Ghost Legion (16 page)

"Blessed Mother," Astarte prayed, "thank you for the
vision. I do not understand, but I will heed its warning. Praise to
your unspoken name."

She lifted a small brass lid, placed it over the smoking sage,
quenched the smoke. Slowly, reaching out her hand, she turned the
statue back around. The Warrior stared back at her with the empty
eyes of one who must kill.

Astarte sat back on her heels. She had never made an offering to the
Warrior and, though she knew what was required— blood—she
could not bring herself to make it.

"I know what you want me to do," she said to the Warrior.
"You want me to spy on him. You want me to have him followed.
You want me to turn men loyal to him into his betrayers. Or if that
isn't possible—and I pray to the Goddess it would not be—then
you would have me hire a snake to slither after him. And then what?
You demand photos of the two of them. Pictures of their lovemaking,
laid upon this altar. You would have me confront him. You want the
anger, the shame, the hatred. Hating me, hating himself.

"This is not me," she said to the Warrior, pleading with
those empty eyes to understand.

They did not.
You don't love him,
they said.

"No, but I honor him," she explained. "Respect him."

She would have loved him; she had started to love him. But that was
over now.

When had she first begun to love him? Perhaps in those early months
of marriage,, which were like a dream to her now. Two strangers,
forced together by circumstance, forced to play a never-ending role
upon a stage before the devouring eyes of billions. Finding
themselves maintaining the roles, even when the curtain was down, the
stage empty, except for themselves upon it.

During that time, she caught glimpses of the man behind the mask, the
man beneath the crown, the man inside the purple robe. Strong,
decisive; and at the same time weak, vulnerable, tormented by inner
doubt. Making decisions, making right decisions, and a part of him
amazed when he was right. Punishing himself severely on those rare
occasions when he was wrong. Learning from his mistakes and going on,
fearful of making more, yet always finding the courage to continue.

She was beginning to love him. She wanted him for her own, and it was
then that she realized he was unattainable. She could not win his
love, because it belonged to someone else. And now his love for this
other woman, which had so long been platonic, had been consummated.
Astarte knew it as well as if she had seen them together.

The danger was great. He was one more step removed from her and, if
this went on, he would be lost to her—and to his
people—forever. The child he had just fathered this night would
not be born. Or if it was, it would belong to another. Perhaps the
man in the vision. ...

"What, then, am I to do? I must save him." Astarte's hand
went to her belly again, slid inside her robe to press against her
bare flesh. He was not the only one she had to save.

The empty eyes of the Warrior held no answers, or else held answers
she rejected. Their cold stare was unnerving. Impulsively, Astarte
reached out to turn the statue back around. Halfway, she stopped. She
had never seen it like this before. The Warrior and the Mother,
standing back to back. To nurture
and
defend, to fight
and
care. Was it possible? Was this what the Goddess was telling her?

Lessons of DiLuna returned to her daughter. Astarte recalled nights
spent listening to the warrior women talk. A warrior did not always
rush forth to meet the enemy, weapons raised, screaming defiance.
Sometimes it was best to retreat, to seem to surrender, to fall back
and let the enemy come to you.

Astarte pondered. Her plan was hazy, not yet clear in her mind, but
it could work. And then she understood suddenly why it would work.

"I know Dion. Deep inside, he despises the deception. He's
fought against this illicit love; that was why he remained faithful
to me for so long. But he is human. In the end, his love for her
proved too strong. During one of those times when he was weak,
vulnerable, one of those times when he sought shelter, she was there.
He turned to her."

Astarte would have been less than human herself if she did not feel
the twinge of jealousy's cruel bite. She thought of him in bed with
his lover, of the kisses and caresses given to her that his wife had
never known, of pleasure taken with his eyes open. Astarte was the
Warrior then, could have watched her enemy's body sliding off her
sword and known the emptiness of the statue's alabaster eyes.

An emptiness that would always be with her.

"No," she said, "I can't think about that. Not now.
Not ever. If I let that poison work on me, it will kill me." She
pressed her hand against her stomach. "Kill us all."

She offered thanks once again. Dousing the candle, she rose to her
feet. She felt comforted, her decision made. It would be painful,
painful for both of them. But she would be merciful as she could,
keep her strokes swift and clean, end it quickly.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre . . .

