Declaring it does not make it so.
He brushed off the unwanted thought, the latest in that annoying string of them. And he did not rise for this unannounced intrusion. Instead he leaned back in his chair.
“You disagree with the Coalition-approved strategy?”
The portly man flushed. “Of course not. It is just hard to accept what a ragged band of rebels has done.”
“Indeed it is.”
That the man had bestirred himself to come all the way to Paledan’s office—a considerable hike, and within yards of the destroyed east wing of the council building—indicated just how unsettled the appointed governor of Ziem was. He had, no doubt, expected an easy posting here, perhaps to add to his already considerable bulk of both body and wealth before retiring to life on a more pleasant planet.
He wondered if the man would take the single chair available. Wondered if he would even fit into it. If it would hold him if he did, or shatter under the burden.
“Then why do we just accept it? Why do we not wipe them out?”
Paledan lifted a brow. “You should have told me you know where they are hiding.”
Flustered, the man shook his head. “I do not. But surely the thermal satellite—”
“Has scanned this entire planet multiple times and found nothing. No sign of an encampment, a base, or for that matter not a single group of more than twenty people gathered, outside of Zelos itself.”
“Then where in hades are they?” Sorkost yelped.
“Something I would much like to know,” Paledan agreed. “But even more, I would like to know what they are planning next.”
Sorkost paled. His hand, the one with the two missing fingers—or without them, Paledan supposed—went to his mouth as if the very thought made him ill.
“You think they will strike again?” the man asked after a moment.
“I would,” he said.
Sorkost’s eyes widened. “You put this Raider on a level with yourself?”
I am not entirely certain he is not better. “You yourself have acknowledged what he has accomplished.”
“But . . . you are the most highly decorated officer—”
He waved the man to silence. “That does not make the Raider any less of a brilliant fighter.”
He knew he was skating on the edge of heresy. For the Coalition never lost because the adversary was better. It was always bad luck, sabotage, betrayal, or the like. The document excusing the victory of the rebels on Trios and Arellia had been full of excuses enough to glaze any reader’s eyes.
Sorkost seemed at a loss for words for the moment, even his usual bombast failing him. Paledan stayed silent, letting the awkwardness grow. Finally, words broke from the man, and they held an edge of panic.
“What are we to do?”
“I understand your concern,” he said, putting on a thoughtful mien. “And I appreciate your willingness to participate. Not many in your position would be willing to actually fight.”
Sorkost gasped, paling. “What?”
“You did ask what are we to do, did you not?”
As he had expected—and planned—the man suddenly remembered crucially important business elsewhere. Paledan was glad to see him go, but he felt no more settled than he had before the man had come bursting in. After a fruitless effort to focus on the work before him—if he saw one more form to be sent out to every person of rank he thought he might hurl the processing unit through his window—he stood up.
He could not afford one of his longer excursions just now, but he would walk the perimeter again, he decided. He did his best thinking while moving. He told Brakely where he would be, and to use the comm link if he needed him.
The moment he stepped outside into the cool mist, he knew he’d made the right decision. There was something about this stuff, perhaps the way it masked the surroundings—allowing visibility for only the few yards immediately surrounding you—that aided his thinking. The removal of distraction, he supposed.
Yet when he had finished his circuit of the perimeter of the compound, he found he was still restless, and decided to walk through Zelos as well. He looked impassively at the destruction they had rained down upon this quiet place. It had been necessary, but that did not mean he had enjoyed it.
Some thought he must surely take great delight in flexing Coalition power. He could have told them, although he would not, that he took delight in nothing. He felt most things only mildly, and many not at all. Such things had been prohibited in his childhood, for he had been born on the planet that had birthed the Coalition itself. And once he’d been selected for their academy, the Coalition had finished the job of crushing what was left of such emotions out of him. He considered it a benefit; he did not feel the heights as those who had come from other places did, but neither did he plunge into despair.
At least, not until I came here.
That was a foolish thought. His injury, not this place, had weakened him. He kept walking.
He hadn’t consciously intended it, and yet he found himself again on the lane that led past what had once been the prosperous taproom run by Drake Davorin. He was not certain why he kept returning, unless it was to remind himself of the strength and abilities of his opponent, who’d been able to lead the double life he had for so long, under the very noses of the Coalition.
And it was not until he stood before the flattened building that he realized he had once more thought of the Raider as his opponent. Not as his enemy.
He became aware of someone’s presence and moved his hand to the weapon on his belt in the moment before the voice came out of the mist behind him.
“Still missing the place, too?”
“Brander Kalon,” he said, turning. His one-time chaser rival looked as he ever did, strolling nonchalantly, his dark coat swirling the mist with his passage. His eyes held the same cool insouciance, despite the ruins around him. They held something else as well, something new that Paledan couldn’t put a name to.
