Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series (26 page)

“That, at least, is first-rate.”

“Good. How many of this intake have experience as pilots?”

“No more than forty, and those are barely qualified.”

“That will be the first order. Turn them over to the training masters, with orders to find any that might be capable of flying our attack ships.

“The others … all the others … are to become warriors, no matter what they thought they would be serving as. We have enough meat cutters, clerks, already.

“When you have given the orders, I want you to communications. I need to have speech with Senza and Keffa as soon as possible.”

The com shuddered against Jasith’s side.

She stood, and the analyst looked down the long table, startled at the interruption. The half dozen other board members in the meeting were just as surprised.

“Pardon me,” she said, trying to sound apologetic. “But there is a com I must make that I forgot about. Please forgive me for my rudeness.”

Without waiting, she hurried to the door behind her, past her two waiting bodyguards, into the corridor as the com fluttered again.

She pulled it from her pocket, keyed it on.

“Jasith Mellusin.”

“Garvin Jaansma.”

“You’re alive!”

“I’m alive.” She could find no emotion in his voice.

“I want to see you.”

There was a silence.

“I can’t. I’ve got … business I’m involved with.”

“I think maybe your business is mine. And I’m not thinking of, of anything else.”

Again a pause.

“ ‘Kay.”

“What about — ”

Garvin interrupted her.

“No names. What about … where I saw you last. Tomorrow night. When you were about to go to dinner with him. The same time. Go for a walk on the pier.”

“There? But that’ll be dangerous. It’s close to, close to them.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The connection went dead.

Jasith stared at the com for a time, then pocketed it, returned to her meeting.

CHAPTER
20

Langnes 889234/Tenacity

“You are overly worried,” Keffa said, a bit of a purr in his voice. “Those who vacillate, those who have fallen away from commitment to your cause, are unworthy, both for their race and to share in any benefits from this undertaking.”

He waited while the transmission bounced around the galaxy, had enough time to watch two more bouts in his private arena and the start of a third before the reply came from the system once known as Cumbre, now Redon.

“I think I am still correct in my concern,” Wlencing said. “Remember I am here on the fringes of nowhere, and by the time an action occurs where you are, and its effects reverberate to me, much time has passed.

“So this is why I want something to be done now. One thing that would aid immeasurably is if there is some way to silence Senza. I would also be grateful for any help you or your clan might be able to make, particularly in the way of warriors, good trained warriors, or equipment.

“I attempted to contact Paumoto, but was told that he was not available. I would appreciate it if you would convey my respects, and also my needs, to him.”

Again, the long wait.

“You may be assured you have my every sinew to assist you,” Keffa said. “Even though I must say I am somewhat taken aback at the reports of the cost of this subjugation, in warriors, equipment, money.

“Still, it is important to we Musth that we are victorious, and I shall personally make it my business.

“Remember, War Leader Wlencing, you are not alone.”

Keffa nodded to an assistant, and the connection was broken. He tried to return to watching the bout, but other matters kept intruding.

So Wlencing was not able to contact Paumoto. Keffa wondered — he had communication with the clan leader within the past three days, and Paumoto had said nothing about traveling. Was Paumoto avoiding the war leader?

As for silencing Senza … that had been tried by many, and, Keffa thought, it would be as impossible to cut off radiation from an exploding sun. He wished he knew of an assassin more competent than the two he’d tried previously.

Was Paumoto beginning to reconsider his commitment?

Keffa thought not. He
certainly
would have contacted Keffa if he thought a change in strategy was worth considering.

Would he not?

Perhaps a visit to this strange system that had belonged to Man might be in order, might suggest a better way of dealing with the matter, might even provide a clue to Paumoto’s behavior.

CHAPTER
21

D-Cumbre

Jon Hedley finished reading the translation, lowered it.

“Seems pretty flipping strong,” he said. “But there’s a couple words I don’t understand.
Lert,
for instance.”

“I do not think there is an equivalent,” Alikhan said.

