The Arsenal of Miracles

by Gardner Fox

  Three moons made bright silver of the flat red surface of ancient Makkador. Pale light flooded the cobbled streets and where it touched the bricks and masonry of the buildings in the su’udar stews, they gleamed as with glowing fire. In the distance, summoning the faithful who worshipped Kronn to the dawn service, a bell tolled mournfully. The wind that had swept the red deserts to the north all night long was dying now in fitful little gusts that powdered the empty streets and stark gray walls of the stone buildings with scarlet dust.

  The woman walked swiftly with a feline stride that ate at distance, yet seemed as effortless as the padding of a panther. Bran aped her stride, stalking slightly behind her, a giant of a man whose long yellow hair was caught in a platinum torque in the fashion of the Akkan outlanders. His a-gun thumped its leather holster against his thigh as the white fur kilt swung to his every step.

  He waited until the tavern was behind them by five hundred paces. Then he asked, “Why did you come back into my life, witch-woman?”

  She walked on until she came to a fountain that had been dry for centuries, turning there and putting back a fold of the cowl to look up at him. “I knew a man once, a man who said he loved me. Yet he believed the lies they told him on Earth and never came back to me as he said he would. I came after him, instead.”

  His hand went out to her shoulder, caught it through the silken chlamys and held it firmly. Though his clasp must have hurt, she did no more than shiver.

  “You violated your agreement. You moved your people off Kuleen.”

  “And why shouldn’t I? You told me to.”

  “Not I,” he said soberly. “You and I knew our agreement. You were to keep the Lyanir on Kuleen as token of your friendliness while I did what I could to induce the Empire to accept you into its hegemony of races.”

  There was a troubled quaver in her voice. “I kept possession of the ’gram you radioed me. It was signed by you. I knew you well enough—in those days—to recognize your signature.”

  His sigh was bitter. “Then someone forged it. I sent no ’gram. I was fighting—and winning—a battle to get Empire to give you living room on the Veil planets, empty worlds no one’s ever colonized because they’re pretty far off the normal trade routes. They’d have been ideal for the Lyanir, far enough from everybody else to give both your people and mine time to get accustomed to the idea of integration without causing incidents by daily shoulder-jostling.”

  “What happened, Bran?”

  His laugh was raw with suppressed anger. “One of the ambitious boys at headquarters got jealous. Evran Dallish, or Alvar Drexel, or David Uronogian. Or—someone else. They were all Commanders, as I was.”

  “I—I don’t understand?”

  “What’s to understand? One of them decided I was getting too big for my britches. He forged my name and sent the ’gram. When the Lyanir moved off Kuleen to Yvrilis, it was made to look like an attempt to force a quick acceptance of my plan. Empire doesn’t like to be threatened. The powers that be decided I’d make a fine teacher for wet-behind-the-ears cadets. They offered me a superintendency of the Academy. I didn’t want it and resigned.”

  “You ran away,” she accused.

  “I went to find you,” he pointed out. “I didn’t.”

  They were standing so near in the shadow of the fountain her thigh pressed into him. The hand that had held her arm so tightly was stroking it now, up to her shoulder and behind her throat, fingers clamping the hood so he could drag it down away from the white face and green eyes and silver hair of the queen of the alien Lyanir. His hot black eyes searched first the red mouth and straight nose and broad forehead where the moonlight touched them. Her long-lashed eyes misted in tears as they stared up at him. When the hood came fully away, her silver hair, long and soft and seemingly filled with pallid fire, was a cloud about the loveliness of her features.

  “Peganna,” he whispered.

  In his memory he tasted the soft moist flesh of her mouth and felt her arms enclosing him as once they had done, so long ago. She stood proud in her white beauty there under the three moons of Makkador while she studied the hard lines on his face with pitying eyes. We could have had so much, he and I, had not Subb of the Hundred Hates thrust his will upon us! Sighing gently, she raised the white hood with its fretwork of purple dye and rearranged it about her face.

