Ganwold's Child

by Diann Read

  The governor had come in through the hallway door behind him with his walking stick in his hands. b’Anar Id Pa’an followed him. But Pulou had escaped.

  Renier crossed the room to press the latrine door’s switch, locking it. “Put him over the end of the bed and tie him,” he said.

  The hold on Tristan’s arms eased just enough for Rajak to shove him forward, still on his knees, and push him face down over the foot of the bed.

  “I’m sorry, my boy,” Renier said from behind him, “but the situation has become such that I can’t afford to keep you alive any longer.”

  While Rajak pinned him, Pa’an knotted cords around Tristan’s wrists, stretched his arms over the bed, tied the cords to its legs. The position made every breath an effort.

  He heard a footstep behind him, and started at the sensation of something blunt and cold gliding down his bare spine. “I wish I could assure you that your death will be quick and painless,” the governor said, “but that wouldn’t begin to repay what I owe your father.”

  The cold tip slid to the right, tracing his lowest rib. “His betrayal of me, Tristan, eventually cost the lives of my wives and children, besides the loss of my motherworld.”

  The tip withdrew—then slammed into the same spot with a force that seemed to pierce Tristan’s back. The floating rib snapped; he felt its stab when his body recoiled. His vision momentarily tunneled.

  “I’ve borne that ache for a long time, young one,” the governor said from somewhere above him. “It’s time that he learned what I’ve suffered.”

  The end of the walking stick moved up Tristan’s spine again. He shuddered.

  “And he will suffer, Tristan. He’ll ache as I have when he sees the holograms and realizes how long it took for you to die.”

  The tip paused at the nape of his neck. Withdrew once more.

  Tristan closed his eyes, clenched his teeth.

  The walking stick whistled out of nowhere, slamming red hot across the top of his shoulders. He buried his face in the bedcover to stifle an outcry and felt sweat well up all over his body.

  * *

  Pulou crouched outside the latrine door. He grimaced at the scent of human blood. It stirred his pulse, made him hyperventilate. The whistling whacks of metal on flesh pinned his ears back. The muffled screams raised his hackles, drew his lips back from his fangs. The snarl that started low in his throat swelled into a banshee’s shriek as he tore at the door.

  One claw caught in the doorframe’s seam and snapped off at the quick. He sprang back, hissing with pain, shaking his hand.

  It would take another human to open the door and let him in, he knew. There was one human who might.

  He clawed at Larielle’s door, mindless of the broken nail.

  He cringed when it opened. He touched his forehead over and over. “Peace, mother!” He panted it, beckoned. “Come! Come! Tristan is hurt!” He kept beckoning, “Come, come!” and backing away, and she followed, her expression puzzled and worried.

  She was the jwa’naan here. She could make them stop.

  * *

  Tristan closed his hands around the cords and tried to pull up on them to relieve the pressure in his chest. He couldn’t scream anymore; he could barely even breathe. His palms were slick with sweat and his fingers had become stiff. He dragged in one breath before his hands went slack.

  He didn’t hear the door sigh open, heard only a cry that wasn’t his own. “Papa, no! Papa, what in the worlds are you doing? Stop!”

  He heard a sound like a nut being crushed with a stone. And a choke. Then the metal walking stick struck the wall and the governor’s panicked voice penetrated his swooning fog. “Lari! My soul, I hit her! I didn’t even see her! My soul, her throat! Oh, Lari, my dear one! Rajak, get the medics!”

  “No . . .” Tristan gasped it, the word only a breath. He tried to raise his head, to turn it, but lightning shot through his ribs and spine.

  He couldn’t see anything but the masuk staring at something on the floor, couldn’t hear anything but the rattling gasps of someone strangling and the governor sobbing, “My soul, my soul, she’s all I have left! She’s all I have!”

  “Larielle . . .” Tristan moaned. He gulped and shuddered, and everything faded.

  Something touched his jaw, his neck, and hesitated. A hand. He let his eyes flicker open.

  “Lie still,” a distant voice urged in a whisper.

  He did.

