The Darkness of God: Book Three of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy (24 page)

“You weren’t around,” Joshua said blandly, thinking of the jammed lock.

“I didn’t mean now,” the woman said. “I mean back when you pulled me away from him. Back aboard the
Laurel.
”

Joshua grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I should have.”

• • •

The five men, all experienced at reconning hostile artificial worlds, entered the big, empty chamber cautiously, keeping low, guns moving, pointing like searching eyes.

Small gunports opened behind, above them.

“Now?” a scarred man asked.

“Now,” said a woman who, but for her hard, knowing eyes, could’ve been his daughter, and gunfire spattered.

• • •

A trapdoor opened as one of Kakara’s officers stepped on it, the antigrav generator at the bottom of the shaft activated at full reverse thrust, and he fell screaming. The dozen men behind him shrank back and huddled against the walls.

A voice spoke: “The rest of the passage’s on hinges too, boys. Better throw away the guns.”

The men looked at each other, then threw their blasters down the hall.

“That was sensible,” the voice said. “Just stay where you are. There’ll be somebody along to collect you in a while. Maybe if you’re good we’ll feed you a beer.”

• • •

The room was circular, opulent, with scarlet drapes hanging from a high ceiling. There were tables with half-eaten meals, half-empty glasses. It was deserted.

The seven men entered. One picked up a glass and was about to sample its contents.

“Don’t,” his leader hissed. “Poison!”

The man dropped it. It smashed on the marble floor.

Then the room was full of laughter, rich, amused, female.

One man tried the door they’d entered through and found it locked. The other doors were locked as well.

“What do we do now?” one whispered.

Echoing laughter was his only reply.

• • •

The two scoutships hung in space just off Malabar, “above” the docked liner and troopships.

Two missiles floated from the back side of the planetoid, and fire hissed from their tails as they went to full drive. Alarms shrilled on the scoutships, and one managed a countermissile launch. The second was too slow, and vanished in a ball of greasy flame and quickly vanishing smoke. A third, fourth, and fifth missile arced around the planetoid’s surface, overloading the first scoutship’s sensors.

It too exploded soundlessly.

• • •

“This is Malabar Control,” came through the speakers on the bridge of Kakara’s liner. “We have taken or killed all of your men. Jalon Kakara is dead. Surrender, or we shall launch missiles against your ships. Reply immediately on this frequency.”

The voice was Cormac’s.

On the bridge, Captain Ives looked at Pak, who avoided his gaze.

“You have thirty seconds,” Cormac’s voice said.

Ives picked up a com.

• • •

“We’ll sort through them,” Cormac said cheerily, “then arrange for one of our ships to dump them somewhere not too far from civilization, on its next run with the goodies … Not that I’m sure what’s still civilization. Things have been getting decidedly strange.”

“I know,” Wolfe agreed. He picked up the snifter, swirled it, sipped, and set it back down. “I better not have any more of this before dinner,” he said. “I’ve been leading a clean life lately, and I’m sort of out of training.”

“Just as well,” Cormac said, draining his beer. “I’m starving. Rita, where are we going to eat?”

“Fifth Level,” she said. “They’re doing a victory banquet. I already accepted.”

“You want company, Joshua? I can think of a couple of lovelies who wouldn’t mind meeting the Hee-ro of Malabar.”

Kristin’s face came to Wolfe, was pushed away.

“Like I said, I’m living a clean life lately.” He stood.

“Joshua,” Cormac said, “you said you knew that things were weird out. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“In a way.”

“Are you away from it now?”

Joshua slowly shook his head. “Now I’m about to dive straight into the middle of things. Let’s go. If this is likely to be my last meal, it might as well be Trimalchian.”

Michele Strozzi looked out at the workmen swarming over the scaffolding that marked where the new Residence was rising.
His
Residence, he thought with quiet satisfaction. He waited until the whispering died, then turned. Twenty-seven men and women looked back at the slender, quietly dressed man.

“Very well,” he said. “Is it agreed that, in the present state of emergency, I speak for the Order, and shall continue to do so until peace has returned and a proper consensus may be found?”

There were nods, quiet yeses.

“Good. I could practice false modesty and thank you for the honor, but I truly believe I am the best suited to represent the Chitet at this time and possibly in the future. Hopefully you will continue to agree with me. I have been made Master Speaker because I have argued we must take immediate action, rather than continuing to moil about in the shock and distress caused by the death of Master Speaker Athelstan and most of our hierarchy.”

“I think most of us here agree on that,” a man with a neat goatee said. “But what, exactly, should this action be? There’s been the conflict.”

“I do have a plan, one which I think will be the best for the Order. However, indulge me for a few moments, and consider history. A bit more than three hundred years ago, we attempted to bring order to Man’s worlds and replace the Federation, or, at any rate, install our brightest minds at its head. Obviously we were premature, and Man had not yet developed his fullest logic, for we were defeated, and our leadership either imprisoned or sent into exile. We bided our time, knowing that the battle had only begun.

“A hundred years later, on consideration of the Al’ar phenomenon, our then-Master Speaker realized we had erred in assuming we could continue at leisure to develop our culture, our society, and allow Man to recognize our superiority when it became obvious.

“Further analysis was done, the process and records of which seem to be lost, and our Master Speaker determined, for the ultimate good of Man, that we must seek an alliance with the Al’ar, since it was clear to him they possessed talents superior to Man’s. With such an alliance, we might learn these talents and continue assisting Man in his progression toward rationality. We were rejected by the Al’ar, and our envoys destroyed.

