Challenge met, p.2
Challenge Met, page 2
Lassaday spat to one side, scattering recruits. Then, “Yes. That much is true.”
No suit, no soldier. They’d been drilled with that since the day they’d been accepted into Emperor Pepys’ resurrected Knights. Those of them who’d made it this far into the service shivered as they thought of being without their Flexalink skins, their weapons, their second selves. He’d lost his armor. That alone was tantamount to treason.
“We can’t judge what happened,” Lassaday said, his gravelly voice low. “Not until we hear th’ story.”
A slender man moved into the doorway, and leaned against it, his captain’s bars winking on his shoulder. Travellini met the sergeant’s stare as he said, “And what if Pepys doesn’t allow us to hear it?”
The NCO rocked back on his heels slightly at the unthinkable. “No,” he answered. “That wouldn’t be.”
The captain traced a seam down the outside of his slacks and flicked off a piece of lint or dust. He looked up. “Nothing says Pepys has to give Jack a military court-martial. It wouldn’t be the first time Storm has been betrayed by the system.”
A freckle-faced recruit crouching over his boots, applying a patina like that of stainless steel, blurted out, “That’s not fair.”
The Dominion captain’s mouth twisted at one corner as he answered, “None of us are likely to ever learn what drove Commander Storm away from here—and what brought him back. And we dare not judge him until, as the old troopers like to say, we’ve walked in his boots.”
“Amen,” echoed Lassaday, his anger soothed by the captain’s calmness. The knots of men began to break up, voices quieted now, tones somber. Never before had one of their own been brought back in shackles, bereft of his armor, rumors of treason and cowardice hanging over his head.
But then, the aged sergeant thought, none of their own had ever dared to fight both the enemy and the emperor. He braced himself. “Now, all right, you spineless excuses for Knights. Which ones of you are goin’ with me in escort?”
Rawlins stepped out of the shadows. Lassaday felt a prickle of apprehension run through him. He was a copy of Storm, but a pure copy undulled by time or cynicism, hair the color of winter wheat and blue eyes with an electric intensity in them, a copy that rang truer than its original because life had not yet defeated Rawlins. But the boy had never been the same since the military action on Bythia that had entangled his life with Storm’s and with the Walker Colin’s. Rawlins had served as the commander’s aide-de-camp and as for the Walker saint, it was said that Colin had blessed the boy, cursed the boy, and even raised him from the dead.
“Sergeant,” Rawlins said softly. “I’d like to volunteer for detail.”
Though he had misgivings, there was no way Lassaday could gainsay the lieutenant. He gave a short, abrupt nod. “That’s it, then. Who is going with me and th’ lieutenant?” He was not surprised to have to turn them away in droves, if only because there was a maudlin curiosity to see the legendary Jack Storm.
Amber was the first to see them crossing the riot lines, on foot, in full battle armor, Malthen sunlight glinting off the Flexalinks. They had not been able to bring the transports through the still pressing crowds of Walkers and other protesters. She stood up even as Pepys came into the lounge. “They’re here,” she said gently.
Jack had been sitting in repose, eyes closed, faint lines smoothed upon his brow. Years of cold sleep suspension had kept him much younger than his chronological age. His sandy hair was a little higher off his forehead than it had been, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes a little deeper, and the grooves about his mouth sharper than she remembered, but his was a body still well in its prime. He looked up as a clink sounded from Pepys’ hands, and his waking gaze fell on the shackles his emperor held.
He said nothing, but Amber’s heart twisted as the lines in his face deepened as his sovereign approached.
Chapter 2
Amber walked the palace hallway, ignoring the gaunt shadow her body threw upon the walls. She hugged herself against a chill that was born not of temperature but of spirit, an iciness the black silks she wore could not keep out. The sight at the port had stayed with her, no matter how hard she tried to pace it off: the wall of Thraks reared in opposition to a wall of human flesh, people crushing forward inexorably, demanding that their saint be returned to them. White-lipped, Pepys had greeted Baadluster, his Minister of War, and the honor guard had surrounded them, swallowing them up—and if it had not been for those machines of war, she did not think they would have made their transports.
