Challenge Met, page 20
Jack faced the screen. “Guthul, I know you’re on-line.”
The screen came to life with the Thraks’ Kabuki mask looming fiercely at him. “I am, Commander, and this time I will find victory and honor!”
“There’s honor for all of us, but only if you call a cease-fire.” He looked to Colin. “Can you keep the Ash-Farel from fighting back?”
The man looked bemused. “I can,” he answered slowly, “try.”
Amber shuddered.
Jack faced Guthul’s visage again. “I know,” he said, “the answer to Tricatada’s infertility. I think our lives are worth that, don’t you?”
The mask reformed slowly. Then, “You trick us.”
“No. But I won’t tell you if we’re under attack.”
“You have allied with our ancient enemy…”
Jack shook his head. “The Ash-Farel don’t need us and they don’t need you. Fire on us and you’ve signed your own death warrant. Do you want fertile eggs or not?”
Behind him Rawlins cautioned, “One of the Ash-Farel ships is up. We’re on borrowed time.”
As if he’d heard him, the Thrakian general bowed abruptly. “We will talk.”
Colin let out his breath abruptly. He said, “The Ash-Farel are listening. They will allow Guthul’s ship to land. The others must, however, pull back.”
Vandover laughed as Pepys fell from the scooter. His weakened wrist doubled under him. It broke with a dull pop. The emperor let out a squeak of pain and writhed on the floor. Baadluster spoke and his words dripped venom. “Do you think to stop me now? You should have thought to do it years ago when you still held power.” He threw his head back and closed his eyes, discounting the broken emperor across the room.
Pepys closed his lips tightly upon his whimpering. Quietly, so as not to warn Vandover, he began to crawl across the floor.
They met on the valley floor. Jack recognized the land with a shock—it had once been the lush Ataract forest, where he’d done much of his rangering when Claron was still verdant, and now the blast of the landing vehicles had welded the new soil into glassy fields. As he strode over the obsidian surface to the ramp of the Ash-Farel vessel, Guthul’s contingent waited for him. Amber leaned on him, her breath rasping as she fought to keep pace with him. They had shed their armor. Colin thought it best. He tottered alongside Jack. Only Rawlins wore his suit, and he carried Bogie’s remains in his arms. He laid the shattered armor down on the ramp as they came to a halt.
Guthul twisted about. Jack knew Thrakian masks well enough to recognize an expression of pure hatred. Before the Thraks could speak, the Ash-Farel finally emerged from the cavernous belly of their ship.
Jack had seen them before, their mummified remains on a dead moon mining colony, in a Walker dig on Colinada, and now in the flesh. They were saurian, immense, and yet curiously avian; they were quick and their scales brilliantly colored. They were three times his size and their eyes were large, and knowingly arrogant. But they were listening.
He could not speak directly to them. Only Colin could translate what he would say now, so he turned to his old friend as Guthul made impatient chittering noises. Seeing the face of his ancient enemy did not seem to impress the Thraks.
“I can give you only the reason, not a solution. But if we can create a true alliance between us, I can promise you we’ll help with the solution.”
Guthul and his aides rattled their armor. “Empty words are like empty egg sacs. Flaunt them and we will return to our vessels.” He pointed his mask up the ramp to where the Ash-Farel milled about. “We will leave the field to fight another day.”
“If I give you the reason, you’ll come to treaty?”
Guthul bowed. “So my queen has ordered me.”
Jack smiled wryly. That was as good as he was going to get from the Thraks. “All right. Norcite has been among the Thraks for a long time. It’s a strengthening agent, highly prized for its effects upon armor.”
Guthul nodded and said warningly, “You waste my time.”
“No. Not by half. When you first began to contend with the Ash-Farel, you needed norcite to protect yourselves. At the beginning, you painted it on. It did well. Then, some time ago, you discovered the virtues of ingesting it. Drinking or eating it… it not only increased the strength of your armor, but its size. You began to develop your warrior classes and your warfare against your enemies. The end result of all the fighting was a drop in population. Your queens, of necessity, began to work harder laying eggs. You swarmed, taking over whole planets for sand nests to hatch and feed those younglings.”
The general’s mandibles worked. He rumbled, “The enemy knows enough of our secrets.
“But it’s no secret now. Tricatada cannot lay a fertile egg. You’ve come as far as you can. In the last thirty years, you’ve gone through a frenzy of swarming, driven out of your own lands by the Ash-Farel and conquering ours. The Ash-Farel have long known of your uses of norcite—every deposit we’ve found, the two of you have fought over. This has been revealed in archaeological records as well as in present history. But what you didn’t know, Guthul, was that it was not the warfare dooming you. It was the norcite. Norcite makes you sterile. The warrior class cannot fertilize the queen. Oh, she can lay eggs from now until the stars grow cold, but there isn’t a mate alive who can finish the job.”
“I am not impotent!”
Jack stared at the enraged Thraks who towered above him. He blinked. “I don’t doubt it—but you can’t give the queen fertility, either. Maybe only the lowliest Thraks, those never allowed to consume norcite still carry the ability. Maybe not. That answer I can’t give you. I can only tell you what happened.”
Guthul rattled his chitin in deafening agitation. “Our enemies will destroy us!”
Colin moved forward. “No,” he said. “They are listening, and they have compassion. I think I can say…” He trailed off, a quizzical expression on his face. He pivoted very slowly toward Amber. “Amber, what are you—”
Jack saw it in her face, in the intense struggle suddenly imprinted on her features. He jumped and brought her down, their bodies hitting the metal ramp, she fighting him like a wild thing.
