The comm monitor flashed to display the square features of her Deputy. The man looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes. His pug nose had been mashed onto his face and his cheeks appeared dark with stubble. At the best of times, Gysell’s black beard gave -his pale skin a blue cast.
“Deputy Gysell? You’re in charge for the moment. I’ve got to get some sleep. Keep special tabs on the University. I’ve had reports that some of the academicians might want to make a statement. If they do, handle it. If any of the lauded professors get too far out of line, arrest them.”
“Of course, Ily. We can book most of them for’ sedition and espionage.”
Ily frowned, thoughts like cotton. “No, we may need them later. I want them kept at a soft simmer not turned off or iced. Played properly, they could turn out to be a major asset.”
“And the Minister of Military Intelligence?” Gysell asked. “He and his Deputies are close to panic over the Sassan buildup. They might spread their unease to the people.”
“Remind them of what happened to Tedor Mathaii’s son. I think they’ll be too worried about the Defense Minister’s confession to rock the boat. Expect compliance. If not, arrest the culprit who steps out of line, and implicate him in some scandal or other.”
“Go get some sleep, Ily. I’ll call if there’s an emergency. “
She nodded, killed the connection, walked the length of her office, and passed the security hatch to her bedroom where she peeled out of her clothing. She flipped her long black hair out of the way as she lay back on the bed and dialed up the gravity field until any sensation of weight vanished. Around her, the room dimmed as the pearlescent walls faded into dull gray and finally to blackness.
Ily filled her lungs and exhaled her tension. How many times had she and Tybalt made love on this platform? She closed her eyes, remembering his warm body against hers, their limbs entangled as she brought him to climax.
To herself, she whispered, “Tybalt, where am I ever going to find a lover like you again?” Perhaps she never would-but then, even the lover of a lifetime was worth an empire. Nevertheless, she could feel regret for having used the Seddi assassin, Arta Fera, to kill her Emperor. She’d played on his one weakness, and enjoyed a delightful irony in doing so, for her own career had been launched years ago by foiling a Seddi assassination attempt against Tybalt.
“Turn about is delicious justice.”
How curious, the way things worked. Those Seddi assassins had been Sinklar Fist’s parents. Sinklar had delivered Arta Fera into Ily’s willing hands.
Next he would deliver an empire to her. She reached out and stroked the soft sheets. Who knew, perhaps he’d be the next man to share this bed with her.
Arta Fera’s words returned to haunt her. “A little young, isn’t he?”
Ily whispered the words she’d spoken in reply, “All the better. I can train him the way I want.” And perhaps he’d turn out to be a better lover than she suspected. On those occasions she’d dealt with him, he’d been self-possessed, unintimidated by her person or power. He’d need a lot of that, dealing with her. She tended to consume men, starting with their bodies ... and ending with their souls.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been preoccupied, grieving for his murdered lover, harried by the need to exterminate the Seddi. To be honest, youth or not, some power in those oddly colored eyes excited her. What would he be like as a lover? Tender? Or an animal like Tybalt had been?
For a while, she’d hoped that she could seduce Staffa kar Therma and bend him to her will-and perhaps she might have, had chance and an error on her part not made it impossible.
Ily growled, remembering the fiasco on Etaria, and blinked her eyes open to stare into the darkness. What had gone so terribly wrong? Where had the fatal mistake been made? She had found Staffa kar Therma condemned to slavery, in a collar of his own manufacture, and she’d misjudged his response. Why? What had changed him? Had slavery broken something elemental in the Lord Commander? He should have jumped at her offer of empire and power, but she’d turned him against her. Only quick action had saved her. She chewed her lip angrily. “How did you escape, Staffa? I had you in my blaster sights ... then blackness. What happened? Who rescued you? The Seddi? Is that how you got to Targa? We knew Skyla was on the planet. Where? How did she get you to her ship? Who made the mistake?”
So many unanswered questions. Ily tossed on her pad, and considered. Events had unfolded with such rapidity she hadn’t had time to think---only to react and scramble to maintain damage control. Why did the Etarian debacle rankle so?