William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Tusk crept slowly out of the hoverjeep, moving carefully so as not to
jar his aching head. Squinting—the dark sun-goggles were still
permitting far too much sunlight to burn into his eyeballs—Tusk
fumbled around the outside of the Scimitar until his hands closed
over the ladder rungs, then he crawled slowly up the ladder to the
Scimitar's hatch.

"XJ, lemme in!"

The roar reverberated around inside his skull like lasgun fire,
ricocheting off four walls. He groaned and lay sprawled on the hatch.
It was still early morning, but Vangelis' broiling sun was already
heating up the spaceplane's shining metal surface. Sweat rolled down
Tusk's body. It occurred to him that if he lay here any longer, he'd
fry like a piece of raw meat on a griddle.

"XJ, damn it, you know I'm out here!" Tusk pleaded. "I'm
not feelin' too good. I feel kinda like I might throw up. . .."

"Not on my paint!" snapped the computer.

The hatch whirred open. Tusk lowered himself gratefully into the cool
darkness, descended cautiously down the ladder, placed his foot
gently on the deck. Even then the vibration sent waves of pain
crashing over his head.

"Juiced," said XJ in disgust.

"Shud'up," Tusk mumbled.

Holding one hand over the goggles in case they should slip and permit
even the dim lights shining inside the plane to pierce his brain, he
stretched his other hand out in front of him and groped his way to
one of the couches. Bumping into it, he fell onto it with a groan.

"You didn't go home last night," stated XJ.

Tusk made a brief circuit of his memory. "Shit," he said,
sitting up and regretting it instantly. "I didn't, did I?"

"Don't worry. I called Nola, told her where you were."

"You did?" Tusk sank back down, pleasantly surprised.

That didn't last long. The more he thought about XJ being nice to
him, the less he liked it. He dragged himself to a sitting position
again.

"What do you want from me?" he croaked, hanging on to the
couch for dear life.

"Jeez, you're so suspicious. Can I . . . can I get you a cold
compress?"

"Stop it!" Tusk snarled, bounding to his feet. He put his
hand on his head to keep it from blasting off. "So I had the
shakes yesterday! Big deal. It happens. See if you can reach Dixter."

"I try to be nice. And this is the thanks I get." XJ
sulked. "Next time, I wont call. I'll let you go home to Nola. I
hope she skins you alive—"

"Anything'd be better than this. How can something that makes
you feel so good turn around and make you feel so awful? It's like
God's standin' there with His hand out saying, 'Glad you enjoyed
yourself. Now pay up.' "

"Philosophy. From a juicer. It's what I live for."

"Shut up. And while you're shutting up, get hold of Dixter."

"Dixter! Hah! You expect me to believe that you and Link
actually discovered some useful bit of information last night? What'd
you do, peel the label off the jump-juice bottle and find a prize
underneath?"

"Just call Dixter, damn it." Tusk moaned. "And turn
the lights off while you're at it."

Clinging to the railing, he lowered himself into the cockpit, fumbled
his way to his chair. He lurched into it, rested his elbows on the
console, lowered his head to his hands.

Dixter's face appeared on the screen. "Yes, Tusk?"

Tusk lifted his head with an effort. "Oh, hullo, sir."

"Hello, son." Dixter was slightly taken aback by the sight
of Tusk sitting in the spaceplane in the dark wearing sun-goggles.
"Hard night?" he asked sympathetically.

"Yeah, you'd think I'd learn." Tusk remembered the goggles,
took them off. He rubbed his eyes, cleared his throat. "Hang in
there with me a minute, sir. Now, let's see. Where did I leave off?
Did I tell you that Link got this same message?"

Dixter nodded.

"Yeah, right. I went over to his place last night. He answered
the message, same as I did. And he got exactly the same instructions,
the only difference being that his name was inserted in all the right
places. If he wants to join this Ghost Legion, he's got to go to
Hell's Outpost."

"I see."