  Eight years before, a race of humanoids who called themselves the Lyanir had swept in toward the Border planets of Earth Empire from the outer stars. In a thousand great star-ships they had crossed the voids between the Tucanae cluster and the Rim planets. Even moving through interdimensional space, the voyage had taken them centuries. They were hungry for fresh air, for sunlight, for fresh foods grown in normal dirt and for the taste of natural meat, not its manufactured equivalents.

  They had come in peace, contacting the Rim world of Keshabar. In panic, the Keshabar forces had opened fire. The Lyanir shot back. There had been no attempt at negotiation, to arrive at a meeting of human and humanoid minds. Two fleets of the Empire Interstellar Command went out to meet the invaders and were swept into powdery non-existence by strange rays that acted as does a vacuum on certain metals.

  Empire sent its youngest Commander, Bran Magannon, out to meet the Lyanir. Commander Magannon gathered up what he could of the powdered hulks of those first two fleets and ordered the powder analyzed. By driving his Ordnance experts day and night he evolved a metallic compound that the Lyanir rays could not harm.

  Once able to get his cruisers within missile range of the alien ships, he wrecked them in a running fight between Keshabar and Kuleen. The name of Bran Magannon was half a legend, already; it had been Captain Magannon who had destroyed the growing power of the sikals on Ceti-21; as Commander Magannon he had shattered the power of the Pumars a million miles outside Fomalhaut. With this latest victory he stood next in line to become Fleet Admiral. His name was a by-word from Earth to Moorn, his fame a toy for small boys to play at winning.

  Such success will breed jealousy among both equals and superiors. While Commander Magannon was meeting with the young queen of the Lyanir, Peganna, to discuss surrender terms, Empire officials were making moves behind his back aimed at reducing his stature in the star worlds. It is not easy to smash an idol who has saved a people from defeat in such a way that their money boxes are scarcely opened. Commander Magannon was too fabulous a hero to be destroyed. The best anyone could hope for was dislodgement from his pinnacle which was bathed by stellar spotlight.

  The surrender parley went on and on, while Commander Magannon and Peganna of the Silver Hair touched mouths under the skies of Kuleen, dancing nightly above the waters of the Loranian Sea or sipping chilled vinoral on the marble balconies looking out over the Tors. Lost in a world where only his love made sense, he gave his enemies time to perfect their moves.

  When Commander Magannon came back from the stars with his Lyanir Treaty worked out to the satisfaction both of himself and young Peganna, his career rivals went to work. Lies and rumors were circulated. His love and friendship for Peganna were distorted into a plot to raise up the Double Axe banner of the Lyanir and create a new empire in the stars, an empire that would see Bran and Peganna become its rulers, an empire which would rival Earth. Forged documents were presented for study to the Tribunal judges even as a raging Bran Magannon flung outraged denials in the teeth of his accusers.

  So great was his reputation, so much love had the common people for him, that he might have snatched victory out of threatening defeat had not the Lyanir lifted off Kuleen planet where they had contracted to remain during the treaty negotiations, and gone to Yvriss.

  Yvriss sent back word it was being attacked.

  No attack was ever made. There had been no bombs dropped or rays beamed down on the peaceful cities of Yvriss. Turned away, the Lyanir fled back into dimensional space, no man knew where. They faded out of existence, seemingly.

  Some men said Bran Magannon had ordered their withdrawal, their flight. But there
was no proof of this; the Tribunal judges accepted for consideration only the actual facts. They gave Commander Magannon the Solar Cluster and the Starflare medal, but they put him down on Earth and told him to teach Spatial Warfare at the Academy. In his pride he turned in his resignation, put his uniform and his medals in mothballs, and went out to the stars as a civilian. Somewhere between Earth and the Rim planets, he had disappeared.

  Only later, much later, did tales and rumors drift back to his home world of a wanderer who walked alone among the star worlds, who worked at one trade or another until he had enough money to travel on. After a while even those stories faded out; there was gossip that the Wanderer had found a strange and unique way to cross the voids between the stars. He never needed to go by spaceship any more. An archeology team might sight him on unexplored Dravakian or barren Kaltal, but no one ever saw his spaceship or understood the manner of his coming and his going. He began to play the gaming tables with an odd pair of dice he had found in some forgotten ruin.

