Guardsman

by Pam Uphoff

  There were a few other items on the agenda. A court case settled, a politician’s wavering party loyalty discussed. Then Urfa dismissed them, leaving before them.

  Lucky Dave looked after him, then over at Rael. “Does he leave you alone to talk about things you didn’t want to bother with in a formal meeting?”

  Rael laughed. “Probably. What’s up?”

  “One police force for a whole bloody planet?”

  Izzo grinned, and Ox shrugged. “I suppose it does sound odd. But every police department is a small part of the Internal Relations Directorate. They are finely divided, right down to city police, and in rural areas, sheriff’s departments. All the same laws, but locally administered. The Native police, on the other hand, had operated under the authority of the appointed colonial governors. Combining them ensures equal treatment under law, and frankly, is probably the first step toward elected Governors.”

  “Okay, so why is it bad to have the Governors in charge of the police?”

  “It . . . gives them the ability to lord it over the Natives. There haven’t been too many cases of serious abuse, but they do happen. Minor abuses have flourished. Laws that keep the Natives subordinate to the Oners. Biased courts. Separating the governor from the police’s line of authority, will, in theory, help.” Izzo shrugged. “We’ll find out if it works in a multi-world empire.”

  Ox nodded. “The thing is to be flexible, and not double down when a plan doesn’t work. I’ve spent the last four years officially working for External, but working closely with Internal on police and courts on all the colonies. It’s been fascinating, watching the upper levels think. The Ministries are a bit stiffer, but the Directorates have been a delight.”

  Izzo looked over at him. “Do you think there will be a problem with the Ministries over the governors?”

  “No. I think they’ve got the worst of it knocked out of their heads. After all, the elected Governors on the other worlds have done well enough.” He grinned a little and caught Dave’s eye. “They elected a sixteen-year-old girl on Lucky Number Thirteen. Well, she’s twenty-one now, and still doing a good job.”

  “I see . . .” Good Grief, these people are insane! “So is it officially sixteen colonies?”

  “Yep, with three more being actively colonized.” Izzo grinned. “I need to consolidate some of the subdirectorates. There are several colonies that don’t really need a subdirector each, to keep an eye on them. Maybe a Subdirector of Evacuation Worlds.”

  Rael answered his questioning gaze. “When it looked like there was a possibility of the Helios miniverse hitting us, we started setting up forty worlds for massive evacuations, and long term residency.”

  “So now you have forty worlds that are what? All ready for people to move in?”

  “Yep. We needed three for various purposes—All the Granite Peak people moved to one, the Helios victims who couldn’t go home to another, and some traitors are restricted to yet a third.” Izzo shrugged at Dave’s raised eyebrows. “We executed the worst. The followers are getting a chance to redeem themselves.”

  “Yikes.”

  Chapter Seven

  And Neck Deep in Politicians and Killers

  26 Shawwal 1413

  After the mind boggling trust shown by Director Urfa, he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that the President of a whole freaking cross-dimensional Empire would just drop in to introduce himself.

  “Of course I called him!” Umaya sniffed. “They needed to meet.”

  Lucky Dave looked over at the commander, who nodded as he took a bite of a sandwich.

  President Orde had an illusion, somehow imprinted on a slip of metal, and was talking as he pointed to places, worlds, in the illusion.

  Nicholas swallowed. “Less risky than it first appears. Each gate is an absolute chokepoint, so any serious attack would have to come through multiple gates, simultaneously, and every gate they captured from the far side would be another risk of the planned attack being discovered.”

  “Yes. Both Empire and Earth became accustomed to small unit action against primitively armed Natives. Fortunately for all concerned, at the time of the Granite Peak . . . encounter. There are only fourteen other polities we consider a potential threat. Partly the ones with modern armies, and partly the worlds with magic.

  “Empire and Earth had both armed up, in anticipation of a war. Xen Wolfson totally derailed both polities’ expectations for the future. Thank the One.” The president glanced up at Davos, hovering over the commander, and then around at Lucky Dave. “Have you heard about Xen’s espionage here?”

