Galactic Empires (17 page)

The one he addressed shook his head. "No… I think… I was…" He gave a puzzled frown, looked to his fellows for a moment, then slowly returned his attention to Shrad. "There's holes, but he tells me I can fill them. I remember now: my name is Evan… Evan Markovian."

Markovian.

"Citizen Guard One!" said Shrad, backing up. "Kill the prisoners! At once!"

Kelly settled back down, the certain knowledge of what would soon ensue igniting a warm glow in her chest.

"Why should I do that?" enquired Evan-formerly Citizen Guard One.

"I order you to kill the prisoners!"

"No," said Evan. He glanced to his fellows and from them received nods of approval. After a moment, he reached up and pushed at one finger of his stroud with his thumb. The device lifted and, as if removing an irritating scab, he peeled it from his head.

"Do you know what's happening now?" Evan asked. Shrad could only shake his head mutely. Evan continued. "Tens of thousands of the Guard, all armed and ready for the new assault on the Grazen, have suddenly found themselves without strouds." He smiled. "I can see the images in my head, and they are beautiful. I see Doctrinaires being marched to the airlocks of ships and expelled into vacuum. I see them, on Capital World, being lined up and shot. Elsewhere, some have had the idea that sterilization is a better option, and flamethrowers are being used. And everywhere more personal, more painful, and more long drawn-out vengeances are being enacted." He paused contemplatively, gazing down at the stroud he held, then discarded it. "I think that last option is the one I want, Shrad." He looked up. "It's going to take you a long time to die."

Shrad turned and ran.

Get him, get him now,
thought Kelly, but the newly awakened Evan Markovian just watched Shrad's departure with amused contempt. Almost without flunking, she brought her hands forward to push herself upright, then stopped and stared in confusion at her wrists. Where were the cuffs? Glancing back, she saw them lying in pieces on the carpet. No matter. She pushed herself to her feet, just as Longshank and Traviss were doing.

"Are you going to let him go?" she asked Evan. "Because I'm not."

The man still had that look on his face, but he was utterly motionless. Kelly walked over to him. She prodded his chest. He swayed but showed no other reaction. The other Guards were motionless, too. What was going on here? Fuckit. She could not work this out right now. But whatever was happening, she was not going to let that fucking Doctrinaire escape. She turned, scanning about her feet, then squatted down to pick up a carbine. She checked it over-just to be sure it was in working order.

"This cannot be happening," said Longshank.

What was the man on about?

A hand squeezed her shoulder. In annoyance, she turned, and then shock took over and she found herself dragging herself backward.

"It's all right," said the man who had named himself Mark, the man whose brains were all over the carpet nearby and whom she'd subsequently seen shot four times in the chest. He turned to glance over at the others and she could see that the occiput of his head was missing, exposing a gory hole the size of her fist.

"Conflicts outside my territory are usually of no interest to me, though I keep watch on them, just to be sure they don't come to represent a danger."

Kelly stared at the back of his head, watching as the hole just filled up and closed. He turned back toward her, and she saw bright pinpricks of light flickering around him. Both his eyes were in place, and red points advanced from deep inside to fill them out, turning them into something demonic. The man Mark seemed to be fading into the background, blurring, or perhaps another background was reaching out from somewhere to grab him back. Abruptly, the figure before her came back into focus and was no longer Mark. This individual's hair was bone white over a thin face. His simple attire transformed into something more like the inside of a machine than clothing for a human being. Trying to focus on him, Kelly realized she was looking into something… else.

Around him, indefinable engines lurked at the limit of perception, gathered and poised like a planetoid moments before impact. Vast energies seemed to be focused upon this one man, like a mountain turned onto its tip.

The Owner-Kelly
had not the slightest doubt now.

"But I don't like conflicts upon my border. I find them… disturbing." He nailed her with viper eyes. "This Collective you fled is one of the most unsavory regimes I've seen in some time. It would have died eventually, but meanwhile it was stirring up the Grazen, who represent an altogether different danger."

