens and displays as the cruiser arced through nothingness toward somethingness.
Rawlins was on watch when the ship came out of hyperdrive and began braking into the decel-maneuver known as turning the corner and he was on watch again when Claron came into view. He let out a yell that echoed through the near-empty cruiser, waking Amber and alerting Jack.
Jack put aside the tool he was using on Bogie. The opalescent armor shifted, levering itself to its feet. “What is it, boss?”
“I’d say we’ve reached Claron. Rawlins’ll be putting us into orbit there until we can pick up traces of Colin.”
Flexalink shimmered. Did the armor tremble in eagerness? Jack put a hand on the gauntlet.
“I know the way,” Bogie said, his deep voice hollow within the battle armor.
Rawlins yelled again, “On deck, sir!”
“I know you do,” Jack said soothingly. He disconnected the power lines to his tools. “I’ll be back, or you can come up. Just don’t break anything.”
Under the suit’s power, Bogie was like an overgrown, very uncoordinated child. Jack left in answer to the captain’s summons without looking back to see if the armor followed him.
He was not prepared for the sight that met him in the control room. Rawlins had boosted the display and put it on the big screen—there it was, the wreckage that had once been a verdant, promising planet. To know that he had been the cause of its destruction had put a lump in his throat before he’d even stepped on deck.
And now this. Cloud cover and oceans—and a tinge of green snaking among the char. Amber was there ahead of him. Her hair streamed loose about her shoulders and there was a glow in her eyes as she reached for him.
“You did this! You did.”
“Out of the ashes,” Rawlins murmured. “You made them bring it back out of the ashes.”
Jack gripped the railing in front of the observation screen. Claron filled his vision—newborn, hopeful, promising yet again. “I didn’t do it. The terraformers did. Look at it. Think your parents will apply again?”
Rawlins shook his head. His deep blue eyes looked from Jack back to the screen. “No,” he said. “They’ve resettled. But I just might.” He tapped the control back. “I’ve sent out a new ident… they might not be too happy to sight Thraks.”
On the heels of his statement, the com board lit up. Rawlins gave Jack a grin and bent his head over the missive, tapping back a quick reply, the keyboard being more reliable than the verbal sending because of Thrakian mechanics.
“Oh, my,” Amber said as Rawlins replaced Claron with a deciphered version of the communication. “Such language.”
The harshness of the displayed jargon drove the wonderment out of Jack. He had done it, in his way. He had been responsible for the firestorming and now he’d made them turn the clock back. An ending, and a beginning.
Rawlins snorted at Amber, saying, “Only a guttersnipe from under-Malthen would even know what most of that meant.”
Instead of flaying him alive with his own words, she went as white as if she’d been whipped, shrinking back. Rawlins didn’t see her reaction, but Jack did. She recovered quickly, snapping out a retort at the captain who laughed, leaving Storm wondering if he’d seen what he’d seen. Rawlins knew Amber’s background, anyone who had been with Jack over the last seven years knew Amber as well, so why should she be bothered?
Vandover, he thought. His fist closed along his thigh. Baadluster was the only one who called her a lady but treated her like dirt. He thought of Baadluster’s whispered farewell. Amber had all her deadly skills back. What had she to fear from the Minister of War? There was no one alive who could make Amber fear with the exception of the unseen master for whom she’d originally been trained.
Vandover, he thought again. Why hadn’t he seen it? Vandover, who’d replaced Winton as smoothly and neatly as any succession into power he’d ever seen. Winton, who’d ordered retreat on Milos when there had been no need for one, who’d betrayed the Knights into a foul and disgraceful history. Jack had known there’d been other hands besides Winton’s in that plot. Baadluster, the link between Winton and Pepys, unseen, uninvolved until Winton’s untimely death made it necessary for him to step forward. How could he have been so blind?
“Amber,” he said quietly, thinking to draw her aside and share the truth with her, but static began to spew forth and Rawlins clucked his tongue against his teeth, saying, “There’s someone who wants to talk to you, Commander.”
Finally, he got the com line open. Battle armor filled the big screen, the helmet tucked under the man’s elbow, and Jack smiled thinly as he recognized the darkly handsome head of the man who wore it.
“Denaro. Am I late?”
The Walker militant bared his teeth before replying, “I left little clues for you on the way out, but you didn’t stop for them. You came straight here. How did you know?”
“I know Colin,” Jack said quietly. Flanking him, both Amber and Rawlins watched the screen intently.
“Ah.” Denaro twisted to look off-camera, then back. “Come on down, Jack. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“All right. I’ve got armor this time.” Jack said to Rawlins, “Get the coords.”
“Yessir.”
Amber slipped back to Jack’s side as the display went dark. “Let me go down there with you.”