She sat up, the room lights brightening. To her bedside comm, she ordered, “Have Security Director Tyklat transferred from Etaria to Rega immediately. Reason: Promotion for outstanding service.”
And when I have you here, Tyklat, we’ll see just what happened that day in Etarus.
She lay back again and sought desperately to still her wheeling thoughts. She had to sleep. Her mind had to be keen enough to split atoms when Sinklar arrived with his troops. Unlike Staffa, she knew Sinklar. He’d still be hurting over the death of his beautiful Gretta Artina. He’d be chafing over Staffa’s escape from Makarta.
Damn you, Staffa, slipped through my fingers again! How did you do that?
Sinklar would be Ily’s key to social control. She had to have his loyal combat divisions: first to take control of the empire, and second, to defeat both the Sassan military and the dreaded Companions. She’d get one chance to seize absolute power and she had to play Fist just right to do it. The memory of Sinklar’s eyes burned in the back of her mind. He did excite her. She ran light fingers down her skin, across her flat belly and into the tuft of inky pubic hair. Yes, I can control Sinklar Fist-one way or another.
“You have no complaints!” The round-faced official-the Minister of Public works in Trystia shouted at the crowd that welled and screamed before the Trystian Municipal Affairs Building. Above, the sky had gone leaden, ominous and filled with the threat of storm. The very air had gone chill. The spacing of the buildings around the Ministry didn’t leave much space for a crowd, so people shoved and pushed, packed in elbow to elbow. More than five hundred people choked the approach to the building. Across the way, government employees stared out of the upper story windows of the Education Administration.
To the amber-eyed woman who stood to one side at the top of the steps, the pudgy official cut a pathetic figure. Still more pathetic, perhaps, was his duplicity in the whole affair. After all, Ily had promised him protection.
The Minister braced his arms on the podium that rested on the raised platform-a stage surrounded by muscular young men in Civil Protection uniforms and an energy barrier, just for good measure. Beyond the barrier, the crowd roared and waved their fists, the picked agitators bellowing out their slogans and demands.
A chill wind gusted, whistling out of the somber skies and moaning around the eaves.
“We’ve done all we can for the workers of Trystia!” the Minister implored. “We have no corruption here. That’s for urban Rega-not our peaceful community!”
A blast of angry calls erupted from the crowd, amplified between the sheer stone walls of the closely spaced buildings. When one of the burly guards looked her way, the amber-eyed woman nodded. The young man nudged his closest companion. One by one, they straightened in anticipation.
The amber-eyed woman stepped to the energy barrier, crying, “Hear us!”
On cue, the cherubic Minister raised his hands, ordering, “Wait! Silence!”
The muffled bellows of the crowd ebbed to a dull roar.
“The time has come,” the amber-eyed woman’s voice rang out, projected by the hidden speakers they’d placed, “for an end to tyranny! The people demand justice for your crimes! You live like the Blessed Gods themselves, while we wallow in misery! You eat Ashtan lamb-while we eat rationed bread! Look at your fat body! And then look at mine!” Her back to the mob, she ripped her coat wide. No one saw the smile on her lips as the Minister and
the guards gawked at her magnificent body.
She pulled her coat tightly around her before she faced the crowd, crying, “We starve so he can get fat! Justice! Justice! Justice!”
The crowd took up the chant, shaking their fists in time with the call.
The guard she’d nodded to leapt to the platform and grabbed the Trystian Minister by the neck, speaking into the public address system. “Justice! Rise, my friends! Death to despots!”
As one, the guards shouted their approbation, cutting the power to the energy barrier.
“Take the building!” the amber-eyed woman goaded. “Fight for the people! Kill them all!”
The Minister of Public Works was picked up bodily, and thrown at the feet of the crowd. He disappeared under a mass of howling bodies as the rest surged
into the Ministry. Only as forward, up the steps, and the last of the crowd charged into the building did the amber-eyed woman slip back out the door and dodge down the steps. One by one, the muscular young guards followed, each careful not to step on the gory remains of the Minister where he lay like a butchered steer.