  The hands moved to one wrist, picked at the knotted cord until it loosened, then untied the other.

  “Go limp, don’t make a sound,” the whisper said.

  Hands pulled him up from his knees and onto the bed. Something warm ran down his sides and the middle of his back and into the top of his trousers. His arms hung useless, without feeling; his chest felt crushed; his back and shoulders burned. He locked his teeth on a groan and sweat broke over him again.

  The hands eased him onto something that seemed to float—it rocked, gave as his weight settled on it—and then they pulled a sheet over his head.

  * *

  Emerging from the lift into the dispensary, Captain Weil felt something brush his leg. He glanced down. Amber eyes blinked up at him, questioning. He nodded, motioned Pulou to stay back, and let his two corpsmen go ahead of him. “Take her down to the morgue,” he said. “I can prepare this one in the trauma unit.”

  He didn’t wait for the others to maneuver the second repulsion sled on down the corridor. When the doors of the trauma room slid closed behind him, he pulled the sheet away from the youth’s head and said, “It’s going to be okay, kid. You’re going to be all right.”

  The boy groaned when Weil moved him onto the surgical table. “I’m sorry, kid,” he said.

  The gan moved around the table, began to stroke the youth’s hair with the back of his hand, began to keen. With great effort, Tristan turned his head. “Pulou . . .”

  Weil switched on the hemomanagement system at the head of the table to prime its pump and selected whole bloodsub over Parenteral-5. Reaching for packaged IV lines, he paused, reconsidered, then took a field pack from the storage cabinet instead. He tore it open on the counter and assessed its contents: medications for shock, for pain, for poisons, all in dermal infusers; aerosol cauterizer and suturing strips; two units of universal bloodsub in gravity canisters. Primitive but mobile.

  He hung one canister over the table, swabbed the youth’s forearm, set the intracatheter.

  Dulled eyes followed his motions but scarcely blinked at the momentary sting. Shock.

  Weil selected a dermal infuser, yanked off its cap with his teeth and pressed it to Tristan’s shoulder. He turned on oxygen and slipped a mask over the youth’s nose and mouth. Checked his pulse again, and blood pressure.

  He didn’t relax for several minutes.

  Using buttons like a computer’s cursor pad, he shifted scanner antennae above and below the table and adjusted the holographic display to eye level. Radio waves emitted and received between the antennae and translated into digital computer code produced a three-dimensional image in the display. Weil touched fine tuning dials, deleting muscle and skin to focus on bone, and enlarged the cervical vertebrae.

  “I’m going to put an electronic neural clip in the back of your neck, kid,” Weil said as he turned away to scrub. “You won’t be able to move as long as it’s in place but it’ll block the pain. Understand?”

  No response. He wasn’t sure the boy had heard him but he didn’t have time to ask again.

  It took only a moment and a small pair of forceps, using the ‘scanner’s display for magnification. When the tautness left the youth’s body, he sighed his relief behind his surgical hood.

  The ‘scanner revealed everything: five ribs cracked and one broken, all on the right side; seven cracked vertebral processes in the thoracic curvature; contusions and hemorrhage of both kidneys, particularly severe in the right; lacerations and contusions to a computer esti
mated thirty-one percent of the dermal surface and underlying tissues.

  Weil clenched his teeth.

  Under Pulou’s scrutiny, he stripped off Tristan’s bloodied trousers and repositioned him on the table. “I’ve got to catheterize you, kid,” he said. “He managed to bruise your kidneys.”

  “. . . killed Lari . . . ?” Tristan moaned.

  Weil paused, recalling what they’d found in the small room. The girl’s larynx had been fractured when the backlash of the governor’s stroke caught her in the throat. By the time he and the corpsmen arrived, she had already suffocated from the larynx’s swelling. Weil’s stomach turned again at recalling it. “She died quickly, Tris,” he said, even though he knew that was a lie. He added, “I’m sorry.”

  Unfocused vision touched his for a moment. Then the boy turned his face away, teeth clamped tight on his lower lip, and Weil heard his breath catch.

