Midnight was a cloud dancer, engineered for that and exotic erotic usage in House Banat-Marath. Her owner of record, a House Director’s whelp on wanderjahr, had become bored with his pretty toy and had discarded her, without documentation, her only assets those designed into her fragile body.
She had survived.
“No. Not tonight. There’s little demand for me now.”
“Funny. I’d think just the opposite. Eat, drink, and make merry. Maybe trouble will go away.”
Midnight lived in the High City usually, drifting from sponsor to sponsor. If she fell out of fashion there, she worked the merchant baronets of UpTown, who strove to emulate the decadence of their overlords. But DownTown was her spiritual home, as it was for all the outcast, the discarded, the ignored, the ordinary, and the abhorred. Princes of lost and vanquished races languished there, hip by thigh with pimps and murderers and worse.
“What do they know in the High City?” Turtle asked. “What do they feel? What do they fear? What do they think?” Midnight was eyes and ears for the Immunes. The Canon lords did not guard their tongues around her. She was a nothing, invisible.
“They know there’s unrest. But they vie at demonstrating their indifference. They’re amused by the idea of rebellion. But the UpTown merchants are concerned. An uprising would be bad for business.”
“Commerce will go to hell when that Guardship breaks off the Web. It will nail this rock down tighter than a marble in a sealed cannister.”
Will one come? Sure? Amber Soul remained unconvinced.
She could not comprehend humanity. The personas she projected functioned adequately, but even to Turtle she seemed insubstantial, like a shadow cast from another dimension. There was no fathoming her in her natural state.
She was an incredible rarity. How she had come to be stranded on V. Rothica 4 was a mystery. Even she did not remember.
She had been around almost as long as Turtle. When he thought about it, he could recall when she was not there but not when she had arrived. He knew more about her than anyone, but what he knew was minute.
Amber Soul was a force in DownTown, an anima, feared by all, best ignored.
“They will come,” Turtle assured her. “Sure as the darkness weaves the night from afternoon. The breath of death is less certain than the vigilance of the Guardships. Pray that the Concord does nothing stupid before the Guardship arrives. Its appearance will bank their ardor.” He reflected a moment. “This krekelen business has an odor. I suspect a manipulation by some House.”
“They wouldn’t stir rebellion against themselves, would they?” Midnight protested. She remained as naive as Amber Soul remained mysterious.
“They would, and they have done. The Enherrenraat was born from a greed-fever dream in Cholot and Merod. The dream grew up to become a nightmare. Cholot and Merod are paying still. The fury of the Guardships was so exemplary that it has not been challenged since, but the universe spawns fools and insects in numbers beyond all reason.”
Something tickled the outside walls; something tested the door. An odor hovered on the brink of perception, like the electric promise before a storm. There were rustlings and what could have been whispers, a harassment that had begun after Midnight’s arrival. It had grown worse as darkness flowed like slime between the ten thousand legs supporting DownTown. It was pure night out now. The creatures of darkness were on the hunt.
One wall groaned and bowed as something huge pressed against it. A network of lines spread upon the bulge. They widened, overflowed one another, turned the brown of paper too near a flame.
Something oozed through, trickled down. It was the color of blood.
“That is quite enough!” Turtle snapped, exasperated.
Amber Soul rested spidery fingers upon the bulge. A psionic darkness filled the room, a ghost of menace that hammered through the wall. There were muted cries. Then silence.
“They are playing intimidation games. In their insanity, they will pass beyond games soon. We will confer with the others tomorrow. Steps must be taken.”
There were eleven Immunes in Merod Schene. None supported the Concord.
Turtle turned to Midnight. “How is Lord Askenasry?”
“He’s still alive. He grows weaker, though his will remains steel. He won’t be with us much longer. I dance for him once a week. He no longer makes other demands.”
“Will you dance for him again soon?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Does he remember me?”
“He asks about you sometimes.”
“Ask if he will see me. Tell him I’m ready to collect.”
