Lost destiny

by Michael A. Stackpole

Khalsa eclipsed the light. "I apologize for such messy surroundings, but we have not completed our renovations on this building." He flicked on the lights from a switch outside the room, then pointed to a waterpipe and spigot. "You can refresh yourselves there, and something in this midden should serve as a chamber pot if you need such. The Com Guards have already dispatched a squad to take custody of you, so your wait should be no more than twenty-four hours. Again, my apologies for your lodgings, but I cannot trust you otherwise."

  Kai rolled to his knees. "Just wait until you get our return invitation to pay back your hospitality."

  Khalsa smiled painfully. "Keep your wits about you, Mr. Jewell. You'll need it." The demi-Precentor stepped back out of the doorway, and a ROM guard swung the door shut. With a grating creak and heavy thunk, the key turned in the lock.

  Kai shook his head. "You have a score for survival and evasion exercises forged into your records and you just had to make it near perfect, eh?"

  Deirdre shrugged. "The guy in administration and I were dating at the time. What can I say?"

  " 'I'm sorry' would help." Kai stood slowly and raised a finger to his lips. He pointed to the floor above and tapped his ear. Deirdre's puzzled look faded quickly as she understood his warning about possible listening devices being present.

  "I'm sorry."

  "You're forgiven." Kai nodded. The single, bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling did little but cast a web of shadows radiating out from the center of the room. The basement walls were made of fitted stones of odd sizes, shapes, and colors. Four thick, wooden, support pillars split the room into nine areas, with the one in front of the door and the one in the middle the most clear. The rest were choked with trash piled up to two meters high—all of which Kai quickly characterized as broken.

  "As long as we're going to be here for a while, we might as well make ourselves comfortable. Let's sort through this junk and see if we can find anything useful. We need a chamber pot, and anything passing for a mattress or cushions would help."

  "Yes, sir." The mock seriousness in Deirdre's reply lacked the venom she usually directed at him. She held up a battered tin stewpot. "Personal hygiene objective obtained, sir."

  Kai turned and raised an eyebrow. "You outrank me, remember, Doctor?"

  She thought for a second, then shook her head. "Military situation, let the military handle it. Military and civilian don't mix well."

  Sorting through a pile of miscellaneous tangles of wires, electric switches, and old paint cans, Kai disagreed. "As much as you hate war, Doctor, even you would have to admit military technology has positive benefits in the civilian sector."

  The sarcastic tone in her voice lowered the temperature in the room by several degrees. "Is that so, Mr. Jewell?"

  Kai coiled a frayed extension cord around his left forearm, then tossed the looped wire into the center of the floor. "Without a doubt. In your own field, you know that surgical procedures developed to deal with medical tragedies carry over into the civilian sector. Reconstructive surgery on military casualties has created techniques used to help people born with genetic defects. Even something as primitive as radar was developed for military use first, but it allows civilian air traffic and weather-detection."

  "I'll concede you the latter point, Mr. Jewell, but not the first. It is well that the means for relieving the suffering and tragedy of a war victim can be put to good use, but I'd rather not have that suffering in the first place." She stopped and clawed away at a heavy piece of canvas. "Yeeeaaagh! What's this?"

  At her yelp of horror, Kai leaped over a half-buried water heater and crossed to her side. She reached out for him and he felt her trembling. Though the thing was still partially concealed by the canvas, she hung back from a large, sluglike mass of tissue sagging at the base of the rough-stone wall. The exposed end looked hard and white and rectangular, but had nothing to indicate whether it was the head or tail.

  "Is it alive or dead?" she asked in a whisper.

  Kai yanked the rest of the canvas away. "Neither, I think." When the thing was more fully exposed to the light, Kai saw where long strings of tissue had been stripped away from the back. "This is myomer. Looks like a finger actuator from a 'Mech."

  "That is myomer? I've never ... I mean, the myomer I've used in surgery was different."

  Kai nodded. "Yeah, it probably was. This is one of the artificial muscles used to move a 'Mech's finger, all right." He pointed at the serial number on the underside of the white insertion cap. "Came from a Valkyrie. This is the industrial-strength stuff. The myomer you use in surgery is manufactured differently and has to be layered in with real muscle tissue to be useful. In surgery the stuff is used more like rubber bands."

