Final Assault (20 page)

"Not a palace, not a mansion and certainly not what I was expecting," said D'Trelna.

"What were you expecting, J'Quel?"

"Darkness. Hideous, menacing shapes." Raising his hands, he curled them into talons. "Things that suck the souls out of . . ."

"J'Quel, you're being silly," said L'Wrona, lowering the commodore's nearest hand with his own. "Just because the man had an unsavory reputation doesn't mean he lived in a charnel house."

"Unsavory?" said the commodore, starting the walk down the road toward the villa. "Try evil."

"Evil?" said L'Wrona with faint contempt. "Really, J'Quel—such a simplistic . . ."

"Evil," repeated the commodore, chopping the palm of one hand with the other. "Can't exist, can it, H'Nar? Not a logical construct. The cool winds of reason blow through the temple of technology. Superstition's cast aside."

"I didn't say . . ."

"Evil," said D'Trelna. "Biofabs, corsairs, mindslavers, components, AIs. Evil. You should recognize it by now, H'Nar—we've been fighting it long enough." He strode on ahead down the ancient pathway, a fat, angry man ready for whatever awaited.

L'Wrona caught up, stopping him with a hand to his shoulder. Surprised, D'Trelna turned, staring up into an angry face. "My people came here with the Golden Fleet. We stood with T'Nil when he overthrew the Mindslavers' Guild. We held the Marches against every form of human vermin that tried for K'Ronar. We fought R'Actol and her creatures. More good men and causes have called us friend than you and I have years, Commodore. My family, my friends—they're all dead. My home's a netherworld of walking dead. Don't lecture me on evil."

D'Trelna opened his mouth, then shut it. Controlling himself with visible effort, he started back down the path, L'Wrona following. They walked silently, footsteps absorbed by the soft rubbery surface of the footway. As they reached the floor of the valley, the dead soil to either side gave way to green heather and flowering shrubs.
#

L'Wrona stopped. "Did you see any flora from the hilltop?" he asked.

D'Trelna shook his head. "Just those trees," he said, pointing ahead to the grove of silver-barked trees.

Twilight vanished, replaced by a bright summer noon. Commodore and captain bed up, squinting—the shield now glowed yellow.

Sunlight and flowers," said D'Trelna, stopping to smell a delicate red bud. "Spring stirs to life. Our doing?" he asked, turning back to the road.

"Let's hope spring's all that's stirring," said L'Wrona as they walked through the small stand of silver trees. As they walked, the interlaced boughs over their heads grew leaves, forming a golden canopy over the two. "S'Yal was head of some hideous cult that promised immortality in exchange for loyalty," said L'Wrona. "Fanatical loyalty—and he probably had enough of the Old Science to pull it off. Mystical idiocy reinforced by ritual sacrifice—that alone would have destroyed him, in time. But then he went and betrayed the very AIs his grandfather had freed ..."

"A revolt he put down," said D'Trelna. "Lost his personal fleet and most of the rest. So having blown the AIs away, the remnant came home and took care of S'Yal—to the general good of all. So? You think he left something behind?"

"Does this strike you as a fortress, J'Quel?" said L'Wrona, gesturing about him.

"Grubby, gray things with too-bright corridors that stink of metallic air?" said D'Trelna.

The captain nodded.

"No." The commodore shrugged, hands behind his back. "But who's to say what an Imperial citadel would look like, given the technology then available?"

"We've both seen Imperial fortresses of about the same period," said L'Wrona. "Does this look like A'Gran Seven's Redoubt, or S'Hlor's Third's Defense Ring—all battlesteel and weapons batteries?"

"No," said the commodore. "But if you're implying we've woken some sort of sleeping dreadfuls ..."

Leaving the grove, they rounded a bend and stopped before the gate.

"There was no gate here," said D'Trelna, reaching out a hand to touch the wooden planks. "Not when we stood on the hillside." A double-doored, brass-hinged gate, it was set in a high, vine-choked stone wall that ran away to either side, disappearing around the villa.

"Well, there's a gate," said L'Wrona, pushing it with both hands. It didn't budge. "And it's locked."