  Lucky Dave sighed. “We’ve seen two different movies. I refuse to believe the whole thing wasn’t ridiculously exaggerated.”

  The president chuckled. “Ask Major Eppa for the whole ‘Endi Dewulfe’ file. Lots of footage from security cams and Newsies interviewing him.” He looked back at the Prophet. “He is Wolfgang Oldham’s son, and is shaking the foundations of the Multiverse.”

  Nicholas grinned. “Wolfgang was a scrawny undersized sixteen-year-old when I first met him. He got put in charge of our martial arts training, managed to clandestinely contact his foster father, organize an escape for those of us who dared. Most of us were rounded up quickly—we naively thought we could simply go to a judge and say ‘Look at us. We’re human.’ And it would all be put right.”

  He shook his head. “Wolf stayed free for oh, three or four years. Silly fool enlisted in the army. When he returned, he spotted the possibilities of the gates we were just barely able to open. He made the bags, loaded them with all sorts of stuff. Taught us survival skills . . . and how to tell when it was time to cut and run.”

  Orde’s eyebrows rose. “The modern theory of the Prophets is that you were marooned explorers.”

  “Close. But even without landing in a war zone, I think we would have never gone back. We were explorers, just looking for the right place to bail out, to escape.”

  A wry smile from the president. “You are totally ruining the last vestiges of the mythos. The all-powerful New Prophets, sent by Allah to lead the believers in the One True God to victory.”

  Lucky Dave snorted. “Which apparently they did.”

  “At great cost.” Ra’d was standing between the commander and the president and the wide glass of the balcony, and Dave wondered if he was shielding.

  In fact, there may be magical protections here that I’m unaware of.

  He winced at the thought of possible hostile magic as well.

  I trained in a World where we were the only ones with magic. I’m going to need to shift my reactions.

  “Three hundred and twenty years after the Arrival the war of unification was over. Oh, there were still spots of resistance, but nothing we’d call a war.” Ra’d shrugged. “The public was told that all the Prophets were gone. Emre . . . was still stuck in a compass so large it is generally referred to as the Hive Mind.

  “I’ve gone to Makkah several times, to check on him and help wiggle loose a few connections. I have great hopes that it can all come apart peacefully.” Another shrug. “They don’t particularly want it to.”

  “That’s a little disturbing.” The commander sat back, blinking, fighting off sleep.

  Ra’d reached to the side where he’d set a meter long metal rod. “The Fallen can manipulate the time ratio inside the bags. This one is doubled and experiences time four hundred times faster inside than outside. You can go in and sleep for three days or so, and pop back out in what we think was only about fifteen minutes.”

  He was unfolding the oversized handles as he spoke and setting them against the wall. He split the two meter tall rod and . . . opened a door to a room.

  Beautiful polished wood. A bed, a desk, a recliner by a bookshelf with a reading light.

  Davos laughed. “All fixed up like the lion’s den back home, eh, Ra’d?”

  “Of course.”

  Lucky Dave jumped to steady the commander and walked him in . . . in a cold sweat at th
e thought of walking back into a bubble.

  I can trust Ra’d! He’s not going to spirit the commander away!

  Umaya hustled in and guided Nicholas to the bed and shooed them out.

  The president grinned. “Trading with Comet Fall, as much for their dimensional works as for hard goods, has changed the World. And it’s not showing any sign of slowing. Am I correct, Ra’d, in thinking that the Prophet will be coming out to eat every fifteen minutes or so for a few days and then will probably be healed?”

  Lucky Dave blinked, and looked to Ra’d. “Just a few days?”

  “Yes. How many will depend on how long he spends out here, before he gets sleepy again.” Ra’d flashed a narrow smile. “And no, I don’t recommend you try it. He’s sleeping for three or four days at a go. You wouldn’t be. It would still feel exactly like three days for you.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll take myself off. Umaya’s going to have her hands full feeding him a dozen times a day.” The president shook hands with them, and ambled off, a guard stepping out of obscurity and following him.

  Lucky Dave blinked. “They’ve gotten good at that.”

  Ra’d nodded. “Like you.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t detect them.”

