House of Jackals
Page 44
"Why do you say that?" the captain asked, already guessing the answer.
"She was only responsible for the bomb delivered to Commander Tillic," Fratér Orqué replied. "She did not know anything about the explosion in Henely's quarters."
-
Although the guard lieutenant marched quickly down the main hallway leading to the throne room, he was confident there was nothing to be overly anxious about.
We swept through the whole place before he came, he thought reassuringly, judging from his new Lord's mood—and the recent rumors about his regard for Henely—that the death of the First Advisor was something that could wait.
-
It was the Possór signet, his father's old ring. Absently taking a few steps forward, Derrick read the words engraved around the seal, leaving the ring in the box: "May the Noble House of Possór Remain. Strength - Honor - Truth - Loyalty."
How strange, he thought. For most of his life, "Lord Legan" was his father. God help me. God help us all. Derrick ran a hand through his hair as thoughts of all the responsibilities before him came at once. Overwhelmed, he tried to focus on more immediate concerns.
Marriage or bankruptcy, he commented silently. He closed his eyes, remembering that that had been the choice facing his mother’s family.
Mother! Derrick called in his mind, raising his head as he searched out the open sky. I will put this behind us. I know who I am again, and I know what I must do.
-
Ceiling sprinklers activated as smoke combined with the acrid smell of the lasfire hitting Jordan's shield. Upon impact with the shifting planes formed by the defensive energy field, the deflected bolts—weakened by their partial absorption—scattered into fragmented beams. Striking the room's walls and objects, they blackened some and set others aflame.
Buffeted within the confines of his shield, Jordan bolstered its protective shell with a psychic barrier, a demanding discipline for which he had limited mastery. It helped, but while the lasfire had tripped the alarms that would bring his security guards, Jordan knew that he did not have much time. Through the din, he saw the third man near the door, the one who had barricaded it with furniture, and set up the portable area-shields his associates had undoubtedly smuggled in disguised as personal ones. Retrieving the projectile weapons that the second man had dropped in the attack, the third assassin stood upright and entered into a trance.
"They are almost outside the door!" he yelled over the noise of lasfire. He wiped the smoke from his face with his sleeve, opened his eyes, and reached for his own shieldbelt.
-
Depré swung the heavy, broken table leg down hard. Marcea sluggishly moved out of the way, kicking him in the ribs as his weapon struck the spot where her face had been a moment before. Through blood and sweat, the housekeeper saw her attacker double over as he fell. Her lack of breath however delayed the pressing of her advantage. By the time she was ready, Depré was standing upright, though he swayed with every jerking motion to remain so. As bruised and battered as his opponent, Depré smiled, his teeth bathed in red as he staggered warily toward her.
"You fight well," Depré admitted, noting how she was protecting her left side, the one where he had scored a nasty hit. "And here I thought that you were just a common maid."
As Lenalt closed, Marcea swung with all the force and fury she could summon. In her left hand was a long, narrow piece of metal that had detached from one of the many smashed and broken objects their battle had claimed. With his right eye swollen, Depré never saw it coming.
The first strike connected with Depré's jaw, splintering it on impact. As he fell to his knees, she swung down from the right, subduing him with a final blow to the head.
"I'm a housekeeper," the woman huffed, correcting Lenalt’s degradation of her managerial position. "And not just a common housekeeper, but a goddamned good one."
-
As the lieutenant walked into view, the two guards outside the double-doors snapped to full attention. Cheerlessly, the man continued down the long hallway.
-
Derrick glanced back at what was once his grandfather’s throne, the ring still within its container. His grandfather. The first to desert him. Closing his hand over the ring’s box, the lid shut with a sharp snap. With the ocean breeze hitting him once again, Derrick lowered his right arm back with the ring, inhaled deeply, and watched the sun rise above the waves.
-
Exhausted by the strain, and still pummeled by the unending lasgun attack, Jordan let his psychic barrier collapse. He was then rocked within his shield as its field weakened.