"Link's like me. He figures this stinks like last week's
mackerel. So we try to get hold of Gorbag. Last we knew, he was
living on Jarun, where he was born. Well, he was out, but we talked
to his mate. She says that yeah, he got one of these vids, too, and
it was exactly the same message, except that they used a Jarun pilot
instead of that Captain Masters to make the pitch.

"Well, you know Gorbag, sir. Nothing scares him. So he flies off
to Hell's Outpost to take a look."

"When was this?" Dixter asked.

"About three months ago, Standard Military Time. He came home
madder'n hell. Said it was a scam." Tusk shook his head. "Like
he couldn't see this coming? But then old Gorbag never was too
bright. Says he met these pilots and they wined him and dined him or
whatever you do with a Jarun and then they gave him some more
coordinates and told him to be there ASAP.

"So he waddles on back to his plane and runs the coordinates and
finds out—surprise, surprise—that it's a planet in some
godforsaken part of the galaxy that's nowhere near a Lane. And,
according to the star charts, the world is nothing but a hunk of dead
rock floating in space with no living thing on it, not so much as a
bowl full of organic soup."

Tusk's stomach lurched. He was sorry he'd brought that up. He paused
a moment for his insides to settle down, wiped sweat from his
forehead. Dixter waited patiently.

"Where was I?" Tusk mumbled.

"Soup," said XJ helpfully. "Get it while it's hot."

Tusk glared at the computer. "Anyway, that's what the Jarun
found. He went back to the Exile Cafe, to tell these pilots he didn't
think this joke was so funny and maybe bounce them around on their
heads some to relieve his hurt feelings and, of course, they were
long gone. So he's out of fuel and a thousand golden eagles and feels
like a damn fool."

"But that's all," said Dixter.

"Yes, sir."

"Then, Tusk, what's the point? They took him for a thousand
eagles, but that's an elaborate scam to only pull in that much. They
didn't set him up to be hijacked way out there by himself in space;
they must have surely known he'd run the coordinates before he flew
them."

"Beats me, sir." Tusk massaged his aching temples.

"I'd like to talk to Gorbag. You have his number?"

"Sure, sir, but he's not there."

"Not there?"

"No, sir. Shortly after this, he got a call from a planet on the
Corasian perimeter. They're all nervous as a stepped-on cat after
that Corasian attack on the outpost. Hiring mercenaries right and
left to back up their own defenses. He flew off to join up.

"I see. Has his mate heard from him?"

"Naw. But he's been sending home his paycheck and so she figures
he's okay."

"But he hasn't talked to her, hasn't told her where his is?"

"No, sir, but why would he? She knew where he was going. She's
got no reason to think he's not there. And if the Corasians are
sniffing around, you guys in the navy are bound to want to keep a lid
on transmissions."

"Yes, I suppose you're right. Still ..." Dixter's voice
trailed off.

Tusk looked at the admiral in concern. "You want us to do
anything else, sir? Link's offered to go check it out. We can't leave
right now, of course, 'cause we got a job lined up, but—"

"No," said Dixter, shaking his head. "No, I doubt if
you'd find out any more than we already have and it might prove—"
He stopped, frowned again. "Don't do anything. And don't mention
any of this, will you?"

"Sure, sir." Tusk shrugged.

"You didn't happen to get hold of those coordinates they gave
Gorbag, did you?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact we did, sir." Tusk was pleased
with himself. "The Jarun had 'em filed in his log. His mate
looked it up, gave them to us. I'll have XJ transmit them."

"Thanks, son. Thanks for everything. You and Link both."

"Happy to be of assistance. You know, sir," Tusk added,
just as Dixter was about to sign off "something did strike me as
kinda funny about this."

"Yes, what?" Dixter was back and interested.

"It's probably not important—"

"Doesn't matter. Tell me."

"That planet. When we looked it up in the files, we found out it
had a name. Not a number, like you'd suppose with a hunk of worthless
rock. But a name. Someone'd gone to the trouble to name the damn
thing."

"What did they call it?"

"Val ... Valum .. . What the devil was that?" Tusk reached
into one pocket of his work shirt, fished around, came up empty. He
dove into the other pocket. "I wrote it down, 'cause I knew I'd
never remember. Yeah, here it is. I'll spell it.
V-a-l-l-o-m-b-r-o-s-a. You got that?"