Dark Powers

by Jack McKinney

  Ah, good! A schemer! Luck was with him again at last.

  Bad luck had certainly had its run. The Regent had only received a few spotty reports of the Sentinels’ onslaught before his commo links went dead. He had grown bored with inflicting horrible fates on advisers and, more to the point, it didn’t accomplish much but diminish the available pool and make those around him very nervous.

  Then came his master stroke: pretend to sue for peace! He cursed himself for not having thought of it before. Freeze the battle lines now. Call for negotiations and draw them out, and stall as long as possible while he rebuilt his armies and prepared to launch a sneak attack.

  But instead of the REF council, he found himself staring at this half-flesh, half-metal face—the Human they called General Edwards. “Call back the forces that have launched this unprovoked sneak attack on my realm,” the Regent blustered, “or I shall utterly and completely wipe them out of existence!”

  “Can I rely on you to be thorough?” Edwards asked.

  The Regent realized the game he was playing wasn’t the one he had counted on. “Is there some semantic problem, or do I understand you to mean that you do not care that the pitiful Sentinels will be crushed like vermin?”

  Edwards smirked. “You and your boys haven’t been doing so well, huh? Mmm, here’s something you might want to keep in mind, next time.”

  Edwards turned and grabbed a memory disk holding the full G-2/G-3 analyses of the Farrago, including its one glaring Achilles’ heel.

  The Regent could scarcely believe what he was seeing, and personally looked at an indicator there at the Home Hive to make sure all this critical information was being recorded. The key to destroying the Sentinels.

  “Haven’t you got anything for me?” Edwards asked disingenuously, with a nod toward the somnolent Living Computer.

  The Regent was still recovering from his phenomenal success. “Hmm. Yes, yes, I do, provided that your information is accurate. I think that you and I must talk, General Edwards.”

  “By all means. But let’s do it here on Tirol, eh?” Edwards’s tone didn’t brook much debate.

  The Regent thought about that. “Indeed we will, friend General, indeed we will. Let me make arrangements and get back to you on the matter.”

  Edwards made an ironic salute with a forefinger. “Don’t take too long; there’s a lot to do.”

  “As soon as I’ve attended to the Sentinels,” the Regent agreed.

  “If they beat your boys on Karbarra, they’ll be headed for Praxis next.”

  “Ah. Thank you. I look forward to communing with a, um, kindred spirit.”

  Edwards inclined his head in a courtly fashion, then blanked the screen. When he straightened, he saw Ghost techs looking at him in some shock.

  “Wipe those looks off your faces!” Edwards jerked a head at the screen, and by implication at the Regent. “When the time comes, I’ll handle him, too.”

  With a new lease on life, the Regent swaggered through the soaring halls of the Home Hive issuing orders and dictating memos. He had had his doubts about the Earther’s veracity, but a battery of Living Computers verified what Edwards had told him, and the Regent was ready to gamble.

  Even with the strategic data Edwards had given him, it might not be easy to destroy the Farrago.

  Then there was the matter of this visit to Tirol. It was beyond the realm of possibility that the Regent would place himself in danger, and yet this gullible Edwards creature seemed to assume it would be normal. Perhaps there was some way to—The Regent stopped so suddenly that a hapless adviser plowed into him.

  The Regent flung the adviser aside in a carelessly non-lethal way, and began talking excitedly to his attendant Scientists. “Are my wife’s Genesis Pits here on Optera still functional? Well, find out! And if they’re not, make them ready for a project of monumental proportions! Divert workers and technicians and Scientists from other projects; bring them here by starship if need be!

  “Oh, what a joke on the cursed Humans!” the Regent hooted. So, the Regess thinks I lost my sense of humor when I decided to devolve, eh?

  Burak sealed the hatch and slipped into place, seated before Tesla’s cage. There were a few Karbarrans on guard outside in the passageway, but they had been joined by friends for a kind of victory feast, and nobody was being very … very “strac,” as the humans called it.