“You’ve been scarce.”
The man shrugged. “You never know what insanity the Raider will attempt next.”
“He’s done much more than attempt,” Paledan pointed out.
“And you are remarkably calm about it.”
He thought of Sorkost, and smiled inwardly. “Frenzy accomplishes little.”
“True enough,” Kalon agreed easily.
“He has also been scarce since his ambush succeeded.”
The man lifted a brow at him and asked, “You so easily admit he succeeded?”
“Where it’s due.”
“You have an . . . interesting code, Major.” Kalon was silent for a moment before saying, “Do you often find yourself in conflict with your overlords?”
Paledan took no offense of the characterization of the Coalition. How could he, when he had often thought it himself recently, although he had never voiced it. There was no swifter way to bring their wrath upon you, and his position was tenuous enough already.
And suddenly an impulse he’d buried, because he was not given to them by nature, surfaced. And also uncharacteristically, he acted upon it without further thought.
“You once said you could likely contact the Raider, if you wished.”
Kalon raised a brow. “Did I?”
“You did.”
“Hmm. Wonder what I was thinking?”
He had to admire the man’s casual manner. This was, after all, his lifelong friend they were speaking of. Paledan might have no experience of such bonds, but he knew from his study they existed, and how powerful they could be.
“Can you still?”
The casualness vanished, to be replaced by a considering stare. “And why would you want to know? Aside from perhaps thinking I could discover where he is and would betra
y him—and Ziem—in that manner?”
Paledan shook his head impatiently “I know you would not, if you did know.”
“There is always Jakel to assist you.”
“Do not tempt me.” His tone was sour, for the invader near his spine had just sharply reminded him of its presence. “And I believe he would have the same luck with you as he had with Davorin.”
Something flashed in Kalon’s eyes, but was quickly gone. “Drake is much, much tougher than I.”
He grimaced. “Apparently he is tougher than is possible.”
He still had no reasonable explanation for why the man he had seen in Jakel’s soundproofed cellar room, broken and so near death as not to matter, had not only survived but risen to lead his rebels on the attack that had destroyed the fusion cannon such a short time later.
“No more talk of that creature. I need only an answer to my question.”
Kalon studied him for a moment. “Perhaps I should ask why you wish to contact the Raider.”
“We met once before. I wish it again.”
“You wish to meet with the Raider? Why?”
“That is to be between us.”
Kalon frowned in obvious puzzlement. “You think he does not know what his head on a spike is worth now?”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Yet you expect him to meet with you, the leader of those who would like nothing more than that? Why would he?”
“He did not strike me as an . . . incurious man.”
“And you think him curious enough to risk it?”
“I think he knows that if I give my word, it will be kept.”
Kalon was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “I will make the effort. On one condition.”
“And you think Davorin tougher, when you dare to make conditions to a Coalition commander?”
The man looked almost startled for a moment, then smiled. “I only wished to secure your word that if I am not able to contact him, it will not be my head on that spike.”
He smiled back. “You have it.”
He watched as Kalon turned and disappeared back into the mist. And realized anew that he had missed sparring with this man.
Chapter 9
“YOU SPOKE WITH him and he wants a meeting?”
Brander nodded at Drake. Iolana felt Eirlys tense beside her at the news her mate had risked himself once more. But she said nothing. Iolana admired her self-control; she was learning quickly what it meant to love a gambler.
They had met before, the Coalition commander and the Raider, and both had walked away. But she, and she was certain Drake, were not foolish enough to think there was a guarantee it would be the same again.
“What does he wish to meet about?” Drake asked.
“He would not say. Not to me, anyway. He wanted only to know if I had a way to contact you.”
“Surely you’re not considering it, Drake?” Kye’s voice held all the tension Iolana had felt in Eirlys. “Not now, after we did such damage? The Coalition will be out for your blood more than ever now.”
“She’s right,” Eirlys agreed.
“Maybe he wants to bargain!” The exclamation came from young Kade, who had followed Brander in when he’d arrived. That Drake let him remain spoke to his belief that the boy had great potential. “Maybe he’s afraid of us now.”
“It is a glorious thought,” Drake said, careful not to smash the boy’s enthusiasm, “but I’m not sure Paledan has any fear in him.”
“Agreed,” Iolana said; there had been nothing of it in the blast she’d gotten. They all knew by now that she’d had direct contact with him, and so she did not have to explain her assessment. In this they trusted her completely. Or they trusted the Spirit, at least.
“So he has another motive,” Pryl said from where he was leaning against the cave wall. “Your head, for instance.”
Drake looked at the canny old woodsman. “So you think he would use himself as . . . bait, to lure me into a trap?”
“Make you think he wants to bargain, then capture or kill you? Sounds typically Coalition to me.”
“Especially after the blow we’ve struck,” Eirlys said.
