Nightsword

by Margaret Weis

  “ ‘Honor of Valkiron, Ship of the Grand Emperor,’ ” Lewis read as the display continued to grow. “ ‘Welcome again to the true world of Avadon, and the Imperial City of Light.’ Well, that’s pleasant enough! At least it seems to know who we are.”

  “Can you get through to Griffiths?” Ellerby asked quickly. “We’ve only got a minute left until we drop out of this alternate-space drive thing.”

  Tobler’s brow furrowed again as she worked. “There doesn’t seem to be any response. This could be an automated message.”

  Lewis continued to read the message aloud. “Listen to this: ‘Our skill we gratefully extend to you. The winds that drive you home are calmed by our glory. In our caring hands shall we bring you home.’ ”

  “Wait a moment,” Tobler said suddenly. “There’s a sub-carrier that just appeared here. It’s affecting the control systems!”

  Lewis looked up. If anything, the ship was moving far more steadily that it had before. “I get it,” she said, nodding. “It’s an automated approach, Tobler. We triggered their automatic landing system … and a rather chatty one at that! Too bad, Ellerby, looks like you won’t get to land the ship on your own this time.”

  “Thanks, all the same,” the big man responded. “I’ll get more practice in later. Drive controls now read on automatic. Thirty seconds indicated for stardrive to shutdown.”

  The glowing, beautifully crafted letters continued to form overhead. “ ‘Death and war encircles our peace. Fear not, for the protecting hand of Kendis-dai and the world of his majesty are with you.’ Well, that is … just what the hell is that all about?”

  “Shutdown,” Ellerby called out.

  Somewhere outside of the command chamber, Lewis heard the ship’s drive systems begin to spin down. “Are we still on automatic?”

  “Near as I can tell,” Tobler replied, glancing across the instruments. “The ship is turning slowly … Now it’s accelerating. We seem to be on course.”

  “The approach graphics just came up on my monitor here,” Ellerby said.

  Lewis stifled a yawn. “Well, everything seems to be in order. Mr. Ellerby, would you be so kind as to turn on the external imager so that we can watch this approach? Instruments are fine, but it’s always nice to see where you’re going.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ellerby responded casually as he reached across the console to press the contact. “External visual on.”

  The dome over the command console appeared to vanish.

  Lewis nearly jumped out of her chair. “God damn!”

  The sky was on fire. That was her first thought. It was as though the stars themselves were ablaze all around Avadon. Bolts of energy laced across her vision, erupting into rolling waves of exploding gas, air, and fuel as they found their mark. Dark shapes trailing long plumes of rainbow fire streaked past them.

  “They came back!” Tobler cried out. “The Sentinels came back.”

  They sailed smoothly and quietly through the chaos exploding around them. No sound intruded on their panic. The ship didn’t waver in its course.

  “Ellerby,” Lewis barked, as she reached for her own control console, “get us out of here!”

  “Sorry, Lewis, but the autolanding sequence won’t release us,” the big man said, looking quite pale. “I keep getting a very polite message about Avadon security and to just sit back and enjoy the view.”

  Three shadows dashed across their path, followed quickly by five more, each spewing balls of destructive plasma at their prey.

  “Damn it, I can’t disengage the comm-system,” Tobler growled.

  “Talk to me, people,” Lewis said hopefully, as she punched at her own useless console. “What do we have that is working?”

  “Proximity display is on-line,” Ellerby replied. “There are … ah … I can’t tell how many ships in our immediate vicinity. Their icons crowd the screen. Each of them appears to be hostile in one form or other. It’s … well, it’s pretty confusing out there. It’s hard to tell just who is shooting at who.”

  Lewis looked up into the clear dome. “Those off to starboard are wraith ships. I recognize the Irindris city-ships, but what the hell are those large ships with the superstructure and sails?”

  A shattered hull suddenly fell across their view, blotting out the sky. Flame and atmosphere gushed from its ruptured plates as it tumbled past them.