A block away, a large aircar dropped; doors bearing the escutcheon of Internal Security opened for the amber-eyed woman and her companions. The vehicle lifted and shot away above the suddenly panic-filled streets.
Division First Ben MacRuder walked down the officer’s corridor as the Regan battle cruiser Gyton approached the end of its null singularity jump. He proceeded with a swinging step, stacks of flimsies and data cubes cradled under his arm.
Of medium height, Mac had a muscular build, blond, medium-length hair, and blue eyes that had already started to grow crow’s-feet at the corners. Like all Regan military personnel, he wore armor, a thick satin-finished synthetic of very tight weave capable of vacuum duty. The material had certain fiberoptic qualities which allowed limited camouflaging, The material’s hollow fibers contained either a rapid acting catalyst or a polymer molecule. Upon impact or exposure to particle fire, the fibers ruptured with an instantaneous hardening of the armor. Once hardened, the armor charred and Peeled in ablative flakes to protect the wearer from blaster or pulse fire.
Mac slowed and slapped a palm to the lock plate on the hatch to Sinklar’s cabin. The door computer coded his body chemistry and dermatoglyphics, then slipped soundlessly back into the bulkhead.
Mac stepped into the little square room and stopped. Sinklar sat slumped at the desk with his head canted at an awkward angle-dead asleep. The desktop looked like a battle had been fought through the wadded and crumpled flimsies. The bank of monitors on the wall across from the desk glowed with graphics displays as they waited for the master’s next manipulations of the tactics tables, maps, and statistics.
Something in Mac’s breast constricted at the slouched posture and the grief reflected on his commander’s face. Mac quietly lowered his pile of duty rosters to the already heaped desk and flinched when Sinklar made a whimpering sound.
“Sink?” Mac called softly as he rounded the desk to shake his friend’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you lay down and get some real sleep?”
Sinklar jerked, crying, “No! Gretta,!” His eyes flickered open and he started, blinking owlishly around the cabin and then up at Mac. Hell reflected from those odd-colored eyes.
“Bad dream,” Sinklar admitted sheepishly in his high voice.
Mac nodded. Sink might never have known it, but Mac had loved Gretta Artina with every bit as much passion and devotion. “Want to talk about it?”
“I’ll be fine,” Sinklar said hoarsely.
“Sure.” Mac settled himself on the corner of the desk. “Mhitshul’s been worried to fits about you. He says you’re not sleeping, not eating. He says when you do drift off, you have terrible dreams. That you’re driving yourself to-“
“Mhitshul’s acting like an old woman.” Sinklar arched his back and kneaded his neck muscles with a nervous hand. “Maybe he’s got a mother complex or something.”
Mac cocked his head, studying Sink skeptically. “Want to take a walk with me? You and 1, buddy, have been so busy trying to organize this rabble of ours into an army that we haven’t had time enough to settle some things between us.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what happened while I was trapped in Makarta Mountain. I’ve heard bits and pieces from Staffa, from Mhitshul, and from Mayz and Kap-he’s doing all right, by the way. They just released him from a med unit. His lungs are mostly healed.”
That’s all you want to know?”
Mac shook his head slowly. “I want to know about that affair on Chrysla when we met with Staffa after the fighting. What the hell was that all about? Is it really some sort of Seddi trick?”
Sinklar spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture, his weird bicolored eyes searching Mac’s. “I think the man’s a lunatic, crazy, schizophrenic. Maybe it’s some peculiar quirk of his. Maybe I came so close to beating him that it tweaked something in his mind, some association. “
“Rotted Gods, Sink! The man thinks you’re his son!”
Sinklar stood, wincing as if every muscle in his back had cramped. From the position he’d fallen asleep in, they probably had.
“I think I’ve got the Regan strategy worked out,” Sinklar muttered as he gestured at the monitors and deftly avoided the subject.