“There doesn’t seem to be,” Danfin Froude said. “Sort of a combination between pride, defiance, an assemblage of what they consider military virtues. Try warrior-thinking. Something you can teach others or, if you’re a mystic, inherit as part of a racial thing.”

“ ‘Kay,” Hedley said. “What about
krang
?”

“Laws, but more than laws,” Alikhan said. “Customs are part of it.”

“Code would maybe come close,” Froude added. “Or so Alikhan tells me.”

“Branda?”

“Fate, career.”

“Another question,” Hedley said. “You didn’t make any call for anyone to join us. Why not?”

“Would
you
respond to a call for desertion from your enemy, especially if he was an alien?” Froude asked.

“ ‘Course not.”

“Well then.”

“ ‘Kay,” Hedley said. “And I like the way you have of disseminating it. I’ll make a few mods, to make sure we suddenly don’t get a homing missile up our flipping heinies before we go off-air, clear it with the old man.

“But I’m pretty sure we have a go on this one.”

“I won’t bullshit you,” Njangu said, his voice echoing across the square. The village of Issus was filled with fishermen from Dharma and a dozen nearby islands. The square was guarded by I&R gunmen, and Shrike and Shadow portable launchers were set up on the village outskirts waiting for a Musth aircraft to show.

“We’re going to fight back, and we’re going to need you. We’ll need you for courier boats, to smuggle various things. I don’t think we’ll have to train you for that. We’ll need you to move troops back and forth between one place and another, maybe, as things progress, we might want you as gunboats.”

“What’s in it for us?” a boat driver asked.

“Damned little,” Njangu said. “Seeing Cumbre out from under the Musth, if you give a stobor’s nostril about that. Getting your boat sunk and maybe you dead if you screw up or get unlucky.

“The infinite gratitude of the government if we win.”

There was laughter, boos. Njangu grinned, and there was more laughter.

“You see? I said I wasn’t gonna try to run anything up your butts you weren’t expecting.”

“The Musth sure like fish,” another fisherman called. “Good market there.”

“They sure do,” Njangu said amiably, relaxing against a porch railing. This wasn’t much different than hustling his clique back when he was a gangster into doing something he wanted and they weren’t sure about.

“They like ‘em so much they’ll probably want you to go back to their worlds and teach ‘em how to shoot a net.”

Some laughter, but there were wry mutterings.

“Or teach ‘em how to use someone for bait, eh, Njangu?” a woman called.

That got laughter — most of them had heard about Yoshitaro being used in exactly that capacity when he came home with Ton Milot, a long time ago, when he was a trainee, and almost becoming dinner for a voracious
barraco.

“Now you know why I’m fighting,” Njangu said. “I don’t want to go back to being bait. Especially for some aliens. But what about you? You think you’ll do just fine, hanging about, throwing your nets, and the Musth’ll live and let live?”

“Never known a government to do that for fishermen,” someone called. “Why should we expect a bun-cha furry aliens to do different?”

“
I
wouldn’t, if I were you. But I’m not. My personal call is they’re going to get more and more demanding, harder and harder to deal with. And I know it’s easier to get rid of a hard-ass master
before
he gets all his hooks seated in you.

“The Musth still have got their thumbs up, wandering around on their elbows. But they aren’t dumb. Little by little, day by day, they’ll get more secure, know us better, and we’ll be farther and farther up that creek.

“Think about it. If you want to join us, there’ll be people around. If we need you for a specific job, we’ll call you. There won’t be any problem from us if you say no.

“But don’t go and sing to the Musth about us, about what I said, about what you maybe’ll see your friends and neighbors doing.” Njangu’s voice changed, became soft, dangerous.

“If you do that, you and I’ll have a chat. And I don’t think you want that to happen.”

He slid off the porch, slung his blaster. Someone in the crowd — he thought it was either Ton Milot, who he’d brought along for exactly that service, or Alei, his brother — cheered, and there were some other cheers. Not everyone, but some. Most of the crowd was silent, thinking about what Yoshitaro had said, about what they’d seen already of the Musth, about what the future might bring.