They had had only one incident of any measure—and her own heart had thudded as they had approached the transports, and she could see a familiar face beyond the guards.
Baadluster had made a low sound in his throat as if he also recognized Denaro, militant right hand of the Walker church. “You should have taken that one out,” he muttered to his emperor, “when you could have.”
Jack acted as if he had not heard them, but his chin went up, and his gaze met the flint dark one of the man standing beyond the Thraks. In a society where biological years often did not match years lived, because of cold sleep and other factors, men no longer measured actual ages. But they recognized prime, and each of them was in his. Jack had once taught Denaro to be a Knight, a wearer of battle armor.
In fear, Amber reached out and touched Jack’s wrist, hoping to break their stares, for Denaro was heavily armed despite the large, hand-carved wooden cross hanging upon his chest. Her gesture had no effect and now Denaro was speaking, his voice cutting through the crowd noise as if it were a laser.
“You came back without him.”
Jack stopped in his tracks and his escort slowed as well. A lesser man would have been dwarfed by the battle armor, but he was not. “Denaro,” Jack responded. “If I had gone with him, he would have come back with me—or neither of us would have returned at all.”
Denaro’s eyes blinked slowly. He scorned to wear Walker overrobes, and his muscles flexed under his miners’ jumpsuit.
“Jack!” Amber warned, even as Denaro’s hand moved, but the crowd surged with a wild scream, as it caught her fear. The Thraks reared up, chitin and carapace pressing against the softer flesh of the rioters.
Something came hurtling through the air at them, moving so quickly that none of the guards could shift to catch it, even as Denaro shouted, “You serve a murderer!”
Jack shrugged off Amber’s hand and snatched the object up, curling his fingers tightly about it.
As the tidal wave of security bore Denaro and the others away, the Walker shouted a last time. “Find him,” he said. “And tell the truth. Or I’ll do it for you.”
Jack turned his hand over and opened his fist. A smaller, no less crude wooden cross rested in his palm. Amber sucked in her breath, recognizing it as one of St. Colin’s. Jack looked out, searching for Denaro and no longer able to see him. He raised his hand in the air.
“I hear you, Denaro!”
The memory now chilled Amber. How close Denaro had come to inciting out-and-out riot. Pepys feared the Walkers. If not for their pressure, she and Jack would be dead now, but the emperor had a desperate need for them. Yet she knew the cloth Pepys and his minister had been cut from. Once Jack accomplished the impossible, if he could accomplish the impossible, the two of them would be discarded.
The hospital wing was deserted, a seldom used area of the palace, maintained only to preserve the health of the emperor. She paused at the clinic doorway, knowing she could jimmy the palm lock if she had to, but also knowing that the prisoner within was honor bound to stay imprisoned and that he had made her vow as well. That she thought him a fool made no difference in how much she loved and worried about him.
A noise in the hallway brought her up short. She thought she heard a scrabble, a clacking of carapaces against the obsidite flooring—and even as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, the noise faded. When a man rounded the juncture and approached her, a tall, homely man with pasty skin, lank brown hair, and lips too thick to smile appealingly, she spat at him.
“No Thraks! You promised no Thraks on the guard duty.”
Vandover Baadluster gave an ironic bow. “And good afternoon to you as well, Milady Amber. What need do the emperor and I have of guards with you on duty?”
She could feel the color blaze in her cheeks as she answered, “I won’t have the bugs within eyeshot or earshot of me and Jack. May I congratulate you on your handling of our allies. We couldn’t be more rife with them. You have rolled over, belly up, and surrendered.”
“Harsh words from a beautiful whore,” Vandover said mildly, but there was nothing mild about the flint dark eyes that blazed out of his pale face. “If you wish to worry about alien contact, I suggest you worry about the Ash-Farel. The Thraks, at least, we have met face-to-face and can bargain with. The Ash-Farel are like a black hole, swallowing worlds and colonies never to be seen again.”
