In time, he eased back the access panel and twisted the blue dial to the number “II.” Next, he broke the red seal and flipped the switch beneath to the “armed” position. He closed the panel and took an-other deep breath.
Moving hand over hand down the narrow shape, he came to the ring drive units, where he opened a second access panel and closed one switch.
“Done,” he said quietly as he edged back to the ship’s lock.
When the exterior lock had closed behind him, he stated, “Course feed to Hunter.”
“Beginning course feed. Course feed complete.”
The inner lock opened, and he stepped back into the ship, waiting until it closed before checking the ship’s pressure.
Normal.
He began taking off the armor and stowing it back in the locker.
“Commence Nihil.”
“Commencing Nihil. Ignition in one minute.”
He completed stowing the armor and walked back to the control station, his booted feet still silent as he crossed the hard floor.
“Ignition. Preliminary extrapolation shows Hunter on optimum course.”
“Interrogative defense screens.” While he knew the answer, he wanted to hear it again.
“No screens in place except normal class three precautions.”
The pilot nodded. Class three screens were the standard screens against nonenergized objects, designed to divert small meteors and other space junk.
The drive units on Hunter would punch through anything but class one screens, and those were only used by ships, Imperial ships.
No dome or station could afford the energy or equipment expenditure to cover that wide an area with class one screens.
“Course lines on screen two,” he ordered.
“Course lines on screen two,” the AI responded.
He swallowed the taste of bile in his mouth. If he could have built a wider organization, trusted more people . . .
“Then you wouldn’t have to do things like this?” he asked the empty air. “Be serious. You don’t fight fanatics. You destroy them totally or you leave them alone. You didn’t have a choice. Corson—what choice did he have?”
“Invalid inquiry. Please reformulate.”
“Hades! Re—“ He had almost told the AI to reformulate itself, but stopped as he realized he had no idea what such a drastic command might do to the artificial intelligence.
“Istvenn!”
He bit his lower lip, not quite hard enough to draw blood, as he watched the red line of the Hunter arcing down toward Iredesium. He forced himself to continue watching.
“Dampers on screens. Shield all sensitives,” he added quietly.
“Shields and dampers in place.”
The command had been early, many minutes before it would be necessary to protect the ship’s equipment.
He could feel the nausea climbing back into his throat, and he swallowed again, still watching the screens. The red dashed line continued to drop toward the moon.
A pale blue line flashed into place above the screen representation of Iredesium.
“Class three screens triggered.”
The pilot watched as the dashed red line penetrated the meteor shield without deflection and continued to dive for the target dome.
“Estimate one minute until detonation.”
Ignoring the AI’s statement, delivered in its impersonal feminine tone, ignoring his own urge to turn away from the information displayed on the screens, he forced himself to keep watching, glancing from the visual on the main screen to the smaller representational screen, then back to the visual.
“Detonation.”
For several seconds both screens seemed unchanged. Then, on the representational screen, the dashed red line intersected the moon’s surface. On the visual screen, Iredesium hung there, still showing half white, half black.
A pinflare of white flashed from the middle of the moon, spreading . . . and the visual screen blanked.
“Dampers on. Impact on target verified. Detonation height at two hundred meters, plus or minus fifty.”
The man did not answer.
He had left the control couch for the fresher, where the slim contents of his stomach were emptying themselves into a small basin.
“Probability of damage within design envelope approaches unity.”
“Plan beta,” choked the man from the former crew section. “Plan beta.”
He wiped his mouth and slowly straightened after splashing his face with a handful of cool water.
“For better or worse . . .”
His legs felt rubbery, but he walked back to the waiting control couch, still as silently as ever.
“Plot all in-system contacts on screen three.”
He swallowed the bitter aftertaste and concentrated on the full screen array.
L
THE SPECIALLY GUARDED and prepared convention hall was nearly full.
“We have a problem.”
“We have more than a problem.”
“You mean the Merhlin thing?”
“Count’s close to a hundred now.”
“A hundred? You sure about that?”
“Two arm councils nearly wiped out . . .”
“Nobody knows who they are . . . not even Imperial Intelligence . . . say Eye himself is worried.”
The hooded figure at the end of the table let the talk continue.
“Said he threatened the Council itself . . .”
The other hooded figure, sitting taller and to the right of the chief assassin, leaned forward.
“Is the threat that serious?” His voice was low.
“You know the answer,” came back the cool tones of the woman. “It is the same answer as always. If the group called Merhlin is totally fanatic and highly skilled and disciplined, the threat has to be taken seriously. Fanatics can destroy anything. But the chances of the kind of knowledge and discipline necessary mixed with fanaticism? Not to mention the human element. We’ve always had warnings of any large scale movements against us, and how could anyone take on the entire Guild without an enormous commitment of personnel and equipment?
“Besides, would anyone today stoop to destroy an entire resort of five thousand people, most of them not involved with us? Even if they would, it would take nuclear weapons or a fleet-sized laser, and those are weapons the Empire has destroyed systems to keep to itself.”