“If we survive the night.” A timorous creature, she was shaking.
“We will survive this night and many more,” Turtle promised. “We will outlive the Concord. I must. I have much to do before I go.”
— 5 —
... whine dying. An exclamatory ping!
Jo Klass drew a frigid breath of medicine and machine, opened her eyes. She felt eager, curious, a touch of trepidation. What would it be? Warming was like wakening to a day guaranteed to be exciting.
How long had she slept?
Not that it mattered. Nothing changed.
As always there was a moth flutter of panic as the air grew hot and humid. The cell walls pressed in. Its lid opaqued with moisture. She scrawled an obscenity in the condensation.
The lid opened. Beyond lay the familiar white overhead of the warming room. How many times had she wakened thus, staring up at that sky of pipe and cable? Too often to recall.
Air swirled in, chilled her.
What was it? Another Enherrenraat? Fear stroked her. She had died that time. It haunted her, though the bud had detoured her around it.
Sometimes she thought she dreamed about dying while she was in the cell, but she remembered no dreams once she wakened.
A face drifted into view. “Off and on, soldier.” No relief at finding her alive instead of a shriveled blue-black mummy. No expression at all. Just on to the next cell and next check.
Jo bounced out as filled with vitality as anyone in perfect health could be. Her squad tumbled out of neighboring cells, as naked as she. Shaigon eyed her, thoughts obvious. “Watch it, soldier.”
“I am, Sarge. I am.” He lifted one shaggy eyebrow.
“Later. Maybe. If you’re a good boy.” She counted ears and divided by two. All present. “Let’s move.” Their cells had returned to stowage. The team followed her, mouthing the usual gibes and wisecracks. Clary and Squat grabbed hands. A sleep in the ice had not changed their relationship. Eyes roved old comrades, seeking remembered scars. Unmarked skin could say a lot about last time out.
They dressed in loose black shipboards and retrieved personals. Clad and inspected, Jo led them toward the briefing center. News of the day drifted back from earlier squads.
“Hanaver Strate is WarAvocat now.”
“Wasn’t he Chief of Staff? What year is it?”
“Year forty-three of the Deified Kole Marmigus. Strate got elected Dictat, too.”
“One of the living? I thought the first requirement was you had to be Deified.”
Colorless laughter.
Marmigus Deified? It had been a long time. He’d just become OpsAvocat last time they were out. “Must have been slow times.”
“Bet it’s a routine cleanup, Sarge. Ain’t nobody in a hurry.”
“Ship is Red One, Hake.”
“Ain’t breaking out nobody but infantry. Somebody dropped a condiment tray.”
Jo paused at the theater hatchway. “Can it, troops.”
They entered a space where thirty thousand could be seated. They nodded to soldiers they knew, found seats, stared at their officers, waited. Above the stage, in large but unpretentious letters, was the motto, “I Am A Soldier.” It was posted over every exit from WarCrew country. It emblazoned a patch worn by WarCrew, encircling a numeral VII superimposed upon a caricature of the tutelary, a naked woman running that did not seem
warlike to Jo.
How about a wide, muscular thug like her, short, ratty hair and a bloody ax in hand? Be more like the truth.
People did not shy away when Jo Klass walked past, but she could not be convinced that she was not unattractive.
The lander grounded. Jo trudged out into P. Jaksonica 3’s reddish daylight. Hake had it right. They were cleaning up a spill. A krekelen shapechanger, for Tawn’s sake!
She glared at Cholot Varagona. It looked like every outport city on every House-dominated world in Canon. The houses were so damned conservative they would not stray from one standard prefab design. If you wanted something different, you had to hunt up a non-House world.
The High City floated a thousand meters up, connected to UpTown by a flexible tube containing passenger and freight lifts. The proconsuls of the House, the very rich and their hangers-on, remained safely isolated there.
The legs of UpTown lifted it, too, above the perils of a world poorly tamed and, especially, above the taint of the tamers. Administrators and functionaries; Canon garrison if there was one; House dependent, cadet, and allied merchants; contract operators; these lived UpTown.