She said nothing in answer to that, but turned away, her short cape billowing with the disdain she felt. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, but the man did not bait her further.
Instead, he seemed to be examining the windowless door as if he could see through its panels. “The doctors should be done with him soon. I came down to tell you the tape has been updated successfully.”
The hammering faltered badly. She swallowed to hide the flutter of pain it caused. “Then there’s nothing to stop the imprinting.”
“Nothing but Commander Storm himself, if the doctors pass him.” Vandover turned, aware that he’d drawn her attention back to him.
Amber met his burning stare defiantly. She said nothing.
The minister thinned his lips with a semblance of a smile. “The mind-loop of a seventeen-year-long cold sleep must be a formidable experience. I myself find it hard to believe that he volunteered for this. A most unusual reward for the task Pepys has asked of him, don’t you think?”
Amber could feel her emotions seething, boiling just under her skin, but she lifted her chin and said coldly, “You might find it… difficult. Jack might find it gratifying.”
Vandover laced his fingers together. They made a pale steeple against the unrelieved darkness of his robes. “Never doubt that Pepys wants Colin found. No one wishes the holy war of revenge that will result unless the man is brought back. Even I.” He paused a moment longer. “I came to ask you for your aid.”
“Me? What could you possibly want from me?”
“Commander Storm’s passion to regain his past is second only to his passion for you. I want you to sway him, milady. Convince him that he may be crippling himself by imprinting the tape before he undertakes his mission to find St. Colin. Convince him to wait… until later.”
Or until you can destroy the tape, Amber thought, but did not say aloud. “We went through hell to find this tape.”
“Indeed. Through that and Green Shirts…” Vandover paused, as though naming yet another dissident faction left a bad taste in his mouth. “And it is, unless I am mistaken, a tape of a man going through yet another hell. We need Commander Storm sound in mind and body.”
“St. Colin has disappeared so well that not one of the thousand under-ministers of his church know where he could possibly be. I don’t think I can ask Jack not to have his memories restored before he goes after him. It wouldn’t be fair… I couldn’t do that to him.” Amber fought a desperate battle to keep her voice cool, free of emotion. If Vandover wanted him to avoid the tape, all the more reason Jack needed it.
She would not let herself look at Baadluster, but she knew he watched her avidly. She could feel his stare burning into her.
“And what about you, milady? Is it a chance you want him to take? Will you chance losing him? An imprint from a year or two ago is nothing—but this—his memories may not integrate. He may remember his life then, and nothing now. What of you, Amber? Are you ready and willing to be forgotten?”
She clenched her teeth. Jack would not, could not, forget her. But her mind trembled at the thought. Rather than give Baadluster the satisfaction of knowing he’d shaken her, she said nothing.
Baadluster waited long silent moments, then gave a bleak smile. “We are allies, Milady Amber, uneasy confederates, perhaps, but entangled nonetheless. I urge you to be selfish now, for whatever reasons you have, because we both desire the same result. Think on it.” He paused another long moment, heard nothing forthcoming from Amber, turned on his heels and left with that hard smile still on his face.
She watched his back until he was no longer in view. Not until he was gone—as far from her senses as from her sight, did she let his words touch her.
Not that Jack had many choices in the future for himself or for her now. Perhaps Jack had been fighting Thraks so long that he was incapable of accepting their alliance—or perhaps he was right, and the mysterious, threatening Ash-Farel was not the current enemy but a new race to be contacted and negotiated with despite their reputation as the Thraks’ oldest and most deadly foe.
Amber let her thoughts sink into her despair. She was under no illusion that anything Jack did here and now was voluntary. What choice did they have? She knew the rumors permeating the ranks of his battalions. Coward. Traitor. Murderer. The emperor had brought him back in shackles.
Publicly Jack was dead. His emperor could do anything he wanted to Jack without fear of reprisal. But the man who thought that of Storm was greatly mistaken.