  Tesla said nothing, only sat looking like an immense Buddha. Burak reached inside his robes, eyes averted, his horns dipping.

  He came up with three luminous perfect spheres, as green as a breaking wave, as green as molten bottle glass. Seeing them, Tesla almost broke his guru pose and reached, but knew that he would only receive a shock charge from the bars of his cage for his troubles.

  “The Fruit of the Flower of Life, as grown on Karbarra,” Burak said.

  “So.” Tesla sat, looking down at the three.

  There was legend among the Invid, and among many other cultures as well, about consuming the Fruit of the Flower. The implication was that the consumption of Fruit from all the worlds Especially Touched by Haydon—all the worlds, it happened, from which the Sentinels came—would bring forth some larger, more magnificent manifestation of the one who consumed it.

  Tesla had spent a lifetime steeped in this occultish lore; he was convinced that there was a scientific basis to it. “Give those to me,” he said, “and give me Fruit from the rest of Haydon’s Worlds, the other worlds of the Sentinels.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Burak said.

  “I don’t expect you to,” Tesla shot back. “Why do you think peace is so difficult to achieve?”

  Burak slammed his fist on the deck. “Stop talking around it! Can you take the curse off Peryton or not?”

  Tesla saw a bulge in the waist rope of Burak’s robes and knew a pistol was there, knew what his fate would be if he couldn’t sway Burak right here and now.

  “I can. But you’re going to have to help me. Trust me. And I’ll help you win back your family, Burak, and your planet, and everything you’ve lost. Because you’re the one fated to be Peryton’s messiah.”

  Burak sat trembling for a long time, looking at the deck. Then he dipped his head once, horns swaying, nodding in agreement.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Why did Jonathan leave me? How come Lisa’s bouquet came right into my hands after the wedding and yet everything’s gone wrong?

  It all started off so beautifully.

  The diary of Lynn-Minmei

  The Karbarrans threw themselves into the effort to get the Sentinels ready for the next step in their war with the same energy the ursinoids had shown in destroying the Invid garrison.

  Unfortunately, a good deal of the capital’s industrial area had been razed. There were shops capable of repairing most of the damaged VTs and tanks, and spaceship yards where Farrago could be put back in full battle-worthiness, but no new mecha could be built anytime soon.

  Some Sentinels argued that it would be better to wait, to build new war machines and perhaps even construct more ships, but Rick and Lisa, among others, argued that lives would probably be lost on Praxis in the meantime, and the decision to continue on to the amazon homeworld became unanimous—except for Burak’s stubborn abstention.

  The vote was one of the few things Rick and Lisa did agree on. Though the media were being repaired, there were gaps in the ranks of the Human fighters, casualties who had left unmanned machines behind. The two were silent on the subject until the night, in their private quarters, when he admitted, “I’m going back on combat duty with the Skulls, Lisa. They need me. And we still won’t be able to get every VT manned.”

  She rolled over and looked at him for a long moment. “I wish there was something I could say that would stop you. But there isn’t, is there?”

  He shook his head. She lay back down and they both stared at the ceiling for a time. “You’re just so damned cavalier with a life that’s important to me,” she said at last,
and he could hear the tears in her voice. “It hurts, Rick.”

  He reached over to take her hand, but she moved it away. She wanted to lie there and see if she could think of some way that she could change things so that she wouldn’t be hurt ever again.

  Jonathan Wolfe returned to his quarters after twenty-one straight hours of meetings, briefings, consultation, training, and planning sessions. He had forgotten what a bed felt like.

  But as he lay down, his eye caught something—a small locket lying on his night table. That type of locket was popular among REF personnel; many carried such a keep-sake. He picked it up and activated it; the little heart-shaped face opened like a triptych.

  A tiny hologram of Minmei hung in the empty air. “I hope this makes you feel near to me, Jonathan, because I feel very near to you, and I always will. Come back to me safe and soon, darling. I’ll be waiting for you, however long it takes.”

  “It’s very kind of you to act as our guide,” Cabell said, as the Karbarran skywain sailed through the afternoon sunlight.

