Conquerors 1 - Conquerors' Pride

by Timothy Zahn

  "Yes," Aric breathed, pulling out the orange injector and popping off its cover.

  "Start with one dosage," Max said. "We'll see how it goes from there."

  "Right." Pressing the flat edge of the injector against Pheylan's skin, Aric touched the trigger. "Any change?"

  "One moment," Max said. "Yes, it's definitely helping. I believe he's out of danger, at least for the moment."

  "We can do a more complete check when we get back to the fueler," Quinn added. "Might as well get some use out of that miniature pharmacy your sister stuffed aboard."

  Wrapping his arms around his brother, Aric hugged him as he hadn't since childhood. They'd done it. They'd really done it. "Thank you, Quinn," he said quietly, his eyes filling with tears. "And all of you."

  "Our pleasure," Quinn said. "Let's go home."

  "We've decided to head directly for Edo," Aric said, hovering in the doorway. "Dorcas and the Mrach worlds are closer, but Quinn thinks that Colonel Holloway might still be too mad at us to listen before he threw us all into the stockade."

  "Probably wouldn't be able to do anything even if he wanted to," Pheylan said, taking a sip of coffee - real, genuine Earth coffee - from his squeeze bottle. "Not unless Command's reassigned some warships to the region."

  "True," Aric agreed. "They hadn't as of four days ago, anyway. And under the circumstances, none of us liked the idea of taking any of this into Mrach space."

  "Can't say I blame you," Pheylan said. "Though I have to point out that the whole idea is probably a waste of time. Even if Command authorizes an expeditionary force to go back there, we're talking a good eighty hours of transit time, plus whatever it takes to throw the force together. Plenty of time for the Zhirrzh to pack up shop and clear out."

  "Quinn knows that," Aric said. "There might still be some rubble left worth sifting through."

  "Maybe. Might be a pleasant diversion from court-martial paperwork for them, anyway."

  "Thanks for the reminder," Aric said, making a face at him. "I trust you'll be able to find time during your busy debriefing schedule to come by as character witness for the defense."

  "Don't worry," Pheylan promised. "Trust me - I'll lay 'em dead in the aisles."

  Aric's smile faded. "You were lucky," he said quietly. "You know that, don't you? They should have killed you the second they knew we were coming. All I can figure is that they thought they'd already finished you off."

  Pheylan sipped again at his coffee, freshly aware of the dull throbbing in his shoulder where Thrr-gilag had stabbed him. There was sense in that, of course. He'd learned a lot about the Zhirrzh during his captivity; surely they wouldn't have wanted him rescued to take all that information back.

  And yet... "No," he said slowly. "I don't think Thrr-gilag was trying to kill me. You haven't seen those tongues of theirs, Aric - damn things work like gutting knives. He could have ripped me clear to the bone and dumped in enough of that poison to kill me where I sat. Or skipped the poison routine entirely and just sliced my throat."

  Aric shivered. "Maybe."

  "No maybes about it," Pheylan told him. "He had to have been just trying to knock me out so they could haul me back to my cell. With that hologram sent in to distract me while he sliced up the obedience suit and took his shot."

  "Must have been one impressive hologram," Aric said. "That still doesn't explain why he didn't change his mind when Paladin came roaring in over the trees at them."

  Or why he or the Zhirrzh tech hadn't attacked long before they reached the Mrach ship, come to think of it. Had they been afraid Pheylan would be quick enough to break their necks before he succumbed to the poison? "Maybe he didn't have time," Pheylan said. "Maybe he panicked. Or maybe..."

  "What?"

  "It's a long shot," Pheylan said. "A real long shot. But maybe those little seeds of uncertainty I tried to plant in Thrr-gilag were finally starting to take root. Maybe he'd started to wonder if his leaders had lied about what happened at the Jutland battle."

  "I suppose that's possible," Aric said doubtfully. "But I wouldn't count very hard on it if I were you. You're asking him to take the word of an alien over his own people."

  "He was thinking about it," Pheylan insisted. "He really was. He'll check into it."

  "Maybe." Aric rubbed his cheek. "Speaking of aliens, you have any thoughts about that Mrach courier ship?"

  "Not really," Pheylan shook his head. "The most likely possibility is that they ran into it at that mining world you mentioned, shot it out of the sky, and took it home as a souvenir."

