Now she gasped as a blue flame surged straight in the air from the top of the alloy stand, coming from the tube. The crowd roared its mindless approval, and then grew even louder when four guards escorted the condemned man toward the platform. Sajak wore a red hood over his head, and a simple red smock; without his uniform he looked very small and thin. Onlookers moved aside as the guards pressed their way through.
Meghina, the most famous noblewoman in the Merchant Prince Alliance, loathed these macabre spectacles that Lorenzo staged too frequently, and disliked the way he made her observe them whenever they were together. She and the Doge could not be any different, but eighteen years ago she had consented to marry him for the sake of her own House of Siriki, to give her people enhanced military protection and commercial benefits.
Over the time that they had been married—living much of the time on different worlds—she had tried to see good things in him, and on occasion his small kindnesses surfaced. But she felt no passion for the nobleman, no spark, not the way she had cherished Prince Saito. Such a distinguished old gentleman the industrialist had been, and what a terrible loss when he didn’t come out of his coma. She wondered if the rumors were true, that his own son had attacked CorpOne, leading to his death. If so, she hoped he got what he deserved.
In front of the Doge and his lady, entertainers wandered through the crowd, playing music, singing songs, and juggling, throwing glimmerballs high in the air. Hawkers worked the perimeter, selling gourmet foods to the excited people who had come to see fifteen traitors die.
How ironic this whole scenario was, Meghina thought, as she watched two black-robed men take custody of the hooded prisoner and lead him up the steps of the platform. General Mah Sajak had been a renowned torturer of Mutatis, and now Lorenzo promised he was going to die as horribly as he always gave it out himself. Fittingly, according to her husband, today’s means of execution was a device of Sajak’s own invention, a machine that he had been developing, and which no one had ever put to use. Until now.
Atop the platform, one of the robed men removed Sajak’s hood with a flourish, which seemed odd to Meghina. Normally it was the other way around; they put a hood on a victim just before executing him, a gesture of compassion at the end. But there was nothing normal about today’s event. General Sajak had been the most trusted military officer in the entire Merchant Prince Alliance, and had committed the ultimate betrayal.
Seeing the chair and the blue flame beside it, Sajak began to scream in terror, and tried unsuccessfully to free himself. The crowd grew quiet, except for the call of a food hawker, an odd sound drowned out by the General’s panicked shrieks.
“No, no!” he pleaded. “Not this! Please, not this! I’ll give you more names, people who conspire against the Doge!” Even from her distance of perhaps thirty meters away, Meghina saw the terror on the disgraced officer’s gaunt face, the way his eyes seemed twice their normal size.
Doge Lorenzo waved one hand, and a holo-image appeared in the air over the execution machine, a three-dimensional schematic drawing of the device.
“General Mah Sajak invented this machine himself!” a mechanical voice proclaimed over the loudspeaker system. “These are his own drawings!”
The image spun slowly, so that all could see it.
The elegant Princess didn’t want to watch this terrible event, but knew she had no choice. Her husband and the crowd would expect it, and she could not lose face by disappointing them.
“No!” Sajak screamed. He tried to kick one of the robed men in the groin, but a thick garment prevented this. In response, the man backhanded the prisoner, sending him sprawling. Forcefully, the ominously-attired pair then dragged Sajak to the chair and strapped him to it, while he continued to scream and shout his promises to reveal new information.
It did him no good, for his fate had been sealed. A black, rather dented robot climbed the platform, and removed the tube that was shooting the blue flame, so that it was now a mobile torch.
Pointing it toward the sky, the robot turned the flame up, to double its previous size. The crowd thundered its approval.
Even over that noise, Meghina heard Sajak’s screams.
“Louder,” Doge Lorenzo said, to an aide.
Moments later, someone turned up the volume on a fireproof microphone that Sajak wore on his person. His shuddering screams reverberated across the square, sending the crowd into a frenzy of pleasure.
