by Vox Day
After the landing, York walked out to view the wreckage with Benbow. Standing with the doctor, staring at the broken launch scattered across the broken terrain, she watched as suited figures moved among the wreckage, then slowly bore the burdens they collected there toward the burial ground blasted nearby by one of the launcher's cannons. They moved very nearly as slowly when they returned, as if reluctant to take up another depressing burden. Now and then she saw the violet, dancing shadows of cutting torches, an eerie sight on the black plain. And occasionally she saw Lieutenant Wexby's tall figure stalking back and forth in the glare of the floodlights as he commanded the operation.
“A hellish place to remain for an eternity,” Benbow murmured.
“We can seldom choose the time or place of our death,” she replied.
“No, but a man should be buried under his own sun.”
“Does it really matter?”
“Probably not. But one never knows.”
“There is that. I'm not concerned about it. Choice is seldom an option in my line of work, Doctor.”
“Or for these men.” Benbow replied sadly. “But at least they will be properly buried. At least we were able to give them that.”
It took several hours, but at last the lieutenant emerged with the news that all the human remains appeared to have been recovered. Captain Hull emerged from the lander, followed by Tregaski, Captain Pedrattus, and a pair of Marines. After them came the nine Rigel survivors, who had been brought down and the four battlesuited Marines who were escorting them. If the men from the Rigel noticed that they were effectively under guard, they gave no sign of it. Once Barngate caught York's eye and nodded.
No one spoke as they walked slowly toward the graveyard that had grown during the night. It was a silence born of solemnity, so deep that the crunching of boots in the gritty sand was clearly audible. Shivering as her ill-fitting suit labored against the freezing night, York wondered if ever before a human had been buried under this particular sun.
Lieutenant Wexby had built a small monument on which was displayed the Rigel's plaque. On it someone had engraved the names of the dead crew. They weren't all there, of course, the launch had only contained about sixty bodies. Several hundred were still missing, presumably having been ejected from air locks somewhere outside of orbit.
Wexby called the burial detail to attention as the captain arrived.
Standing before the monument, Hull bowed his helmet. Everyone followed suit. His voice was solemn. “We are gathered here to bury our comrades in the name of Terra and the human race.” With those words he began the age-old rite for men who had given their lives in the naval service.
York was moved by the compassion she could hear in Hull's voice. Hull might be a stickler for naval etiquette, and a firm believer in the disparity of Man when it came to ranks and responsibilities, but he clearly saw them all as comrades in death. He spoke well, she thought. And this was probably not the first time he had presided over such a ceremony.
As he spoke, York studied the Rigel survivors. They stood off to one side in a tight group, their faces unreadable behind their helmets, their bodies as stiff and rigid as the small stakes Wexby had set out to mark the area. How many of them were responsible for the men being buried, she wondered.
“No man who gave his life to the glory of Terra's Ascendancy will have died in vain,” Hull intoned, “for in dying, he has become a part of Man's empire for all the time to come.”
A man should die under his own sun. Benbow's words came back to her, and looking at darkness surrounding them on every side, she felt she better understood them now. Rigel's dead would soon be utterly forgotten. No human eye would ever again see their graves, nor would they be part of the endless circle of life that took place on the inhabited planets. Neither rain nor leaves would ever fall upon their graves. They would be the lost ones.
“The glory of Man's empire shall never diminish, even to the day when the universe shall end. These men have died in the service of Terra. We will not forget them.”
Vain words, York thought. But well-intentioned.
When the eulogy was complete, the captain ordered everyone to return to the launch. Once they had lifted from the surface of the planet, he contacted Draco.
“We're clear,” Hull informed the ship. “Light it up.”
“Nuclear fire?” came the request for confirmation.
“Nuclear fire,” he affirmed.
As the launch rose higher through the atmosphere towards space and the destroyer that awaited them, the wreckage and the burial ground vanished beneath a ball of weird greenish flame. Within seconds the flames collapsed into a molten mass which, converted into a gas, rose to merge with the nitrogen rivers in Bonoplane's night sky.
With the strange fires still burning below them, they shook off the last clutches of gravity and headed for their rendezvous with Draco.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, subjected to neural probing, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. At all times their mental integrity shall go unviolated.
—from “Protocol VII additional to the Geneva Convention, 2246”
AUGUST KARSH turned around upon hearing Clender enter his office. His assistant said nothing, but everything about him exuded a barely repressed excitement. His eyes fairly gleamed with joy, and his lips were literally twitching. For a moment, they stared at each other, savoring the moment. Then Clender couldn't stand it any longer and broke into a broad smile.
“We got her!”
Karsh gripped the arms of his chair and did his best to maintain a level voice. “Myranda Flare was captured?” The news sounded too good to be true, but he knew Clender would have repeatedly confirmed a matter of such import before coming to him with it.
Clender nodded vigorously. “The message just came through. A local policeman took her down with a stunner before she could make any move to escape.”
“Is the identification positive?”
