Final Assault Part 9

"Come," called A'Tir as the door chimed.

N'Trol stepped into what had been D'Trelna's old office.

"Yes?" said the corsair, looking up as the engineer crossed the carpet.

"We've entered the Ghost Quadrant and are proceeding on course toward the Rift," said N'Trol, stopping in front of the big traq desk and the deceptively small woman.

"So?" said A'Tir, returning to the desk's complink and the s.h.i.+p's status report. "You think I need a progress report from you to know where we are?" She looked toward the door, frowning. "Where's your escort?"

"Vigilantly guarding my cabin door," said N'Trol. "I used the ventilation and light conduits."

A'Tir pressed a commkey. "K'Lana, two crewmen to my quarters, please. They're to remain outside unless called."

She switched off at the acknowledgement.

"What do you want, N'Trol?" said the corsair, leaning back in the big chair.

"May I?" He jerked his head toward the sofa.

A'Tir shrugged.

"You've cleared last jump point," said N'Trol, sitting. "You're within sublight of some of the Empire's lost colonies-D'Lin, notably. You can gang-draft people there, run them through forced training. So even if you don't rescue K'Tran or anyone else, you can still crew this s.h.i.+p. I think you'd rather chance the inconvenience of impressing and training a bunch of groundies than risk our hatred just for our experience. Am I right?"

The corsair looked at N'Trol with new eyes, silent for a moment. "I keep underestimating you, Engineer. I used to think you were a brilliant, misanthropic technical officer. Yet you've held your men together, and now you've antic.i.p.ated me."

She nodded. "Yes, I don't need you or your crew anymore. You're all going to take a short jump into hard vacuum at first watch."

N'Trol's face betrayed nothing. "I have a deal for you, Commander A'Tir," he said.

"Dead men don't deal, N'Trol," she said, reaching for the door switch.

N'Trol moved quickly, reaching across the desk to stop her hand as it touched the switch. "Spare my crew, and I'll get K'Tran back for you."

A'Tir looked at the blunt, competent fingers circling her wrist. "You have nice hands, Engineer," she said, brown eyes meeting his green ones. "Can you do something with them besides fix jump drives?"

"What did you have in mind?" said N'Trol, letting go and stepping back a pace.

A'Tir stood and nodded toward D'Trelna's bedroom, just the other side of the bulkhead. "I'll show you," she said and turned for the connecting door, unfastening her tunic as she walked.

"What about my deal?" said N'Trol, not moving.

"We'll discuss that while you work, Engineer," said the corsair. She turned to face him as the door hissed open. "Coming?" Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small, firm and tanned, with large, dark areolae, her belly hard and flat.

"I'm not a piece of meat, A'Tir."

She shook her head, smiling coldly. "You are what I say you are, N'Trol. And if you don't fix my problem, Engineer, we don't talk a deal."

N'Trol sighed. "I suppose I could look at your problem," he said, and followed her into the bedroom.

"D'Trelna's still asleep," said Line.

L'Guan nodded, staring out at K'Roponar, hands clasped behind his back. He stood in the asteroid's observation bubble, a small black pip on the jagged surface. Above him, K'Ronar rose, its eastern hemisphere turning to meet a new day.

L'Guan turned from the view. "Will you redeploy as prescribed in your prime directive?"

"Of course," said Line. "When so ordered by the Emperor in his capacity as Supreme Commander."

"There is no Emperor," said L'Guan. "He has no command. Just a comparative handful of us against a whole universe of AIs."

"Wrong," said Line as L'Guan, tired of the familiar exchange, stepped toward the lift.

THE MONUMENT HAD no name. Time had wiped it from the memory of U'Tria as slowly and as inexorably as the stiff winter winds off the lake had rounded the obelisk's sharp edges. A weathered, silver shaft, it rose above the choppy night waters and its own dim, uncertain reflection, a testament to forgotten men and dead ideals. no name. Time had wiped it from the memory of U'Tria as slowly and as inexorably as the stiff winter winds off the lake had rounded the obelisk's sharp edges. A weathered, silver shaft, it rose above the choppy night waters and its own dim, uncertain reflection, a testament to forgotten men and dead ideals.

The old man stood in front of the monument, looking out on the lake, then up at the Stalker, just rising in the west. Wrapping his thick winter cape tight against a sudden chill, he turned toward the monument and the village beyond.

"Blood moon," said a voice.

The old man froze for an instant, then turned. A man in Fleet uniform stood beneath the monument, the silver stars.h.i.+p on his collar now reflecting the Stalker's ocher tint.

"My Lord Margrave," said the old man with a slight bow.

"Freeholder K'Sar," said L'Wrona, walking over to the other. "Long time." He held out his hand. "Well met, Freeholder."

The old man smiled a thin smile as he took L'Wrona's hand. "Well met, My Lord. I'd hoped you'd have been back long before now. We need you."

"War," said L'Wrona, looking at the monument. "It never ends. We defeated the S'Cotar, now it's the AIs, one the precursor to the other." He looked up at the stars, toward Quadrant Blue Nine. "The Rift has opened and they're coming."

"And you've nothing to stop them?" said the freeholder.