  “There must be something we can—oh, shit!”

  Tobler and Ellerby both followed Lewis’s gaze up into the dome. One of the huge ships with the sails was slowly positioning itself directly in their path.

  “Has the Phoenix altered course at all?” Lewis gasped.

  “Course, speed, and attitude all remain unchanged,” Tobler said, her voice quivering. “Wait! We’re accelerating!”

  “Accelerating?” Lewis and Ellerby squeaked at nearly the same moment.

  “Yes … I don’t … so far as I can tell,” Tobler replied, “we’re still on what must be a standard approach vector to the city.”

  The warship continued on its course, determined to prevent the Phoenix from making landfall on the planet. In moments, Lewis could see the individual windows glowing from the superstructure.

  “Brace for impact!” she cried, knowing the act was utterly futile.

  Suddenly, a column of coherent energy erupted through the hull looming before them. In moments, three—then five—more similar columns of force sliced through the hull and decks. Their brilliant shafts lanced around the Phoenix, never touching her. The atmosphere and power the hull had held in check exploded in blinding light—a light into which the Phoenix continued to drive.

  Instinctively, Lewis covered her eyes, then forced herself to look again.

  The hull was broken in two. The Phoenix sailed smoothly between the two halves of the ruptured ship.

  “Where did that come from?” Tobler yelled.

  “It came from the planet,” Ellerby said, shaking his head as he still tried to accept what his readouts were telling him.

  “The planet is armed?” Lewis gaped.

  “Apparently, Avadon can take care of itself,” Ellerby answered. “Looks like we’ll be landing on schedule—right in the middle of a war-zone.”

  The columns of light were still cutting into the sky as the Phoenix landed. Several of the buildings around the perimeter of the city—tall, crystal structures with elegantly sweeping lines—were glowing with the same brilliant light as the weapons. The beams themselves, however, seemed to have their point of origin far overhead. Lewis had pondered this during the approach, then realized that beam weapons would have been diffused and weakened if they had to be projected from inside the atmosphere. Apparently the ancients had figured out a way of having their weapons start where their atmosphere ended—a rather convenient trick which Lewis thought might have some other intriguing applications.

  The Phoenix settled gently back into her landing bay—the same landing bay, Lewis ruefully noted, that they had left some weeks before. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” she said as she extended the landing ramp. She stepped through the airlock hatch …

  … and found herself facing a nearly solid wall of Thought-Knights, their bruk weapons leveled at all three humans.

  Ellerby slowly raised his hands over his head. “You were saying, Lewis?”

  The foremost of the Thought-Knights spoke, her voice cold and edged with anger. “We arrest you in the name of the prophet! Thine lives shall be forfeit for the darkness of your sins, vile and scurrilous creatures!”

  Lewis was also slowly raising her hands over her head, some part of her mind wondering if doing so was also considered an act of surrender in this culture. Not only that, but why was everyone talking as though they were out of some old movie? “Fine. We’re under arrest. What is the charge?”

  “You wish us to charge?” the Thought-Knight asked in surprise.

  “No!” Lewis said. How was it that the biolink seemed to make translation mistakes only at the most inopportune
times? “What is the crime that we are supposed to have committed?”

  “Ah, thine words are clear once more to my ears,” the Thought-Knight responded gravely. “Thou art arrested upon our belief that thou hast conspired to murder the prophet of Avadon, yea, even with savagery and malice. Further, thou art numbered with our enemies who do now wage war against the holy world of our destiny!”

  “Murder?” Tobler squawked. “Griffiths is murdered?”

  “Praise the ancients, nay,” the Thought-Knight responded. “The prophet lives on. He has flown to the stars in pilgrimage, now safe from your wicked and unrighteous designs.”

  “Nuts!” Lewis exclaimed. “He’s flown the coop! Now we’ve got to go and find him.”

  “Thou shalt not live to attack the prophet again!” the Thought-Knight cried out. “Brother knights! Destroy the infidels! Destroy them!”