  Folding her arms across her chest, Deirdre looked down at him. "When did you get a medical degree?"

  "My ...," Kai hesitated, "friend's mother had breast cancer. She'd had some myomer replacements in her shoulder from an old war wound, and when they discovered the cancer they did a radical mastectomy. They rebuilt her pectoralis major with myomers. The doctors explained it to him and I was there." From the distant look in her eyes, Kai knew Deirdre realized he was speaking about his own mother.

  "So what's this actuator doing here?"

  The Mech Warrior ran his hand across the area from which long strips of myomer fiber had been peeled away. "Offhand, I'd say whoever lived in this house before ran a little repair business on the side." He picked up a slender strand of wire with a bead on one end. "He may even have been a musician using myomers to replace broken guitar strings."

  "What?"

  Kai handed her the broken string he had found. "Myomers contract when an electric current is run through them. The contraction is instantaneous, but by varying the power level, you can control the amount of contraction and how quickly the fiber will lose its tension. It's a very exacting task, but with a computer chip and electric power, it's fairly easy. Some folks started experimenting with this variable-tension idea in things like tennis racquets, but it really only caught on with musicians. But with the need to rearm after the war, myomers have been hard to come by for this sort of application. Somehow the person who owned this house got an actuator and was making some money from it."

  Deirdre's face solidified into a pitiless mask. "Don't tell me—another civilian benefit of military atrocities."

  "Hey, I don't commit atrocities!"

  Deirdre turned from him. "You kill people for a living."

  Kai spun her around. "Listen to me, really listen! I do what I am called upon to do. If that results in the death of another human being, I regret it more deeply than you know."

  "Yet you keep on doing it." She tried to wrench herself free of his grasp, but his hold on her upper arms was too tight. "You keep on killing like it feeds a hunger in you."

  "When I was very young, my father told me, 'Killing a man is not easy, and never should be.' He wasn't talking about tactics, he was talking about the toll it takes on your spirit. Killing is not something I revel in. It is something I hate."

  At the mention of his father, Kai felt her go stiff, then felt the fight drain out of her. My God, it is my father! What could he have done to her? He released her and she crossed her arms over her chest, shivering as in a cold draft. She drifted off to stand near the light bulb and Kai squatted in her shadow. Now is not the time to ask her about my father. I've got to get us out of here.

  He reached down and snaked a length of garden hose from beneath a rat's-nest of heavy nylon cable and mangled bed springs. He glanced over at the water heater, then down at the hose. I have all the things I need ... Might just work, if she's willing to cooperate.

  * * *

  Demi-Precentor Khalsa keyed up Deirdre Lear's file and sighed as the computer layered colors onto her picture. There was something about her that infected him, just as it had the first time he saw her. The way she moved and the light, polite laughter that rolled musically from her slender throat. From the first, she had appeared in his dreams
—and then to find her here in his office.

  Fate, he thought, was compensating him for having dumped him on such a backwater world.

  And you are spurning its gift! It struck him like a physical blow that the object of desires ComStar should long since have trained out of him was in his hands, and he had stuck her in a dark, dank hole with a young, virile man to comfort and chase away her fears. How could I be so foolish?

  As his fantasy world started to implode, the demi-Precentor mentally chastened himself and moved to remedy the situation. "I can segregate her from Jewell and make sure she is not taken off to the Reeducation Center." The memory of an earlier visit to that facility made him shudder. "No, she should not be wasted there."

  Khalsa heaved himself up out of his chair and quit his office. At the door heading down into the basement, he waggled a finger, causing two ROM guards to follow him down the wooden stairs. He crossed to the door and flicked open the little viewport, but saw nothing.

  With a frown, he stepped over to the light switch. "The light is out, but the switch is on." The ROM guards stepped closer to look through the viewport, and Khalsa flicked the switch up and down several times. "They've broken the bulb!"