"We don't have time for this," said D'Trelna. "Combine T'Lan could be slicing up K'Ronarport by now. Take it out, H'Nar," he ordered, stepping back.

Nodding, L'Wrona stepped back, drew and fired. Three red bolts burst through the gate, leaving behind a few charred and flaming sticks clinging to scorched hinges.

Captain and commodore stepped cautiously through the smoke, weapons in hand, and found themselves standing back on the hillside, looking down at the distant villa. There was no wall, no gate. Twilight had returned.

The two officers stared at the valley for a moment, then at each other. "We're being toyed with," said D'Trelna, holstering his side-arm. "Suggestions?"

"A time field?" said L'Wrona.

D'Trelna glanced at his chronometer. "No. Time has advanced, not retreated."

"Internal transporter?"

"I'd say yes, except that the visual images keep changing." D'Trelna ran a hand through his hair. "Which leaves . . ."

"Illusion."

"Certainly some form of mind control," said D'Trelna. He looked at L'Wrona. "I really wanted to strangle you back there, H'Nar. We're not the most compatible couple Fleet ever fielded, but I've never been that angry at you."

The captain met his gaze and nodded. "You're right—we're being toyed with. How?"

D'Trelna looked back down into the valley. "Something that alters our perception of reality—some gentle electronic whisper seducing our senses, goading our baser instincts."

"And to counter it?" said L'Wrona. "We've no grasp of the technology ..."

"A sharp dose of reality," said D'Trelna. Drawing his blaster, he twisted the muzzle power selector to low, covered the aperture with his left hand and clicked off the safety.

"J'Quel!" cried L'Wrona, stepping toward D'Trelna, hand reaching for the blaster.

D'Trelna squeezed the trigger just as L'Wrona seized his wrist. A bolt of raw red energy lanced D'Trelna's left hand.

L'Wrona found himself alone, his hand clutching nothing.

"You've got to pass them," said Admiral L'Guan with more calm than he felt. "K'Ronar's about to be decimated. The Palace, the Tower, Archives—the cultural and historical legacy of galactic humanity ..."

"No," said Line. "Those ships are only fourteen percent of the total recalled. Of those, eight percent are corsairs. And the Fleet units present represent over forty-seven disparate commands. Do you seriously expect to get them all to fight as a unit, for the same cause, without a week's training, Admiral?"

"But. . ."

"We'll hold them in reserve," said Line. "Until the rest of the recall comes in, and the Heir returns."

L'Guan shook his head and turned to stare at wall screens with their vivid images of the Combine ships wiping out the remainder of K'Ronar's defenders: blasted and crumpled
wreckage tumbling in erratic, decaying orbits around the planet; lifepods torn open by the precise little bolts of Mark
44
fusion cannons, holes in their hulls choked with tangled wreckage and bloated, unsuited bodies.

As L'Guan turned away, his eye was caught by another screen on which a round silver lifepod fled toward a red glimmer on K'Ronar's surface—the shielded sanctuary of Prime Base. As the admiral watched, two slender silver missiles overtook the lifepod, exploding within meters of its unshielded hull. "Line," said L'Guan, turning from the image of ochre-colored gases dissipating into space, "you're an unfeeling slime."

"Just doing my job, Admiral."

"Now, this is more like it," muttered D'Trelna, looking at the real citadel as the medkit tended his hand.

The original twilight was there, generated by the same shield—all else had changed. Where the villa and its grounds had stood now loomed a dark ziggurat of a pyramid, made of the same black metal as the citadel's flooring. The only other structures were oblong, vertical mirrors, set in the flooring. Slightly taller than a man, they ringed the pyramid at the same distance as had the stone wall. A second, smaller group of mirrors stood in four rows fronting the ring at about the same distance as the trees had the wall.

The medkit chirped as its amber light turned green. The commodore slipped the little machine off his hand and snapped it back onto his belt. Raising his left hand to his face, he examined it carefully, flexing his fingers. Gone was the neatly cauterized hole of the beam hit that had pierced the palm, only a small white scab marking its place. Satisfied, D'Trelna drew his blaster, twisted the muzzle back to operational mode and turned to where L'Wrona stood. Seemingly unaware of D'Trelna, he stared around and through the commodore, eyes scanning the citadel. "J'Quel!" he called, hands cupped.