His guards were not going to make it, Jordan thought, wondering if the assassins knew how to activate the room-shields. The room-shields. They defended the door and the balcony, but there was also one that bisected the room from the door to the front of his desk.
Coughing, he glanced about to regain his bearings. His vision impaired by the lasfire, Jordan could not tell if any room-shields were activated. But he was lost anyway if they were.
Depleted from incessant use, one lasgun went dead.
Damned Death Commandos! Jordan cried as the man grabbed an ancient handgun from his associate. Removing the silencer, he leveled the gun at Jordan, and stood ready. If the other lasgun drained before breaching Jordan's shield, their only hope was that it would be sufficiently weakened to be either shattered by bullets fired at point blank range, or penetrated by a slow manual entry into its field. Although the latter offered Jordan a chance, as it would involve a physical a man-to-man struggle with opposing non-intersecting shields, he was not going to wait.
In a desperate attempt to save himself, Jordan found the strength to leap clear of his desk, psychically activating the room's inner shield just as he reached his point of safety.
-
Steuben broke through the door just as Marcea was about to bend over to examine her assailant. "Is he alive?" the Colonel called as he rushed forward.
"I don’t know," the housekeeper replied, straightening as he approached. "And you are?"
"Colonel Henrald Steuben, HOPIS," Steuben said, ignoring her tattered appearance. Clearly she needed medical attention. "You better get help," he continued, adding with a lie, "I don't have a comm with me." Nodding begrudgingly, Marcea walked past him toward the door.
Depré was alive, if barely. Searching him, the Colonel saw that the rebel had not brought a poisoned capsule, a standard precaution for any mission in which capture was a possibility.
Steuben wrinkled the side of his nose. Not only inept, but a coward as well, he thought, suddenly smiling. You fool, Depré. Derrick was never even here. He's at Linse.
Finally alone, Steuben looked again at Depré's head wound. He only had so much time.
"Tah-ell," Lenalt suddenly wheezed through a broken jaw. Blindly Depré looked about, not seeming to know where he was. "Ahh-nielll..."
Aware that he could not let Depré reveal how he had disobeyed orders by engaging in unreported rebel activities, Steuben angled the rebel's head and steadied it. Summoning the Disciplines, he pulled back his arm and thrust the edge of his palm against the open wound, coming down with just the minimal amount of force needed to silence Lenalt Depré forever.
First your brother, Lenalt, now you, Steuben thought, wishing he could appreciate the double irony of killing a man who had marked the same target for revenge as he once had. For some reason, the Colonel felt sympathy, and even a strange sense of kinship, for the dead rebel.
I will give you a chance, Derrick, Steuben thought, adjusting Depré's body for the arrival of the Palace guards. But if you are your father's son, you will be my revenge on Seffan's House.
Thinking back to the unmanned shuttle he had sent against the Possór heir in the forest months before, the Colonel added: And in that, I will not fail you again, Rachel.
-
At a location known only to those Lord Ketrick deemed most loyal, the DuCideon grandmaster questioned his own newly unmasked trai
tor. “So, what other secrets did you reveal to the uninitiated?” Ketrick asked, peeling a blood-red fruit with a long decorative knife.
Ethes Anni did not reply. On his knees, and chained by his wrists to a spinning circular table raised above the floor in the center of the room, the man who was once Ketrick’s second peered at the DuCideon leader through swollen, sweat-stung eyes.
Ketrick waved a finger. As the table turned, each of the men standing around it brought their flails down upon the man’s back, wringing cries from him with each blow.
-
The lieutenant had just reached the doors when the tense voice of a security officer at Linse came over his com-link. Stopping, he pressed one of the unit's buttons. "Yes, Sir?"
"Tell Lord Legan that one explosion was traced to a small package. Do you understand?"
-
“CheCredit,” Anni wheezed once the punishment had stopped.
