Celestial Hit List

by Charles Ingrid

  Rawlins let out a low whistle. “Lieutenant, go get Sergeant Lassaday for me,” Kavin ordered.

  The towhead left, a little reluctantly.

  As soon as his footfalls faded, Kavin pointed at Ted. “You’re not here because of Holy Trials. You’re here to save your ass. Why do you think Captain Storm would have any interest in you?”

  Ted licked his lip apprehensively. He glanced dartingly around, saw no help, and decided to plunge in. “I know why Claron was burned off. I’m a bush skimmer, see. I did some mapping for the free miners. It’s a long story, goes back to the Sand Wars.”

  Kavin sat back on the conference table edge. “I’ve got time. Tell me.”

  The pilot took the liberty of propping his bad ankle up on the table. “I wasn’t always stove up like this. I made a good living as a bush skimmer. Then I found something I shouldn’t have. A Thrakian sand crèche on Claron. Now Claron was a new planet, just opened up for colonization. Damn Thraks shouldn’t even have known about it. You heard about the Sand Wars?” Ted eyed Kavin. “Maybe. You’d a just been a pup, like me, but maybe. Anyhow, I was lookin’ for somebody on Claron. A Knight.”

  “The Thraks were supposed to have wiped out every Knight there was in the Sand Wars, ‘cept maybe one or two who went AWOL, but those kind didn’t go AWOL. They were elite, you know?”

  Kavin nodded his head briskly. He knew.

  “Well, someone in the Dominion found out the Thraks honor ferocity among their defeated. They’ll take in one or two of their best enemies. Honor them. Convert them if they can. Subvert them if not. And put ‘em back where they’ll be found. There was supposed to be one of those Lost Knights on Claron, and I was supposed to keep my eye peeled for ‘im while I was skimming.”

  “I didn’t find the Knight. I did find the sand crèche. I reported it. Next thing I knew, the warships were comin’ in overhead, firestorming the place. It was a nightmare. Nobody was meant to get out of there. Nobody. I made it, only because I was out skimmin’ and had camped so far out. I barely got singed. But then the agent I was working for visited the evacuation camp and tried to make sure I would never talk about what I’d found.”

  “But you talked to Storm. Why?” Inside, Kavin found it difficult to breathe. His guts were clenched just below his navel. He knew why. Storm had been on Claron. Storm knew what sand crèches were. But he also knew that Storm wasn’t the lost Knight they were looking for. He stood up.

  “Because I worked for a lot of people. I got here, thinkin’ I was out of trouble.” Ted gave an ironic laugh and shook his head, thinning hair ruffling. “The Bythians are the hardest working people I know—at dyin’. See, they only have one life. They renew themselves. The Bythian you meet today is the same snakeskin that was around two hundred, even a thousand years ago. And they’re tired. They fucked up this world once, cleaned it up, went back to simpler ways, but inside, they’re tired. Most of ‘em don’t want a Third Age. They’ve seen it all. So dying is a gift to them.”

  “I don’t want to be here and get a surprise package like that. But I’m stuck here, so my contact gets ahold of me and says, the Dominion Knights are on the way. If you want out, go to this Knight and tell him what you know. He’ll see to it you get out. So I did. And he promised.” Ted stopped talking. He took a look at his companion. The old man huddled as if very cold. Ted patted his knee comfortingly.

  Kavin rubbed his temple where a vein had started throbbing. It had become very clear to him that this scroungy bush pilot and his lover could give evidence that the Dominion needed. He looked at Ted. “Can you identify the agent?”

  “Sure. His name’s Winton.”

  The commander took it in. He knew the name, too. The secret head of the World Police. Winton was here on Bythia now, working undercover at the embassy. Kavin had had word of him. Pepys trusted Winton, but sometimes appeared afraid of him. The emperor had asked Kavin to keep an eye on him. Now the commander had two very fragile shipments and he had to make sure they were returned to Malthen.

  Rawlins reappeared with Lassaday.

