“Ah, yes.” Snelund eased. “It does no harm to have a man in your debt who is on his way up, does it?”
Flandry looked smug.
“Yes-s-s, I think we resonate, you and I,” Snelund said. “What is your suggestion?”
“Well,” Flandry replied, “as far as officialdom knows, Rommel contains no life other than my multiple Didonian. And heesh will never talk. If my orders were cut tonight — not specifically to anywhere, let’s say, only for ‘reconnaissance and report at discretion, employing minimal crew’ — a phone call by Your Excellency to someone on Admiral Bickens’ staff would take care of that — I could go aboard and depart. My men would relax about Lady McCormac. When they haven’t heard news of her in a year or two — well, reassignment will have scattered them and feelings will have cooled. Oblivion is a most valuable servant, Your Excellency.”
“Like yourself,” Snelund beamed. “I do believe our careers are going to be linked, Commander. If I can trust you—”
“Come see for yourself,” Flandry proposed.
“Eh?”
“You said you’d be interested in meeting my Didonian anyway. It can be discreet. I’ll give you the Rommel’s orbital elements and you go up alone in your flitter, not telling anybody where you’re bound.” Flandry blew a smoke ring. “You might like to take personal charge of the execution. To make sure it’s done in a manner suitable to the crime. We could have hours.”
Then he waited.
Until sweat made beads on Snelund’s skin and an avid voice said, “Yes!”
Flandry hadn’t dared hope to catch the prize for which he angled. Had he failed, he would have made it his mission in life to accomplish the same result by other methods. The fact left him feeling so weak and lightheaded that he wondered vaguely if he could walk out of there.
He did, after a period of conference and arrangement-making. A gubernatorial car delivered him at Catawrayannis Base, where he changed into working garb, accepted his orders, and got a flitter to the Rommel.
Time must be allowed for that craft to descend again, lest the pilot notice another and ornate one lay alongside. Flandry sat on the bridge, alone with his thoughts. The viewscreen showed him planet and stars, a huge calm beauty.
Vibration sounded in the metal, as airlocks joined and magnetronic grapples made fast. Flandry went down to admit his guest.
Snelund came through the airlock breathing hard. He carried a surgical kit. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“This way, sir.” Flandry let him go ahead. He did not appear to have noticed Flandry’s gun, packed in case of bodyguards. There weren’t any. They might have gossiped.
Woe stood outside the captain’s cabin. Xenological interest or no, Snelund barely glanced at heesh and jittered while Flandry said in pidgin: “Whatever you hear, stay where you are until I command you otherwise.”
The noga’s horn dipped in acknowledgment. The ruka touched the ax at his side. The krippo sat like a bird of prey.
Flandry opened the door. “I brought you a visitor, Kathryn,” he said.
She uttered a noise that would long run through his nightmares. His Merseian war knife flew into her hand.
He wrenched the bag from Snelund and pinioned the man in a grip that was not to be shaken. Kicking the door shut behind him, he said, “Any way you choose, Kathryn. Any way at all.”
Snelund began screaming.
XV
Seated at the pilot board of the gig, Flandry pushed controls to slide aside the housing and activate the view-screens. Space leaped at him. The gloom of Satan and the glitter of stars drifted slowly past as Rommel swung around the planet and tumbled along her invariable plane. Twice he identified slivers of blackness crossing the constellations and the Milky Way: nearby warcraft. But unaided senses could not really prove to him that he was at the heart of the rebel fleet.
Instruments had done that as he drove inward, and several curt conversations once he came in range. Even when Kathryn spoke directly with Hugh McCormac, reserve stood between them. Warned by his communications officer what to expect, the admiral had had time to don a mask. How could he know it wasn’t a trick? If he spoke to his wife at all, and not to an electronic shadow show, she might be under brainscrub, speaking the words that her operator projected into her middle ear. Her own mostly impersonal sentences, uttered from a visage nearly blank, yet the whole of her unsteady, might lend credence to that fear. Flandry had been astonished. He had taken for granted she would cry forth in joy.
