Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (4 page)

________

Duaal opened a radio channel to the landing field's tiny control center. "Blake, this is the Blue Phoenix. We're ready to take off on surface vector two eighty-eight."

"I hear you, Blue Phoenix," came Blake's rusty-sounding voice. "I'm monitoring Control chatter. We should have a window open for you in about ten minutes."

Duaal put his feet up on the controls in front of him and inspected his shoes. The leather was getting old. But when would there be money enough for replacements? Duaal silently cursed Maeve again for every one of her many, many crimes. Finally, he sat back and looked over at Tiberius.

"Are you all right, captain?" he asked. "You've been on edge all day."

Tiberius' joints creaked in audible protest as he dropped into the pilot's chair. "It's nothing for you to worry about, Duaal."

"Can't you just talk to me a little? I'm bored and my head is still curling around the edges."

"Go raid the medbay, then."

"Come on!"

There was a pause, and then Tiberius answered. "It's all of this."

"All of what?"

"Everything!" Tiberius shouted suddenly, startling Duaal.

The boy jumped and cracked his head hard against the cockpit's low ceiling. He rubbed his scalp and checked for blood. "Ouch, captain."

"I was a cop for forty-one years, not some plucked criminal," Tiberius said. "It shouldn't be like this – squatting on illegal fields, buying our supplies on the sly."

"You only tried to do right," Duaal reminded him.

"And for that, I'm hiding like a rat." Tiberius shook his head. "I don't want to live the rest of my life under a rock."

Duaal searched for something to say, but could think of nothing. He sat back with a sigh and waited for Blake to tell them that they could finally fly away.

"Without laws, there can be no crime. But without laws, we are all victims."

- Gaius Varren, Prian police officer (192 PA)

Cedon Barnes was a handsome man. He admired his fine, chiseled jaw and bright blue-green eyes. He really looked nothing at all like a criminal, he thought. Cedon straightened his stylish black tie and checked his pale hair in the darkened window. In the bright Sipho nightlight, the glass threw back a stark silver-and-black reflection of innocent perfection.

He waited on the corner of Malone Street, just as his client had requested. Cedon leaned against a waist-high iron fence that wrapped around the cafe patio. It was the middle of the night and the chairs all sat upside-down atop of their tables, legs in the air like dogs playing dead. A few other drivers and midnight walkers strolled past, but not many. Cedon Barnes waited alone.

The night was clear and warm. Still, was it not for the importance of his meeting, Cedon would have been back in his hotel room, in his warm bed and the warmer embrace of the woman he had left there. Both were well outside his price range, but Cedon was about to be a very rich man.

His pay as a floor supervisor in the Narsus shipyards had been comfortable enough, but then an engineer from another team left the new schematics just lying out on his desk. The whole thing, finished and unencrypted. Those plans were worth more than thirty years of pay, if Cedon could just sell them. So he pulled the memory chip and slipped it into his pocket. Easy as that. Once he got off Kahl, all Cedon needed was a rich enough buyer.

He ran his finger over the patio fence. The metal was spotted with spreading dew, like it had been decorated in delicate glass beads. Cedon flicked the moisture from his finger. It splattered against the window.

The bright core-world stars and multitude of pearlescent blue-white moons filled the Sipho sky and street with radiance that outshined the light of the arched street lamps. They were more for decoration than anything else. Rains on Sipho were light and short-lived, more like standing in a shower than a real storm. There were never clouds enough to blot out the skylight.

Sipho was really a rather lovely planet, Cedon decided. Maybe he would stay. With the money he was about to make, he could certainly afford it.

A shadow fell across the cobblestone-textured road. His buyer had finally arrived. The other man was a little taller than Cedon and wore a long black coat with the collar turned up as though it was a much colder night. There was nothing remarkable about his face or short blond hair, but there was something in his pale blue eyes that made Cedon's throat clench. He cleared it loudly before calling out.

"Pleasant evening, isn't it?" When he was close enough, Cedon held out his hand. "Hello, I'm Cedon Barnes."

His customer kept his own hands thrust deeply into his coat pockets. "Do you have the plans?" he asked.

Cedon sighed. He recognized that accent. Prian. Small wonder the man had no manners.

"I've got them," Cedon said. "Do you have my money?"

A curt nod. "Show me the schematics."

People had no faith. Cedon reached into his jacket and produced the memory chip with a flourish. It was tiny, only about the size of his smallest fingernail. He held it up, just out of the other man's reach. Starlight flashed on the serial number printed along one side: NSS-NIE-288-37D

"So much precious data on such a tiny thing," Cedon said philosophically. "Amazing, really."

The Prian did not seem interested in discussion. He was pulling his hand from his pocket, probably eager to pay and go play with his new toy. But the hand that came back up held not colorful cenmarks, but a large gray laser pistol. A sudden dread made Cedon's heart skip. He took a hurried step back and flung his hands into the air.

"No… No, wait! Did Narsus send you?" he cried.

"Give me the plans."

Cedon's heart was working again, but at about ten times its normal pace. It slammed against his ribs as though the muscle might break through and run away all on its own. Terrified, Cedon held out the memory chip, but his hands shook so hard that he dropped it. The man with the gun lunged, grabbing for the tumbling card, but it slid through his fingers. He wore a black half-glove over the hand, but his fingers shone dully metallic in the starlight with the same flat gleam as the gun. Cedon's knees turned to water and he staggered back against the patio fence.

"Oh, God! A bounty hunter," he moaned. "Help! Somebody help me!"

Why were the streets so empty? Surely not everyone could be inside. Why didn't someone save Cedon? Why had he ever agreed to a midnight meeting? The bounty hunter flicked his gun at the card on the ground. The blue plastic was almost invisible in his dark shadow.