“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t do this. Listen to me, not Vandover. Love, listen to me!” He bore her body down with his and took her face between his hands. Her eyes went wild and she screamed in fury at him.
Colin put his hand to his temple. He closed his eyes in sudden pain.
His arm hurt as if he’d been knifed. He held his breath for fear of whimpering too loudly. He crawled another foot upon the floor. He was close enough now to touch the edge of Vandover’s over-robe. To smell the sweat of the man’s booted feet. Pepys wrinkled his nose. All those years, and he’d never noticed how Baadluster’s feet stank. He pulled himself forward again. With a sudden upheaval, he wrapped his good hand in Vandover’s robe and pulled himself to his knees. Vandover exploded in snarling hatred and the smaller man saw his death in those flat, dark eyes.
Jack stroked her heated face, feeling her body heave under him, not caring if all the Thraks and Ash-Farel in the universes saw him struggle with her. “Dig deep,” he told her. “I’m here. Fight him. Don’t give in. I’m with you.”
Rawlins let out a shout and caught Colin’s toppling body. The saint said weakly, “I’m all right. Help Amber.” The Ash-Farel let out the first sounds he’d heard them make—it was like whale-song. He understood nothing they said and he thought that perhaps he couldn’t even hear all that they sang and boomed. Amber thrashed under him again, and a tear leaked out from her eyes.
“Jack,” she rasped. “Don’t lose me.”
“Never.”
She shuddered, her eyes rolling back until he could only see their whites. She cried out, “Dark child!”
Pepys screamed as Vandover shook him like a broken doll. He heard K’rok’s thundering voice, “What be happening here!” as the Milot leaped over the scooter and into the room. The impact of their bodies sounded like the clash of giants as Baadluster dropped him, forgotten. The hairy Milot and the black-clad man jointed in battle, the com net tiara trailing a tail of sparks as it tore loose. A powerknife buzzed to life in Vandover’s hand.
Blood splattered Pepys. He wiped it from his cheek and look up, to see the Milot dripping upon him as the knife cut him yet again. K’rok snarled in outrage, reached out, and punched Vandover in the chest. There was a sickening crunch of bone. Baadluster staggered back, gasping. He clawed at his chest and the powerknife dropped to the floor where its blades whirred angrily. He looked at Pepys as he sank to his knees. His pasty complexion turned purple. Then Vandover collapsed face first, burying the knife to its hilt in his shattered chest.
K’rok lifted Pepys to his feet. The emperor clung to him as if to life itself.
Bodiless, Vandover’s thoughts clung to their foul anchorage in Amber’s mind. She gasped and bucked as Jack’s words made their way to her. She thought of the light Colin had made in her once, the light that had driven Baadluster out. She had to make such a light now.
“Together,” Jack said.
She looked into his eyes. He loved her. She had lost him and gotten him back. “I won’t let him have you,” he told her.
If he only knew. If she did not burn Vandover from her mind now, she would be forever possessed.
“I love you!” she cried. He kept her face between his hands and his eyes became her world. Eyes of rainwater blue. Eyes she had once told someone could never lie. He loved her back.
Happiness roared up like a fire fed by the look in those eyes. It spewed its light throughout her and Amber let it burn.
With a howling, that dark child which was Vandover burned out and was gone.
Chapter 33
If they can take a man apart and put him back together, it stands to reason they can do the same to armor,” Colin said. He smiled at the gleaming opalescent suit standing before them with the radiance of a newly born sun. “And as for Bogie, the suit did its job. It protected the life within it.”
Jack smiled. Amber stood within the cradle of his arm. The Ash-Farel had dressed her, decorating her like some wild exotic creature, silks and feathers and beads about her. “I wish you’d reconsider coming back with us.”
Colin tilted his head. He had the look of the Ash-Farel about him when he did it. “No,” he answered. “I’ve passed that robe to Rawlins. He’ll do much better than I. I’ve told him a few of the hard things I’ve learned along the way. He’s got a head start on the job.”
Rawlins ducked his head, suddenly and embarrassingly humble.
“Forget Rawlins. I can use your help dealing with Pepys and K’rok.”
“My friend. There is no one who can do what I can do here. Even Bogie cannot. But with your help, he will. You’ve brought the Thraks to bay and you’ll have the time you need to rebuild. The Ash-Farel are listening, and that is no small feat. I’d say you’ve more than met the challenges Pepys handed you.”
Jack shook his head. “I was given a job. I did my best. Denaro—”
“You couldn’t help him any more than you could save Vandover from himself. Pepys has dismantled his throne, K’rok has his regency over Milos, my Walkers await Rawlins. You’ve done well. The only thing I regret,” and Colin put a finger to his lips as he smiled, “the only thing I regret is not being able to give the vows to bond you two officially.”
Amber laughed. “What’s stopping you?”
“What? Here and now?” Colin looked about him. The Claron sky was midday bright and clear. The warships perched like gigantic nesting birds and Amber stood among the warriors, a brilliant rainbow-hued nestling.
“We’re among friends,” she said. “There’s no time better. Is there?”
Jack cleared his throat. “Now I know what Pepys felt like with K’rok staring him down the throat demanding a regency.” He smiled. “Go ahead, Colin. Do your worst.”
It was fitting, Jack thought, to begin again on Claron.
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Charles Ingrid, Challenge Met
