Challenge Met, page 19
Then a gauntlet gripped her forearm. The armor pressed close. *I know the way,* Bogie said. He took her with him.
The contact came with a blazing shock. White light branded her mind, shearing Vandover away with its force. For a split second, she thought it had purged her mind of everything, but then she saw that, no, it was a beacon and everything stood out crystal clear. Vandover stood, hunched into his dark cape at one end of her mind, the light so blinding that he could be seen only as a shadow, and at the beacon’s beginning was another figure, squarish, thinning hair ruffled about a mature face, the clothes that of a mining workman—“Colin!” she cried out, the name bursting from her throat.
Her mind went dark. The light gone. Vandover stilled. Bogie held her arm tightly and she wondered if he had felt what she had. She swallowed down the lump in her throat.
“I’ve got him,” she said. “Lead ship. In the… the middle. Jack, he’s alive.”
“Damn.” Jack came about. “Denaro, shut down the guns. We can’t risk taking the offensive.”
“They’re bringing us down,” Rawlins warned. Screens lit up as they hit the ionosphere and heat shields went up. Claron filled the displays.
“Try to stay away from the installations,” Jack said. “We’ve got some control.”
Amber sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. Bogie stayed at her side, silent. The ship spiraled down as its shepherds stubbornly forced it planetward.
“It’s going to be a rough landing,” Rawlins said. “Belly down.”
They braced themselves for the hit. The Thrakian cruiser burst through the clouds, through mist and downward, dragging atmosphere and gravity with it. There would be no mat to brake it, no berthing to cradle it at journey’s end, no hope that they could ever land intact enough to take off again. The only hope they had was to survive the landing at all.
“They’re coming with us,” Denaro warned.
Amber felt the gauntlet on her arm close. Was Bogie frightened? Did he share her sense of mortality? She made a soothing noise that did not finish. It got caught in her tightening throat.
Denaro said, very calmly, “They’re coming in firing, Jack. We’ll never make it down.”
Bogie let out a howl.
Chapter 31
know the way. Colin froze on the bridge as the words burned into his mind. The Ash-Farel had herded him on deck, urged him quietly as he tottered his painful body where they wished him to be.
“We are hunting,” they said, and he knew despair. The Ash-Farel did not make war, as he knew it. They hunted and eradicated. He knew they might well be hunting his people.
“We have heard a call,” they told him. “We are unsure. Listen with us.”
And then his thoughts had lit up as if novaed. He reached for Bogie with all his hope and joy, embraced Amber for an incredible moment, lost her but stayed with Bogie, warmth blazing through him as they melded and when a howl of terror eclipsed that joy, the Ash-Farel reacted.
The ship’s bridge pitched under him. He clung to the shoulder of Na-dara for strength in his physical self as his thoughts interwove with Bogie’s fear and desperation.
“I hear,” Colin said. And he showed Na-dara what it was he heard, all the while trembling, knowing his friends’ lives were being measured in seconds, if he could stop the Ash-Farel from hunting, if he could get the Ash-Farel to listen to his friends. The screen in front of him filled with the vision of the slender, dwarfed Thrakian vessel as it plummeted groundward toward Claron’s new soil.
“If you hear, we also must hear,” Na-dara said reluctantly. He reached out to the control board. The tractor beams came on, seizing the Thrakian ship, controlling its rapid descent into a safe landing, and they followed it down, the keels of the warships plowing into the loam.
The Ash-Farel turned to Colin. Its saurian face was avid. “You must help us to listen,” Na-dara said. “We hear the echo of one of our lost children in your thoughts.”
Colin wondered about that. The warship shuddered as its great bay opened. He painstakingly left the bridge and tottered to the tongue of ramp that lowered him to Claron.
Fresh air touched him. There was mist in it, comforting to the burn of his skin. He saw the Thrakian ship pop its air lock, and figures tumble out… armored, all of them, except for Jack—Colin’s heart swelled at the sight of Storm—and he spread his arms in welcome.