Mac gave the displays a cursory inspection. “That’s a relief. I’m not used to you pulling your hair out over a simple thing like a battle plan.”
Sink raised an eyebrow. “Do I detect a sarcastic undercurrent here?”
Mac sighed and slapped his thighs as he got to his feet. “You want to take that walk with me, or spend all day making small talk to get around the fact that you’re about to break up and crumble into little pieces?”
“Mac, I’m fine. Just a little tired and worried. Don’t talk to me like that. “
MacRuder considered that while Sinklar pushed his toilet door open, ran the little sink full of water, and doused his head in it. After Sink stepped out, drying himself, Mac swung around and jabbed a finger hard into Sinklar’s chest. “Oh, yeah? Well let me remind you of a thing or two. I know you, Lord Fist. Who picked your fragged ass up in that Kaspan alley when a rebel blaster filled your scrawny hide full of shrapnel? Who carried your sorry meat up those stairs? Who wandered down into the dark to die for you at Makarta? Damn it, Sink, I’ll talk to you however I want to-and you’ll Rotted well listen when I do.”
Sinklar’s angular face reddened with anger, then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah ... yeah, I guess you will.” He rubbed a hand over his face and glared at Mac through bloodshot eyes. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here and take this walk. Where we gonna go? There’s no place but circles to walk around in this damn bucket of air.”
“How about the little lounge back of the gym? It’s the closest thing to a relaxing environment on this rust bucket. “
“You got it.” Sinklar palmed the hatch and led Mac into the rib cage corridor with its long rectangular light panels and overhead conduit.
“Gretta’s still haunting you, isn’t she?” Mac hung his head, watching his feet.
“When she ... I mean ... When she was killed, it’s like it tore something out of me, left me ... I don’t know . . . hollow inside.” A pause. “I loved her so much. On Targa there wasn’t time enough to understand. Too much was happening. The Makarta fight, fencing with Ily and Rysta . . . I didn’t have the luxury to think about it-to feel the loss. But now? Damn it, Mac, every time I try and plan, Gretta should be there. She was part of me ... and now there’s only a hole inside.”
Mac chewed his lip uneasily. She was part of all of us, Sink. By the Rotted Gods, how good is that plan you’ve been hatching? The last one damn near got us all killed. A shiver played along Mac’s spine. Was that it? Had Sink’s nerve broken? Had Arta Fera killed more than just Gretta? Had she killed that spark in Sinklar Fist that made him brilliant?
“You’ve just got to go on, Sin
k.” How empty and trite that sounded. “What about Ily Takka? What do we do with her when we get to Rega? I don’t trust her-haven’t since the first day she set foot on Targa outside the Vespan brick factory.”
Sinklar grunted noncommittally as they walked into the gymnasium. Two Sections were engaged in calisthenics. Someone saw Sinklar walk in. A whisper ran through the ranks as heads craned and worshipful eyes sought Fist’s scrawny figure. The cadence of the exercise fell apart as the soldiers stopped to stare, reverence on their faces. Only the cursing of the Section Firsts got them back to work, and by then a transformation had taken place. Backs were straighter, heads high, each move perfect as if the sweating recruits labored before the watchful eye of the Divine.
Despite the number of times Mac had seen it, the phenomenon still surprised him. The Empire had left these people in a murderous environment to die for obscure political ends. Sinklar had defied the odds, kept them alive, and molded them into a military force so dangerous the Emperor had dropped five veteran Divisions to snuff them out. But we beat them. Outnumbered five to one, without orbital recon or support, our two skeleton Assault Divisions still won.
A grim smile played across Mac’s lips. Their courage and skill had brought the Minister of Internal Security to them to ask for a reconciliation, and each man and woman knew it. Then they’d tackled the Seddi in their lair and fought no less an opponent than the Rotted Star Butcher to a standstill. That pride and indomitable spirit was reflected in the eyes of the Targan Assault Divisions and in the aggressive swagger they adopted in the corridors.