  The Thought-Knights leaned into their weapons. Lewis caught her breath, slamming her eyes shut against the imminent pain.

  Nothing happened.

  She waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Lewis opened one eye.

  The Thought-Knights stood frozen before her.

  “Lewis,” Tobler asked timidly, “what’s going on?”

  The air between the astronauts and the Thought-Knights began to shimmer and coalesce.

  “I don’t know,” Lewis responded.

  In moments the air before them began to take form. Suddenly, a tall, robed man with shockingly white hair appeared before them.

  “Out of my way,” he said, then pushed his way past them through the airlock hatch and into the Phoenix.

  Lewis looked at her crew. They appeared to be as baffled as she was. She then turned toward the still-glaring Thought-Knights.

  “Excuse me,” she offered.

  There was no response.

  “Would you mind if we just stepped back into our spaceship for a few moments?”

  There was no response.

  Lewis wheeled and leaped back through the airlock. “Come on!”

  The three humans quickly secured the airlock and dashed hurriedly through the sweeping corridors of the ship.

  “Let’s find the old guy, get him off the ship and get the hell out of here,” Lewis puffed as they ran toward the control sphere.

  “But we’ve got to find Griffiths!” Tobler wailed.

  “Didn’t you hear those goons outside?” Lewis barked. “He’s not here! We’ve got to find him!”

  “We couldn’t find the entire Earth,” Ellerby rejoined. “How are we supposed to find Griffiths?”

  They entered the control sphere. The tall, robed man was there, hunched over the control console.

  “Well, at least we’ve found someone,” Lewis observed.

  The man turned, his white hair appearing somewhat disheveled. “Lewis. Tobler and … ah … Ellerby. The astronauts from Earth, I presume.”

  Lewis was stunned. She glanced at her companions, both of whom looked as though the slightest breath of wind might blow them over.

  “Yes,” she answered tentatively.

  “How fortunate for us both,” the man responded. “I require your assistance.”

  “You require our assistance?” she echoed, somewhat sarcastically.

  “Yes, there really isn’t a moment to lose. Your companion—Griffiths—he’s left the planet. I need to get some information from him—vital information. I need you to take me to him as quickly as possible.”

  “We don’t know where he is.” Ellerby shook his head doubtfully, wondering where this conversation was leading.

  “Oh, I know where he’s going … or will shortly. However, if we’re going to catch him, we can’t waste any time.”

  Lewis looked skeptically at the robed man.

  “You want to find Griffiths, I presume,” he said. “So do I. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Targ of Gandri.”

  “Yes?” Lewis realized from the man’s tone that he believed his name alone was full of some meaning to which Lewis had no clue. “And?”

  “And if you’ll follow my directions, I think I can find Griffiths for us both.”

  KAPPA:

  LOG

  OF THE

  BRISHAN

  15

  Interstellar Flight

  “… Fleeing from K’tan tyranny. This is Ka’ashra of Marris with the IGNM NetcastNow update for sidereal 11.2, 3247 …”

  Griffiths slumped in the command seat on the bridge of the Brishan. It was almost too comfortable, for without an effort of will—or, at a minimum, instructions to the ship’s synth Lindia to make the chair slightly uncomfortable—he would easily have dropped off into yet another blissful nap.

  “… Crystal ships of the Zharythian empire have occasionally engaged the K’tan in open battle with mixed results. In other news …”

  Griffiths yawned in spite of his better judgment, and gazed again up into the stars rushing past the clear dome around him. The Brishan was moving again. It was yet another quantum zone, the astronaut reminded himself, and therefore, yet another complete set of physical, temporal, and mystical laws that the ship had to address or it simply wouldn’t fly. He laughed softly to himself at the thought of Earth science—he had never supposed before just how myopic humanity had been. Everything from Newtonian physics to advanced quantum mechanics had been based on the accumulated scientific observations of centuries, yet no one had seriously considered that physics might have been a local condition only.

