Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (54 page)

Chapter 50

In Gilead Space

Ships in the Night

The thirty Tilleke warships slid eel-like through the wormhole that connected Tilleke space into Gilead space.  Each of them was a dark, mottled black, the black of starless space, the black of an assassin’s blade.  Under heavy stealth, with heavily muffled power emissions, they moved slowly away from the wormhole entrance deeper into the Gilead Sector.  

From the Gilead Sector, they had several options. They could enter The Light, though why anyone would want to encounter the mad monks of that obscure religion was beyond reason.  Or they could go to Darwin, or Victoria, or even take the old trader’s route to Refuge. 

But Victoria was the prize of prizes.  He who controls Victoria controls all of Human Space.

Five weeks ago the spy ships in the Dominion of Unified Citizenry reported that the Victorian Fleet was entering Dominion space and that the Victorian and Dominion fleets were evenly matched.

Then the spy ships fell silent.

Not that it mattered, thought Prince RaShahid, eldest son of His Most Imperial Majesty Chalabi. Whatever needed to happen must have already occurred.  After the passage of five weeks, one side had ravaged the other, or perhaps they had managed to destroy each other.  He smiled at the thought.  Either way, he was going to Victoria and then the Dominion to pick up the pieces and assert the Emperor’s rightful control over his expanding dynasty.

The Emperor’s Pride
had barely gone 5,000 miles when a single ship suddenly materialized on the sensor display.  Prince RaShahid, eldest son of His Most Imperial Majesty, Chalabi, jerked up in shock.

“What is this?” he demanded.  His Sensors Operator, a trusted Freeman, looked anxiously at his controls and then straightened.  “A single ship, Noble Born, destroyer-sized, and powered down.  They must have been under stealth; our sensors showed nothing until they suddenly appeared.”

“Whose ship?” the Prince grated.  He was not a man who took kindly to surprises.

“We cannot get a clear sensor picture, My Prince,” the Freeman answered, his face a frown of concentration.

Then a chime sounded, indicating that
The Emperor’s Pride
was being hailed.

“How can they see us?” fumed RaShahid.  The Freeman did not answer.

The communications chime sounded once again.

The Prince thought for a moment, then nodded brusquely to the Communications Freeman.  “Open a channel.”

The comm screen remained dark; only a voice could be heard.

“Your spy ships are dead.” 

The voice was low, even, and without passion.

“You are here on a fool’s errand,” it continued.  “On incorrect assumptions.”

Prince RaShahid turned angrily to the Weapons Officer, a noble-born.  “Destroy that ship!” he grated.

“We don’t have a firm lock,” the Weapons Officer protested.

“Shoot anyway!  Make them move!  When they move, we’ll get a fix.  I should not have to tell you this!”

From anyone else, this would have been grounds for a
kafari,
a duel of honor where one man must die, but this was the son of the Emperor and the heir to the throne.  The Weapons Officer choked back his anger and fired a spread of missiles, saturating the area where the unknown ship seemed to be.  The Battle Display showed eight bright green dots racing toward a smudge of red.

“I see you have fired missiles at me, Prince RaShahid,” the voice chided.  “Did you think it would be that easy?  Watch.”

Just as the missiles reached their target area, the red smudge vanished, then suddenly reappeared 1,000 miles away.

“Am I here, My Prince?  Can you shoot me now? Or am I here?”

A second red dot, as indistinct as the first, appeared 500 miles to the right of the first.

“Or am I really here?”  A third red dot appeared.

“Use the lasers!” snapped Prince RaShahid.  “All ships! Shoot them!  Shoot them!”

Laser beams lanced out from thirty Tilleke warships, some large, some small.  They flashed through all three of the targets showing on the Battle Display.  All three targets disappeared.  Prince RaShahid nodded.  Good.  Let the lesson be learned:  All who stand in the way of the Emperor, die.

Then the speakers on the communications screen burst into life.