  The myth of Bran the Lucky had been born.

  Now under the three moons of Makkador, he stood once again beside Peganna of the Lyanir. Her voice as she whispered to him was a dirge for the might-have-been, lost in the night around them.

  “We could have had so much, so long ago.”

  She turned on a heel and walked more swiftly toward the spaceport where twin control towers made a pattern of chrome and glass against the starred sky. Bran went after the white silk of her chlamys as it whipped to her stride in the last few gusts of wind off the desert.

  At the edge of the black tanbark, she halted.

  “Bran—look!” she cried out, pointing.

  He saw the sleek starship he had glimpsed hours before, standing bright and silvery in the moonlight. Grouped about its base were men in the white uniforms of the Star Fleet, weapons at the ready.

  His arm drew her back into shadows. “Somebody alerted them that yours was a Lyanir starship. They’ve put it under guard. They’re waiting for you to come back.” He felt her shiver against him.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Officially, you’re an enemy of the Empire. I’m a traitor for consorting with you.” At that in her pride, she would have pulled free of him but he would not let her go. “Easy! Be easy, girl. I’ve no intention of letting them come at you. We’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Where, on Makkador? When I don’t return to the ship they’ll send out searching parties. They’ll invade every tavern, every house in Makkamar City. Then they’ll start hunting from the air, in Zads. There’s nowhere on Makkador for us to hide.”

  His teeth showed like those of a wolf baring its fangs. “We’ll go off Makkador, then—to safety.”

  She was so startled she cried out as she turned to look up at him. “But how can we, with the spaceports closed? With my ship under quarantine?”

  “There are ways I know.”

  She looked at him queerly but went willingly enough to the tug of his hand at her elbow. They moved back along the narrow alleyways and cul-de-sacs that made the su’udar stews a labyrinth of hiding places. Within the hour dawn would flood these cobbled streets and armed details of Fleet soldiers would be patrolling them, hunting the queen of a lost people and the man who loved her.

  By dawn, the Wanderer wanted to be far away.

  TWO

  FLEET COMMANDER Alvar Drexel was angry.

  “Where can they be, those two? A woman as beautiful as Peganna and a man as impressive as Bran Magannon—I give him that, freely enough—can’t have vanished into thin air?”

  His hard stare held his lieutenants rigid. They stood at attention in the Operations Room of the Empire Starship Taliesin, neatly uniformed in the white action dress of men on an alert. Gold braid sparkled at their left shoulders. Black leather belts snugged their lean middles. Their dress swords hung motionless. They were hard men, fashioned in a tough school, disciplined to a nicety. Not even their eyelids flickered as they waited.

  When Drexel raised his blond brows, the shorter man spoke. “We took her ship under surveillance the minute it crossed the Barrier, sir. We’ve been on alert since twenty hours three days ago, when we had a report that the Wanderer had been seen on Makkador.”

  “I know all that. You sighted her ship. We passed it through the Barrier without incident, figuring that those two intended a meeting somewhere down below. Well, they met, all right, as we figured, they’d do. Then—we lost them.”

  “Not lost, exactly, sir. They’re down there somewhere. How far can they go? Patrols are moving through Makkamar City, searching it house by house under the Commander’s orders.”

  “That search has been going on for sixteen hours. We haven’t turned up a sign of them.” Face flushed, Commander Drexel moved to a map case hung along one metal wall. His finger stabbed out to touch buttons.

  Maps unrolled too fast for the eyes to follow. The lights slowed after a half minute and firmed. A detailed map of Makkamar City shone on the wall. Alvar Drexel touched it with a forefinger.

  “We sent searching parties inward from the four corners of the city. Not one of them has reported catching so much as a glimpse of them. Within the hour those details will make contact at the Square of Krai. If Peganna and Bran aren’t in this last radius, they aren’t in Makkador.”

  The taller lieutenant said, “Then they’re on the desert and not even Bran Magannon can hide from us there. Makkamar City is rimmed by red sand for twelve miles to the north and fifteen to the west. If they try crossing that, our Zads will sight them.”

