Torch of Freedom

by David Weber

  And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

  "Yes, it is," he said. "The most likely explanation, by far."

  * * *

  "Where's Ruth?" Berry asked plaintively, once they were in the corridor that led—eventually—to the ballroom where the trade delegation was waiting.

  "Saburo says she's running late, girl," Lara said, shrugging with the casual informality which was such a quintessential part of her. "Even later than you are."

  The ex-Scrag was still about as civilized as a wolf, and she had a few problems grasping the finer points of court etiquette. Which, to tell the truth, suited Berry just fine. Usually, at least.

  "If I've got to do this," the queen said firmly, "Ruth has to do it with me."

  "Berry," Lara said, "Kaja said she'll be here, and Saburo and Ruth are already on their way. We can go ahead and start."

  "No." They'd reached an intersection of corridors that was wide enough that someone had seen fit to place a couple of armchairs in it. Berry flounced—that really was the only verb that fit—over to one of them and plunked down in it. "I'm the Queen," she said snippily, "and I want my intelligence advisor there when I talk to these people."

  "But your father isn't even on Torch," Lara pointed out with a grin. Thandi Palane's "Amazons" had actually developed senses of humor, and all of them were deeply fond of their commander's "little sister." Which was why they took such pleasure in teasing her.

  "You know what I mean!" Berry shot back, rolling her eyes in exasperation. But there was a twinkle in those eyes, and Lara chuckled as she saw it.

  "Yes," she admitted. "But tell me, why do you need Ruth? It's only a gaggle of merchants and businessmen." She wrinkled her nose in the tolerant contempt of a wolf for the sheep a bountiful nature had created solely to feed it. "Nothing to worry about in that bunch, girl!"

  "Except for the fact that I might screw up and sell them Torch for a handful of glass beads!"

  Lara looked at her, obviously puzzled, and Berry sighed. Lara and the other Amazons truly were trying hard, but it was going to take years to even begin closing the myriad gaps in their social skills and general background knowledge.

  "Never mind, Lara," the teenaged queen said after a moment. "It wasn't really all that funny a joke, anyway. But what I meant is that with Web tied up with Governor Barregos' representative, I need someone a little more devious to help hold my hand when I slip into the shark tank with these people. I need someone to advise me about what they really want, not just what they say they want."

  "Make it plain anyone who cheats you gets a broken neck." Lara shrugged. "You may lose one or two, early, but the rest will know better. Want Saburo and me to handle it for you?"

  She sounded almost eager, and Berry laughed. She often suspected Saburo X still didn't understand exactly how it had happened, but after a brief, wary, half-terrified, extremely . . . direct "courtship," he wasn't complaining. On the face of it, his and Lara's was one of the most unlikely pairings in history—the ex-genetic-slave terrorist, madly in love with the ex-Scrag who'd worked directly for Manpower before she walked away from her own murderous past—and yet, undeniably, it worked.

  "There is a certain charming simplicity to the idea of broken necks," Berry conceded, after a moment. "Unfortunately, that's not how it's done. I haven't been a queen for long, but I do know that much."

  "Pity," Lara said, and glanced at her chrono. "Now they've been waiting over half an hour," she remarked.

  "Oh, all right," Berry said. "I'll go—I'll go!" She shook her head and made a face. "You'd think a queen would at least be able to get away with something when her father is half a dozen star systems away!"

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harper S. Ferry stood in the throne room, arms crossed, watching the thirty-odd people standing about. He knew he didn't cut a particularly military figure, but that was fine with him. In fact, the ex-slaves of Torch had a certain fetish for not looking spit and polish. They were the galaxy's outcast mongrels, and they wanted no one—including themselves—to forget that.

  Which didn't mean they took their responsibilities lightly.

  Judson Van Hale walked casually across the throne room, angling a bit closer to Harper, with Genghis riding his shoulder.

  "This is a lively bunch," Judson murmured disgustedly out of the corner of his mouth as he stopped beside Harper. "Genghis is downright bored."