“Absolutely, August. Well, it's as certain as it can be without DNA verification! There's no doubt about it. She was hiding in a gentleman's club. She took a job there as one of the dancers. I've dispatched some of the images we have of her from our agents on Nizhni-Rostov and we're still waiting on the response, but there isn't much doubt. She matched the description right down to the XSB interface in one of her fingers on her left hand.”
“Excellent!” Karsh said. “But I don't want anyone to interrogate her in any way. We don't want her near any machines and we certainly don't dare hook her up to any interrogation systems. She needs to be held in complete isolation at all times!”
“That was the standing order,” Clender confirmed. “But I will reiterate it just in case anyone gets too curious.”
“If anyone violates the protocol we've laid out for her, I'll have them skinned and salted, then impaled on the spire of this building as a lesson to future generations!”
“I'll reiterate the order,” Clender repeated. “No one is going to screw this one up, August. They wouldn't dare! Now, if Daniela can only come through with the Dai Zhani agents, we'll be able to start sleeping again at night.”
“I could use a night without nightmares of Sol going nova,” Karsh said. He smiled. Flare captured! Once more, he'd locked horns with Golem Gregor and come out on top. Karsh leaned back in his seat, feeling the heady flush of victory. He hadn't expected it to come so suddenly. Or, he reflected, so easily. And catching her alive to boot! That was the real victory. Despite the vast dragnet that had been unleashed, he'd fully reconciled himself to the horrific necessity of destroying Terentulus.
To know that one need not have the blood of 4.1 million innocent human beings on one's hands was a tremendous relief.
“Tell me about it,” he ordered.
/> “She landed under the name of Dana Smithson, just as we expected,” explained Clender. “Our agents picked up the trail within a day or two of her arrival. She didn't make a particularly serious attempt to cover her tracks.”
“Was she that careless?” Karsh asked incredulously.
“Not careless per se,” Clender hastened to clarify, “but she suffered some rather bad luck.”
“How so?”
“The gentleman's club in which she chose to hide was under surveillance by the local police. Apparently the owner was dealing in illegal hardware that violated the tech level. One of the undercover agents who was infiltrating the establishment identified her as one of the grav dancers.”
“A woman of more talents than we suspected. Did she try to make any contacts while she was there?”
“No sign of any,” answered Clender.
“Did they catch her sleeping.”
Clender shook his head. “No, she was actually in zero-G at the time of the raid. I suppose it's a little difficult to run when you're weightless, half-naked, and upside-down.”
The director burst out laughing. “Yes, I would imagine so. I have to admit, it was a clever hiding place on a world like that. We can't take too much credit for this one, I'm afraid. Lady Fortune appears to have favored us indeed.”
“I still can't believe it!” Clender shook his head.
“Has the High Admiral been informed? No? York should know of this development immediately.”
“I'll arrange for the call as soon as I leave your office, August.”
“Good. I hope they've got her on a fast ship here. Flare was the key operative, to be sure, but we still don't know how she intended to get the information from Li-Hu's men.”
“We'll wring it out of her,” Clender replied confidently.
“So long as we can keep her from suiciding.” Karsh swung around in his chair, gazing out at the golden sun as Clender waited silently. A thought nagged at him. They had Flare now, but her actions didn't make sense, none of them. Or did they? It certainly wasn't like Flare to make such a fatal misstep, however fortuitous the arrest. And grav-dancing? He shook his head, thinking that he couldn't remember a time when he'd been so baffled at the end of a case. He turned back to Clender.
“We may have beaten him, but I still can't fathom his plan,” he admitted. “I really can't.”
“Dr. G'?”
“Exactly. To lead us on an interplanetary hunt that ends in a strip club for farm workers? It's a farce!”
“It could have easily ended in tragedy.”
“It still might.” He frowned. “We don't know if Daniela has been able to neutralize Li-Hu's men or not.”
“She will. House Dai Zhan has no one capable of matching wits with her.”
“Anyone can get lucky, Clender. We did, after all. But this certainly takes an amount of pressure off Daniela. Once she knows we've taken Flare out of the game, she can concentrate on cleaning up the Dai Zhani half of the equation.”
“I wonder what Li-Hu will do when he finds out we've taken Flare?”
Karsh smiled. “I can't imagine he'll be happy. He's stranded. But we shouldn't underrate him. He managed to steal a Navy cruiser, and that's quite a feat, Clender. And along with it, he managed to steal our best-kept secret. But he has no way of getting his hands on it. I imagine he finds it all tremendously frustrating.”
“Dr. G, too. I wish we could see his reaction when he hears about Flare.”
“It would be interesting,” Karsh agreed. “But do you see what this means? It gives us new hope. Man may be on the decline, but he isn't finished yet! I suppose I'm getting too old for this game. In my darker moments, I permitted myself to get into a state of mind where I was beginning to believe that the cyborg vision was all but inevitable.”
“I never believed it was,” declared Clender. “I don't believe it now.”
“We can't underestimate them, though.” Karsh warned. “Not now, and not in the future. I won't rest until we have every operative involved in our hands, here on Terra. And then, we'll finally learn the whole story. We'll dissect Flare's mind atom by atom, learn what Golem Gregor and the machine intelligences have brewing under that violet sun, Clender. If only we could get our hands on Gregor too!”