  It was rather like sitting on a South Sea island and saying that the entire universe consisted of palm trees, coconuts, and ocean. Snow, deserts, and sprawling plains would never have been considered. Earth scientists had looked out from their little island and said that the entire universe consisted of nuclear physics, biology, and chemistry. Mystic forces, etheric conductivity, and sorcery were interesting mental exercises of the imagination but had no real relationship to the physical and “real” universe of scientific observation—regardless of how limited the perspective.

  So, those same vaunted scientists had pooled all of their observed knowledge and created a wonderful spacecraft embodying all the best that their wisdom had to offer. They then stuck Griffiths, along with a number of people who were also either very brave or very stupid, at the top of their heap of collected technology and merrily launched them out among the stars in search of new discoveries which, they were confident, would confirm their old discoveries.

  The first thing that they had discovered was that their scientists had it all wrong. The universe was not one great homogenous sameness but a collection of pockets of unique mixtures of the logical and the illogical. Whatever worked within the context of its immediate vicinity was law so far as that region of space was concerned—and the first region they had entered simply didn’t recognize nuclear isotopes as being anything particularly powerful or dangerous.

  That little fact had turned what they had considered the pinnacle of human technological achievement into a drifting tub of directionless metal. Then an Irindris boarding party attacked them, of course …

  Well, he sighed, leaning further back in his invisible chair, that was another story.

  “… Objected to Aendorian totems being used during the negotiations. The Kalikari continue to insist on utilizing their own mystic sages for the duration of the treaty negotiation …”

  Griffiths shifted slightly in order to stay awake. He was having trouble concentrating on the Omnet netcast—something that Merinda, in one of her few waking moments, had insisted that he do. He wished that she had been more specific with the “why” as opposed to the “what” in his task. The netcasts took place once every fifty minutes, although he wasn’t sure why that particular interval had been decided upon.

  It was amazing to him still that things could be so diverse in the universe and yet so much the same. Take the netcasts, he thought. They were essentially the same kind of thing that one would hear on Earth except on a much grander scale. The top st
ories repeated pretty much through every day period, with slight variation as the focus and importance of various stories changed. Worse yet, many of the stories were about faraway empires and nations with which he had no mental connection at all. It was one thing to hear a story about the psionics of Prathos and their struggles with other cultures—but an entirely different matter to know just where Prathos was in any meaningful relationship to himself.

  For three days now he had patiently listened to each netcast as they rushed from zone to zone. They had made planetfall once for refit—a rushed thing that Seven-alpha-three-five had overseen personally. Griffiths had hoped to walk about the streets of the starport there. The natives looked inviting enough and he would have liked to have sampled some of their local culture—no, he admitted to himself, he just wanted to get out of the ship for a while and breathe air that he hadn’t breathed before. Yet the TyRen had insisted that there hadn’t even been time for that. The moment the loadout had been completed, the Brishan once more rose into the sky. They had passed through six separate quantum zones since then—the last one requiring that the TyRen leave the ship in deep space and rig some sort of gigantic lure to snag some kind of deep space creature to transit their current zone. He had offered to help but the TyRen had refused, saying that what Griffiths was doing was too important for him to leave it right at the moment.

  Of course, the TyRen didn’t say why it was important, either.

  “… Of Prathos. More news on this story to follow in the next netcast. The Valdori have opened a branch of their Valdori Enchantment Research Institute in the Oltearian Empire, representing the first such exchange of mystic technologies between those two nations …”

  Jeremy Griffiths turned the command chair toward the sound of the bridge hatch activating. In a moment, the massive form of the TyRen smoothly maneuvered through the opening in the clear cylinder and bowed respectfully.

  Griffiths shook his head as though to ward off a chill. It was bad enough that the designers of those things had left them with four arms but the lack of a head continued to unnerve him. He wondered for a moment if he would ever get used to it.