Can you remember? Can you recall how you cried over the crushed corpses of your parents?"
Staffa denied the memory of that day while his fist knotted and trembled.
The Praetor eyed the blasted city beyond the armored window. "Do you remember,
Staffa? Can you recall the conversations we shared? How you became the son I never had? You loved me then and I ... I loved you."
Silence stretched as Staffa bit his lip; the stinging pain kept his concentration pure. This man had . . . Memories began to flash through his mind in ghostly images: Times when there had been laughter, joy, and security; life without assassins and blood and ships that flared death into the star-frosted emptiness of space; warm rooms, teachers, and breakfast in bed.
The crushing loneliness, loneliness so terrible that only his studies relieved it.
"Ha!" the elder exploded, breaking the spell. "How powerful you became! Too powerful for Myklene. You frightened the Council. They wanted you eliminated.
Only a degenerate society allows predators to stalk unleashed in its midst."
He paused. "But I couldn't let them destroy you. I risked everything. Had you smuggled away. Gave you a ship, and, in the way I predicted, an occupation. I wonder if the old devils ever thought such innocent action would bring their destruction?"
"What of my wife and son?" Staffa thundered, slamming his fist against the hospital unit with force enough to jerk the Praetor's head.
"You know the term 'Achilles' heel'?" The brown eyes studied him thoughtfully.
"It's old. I don't know the origin. It refers to a vulnerability, one unknown to most others."
"Your weakness Commander! Your vulnerability. I took them! I stole your Chrysla away! Don't!" he cried as Staffa approached. "Harm me, and you shall never know their fate!"
Staffa stopped short, quivering hands already reaching for the old man's head.
"W-where?"
The old man nodded in enjoyment. "First, I will bargain."
"At peril of your LIFE!"
"For the disposition of my life."
Staffa trembled. The contract! His honor demanded that he fulfill every letter of the agreement between the Companions and the Sassan ruler. To compromise his honor for this vile ...
"I-1 ... accept. WHERE ARE THEY?" Staffa's senses cleared in the rush of adrenaline. The age freckles on the old man's face stood out like sunspots against the grainy sweat-filled pores on sallow tan. Hard blood vessels laced a blue-red maze under delicate skin.
A ghastly chuckle was followed by, "Your son is out there- somewhere. I don't know exactly. I gave him to the Seddi. Part of an old bargain I'd made. A child ... for a child. I think they took him to Targa. That was before you ...
Well, you know."
Wretched chill formed at the base of Staffa's brain to drain down his spine.
Targa! Where the Companions had killed millions suppressing the Seddi revolt.
He saw again the mounded rubble, the piled corpses of rotting dead littering the war-torn streets. His son? One of those? "H-how long . . . ago?"
.. "Eighteen years. Maybe ten months before you blasted the place. " And then,
"There were survivors, you know. No one ever caught up with the Seddi."
Fragments of thoughts refused to coalesce. A vision of particle beams raking Targa's scabby topography surfaced in Staffa's mind. He remembered the bridge lights dimming as the gravity flux generators surged and the monitors showed a city crumbling into wreckage. Another vision showed a diving LC attack ship firing bolt after energy bolt into an urban area, fountains of fire and debris rising in the hellfire.
"That's where I'd start looking," the Praetor mumbled on. "Left him with the Seddi-but you'd better hurry. I hear they're in trouble again. You know how the Seddi operate-like a cancer in a restless host. Targa's seething."
Staffa's voice grated like a skid on sand. "And Chrysla? She was left there, too?" No, not my Chrysla, not her. Had her soft flesh been left to rot with the rest of the Targan dead? Could one of those bloody chunks of meat have been her?
"No. Commander. But first, you will never let the Sassans have me. That is our deal-my price, if you will. I don't want them raping my mind with their probes. Understood?"
Staffa worked his lips, relief washing through him. He closed his eyes, aware of the sweat beading on his face. "I promised them that if you survived the combat.... Part of the contract that you'd.... I signed. My honor."
"Honor? What care I for your honor? No. You'll kill me." The Praetor laughed humorlessly. "I still control you, Staffa. "
"Never!" "Then you'll never know the whereabouts of Chrysla, Commander."
