Ghost Legion (4 page)

When His Majesty Dion Starfire first came to power three years ago,
it had been recommended that King's Island be transformed into a
security zone, barring entry to everyone except those who had
business there. Twenty years ago, John Dixter had seen the Glitter
Palace in flames, its walls covered with blood, and he had been
inclined to favor such precautions. Dion had adamantly refused. He
would not separate himself from his people; he would not become some
godlike figure perched high on a mountain peak, speaking to them
through the vidscreen.

His Majesty liked to travel and was constantly on the move. And
wherever he went, he drew enormous crowds and was always as
accessible as it was possible for a man surrounded by armed guards
and burdened with a tight, down-to-the-second traveling schedule to
be accessible. He often held public audiences on the worlds he
visited, inviting those with grievances or petitions to present them
in person.

This hour with the public was an hour from hell for the Royal Guard,
responsible for the king's life, despite the fact that people
admitted into the Royal Presence were carefully screened—generally
by their own governments in advance of His Majesty's visit—and
searched practically inside out for weapons.

"I put my trust in God," Dion told an unhappy Dixter when
the admiral had made his formal protest.

The king had smiled when he spoke, and so Dixter wasn't certain
whether His Majesty was being reassuring or ironic.

The admiral was serious. "Begging your pardon, sit" he said
in a low tone, "but I knew another long who used to say that."

Dion had reached out, placed his hand on the hand of his old friend.
"God watches over me, sir."

"That may be true," Dixter later remarked to Cato, captain
of the Royal Guard, when they were discussing the matter: "But
who is watching over God?"

"Derek Sagan," said Cato with a shrug.

The story made its way around the barracks and was greatly
appreciated by the Royal Guard, most of whom had served under the
deceased Warlord. Dixter himself had smiled at the captain's
witticism, though he rather thought that Cato had been more serious
than otherwise.

"I will not be seen living in fear," His Majesty had stated
on his first ascending to the throne. "My intent is to project
an image of calmness, tranquillity. If the people see that I and my
family feel secure, unafraid, then the people will feel secure,
unafraid. I must be seen to be in control of my present and of my
future."

And it had worked. It was working. Dion had seized control of the
reins of state and was hanging on to them grimly. He had established
a constitutional monarchy, formed a parliament. Each day was a
struggle, however. Each day brought some new crisis for the young
king. Each day it seemed he might lose his grip, be jounced from the
saddle to fall in the mud. And there were many riding behind him,
waiting to trample him when he fell.

"And he loves it," said Dixter now to himself.

As the days progressed he watched the young king in awe, amazed that
someone in his early twenties could act and think with the wisdom of
far older years. Dion knew when to bring quarreling factions
together, knew when to keep them apart. He knew when to talk, when to
keep silent. Knew when to threaten, to bully; knew when to plead,
cajole. Politics never wore him out. It acted on him like a
stimulating drug. He would emerge from a grueling session looking
refreshed, invigorated, while others in attendance would come out
weary, drained, exhausted.

The tour guide below was pointing out the location of the king's
private rooms, describing the myriad luxuries in a rapid-fire
monotone, machine-gunning the tourists with accounts of the royal
china, the royal silverware, the royal tablecloths and bed linens,
the royal jewels, the royal shoes, royal this and royal that and
royal so forth. The tourists, ducking beneath the hail of statistics,
looked up at the faraway windows in awe.

Dixter looked at the windows in musing sorrow.

It was behind those windows, when Dion was away from the cams and the
vids and the media, away from the "balm, the scepter and the
ball, the sword, the mace, the crown imperial... as Shakespeare
termed it in
Henry
V, that the drug wore off the reaction set
in. It was there, in his home, where he faced his most difficult
challenge. The young man who, at twenty-one, could bring warring star
systems together in peace could not manage to spend fifteen minutes
together peacefully with his wife.

The door opened noiselessly. Dixter's aide-de-camp, Bennett, glided
into the room, unobtrusively began to set to rights everything the
Lord of the Admiralty had knocked askew.