  "Figuring out how to fly it en route?"

  "It would have been a little tricky," Pheylan conceded. "But on the other hand, I was outside pretty soon after it landed and never saw any actual Mrachanis." He shrugged. "Though on the other hand, the Zhirrzh could have just gotten them inside quickly."

  "That's what I like about you, Pheylan: you always keep things clear-cut," Aric said dryly. "Well, at least that one's not our problem."

  "Just as well," Pheylan said, setting his squeeze bottle on its patch and adjusting the straps on his sleep pad. "We're going to have enough on our hands just getting you, Dad, Quinn, and Melinda out from under all this."

  "Not a problem," Aric assured him, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. "Quinn and I are heroes now, you know, and you can't jail your heroes. And with Dad's connections, he and Melinda are probably already back home wondering what's taking us so long."

  "I hope you're right," Pheylan said.

  "Of course I'm right," Aric soothed him. "Besides, medical types with Melinda's credentials are far too valuable to lock away somewhere." Reaching into the room, he switched off the light. "Anyway. Max says you should get some rest. War may be looming on the horizon, but that's no reason we shouldn't catch up on our sleep."

  Pheylan reached up to rub his sore shoulder. "If the war hasn't already started," he said quietly. "It wasn't more than three days ago that Thrr-gilag was asking some rather insistent questions about the Copperheads."

  Aric grimaced. "Well... if it's started, it's started. We'll know one way or another soon enough. You just get your rest. For the moment, anyway, the Cavanaghs are out of it."

  25

  They found Ezer Sholom buried away in a surprisingly elegant apartment in an otherwise nondescript part of Mig-Ka City, barely five blocks from the run-down apartment house where Fibbit had been living.

  Buried away, looking frail and old. And barely breathing.

  "What's happened to him?" Cavanagh asked as one of Bronski's men wrapped the diagnostic band of a Peacekeeper medic box around his wrist.

  "I don't know," Bronski said, sniffing the air suspiciously as he looked around the room. "Stress, maybe. Old age." He glanced around, gestured to one of his men. "Daschka, I want you to start checking out the area. All the bordering apartments, likely outside spots for bouncer setups - you know the routine. Leave Cho Ming on the door; you can take everyone else. You find any Mrachanis hanging around, you put 'em under detention - my authority and to hell with any diplomatic niceties."

  "Right," Daschka nodded. "You heard him, gentlemen. Let's go."

  He left, taking the rest of Bronski's squad with him.

  "What are they looking for?" Cavanagh asked, taking a couple of experimental sniffs of his own. He couldn't smell anything.

  "There's a smell in here that could be the residue from a hypnotic inducer," Kolchin told him. "If the Mrachanis were in a hurry to get information out of Sholom, they might have used something like that."

  "Or abused something like that," Bronski growled. "Hypnotics are tricky to handle, and I doubt the Mrachanis have had much practice using them on humans."

  "You might be surprised," Cavanagh said. He looked over at Lee, glowering out one of the windows. "Certainly seems to have been worth the effort to come find him."

  Lee didn't reply. He hadn't said much at all since Bronski had pulled rank on him and taken them off Phormbi sixteen hours ago. "Well, they were certainly
treating him like peerage otherwise," Bronski commented, glancing around the apartment. "We're definitely going to want to backtrack this. Find out when and how they got him to move in here."

  "Sir, I've got a positive on a foreign substance in his bloodstream," the man crouched over Sholom said. "You were right on the nose: it reads out as a hypnotic. The box is mixing up a counteractive - he should be all right in a few minutes."

  "Good job, Eisen," Bronski said. "Stay with him."

  "Yes, sir."

  There was a movement across the apartment, and Cavanagh turned to see Bronski's man Garcia come in. One look at his face -

  "What is it?" Bronski asked.

  "You asked me to go pull the Peacekeeper file from the last skitter into Mra-mig," Garcia said, his voice as grim as his face. "I didn't think this was something I should put across the phone system. Seems the Conquerors have hit Dorcas, Kalevala, and Massif."

  Bronski's lip twitched. "Confirmed?"

  "We've got two confirmations on the Dorcas attack: one from a man named McPhee from Parlimin VanDiver's staff, the other from the captain of Lord Cavanagh's private yacht. No information yet as to damage or situation. The Massif and Kalevala hits have yet to be confirmed. Command is sending task forces to check things out."