  As Jewell usurped the demi-Precentor's place in his erotic fantasies about Deirdre Lear, the ComStar bureaucrat quivered with rage. Giving the light switch a last flip, he pointed at the door. "Open it! Open it!"

  In the 1.27 seconds it took from Kai's activation of the cut-out switch connected to the light, to the power drain knocking that whole city sector from the power grid, the damaged myomer actuator contracted. It went from a gelatinous consistency to one of spun steel as it snapped taut, cracking both the pillars to which it had been bound with nylon cables. When the power died, the myomer relaxed, too soon for it to bring down the house, but not soon enough to prevent it from accomplishing the task for which it had been prepared.

  The water heater, filled up to the crack in its side with water, launched forward like a stone from a slingshot. As it left the myomer, it began a slow rotation, with the lower, heavier section lagging slightly behind the upper part. Kai saw the cylinder slam into the door, blasting the half-rotted wood into a cloud of splinters. He heard one man's muffled scream of pain, then another snapping sound.

  The projectile continued its flight, skipping off bodies and the cellar corridor until it hit the far wall and crumpled. Water gushed from the crack and slowly spread back along the floor. In the glare of battery-powered emergency lights, it looked like an oversized beer can that had been mashed underfoot.

  Squinting against the harsh illumination from the emergency black-out lights, Kai shot forward and leaped from the room. With a snap-kick to the chest, he sent the demi-Precentor spinning into the far wall. As the corpulent man collapsed in a moaning heap, Kai plucked the autorifle from the first ROM guard's dead hands, then stripped off his ammo belt. He looped it over a shoulder, then looked toward Deirdre. "C'mon, do it!"

  Motion above him caused him to backpedal and bring the autorifle up. A ROM guard at the head of the stairs jerked his trigger at the same moment Kai tightened down on his. Both guns filled the cellar with smoke and strobing muzzle-flashes. The ROM guard's throat exploded in a spray of blood, then his nearly severed head lolled to the side as his body toppled back into the hallway above.

  Kai felt the impact of three bullets as they hit his chest.

  Knocked off his feet, he crashed back against the wall. His head hit hard and sizzling rainbow lights exploded before his eyes. As darkness began to close in around him, he tried to fight it off, but blacked out nonetheless.

  When his eyes snapped open again, Kai knew from the smoke still drifting upward and the single, bloody rivulet dripping down step by step that he'd only been out for a second or two. The pain in his chest that came with each breath reminded him of the ROM guard's marksmanship.

  Deirdre dropped to her knees beside him. "Oh God, I've got to get you to some place where I can operate."

  Kai rested his left hand on her shoulder. "Just help me up."

  "You can't. You have to lie still. Massive chest trauma." She bent over him and peered into his eyes. "Pupils are slightly dilated. You must be in shock."

  "I'm just in pain." He patted his chest with his right hand. "I've got my cooling vest on, remember? Ballistic cloth. It stopped the bullets, but I think ribs got bruised."

  "Or broken. Be careful." She helped him to his feet and pulled the ammo belt from the second ROM guard without his asking. "How do you feel?"

  "Rocky. I blacked out for a second." He shook his head to clear it, but was less than satisfied with the result. "We have to get out of here."

  She looked down at the ComStar staffers. "The first guard's dead. His neck is broken. The other two are just out cold. Are you going to finish them?"

  He looked at her as if she were mad and mounted the stairs. "They're no threat. Let's move." Hugging his left arm to his ribs, he worked his way up the stairs with the autorifle's muzzle leading the way. At the first-floor landing, Kai crouched near the body of the man he'd shot, but saw no one. He signaled Deirdre to follow him and cut down the hallway to the demi-Precentor's office.

  They ducked inside and Deirdre shut the door behind them. "Why are we here? Let's just go!"

  Kai walked over to Khalsa's desk. "Can't. I made a promise." He scooped Dave Jewell's holographs into the small pack he'd brought to the ComStar center. He checked it and smiled when he saw his pistol and the survival knife still in their place.

  "Besides, I want to see what the demi-Precentor can offer us to help our escape." He wrenched open the central desk drawer and nodded. He scooped out a series of magnetic cards and tucked them into a pocket. "Trip-cards. All we have to do is get to the garage in this place and his hovercar will provide us a way out."