"Magnificent view, my lord," remarked Bennett, noting
Dixter's fixed stare.

"Is it?" Dixter blinked, looked at what he had been looking
at. "Oh, yes. I suppose it is." He smiled ruefully. "You'll
never guess what I was seeing Bennett."

"No, my lord," said Bennett in tones which indicated that
though he might not be able to guess, nothing would surprise him.

"I was in that trailer on the planet Vangelis. Sitting in that
little cubicle of an office, looking out over the tarmac. Do you
remember?"

"I remember the heat, my lord."

"Was it hot? Yes, I suppose it was. I didn't notice the heat.
We'd been in hotter places."

"True, my lord." Bennett continued his tidying up,
rearranging chairs that had been moved during a conference, emptying
coffee cups, whisking away paper napkins.

"I was thinking about that day Tusk brought him in to see me.
'Dion' he said his name was. He didn't know his last name. I remember
that red-gold hair, those blue, blue eyes. Do you know, Bennett—when
I think back on that moment, it seems to me that everything in my
life was gray up until then. I don't remember seeing colors before
then. Not for years." He sighed, rubbed his eyes, which ached
from staring fixedly into the sun's glare.

Bennett cast a surreptitious glance at his commander. Others
addressed him as "Sir John" or "Lord Dixter," but
to Bennett he was always the "general," just as he had been
for the fifteen or so years the sergeant-major had been in Dixter's
service.

Bennett had memories of his own. He looked at John Dixter,
resplendent in his uniform that had at least out immaculate. A
uniform decorated with medals—medals of honor awarded him by
innumerable star systems, primary among them being the lion s-head
sun that had been pinned onto his chest by the young king's own hand.
Dion's first official act.

Bennett looked around the enormous office, took in the desk that was
practically as large as the trailer on Vangelis to which the general
had been referring. The sergeant-major thought back to the first time
he'd met John Dixter, in a bar on Laskar. It had been shortly after
the Revolution. As a suspected royalist, Dixter was on the run. There
was a price on his head. He made his living as a mercenary, operating
out of Laskar. This bar was the only bar on Laskar Dixter ever
entered. The only bar where he ever got truly drunk. That night,
Dixter told Bennett—a complete stranger—why.

In this bar, years before the Revolution, John Dixter had met the one
woman he would ever love—the Lady Maigrey. The one woman he
could never have, for she was Blood Royal and John Dixter was . . .
ordinary. He told Bennett how he had loved her, how he'd lost her the
night of the Revolution. What he hadn't told Bennett, what the
general had not foreseen, was that years later he would find her
again.

Only to lose her again.

Perhaps it was just as well he hadn't foreseen. Dixter was drunk
enough that night as it was.

And so the sergeant-major had carried the general home that night and
had not left his side since. Remembering Dixter then—dressed in
a faded, tattered uniform, slumped over the bar—and seeing him
now, Lord of the Admiralty, Bennett was forced to blink back a most
unmilitary moisture in his eyes. The sergeant-major marched across
the room, cleared his throat with a loud harrumph, and stared hard at
the general.

"What is that stain on your uniform, my lord?"

Dixter glanced vaguely in the direction of his aide's disapproving
gaze. "Where? Oh, that. Coffee, I would imagine."

"You appear to have set your elbow in it, my lord."

"It's those confounded small cups. Like drinking out of an
eggshell. I can't get a grip on that fancy gold-plated handle and I
end up sloshing coffee into the saucer. Then I hit it with my arm.
... What the devil are you doing?"

"You will have to change jackets, my lord."

"For a little coffee stain?"

"And the cheese pastry on your lapel, my lord."

"Confound it, Bennett, I'm not scheduled to see anyone—"

A trilling whine interrupted. Bennett was forced to leave off
struggling with his general in order to answer the phone. While he
did so, Dixter left the window, returned to his desk. He took the
opportunity to dip a napkin in a glass of water, rub ineffectually at
the stain.