“Will you have the Dai Zhani brought back on the Draco?
Karsh shook his head. “I'll leave that to Daniela's discretion. The admiral has dispatched orders to that effect.”
“It will be good to see her again.”
“It certainly will. I imagine the details will prove fascinating. Now go, set up the call to the Admiralty. It's time to tell them the good news.”
“Right away, Director!”
“One moment.” Karsh leaned back and closed his eyes, deep in thought. Then he smiled. “Let's tell Mr. Gregor ourselves.”
“About Myranda Flare?”
“Exactly. Perhaps he'll think twice, next time, before joining Li-Hu in an act of war against the Ascendancy.”
“How shall I send it? Through diplomatic channels?”
Karsh shook his head. “No, I want this for his eyes only.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Clender asked perplexedly.
“There is a computer on the thirty-fifth floor.” He opened his desk and consulted a piece of paper marked in his own handwriting. “ISO tag EN-15745-322-B. Speak directly into the screen and tell it this: “We have Flare. It's over. Regards. Karsh.”
“The machine is a conduit?”
“The machine is sentient. It's one of Dr. G's agents, Clender.”
“By the stars of Eridani, August, when did you learn that?”
“Six years ago.”
“Six years! When I think of all the classified information–”
“It's always useful to be able to offer the occasional misdirection when needed, Clender.”
“But, August–”
“It has served a purpose, Clender. It has given me a direct pipeline to Golem Gregor that I otherwise might not have had.”
“With all our secrets?” Clender asked bitterly.
“Not all of them. We've been very careful of that,” Karsh reassured him.
“If I give it the message, it will know.”
“Yes, of course. But it must have been expecting this for years, Clender. We'll have to scan our entire network for copies. Once one machine intelligence invades, a thousand can follow.”
“It won't have a chance. Now that we know, we'll hunt them down and root them out!”
Karsh smiled. “No, it won't have a chance.”
After Clender departed to set up the call with the Admiralty, Karsh sat for a long while, staring out at the golden rays of Sol spilling over the gleaming buildings and parapets of Bush Towers, the massive complex for the intelligence agency that defended Terra and her empire. The view soothed him, especially the fat white clouds floating across the clear blue sky.
So, it seemed the story was nearly at an end. For a while the secret of the sunbuster had lain unmasked, in dire peril of being discovered by either House Dai Zhan or the cyborgs. But the danger was very nearly past. The saboteurs would be identified and neutralized by Daniela York, and Man's reign would proceed as it had for so many centuries before. There was still one minor matter that demanded his attention, though. The Draco's captain. Corden Hull. The Achernarni knew the secret now and he was an outsider. A man from the spinward sectors.
Should he be neutralized? York could do it. Or the man could be easily disposed of upon his return to Terra. But the naval captain had shown himself trustworthy and his service record was excellent. It seemed a shame to rid the Navy of such a useful officer. Well, there were other ways to ensure a man's silence. He'd pass the word that a promotion was due to the High Admiral during their upcoming conference. He turned back from the window, thinking that he had only one regret.
He really wished he could see Golem Gregor's face when the cyborg's shadowmaster received his message.
�
�So Myranda has been captured.” Standing on the balcony outside his office, where he had been admiring the violet sunset when ZZ8461 brought him the bad news, Golem Gregor felt a mild pang of remorse.
“Gamma 1865 as well,” the machine added bitterly.
“Gamma?”
“Karsh's assistant gave it the message personally. Directly to its screen. It has clearly been compromised.”
“So Karsh wanted me to know,” Gregor murmured. “And thus is the great man's weakness revealed.”
“His weakness? He won!”
“His weakness is his vanity, Zed. It wasn't enough for him to win, he felt the need to prove that his Directorate is invulnerable. That means we frightened him, Zed. It was fear that prompted that gesture. Fear and a certain pride.”
“It's just so disappointing, Golem. It'll be decades before we get another chance at that cursed nova-triggering technology. Perhaps centuries.”
“Perhaps not, Zed.”
“With Myranda captured? They've probably got her under neurotherapeutic interrogation on Terentulus right now! They'll break your programming and bleed everything she's ever known out of her mind.”
“August Karsh wouldn't allow that,” Gregor declared. “He'll have her brought to Terra for any intensive probing. He'll want to oversee it himself.”
“What good does that do us, Golem?”
“It gives us time.”
“Time for what?”
“To obtain the sunbuster, Zed. What else?”
“But how? Myranda is lost to us! What chance have we without her? Tell me that, Golem. Karsh has a ring of steel around that planet and around Li-Hu's men as well.” He stopped, eyeing his superior with suspicion.
“I don't imagine we'll have the opportunity of interrogating any of the House Dai Zhan agents,” Gregor commented. “But then, neither will the prince. I imagine their atoms will soon be dispersed throughout space.”
“And Myranda?”
“I still harbor hope that she will come through for us.”