  “Oh, we love going out to the monument,” Crysta gushed, and at the controls, Lron nodded agreement. Off to one side, Rem and Dardo paused in the pattycakelike game Lron’s son was trying to teach. “And how old is the monument?” Rem asked.

  “Centuries, ages,” Lron rumbled. “No one’s exactly sure. History says it was erected right after Haydon visited Karbarra, and that was long, long ago.”

  The skywain began its descent, alighting on the top of one of the higher mountains overlooking the city. Rem asked again if Cabell would be warm enough; the old sage reassured him.

  Lron and Crysta led the way, up to an open pavilion carved from the living rock of the mountaintop. There, in the middle of an acres-wide floor, stood a statue that reared up and up—a colossus a thousand feet high.

  It was of Haydon. It had been carved by Karbarrans, and time and weather had eroded it, but the figure appeared to be a humanoid male, wearing flowing robes and poised with an air of nobility and wisdom.

  “It was Haydon who taught our ancestors the secrets of Sekiton,” Crysta said. “Just as he breathed life into the crystals of Spheris and created Baldan’s people, and decreed that the Praxians’ should be an all-female planet.”

  “And Haydon taught the Gerudans how to think,” Dardo said, reciting his school lessons. “And some people even say he gave the Flower of Life to the Invid!”

  Cabell already knew all that, of course, but he tried to look impressed by Dardo’s erudition—Crysta and Lron were so proud of the cub, after all.

  Rem stood staring up at the stone face now worn to anonymity. Haydon, certainly one of the galaxies’ great enigmas, fascinated him just as Haydon fascinated so many others. Where had the bringer-of-miracles come from? What had prompted him to spend a Golden Age in this sector of space, traveling among local worlds and working his magic?

  Rem had always vowed that if he got to travel among the stars, he would do his best to find out. And now that time had come. Rem stared up at the smooth visage, wishing it could speak to him. He swore to himself at that moment that before his travels were done, he would know what face belonged on the monument.

  “Red alert,” whispered one Ghost Squadron yeoman to another. “Stay out of the Old Man’s way!”

  The second yeoman nodded and did his best to look busy as Edwards marched from his office with a murderous look on his face.

  The Sentinels had won a smashing victory on Karbarra! Edwards tried to suppress his fury, but wasn’t having much luck. To make matters worse, when he had called Minmei, she wasn’t at the club. Nobody seemed to know where she was.

  This, after he had been there at a ringside table every night to hear her sing, had wined and dined her, had made sure the council listened to her and that her service club was a success. Yet each time he was sure he was making her forget Wolfe, she was sure to bring the halfwit’s name up.

  Edwards stopped in midstride. He suddenly knew just where she would be.

  Sure enough, he found her there, looking at the posted casualty reports along with many others, searching the alphabetized lists of KIAs and WIAs. The names would go on the REF broadcast screens momentarily, but there were a lot of people who couldn’t bear to wait. There was quite a press, and those at the back were calling out names for those in the front to check.

  Just as the general came up behind her, Minmei turned with a thousand-watt smile on her face. “Oh, General! He’s not on it! Jonathan’s not on the lists, so he’s all right!”

  Edwards forced a smile. Yes, Wolfe had survived Karbarra, but the Sentinels would be headed for Praxis soon, and the Regent was aware of it.

  “Yes; he’s a lucky man.” He showed her what he had brought for her.

  “Oh, they’re beautiful!” Minmei took the bouquet and held it to her face, inhaling the sweet, exotic alien scents. She was delighted, and pleased with the good news about Jonathan; even though he could be cold, almost cruel at times, Edwards had been such a help, had been there whenever she needed someone to listen to her or reassure her …

  Without pausing to reconsider, Minmei put her free arm around his neck and kissed him once, quickly, on the lips. Then she was racing off for a rehearsal.

  Edwards watched her go, thinking of the day when he would comfort her in her grief over the death of Jonathan Wolfe.