  Kavin took his veteran sergeant into a corner. “We’re going to be evacuating personnel as soon as we can verify this man’s story. I want him to be one of the best preserved bundles we intend to ship out. He’s going to be Dominion evidence. Guard him with your life if you have to.”

  “I’ll lose my balls before I’ll lose him, commander.”

  “Right.” Hiding his smile, Kavin turned back. “Gentlemen, Sergeant Lassaday will be taking care of you.”

  Rawlins waited for him. The commander motioned to him. “Let’s go take a look from the top wall and see what we can see.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Kavin lifted the night glasses. The wind blew fiercely, whistling down over Sassinal’s walls as though it had personal vengeance in mind. The EP suiting they wore was already filling with fine grit. He’d be full of dirt before he got back to the barracks. Rawlins lay flat on the wall, anchoring him about the ankles so that he could stand up to look out.

  In the wind and the dust, heat was cut down considerably—but he could still see the red-black smears in the darkness. Bythians were massing out there—by the hundreds and soon, probably, by the thousands.

  The Dominion commander’s thoughts hesitated as he did a long, slow sweep of the horizon. He’d miscalculated when they’d come to Bythia. He knew now that he should have tolerated the poor attempt to hit the shuttle bringing them in and that by attacking back, he’d set off a global confrontation. He knew now that he’d given the splinter groups a common enemy—and one that they were not afraid to attack. He’d failed Pepys and more… he’d failed those vaguely remembered codes of his brother, the man whose footsteps he’d spent his whole life trying to follow. He knew now that merely wearing the suit, and resurrecting others to wear the suit had not been enough.

  He wished Jack had come back. He had no one to talk to about his shortcomings, but he had often felt that Jack would have understood. But Jack had been missing for a day and a half, and the probability that he would not make it back was extremely good.

  The Bythians wanted to die. No doubt about it. Their religion told them a better life lay beyond. He’d given them the means to quit this planet and they were eager to take it. He could not comprehend that. Another failing.

  With a sigh, Kavin lowered the glasses. The EP visor shielded his face somewhat, but all he saw now was a fierce and murky cloud shifting with the violent wind. Early evening weather reports said the wind would be dying out during the night.

  By morning there would be thousands of Bythians instead of hundreds. He was certain of it.

  By morning, the three hundred Dominion Knights he had left to command would be up to their gauntlets in bodies.

  Unless a miracle happened.

  He got to his knees, unable to stand in the wind any longer. Rawlins pulled himself up until they braced each other shoulder to shoulder. Kavin passed the young man the night glasses.

  Rawlins took a look, but his exclamation of surprise was grabbed by the howling storm and lost. Kavin tapped him on the shoulder; together, they climbed down the wall and stood in its lee, somewhat out of the fury.

  “What are you going to do, sir?”

  “Prepare the shuttle for evacuation. And prepare the rest of us for one hell of a fight.”

  Amber staggered in the wind. She was stung in a hundred places or more from the sharp pebbles and rocks blasted aloft, bleeding or bruised, she knew, and she could not see. She kept her eyes closed. She had pulled down her headdress so that it would bandage her eyes against the storm and had added a pull-down veil across her nose and mouth. She followed Hussiah’s form as he’d taught her—by scent and by heat, but her senses were yet unreliable. The moment she’d been trained for was near. She would champion death for Hussiah and his followers. Her victory would mean that the gates had opened for his people and that the God of All beckoned them to join him. She would face two other champions but only one would be
of consequence.

  He would be wearing a suit of All Light—as opposed to the darkness and sweetness of peaceful death as such a one could be. The enemy. The Deceiver.