“You think you killed me, don’t you?” the voice asked sardonically.  A new red dot emerged on the Battle Display, just over 1,200 miles from
The Emperor’s Pride.
  But then a second appeared, this one closer, and then a  third, and a fourth.  Then a  dozen.

“You are a foolish man, Prince, and now your crew can see it for themselves.  You thought the Victorians would destroy the Dominion, or that the Dominion would destroy the Victorians.”

Prince RaShahid looked warily around the bridge of
The Emperor’s Pride. 
There were eight Freemen on the bridge, all studiously looking at their consoles, none daring to look at him.  But each one of them had heard every word.  Anger welled up inside him.  Anger at the mysterious voice that could not be silenced.  Anger at the men who had witnessed his shame.  One of the Freemen coughed. Smothering a laugh, perhaps? But ‘perhaps’ was sufficient proof for a Noble Born.  The Prince snapped his fingers to get the attention of the Savak guard in the corner, then pointed at the Freeman.

The Savak guard walked behind the man, who still kept his head down, not daring to look up and seal his fate.  The burly Savak grabbed the man’s head and, grunting, twisted it around until it faced backwards, the doomed man’s shriek suddenly punctuated by a wet ‘crack!,’ followed by silence.  The Savak released the body and it sprawled limply across the work console.  The Savak went back to his post in the corner.

“But you were wrong,” the voice continued, “And your eminent father was wrong as well.  The Victorians and Dominions did not destroy each other, they formed an
alliance
.  You come now with your thirty ships, thinking to feed on a dead carcass, but instead you find a living, ferocious tiger, thirsty for revenge.  Thirsty for blood.”

More red dots appeared on the Battle Display.  “Noble Born, sensors show sixty ships, but we cannot get a lock on any of them,” the Sensors Freeman reported, glancing nervously at the Savak standing in the corner.

“Now you must decide, My Prince,” the sardonic voice continued.  Prince RaShahid was learning to hate that voice.  “You must decide to forge ahead like a brave, courageous son of the Great Emperor and face certain annihilation, or you must turn back to Tilleke Space.”

Suddenly, one by one, the red dots signifying enemy ships blinked out; vanished, leaving only one, now glowing more brightly.

“This one shows as a battleship, Noble Born!” the Sensors Freeman said urgently.  “Strong signal, very large ship!”

Then that red dot, too, vanished.  But the voice relentlessly continued, seemingly coming from nowhere.

“If you continue to Victoria,” it said, “you will find the superior forces of the Victorian and Dominion alliance waiting for you.  When you do, you will wonder just who it was that met you in Gilead with this warning.  And you will wonder when you will see them again.”  The voice grew cold.  “I will tell you this, my dear Prince, the next time you see us will be the last.  And when we are through with your paltry attack fleet, we will go through the wormhole into Tilleke space and your father, His
Most
Imperial Majesty, will die cursing your name for a fool.”

The voice went silent.

Prince RaShahid sat for a long moment, trying desperately to understand what had just happened and what it meant.  Then he sighed and ordered the assault force to turn around and return to the Tilleke Sector.

He wondered how he would face his father.

And if he would survive it.

Chapter 51

On the Planet Refuge

They started up the mountainside at dawn.  Emily patted Rosie’s head and the horse nuzzled her.  “This is Rosie,” she told Cookie.  “She has some fancy names in Berber and Hebrew that I can’t pronounce, meaning ‘Bride of the Wind,’ but to me she is just ‘Rosie.’”

Cookie nodded, but didn’t say anything.  She took a long look up the mountain, then studied her horse, a brown gelding named ‘Tripper’ for reasons no one had bothered to explain.  Cookie watched how Emily climbed into the saddle, then mimicked it perfectly and swung up onto her horse.  Tripper looked over his shoulder at her, but didn’t do that unsettling sideways skitter thing that some horses are prone to.  The breeze ruffled Cookie’s hair and for a moment she closed her eyes and just breathed in the smells of a different world.  Then Rafael Eitan stepped up to her and slid a needler rifle into the holster in front of Cookie’s right leg.  Cookie frowned and raised an eyebrow in question.