Since his fortuitous encounter with Lady Vialette outside Lord Jordan’s office, Ketrick knew it had been Anni who compromised their financial dealings with the Consortium. The real question for Ketrick however was who else employed Anni as a spy, and he had his suspicions.
“Yes?” Ketrick prompted. The man remained silent. “Come, Brother. The flowing of your blood is to atone for your sins, not to prompt their confession. What about CheCredit?”
“I can’t say any more,” the man insisted. “They will know.”
“We have gone over this.” Ketrick’s tone was like the draping of a silk shroud. “The same energy fields preventing you from employing the Disciplines in this room also shield you from the vision of others. The NDB can neither touch you here...nor help you.”
“Please, Brother Ketrick,” the man whispered. “Forgive me.”
“You forget your instruction, Brother. First you must confess, and then atone. Only after that can there be forgiveness. Now, what did you give them on our CheCredit offer?”
“The bid amount,” the man’s head fell forward, “and copies of internal documents.”
“And what is the NDB Church’s interest in a regional bank?”
“I can’t tell you. Please, Brother Ketrick. I had no choice! They will kill me!”
“You have no choice now, Brother.” Ketrick savagely bit into the fruit he had just peeled. “For so will I, if you do not answer.”
-
The lieutenant finally found Derrick in the seemingly abandoned audience hall. “My Lord!” The man took several hurried steps before halting.
“Yes?” Derrick replied, seeing the man’s gaze lock on the box in his hand.
“If I may ask, my Lord,” the man said with forced evenness, “where did you get that?” The man pointed to the box. There was no mistaking his fear.
Derrick’s face fell. “I thought it was from my father,” he answered weakly.
“Control,” the man said over his com-link. “Lord Legan is in the main throne room with another possible explosive.” Derrick looked a question at him. “There have been several in and near the Palace, my Lord, traceable to...Your Lordship did know about Commander Tillic?”
“No. I mean yes, but not about an explosive. Traceable to whom?”
-
“Bishop Wyren wants the Consortium to buy that bank,” Anni said after another beating. “He wants the Brotherhood’s money for something else.”
Ketrick’s eyes flickered. “For what?”
“A war. With the Consortium.”
“And giving them CheCredit will do that?”
“Bishop Wyren has planned a run on the bank to affect its collapse. Before the bank fails however, the Consortium will invest further money to save it, draining their reserves.”
Ketrick could not help but imagine Anios Tenatte’s face if that were to happen. But how was Bishop Wyren going to get his hands on the Brotherhood’s money? “The good bishop must also have a plan to replace me. Perhaps by stuffing one more murder under the cloak of Seffan’s purge. Who was to be my successor?”
“Brother Ketrick, I have already told you more than—”
Ketrick signaled with his finger once again.
“Me!” the man cried, bending down as low as he could on the table before he could again be lashed. “It was to be me.”
“And were you to be the one to assassinate me as well?”
“No!” Anni raised his head in supplication. “He was going to arrange that himself. At some theater pageant or something. That is all I know. I swear, Brother Ketrick.”
“Oh, I believe you, Brother.” Ketrick stepped forward and put his hand on the back of the other man’s head, patting it reassuringly. “You have confessed your transgressions.”
Grabbing hold of the man’s hair, Ketrick pulled his head back and raised the knife he still held in his other hand. Cutting the man off in mid-scream, Ketrick slit his throat from ear to ear.
“And with the flowing of your life’s blood, Brother,” Ketrick said once the man stopped twitching, “you have atoned.” He again put a hand atop the man’s head. “Now I forgive you.”
-
It took time for the team of specially trained security experts to arrive. Assembled, their personal shields shimmered in the half-light.
“Please remain still, my Lord,” said one of them, approaching Derrick with a shieldbelt in her hand. Derrick stood quietly as she deactivated her own shieldbelt so she could fasten the one she carried around his waist. “Now, my Lord,” the woman resumed, “we should take that box.”