  "Yeah," Bronski growled. "Well, it's started."

  "Yes, sir." Garcia looked at Cavanagh. "One other interesting bit of information in that packet: Lord Cavanagh's son and daughter have been charged with grand theft of Peacekeeper property."

  "I knew it," Lee snapped, turning away from the window. "I told you he was dirty, Bronski - I told you a hundred times. But you wouldn't listen."

  "Shut up, Lee," Bronski said. "The report say whether the son and daughter are in custody?"

  "The son isn't," Garcia said. "He's off somewhere with some stolen Peacekeeper fighters - there weren't any other details. The daughter is in detention on Dorcas."

  Cavanagh's chest tightened. "On Dorcas?" he demanded. "You just said Dorcas was under attack."

  Garcia shrugged. "Apparently, this VanDiver aide was supposed to take her out, but at the last minute the local commander decided to keep her there. That's all we know."

  "Probably all we're going to know for a while, too," Bronski said. "All right. Daschka's out looking for whatever surveillance post the Mrachanis had set up here. Go give him a hand."

  "Yes, sir." Turning, Garcia left the apartment.

  "We have to get out there right away," Cavanagh said quietly to Kolchin as Garcia left the apartment. "Call Hill - tell him to charter us a ship. We'll need to get to Avon, connect back up with the Cavatina, and get out to Dorcas."

  He'd been talking quietly. Apparently, not quietly enough. "Don't even think it, Cavanagh," Bronski said, looking over at him. "You're not going anywhere until we get all this straightened out."

  "Brigadier, my daughter's in a war zone."

  "And you're especially not going into a war zone," Bronski added. His lip twisted, a glimmer of sympathy edging through the professional cast-metal set of his face. "Look, I know how you feel. But the last thing we need is a civilian spinning around getting in the way. Let the professionals deal with it, all right? They'll get an attack fleet there; NorCoord will put CIRCE back together - "

  "CIRCE," a weak voice murmured.

  They all looked down at the old man lying on the floor. "Mr. Sholom?" Bronski said, dropping to one knee beside him". "I'm Brigadier Petr Bronski of NorCoord Military Intelligence. How are you feeling?"

  "Absolutely wonderful," Sholom said, a dreamy smile creasing his face. "I'm floating where no one has ever seen."

  "Yeah," Bronski said. "Well, it'll wear off soon enough. Anyway, you're safe now."

  Sholom's smile turned bittersweet. "Safe, you say? Safe? No. It's all false, sir - all of it. No one is safe. The Conquerors are coming."

  Bronski frowned at Eisen. "What is all this?"

  "Residual effects of the hypnotic," Eisen told him. "I've seen this before. There'll be a few minutes of it while he comes back up out of the overdose."

  "Okay. It's all right, Mr. Sholom. You'll be all right in a minute."

  "Will I?" Sholom countered. "Will I really?" He shook his head. "None of us are going to be safe, Brigadier Bronski. Not from the Conquerors; not from anyone. I know, you see," he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially. "I figured it out. No one knew that I had; but I did. And I never told anyone. It was a fluke of nature, you see. A million-to-one coincidence. Maybe even a billion to one. But NorCoord was clever. Or maybe just desperate. Or maybe just too proud to pass up the chance. They took what happened and ran with it. Came up with a soap-bubble explanation and name and a way to use it. And it worked. It ended the war."

  Bronski looked at Eisen again, got a puzzled shrug in return. "I don't understand," he said to Sholom. "What are you talking about?"

  "Celadon, of course," Sholom said quietly. Suddenly the dreaminess was gone from his face; and in its place was the same guilt-tinged fear that Cavanagh had seen in Fibbit's threading of him. "It was the surge from a massive solar flare. That's all it was. Coming up just as the Pawolian ships sprung their trap. It came up behind them, you see, just as they left the protective cover of the planetary umbra. They couldn't see it coming, of course - they were in the umbra. A million-to-one coincidence. Maybe a billion to one."

  "Sir?" Eisen put in urgently, jerking his head toward Cavanagh. "I don't think civilians should be hearing this."

  "It's all right," Bronski said, his voice grim. "Anyway, it's already too late. Go on, Mr. Sholom. What happened then?"