His
tweg,
Stef Bassas, came up.

“Are we pulling out tonight, sir?”

Njangu glanced at the lowering sun.

“Negative. I’d just as soon not chance the rust bucket in the air when it’s getting dark. Too big a goddamned signature, and I don’t like meeting
aksai
in the dark. Or anywhere else, come to think.”

The team’s Grierson was under cam nets about half a kilometer outside Issus. This was the fourth speech Njangu had given that day in as many villages, and he was tired. He’d deliberately chosen Issus as the last stop because he felt it was as much of a home, besides the Force, as he had on Cumbre.

“We’ll set up camp outside the village,” he decided.

“I’ll have the men detailed off, sir. And I’ll have rations distributed from the Grierson. Maybe we’ll be able to get some fruit from the people to supplement them,” Bassas said.

“ ‘Lo, N’anju,” a shy voice came.

Njangu turned, saw Deira. She’d lost a bit of weight since he’d last seen her, but was still voluptuous. She wore, like a lot of the fishing women, a comfortable wrap that, Njangu knew, comfortably unwrapped. He felt a stirring somewhere south of his weapons harness.

“Are you staying the night?”

“Uh, yeh.”

Deira smiled.

“With me?”

“Umm,” Njangu said cleverly, looked at Bassas, who was considering the ground.

First your men, then yourself,
he remembered the adage.

“The village will be feeding your men if you do,” Deira said. “We don’t have many feasts these days, and we’d surely like to have one in your honor.”

Njangu noticed Ton and Alei to one side, with an impressively bearded man who had to be the clout in Issus, looking approving.

Bassas smiled at the idea of a night without issue rations.

“We thank you,” Njangu said. “But we cannot drink. If the Musth show up, we have to be able to do more’n throw rocks at them.”

“I’ve already told everyone that,” Ton said. “They’ll go along with the water-and-juice ritual, even though they don’t like it.”

Njangu looked at the sky, looked at Deira, thought about duty, thought about Deira, thought,
Screw duty.

“We’ll do it.”

“Good,” Ton said. “Some of our boys were admiring your girls.”

“And don’t forget about us women,” Deira said. “It’ll be nice, uh, talking to somebody who doesn’t have fish breath.”

“Thanks a lot,” Ton said.

“You be quiet,” Deira said. “You’re married.”

“I know that,” Ton said indignantly.

“Lupul told me to make sure you wouldn’t forget.” Deira came up, took Njangu’s arm.

“You, I have a special dish cooking. Just you, me, and Babeu,” she said in a low voice. “That’s her, there. We’re good friends, and I told her
all
about you, about us. If you like her, it’ll be like it was before, hmm?” Deira indicated a slender blond-haired woman about Deira’s age. “I had a lot of fun then, more than the last time you were here. You think you won’t get bored?”

“I’m not worried about that,” Njangu said. “I’m worried about getting any sleep.”

“Don’t worry,” Deira said. “You won’t get any.”

“Oh Abu running zigzags in the desert,” Njangu murmured.

“Come on,” Deira urged. “The fish won’t be ready for an hour. And we don’t want to waste any time, do we?”

Njangu moaned.

Tomorrow he had another four speeches scheduled, these in mountain villages, recruiting aircraft watchers.

• • •

The team landed quietly about half a kilometer from the transmission relay station. The four technicians, helped by their gun guards, turned the antigrav pallet’s power on, and muscled it out of the Grierson’s rear hatch and up the mountainside toward the low buildings just over the crest. Alikhan and Froude, even though their work was finished, insisted on seeing the mission through. Froude had been given a blaster, and someone started to tell him how to use it. Froude got indignant. He might be a civilian, but that didn’t mean he knew
nothing.

Ben Dill, following orders and accompanying Alikhan everywhere, had flown the Grierson in, and now was quietly bemoaning his fate at being once again a crunchie as he took point and led the team upward.

They saw no one as they approached the site. Two techs, specialists in security devices, examined the fencing.