There was a coldness here—an indifference to human suffering. Yet, he had saved them. Why did he do that? Kelly suspected that he had done so simply because the difference between saving them and not saving them was minuscule to him. She also felt he could annihilate them in a moment, at a whim.

"How can they be a danger to you?"

He paused contemplatively, then said, "Human speech—I have to slow myself down so much for it, have to hone down a fragment of myself for its purpose. The word should not have been danger but inconvenience. They inconvenienced me once before. They call it 'the Misunderstanding.' It resulted in me losing the biosphere of one of my worlds."

"What did
they
lose?"

"Half of their race… but that was long ago, when I was more impulsive."

Had he used the right words then?

"What about them?" Kelly pointed at the Guard.

"They are healing slowly—it's better to take them offline during the process. I used them to set Shrad running, just as I am using the rest of their kind to bring down the Collective."

He talked about human beings as if they were components in a machine.

"Yes, Shrad," said Kelly pointedly, gripping her weapon with more determination, but not yet ready to turn away from this being.

He looked at her as if he did not understand; then it seemed that the penny dropped. "I see, Shrad. You want to kill him." He turned toward the shattered window. "Walk with me." Glancing at the others, he instructed, "All of you."

They stepped out of his house and began crossing the rose garden. His walking, she saw, seemed okay at a brief glance, but closer inspection revealed that his feet weren't touching the ground. Kelly strode at his side; the others attentive all around.

"My god!" Olsen suddenly exclaimed.

Kelly glanced at him and saw that he was gazing up and to her left. She glanced there, taking in the starlit darkness and the rising moon. It took a moment for what she had just seen to register, and then she looked back. That was no moon.

"My ship," stated the Owner.

His ship. Fucking hell.

"I don't like problems close to home," he went on. He glanced at Kelly and she thought,
He's more human now
. Perhaps he had refined
that fragment
he was using for communication.

"The Grazen are an inconvenience. A Grazen Mother who is grieving and half mad could become something more than that, especially when she positions herself right on my border."

"The one that's coming?" Kelly guessed.

"The one that is already here."

Kelly's sudden fear was muted by his presence. "Here?"

"Yes, here to find a cure for her ill, and a kind of justice."

Abruptly, Slome interjected, "Is vengeance a cure?"

The Owner gazed at him and Slome turned pale at what he saw, but the Owner nodded. "Yes, for that mind-set, and for the human mind, too, though humans would like to deny their own nature."

Vengeance?

Then Kelly understood.

*

Leaning against the trunk of a gnarled olive tree, Astanger caught his breath and gazed in horror at the thing poised on the slope below them. So this was a Grazen! He saw a giant crayfish head from which extended many wiry tendrils, many of them spearing away to connect into the writhing tangle of pipe-things, whose black-etched moon shadows now surrounded him and his crew. Unlike a crayfish, it did not seem to possess a jointed exoskeleton, but a slick and tough-looking red and brown skin. At the extremities of the multiple limbs arrayed down its long body, it possessed things like hands, or feet, with digits arrayed in rows under flat pads. Its tail was not a flat fish tail, but a long rattish thing coiled around its already coiled body. And the Grazen was the size of a space shuttle.

It had stopped, why had it stopped? Was it toying with them now?

"What do we do now?" asked one of the crew.

Astanger wanted to reply,
We die, probably very slowly,
but didn't think that would help much. He gazed down at the sidearm he clutched and wondered if it would be best to use it on himself now, or to wait until the monster sent one of those twiggy things for him.

Movement behind.

He looked upslope and saw the pipe-things withdrawing into the surrounding trees. Did it want them to run again? Had the chase thus far not been satisfying enough for it? Then he saw the figure hurtling toward them down the moon-silvered grass, and, after a moment, recognized the Doctrinaire. Obviously things had gone badly at the house-perhaps the Guard with Shrad had collapsed like those aboard the
Lenin.
Shrad must have used the tracer on Astanger's communicator and had come here because he thought he would be safe. Astanger felt like laughing, but knew it would come out hysterical.