* * * * *
Holding the torch, the sentient robot activated a laser eye on it, and directed a bright red light at the prisoner’s booted left foot. Jimu moved closer, and a metallic strap shot out of the device in his hand, wrapping itself around Sajak’s lower left leg, just above his ankle.
“No!” he screamed. “Don’t do this to me!”
The blue flame darted forward hungrily, and consumed the boot and the General’s foot. His screams intensified, but the robot paid no attention. This evil man had tried to assassinate the Doge, the greatest Human in the galaxy.
Where there had been a foot only moments before, nothing but a charred, cauterized stump remained now.
Moments later, Jimu burned the right foot off. The robot expected Sajak to pass out from the pain, but he didn’t, and kept wailing and crying for mercy. An expert at torture himself, the General was suffering indignity on top of indignity at the hands of the robot. The lower legs followed, then the thighs. Piece by piece, Jimu melted the body from the feet up. When he got to the lower torso, Sajak finally grew quiet and motionless.
The crowd cheered and clapped. Children giggled and played. Musicians struck up joyous tunes, and acrobats performed.
In a cruel spectacle, other robots under Jimu’s command then executed General Sajak’s co-conspirators the same way, one by one and piece by piece. Princess Meghina nearly gagged at the odor of charred flesh. Admittedly, these were all bad people, but she couldn’t avoid her feelings of intense sadness. Faking a little sneeze, she leaned forward and wiped tears from her eyes, not wanting anyone to see.
Through it all, she sat silently beside Lorenzo, showing the Doge and the public one face, while concealing another one.
* * * * *
Following the executions, Doge Lorenzo appointed the famed inventor Jacopo Nehr to a new position, surprising many people. Nehr—previously only a reserve colonel—became Supreme General of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces, taking control away from the noble-born princes, whose champion had been Sajak. The new military commander owned several machine manufacturing plants on Hibbil worlds, and preferred the uniformity of those new machines to Jimu and his motley bunch. Still, Nehr could not deny their loyalty or accomplishments, so he rewarded them by commissioning all of them Red Beret officers.
In the process, Jimu was initiated into the rituals and secrets of the elite paramilitary organization, whose primary mission was to protect the Doge. This pleased the robot immensely, but he found himself troubled by the memory of the terrible defeat suffered by the Grand Fleet at Paradij … the biggest military loss in merchant prince history. Sadness and guilt permeated his mechanical brain, but his logical circuitry told him that he had not been at fault, and that he had done his best possible job as Captain of the sentient machines.
Even so, he felt an inexplicable need to make up for the loss, in some manner. The loyal robot vowed to work even harder on behalf of Doge Lorenzo.
Chapter Fifty-One
We have been taught from birth to never trust any member of another race, not even those who profess to be our greatest, most virtuous friends.
—Hibbil Instruction
He knew he must be a comical sight this morning, a furry little Hibbil in the saddle of an immense tigerhorse, but Pimyt didn’t care.
Far ahead, at the edge of a clearing, the Royal Attaché heard barking hounds and the shouts of other riders, who were barely visible to him as they hunted an elusive ivix. Pimyt sat sidesaddle on a magnificent bay steed at the rear of the pack, thinking about how much he hated hav
ing to get up so early, without time for a civilized breakfast. Hunger pangs gnawed at his stomach.
He tried to put such thoughts aside, knowing that his opportunity to get even for such discomforts would come. Very soon.
An ivix? Who cared about running one of those tiny horned creatures to ground and taking it home to stuff as a trophy? Pimyt had much more important prey in mind.
Purportedly, his own people were to Humans what Adurians were to Mutatis—allies, advisers, and legitimate business associates. But none of that was really true. It was all a deadly ruse. The extent of the treachery was immense and so cleverly fabricated that it spanned an entire galaxy.
The web of deceit permeated both Human and Mutati society at the highest levels.
As the Doge Lorenzo del Velli’s most trusted associate, Pimyt exerted a great deal of influence over affairs of the realm. In the past, the furry, innocent-looking little fellow had even been appointed temporary Regent of the entire Merchant Prince Alliance, until the princes decided upon a new leader.