  “Suppose they go south to Lunn?”

  Polite incredulity showed in the voice of Lieutenant Bradford Madden. “Over fifty miles of red sand? In the heat of Mizar?”

  His commander brooded at him. “The odds were greater that Magannon would never defeat the Lyanir, seven or eight years ago. He found a way to do it. He may find a way to get to Lunn.”

  “And if he does, what can he do? Where can he go? The only spaceport on Makkador is at Makkamar City. Even assuming he came in illegally, as he might with a small spacer, he can’t get off-planet without alerting the Barrier.”

  “Mmmm, yes. I suppose there isn’t any real need to worry.”

  Fleet Commander Alvar Drexel had a very high opinion of Bran Magannon, having been his second-in-command before Commander Magannon had met the Lyanir spaceships in battle. His own wits had been paralyzed at the problem confronting High Command. It had been Bran Magannon alone who had thought to have the drifting debris—all that was left of the Empire war-spacers before the Lyanir rays blasted them—analyzed. When that analysis showed the composition of those awesome rays and when Ordnance found a metallic compound to offset them, he had ridden to a semi-glory on his commander’s uniform braids. This dependence rankled in Alvar Drexel.

  While stationed on Kuleen after the crushing defeat of the Lyanir and while Commander Magannon spent his hours with Peganna of the Silver Hair, he had made friends of sorts with her brother, young Gron Dhu. Gron Dhu was an ambitious youth. Jealousy of his sister bit in him as jealousy of Bran Magannon bit into Alvar Drexel.

  For hours on end they had sipped tart slisthl and conjectured on what might happen if both Peganna and Bran Magannon fell from power. There seemed no hope of this, however, until the treaty terms were agreed upon; then Gron Dhu suggested that, if those treaty terms might be broken and the blame for such breaking laid upon Peganna and Commander Magannon…

  It was worth a try, they had decided.

  Somewhat to the surprise of both, their plan worked. Believing that it was Bran Magannon telling her to rise off Kuleen, Peganna had taken her people toward Yvriss. When they were fired upon, she realized her terrible mistake; by then it was too late to turn back. She had to flee into the void out of which the Lyanir had come to the Rim worlds. And as they fled, Gron Dhu maintained contact with Alvar Drexel, advising him when and where they were going.

  Gron Dhu had been silent for seven years. Then he had sent a
’gram on their private wave-length, informing Drexel—now Commander Drexel—that Peganna had left the barren planet where she and the Lyanir had taken refuge. She had a harebrained scheme by which she hoped to compel Empire to give her people shelter, but Gron Dhu knew no more than that. Perhaps if Commander Drexel could manage to intercept her—and Bran Magannon, whom she was hopeful of meeting—he could kill them and make out a case of intended attack on the Empire against them. If this were done, Gron Dhu would make submission to Commander Drexel and together they would work out a deal by which the Lyanir need no longer stay exiled.

  If this should happen, Gron Dhu promised to make Alvar Drexel a very wealthy man. During their wanderings between planets, the Lyanir had found fabulous treasures and rumors of others still more amazing. Gron Dhu and Alvar Drexel would share them. No price was too high for the Lyanir to pay for living room, even as subordinates to mankind.

  Ten hours ago, Commander Drexel could envision himself living in a mansion on the pleasure world, Nirvalla. Since then, his roseate dreams had been turning a gray, ashen color. If that thrice-damned Bran Magannon and his silver-haired companion should escape—

  Alvar Drexel hit his desk with a clenched fist. His two lieutenants blinked at the fury of the blow.

  “Send more patrols into Makkamar City. Flood it with searchers. On the double!” His junior officers saluted and ran. Behind them, Commander Drexel worried his lower lip with his teeth.

  Where in the name of the Akkan gods could they be?

  It was hot walking over the red desert sands with the red wool blankets on their shoulders. From time to time Peganna stumbled and might have fallen had not Bran thrust out his arm to catch and hold her. Fiery Mizar was high in the midday sky, bathing Makkador in heat.