  When Edwards got back to his HQ he was in visibly better spirits, but not for long. Adams entered, looking grim, and cued up a recording. “The internal-security people monitored this with the bug we put on Lang’s private commo rig,” Edwards’s aide told him. “It went out earlier today, before Tirol Base lost contact with Karbarra.”

  Lang was saying, “General Hunter, I’m not opposed to the building of more starships per se; SDF-3 will not be ready for a return voyage to Earth for a prolonged period, and we might very well need this armada that General Edwards keeps pushing for.

  “But I must tell you in confidence that I have my doubts about Edwards’s motives.”

  Rick’s face, on the other half of the split screen, looked drawn and tired. “Just what are you saying, Doctor?”

  “That Edwards may very well be furthering his own ends. I think a coup attempt is a quite plausible danger at such time as this armada is ready.”

  Rick considered that. “If the other Sentinels’ worlds can be liberated as quickly as Karbarra, we’ll be back long before the armada is finished, Doctor. And we’ll have plenty of Sentinel allies to help us make sure Edwards is checkmated. But after what we’ve seen—I’m more convinced than ever that the Invid have to be rooted out of these planets they’re occupying.”

  Lang nodded. “I agree, Admiral, but I wanted you to be aware of the gravity of the situation here.”

  Adams stopped the recording. “What are we going to do, sir?”

  Edwards leaned back. “For the time being, nothing. We need Lang to build that fleet and get SDF-3 fully operational. And once the Sentinels show up at Praxis …”

  He allowed himself a thin smile. “Once they’re out of the way, the REF belongs to me completely.”

  When he returned to Tracialle, Rem was surprised to find Janice Em waiting for him.

  They hadn’t spent much time together in the rush of the Karbarran campaign. Now, she took his hand and said, “I thought we were friends, Rem. Have I done something to offend you?”

  His brows knit. It was sometimes hard to understand what Humans were getting at. “Of course not! What makes you say that?”

  She showed a slight pout. “I was beginning to think a gal’s got to be a butch weightlifter to get any attention from you.”

  He realized that she was talking about Gnea. “Hmm? Gnea and I are friends, of course—we went through a lot on that scouting mission.” He had been spending considerable time talking to the young amazon, learning about her life and her world.

  Jan had both his hands in hers now. “If you want me to step aside, just come out and say so!”

  He sho
ok his head in confusion. “What? No, no I—”

  Janice was suddenly in his arms with a happy laugh. “Oh, I’m so glad! You—you’ve become kind of important to me, you know.”

  It felt very good to have her embracing him, brushing her lips against his cheek, his neck, his lips. Very unsettling, but simply wonderful. “Let’s go somewhere and be alone,” she said.

  He yielded as she drew him away. “And you can tell me all about this expedition you took to the Haydon monument,” Janice added. “What did Lron and Crysta have to say about this Haydon, anyway? And Cabell; what was his reaction?”

  Why was she nattering away about Haydon, of all things, when she was back with Rem at last? But Janice felt something puzzling, something that made her curious about the subject, and about Cabell and the Sentinels’ plans too. And there was something about Rem that excited her and made her want to be with him and know everything about him.

  Maybe that’s what love is, she shrugged to herself.

  On Praxis, the Regess flung her hands high, throwing her head back crying, “Hear me, O my Children!”

  Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, her half of her species paused to listen to her.

  Just as no subject of her husband’s could eavesdrop on her mental link, so none of the Regess’s children bore any further allegiance to him.

  She looked more Human than a Haydonite, though she was fully as tall as her mate—some twenty feet. And yet there was something ethereal about her, an alienness that showed in her cobalt eyes. Slender and hairless, she wore a full-length robe and curious, tasseled five-fingered gloves. Four emerald-green sensor scarabs, like beautiful brooches or oriental masks, decorated her robe’s collar and neck closure.

  “Hear me!” she cried again. “My investigations here tell me that the answer I seek is to be found on Haydon IV! There at last I will learn where the Robotech Masters have gone, and what has happened to the last Protoculture matrix, the treasure that we must have in order to carry out my Great Work!”