But Hibbils had never been loyal to Humans, nor had Adurians ever been allegiant to Mutatis. The Hibbils and Adurians were, in fact, secretly allied with one another in what they called the HibAdu Coalition, and for centuries had developed a diabolical scheme to overthrow both the Merchant Prince Alliance and the Mutati Kingdom.
Lorenzo was somewhere up ahead with most of the other riders, on the heels of the barking hounds and the little ivix that they all sought. It hardly seemed worth the effort to Pimyt. But he participated anyway, as he was expected to do. Not being of noble blood himself, some of the riders resented his presence, but he didn’t care about any of that, the petty politics of Human society.
To his credit, Doge Lorenzo didn’t care much about the pedigree of noble blood, even though it coursed through his own veins. Rather, he preferred to promote people on the basis of merit, regardless of the circumstances of birth. But that was not enough to redeem himself in the eyes of Pimyt or his Hibbil brethren. No Human could ever do that, and especially not the leader of their damnable kind.
In his years as a trusted confidant of Doge Lorenzo, Pimyt had accomplished a great deal, and in the process he had learned not to trust anyone. The downside of a lapse or oversight was too great. Better not to rely on anyone except his own people. Promises made between races were notoriously unreliable. Even the alliance between the Hibbils and the Adurians had its dangers, which his people were monitoring carefully.
Abruptly, Pimyt noticed that the hounds were running toward him, barking loudly, and the rest of the hunters were following them. Then he noticed something running low to the ground just ahead of the daggs, a little horned creature with fur that glinted gold when morning sunlight hit it.
Concealing himself and his mount in a thicket of leyland maples, he waited until the ivix ran by, then fired a shot from his vest-pocket gun at it, hitting the animal square in the side of its body. This was not a proper thing to do, so he quickly rode away through the trees, to avoid detection. Coming around behind the hunters again, he sat atop his tigerhorse, looking down at the fallen ivex.
“Looks like it’s been shot,” said a fop from the royal court.
“Who would do such an unsportsmanlike thing?” Lorenzo asked, looking from face to face. Since he trusted Pimyt explicitly, however, his gaze hardly touched the Hibbil.
No one seemed to know the answer.
As they rode back to the stables together, Pimyt felt very pleased. Now that this consummate waste of time was over, he could sit down for a decent meal. Despite his small stature, he had a voracious appetite. All of his people were this way, so it was a wonder that they didn’t grow any larger.
* * * * *
That evening at his private apartment in the capital city, Pimyt received a coded message chip, containing very interesting information from his Adurian co-conspirators. With information from an unlikely source—Jacopo Nehr’s own brother Giovanni—the Mutatis now had the secret of the nehrcom cross-space communication system. This was highly useful information to Pimyt. Not for the technology, but for the lack of it … and the leverage this gave him. Jacopo Nehr had always been so secretive about the workings of the device, and now it turned out that it was not so complicated after all. With the message, Pimyt received a holo replica of the entire nehrcom transceiver, showing its simple inner workings.
* * * * *
The following afternoon, Pimyt plodded into Jacopo Nehr’s private offices for an appointment he had requested, ostensibly to discuss details of their new working relationship. Behind his gleaming sirikan teak desk, Nehr looked more rested than usual, perhaps reflecting his contentment at having been selected as the top military officer in the Alliance.
“Congratulations on your appointment, General Nehr.”
“Thank you.”
“I would have thought you’d be out drilling your officers on your new programs,” Pimyt said, as he climbed onto a chair that was too large for him and plopped himself down.
Nehr beamed. “As a businessman, I’ve learned how to delegate.”
“I see. And how to manage crises, I presume?”
The man’s eyes narrowed, just a little. “Of course. That comes with the territory.”
“We’ll see how good you are at it, then.”
Leaning forward nervously, Nehr asked, “What do you mean?”