  Ra’d nodded. “Lucky Dave . . . you need to work with the people here. Is Rael still teaching magic?”

  Dave pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, the insane . . . Warrior is teaching magic. And cool Speed.”

  Davos chuckled. “Dave’s good at it. I still lose my temper—and then she trounces me.”

  Ra’d nodded. “I learned cool Speed from Ebsa, who is one of her pupils. So how are your history lessons coming?”

  “Oh, we started over, and have proceeded from the ridiculous things they teach about the Arrival through the end of the Unification War. Tonight, the Guards claim they’ll be showing us the invention, or reinvention, of Dimensional gates to other Worlds. And how we encountered Earth. Which will apparently explain this ‘Granite Peak Disaster’ everyone keeps mentioning.”

  “Keep in mind that it’s all fictionalized.” Ra’d smiled. “So a lot of it is toned down to make it believable. And in this case, foreshadowed, which didn’t actually happen. I’ve read the original reports. We were completely blind-sided.”

  ***

  Lucky Dave sighed. “The one thing all these movies are showing me is the depth of history of this world I’ve found myself in.”

  Foo tsked. “Surely you had history lessons.”

  “Heh. More like the myths about the world before the nuclear war. Which was only three hundred years before I was born. The History of the Dark Ages, the Formation of the Islamic Union, the age of conflicts as everyone tried to find high tech goodies in Europe and North America. That was all the history they bothered with. Oh, religious stuff. But that was even more mythical.”

  Davos nodded. “We’ve got history books now, including stuff from Earth Prime and Comet Fall. The history books that the Ones Left Behind kept in bubbles are the best. That Earth had a few wars, and it had a few nukes tossed around, too. So a lot of their records were lost. Or discarded over fourteen centuries.”

  Lucky Dave nodded. “The movies, sorry, vids make it all more visceral. At least these won’t give me nightmares. So the Horseboy slots in between, and the enemy spy is how we rediscovered Granite Peak. And I’ve got to say if your External Relations Director is anything like that third mov . . . VID, dammit, he’s got cast iron balls.”

  That got laughs.

  Oldy grinned. “Remember in Horseboy, the IR analyst who was getting set up to take the blame, and instead killed the main conspirator? Same guy. And in The Survivors? The guy investigating the possible incursion and catching up to them in Makkah in time to fast talk them out of there? Yeah him.”

  A giggle close enough behind him to chill his spine. “He came in to talk to Urfa yesterday. So Dave has seen the real thing.”

  Lucky Dave glared over his shoulder . . . modified it into an expression of casual curiosity. He hoped. “He looked quite a bit like an ordinary businessman. So, not just a good manager, apparently.”

  Nods all around.

  “Umm, so these fast rooms. Are they importing them?”

  “Not really. The problem is the danger in leaving a baby in them too long. Even the straightforward singles are dangerous that way. At twenty-to-one if you leave your baby in there and get distracted for fifteen minutes, that’s five hours during which the kid’s probably been screaming and crying and whatever.”

  “Oh. That’s not good.”

  “Yeah. Paer’s got one, but she’s also got a nanny and two guards on the premises at all times.” Rael giggled. “She uses it to catch up on her sleep, when the twins get cranky and keep her up at night. Or if something comes up, she can bubble them, and then make up the time by sleeping in there with them for however long it takes to catch up with their calendar age.”

  “Is it really necessary to do that?” Lucky Dave considered the families he’d known, the exhausted parents.

  “Being the President’s daughter, their kids are under scrutiny, and being ‘delayed’ in development would get spread all over the Empire.” Rael shrugged. “Ra’d and Nighthawk on the other hand are deliberately letting their kids grow slowly. They’re thinking that if they can manage it, Oak being a year older than the twins and Fox a year younger, they’ll have a good play group, and extended courtesy Aunt and Uncle and so forth.”

  “So Paer and Nighthawk are friends?”

  “Yep. And Ebsa and Ra’d are an unbelievable team in XR.”

  “Oh . . . that’s the president’s son-in-law? My head hurts.”