“Order!” The command was simultaneous with the tap of the ancient handgun on the metal plate.
The conversations around the meeting hall died into a series of murmurs, and the murmurs into silence.
“The first order of business is the five year report.”
The Guild delegates shifted restlessly in their seats, waiting for the routine business to pass and to hear what the Council had to say about the threat to the Guild itself.
“Delegate Beta . . .”
Like most participants, Delegate Beta did not wear a privacy cloak, opting instead for a simple synthflesh false face and wig, combined with a voice distorter.
“The summaries are presented on the screen for your review. As you may recall, the screen is rear-projection and nonimaging, which means that your portable equipment will not retain the images . . .” Delegate Beta launched into his summary of five years of Guild activities and financial accomplishments.
At the conclusion he received a mild round of applause, mainly for the brevity with which the summary had been presented.
“Second order of business . . . Delegate Gamma.”
Delegate Gamma stood and moved toward the podium.
She never got there.
Sun-white light seared through the roofing of the meeting hall, as well as through the rest of the Iredesium Resort Complex Red, reducing all but the heaviest metals to their basic atomic forms, turning ten square kays into a shimmering and cooling lake of molten stone and metal standing on an airless plain.
LI
“WE’VE IDENTIFIED THE cause.
Eye inclined his hooded head, but said nothing.
“Class two hellburner. Surface burst.”
“Where did they get it?”
“Who got it?”
“Got what?”
At the commotion, Eye raised one hand. The noise died down.
“Please summarize from the beginning, Commodore.”
“We’re not entirely certain, but it appears as though the Iredesium Red Pleasure Dome was the site of the Guild’s Five Year Conference. We usually find out several months afterward, although they try to keep it hushed.
“The so-called Merhlin group had apparently threatened the Guild with virtual extinction. We don’t know what the Guild position was, but they didn’t take the threat seriously enough. Class two hellburner went up ten minutes after the conference started, the part that everyone was required to attend. Casualties over six thousand. Probably only five hundred official Guild delegates; another two, three hundred might have been lower grade assassins . . . .”
The commodore waited for a moment, but there were no questions or interruptions.
“Definitely an I.S.S. weapon. Media faxers are already saying that it was. Delivery method unknown, but the tracked velocity was compatible with warship launch. It could have come from a private yacht, but the Iredesium complex has been choked with them this season—more than a hundred registered, and that’s half of all the Imperial private ships.
“There were also three Service ships present in system—Bismarck, Saladin, and Martel. All their weaponry is fully accounted for.”
The Admiral of the Fleet, to Eye’s right, coughed.
“Are any of the media suggesting that it was an Imperial effort to destroy the Guild?”
“No. The Free Fax is implying that the destruction of Guild leadership with I.S.S. weapons implies either tacit Service agreement or extremely loose controls on nuclear equipment by the Service. In either case, a full-fledged investigation is necessary.”
“Just what we need.” The sotto voce comment came from the corner of the room farthest from Eye, but neither the Intelligence Chief nor the Admiral of the Fleet acknowledged the truth of the remark or the speaker.
“Any favorable commentary?”
“The RadRight had an ed-blip.. They said they wished the Imperial Government had acted with such dispatch years ago.”
“Wonderful.”
“What is the real probability that this was accomplished by the Merhlin group?”
“One, we don’t know if Merhlin represents a group or an individual with vast resources. Two, while Merhlin threatened to destroy the Guild and is reputed to have carried out close to a hundred assassinations of Guild agents in past years, we have no proof, even indirect or heresay, that the attack was in fact carried out by Merhlin. Three, if it was, I doubt that we will hear of Merhlin again. Nor will we if it was not. Four, now that the Guild has been reduced to several hundred scattered agents, the Imperial Government will face extraordinary criticism if we fail to finish the job. Five, this will result in greater economic stability within the Empire and probably short-term expansion of Imperial spheres of influence.”
“In short,” finished Eye, “we have no choice but to turn this terrible tragedy into an Imperial benefit. That solves one problem and leaves two. While we may never hear the name Merhlin again, whoever Merhlin is has the capability to find out information we don’t. He or she also has no compunctions about acting when necessary. And no conscience. What do we intend to do about it?
“Second, we need someone to blame, and it can’t be Merhlin. How could we admit that some unknown power can do what we can’t, that they knew what we couldn’t guess? So whom do we blame to get on with the job?”
“No one, ser. We will blame the anarchists and claim that the Guild and the anarchists collided. We have taken steps to round up the necessary accessories, and we will. And, in the future, enemies of the government can be tagged as anarchists, like those who murdered six thousand people at Iredesium.”
“It might work,” reflected Eye. “It might at that. But don’t collect too many dissidents. We can’t have this seen as a pretext to tighter social control.”
“What about Merhlin?” asked the Admiral of the Fleet.