  Guided by the holographic display, he used a laser apparatus to cauterize and close the deepest lacerations, to fuse cracked ribs and vertebral processes.

  Maneuvering the laser apparatus away on its robotic arm, he felt the youth watching him again. Dazedly. “We’re almost done,” he said, reaching for an aerosol container. He sprayed its contents over the boy’s back with several sweeps. Mist settled into a transparent layer like a gel. “When that dries,” Weil said, “it’ll form an artificial skin that’ll peel off as yours heals. It has a topical antibiotic as well as medication to reduce swelling.”

  He set down the container, peeled off his surgical gloves, turned toward the medications locker. “I’m going to start you on a regen to help you heal more quickly and a sedative so you’ll sleep, and I’ll keep an eye on your vital signs for the first few hours. We should pretty well have you back on your feet in five or six days.”

  Tristan didn’t answer.

  But he jumped at a voice from outside the doors: “Need some help in there, sir?”

  Staff Sergeant Ricker, one of the corpsmen.

  Weil stiffened, too. “No,” he said, a little too quickly. He forced himself to take a breath. “No, I’m just about finished.” The timepanel on the far wall caught his attention. “You two might as well take off. The day shift will come in a little while.”

  “What about the pictures?”

  “I’ll process them while I’m waiting for the day staff.” He kept his voice under control.

  “All right, sir,” Ricker said. “See you tonight.”

  Weil listened to two sets of footfalls retreat up the corridor. He met Pulou’s inquisitive look and let out his breath.

  Easing Tristan back onto the med sled, he collected the catheter and IV canister, a monitor kit, blankets and sterile towels, and concealed them all under the sheet with his patient before leaving the room.

  The morgue was chilly and smelled of embalming fluids. Pulou wrinkled his nose and grimaced. Weil tried to ignore the cabinet with the new tag on it, but he felt the skin prickle at the nape of his neck.

  The slab stood at the back of the room, where light from the doorway didn’t reach. The blankets would have to suffice for padding. Weil folded each in thirds and laid them on the table. Then he shifted Tristan from the sled, positioned limbs rendered limp by the neural clip, and placed folded towels to ease pressure points.

  Pulou slipped up on the counter and watched with his head cocked as Weil hung up the IV and infused it with the sedative and regen. Watched him apply vital signs patches and make a final check of pulse and blood pressure, temperature and respirations.

  “You’re doing okay, kid,” Weil said. “Pulou will be here with you, but there’s one more precaution I think we’d better take.” He forced himself to meet the boy’s eyes as he placed dressings and suturing tape on the slab near his head. “I’m going to bandage your mouth closed. We can’t risk you moaning or something and being heard. Right now your survival depends on making people believe that you’re dead.”

  * *

  And making sure the boy’s father knows he’s still alive, Weil thought a little later. He studied the death certificate form on the terminal’s screen and wrinkled his brow.

  The situation struck him with a sudden sense of deja vu. Had it been only six months ago that he’d concocted the report about a psychological bond between gan hunting partners? Here we go again, he thought, and turned back to the task at hand.

  Leaving the death date and time blank would be too obvious. So would be filling in “Unknown.” He gave the correct date and approximate time of the beating.

  MEDICAL EXAMINER

  On an impulse he deleted the title and replaced it with Attending Physician before he entered his name.

  CAUSE OF DEATH

  That was it. He chose the words carefully: medical terms that cataloged his patient’s injuries and stated their extent. Precisely. They would mean nothing under scrutiny by the governor or the Comms Center, but any physician in known space would understand.

 

  Nineteen

  The intercom on the desktop buzzed. Lujan reached for it without turning his vision from the document on his desk terminal and hit its button. “What is it?”

  Jiron’s voice answered. “Intelligence has brought up the report you requested, sir.”

  “Tell them to come in.”

  The ensign who had briefed the previous day stepped into his office. She removed a folder from her case, extended it to him over the desk, stepped back and stayed at attention.

  “Thank you,” Lujan said, and detected—awe?—in her face, in her rigid posture. That never failed to surprise him. He smiled to put her at ease, and gestured. “Have a seat while I look at this, Ensign Dicharia.”