“Just in case we run into grogin,” he said cheerfully.  “They’re usually not down this low, but better safe than sorry.  Hope you’re a better shot than Emily.”

Cookie gave Emily a considering look.  “You brought me here to help me relax?  Really?”

They climbed the mountain slowly, the cool morning air giving way to mid-morning warmth.  Cookie and Emily rode together while Rafael ranged a hundred yards or so ahead, keeping an eye out for grogin.  The forest was a riot of birds, small rodents and gorgeous, breath-taking vistas across the valley to the mountains on the far side.  Cookie didn’t say anything, just greedily drank in the landscape – exotically huge and rich after so many months inside space ships and…prison.

Mid-day they stopped at an alpine pond nestled in a small flat.  A stream rushed down the steep mountain to it, cascading the final fifty feet in a waterfall over a tumult of rocks, the spray making tiny, fleeting rainbows in the air. Raf put a bottle of white wine in the pond to cool, then broke out some cold chicken and cheese, followed by fruit that looked like a pear but tasted more like a cross between a watermelon and an apple.  He fetched the bottle of wine from the pond, took a sip and pronounced it ‘just perfect.’   He poured them each a drink in small metal cups, then raised his in a toast.

“To a reminder,” he said, gesturing at the scenery all around them, “that the world can be a beautiful place.”  Far off in the distance, they heard the long, undulating cry of a grogon on the hunt, the sound echoing off the valley walls.

Rafael smiled ruefully.  “Well, beautiful some of the time, at least.”

They mounted the horses and climbed further up the mountain.

After another hour they came to the first stand of
shatah mallah
trees, the tall trees with the short waxy leaves that fluttered in the wind like ocean waves flowing down the mountainside.  Cookie stopped to stare at them as the breeze stirred the leaves and they began their rhythmic, flowing motion.  She stared at it in wonder and delight.

“They call them the ‘Dances with God’ trees,” Emily told her.  “The first time I saw them I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.”

Cookie nodded.  “I’m beginning to understand why they call this planet ‘Refuge.’  These mountains are…incredible.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen the grogin yet,” Emily retorted.  “It’s not quite as perfect as you might hope.”  Then she gazed out on the snow-covered peaks across the valley from them and sighed.  “But still, pretty darn nice…”

Cookie stared off into the distance.  “He’s not going to take me back,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact but not quite making it.  She sighed.  “He thinks he can, but I saw his face when I killed Schroder.  Every time he looks at me, he’ll see that.”

“You didn’t kill Schroder,” Emily retorted firmly.  “I tried him in a military court and sentenced him to death.  He was executed.  It’s all in the record.”

Cookie gave her a withering look.

“He was a sadistic, twisted, mean little pervert and he deserved to die,” Emily said defensively.

Cookie’s lips curled in a sardonic smile.  “Yeah, well, I obviously agree with you, but that’s not the problem.  The problem is that when I slit his throat I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that I had an audience, and that
Hiram
was in that audience.   I can live with what I did – if I had to do it over I’d do it again – but that’s the image Hiram has stuck in his brain.  That’s what he sees every time he’s near me.”

They rode for a minute or so in silence, then Emily said, “I think you underestimate him, Cookie.  Hiram wasn’t horrified at what you did.”

“Bullshit,” Cookie said, angrily wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.  “I saw the look on his face.  Hell, I see it in his face every time we’re together.”

“
Listen
to me, you damn stubborn idiot,” Emily said very gently.   “He wasn’t horrified at what you did; he was horrified at what
they
had done to make
you
need to kill Schroder.  Can’t you see the difference?”

Cookie shook her head stubbornly.  “He’ll never forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Emily said simply.  “And when you understand that, when you
accept
that, you’ll be able to forgive yourself.”