“We keep looking, quietly. I don’t think we’ll find him or her. Merhlin got what he or she or they wanted. But people forget. Especially, they forget faceless tragedies. Who got seared at Iredesium? Assassins, cold-blooded killers, and playboys and joy-girls. Who’s going to feel sorry for them for long? How can you create outrage about them?”
LII
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
The single set of footsteps echoed in the sub-zero chill of what would have been dawn, had the sun not been lost behind clouds that filtered fine snow over the hills and frozen lakes.
Click. Click.
The footsteps halted on the smooth stone before a marble wall. On the wall were rows of gray metal plaques, each the color of gun metal glinting in the dim light.
The man’s eyes centered on the last three plaques, picking out the names.
“Corson MacGregor Ingmarr.”
“Mark Heimdall Ingmarr.”
“Allison Illsa Ingmarr.”
He repeated the names to himself silently, then continued to stand, looking at the three names, ignoring the long rows of plaques above them, ignoring the blank space of the stone below them.
An occasional flake of snow drifted in from his left, under the flat marble roof and between the square and smooth columns that upheld the stone edifice, but he paid the weather no attention.
The wind whispered, ruffling and shuffling the snow that covered the grass and walks around the lone structure.
The gray of his jacket and the gray of his trousers gave the impression of a ghost visiting other ghosts, a spirit paying his respects to other spirits.
Outside, the fine snow falling from the dawn began to thicken, until the hills surrounding the family memorial were less than white shadows, though they lurked but a kilometer from the mount on which the mausoleum stood.
The visitor glanced toward the brighter light of the east and surveyed the falling snow and the shrouded hills, his eyes seeming to burn through the white veil to see the slopes beyond the trees, and the lakes beyond the rocks. Then, as if dismissing the winter, he returned his attention to the wall, and to the three last plaques upon it.
Finally he turned, and his shoulders dropped momentarily, and he faced west, staring out over the line of footprints nearly filled in by the drifting and dropping snow, footprints that would lead him back to another shadow of the past, a ship that belonged to a time predating even the construction of the centuries-old monument and mausoleum within which he stood.
Click. Click. Click.
Without a word, without a gesture, the visitor walked back across the stone slabs of the floor, down two wide marble steps, and into the snow, into the snow that cloaked him, that hid him and the hills toward which he walked.
LIII
THE ADMIRAL SHIFTED his weight in the chair, waiting for his ultimate superior to appear behind the antique desk. His eyes took in the single Corpus Corps guard, as well as the sparkle to the air between him and the desk that indicated an energy barrier.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Click, click, click.
The man whose steps preceded him eased his tall and lanky but stooped frame through the portal and into the recliner behind the ancient artifact that had no screen.
“You requested this meeting, Admiral.”
“Yes, sire, I did.”
“Begin.”
The admiral cleared his throat as quietly as possible. “I requested a private meeting because I cannot support my concerns with hard evidence, and because I cannot trust those who would normally provide such hard evidence.”
“You do not seem to trust our Eye Corps.”
“No, ser.”
His Imperial Majesty Keil N’Troya Ryrce Bartoleme IV wa
ited for the Admiral of the Fleet to continue.
“You know that a Service hellburner was employed on Iredesium. What you may not know was that a single weapons pack of nuclear torps was diverted from New Glascow nearly twenty years ago. That represents the only loss of nuclear weaponry in the entire history of the Service. I have no choice but to believe that the hellburner used on Iredesium had to come from New Glascow. I also find it rather difficult to believe that a private group, or even a planetary system, would keep such weaponry either unused or unadvertised for nearly twenty years.
“Further, sire, I have to ask what group is the single group that has challenged successfully the Eye Corps over the past century.” The admiral shrugged. “I have no answers, sire, and my surmises cannot be verified, or probably even asked as questions, but I thought you should know.”
“We appreciate your concern, and your candor. That is an issue in which the Prince has expressed some interest. I would appreciate it, Admiral, if you would contact Ryrce directly in the future, should you have further inspirations or any factual support for your theory.”
The admiral wanted to wipe his steaming forehead, but did not. Instead he waited.
The Emperor stood.
“We are not displeased. We also appreciate your sense of tact. Therefore, your effrontery will not be punished, and we urge you to continue your direction of the Service with the same sense of dedication you have so far shown.”
With an obvious effort, the elderly ruler turned and departed, his feet clicking as he made his way across the tiles toward the exit portal.
The admiral let his breath out slowly, as evenly as he could.
LIV
GERSWIN LEANED FORWARD on the control couch and checked the results displayed on the data screen again. According to every conceivable test, the plant produced a thread stronger and finer than any synthetic, needed no special fertilizers, and thrived in a wide range of climate and soil conditions.
The field tests, limited as they were, supported Professor Fyrio’s research and contentions, as did the limited evaluations Gerswin had commissioned from the University at New Avalon.
The Silent Warrior Page 18