Was it perhaps a simple but strong wish for privacy, or was it that at this ultimate moment and ultimate stress she must fight too hard to keep from flying apart? There had been no chance to ask her. She obeyed Flandry’s directive, revealing no secret of his, insisting that the two men hold a closed-door parley before anything else was done; and McCormac agreed, his voice rough and not altogether firm; and then things went too fast — the giving of directions, the study of meters, the maneuvers of approach and orbit matching — for Flandry to learn what she felt.
But while he prepared to go, she came from the cabin to which she had retreated. She seized his hands and looked into his eyes and whispered, “Dominic, I’m prayin’ for both of you.” Her lips brushed across his. They were cold, like her fingers, and tasted of salt. Before he could respond, she walked quickly away again.
Theirs had been a curious intimacy while they traveled hither. The red gift he had given her; the plan he laid out, and that she helped him perfect after she saw he was not to be moved from it; between times, dreamy talk of old days and far places, much reminiscence about little events on Dido — Flandry wondered if man and woman could grow closer in a wedded lifetime. In one aspect, yes, obviously they could; but that one they both shied off from speaking of.
And here came Persei into view and with her, one way or another, an end to everything which had been. The flagship loomed like a moon, mottled with thermostatic paint patterns, hilled with boat nacelles and gun turrets, thrusting out cannon and sensors like crystal forests. Satellite craft glinted around her. Indicator lights glowed on Flandry’s board and his receiver said, “We have a lock on you. Go ahead.”
He started the gravs. The gig left Rommel and surrendered to control from Persei. It was a short trip, but tense on both sides of the gap. How could McCormac be positive this was not a way to get a nuclear weapon inside his command vessel and detonate it? He can’t, Flandry thought. Especially when I wouldn’t allow anyone to come fetch me. Of course that might well have been for fear of being captured by a boarding party, which indeed was partly the case, but just the same — He’s courageous, McCormac. I detest him to his inmost cell, but he’s courageous.
A portal gaped and swallowed him. He sat for a minute hearing air gush back into the housing. Its personnel valves opened. He left the gig and went to meet the half dozen men who waited. They watched him somberly, neither hailing nor saluting.
He returned the stares. The insurrectionists were as marked by hunger and strain as he, but theirs was a less healthy, a sallowing, faintly grubby condition. “Relax,” he said. “Inspect my vessel if you wish. No boobytraps, I assure you. Let’s not dawdle, though.”
“This way … please.” The lieutenant who led the squad started off with rapid, stiff strides. Part of the group stayed behind, to check the boat. Those who walked at Flandry’s back were armed. It didn’t bother him. He had worse dangers to overcome before he could sleep.
They went through metal tunnels and caverns, past hundreds of eyes, in silence hardly broken save for the ship’s pulse and breath. At the end, four marines guarded a door. The lieutenant addressed them and passed through. Saluting in the entrance, he said, “Commander Flandry, sir.”
“Send him in,” replied a deep toneless voice. “Leave us alone but stay on call.”
“Aye, sir.” The lieutenant stood aside. Flandry went by. The door closed with a soft hiss that betokened soundproofing.
Quiet lay heavy in the admiral’s suite. This main r
oom was puritanically furnished: chairs, a table, a couch, a plain rug, the bulkheads and overhead an undraped light gray. A few pictures and animations gave it some personality: family portraits, views from home, scenes of wilderness. So did a chess set and a bookshelf which held both codices and spools, both classics and scientific works. One of the inner doors was ajar, showing an office where McCormac must often toil after his watches. No doubt the bedroom was downright monastic, Flandry thought, the galley and bar seldom used, the—
“Greeting.” McCormac said. He stood large, straight, gaunt as his men but immaculate, the nebula and stars frosty on his shoulders. He had aged, Flandry saw: more gray in the dark hair than pictures recorded, still less flesh in the bony countenance and more wrinkles, the eyes sunken while the nose and chin had become promontories.
“Good day.” Flandry felt a moment’s awe and inadequacy wash over him. He dismissed it with a measure of cold enjoyment.
“You might have saluted, Commander,” McCormac said quietly.
“Against regulations,” Flandry replied. “You’ve forfeited your commission.”
“Have I? Well—” McCormac gestured. “Shall we sit down? Would you care for refreshment?”