"Pick it up," he ordered.

Cedon pinched the card up from the street. The hunter took the schematics very carefully in his metal hand, inspected them briefly and then dropped the memory chip into his pocket. "Where are the other copies?"

"Copies? What copies?" Cedon asked.

"You didn't make any?"

"No! No! Don't shoot me, please!"

Some unreadable expression flashed across the hunter's face. He hauled Cedon up by his collar, holstered his laser and snapped a pair of handcuffs around his prisoner's wrists.

"Let's go."

________

Logan Coldhand shoved Barnes into the arms of two waiting CWAAF soldiers. The middle manager who thought himself a daring thief was still sobbing in terror and very nearly had to be carried away. They vanished through the door, leaving Coldhand alone in the waiting room.

The Sipho government had devoted little time or money to the bounty collection center. The entire building was a white prefabricated cube and every surface had the faintly oily look of janitorial nanites, not unlike those used on nanoblades to maintain the weapons' keen edge.

There were no windows in the building, only a row of monitors that alternated between local news and cycling lists of other bounties. Coldhand could have been anywhere in the galaxy, in any one of ten thousand identical collection centers anywhere in the Alliance.

The hunt for Barnes had been… unsatisfying. The man was unbelievably stupid. He had taken a commercial flight from Kahl, booked under his own name. Investigation of Barnes' hotel room on Sipho had yielded only a frightened prostitute and some cheap chems. The self-important little thief really had no copies of his stolen schematics. He was actually selling the original files with no thought about what he might do if he lost them. He threw away his career and his freedom for something he could sell only once. Cedon Barnes was an idiot.

An idiot worth a lot of colour to Narsus Shipyards, but no less an idiot.

Coldhand waited. There was an indignant yelp from the next room as one of the techs checked Barnes' redprint. The flashing screen on the far wall caught Coldhand's attention:
Cult of Nihil – All members. Wanted for degree one heresies.

The monitor displayed a sallow-skinned man in tattered clothes. Coldhand sat forward. The man on the screen was not Gavriel. This one wore the scarlet of an Emberguard, the Nihilist's most brutal warriors.

Thieves. They took my hand and my heart. My life.

Coldhand pushed the maudlin thought aside and read the text scrolling beside the picture. When the Union of Light banned the Nihilist teachings, the cultists became criminals under Alliance law, subject to all of the associated penalties. The CWA was offering a bounty for any captured Nihilists. Alive only, of course. It was a government bounty, after all.

The price was low. There were only so many cenmarks to go around and the Alliance could not pay much for individual cultists. The bounty posting listed an estimated two hundred surviving Nihilists. Coldhand suspected there were many more than that.

He ignored the rest. It wasn't worth his time. Coldhand had no useful leads. After the destruction of their Gharib cathedral, the Nihilists had probably gone into hiding on Stray. The planet was a long flight from Sipho and Stray was an entire world of desperate people with something to hide. Trying to find the Nihilists there now would be like sifting salt from sand.

Too much work for too little pay.

His leg throbbed dully. Coldhand looked down and found his left hand on his thigh. The illonium fingers had dug hard into the leg of his pants, bruising the flesh beneath. He forced the cybernetics to release just as a brown-furred Lyran stepped into the waiting room.

"Thank you for waiting," he said. "We've checked over Mister Barnes. According to Narsus instructions, he will be held here for transport. He'll be assigned counsel and tried on Kahl. If you'll just sign here, I can pay out the bounty. It's late and I'm sure you would like to go home, too."

The canine man smiled toothily up at Coldhand, who wordlessly signed his name to the offered datawork. The Lyran tucked the datadex under his arm and held out a single black cenmark chip to Coldhand. The hunter took the plastic square and turned it over. There was a name on the front:
NARSUS.

The company logo glowed faintly violet at his touch. He flipped it back at the Lyran, who caught the cenmark in his paws.

"Is there a problem?" he asked.

"I don't work for credit. Barnes' bounty was posted in Alliance marks."

"I'm sorry, but this is all that Narsus Shipyards would approve."

"That's your problem," Coldhand said. "Alliance colour only."

The Lyran laid his ears back, but left and returned a few minutes later with a stack of colored plastic squares. Much less pleasantly this time, he thrust them into the bounty hunter's hand.

"Alliance cenmarks," he announced.

Coldhand counted the money and nodded curtly. "We're done here."

The Lyran's furry ears remained flattened. Coldhand left the canned air of the collection center and made his way back out into the warm Sipho night.

"Wherever there is light, first there was darkness."

- Gavriel Euvo, founder of the Cult of Nihil (230 PA)

Gavriel considered the darkness. The lightless void was perfect. It was deep and distant as the space between stars even as it clung sticky-close as spider webs on his skin. It hid the ugliness of the universe, swallowed nations and worlds away into bottomless oblivion. In time, the darkness ate up even suns and stars. Everything.

Gavriel held his hand up before his eyes, but could see nothing. The shadows concealed his thin, brittle skin, spotted by age and too many years under the suns of a dozen worlds. He was stronger now, since Elsa's unwilling sacrifice. His age had not left him, but he wore it now like the robe around his shoulders instead of a weight around his neck.

But even in the darkness, Gavriel could hear his joints creaking, feel the bone-deep ache of long years of life and suffering… if there was any difference between the two. The dark only masked the things that seethed in shadows. It did not conquer them. The lesson had been hard-won…

He waited in the darkness. The dead girl's blood was warm and sticky on his hands, but cooling rapidly in the night air. The street outside the old millhouse flashed with blue lights as the Sunjarrah police searched for him. Gavriel cursed silently to himself. They would tire of the hunt, but not before dawn. Until then, he would have to remain hidden.