  He reached up and caressed the cream-and-gray treecat, and the 'cat purred and pressed his head against Judson's hand.

  "Boring is good," Harper replied quietly. "Exciting is bad."

  "Aren't they running late?" Judson asked after a moment, and Harper shrugged.

  "I don't have anyplace else I need to be today," he said. "And if Berry's running true to form, she's dragging her heels, waiting for Ruth. And Thandi, if she can get her here."

  "Why aren't they here?"

  "They're going over something to do with security for the summit, and according to the net," Harper tapped his personal com, "Thandi's sending Ruth on ahead while she finishes up." He shrugged again. "I'm not sure exactly what it is she's working on. Probably something about setting up liaison with Cachat."

  "Oh, yeah. 'Liaison,' " Judson said, rolling his eyes, and Harper slapped him lightly on the back of the head.

  "No disrespectful thoughts about the Great Kaja, friend! Not unless you want her Amazons performing a double orchidectomy on you without anesthesia."

  Judson grinned, and Genghis bleeked a laugh.

  "Who's that guy over there?" Harper asked after a moment. "The fellow by the main entrance."

  "The one in the dark blue jacket?"

  "That's the one."

  "Name's Tyler," Judson said. He punched a brief code into his memo pad and looked down at the display. "He's with New Age Pharmaceutical. It's one of the Beowulf consortiums. Why?"

  "I don't know," Harper said thoughtfully. "Is Genghis picking up any sort of vibes from him?"

  Both humans looked at the treecat, who raised a true hand in the thumb-folded, two-finger sign for the letter "N" and nodded it up and down. Judson looked back at Harper and shrugged.

  "Guess not. Want us to stroll a bit closer and check him out again?"

  "I don't know," Harper said again. "It's just—" He paused. "It's probably nothing," he went on after a moment. "It's just that he's the only one I see who's brought along a briefcase."

  "Hm?"

  Judson frowned, surveying the rest of the crowd.

  "You're right," he acknowledged. "Odd, I suppose. I thought this was supposed to be primarily a 'social occasion.' Just a chance for them to meet Queen Berry as a group, before the individual negotiating sessions."

  "That's what I thought, too," Harper agreed. He thought about it for a moment longer, then keyed a combination into his com.

  "Yes, Harper?" a voice replied.

  "The guy with the briefcase, Zack. You checked it out?"

  "Ran the sniffer over it and had him open it," Zack assured him. "Nothing in it but a microcomputer and a couple of perfume dispensers."

  "Perfume?" Harper repeated.

  "Yeah. I picked up some organic traces from them, but they were all consistent with cosmetics. Not even a flicker of red on the sniffer. I asked him about them, too, and he said they were gifts from New Age for the girls. I mean, Queen Berry and Princess Ruth."

  "Had they been pre-cleared?" Harper asked.

  "Don't think so. He said they were supposed to be surprises."

  "Thanks, Zack. I'll get back to you."

  Harper switched off the com and looked at Judson. Judson looked back, and the ex-Ballroom assassin frowned.

  "I don't like surprises," he said flatly.

  "Well, Berry and Ruth might," Judson countered.

  "Fine. Surprise them all you want, but not their security. We're supposed to know about this kind of crap ahead of time."

  "I know." Judson tugged at the lobe of his left ear, thi
nking. "It's almost certainly nothing, you know. Genghis would be picking up something from him by now if he had anything . . . unpleasant in mind."

  "Maybe. But let's you and I sashay over that way and have a word with Mr. Tyler," Harper said.

  * * *

  William Henry Tyler stood in the throne room, waiting patiently with the rest of the crowd, and rubbed idly at his right temple. He felt a bit . . . odd. Not ill, really. He didn't even have a headache. In fact, if anything, he felt just a bit euphoric, although he couldn't think why.

  He shrugged and checked his chrono. "Queen Berry"—he smiled slightly at the thought of the Torch monarch's preposterous youth; she was younger than the younger of Tyler's own two daughters—was obviously running late. Which, he supposed, was the prerogative of a head of state, even if she was only seventeen.