They stared unknowingly at the white-robed figure and then the dark blue armored soldier reached up and took his helmet off. Rawlins said slowly, “My god. It’s Colin.”
The Walker could have wept, did weep, knowing that someone recognized him, beyond all hope that they could have done so.
Amber could not tell if it was the Claron mist on her face, or the tears she shed, as she stood back after gingerly embracing Colin. The man in her thoughts and memories did not stand in front of her. She searched for remnants of him in this tortured, elongated caricature of humanity. Only the voice remained the same, and the hair, and the eyes—she did not know how Rawlins had recognized him.
Denaro paced the virgin soil, not caring that his armored boots churned up new seeds and shoots, trampling them. Colin looked at him. “Have a care, my son,” he said. “You are being listened to.”
Jack had kept his arm about Colin’s waist as if knowing instinctively that the older man found it difficult to stand. He looked up the ramp into the darkened interior of the warship. It was cavernous and held secrets. “By them?”
“Yes. You must understand that any attempt at communication at all is miraculous. To them, we are parasites. Vermin. The worlds are better off without us. Would we talk to such creatures, in their position?”
Understanding illuminated Jack’s face as Colin spoke. “That explains their warfare.”
“Yes. Only they call it hunting.”
Denaro stopped short. “Tell them we’ve come for you.”
Colin made an abrupt movement, lost his balance and would have fallen but for Jack’s bracing. His face twisted. “Knees don’t always lock,” he said by way of explanation, then turned to Denaro. “You don’t know what you ask. Could I live like this among you? I think not. I see myself mirrored in your eyes. I am a grasshopper of a man… a walking skeleton. My pain numbers my days. But,” and he looked at Amber kindly. ”The price paid is not without reward. I talk, and they listen.”
“They threw a tractor beam on us,” Rawlins said. “I think it kept us from splattering the landscape. You did that?”
“I asked. They listened. We were both fortunate.” Deliberately, Denaro spat over one armored shoulder. He held his helmet in one glove as if it were a weapon he might throw. “You have obligations.”
“You do not need to remind me of my former life.”
“I need to bring you back.”
The two Walkers stared into one another’s eyes. A faint tinge of pink dusted Colin’s painfully boned face. “If for no other reason than to pick a successor?” he asked carefully.
Denaro flushed then. “The streets of Malthen run with blood. My brethren chose to fight, but now is not the time. We are wasting good men, good weapons.”
Amber felt chilled by his words. Colin made a desultory wave. “I have other matters to settle first. The Ash-Farel are listening, and they’re growing impatient. Bogie.” He turned to the opalescent armor.
*I hear you.*
“Bogie, there is a good chance that these are your people. They cannot quite hear you, as they put it, but they can listen to you through me. Do you wish it?”
The sentience did not answer immediately. Jack reached out with his free hand and clasped the shoulder of the battle suit. Colin said gently, “I know the way.”
There was another muffled howl as Colin swept him up, and Bogie could not fight the torrent of thought as it took him. Without moving a physical step, Bogie and the Walker saint joined the Ash-Farel who had been observing them from the shadowy interior of the warship.
He felt their exultation and more, the fierce burning warrior spirits that he knew were kindred to his own, but when he spoke, they did not quite hear. It was only when Colin bridged him that he could touch them, could know that his flesh had once been their flesh.
And the difference that must be spanned was that which he had taken from Jack. He could hear them, but they would not, could not hear him without Colin. He railed at the difference. He was theirs, but not theirs. And finally, in sadness, Bogie pulled away from them and from Colin, knowing that he could not return to them.
He was alone.
No. In his flesh was Jack and Amber, in his spirit, in his thoughts. They made the difference, but they also transformed him.
He would not be alone again.
Colin released him. They stood once again in the misty morning breeze off Claron. Jack’s hand touched the Flexalinks which Bogie used as skin and shell both.
“I am,” Bogie said, “Ash-Farel. And I am not.”