  Sholom's lip twisted. "What do you mean, what happened then? It killed them, of course, that's what happened then. All that radiation surged right up through the drive nozzles where there weren't any dipole protection fields. And then it just bounced around inside the ships. Focused and concentrated by all that superdense metal and liquid reflectors that were there to keep radiation out." He gazed out at nothing. "Bounced around until it killed them."

  Bronski's face was that of a man walking through a graveyard at midnight. "Are you saying," he asked quietly, "that CIRCE doesn't exist?"

  Sholom shook his head. "It doesn't. It never did. I figured it out, you see. I wondered why no one had even heard of something like that being in development until it was announced after Celadon. It was because there was never anything. I figured it out. But I didn't say anything."

  "Why not?" Cavanagh asked.

  Sholom shook his head again, his eyes filling with tears. "It was keeping the peace; don't you see? It was the threat of CIRCE that kept the Pawoles from fighting. It kept the Yycromae from fighting. It kept everyone from fighting."

  "It's not going to keep the Conquerors from fighting," Kolchin said.

  Sholom closed his eyes. "I know," he murmured. "I know. Perhaps NorCoord should have admitted it a long time ago. Such pride, to think they could use a myth to ensure peace. Such foolish, foolish pride..."

  He trailed off, and for a long minute the room was silent. Cavanagh stared at the old man, the pounding of his heart like the sound of the universe crashing down around him. CIRCE had given him his life once, ending a war that might otherwise have killed him. Later it had given him hours of fear as he waited for it to begin the series of wars that would rip the Commonwealth apart and burn civilization down to ash. And then, three weeks ago, it had once again given him hope. Hope, this time, that the unstoppable Conquerors could in fact be stopped.

  And none of it had been real. None of it.

  Bronski took a deep breath. "Is he stable yet? Eisen?"

  Eisen's eyes seemed to come back from a long way away. "Yes, sir, he'll be fine," he said, the words coming out with difficulty.

  "All right," Bronski said. "Everyone in this room is hereby remanded to full quarantine confinement. Get that strap off him - "

  "Wait a minute," Lee cut him off as Eisen set to work on the medic box. "You can't lock us up like junior officers, Brigadier. As a member of P
arlimin VanDiver's staff - "

  "Shut it down, Lee," Bronski advised him. "At the moment I don't care a Meert's moltings who or what you are. You're going into quarantine until I can find out whether any of this is true. And what the hell we do if it is."

  "There'll be records," Cavanagh murmured. "Radiation records from the NorCoord ships at the battle. Brigadier, what about my daughter? I cant just sit back and do nothing when she's in danger like this."

  "I'm sorry, Lord Cavanagh, but I've got no choice," Bronski gritted. "And to be perfectly honest, after that little private talk of ours on Phormbi, you were for the lockbox anyway. Eisen, go out and get Cho Ming off the door."

  "Yes, sir," Eisen said, getting up and heading for the door.

  "You're making a serious mistake, Brigadier," Lee said, biting out each word. "You can't make a parliamentary aide simply disappear."

  "I can and I - damn!" Abruptly, Bronski grabbed for the inside of his jacket -

  And froze there, his face stiff and unreadable, his eyes focused on something over Cavanagh's shoulder. Chest tightening again, Cavanagh turned to look.

  Kolchin was standing there quietly, Eisen's limp form on the floor at his feet, Eisen's flechette gun in his hand. Pointed at Bronski. "Nice and slow, Brigadier," he advised. "Pull your hand out. Empty."

  "Are you insane?" Bronski hissed, easing his hand away from his jacket again. "You can't get away with this."

  "Lord Cavanagh needs to see to his daughter, sir," Kolchin said mildly. "He can't do that locked up in a quarantine cell."

  "He's going to be there for life if you don't put that gun down," Bronski snarled. "Cavanagh - tell him."

  Cavanagh looked at Kolchin. Bronski was right, of course. It was insane to think he could do anything for Melinda.

  But to be locked up, unable to do anything at all, while the Conquerors began a war around her... "The Jutland fleet tried to stop the Conquerors," he reminded Bronski, stepping up beside him and carefully relieving him of his concealed flechette pistol. "They couldn't do it. If CIRCE is really nothing more than a well-crafted myth, we're going to need some brand-new approach to fighting them."