Bennett's eyebrows telegraphed his disapproval, but he was prevented
from saying anything until he ended the conversation.

"Urgent communique coming in for you, my lord. Your personal
access code."

Dixter frowned, stuffed the napkin in the water glass, and headed for
the commlink room. Very few people in the galaxy had access to the
admiral's personal access code, which provided the highest level of
security available. An urgent message from one of them boded nothing
good.

Entering the commlink room—located adjacent to his
office—Dixter dismissed the personnel working there, shut and
sealed the door. Bennett, with a long-suffering sigh, remained behind
in the general's office to mop up the spilled water.

Dixter gave his identification, provided voice and hand print and DNA
scan to gain access to the message. The descrambling took several
seconds, during which the general waited with grim patience. He had a
good idea who was calling and wished he'd thought to take an antacid
tablet after breakfast.

A man's face appeared on the vidscreen—a bald head,
acid-splashed skin, overhanging forehead, and deep, shadowed eyes—one
real, one cybernetic. The burning sensation in Dixter's stomach
increased.

Xris nodded curtly as Dixter's image registered on the cyborg's own
screen. No preliminary, time-wasting formalities for the cyborg. He
was direct and to the point.

"Something took the bait, boss."

"They made an attempt? Did you catch them?"

Xris grimaced. "You might say they ended up catching us, boss.
Swallowed us hook, line, pole, and boat. The good news is you were
right on two counts—you've got a leak and someone is after the
bomb. The bad news is—they found it. Something entered the
vault. Took the bomb."

Dixter stared, shocked. "Good God, man! That's not possible! And
you let them get away—"

Xris grunted. "Hold on, boss. You've got to hear me out.

You'll get my full report in writing, but I thought I better deliver
it first in person. Let you know I'm sober."

Dixter attempted to contain his impatience. "What happened?"

Reaching into his pocket, the cyborg drew out a twist, stuck it in
his mouth, lit it.

"We made the transfer, moved the space-rotation bomb from the
palace to Snaga Ohme's. You know how it went from your end. Top
secret. Same from ours. As you and I arranged, Raoul let it be known
among certain circles here on Laskar that he was for sale. A couple
of people wanted to buy, but they turned out to be just after
information on new product lines.

"Then we hit dirt. These guys weren't interested in the latest
in plasma grenade launchers. They wanted blueprints of the house,
details about the security systems. Raoul gave them the stuff, enough
of it real to look good to an expert. Not real enough to use. I don't
know why they needed it. Any of it." Xris drew in smoke. "Waste
of their money, our time."

"Obviously not," said Dixter dryly. "It worked for
them. You must have made a mistake, Xris, given them too much real
information."

The cyborg snorted, blew smoke through his nose. "I don't get
paid to make mistakes, boss. Hell, I could have given them a layout
of the inside of Raoul's head and it would have been one and the
same. Take a look at the monitor readings. They should be coming
through by now."

Dixter walked over to another machine, studied the information that
was being transmitted hallway across the galaxy.

He stared at it, frowned. "Print it," he ordered the
computer, unwilling to believe what he saw on the screen.

The printout was no different, however. He studied it wordlessly,
then looked back at the cyborg. "If it were any other man, I'd
say you were seeing ghosts...."

"Ghosts." Xris stubbed the end of the twist out on the
console. "Funny you should mention ghosts. Look, if it makes you
feel any better, boss, we didn't believe it either. We figured, like
you are, probably, that the equipment must have malfunctioned. We
checked it, more than once. It's working fine."

The cyborg stopped, took another twist from his pocket, but he didn't
light it. He stared at it, switched the stare to Dixter. "And
then we found proof. You want it from the beginning?"

Dixter sighed, rubbed his forehead, nodded.

Xris continued. "Front gate security saw, registered nothing.
Same with the entrance—all the entrances. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
The first we know we're being invaded, the motion detectors inside
the house start registering movement. Like you see there."

"But how can you be sure? There's no corroboration from the
other monitors, is there?"

"Nothing on visual, nothing on audio."

"What confirms it?"