When he saw what was awaiting beyond Astanger and the crew, Shrad came to an abrupt halt.

"Astanger! This way!" Shrad gestured imperiously.

Astanger just rested against his tree, watching the pipes moving in quietly behind the Doctrinaire. It was a small satisfaction to know that the man would be suffering a similar fate to them all.

"Come on!"

He started to gesture again, but then must have heard something. Turning, he saw one of the pipes rising up behind him, throated darkness bearing down on him. He fell back to the ground and scrambled downslope. He managed to gain his feet and break into a run. The pipe, like a confident python, came down and slowly writhed after him, then halted ten yards out from the first of the crewmen. Shrad kept running until he was up beside Astanger. Horrified, he stared downslope at the Grazen, then turned on Astanger.

"What the hell do you think you are doing, Citizen Astanger! You should've warned me! You should've run!"

Shrad's holster was empty. Astanger gazed at crewmen Breen, Chadrick, Grade, and the others who now gathered around. He read in them the contempt and hatred they felt for the Doctrinaire. Transferring his gaze to his own weapon, he swung it to one side in a leisurely motion, then brought it back hard across Shrad's face. The man went down and lay moaning, clutching at his cheek.

"He's unarmed," said Astanger to the others. "Instruct the others not to give him a weapon and not to give him a bullet when the time comes."

"Astanger!" Shrad was glaring at him from the ground.

In measured tones, Astanger said, "If you speak to me again I will shoot you in the kneecap." He returned his attention to the alien.

The Grazen seemed to be agitated—if he was interpreting correctly its jerky movements and the way it was reaching out with its insectile hands to touch the surrounding tangle. It had deliberately made a gap to let Shrad through, to get them all together in one place, so why was it not now attacking? Was it waiting for others to come this way? How likely was that? The Guard were screwed so it seemed unlikely to him that they would be coming after Shrad. Maybe the escapees, since their ship lay beyond the Grazen?

The ground shuddered and someone swore. What now? Astanger looked to where many of the crew were now gazing, as the shuddering of the ground increased. The moon was on the move, the glare of some titanic drive behind it. Slowly it shifted from its location above the horizon and grew visibly brighter. Astanger had no doubt it was moving into a position overhead.

"Please, you must listen to me, Astanger," said Shrad.

The man was crouching, desperate-looking. He hadn't even noticed what was happening in the sky-it probably didn't fit his ideology.

"Do go on," said Astanger, almost too stunned to care anymore.

"If we make a concerted attack on the creature itself, it'll lose control of… those… things. We should be able to fight our way through-get to the ship."

Astanger considered that. They'd fired eight missiles at the creature and every one of those eight missiles had impacted on opalescent shields that abruptly sprang into being. Bullets just bounced off of the thing. Missiles into the tangle of pipework had shattered it, but the pipes just discarded the shattered sections, melded back together, and carried on. Now they were all out of missiles and the rest of their ammunition was depleted. He'd seen the others passing bullets to those who had run out. The bullets weren't for the Grazen. Astanger had four bullets left in his sidearm. He could spare one. He raised his weapon and fired once. Shrad went down yelling, clutching the mess of bone and blood that had been his kneecap. Astanger returned his attention to the alien.

Why was it holding back? Did it understand that its prey would kill themselves when it made its final assault? Was it trying to figure out a way of capturing them alive?

"Captain Astanger," said Grade, no longer worried about using a politically incorrect form of address.

Astanger turned to see the man pointing upslope. Looking there he saw a group of people approaching. He recognized graywear, then, after a moment, recognized some of the escapees. There was one other with them—something odd about him. Two of the pipe things reared back and the group passed between. Now Astanger could see the other individual more clearly. He seemed to be walking in a kind of hollow in the air and around him metallic things seemed to hover on the edge of visibility. Pale, white hair, eyes that seemed to open into the Pit. Astanger knew at once who this person must be.

The group approached, the escapees glancing warily at the crewmen as they moved aside. Finally, they reached Astanger. The Owner glanced down at Shrad, then raised his gaze to Astanger.