Derrick flattened his fingers so that the box rested on the palm of his hand. “Wait,” he then said, pulling the object back before the woman could take it. “What will you do?”
“If it has internal shielding, my Lord, the safest thing would be to detonate it.”
“It is from my father,” Derrick protested. “His signet ring...”
“My Lord,” the woman said gently. “We are responsible for your safety. The bombings. It is known that Lord Seffan—”
Derrick psychically floated the box over his outstretched hand. The box wobbled in mid-air as everyone in the room froze. Finally, the security officer took several slow steps toward him. As Derrick turned to the open window, the box shot out to hover over the open sea.
Keeping his concentration on the box, Derrick remained motionless as the woman came up behind him and activated his shieldbelt before reactivating her own. With his psychic vision, Derrick saw the box turn over and sway in the wind as he held it aloft.
He did not want the ring destroyed. And he did not want to wait to discover if his father had sent him anything else with his gift.
Derrick needed to know now.
The box stopped its spinning as Derrick refocused his power. He sensed movement around him as the shielded guards encircled him, but ignored their urgings to retreat to safety. Once more he opened the lid of the box. The ring was again there for the taking. Inhaling deeply, Derrick used his psychic energy to pull the ring free.
The bright light of an explosion overwhelmed his psychic vision before Derrick’s concentration broke and his power dissipated.
His normal vision returned, Derrick hazily watched as the morning rays from the window receded. He was moving backward. Surrounded by security people, they were apparently carrying him from the room. One was speaking. It was the woman who had activated his shieldbelt. Derrick’s vision clouded again. There was something in his eyes. He tried to wipe them but his arms were held fast. He was still moving, still moving away from the light.
Finally he passed through a doorway. Unmindful of those around him, Derrick pulled his hands free and clawed at the door’s receding image, crying out as it slowly closed before him.
---
Epilogue
From the comfort of a private luxury box, Bishop Chais Wyren watched as Anios Tenatte occupied himself with a portascreen, ignoring the festive air around him. Betting on exotic animals fighting one another was nothing new. What made the upcoming show less common was the grues
ome scenes being made into a game, one in which even children could participate.
As he reflected on Tenatte’s lack of engagement, Wyren knew that having him come to his secretly-owned cruise liner was not one of his subtler taunts. Still, with the orbiting ship owned through multiple shell companies, it was a secure site for their first meeting together.
The Bishop glanced over as attendants brought up a small woolly creature through the transparent gravity-lock. Attached to its stubby legs and puffy body were small mobility thrusters, which guests could remotely fire from consoles scattered about the lounge. Once through the gravity-lock, the humble creature would be in a giant free-float chamber, where a larger, heavily-muscled beast with retractable claws and a forked-tail was already waiting, similarly equipped with its own set of propulsion devices.
Standing behind Tenatte, Wyren considered how easy it would be to murder the man. If done correctly, he could give any explanation he wanted for Tenatte’s death. None of his resort guests would not know the difference between his story and the truth. The same would be for any investigator, assuming the assassination of a known crime-figure was worth his or her time.
The resulting chaos from the local under-bosses vying for control could also be useful. With the Consortium’s planetary forces decentralized, Wyren could play on the rivalries to keep them all off-balance. But what if Tenatte’s successor turned out to be someone worse?
In the end, the NDB bishop decided to tighten his control over the DuCideons for now. Once the Brotherhood was fully subdued, then he could take on the Consortium directly.
Cheers erupted from the lower gallery as the seemingly submissive herd animal was ejected into the zero-gravity chamber. Most were from teenagers, many having already chosen which animal to support with their pre-paid power bursts to various thrusters.
The True Church might be touchy about its reputation, but Wyren wondered if his social standing would truly suffer if he were tied to his ship’s activities. Predators killed prey. How could monetizing the Circle of Life be wrong? Learning about the animals’ special attack and defense capabilities was even educational. The money went mostly to charity in the end anyway.