  She had provided imagery, an astral map, a one-page summary. He read it completely and nodded. “That’s what I suspected.” He looked up. “How many combatants are out there now?”

  “Thirty-nine, sir. Almost four carrier battle groups, plus some resupply boats.”

  “And more are expected?”

  “Probably, sir.”

  Lujan leaned back in his chair. “He’s done this before. Once at Enach with the fleet he hid near Kvist, and again when he took Adriat, five years after the Great War ended. There’s always a concealed weapon.” He straightened, placing the folder on the desktop. “Good work, Ensign. There’s one more thing. We’ll need everything you can give us about air and space defenses in the Saede system.”

  * *

  In the Triune’s private conference room Lujan said, “Issel is assembling a fleet beyond Ogata, the sixth planet in the Saede system. According to this imagery, it consisted of thirty-nine ships at oh-one-hundred this morning, and more will probably join them.” He spread the pictures on the table before the Triune and Governor Gisha. “In another five days, Ogata’s orbit will place it in an optimum position for that fleet to launch against Sostis.”

  “Sostis?” Pite Hanesson straightened in his chair. “Why do you think it’s not another force targeting Yan, Admiral?”

  “Because Renier has always worked this way,” Lujan said, “using multiple fronts to distract and divide his enemy’s forces. And because, although he wants Yan as well, his real objective has always been Sostis.”

  Hanesson sat back, eyeing the astral map and stroking his chin.

  “Wouldn’t that involve a considerable risk?” asked Ashforth.

  “Not if enough of Sostis’ defenses were diverted to Yan, which is what he seems to be counting on,” said Lujan.

  Silence. The weighted space grew more so, until Hanesson said, “What do you propose, Admiral?”

  “The Spherzah fleet that entered your spacedocks two weeks ago is ready to launch again. You have the authority to order it; I suggest that you do so. It should be in position here at Buhlig—” Lujan pointed to a minor star system on the astral map, “—when the Isselan strike force returns to real space from its first lightskip. When that’s contained, we’ll move on to Saede.”

>   “No!” Hanesson shot to his feet. “That world—”

  “—houses a main forward operating base,” Lujan said, “and ports which are vital links in Renier’s chain of logistics support. If we don’t eliminate those facilities now, they’ll be used against us again.”

  “But our enemy is Issel,” Hanesson protested, “not Saede!”

  Kun Reng-Tan raised one hand in a conciliatory motion. “A world which aides your enemy is not your ally,” he said.

  Hanesson surveyed the circle of his peers and read a grimness in their eyes, born of events and places they had survived and he had never seen. He let his hands drop to the tabletop, let his shoulders go slack. “Then you approve of the admiral’s attack on Saede?” he said to Kun at last.

  “Counterattack,” said Kun. “Yes, I do. If that fleet launches, if it comes through the Buhlig ‘skip point, then it has committed itself to attack. It has struck the first blow.”

  “And you, Alois?”

  She gave a single nod. “I approve.”

  Hanesson turned to Lujan. “I can’t in good conscience give you my own approval, Admiral Sergey, but I am overruled. Therefore, do what you must to defend Sostis.”

  Lujan acknowledged him with a nod.

  Hanesson turned to Sostis’ World Governor. “What of you, Kedar?”

  She glanced across at CINC SPAFLT. “Are the fleets ready?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “What of the resupply ships?”

  “Only twenty-five have finished on-loading.”

  Gisha looked at Lujan. “The Sixth and Eighth Fleets are standing by to launch for Yan today,” she said. “According to the information you’ve presented, Admiral, we’re at D minus nine right now. The flight to Yan will take most of that time, and the commanders will need the rest of it to establish their defense positions.”

  “The Eighth fleet and the twenty-five resupply ships will be sufficient to defend Yan,” he said, “at least initially.”

  “You’re certain of that, Lujan?”

  He said, “Nothing is certain in war, Your Honor.”

  She considered for several moments. “And the other fleets?” she asked.