“No, thanks,” Flandry said. “We haven’t time to go through the diplomatic niceties. Pickens’ fleet will be on you in less than 70 hours.”
McCormac lowered himself. “I am aware of that, Commander. We keep our scouts busy, you know. The mustering of that much strength could not be concealed. We’re prepared for a showdown; we welcome it.” He glanced up at the younger man and added: “You observe that I give you your proper rank. I am the Emperor of all Terran subjects. After the war, I plan on amnesty for nearly everyone who misguidedly opposed me. Even you, perhaps.”
Flandry sat down too, opposite him, crossed ankle over knee, and grinned. “Confident, aren’t you?”
“It’s a measure of your side’s desperation that it sent you in advance to try negotiating, with what you claim is my wife for a hostage.” McCormac’s mouth tightened. Momentarily, the wrath in him struck forth, though he spoke no louder. “I despise any man who’d lend himself to such a thing. Did you imagine I’d abandon everyone else who’s trusted me to save any individual, however dear? Go tell Snelund and his criminals, there will be no peace or pardon for them, though they run to the ends of the universe; but there are ways and ways to die, and if they harm my Kathryn further, men will remember their fate for a million years.”
“I can’t very well convey that message,” Flandry replied, “seeing that Snelund’s dead.” McCormac half rose. “What Kathryn and I came to let you know is that if you accept battle, you and your followers will be equally dead.”
McCormac leaned over and seized Flandry by the upper arms, bruisingly hard. “What is this?” he yelled.
Flandry snapped that grip with a judo break. “Don’t paw me, McCormac,” he said.
They got back on their feet, two big men, and stood toe to toe. McCormac’s fists were doubled. The breath whistled in and out of him. Flandry kept hands open, knees tense and a trifle bent, ready to move out of the way and chop downward. The impasse lasted thirty mortal seconds.
McCormac mastered himself, turned, stalked a few paces off, and faced around again. “All right,” he said as if being strangled. “I let you in so I could listen to you. Carry on.”
“That’s better.” Flandry resumed his chair arid took out a cigaret. Inwardly he shook and felt now frozen, now on fire. “The thing is,” he said, “Pickens has your code.”
McCormac rocked where he stood.
“Given that,” Flandry said redundantly, “if you fight, he’ll take you apart; if you retreat, he’ll chivvy you to pieces; if you disperse, he’ll snatch you and your bases in detail before you can rally. You haven’t time to recode and you’ll never be allowed the chance. Your cause is done, McCormac.”
He waved the cigaret. “Kathryn will confirm it,” he added, “She witnessed the whole show. Alone with her, you’ll soon be able to satisfy yourself that she’s telling the truth, under no chemical compulsions. You won’t need any psych tests for that, I hope. Not if you two are the loving couple she claims.
“Besides, after talking to her, you’re welcome to send a team over who’ll remove my central computer. They’ll find your code in its tapes. That’ll disable my hyperdrive, of course, but I don’t mind waiting for Pickens.”
McCormac stared at the deck. “Why didn’t she come aboard with you?” he asked.
“She’s my insurance,” Flandry said. “She won’t be harmed unless your side does something ridiculous like shooting at my vessel. But if I don’t leave this one freely, my crew will take the appropriate measures.”
Which I trust, dear Hugh, you will interpret as meaning that I have trained spacehands along, who’ll speed away if you demonstrate bad faith. It’s the natural assumption, which I’ve been careful to do nothing to prevent you from making. The datum that my crew is Woe, who couldn’t navigate a flatboat across a swimming pool, and that heesh’s orders are to do nothing no matter what happens … you’re better off not receiving that datum right at once. Among other things, first I want to tell you some home truths.
McCormac lifted his head and peered closely. With the shock ridden out, his spirit and intelligence were reviving fast. “Your hostage?” he said from the bottom of his throat.
Flandry nodded while kindling his cigaret. The smoke soothed him the least bit. “Uh-huh. A long story. Kathryn will tell you most of it. But the upshot is, though I serve the Imperium, I’m here in an irregular capacity and without its knowledge.”
“Why?”