  … a battle armor of Flexalinks, with an honorable man inside of it, calling her…

  Amber blinked inside her mummylike wrappings. The stray thought passed through her, as cutting as the wind from the storm they braved. It passed through her, but not without leaving marks of its passage, just as the stones had left cuts and bruises. She knew him…

  If he was mad again, he’d come a long way to find himself. He had the impression of multitudes following him, trailing him through the most hellish curtain of circuit destroying grit he’d ever run across. Whenever he staggered to a halt, to empty the catch bag or hope he could find water, a Bythian had appeared bearing gifts. One or two had spoken halting English. They’d thanked him for cleansing their temple. That, Jack understood. The rest, he did not. They called him Champion and other names and he knew only that he might very well wring Colin’s neck when he made it back to Sassinal. He’d thought to ask of Amber. He’d been told that a human hatchling lived with the High Priest. That must be her. Perhaps she’d come out to greet him also, and he could take her in his arms and let her know that everything would be all right.

  But in the whirling curtain of sand, he could not make out forms. His sensors were screwed, clogged, target screens only half-functional, his long range com out for the count… but his own senses told him he was being followed as he took the long strides across Bythia to Sassinal. Once he’d staggered to a halt and dropped, only to find a Bythian carefully pulling off his helmet, administering a wet rag to his lips, pulping a fruit for him to eat, a tent draped about the armor as if he were being laid out for a funeral, and the dust skimming around them as though the Bythian had had the power to part the storm. Perhaps he had had…

  None of which would explain what had happened to Bogie. What had happened to Bogie, the sentience told him, had been an awakening. Gone was the childlike fighter of his acquaintance. In its place, a grim but adult being aware of the struggle to live, to remember, to grow…

  And a Companion. A companion more intimate than a lover. Bogie remembered Milos and the Sand Wars vaguely. He would help Jack search for the truth of his background.

  There would be no more endless dreams with recurrent loops of nightmares. He now had a Companion to walk with him through his psyche.

  Unless, of course, he was mad.

  In which case, the dual conversation was moot.

  ***

  Rawlins woke Kavin in the morning. The first thing he noticed was the eerie, muffled, total silence. The bells and wind chimes that had gone insane in the wind, some even smashing themselves to bits, had stopped.

  He went to the wall and saw that others were there before him. Most of them were Bythians, but he saw St. Colin with that militant, macho son of a bitch Denaro at his side.

  Jonathan, the bodyguard, stood at the wall’s base and rolled worried eyes at him.

  Rawlins gave the commander a boost up and Colin moved over to give him room to stand.

  “Jesus.”

  Colin coughed and Kavin added, “Sorry, your holiness.”

  “Quite all right. I think.”

  Nothing could quite describe the sight. Thousands upon thousands of Bythians sat on the plains and roads approaching Sassinal. The grassy plain had been stripped by the storm, but it was far from barren. Headdresses waved like pampas grass, the ground became a sea of costumes and tents, accented by the prismatic, tattooed skin of the beings sitting there. A fragrance hung on the air… dark, mysterious, excited.

  Not all were warriors. No. And Dr. Quaddah, who stood on the far side of St. Colin, excitedly babbled that some of these aliens had come from the Northern hemisphere, across an ocean, to sit in front of Sassinal’s gates this day. There were no signs of the gate scavengers. Kavin’s stomach rolled. How fortunate could he be.

  “What are they doing?”

  Colin shrugged. Quaddah rubbed his brown, wrinkled face and said, “Waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything and nothing.”

  Kavin curled a lip at his enigmatic answer. Colin slapped him on the back. “Where’s Jack?”

  “He never made it back in from patrol.”

  “What?” Colin stared at him, mild brown eyes huge with shock.

  “All he had was a skimmer. We think the storm’s edge took him down.”

  “What in heaven’s name was he doing out there?”

  “Looking for Amber.” And Thraks, but Kavin could not tell the man that. “I need to send a patrol out to search, but—”

  “Not until you know what’s going to happen.” Colin sighed heavily. It was obvious the older man understood.

  “What are you doing up here? I sent word out last night we wanted to evacuate the embassy this morning.”

  “I have… other duties.” Colin indicated his robes. He’d gone back to wearing his Walker blue over-robe.

  Kavin made a sound he hoped was noncommittal. He gazed out over the sea of Bythians once again. They were not moving. He touched Colin’s elbow. “Let’s go have a drink and talk this over.”