The panel before Amber opened suddenly, startling her and sending her thoughts scattering like dry leaves before a cold autumn wind. The emerging doctors blocked her view of Jack and they talked among themselves as they passed her, ignoring her presence.
“Remarkable condition, but I’d like to see those toe buds done before he leaves… the scar tissue will only continue to thicken until the point where we can’t consider that option—”
“Forget the implants, he balances well enough without those digits. It’s the mental profile that worries me, but for a man who was chilled down for more than half his lifetime, he spikes well enough, I guess. I wonder if Pepys knows what he’s gotten into…”
Their voices faded as they turned the corner and passed from view.
Amber turned her head slowly until the room opened up in front of her and she saw Jack sitting crookedly on a lab table, fastening the front of his tunic. Her senses flared with the sight of him, his plain but honest face unaware that she looked at him, his sandy hair darkened by exertion on the treadmill, his faded eyes focused on thoughts and events elsewhere, relaxed body still muscular from the demands of wearing battle armor. And although she’d grown up in the years she’d known him, he hadn’t aged to speak of, his body, frozen by time, that of a man in his prime.
She spoke as she entered. “Vandover says your tape has been transcribed.”
He looked up, not startled, having grown used to her catlike ways of entry and exit. He smiled, crinkling the sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “It’s going to work! I’m all cleared. Pepys should be down in a minute to discuss final arrangements.” He reached out for her and pulled her close. She found it momentarily disconcerting—he sat on the lab table, and she looked down at him.
Biting down on her lip, she made a decision. “I saw Jonathan while you were in examination,” she said.
Jonathan was Colin’s right hand, a great big bear of a man—and he was the only survivor of the Walker’s ill-fated expedition. Jack looked up, meeting her worried gaze. “He’s comatose,” she added. “He may not make it.”
“What happened?”
“They don’t know… there’s not a mark on him. He’s around the corner with more security than I’ve seen in a long time. Jack… it’s not like Colin to take Jonathan with him and then abandon him.”
“You worry too much.”
“You’ve given me a lot to worry about.”
He kissed her chin, a nibble of a kiss. In a low, intimate voice that did not match his words, he said, “I’ll want to see him before they wire me up for the cryo bay. They just told me they expect the playback imprint to run maybe four, five days.”
“Pepys left word you’re to be let in. I wouldn’t.” She swallowed. There was a heat creeping up her body, spreading from the point on her jaw where his lips rested briefly and then continued on, following the swan swoop of her neck down to the delicate bones below her throat where he paused again. She closed her eyes and, despite the attention Jack was giving her, she saw Jonathan’s vast, near lifeless body, sheeted and wired, monitors projecting the reluctance of the life force it retained.
“Do you think Jonathan would mind waiting a few minutes?”
“Minutes?” she retorted. “You’d better take your time with me, soldier. And no, I don’t think Jonathan would mind at all. He had a certain lust for life himself.” And her eyes brimmed, in spite of herself. To combat the lump in her throat, she added, “I want you, too.”
“There were times,” Jack said softly, “on board ship when I thought I could hear you breathing on the other side of the cabin wall.”
Amber shook her head. “If we’d been that close, they couldn’t have kept me from you.” She did not fight as he encircled his arms about her waist and drew her up on the exam table next to him, but she did grasp his right hand, his four-fingered hand, where the frostbite of cold sleep had taken away his little finger, and said, “Someone should do something about sealing this lab. We wouldn’t want to break quarantine.”
“I’ll take care of that,” and he voice-coded the lock with a phrase that made her laugh. And then he proceeded to do something very unorthodox to cool her fever.
For long moments, all the worlds and all the stars concentrated into the intimacy of two people entwined with one another.
Chapter 3
I intercepted a message matrix from the Green Shirts,” Vandover said, not bothering to conceal the pleased look which he knew contorted his fleshy lips.
Pepys, immersed in his control mesh, looked up with an irritated flash. “You know I’m busy.”