  He glanced down at his brief case and felt a brief, mild stir of surprise. It vanished instantly, in a stronger surge of that inexplicable euphoria. He'd actually been a bit startled when the security man asked him what was in the case. For just an instant, it had been as if he'd never seen it before, but then, of course, he'd remembered the gifts for Queen Berry and Prince Ruth. That had been a really smart idea on Marketing's part, he conceded. Every young woman he'd ever met had liked expensive perfume, whether she was willing to admit it or not.

  He relaxed again, humming softly, at peace with the universe.

  * * *

  "All right, see? I'm here," Berry said, and Lara laughed.

  "And so graceful you are, too," the Amazon said. "You who keep trying to 'civilize' us!"

  "Actually," Berry said, reaching out to pat the older woman on the forearm, "I've decided I like you all just the way you are. My very own wolfpack. Well, Thandi's, but I'm sure she'll lend you to me if I ask. Just do me a favor and try not to get any blood on the furniture. Oh, and let's keep the orgies out of sight, too, at least when Daddy's around. Deal?"

  "Deal, Little Kaja. I'll explain to Saburo about the orgies," Lara said, and it was perhaps an indication of the effect Berry Zilwicki had on the people about her that an ex-Scrag didn't even question the deep surge of affection she felt for her teenage monarch.

  * * *

  A slight stir went through the throne room as someone noticed the queen and her lean, muscular bodyguard entering through the side door. The two of them moved across the enormous room, which had once been the ballroom of the planetary governor when Torch had been named Verdant Vista. The men and women who'd come to meet the Queen of Torch were a little surprised by how very young she looked in person, and heads turned to watch her, although nobody was crass enough to start sidling in her direction until she'd seated herself in the undecorated powered chair which served her for a throne.

  Harper S. Ferry and Judson Van Hale were still ten meters from the New Age Pharmaceutical representative when Tyler looked up and saw Berry. Unlike any of the other commercial representatives in the room, he took a step towards her the moment he saw her, and Genghis's head snapped up in the same instant.

  The 'cat reared high, ears flattened and fangs bared in the sudden, tearing-canvas ripple of a treecat's war cry, and vaulted abruptly from his person's shoulder towards Tyler.

  Tyler's head whipped around, and Harper felt a sudden stab of outright terror as he saw the terrible, fixed glare of the other man's eyes. There was something . . . insane about them, and Harper was suddenly reaching for the panic button on his gun belt.

  The pharmaceutical representative saw the oncoming 'cat, and his free hand flashed across to the briefcase he was carrying. The briefcase with the "perfume" of which no one at New Age Pharmaceutical had ever heard . . . and which Tyler didn't even remember taking from the man who'd squirted that odd mist in his face on Smoking Frog.

  Genghis almost reached him in time. He launched himself from the floor in a snarling, hissing charge that hit Tyler's moving forearm perhaps a tenth of a second too late.

  Tyler pressed the concealed button. The explosive charges in the two massively pressurized canisters of "perfume" in the briefcase exploded expelling the binary neurotoxin which they had contained under several thousand atmospheres of pressure. Separated, its components had been innocuous, easily mistaken for perfume; combined, they were incredibly lethal, and they mingled and spread, whipping outward from Tyler under immense pressure even as the briefcase blew apart with a sharp, percussive crack.

  Genghis stiffened, jerked once, and hit the floor a fraction of a second before Tyler, left hand mangled by the explosion of the briefcase, collapsed beside him. Harper's finger completed its movement to the panic button, and then the deadly cloud swept over him and Judson, as well. Their spines arched, their mouths opened in silent agony, and then they went down as a cyclone of death spread outward.

  * * *

  Lara and Berry did their best to maintain suitably grave expressions, despite their mutual amusement, as they walked towards Berry's chair. They were about halfway there when the sudden, high-pitched snarl of an enraged treecat ripped through the throne room.

  They spun towards the sound, and saw a cream-and-gray blur streaking through the crowd. For an instant, Berry had no idea at all what was happening. But if Lara wasn't especially well socialized, she still had the acute senses, heightened musculature, and lightning reflexes of the Scrag she had been born.