"Damn you! Tell me, Praetor. Tell me!" "You will not allow the Sassans-"
"ALL RIGHT!" Staffa lunged for the hospital, sliding the heavy unit across the floor as if it were a reading stand. "Whatever you want. But where?"
The Praetor smiled thinly, enjoying another small victory. "She was here, Commander," he uttered softly. "On Myklene."
Staffa closed his- eyes and took a deep breath, relief flooding as powerfully as a tide across the desert sands of Etaria. "I kept her in my palace. None of her needs went unattended. "
"Where is she now? Where did you send her?" After all these years, he and Chrysla....
"I had hoped to dicker with you, Commander. As I say, you have one weakness-your family. Outside of your desire to see me destroyed, only your obsession with her could overcome your precious honor when it comes to contracts. I use my weapons well."
"By the Rotted Gods, Praetor, where is she?"
"She was on the Pylos. I had her in my quarters. I thought I'd have time to contact you before the fighting, to use her as a bargaining ... "
"Your flagship ... was ... destroyed." I blew Pylos apart. With my own hands, I triggered the guns ... thinking I was destroying you, old man. Realization left him devastated ... as butchered internally as the city beyond the window.
A slight nod. "Your ship ... I believe you call her the Chrysia-how ironic-blew her into plasma, Commander."
Staffa pulled himself upright, gutted, and started for the door. The room seemed to reel as if it rested on gimbals. Chrysla? No ... not this. He could imagine the scene: decks rupturing; metal twisting and shrieking; violent plasma jetting hot and deadly; Chrysla's final scream.
"Our deal, Commander!" the Praetor called frantically. Staffa looked back with dead eyes. His voice stuck in his throat. "I have a contract with the Sassans."
One final betrayal of this man he had once loved.
"You have no soul, Staffa. And now, I damn you." The Praetor's lip quivered and a knowing glint sharpened in his eyes. In a perfectly modulated voice, he said, "You are my creation. You're a machine ... a construct of human flesh.
Did you hear me, Staffa? I said you're a machine. A construct. A creation."
A surge, like a jolt of electricity, coursed through Staffa's brain. His body flushed and he staggered. Bracing against the wall, he stared at the Praetor through tearing eyes. "What ... did you . . . "
"The last of the mental triggers, Staffa." The Praetor watched him from half-lidded weary eyes. "I hid that trigger in the deepest part of your psyche-the sense of identity. I expected you to find the others, but I knew you wouldn't search your sense of self. It's too frightening--even for you. So I left my final weapon there ... and with it, I damn you to the hell of your own devising. May God rot your inhuman self. Staffa, you are a man accursed."
"I am no more than you made me." Staffa rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the sweat that beaded on his skin. His thoughts faded and slipped away. Damn the treasonous old bastard! What had he done? A thousand voices wailed in Staffa's head. His imagination spun image after image of Chrysla dying in agony as Pylos blew apart and decompressed around her.
The Praetor beamed at him, suddenly crafty. "Then it won't hurt you to know your Chrysla was a most remarkable woman. She provided me with a great deal of warmth in my last years. You know
, she had a mole on her right breast-just under the nipple. When we would lie together, sweaty and loose jointed, after making love, I would kiss it just--2'
The look of triumph in the old man's eyes barely registered as Staffa leapt, catlike, to the top of the hospital unit, reaching down to grab the Praetor by the corners of the jaw, steel fingers ripping up and out, crushing the tongue against the roof of the old man's mouth as he twisted. The vertebrae popped hollowly. Possessed, Staffa continued to twist, hardly aware of the blood that leaked onto his fingers. Thews bulging on his arms, Staffa heard himself screamthe sound of a wounded animal.
He swayed, a gray mist washing from his vision in tattered streaks. Breath sobbed in and out of his lungs. He blinked aware for the first time that the door gaped open. Skyla and Ryman Ark crouched to either side, rifles ready, expressions haunted by the sight.
He tried to think, to sort out what had happened and why, but the thoughts wouldn't form. Something hidden in my mind-something keyed by the phrase. How did I miss it? How badly will it affect my judgment?