Flandry spoke with the same chill steadiness as he regarded the other: “For a number of reasons, including that I’m Kathryn’s friend. I’m the one who got her away from Snelund. I took her with me when I went to see what the chance was of talking you out of your lunacy. You’d left the Virgilian System, but one of your lovely barbarian auxiliaries attacked and wrecked us. We made it down to Dido and marched overland to Port Frederiksen. There I seized the warship from which the code was gotten, the same I now command. When I brought it to Llynathawr, my men and I kept Kathryn’s presence secret. They think the cosmos of her too, you see. I lured Governor Snelund on board, and held him over a drain while she cut his throat. I’d have done worse, so’d you, but she has more decency in a single DNA strand than you or I will ever have in our whole organisms. She helped me get rid of the evidence because I want to return home. We tossed it on a meteorite trajectory into the atmosphere of an outer planet. Then we headed for Satan.”
McCormac shuddered. “Do you mean she’s gone over to your side — to you? Did you two—”
Flandry’s cigaret dropped from lips yanked into a gorgon’s lines. He surged up and across the desk, laid hold of McCormac’s tunic, batted defending hands aside with the edge of his other palm and numbing force, shook the admiral and grated:
“Curb your tongue! You sanctimonious son of a bitch! If I had my wish, your pig-bled body would’ve been the one to burn through that sky. But there’s Kathryn. There’s the people who’ve followed you. There’s the Empire. Down on your knees, McCormac, and thank whatever smug God you’ve taken on as your junior partner, that I have to find some way of saving your life because otherwise the harm you’ve done would be ten times what it is!”
He hurled the man from him. McCormac staggered against a bulkhead, which thudded. Half stunned, he looked upon the rage which stood before him, and his answering anger faded.
After a while, Flandry turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said in a dull voice. “Not apologetic, understand. Only sorry I lost my temper. Unprofessional of me, especially when our time is scant.”
McCormac shook himself. “I said I’d listen. Shall we sit down and begin over?” Flandry had to admire him a trifle for that.
They descended stiffly to the edges of their chairs. Flandry got out a new cigaret. “Nothing untoward ever happened between Kathryn and
me,” he said, keeping his eyes on the tiny cylinder. “I won’t deny I’d have liked for it to, but it didn’t. Her entire loyalty was, is, and forever will be to you. I think I’ve persuaded her that your present course is mistaken, but not altogether. And in no case does she want to go anyplace but where you go, help in anything but what you do. Isn’t that an awesome lot to try to deserve?”
McCormac swallowed. After a moment: “You’re a remarkable fellow, Commander. How old are you?”
“Half your age. And yet I have to tell you the facts of life.”
“Why should I heed you,” McCormac asked, but subduedly, “when you serve that abominable government? When you claim to have ruined my cause?”
“It was ruined anyway. I know how well your opposition’s Fabian strategy was working. What we hope to do — Kathryn and I — we hope to prevent you from dragging more lives, more treasure, more Imperial strength down with you.”
“Our prospects weren’t that bad. I was evolving a plan—”
“The worst outcome would have been your victory.”
“What? Flandry, I … I’m human, I’m fallible, but anyone would be better on the throne than that Josip who appointed that Snelund.”
With the specter of a smile, because his own fury was dying out and a measure of pity was filling the vacuum, Flandry replied: “Kathryn still accords with you there. She still feels you’re the best imaginable man for the job. I can’t persuade her otherwise, and haven’t tried very hard. You see, it doesn’t matter whether she’s right or wrong. The point is, you might have given us the most brilliant administration in history, and nevertheless your accession would have been catastrophic.”
“Why?”
“You’d have destroyed the principle of legitimacy. The Empire will outlive Josip. Its powerful vested interests, its cautious bureaucrats, its size and inertia, will keep him from doing enormous harm. But if you took the throne by force, why shouldn’t another discontented admiral do the same in another generation? And another and another, till civil wars rip the Empire to shreds. Till the Merseians come in, and the barbarians. You yourself hired barbarians to fight Terrans, McCormac. No odds whether or not you took precautions, the truth remains that you brought them in, and sooner or later we’ll get a rebel who doesn’t mind conceding them territory. And the Long Night falls.”
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