  She didn't know what had set Genghis off, but every instinct she had screamed "Threat!" And if she wouldn't have had a clue which fork to use at a formal dinner, she knew exactly what to do about that.

  She continued her turn, right arm reaching out, snaking around Berry's waist like a python, and snatched the girl up. By the time Genghis was two leaps from Tyler, Lara was already sprinting towards the door through which they'd entered the throne room.

  She heard the sharp crack of the exploding briefcase behind her just as the door opened again, and she saw Saburo and Ruth Winton through it. From the corner of her eye, she also saw the outrider of death scything towards her as the bodies collapsed in spasming agony, like ripples spreading from a stone hurled into a placid pool. The neurotoxin was racing outward faster than she could run; she didn't know what it was, but she knew it was invisible death . . . and that she could not outdistance it.

  "Saburo!" she screamed, and snatched Berry bodily off the floor. She spun on her heel once, like a discus thrower, and suddenly Berry went arcing headfirst through the air. She flew straight at Saburo X, like a javelin, and his arms opened reflexively.

  "The door!" Lara screamed, skittering to her knees as she overbalanced from throwing Berry. "Close the door! Run!"

  Berry hit Saburo in the chest. His left arm closed about her, holding her tight, and his eyes met Lara's as her knees hit the floor. Brown eyes stared deep into blue, meeting with the sudden, stark knowledge neither of them could evade.

  "I love you!" he cried . . . and his right hand hit the button to close the door.

  Chapter Thirty

  "It's getting harder, Jack." Herlander Simões leaned back in the visitor's chair in Jack McBryde's kitchen and shook his head. "You'd think it would either stop hurting, or that I'd get used to it, or that I'd just go ahead and give up." He bared his teeth in a bitter mockery of a smile. "I always used to think I was a fairly smart fellow, but obviously I was wrong. If I really were so damned smart, I'd have managed to do one of those things by now!"

  "I wish I could tell you some magic formula, Herlander." McBryde flicked the top off another bottle of beer and slid it across to his guest. "And, I'll be honest with you, there are times I just want to kick you right in the ass." There was at least a little humor in his own smile, and he shook his head. "I don't know whether I'm more pissed off with you for the way you keep right on putting yourself through this or for the way it's twisting up your entire life, not just your work."

  "I know."

  Simões accepted the new beer and took a long pull from the bottle. Then he set it down on the table top, folding his hands around it so that his thum
bs and forefingers were a loose circle about the base. He stared down at his cuticles for several seconds, his worn face set in a pensive expression.

  "I know," he repeated, looking up at McBryde at last. "I've been trying to get past my own anger, the way you suggested. Sometimes, I think I'm making progress, too. But something always seems to come along."

  "Are you still watching those holos at night?" McBryde's voice had gone very gentle, and Simões' shoulders seemed to hunch without actually moving a millimeter. He looked back down at the beer bottle, his hazel eyes like shutters, and nodded once.

  "Herlander," McBryde said softly. Simões looked up at him, and McBryde shook his own head. "You're just killing yourself doing that. You know it as well as I do."

  "Maybe." Simões inhaled deeply. "No, not maybe—yes. I know it. You know it. For that matter, my official therapist knows it. But I just . . . can't, Jack. It's like as long as I look at the HD every so often she isn't really gone."

  "But she is gone, Herlander." McBryde's voice was as merciless as it was gentle. "And so is Harriet. And so is your entire damned life, if this succeeds in sucking you down."

  "Sometimes I think that might not be such a bad thing," Simões admitted quietly.

  "Herlander!" This time McBryde's voice was sharp, and Simões looked up again.

  It was odd, McBryde thought, as their eyes met. Under normal circumstances, having one of the scientists whose security he was responsible for overseeing as a guest in his apartment—as someone who had turned into something remarkably like a personal friend—would have broken every rule of the Alignment's security services. In fact, it did break every one of them . . . except for the fact that Isabel Bardasano's personal orders were still in effect.