Staffa turned and started for the door, his brain numb, as if drugged. Behind him, the gruesome remains of the Praetor stared sightlessly into the greenish-yellow rays of the sunset of an empire.
CHAPTER 3
Magister Bruen's steps scuffed hollowly as he entered the cavernlike chamber.
He paused, a thin hand braced on the gritty rock of the wall, and took a second to rest before walking out among the waiting people. The nagging ache in his hip reminded him of the long descent to this lowest level. He panted and wiped at his age-lined forehead, refusing to look at the shining machine that dominated the far wall with its banks of gleaming lights.
Overhead panels sent a soft white glow down to illuminate the ancient rock walls of the Seddi cavem. It filled the recessed hollows with diffused rays that feathered the shadows into a gray haze.
Bruen ignored the ominous flashing signal on the huge computer. Others of his party filed down the passageway behind him. Magister Hyde's wheezing gasps sounded too loud in the rocky confines. To this hidden chamber under neary two kilometers of honeycombed Targan rock, came somber-robed men and women. No one spoke as they stepped out of the stair-lined tunnel.
The brown-robed Initiates crowded nervously along the walls, anxious eyes shifting as the two elders in white Magister's robes passed to stand before the gleaming machine.
Bruen cast a loathing glance at the brushed metal and multicolored lights of the Mag Comm. He hated it, could feel its miasma permeating the very air. What do you want of us now? Slippery fingers of fear tugged at his soul. A queasy tightness cramped his gut.
Magister Hyde, resplendent in white robes, stood beside Bruen and pulled nervously at his fingers. As if the Mag Comm recognized their presence, the lights flickered in unfathomable patterns. Bruen considered the monster. Where had the machine come from? Who had originally built it in the long forgotten recesses of the past? It represented a technology the Seddi hated and couldn't live without. In the silence, a faint shuffling of sandaled feet scuffed the stone floor. The air carried a metallic tang mixed with the taint of human sweat.
Magister Bruen rubbed his rounded belly, grimacing at the shimmering mass of the golden wired helmet resting in the holder next to the reclining chair—the single piece of fuiture in the cavern. He looked nervously toward Magister Hyde and the sober-faced Initiates flanking him. Bright worry filled Hyde's eyes. A worry Bruen hoped his own features didn't reflect.
Bruen could see himself in the mirror-bright surface of the machine's metal—a small man, rounded, squat, arms and legs rubbery from years of scholarship and teaching. His drawn face displayed his age, each line of his deeply etched visage a hash mark of the passing years. The march of decades had sagged his flesh, adding to the dissipation of his now frail body. His Seddi robes made of coarsely woven Targan cloth were off-white and hung loosely about him. His head had lost all but a few wisps of snowy hair over the years. Now, his bald pate gleamed.
Only his eyes betrayed the unquenchable spirit that drove him now—despite his advanced years—to stand in the vanguard of events. Events which would forge humanity in a vortex of fire, blood, and pain—or destroy them all.
"Too old," he had muttered to himself so often, "and too Rotted much is at stake to get out."
He lived the curse of an. old man: to hold to ideals; to dedicate one's life to the destiny of the species and an unattainable abstract. And then, when the final moments came, the Fates laughed as the warrior—girding for the final battle—looked in the mirror to find himself past his day. So old, so tired.
The moment had finally come . . . leaving humanity an old, old man for a champion.
Existence proved bitter fare at best.
The machine remained a frightening enigma with its meanings hidden in the banks upon banks of mysterious boards forged in the distant past by a lost technology. Bruen filled his ancient lungs and experienced a stitch of pain in his brittle ribs.
A distasteful task this—one that came of being the highest ranked Magister of the Seddi priesthood. The huge comm had called from its lair deep under the temple in Vespa. Normally, the machine ran programs for Seddi scholars who studied social reality. For those endeavors the Mag Comm employed complicated statistics Bruen's colleagues barely understood; but they used them to plan covert Actions throughout Free Space, predicting trends of behavior, manipulating data, producing historical facts for their consumption and illumination.