  Deirdre nodded. "Let's go. Hurry."

  Kai dropped a new clip into the autorifle and shook his head. "One more thing. We pay this clown back for betraying us." He tracked a burst of fire across the desk, then along the wood-paneled walls. The computer console exploded and a few splintered paintings dropped to the floor.

  Deirdre clapped her hands over her ears. "It's a good thing you're a warrior," she shouted.

  "Why?" Kai asked as he put another clip into the gun.

  "You make a lousy decorator."

  * * *

  Khalsa's harsh stare sent his subordinate scurrying from the ravaged office, but had no effect on the Clan Elemental standing before him. The plaster on his left-arm cast had not yet dried, and it felt cold and clammy pressed over the dressings binding his ribs and shattered collarbone. The painkillers even made him feel a bit loopy, but his sense of duty to ComStar cut through the narcotic haze.

  "I was quite reluctant to summon you, Star Captain, but I had no choice. You see what he did, don't you?"

  The Elemental nodded solemnly. Even without his armor, Khalsa thought the man improbably large. His close-cropped blond hair and military bearing contrasted with the brightness of his blue eyes, at least to the demi-Precentor's way of thinking. Not the eyes of a killer.

  "I saw his handiwork throughout your station here, demi-Precentor. Pity about the chandelier in the foyer." The Elemental kept his hands clasped at the small of his back. "Had you informed us about your capture of a FedCom, we would have taken him off your hands with less inconvenience for you."

  Khalsa bristled at the derision in the man's voice. "Yes, Star Captain, I am certain you would have, but my authority here allows me to determine the disposition of those people we capture, as you have control of those people you capture. This Dave Jewell is obviously very dangerous, so I have called you in."

  "He kidnapped Dr. Lear, perhaps with some hideous motive, and stole my Migliore hovercar." Khalsa picked up a sheet of paper from his war-ravaged desk. "This is a list of the destinations and routes for the trip-cards he stole." He extended it to the Elemental, but the man did not take it.

  "From everything I have seen, he wi
ll use your vehicle as a decoy. It does not matter where it ends up, he will not be there." The Elemental studied the line of bullet holes tracking along the wall. "I can also tell you the woman is traveling with him of her own accord."

  Khalsa's eyes narrowed. He did not care in the least for the condescension in the man's voice. "And how, pray do tell me, do you know all this?"

  The Elemental continued studying the damage until it brought him to the desk and Khalsa again. "Shooting this place up took time, during which she could have escaped him. Furthermore, they looted your first-aid center, taking things that she, as a doctor, knew would be useful on the run. Their partnership has allowed them to live behind enemy lines since we took this planet. If they were not working together, we would have had them before this."

  Khalsa could not believe the admiration he heard in the Elemental's voice. He slammed the paper and his fist down on the table. "You think this is amusing! Well, I do not! I want Dave Jewell's head on a stick. Do you hear me? On a stick!"

  The Elemental stared hard at Khalsa and the demi-Precentor felt a chill run up his spine. "Let them run, Khalsa. We will get them eventually. Where can they go?"

  "I don't care where they can go, Taman Malthus, and I do not want them 'eventually.' They are a disruptive influence on this world, and in my capacity as planetary administrator, I order you to make their capture your first priority!"

  The Elemental swallowed hard. "As you wish, demi-Precentor. Your will is now mine."

  12

  Imperial City, Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  19 February 3052

  Shin Yodama, sore from travel and the multi-G journey into Luthien, tried to hold himself as tall as possible in the briefing room. He struggled to keep the disgust and fury from his face as Tai-sa Alfred Tojiro and Tai-sa Kim Kwi-Nam made their case to Takashi Kurita. They twist words and facts to justify slaughtering their own men.

  Alfred Tojiro's wrinkled face wore a pained expression of regret. "We would have defeated them, driven them from Teniente, had our strategy been allowed to unfold. Our men were valiant and refused to succumb to baseless stories about the Clans and their invincibility. We were prepared to add the name Teniente to the names Luthien and Wolcott as places where the Clans knew defeat."