  Colin inclined his head, saying, “I think I could use one.”

  They left the wall.

  Because their backs were turned, they missed the last two figures to join the ocean of Bythians. The High Omnipotence was given a corridor to walk through until he reached the nearest gate in the wall, his apprentice moving discreetly behind him, and they both sat. The corridor remained open as though they’d opened up a permanent breach in the ranks.

  It was doubtful either Kavin or Colin would have recognized Amber anyway.

  “I want you to go with me to the Thrakian Embassy,” Kavin said, when they were far enough away from the wall with its many ears.

  “Why?”

  “I consider it part of my duty to convince them evacuation is necessary.”

  “They’ll laugh in your face, if Thraks laugh,” Colin answered. “They will probably view our leaving as voluntary ceding of this world to the League.”

  “If they live that long.”

  Colin shrugged. “It’s a futile mission.”

  “But necessary. I’ve got to get them off, too, if for no other reason than to make sure Bythia stays neutral territory. Otherwise, I’ll have botched up this whole assignment and Pepys will have my balls.” Grim as his statement was, Kavin heard the echo of Lassaday in his words, and fought to keep from smiling.

  The Dominion Embassy was closest, and it was there they walked for their drink. Bythian servants were stripping down the tapestries to pound the dirt out. They walked through without a challenge. Colin frowned.

  “That’s strange. The WP should have a guard up.”

  “Out gawking at the snakeskins. I’ll send a couple of Knights over.”

  Winton materialized out of an inner corridor. “That won’t be necessary, commander. I have everything completely under control.”

  Winton was a square, heavily muscled man just out of middle age, but not past his prime. He’d been lasered across the temple… it widow-peaked his dark hairline in a sinister fashion. Kavin did not like the head of the World Police, never had. He didn’t like the clandestine activities that Winton appeared to dabble in, he didn’t like the fear/respect in which Pepys held the man, and he didn’t like the man.

  “Still hiding in corners, Winton?” Kavin said lazily, not bothering to hide his dislike.

  “Some men choose corners,” Winton answered. “Others, armor.” He bowed his head to Colin. “Ambassador. Ambassador Dhurl sends his regards and requests that you join him at the Thrakian Embassy. He would like to speak with you.”

  Colin stiffened. Then he sighed. “I suppose I must.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Kavin offered.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Winton interjected. “The Ambassador’s safety is still my responsibility.”
/>
  The two men measured one another, then Kavin gave way. He had enough bad marks to earn Pepys’ disfavor without getting on the bad side of the WP, also. He inclined his head and left.

  Winton watched the commander go. He smiled thinly. He had also intercepted a low frequency message from Storm and knew the captain was within a few kilometers of Sassinal. Winton had no intention of warning him about what lay waiting for him.

  He would not have to kill the Knight. Thousands of Bythians sat waiting for the chance to do so.

  All he had to do was finish off Dhurl and Colin while he had them together.

  The shock waves of his actions would bring Pepys and the Triad Throne toppling down.

  And the Bythians would take care of the Thrakian subverted, lost Knight for him.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Rawlins, I want you to report to the Thrakian Embassy. Tell them you’re St. Colin’s assigned bodyguard.”

  The young man’s face blanched. “I—what?”

  “You heard me. Dhurl has invited Colin for a little confab. I’m willing to bet it’s more than a friendly discussion about the current situation, and I don’t like the idea that his holiness is going in there without friends.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

  “How’s the evacuation?”

  “We have two hundred personnel shuttled out to the staging area, sir. The craft is being readied.”

  Kavin nodded. The transport was far enough out of town that even if the Bythians rioted and swarmed the city, there should be no problem getting a lift-off. Getting the saint and his people out there, and the remainder of the Knights… well… one thing at a time. “Good work.”

  “Yes, sir!” And Rawlins’ smile was like a beacon. “And we heard from Captain Storm, sir. He’s walking in.”