At a snap of his fingers, Pimyt produced a holo-image of the nehrcom transceiver, showing all of its inner workings. Like a bubble, it floated in front of the startled inventor, whose eyes looked more like an owl’s now than those of a Human. The Hibbil suppressed a smile.
“W-where did you g-get this?” he stammered.
Ignoring the question, Pimyt said, “So, your famous transceiver is only a box of piezoelectric emeralds cut precisely and then arranged and linked in a specific way to open up the cross-galactic transmission lines. Interesting, isn’t it, how the most important ideas are often so simple?”
“But h-how?.… w-where did you … ?” Undoubtedly envisioning his galactic corporation crumbling around him, Nehr could hardly complete a sentence.
“I have my sources, shall we say? Let me caution you, before we go any farther, that I have given copies of this holo to certain key … associates for safekeeping. And if anything were to happen to me … “ He smiled. “I need not go into detail, do I?”
Astounded, Nehr stared at the holo of precisely-arranged gems inside its box.
The Royal Attaché smiled, and said, “Great inventor! What a joke that is. As a Hibbil, with a long tradition of innovative manufacturing and development techniques, I know the difference.”
“I’ve had my suspicions about you for a long time,” Nehr muttered.
“And you consider yourself a fine judge of character, I presume?”
“What are you driving at?”
Rubbing his furry chin, Pimyt decided not to reveal what was on the verge of passing over his lips, that Nehr’s own brother had betrayed him. No need to reveal that yet. There might be an opportunity to gain an advantage over the brother, too.
“Well?”
Delaying his response, Pimyt studied his new captive, considering how best to leash him and prevent him from biting. Nehr was red-faced. Perspiration trickled down his brow, into his eyes.
“If you don’t cooperate with me,” Pimyt said, “I’m in a position to ruin you. If I reveal your nehrcom secrets, you will no longer have a monopoly on instantaneous communication across the galaxy. There’s also the little matter of your machine-manufacturing plants on Hibbil worlds. They could easily be nationalized, taken away from you.”
“Get to the point. What is it you want?”
“Not so much. Just a little arrangement.” Again, he hesitated, this time for dramatic effect. Nehr was getting more red-faced, sweating more.
“Here is what you will do,” Pimyt finally said. “Periodically, I will give you communiqués, which you are to transmit to all planets in the Merchant Prin
ce Alliance.”
“Concerning what?”
“You are in no position to ask questions. And do not discuss this with anyone but me, in private. Not even Doge Lorenzo. Understood?”
The inventor nodded, reluctantly. He looked displeased and trapped.
Pimyt smiled. Unrevealed to Jacopo or any other Human, the Hibbils and Adurians had a military agenda of their own, and were now in a position to influence the placement and strength of Human forces. Some of the messages, in the midst of innocuous ones, would involve military matters.…
Chapter Fifty-Two
People change, and so do worlds. The universe remains constant.
—Saying of the Sirikan Hill People
Inside an oval chamber on the lowest level of EcoStation, Noah stood at the most powerful magnaviewer window aboard, providing him with a high-resolution picture of the planet below the geostationary orbiter. Once, Canopa had been his world. He had known it well, and especially his beloved Ecological Demonstration Project there.
Subi Danvar wanted him to leave the orbital platform and seek refuge on some distant planet. But that was against Noah’s nature. He didn’t like to run away from anything, no matter how much sense it made to do so. Earlier, when he’d been caught in the surprise attack on CorpOne headquarters, he’d only been accompanied by a small entourage, and it had seemed prudent to escape quickly and analyze the situation. Now he hesitated, searching for alternatives.
Having received telebeam reports from the ground, and having watched through his magnaviewer, he knew that his security force had fought valiantly, and still held tenuous control over the southwest corner of the compound. But they had been unable to defend the main buildings, which had fallen to superior Red Beret and CorpOne forces. Such a disturbing alliance between his own sister Francella and Doge Lorenzo, and Subi had intercepted reports that more of their forces were on the way. It was only a matter of time until the brave Guardian defenders lost what little ground they still held.
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