L'Wrona looked into eyes deep set beneath the high forehead, a face seamed by decades of care. "Millions of s.h.i.+ps the size of the Stalker," he said. "All coming our way, backed by millennia of carefully nurtured hate. We're held responsible, it seems, for all the AIs' failures since . . ."

"Since the Revolt," said K'Sar.

L'Wrona looked at him, startled. "I thought only the AIs retained that bit of history. Or do you still have friends in FleetOps?"

An even stronger wind buffeted them from the lake, sending leaves swirling around the monument. K'Sar hooked his arm through L'Wrona's. "Walk me home, H'Nar. I promise you a good meal, a better brandy and a warm fire."

A few moments and they were crossing the village plaza. What L'Wrona recalled as a bustling marketplace was now a row of gutted shops, their windows smashed, broken gla.s.s and congealed duraplast puddling the scorched paving stones. Fires flickered among the ruins, people huddling around them, silently eating from Fleet survival packs, not bothering to look as freeholder and margrave walked by.

"What happened here?" asked L'Wrona.

K'Sar shrugged. "The usual. When what was left of the Fleet fell back and the S'Cotar landed, we fought ... we lost. Then they started conscription, brain wiping about a third of the survivors down to automaton level, using them to produce war goods in retooled factories. Now the S'Cotar are gone, and we're left with the ruins-physical, mental, spiritual. Fleet does what it can, but there are so many worlds in need ..."

They reached the little stream whose venerable old bridge was now just a heap of hand-tooled masonry. Someone-Fleet engineers, Planetary Guard-had thrown a field span across it, twenty meters of gray duraplast strung with thick hand cables. Crossing the bridge, the two men turned right where the footpath forked into the forest-a primeval forest of thick-trunked trees whose high canopies cloaked the Stalker and the stars.

"Home," said the Freeholder as the outline of a tall, wood-beamed house rose out of the night, a single light in one of the lower windows. The footlights flanking the pebbled path were dark.

"When are they going to get the power grid back on?" said L'Wrona as K'Sar fumbled at the lock.

"When an Emperor sits on the sceptered throne again," groused the old man. The door clicked open and they stepped into the house.

It was the same room that L'Wrona remembered from before the war, but darker, shrouded in deep shadows that danced to the flickering light from the oil lamps and the hearth: a long, wide room of broad-beamed ceiling and wide wood floors that swept on into the dining area and the darkened kitchen beyond.

"If you'd stoke the fire," said the freeholder, "I'll heat the stew." Not waiting for a reply, he moved into the kitchen, turning up the oil lamps along the way.

Throwing the hardwood logs on the fire, L'Wrona replaced the mesh screen and stepped back, rubbing his hands. As he did so, he noticed the char marks burned into the floor in front of the stone fireplace. They were small, perfectly round and patterned into two rough cl.u.s.ters a few meters from each other, the sort of marks a hand blaster set on low would leave.

As the flames rose and the heat grew, L'Wrona unfastened his battlejacket and folded it over the back of a sofa. Unstopping the decanter that stood on a side table, the margrave poured the amber-colored brandy into two of the thin crystalline goblets. As he replaced the stopper, K'Sar appeared, wheeling a small serving cart.

"Best to eat in here," said the freeholder, unfolding a pair of floor trays and setting them before two chairs to either side of the hearth. "The dining hall's s.p.a.cious but cold."

L'Wrona took a steaming bowl of v'arx stew from the cart, setting it at K'Sar's place, then took one for himself as the old man doled out the black bread. Before he sat, he placed one of the brandy goblets on the freeholder's tray, taking the other for himself.

"All kinds of rumors reach here about you, H'Nar," said K'Sar, carefully sipping the stew.

"Oh?"

"Hero on the run. Fleet's afraid to arrest you, the Imperials and Combine T'Lan want you dead." The freeholder dunked his bread in the stew, nibbled the crust. "If anyone's after you and they know you're on U'Tria, they'll be here as soon as they run your biog."

L'Wrona nodded, half listening, his eyes roaming the room. He remembered a bright-lit house, always a party for this or that occasion, music, laughter, the sound of children. As U'Tria's de facto minister of culture, a Freeholder was necessarily a visible, gregarious person. Now the house was as cold and as bleak as a tomb, while the man . . .

L'Wrona looked at the freeholder. Like the house, he decided-a bright flame all but gone.

"Your family," said the margrave, "did they survive the occupation?"

K'Sar's gaze s.h.i.+fted to the burn marks on the floor. "No," he said after a long moment, his eyes returning to L'Wrona's. "My family are all dead."

"Your grandchildren?"

"All," said K'Sar softly.

"Why've you come, H'Nar?"

"I need your help," said the margrave.

"My family has stood by yours since the High Imperial epoch," said K'Sar, setting down his spoon. "How may I help?"

"Once upon a time," said L'Wrona, picking up his brandy and leaning back in the chair, "there was an emperor who sent a fleet to stop a revolt-a revolt of our own homegrown AIs. That fleet jumped and was never seen again."

K'Sar laughed-an empty brittle sound that echoed through the rooms. "H'Nar, H'Nar. You want the recall device. You want the legendary Twelfth Fleet of the House of S'Yal."