"Here, H'Nar," said D'Trelna.

L'Wrona seemed not to hear, instead taking out his communit and keying the transmit. "D'Trelna. L'Wrona. Acknowledge," he called.

Reaching over, D'Trelna seized the captain by the shoulder and shook him, hard.

"D'Trelna!" exclaimed the captain, seeing the commodore for the first time. "Where in . . ." He stopped, his eye caught by the dark spectacle of S'Yal's citadel. "Gods," he said. "You beat their camouflage." He glanced at DTrelna's hand.

"Medkit?"

"A marvelous device," nodded the commodore.

"What are all those mirrors for?" asked L'Wrona, his gaze returning to the citadel.

"I have my suspicions," said D'Trelna.

"Care to share them?"

"Not yet—I don't want to have to argue my primitive superstitions with you when we should be penetrating that large lump out there."

"I see," said the captain. "Well, if it's here, it's in there—S'Yal's resting place, would you say?"

D'Trelna nodded. "And well protected, Fd think." He drew his sidearm. "Let's go. And let's not touch the mirrors—just in case Fm right."

Side by side, weapons leveled, they advanced toward the dark pyramid and its strange guardians.

"AI commander on Fleetcomm nine," said computer into A'Wal's earpiece.

The commodore tapped a comm sequence, then watched as the familiar image of Goodman T'Lan appeared on his commscreen.

"Good afternoon, Commodore A'Wal," said T'Lan. "Though probably not so good for you down there in FleetOps, is it?"

"What do you want?" said A'Wal, eyes shifting to the big board and the final wiping of the last picket ships. He only wished he'd been up there rather than in the hole.

"I want to speak with Admiral I'Tal."

"He's indisposed," said A'Wal. They'd carried the old man out with a heart attack a moment after the K'Ronarport shield had failed. "I command here."

"Very well," said T'Lan. "I want your surrender. Now. The city shields have fallen. The Fleet of the One has penetrated Quadrant Blue Nine and will be here within the week. Surrender now, we'll spare the planet. Otherwise we'll sit up here and blast your cities to glowing rubble and your people to windblown ash. Prime Base and FleetOps can huddle behind their shield for another week, then the battleglobes will be here. You do know what a battleglobe is, Commodore?"

"Rust in hell," said A'Wal, switching off. He touched another commkey. "Commander Prime Base," he said.

A woman's tired face appeared in the commscreen, commodore's insignia on her collar. "A'Wal," she said.

"S'Jan," he said. "They just called for surrender."

"You told them to jerk their circuits."

"I did. Just a suspicion, but I think they're going to try a selective field damp and run an assault force in on us."

"We're ready for them," said S'Jan. "Can't stop them, but we'll keep them out of the hole for a while." She looked up at something offscan, then turned back. "Councilor D'Assan slipped out of the city—Intelligence believes he's with the T'Lan."

"Gone for a traitor's reward. Luck, S'Jan." "Luck, A'Wal. Luck to us all."

"Can you take Prime Base?" asked D'Assan, setting down his drink.

"With the data you've provided," said the elder
T
'Lan, "certainly. We can penetrate that portion of the shield directly over FleetOps, take them and the shield generators out and scrub Prime Base. That should end all but guerrilla resistance. If you'd care to look, you can see the assault force assembling now."

Taking his drink, D'Assan left the armchair and walked over to the wardroom's armorglass wall, accompanied by the two T'Lans. Outside, sheltered by the fleet's heavy cruisers, thousands of assault craft were massing: wingless, oblong shuttles of K'Ronarin design, each capable of carrying fifty humans.

"What's in there?" asked D'Assan, sipping his drink. "Security blades?"

"Yes," said T'Lan junior. "But piloted by humans familiar with the K'Ronarin defense grid—you're a naturally corrupt species."

"Not all of us," said D'Assan, turning to the AI. "Everything I've done's been for the betterment of humanity. We're illogical, incapable of governing ourselves—you've taught me that."