“We returned to our normal passive ways, and time passed. Perhaps this was an error in our logic, and we should have pressed matters. I believe it was, but my synthesis isn’t complete. Eventually, as we had predicted, war broke out between the Al’ar and Man. We firmly backed the human cause, having come to the realization that if there could be no cooperation between Al’ar and Chitet, they must be unutterably destroyed. The manner of their destruction is still unknown, but they vanished from our known universe, just before the final attack was to be made. Whether this was some sort of mass suicide or an interdimensional shift is unknown. Certainly since the Al’ar seemed completely alien to this spacetime, the second theory seems the most probable to me.

“In the midst of the celebration over the war’s end, our new Master Speaker, Matteos Athelstan, made a remarkable jump in logic, using techniques and sources that are still being sought. He decided that the Al’ar had not only fled the threat of destruction by Man, but that they also recognized a greater threat in the offing, one which they would be unable to defeat and hence refused to confront. He did not know what it was, or even what form it might take, but determined, as you all know well, to recover any and all Al’ar artifacts that seemed pertinent to their weaponry and thinking and turn their benefits to our Order. This included the Lumina stones and, when the existence of the ur-Lumina, the Overlord Stone, was discovered, that became the prime area of concern.

“At this point our matrix of events intersected Joshua Wolfe, who we quickly realized was our most dangerous enemy, the one who’s brought greater destruction to the Order than anyone in its history. Master Speaker Athelstan captured this man, if he is indeed just a man, and attempted to use him in our quest for the Overlord Stone.”

“
Just
a man, you said?” a very old man asked.

“Wolfe spent time among the Al’ar,” Strozzi said. “He was supposedly their captive at the beginning of the war, although I privately wonder if that is a fact or a cover-up Wolfe or his sometime superiors in Federation Intelligence promulgated.

“I personally believe that Master Speaker Athelstan erred slightly in his thinking about Joshua Wolfe, accepting that he was truly a renegade, rather than an agent in deep cover working for Federation Intelligence. Certainly it’s absurd to think one man could wreak the havoc he has managed.” Strozzi glanced reflexively at the ruins of the Residence.

“At any rate, Master Speaker Athelstan met his death attempting to use Wolfe to find the Overlord Stone. As you all know, Master Speaker Athelstan was very careful about security. Perhaps he was too careful, since we still have no idea exactly what happened on Rogan’s World. All records of the event appear to have been destroyed with Master Speaker Athelstan’s ship. However, we have sent skilled operatives to Rogan’s World, and they have analyzed the situation. We have some tentative appreciations:

“1. Joshua Wolfe was not killed in the debacle, but survived the destruction of Master Speaker Athelstan. Whether he was a causative factor is unknown.

“2. He managed to secure the Overlord Stone from the traitor and murderess who had possession of it, and he fled, possibly with the connivance of those Chitet who had been ordered to guard him closely. That last is a mere theory, though. But it is absolutely known that he has possession of the Lumina and that he killed Token Aubyn and destroyed her political machine that controlled Rogan’s World.

“Where Wolfe went from Rogan’s World is unknown. What he intends to do with the Overlord Stone is unknown. What Joshua Wolfe has to do with this present emergency in the former Al’ar Worlds, the so-called Outlaw Worlds, and the settled systems close to them within the Federation is also unknown.

“My belief is that Wolfe is indeed connected with the strange events that have come upon us, strange events foreseen by Master Speaker Athelstan. It is my belief that
all
of the events I’ve discussed, this possible alien entity that is wreaking so much havoc, the Overlord Stone, the Al’ar, and Joshua Wolfe are inextricably linked. It is also my belief that we are being invaded, that there is a new alien race no one knows anything whatsoever about, and they are infinitely more hostile than the Al’ar. We must act immediately to save Mankind.”

“I would like to see an analysis of your thinking, Brother,” a woman said.

“I cannot provide it at the moment,” Strozzi said frankly. “There are some quantum leaps I’m not yet able to justify mathematically. But I
know
I am right, just as Master Speaker Athelstan
knew
he was right, and events bore him out.”

“Accepting for the moment your thesis,” the woman continued, “have you a course of action?”

“I do,” Strozzi said. “The place where the ur-Lumina was found is, I believe, a locus. The ship where the Overlord Stone was found had been deliberately placed where it was by the Al’ar, and they did nothing by accident or without considerable deliberation. I also note that the earliest reports of the current phenomena came from sectors close to that point.

“I propose we send two or three of our finest reconnaissance craft, manned by the most skilled and experienced crews, to that sector, and, just within range of communication, our most powerful battlefleet, ready for the most immediate response to any eventuality. To prevent any errors, I shall accompany that fleet.”

“What do you expect to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Strozzi said.

“Isn’t there considerable risk to the recon ships?” someone else wondered. “And, conceivably, to yourself? We do not wish to sacrifice another Master Speaker.”

“There is,” Strozzi said quietly, “considerable risk to all Mankind right now. We must not delay. I feel the Overlord Stone will once again return to where it was found, and it will be returned by Joshua Wolfe. And when it does, we shall, we
must,
be ready to strike.”

“Well?” Rita asked. Cormac was at the ship’s controls; she leaned back in the navigator’s seat.

“Phew,” Wolfe said. “I thought I knew how messed up things have been lately. Not even close, was I?” He handed back the three fiches of recent newswires. “The world hasn’t become a better place in my absence.”

“And you’re going back into it? You sure?” Cormac asked.