"Surely it's possible?" said L'Wrona, sipping his brandy.

K'Sar shrugged. "Anything is possible, My Lord-but not necessarily wise.

"Why come to me?"

"Because you're an amateur archaeologist and a first-rate archivist. And the House of S'Yal's your area."

"And a difficult area it is." Pus.h.i.+ng his tray aside, the Freeholder rose and stepped to the fire. "Information is fragmentary, and much of it still cla.s.sified." He stood looking down at the fire.

"Not to a former senior officer of Fleet Intelligence, Freeholder. You may not have published everything you know about the period, but ..."

K'Sar turned back from the fire. "Consider -as no one ever seems to-the consequences of recalling the Twelfth. Over eight thousand mindslavers commanded by death-oath officers fanatically loyal to S'Yal, suddenly freed from stasis and released upon us. Think they'll be happy, H'Nar? Think they'll even be sane-thrown fifty centuries downtime, everyone and everything they knew gone?"

L'Wrona shook his head. "They're Imperial Fleet-the finest military force humanity ever fielded. They'd recover, adapt, help their own."

"The Imperial Fleet." The freeholder picked up his gla.s.s, holding it to the firelight. He sipped, then turned to face the margrave. "There were Imperial Fleets and there were Imperial Fleets, H'Nar."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"S'Yal followed T'Nil to the throne-and undid much of the good T'Nil had done. He reactivated the mindslavers. He reneged on concessions T'Nil had granted the Empire's evolving machine race. He created a fascistic command structure within Fleet and encouraged a hideous mystical religion based on his alleged ability to grant immortality to his chosen preceptors."

K'Sar tossed back his brandy and set the gla.s.s on the mantlepiece. "When the machines revolted-as well they should have-it took S'Yal by surprise. He gambled and sent his personal fleet under his most loyal admiral to hold the machine advance in check while the Fleet rallied. S'Yal's personal fleet, H'Nar, under his most loyal admiral." K'Sar pointed a finger at L'Wrona. "That, My Lord, is the Imperial Fleet we're discussing."

L'Wrona nodded silently, then finished his own brandy. "I need that Fleet, Freeholder. If the AIs break through, we're all dead anyway. Legend has it that just before S'Yal was overthrown, his technicals created a recall device and that it lies buried with him in his last citadel."

"What makes you think I've the location of the citadel?" said K'Sar, turning to toss a stout log on the fire.

"Don't toy with me, Freeholder," said L'Wrona, standing. "If you know, you owe it to the Confederation, to your oath of loyalty, to . . ." He stopped as K'Sar turned, his face suddenly white with rage.

"Don't you dare question my loyalty, My Lord Margrave," he said, voice quivering with anger. "When the S'Cotar came, they demanded the location of the Planetary Guard fallback points. I knew them and had an L-pill under my tongue, should they try to rip the information from my dying mind. But they were more clever than that. They brought in my two grandchildren, and, when I still wouldn't tell, slowly beamed them down in front of me." K'Sar pointed with both hands to the two burn marks flanking him on the floor. "Don't question my loyalty," he repeated softly.

"I wasn't questioning your loyalty, Freeholder," said L'Wrona carefully, unable to take his eyes off the nearest burn mark. The kids were too young for him to remember -born during the war, their birth announcement a vague memory. Their mother K'Yan had been his friend, though. K'Yan of the laughing eyes dead, too, he supposed.

L'Wrona looked up at the stern old man. "I "I apologize if . . ." apologize if . . ."

Sighing, K'Sar waved his hand. "It didn't happen," he said.

"The citadel's on K'Ronar, H'Nar, at a point very dear to S'Yal and the Imperial treasury -I'll give you the coordinates. But I beg you, H'Nar, be careful-S'Yal was an evil man, and he had the old knowledge. His last resting place may not be entirely ... at rest.

"You have a file on it that I could have, sir?"

The freeholder nodded. "In my study safe. I'll get it." He was back in a moment, holding a gray commwand. "Here," he said, holding it out. As L'Wrona took it, the Freeholder placed his hand atop the younger man's. "Your word," he said, looking into the margrave's eyes, "you'll make no copy of it and destroy it when you're through."

"My word on it, Freeholder," said the Margrave.

Satisfied, the old man nodded, releasing L'Wrona's hand and the commwand.

The blaster bolt took the Freeholder in the back, crumpling him to the floor between the old scorch marks, eyes staring into forever.

Whirling, L'Wrona dropped to one knee, drawing and firing as a burst of blue bolts exploded around him.

L'Wrona's three quick bolts shattered the front window, sending a stream of gla.s.s slicing into the falling body of the black-clad man with the blaster hole through his chest.

The firing had masked the faint sound of soft-soled boots slipping in from the kitchen. A sharp gasp turned L'Wrona left, blaster raised.

A woman-black-clad, short-haired, an Mil A clutched in her hand-lay facedown across the threshold, another woman straddling her, knee to the small of the back. Before the margrave could move, the woman on top pulled the other's head back by the hair and deftly slit her throat, then rose nimbly as her victim died, convulsing in a growing pool of blood.