  Giggle. “Don’t worry. There’s not too many more movers and shakers to meet. What do you think, Foo? Two, three hundred, max?”

  Lucky Dave groaned while his brother laughed.

  Yeah. Easy for you to laugh. You’re a Warrior. I’m a badly misplaced soldier with a few magic tricks.

  Lucky Dave hauled himself to his feet and headed back to the mansion.

  Scar was watching as a cart from the kitchen was unloaded, the cart across the doorway as a maid took things off the bottom shelf and handed them across the cart to another maid.

  As he walked up, he could hear Umaya’s cheerful voice from inside ordering someone to put something in the little fridge.

  And a sudden sharp, “What are you doing!”

  Two fast steps, dive over the cart, knocking the inside maid over. Somersault to his feet. Grab the flat lid so close to hand. Survey. Umaya wrestling with another white clad maid . . . who shrugged her off easily, pulling a gun. The thrown lid hit her across the cheekbone.

  Where’s the commander? What’s the angle to his bed? Dare I shoot?

  Umaya pounced on the maid’s gun hand and clung. Dave punched the maid’s throat, twisted her gun hand. The gun fell.

  Scar grabbed the gun in midair and threw it at the far end of the room as he shoved them all through the door and into Umaya’s bedroom. A sharp hard crack.

  “Fuck! You have exploding fucking guns?” Dave grabbed hair and thumped the maid’s head on the wall a few times. Until she—or he—went limp.

  “Yeah.” Scar grunted to his feet and limped back out the door, trailing blood. The inside maid was gorily dead. “Maid in standard dress exiting 2W. Assume armed and dangerous. Explosion was laser power pack.”

  Oh, he’s got some sort of radio on.

  Dave checked Umaya, stumbling to her feet and rushing for the commander’s room. Dave hustled after. All clear, opened the fast room.

  Nicholas was buttoning his shirt, eyebrows rising as he took in Dave’s appearance, the gun now in his hand.

  “Umaya, stay with him. Close the door.” A more thorough check, bathroom, wardrobe, under the bed. Dave trotted back out. “Clear back here.”

  Scar nodded from the exterior door. “Yeah, they’ve got the third maid.”

  “They were too strong for women. Small men, I think.”
/>   “Oh? Now that’s interesting.” Scar sighed. “And we get another security review. Domestic staff has always been a weak point.”

  More Black Horse Guards entered, and Dave backed up to the fast room and let them do their thing.

  Not that I’m not familiar with people wanting to kill the commander, but I really thought it would be different, here and now.

  A familiar voice, Rael had arrived. Dave stepped to the door to Umaya’s room and listened to her talking to the first maid.

  She—or he—was barely conscious and Rael was face to face with her. “The Prophet, what are you planning to do to the Prophet Nicholas, the General of the Armies . . . Oh really? Why would he fight for you?”

  Reading his thoughts, as he tries to not answer.

  A small soft man in an immaculate robe hustled in. Rael eased to the side to give him access to the assassin.

  Dave caught Foo’s eye. Kept his voice to a bare breath. “Is that one of those Eunuch Priests?”

  Foo nodded. “They’re doing a truth match, to find out . . .”

  Rael flinched back and hauled the priest back, slapped him. “Out! Get out!” Behind her the maid slumped to the ground. Dave flinched at the little psychic death shock.

  The priest reeled, staggering back. “T-Thank you, Rael. I’m, I’m all right.” He looked down at the body, and then back at Dave. “They weren’t here to kill him, they planned on kidnapping him.”

  Rael nodded. “A splinter group that thought having a prophet all their own would help them push their cause.”

  Lucky Dave sighed. “I believe the appropriate hackneyed phrase is ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ Except back then the Imperial Chinese were trying to kidnap magic children. Well, and kill any adults around. These poor fools have no idea what a Prophet is capable of.”

  Rael cocked her head. “As good a shape as Nicholas is in . . . yes, I’ve met a few of the Comet Fall gods. I wouldn’t want to get any of them mad at me.”

  Lucky Dave turned at a step behind him. The commander, Umaya safe behind him.