DownTown was the base of the social pyramid. Its own gradient declined toward the deepest shadow beneath the belly of UpTown.
Some were big, some were small, but that basic structure formed the capital on ten thousand worlds.
Jo activated her suit and bounced to her right. Her squad followed. Sensors systems came up, displaying in color on the sensitized inner surface of her face plate, defining her surroundings. She could breathe the air. It was not too cold out there. But the info she cared about was that there were no unfriendly weapons nearby.
Data from VII Gemina, relayed from the lander, interrupted once a minute for five seconds, mapping the city as Probe saw it. The krekelen remained stationary near the heart of DownTown.
City work. Jo hated it. Cities were treacherous. You never knew who would hit you with what from where. The system was not great at detecting non-energy weapons.
Linkup. Circle complete. Nothing would get out. Came the order to advance.
Jo glanced up at the High City, at the flaming star of VII Gemina, which seemed tangled among fairy spires. How frightened they must be, those Cholot lordlings, wondering if the landing party had come to end the Ban by toppling UpTown and killing the High City’s gravs.
There was no resistance. The few beings Jo saw stood rigidly immobile, staring with terrified eyes. Seldom had she seen so many sports, discards, and bizarre aliens. And this world had been allowed no outside contact for centuries. The creepy-crawlies were taking over.
The target did not move till the circle was under a kilometer in diameter. Jo’s faceplate began displaying Gemina track in five second alternates with suit local. Up on battalion net, for all officers and NCOs: “A reminder from up top, people. We will take it alive.” No commentary, of course. That was there only in tone.
I Am A Soldier.
Corollary: I Obey.
On platoon net: “It’s headed our way, people.”
Jo matched Gemina-feed with a suit-local heat trace a hundred meters out. She outlocked Gemina, fixed the track, switched on squad tac. “Coming right down our throats, guys.”
“Why can’t we see it? You see it, Sarge? Anybody see it?”
No one did. But it ought to be visible. It was on top of them.
Top! She looked up, adjusted to max enhancement. There. Something scuttling along a beam.
Her bolt edged it perfectly. It went into nerve lock, clung to a stress lattice branching from a pylon, slowly changed into what looked like a black plastic film. Jo switched to platoon tac. “Platoon, Second Squad. We got it.”
— 6 —
The chamber was a perfect globe a thousand meters across. A great mass floated near its heart, slightly upward as gravity was oriented. Lightning leaped from the curved walls to the mass. Tin-sheet thunder beat its chest and howled around the cavity. Gouts of red, gaseous flame exploded across the darkness. Self-congratulatory devil’s laughter pranced between the valleys of the thunder.
A woman stood in the mouth of a corridor ending at the wall of the chamber. “He’s in a dramatic mood today.” Her companion was a youth who looked seventeen. She looked twenty-one. He was. She was not. She was much older and more cruel. The sorrow of the torturer looked out through her pale blue eyes.
“When will we kill him?” The boy’s dark eyes were not those of an adolescent. The rest of him looked naive and young and innocent, but his eyes were those of a predator.
She slapped him. “Don’t say that! Don’t even think it this close to him.” She laughed. “Not soon. After he succeeds. If he succeeds.” Though not as loud her laughter was as wicked as that racketing around the globular cavity. “Who wants to inherit a disaster?”
The boy shivered. It was cold there, and gloomy, and something in the air reminded him of graveyards before dawn. “Why did he summon us?”
“Probably because he needs to proclaim his genius, and Lupo Provik doesn’t feed his ego because Lupo refuses to be impressed.” She palmed a bright plate on the corridor wall. “Father! We’re here.”
The show doubled in intensity. Lightning arrows thumped the wall near the corridor’s end. Hologramatic monsters slithered the air, snapping and clawing, breathing fire and spitting venom. A black gondola manned by a skeletal gondolier approached imperturbed through the fury. Backlighting betrayed the hologram. The thing was a grav-sled and humanoid robot tricked up by the imagination of Simon Tregesser.