“Nothing, sir,” they reported to Froude, not knowing what rank he held, but assuming anyone who could dress as shabbily as he did, and in civilian clothes to boot, certainly outranked them. “Just some buzzers and the fence is electrified to keep critters off. It’s clear now, and we’ve cut the lock off.”

They muscled the bulky transmitter through the gate, waited while the techs opened the control-room door, brought it inside.

“Just like I thought, sir,” another tech reported. “Pretty standard, no security devices I can see on the operating net. We’ll need fifteen, no ten minutes to wrap this up.”

Well within the time frame the retransmission point’s power was shunted through the transmitter, and it was powered up.

The transmitter was tuned to the Musth’s main watch frequency, and was using the station’s power to blast its message across the planet and into space.

It was not coincidence that the station was one of
Matin’s.

“Anytime, sir.”

“Start it up,” Froude said, and the recording hissed on, beaming into a hundred or more disbelieving Musth coms, from ships to stationary units.

The team left the station, trotting down the path to the Grierson and lifting away from the site before anyone could respond.

The production qualities of the recording were somewhat lacking, no more than a carefully filtered voice, speaking Musth in a gentle tone:

“Remember when you were a cub, how you fought, played, looked up at the stars, saw them gleaming promise?

“You fought hard in your den, showed you were the strongest, the best, the most
lert
You held your own and more in the warrens, then went out, into the world.

“You became a warrior, knew the ways, the sacred
krang.
You fought your brothers on the training grounds, proving yourself again. Or perhaps you listened to the blood singing within, and came to Redon without your claws blooded.

“You were proud, brave, with all your
lert,
all your honor.

“But what has happened since then?

“You have seen your brothers die, killed from behind or from a burrow. You fought back.

“Against what?

“Cubs? Females? Nothing?

“Is this honor?

“Has your
lert
grown?

“Many, too many, of your fellows are gone, with only the death ceremony for remembrance. Some lie rotting on a jungle path, others’ bones are turned, swept by the tides, others … others are simply vanished, with no one to know their deaths.

“Will their dens remember them? Will their clans? Will cubs thrill to their honor?

“What about you?

“Will cubs pray to inherit
your lert?

“Or will you be like so many, many others, die here on this forgotten end path, this green nightmare of a planet?

“Dead.

“Forgotten.

“Without honor.

“Or is it time to leave, to return to worlds that are as they should be, to find proper
brahda
for yourself, for others, for your clan?

“You can make your own decision about that.

“You are a warrior. You know how to think.

“Don’t you?”

A continuous low growl came from Wlencing as he listened to the recording twice through.

“I am assuming that transmission source had been taken over by these worms.”

“It must have been,” Daaf said. “I cannot picture this Kouro person being that far removed from reality to allow it.”

“No, he is not,” Wlencing said. “I assume you sent a team out to secure the location, and make full analysis.”

Daaf hesitated.

“You did not?”

“No,” Daaf said. “An
aksai
flight commander located the source of the transmission, and he and the other craft destroyed it.”

Wlencing’s growl grew larger.

“I want his guts … no. I cannot punish bravery. But make sure he does not enter my sight for a time, until my anger is gone. Also, deal with this Kouro. He may not have anything to do with this filth, but it is still his fault. Punish him in some appropriate way. Take some of his credits. I would think that would hurt him more than anything physical.”

“It will be done.”

Wlencing touched a sensor, listened to the ‘cast again. What did the bandits hope to accomplish? There was no call to change sides or mutiny. Just that bleak promise of eventual death and nothingness.

It would not be good for warrior spirit to listen to it. Wlencing was about to order that anyone caught listening to this would be punished, caught himself. That was stupid, and would do nothing more than make it a forbidden, and therefore attractive thing.

He listened again.

The language was perfect. No human could have made the recording. Certainly whoever created it understood Musth thinking. But no human could understand Musth honor. But no Musth would work with worms. And there were no reports of a prisoner having been taken …