Behind those panels lay their only ally in the coming conflagration.
Ally? Of what sort? Bruen swallowed nervously, ignoring the pain in his feet.
The summons light-a glaring angry amber-blinked on and off, calling to him to communicate.
Bruen stared uneasily at the huge computer. After all the years the Seddi records claimed it had functioned passively, why had it awakened? Why had it developed an interest in the doings of men? What motives beyond Seddi ken did it now advance?
The Seddi had cared for the Mag Comm for centuries, keeping careful track of the periodic maintenance. They had recorded in detail each of the repairs they had asked the machine to lead them through. For centuries, the Mag Comm had been a giant passive machine, answering questions, responding to programmed data. Then it had changed. Bruen had been in this very room when the Mag Comm flashed to life, as if totally aware in an instant, printing commands, flashing lights, asking questions. The shocked Seddi had answered, falling under the huge Mag Comm's sway, becoming its servants.
Bruen-an Initiate then, young, full of religious ambition and vigor--could recall those days with crystal clarity. At first he'd thought it a miracle to see the machine come to life, long dead lights gleaming brightly, a low pervading humming growing in the dim recesses of the subterranean cavern.
Heart in his throat, he had run for the upper chambers, panicked and shouting for the Magisters. When a human watches a God come to life before his very eyes, existence is forever altered.
And the works of the Seddi had been transformed.
What have you made us? What is your purpose? The old unsettling questions prickled like thorns in Bruen's mind. And now I have to face you again. Do you know what we've plotted? Are you playing with us even now? How can mere men hope to stand against you and your powers? As if we had even the slightest comprehension of what those powers are.
He couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. Bruen grunted a sigh and settled himself in the velvet-contoured chair near the shimmering helmet. He wet his lips as he Closed his eyes. Once again he had to trust his cunning and control-place himself in jeopardy. The future of humanity would hang on his abilities to deceive.
"Easy. Patience, Bruen, old man," he mumbled to himself. I must control myself. Compose your thoughts, Bruen. Stifle that fear. Therey There, feel your mind gain control. Soothe yourself, Bruen, old man. Yes. You must be careful. As always. No failings, no slips of thought. So much is at stake.
Careful. Careful. Careful.
Under his breath he began humming the mantra the Mag Comm had taught them. He had to will himself to resist, building strength, rehearsing an epistemological framework for his thoughts. The mantra became a form of self-hypnotism; he shut down portions of his mind, keeping his thoughts ordered. The machine must read only "right thoughts'-thoughts following the systemic framework of the "Teachings of Truth."
Through endless repetition, he invoked the dogma the Mag Comm had ordered them to adopt after the awakening. As an Initiate he had watched the changes in the Magisters. They had fallen completely under the spell of power and knowledge, reveling in communication with the Mag Comm. So much of his life had been dedicated to ...
No! Stifle that, Bruen. Sing the Mantra. I am of the Mag Comm. The Mag Comm is the Way of Humanity. The Way.... The Way.... The Way.... The Teachings are of Truth. Through Right Thoughts come emancipation. The Way.... Right Thoughts.... The Way....
Falling deeply into his mind, he hardly felt himself reach for the helmet and lift it lightly over his head.
The Way.... Right Thoughts.... I am of the Mag
Comm. . . . We are one. . . . I practice the Teachings of Truth. am of the Way. . . .
"Greetings, Magister Bruen." Jangling words rang through his mind.
Invasion! A rape of privacy
No, it is The Way. We are One. He allowed himself to submit, feeling self-induced pacifism flood his thoughts.
"Greetings, Mag Comm." Bruen's thoughts formed the ritual answer, exalting in Right Thoughts.
"You have progress to report?"
"Yes." He opened his mind, following the dogma of the Truth teaching mantra.
"Myklene has fallen. The Lord Commander killed his patron, the Praetor. The Sassan Empire now controls Myklenian space and resources."
"So quickly? Our predictions indicated kar Therma would need longer to prepare." A pause. "This is most unfortunate. The permutations of this new data must be analyzed. Do you have any estimate of the Lord Commander's combat losses?"