The sled nudged the wall. The woman stepped aboard. The youth hesitated, followed. The wing of fear cast one brief shadow upon his face.
His features hardened into naive inscrutability. He was learning.
One learned if one intended to survive amongst House Tregesser’s ruling family.
The sled glided toward the heart of the cavity. A closed, transparent bell filled with dark smoke hung from the machinery there, which supported the thing inside and made of its will realities. The sled stopped ten meters away. Search probes tickled its passengers.
A grotesque face pressed against the inner surface of the bell. The smoke faded, revealed the wreckage of a body, one arm withered, the rest gnawed by fire, blind, all the handiwork of an assassin who had been almost lucky enough.
“Ah. My loving child Valerena. And her plaything.”
“My son, Father.”
A shrill cackle surrounded her. “I have eyes that see farther and deeper than these blind scars. But who or what you bed is your own affair.” A moment. “Are you Valerena indeed? Or her Other?”
“I’m Valerena Prime.”
“That’s a comfort. Sometimes I think you send your Other when your conscience bothers you.”
Guilty, Valerena tried to change the subject. “Why did you summon us?”
“The most pessimistic projections suggest that the beast is down on P. Jaksonica 3 and has been recognized. That entire Presidency will be crawling with Travelers carrying the alarm. We count the game begun. Soon they’ll come sniffing up the trail. And we’ll seize a Guardship for House Tregesser.”
“You underestimate them.” Valerena sounded tired. She had argued this before. “You risk the existence of House Tregesser against a quantity you know only from fragmentary reports that survived the Enherrenraat.”
“I have shielding the equal of theirs. I have Lupo. The rest is firepower. When the Guardship arrives it will be cut off from the Web and under fire so intense its screens have to overload. It’ll be surrender or die. The only choice they give the rest of the universe. Then House Tregesser will have its Guardship, Hellspinners, and the secret of lifting so vast a mass onto the Web.”
“That’s the strategy of the Enherrenraat revenant. They thought they’d win with firepower. They’re extinct. The Guardships aren’t. And they’re five hundred years wiser now.”
“Five hundred years more senile, child. Five hundred years more frozen int
o old ways.”
Blessed stepped in. “Why did you call me here, Grandfather?”
“You’re the heir of my heir. It’s time you learned why your mother and I doppelled; so we can work on this unconcerned by the jealousies of lesser Houses and the spiteful interference of the Guardships. They can’t suspect us of schemes and duplicities if their spies see our Others devoting themselves to the interests of House Tregesser.”
The thing in the bell roared, “A thousand years has House Tregesser prepared! In our generations the hour has come at last!”
“Yes, Grandfather. Grandfather, where did you find a krekelen? They’re supposed to be extinct.”
“I have my resources, boy. Valerena! I need a woman. Send me one. And this time make her one with some juice left. That last one was a crone.”
Valerena flared. “She was twenty years younger than I am!”
“Ah? Then maybe I should use you while there’s a dollop of juice left in you.” A pendulous, maggot-colored, impossibly huge organ slithered through a sudden opening in the floor of the bell. “Come here.”
“No.”
“Then send me a woman who will please me. Or take her place yourself. Go away. I have no more use for you.”
The skeletal gondolier began poling toward the corridor mouth.
“Noah!”
A black, winged man dropped down between the gamboling lightnings. He lighted on a tongue of metal protruding from the great machine. “Lord?”
“How was I, Noah?”
“You were madness itself.”
“Were they convinced?”
“I believe so.”
“Ha! And will they try to kill me, then?”
“Someday.”
“How soon?”
“Not soon. They will wait till after you capture the Guardship. They will want to steal a triumph.”
“And they’ll want to avoid the consequences if I fail, eh?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Does Valerena know she’s not the first Valerena?”
“I think not. You indulge her too much, Lord.”
“I have no other heir.”