Drake was silent for a long moment, thinking. And then he looked at Iolana.
“You have offered no opinion.”
“As your mother, I would scream no, you must not. I, and the others who love you, cannot lose you.”
“Is that what the Spirit Sees? My death?”
She shook her head. “As is too often the case, the Spirit Sees nothing actually helpful in this situation.” She had lived her entire life with the capriciousness of that part of her gift, yet it still had the capacity to exasperate her.
“And as a Davorin?” he asked softly.
She drew in a deep breath. “As a Davorin, I would say that, for this moment, you hold the upper hand, for the Coalition believes you have the mightiest weapon on Ziem.”
“For the moment,” Kye said. “If they figure out it’s only a device emitting the cannon signature . . .”
“They did not, on Trios,” Iolana said. “They never realized they’d been duped.”
“But the Triotians managed to actually build one,” Brander pointed out.
“Eventually, yes,” Iolana agreed. “But we do not know how long that took.”
“Paledan is no fool,” Drake said. “Eventually he will conclude we have no way to move a weapon of that size and power in the way the transmitting device suggests. And once he has eliminated the impossible, it is probable he will land on the likely, that it doesn’t really exist.” He glanced at Brander and added, “Yet.”
“The matter at hand?” Brander suggested, then added dryly, “Since I have no idea where to even begin with the matter of actually building a fusion cannon with what tools we have.”
Drake looked back at Iolana. “You got no feel that he was planning a trap?”
She shook her head. “None. But that is no guarantee.”
Drake nodded.
“If you’re going to do this insane thing,” Kye said, her voice remarkably even, “it should be a new meeting place, that we’ve scouted thoroughly. That way Paledan can’t prepare an ambush.”
Brander nodded. “And if we pick it right, it could throw them off on where we are now.”
Kade stirred, looking as if he wanted to speak but wasn’t sure he should try again. Drake turned to face him. “You are here because you are clever and quick, Kade. And you, just as Brander, sometimes have a view others miss. What is it?”
The boy, who had begun to practically glow at Drake’s words, spoke quickly then. “I just . . . if we chose someplace that will lead them away from the stronghold here, but also away from the old cellar, and away from where you met before, it would make it look as if we can go anywhere we please. Like they don’t matter anymore.”
For a moment they were all silent. And then, slowly, a grin spread across Drake’s face. “And never,” he said, reaching out to put a hand on Kade’s shoulder, “underestimate the power of that kind of victory.”
Kade fairly beamed under the praise. Drake turned back to Pryl. “What say you, old friend? Is there such a place?”
“There may be,” Pryl said, clearly thinking. “In the low valley, perhaps.”
“Across the Racelock?” Eirlys asked, sounded startled.
“And past their compound?” Brander asked, sounding nearly as startled.
“Which is ever more fiercely guarded now?” Kye reminded him.
Drake, on the other hand, merely waited. And Iolana smiled in spite of the grimness of the subject, to see this vivid demonstration of the leader he had become.
Pryl looked at Brander. “You have said you believe their security perimeter ends on the far side of where the
fusion cannon once sat when it guarded Zelos.”
Brander in turn looked at Kade, whose face became set as he answered steadily, “That is where my father installed it, fifty yards beyond the emplacement.”
“You’re certain?” Pryl asked.
“Since that is where they then murdered him, immediately after he threw the switch, yes, I’m certain.”
“Then it is well that we will use that against them,” Pryl said. After a moment the boy nodded.
“What have you in mind?” Drake asked.
“The foothills of the south range, overlooking that emplacement. That now empty emplacement.”
Kye let out an audible breath. “Well, that would surely chap his armor.”
“And be a worthy reminder of what he is dealing with,” Iolana said.
“As long as it doesn’t make him angry enough to take your head before you say a word,” Eirlys said, her tone more than a bit sour.
“I do not think that kind of reaction is . . . innate in him,” Iolana said. “He does not feel anger, not in that way. Or many other things.”
Drake frowned. “In what way?” he asked.
“Personally.”
“You mean as Frall did?” Eirlys asked. “Taking everything as an affront to him personally.”
“Exactly that,” Iolana said with a smile at her daughter.
“So you do not think he will attempt to take my head merely because I chose a location that could be construed as an insult?”
“He is not of that . . . delicate a nature,” she said. “But do not think him incapable of taking your head for other reasons,” she added warningly.
“I think Paledan capable of whatever he feels necessary.”
“Then you are correct.”
“How would you get there, without being seen by the troopers?” Kade asked.
Drake smiled. “A practical voice heard from,” he said approvingly. Iolana saw the look that glowed in the young man’s eyes then, and knew her son had earned the boy’s loyalty for life. “Pryl?”
“There is a way, although it is long and somewhat arduous.”
“I shudder to think how bad it is if you think it’s arduous,” Brander muttered.
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