Colin’s face had grayed with strain. He nodded wearily. He had no chance to turn away as Denaro strode over and snatched him up, tearing him away from Jack. He brought his armored knee up viciously into Jack, knocking him aside.
Colin cried out, “Don’t. The Ash-Farel—”
Denaro leapt past Amber as she grabbed for him, their armor clashing, and her gauntlet slipping away.
Colin bumped on the shoulder epaulets, his breath torn from him, gasping, “Denaro, you don’t know what you’re doing—”
The ground fell away from under them. Denaro snarled, “I know the Ash-Farel won’t touch me as long as I’ve got you. I need you, old man, just long enough to make a statement in front of witnesses—”
White armor landed in front of them, and Bogie threw up his arms, saying only, “No.”
They clashed, Walker and alien, the man hampered by the burden of frail flesh over his shoulder. Denaro kicked out. Bogie turned, catching the boot on his flank. He hit his power vault and returned the blow, staggering Denaro backward. He came back with his fist and their armor pealed out as they made contact. Denaro shook himself loose of his burden, throwing Colin away, heedless of the white-robed figure tumbling away from him.
He brought his gauntlet up and fired, laser wash scouring Bogie’s chest and helmet. Amber ran to Colin’s side and knelt over him, protecting his body with her own armor. Bogie reeled, straightened, and jumped at Denaro. They bowled over and then Denaro shook free.
Rawlins helped Jack stand. Jack fought to breathe, winded. He felt broken in two or three different spots. He managed to gasp down some air and his diaphragm loosened slightly. He looked up. He launched himself across the broken field at Amber.
Rawlins saw what Jack saw even as the man dove at Amber and Colin to protect them. Denaro, at close range, cocked his wrist to fire, heedless of the damage the backwash from a wrist rocket would do. The white armor was his sole target, his obsession.
He fired. The rocket exploded, taking the white armor dead on. It staggered back, flowering open, Flexalinks splitting. Rawlins unhooked his helmet and screwed it on, as Denaro began to pivot toward the three huddled on the ground just as the explosion washed over them. The ragged hem of Colin’s robe caught fire spontaneously. As the orange flames gouted upward, Jack smothered them with his body.
Rawlins hit his vault. He smacked into Denaro just below the shoulder. Before the armored Walker could right himself, Rawlins locked his arm about the man’s upper torso, and tore the helmet off. Denaro yelled in fury.
His shout was cut short as Rawlins reached in and broke his neck.
The battle suit slumped over in response to its wearer’s death. Rawlins dropped back to the ground. He tore his own helmet off.
“My God,” he said, as if unsure himself just what he’d done. He stumbled to Jack’s side as he levered himself off Colin’s body.
The Walker saint lay crumpled, his robes sooty and stained. His broken form looked as if it had finally taken all the punishment it could. Amber let out a sob. Rawlins fell into a kneeling position beside his friend’s body. The pallor of his face matched the winter-wheat color of his hair, Jack thought. Aloud, he said, “You did what you could. It’s too late, that’s all.” And he wondered who the Ash-Farel would listen to now, if indeed they would listen at all.
Thunder rolled sullenly in the sky. Rawlins caught his breath and reached for Colin’s hand.
What happened next, neither Jack nor Amber could be sure, nor could they ever describe it except to say that the gauntlet took on a glow, an infusion of light and dark as it met Colin’s flesh. Rawlins never saw it, for the tears obscured his dark blue eyes. He held the dead saint’s hand for a long moment and when he let go, the radiance faded. The spicy air of Claron filled with an aroma that made Amber think of roses.
With a deep, shuddering sigh, Colin rolled over and sat up. They could see life shimmering into him, through him. He reached for Rawlins’ hands. “My boy,” he said. “You have returned the gift I gave to you.”
Rawlins’ mouth dropped open. Then, he shook his head. “I’m no Walker.”
“No? Well, then, I’m sure we can find someone who will teach you. But a good man is a good man, a saint is a saint, regardless of his religion. If my Walkers won’t accept you, there will always be those who will. You’ll do.” Colin released his gauntlets and looked at his own hands briefly. “You took away my pain. That’ll make listening with the Ash-Farel a little easier.”
Jack looked up. He frowned. “If there are any left. Rawlins—that’s reentry rumble! The Thraks are coming in! And the Ash-Farel are on the ground—Amber, get Colin up and in the ship. We’ve led them into a trap.”
Chapter 32
Vandover sat in his com net, face furrowed with anger. Amber had been able to brush him away, but he’d sifted through her mind well enough to know that the team had found Colin, been in touch with him. He would not be turned away from his goal now. She would do his will.
He took a cleansing breath. He knew her well, he did, the silken feel of her skin, the curves and valleys of her body as well as the twists of her mind. With every heartbeat, he drew closer to her again and she would be his…
“What are you doing, Vandover?”
The minister jerked upward in his chair. He looked at Pepys, weakened, hapless Pepys, and smiled even as he sent his questing thoughts out farther, closer to his quarry. He made a steeple out of his hands. “I do my work, emperor.”
“You’ve been relieved of your duties.” It was night on Malthen, and the emperor had been asleep. Lines from his pillow still creased his face and his frizzy red hair was matted down. He ran his good hand through it as if aware of Vandover’s observation.
“Not all of them, I’m afraid. Not my duty as I see it.”
The cables and wires of the com net prevented Pepys’ scooter from bringing him closer. The emperor remained in the doorway, frustrated. His anger showed on his face. “What are you doing?”
Vandover smiled that humorless smile of his. “A little long-distance assassination, my dear Pepys. The cease fire you’ve instituted won’t last long when the Walkers discover what you’ve done to their much beloved saint.”
“They’ve found Colin?”
“Oh, yes. And the Ash-Farel. And,” he smiled with real satisfaction now as he found Amber’s mind and sunk his hooks mercilessly into her, “I have found them.” He laughed dryly. “Remember the east wing? Remember the quorum of psychics you used to keep ensconced there, just in case one of them could sense or predict something for you?” He leaned forward, the comnet trailing about his head like an obscene tiara. “Well, my dear emperor, you’ve had the genuine article under your nose for years without a clue. She’s beautiful and deadly—but she’s mine.”
Pepys’ mouth worked silently. He saw his soul suddenly stretched out before him and knew that the stain of Colin’s death was a stain he could not bear upon it. He had to stop Vandover even if he had to kill him to do it. He tried to thrust himself from his conveyance.
They left their wounded and dead upon the field. Rawlins shut the Thrakian cruiser after them, Amber strangely pale as she helped Colin into a webbed chair. Jack climbed above, into the overhead turret. The cruiser vibrated into life.
Colin said, “Since this is a Thrakian vessel, I presume you can open channels for me?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
The Walker leaned his head back against the molded chair. He looked above. “Jack, hold your fire.”
Jack looked at the Thrakian warships coming in lean and mean on his grid. “Guthul won’t let us go. I don’t know what you have in mind—”
“Norcite. The Ash-Farel know far more about norcite than you and I ever will. I think the Thraks will trade our lives for the location of additional deposits.”
Jack came about in the turret, staring down. Amber sat in her chair next to Colin. The shock of all they’d gone through was written in tiny lines about her eyes and mouth. She gave him a stricken look.
Giving norcite to the Thraks was like giving weapons to a baby. Even if it meant bargaining for his life now, it also meant he would spend the rest of his life fighting Thraks and sand, until Tricatada gave out and her generation died fighting his—
“Shit.” The realization hit him.
Colin jerked in his chair. “What is it?”
Jack began to slide out of the turret. “Open up that channel, Rawlins. I’ve got something better to trade.”
An explosion rocked the cruiser. “Close,” said Rawlins. “They’re getting our range.” He opened up the monitors. They showed one of the Ash-Farel vessels beginning to lift off.
