Imperial Bounty (28 page)

"OK, you can turn . . . slowly." A chill ran down Tellor's spine. There was something familiar about that voice. It couldn't be. Nobody could have luck that bad. As the gun barrel left his ear he slowly turned his head. Shit! It was Sam McCade.

McCade grinned. "Hello, Major, fancy meeting you here." He placed a finger over his lips. "Mum's the word though. We wouldn't want to distract your team with our idle chatter."

McCade used his left hand to remove the binocam from Tellor's unresisting fingers. He used his left hand to sweep it across the hillside below, while his right hand kept the slug gun centered on the marine's spine. Tellor didn't even consider testing McCade's reflexes. Not after seeing tapes of the battle in the Imperial Coliseum.

McCade saw that the Nuags were almost in position. "All right, Major, in a moment I'm going to say 'now.' When I do, give your team the go ahead. Get fancy and you're dead. It's up to you. OK . . . ready . . . now."

Tellor chinned his mic switch, and said, "The objective is in position . . . go!"

And they went. Rising from the ground like ghosts they swept down the hillside to surround the Nuags below. The moment they were in position, Sergeant Okada bellowed, "You're surrounded. In the name of the Emperor, throw down your weapons and come out!"

For a moment nothing happened. Then, just as Okada started to order the team in, the lead animal gave a snort of protest, and grudgingly lifted an armored skirt. An attractive black woman emerged. As she straightened up, Okada saw both her hip and shoulder holsters were empty. "Where's the rest?" Okada demanded.

The black woman smiled. "Behind you. Throw down your weapons and surrender."

But Okada was having none of that. She knew what her job was, and it didn't include dropping her weapon for some unarmed colonial. Her blast rifle was already spitting blue energy as she spun around. Her dying brain barely registered the flash of light that killed her before a wave of darkness snuffed her out. Two more marines fell to Rico's and Phil's markmanship, before the rest gave up, and threw down their weapons. As Rico and Phil made their way down from their hiding places at the top of the hill, Mara forced the marines to sit on their hands, while she gathered their weapons into a pile.

As McCade followed Tellor down the hill, he gave thanks the plan had worked. About a hundred things could have gone wrong but didn't. They'd been very lucky to spot the marines while they were too busy carving hiding places to notice.

After forcing the Nuags out of sight down the trail and sneaking up to the crest of the hill, they'd watched the marines for a while, counting the opposition, mapping their locations, and planning their counterambush. Unfortunately the Nuags wouldn't leave their ancestral path, so there was no way to circle around the ambush. After that, it was a matter of creeping into position, and hoping for the best.

As McCade and Tellor reached the bottom of the slope, Phil said, "Welcome, Major, if you'd just step over there." He pointed to the group of angry-looking marines.

Tellor did as he was told. Rico turned to McCade. "What's the plan, sport, we can't take 'em with us."

McCade ran his eyes over the marines. They were a bedraggled bunch, but far from beaten, and even unarmed they were dangerous as hell. He hated to leave them behind, but Rico was right, they didn't have room for prisoners. If the positions were reversed, McCade knew what Tellor would do. But McCade had no stomach for cold-blooded murder. They'd have to leave the marines behind and hope for the best.

Tellor sneered, as if able to read his thoughts, and amused by his weakness. McCade ignored him as they made ready to depart. They left the marines their food and medical kits, nothing more.

Thirty minutes later they were on their way. Mara and Phil rode together, suspended under the first Nuag, while McCade and Rico followed along behind.

The marines were just a dwindling image on the rear screens. They stood in a clump apparently listening to Major Tellor. A little pep talk perhaps, or maybe a major ass chewing, with the Major doing the chewing.

Hours passed and it seemed as if their luck had taken a turn for the better. The wind died down, the clouds vanished, and the Nuags walked along under blue skies. Soon they were out of the foothills and working their way up into the mountains beyond.

Occasionally they took turns walking beside the Nuags, enjoying the fresh air and the exercise. There were lots of things to look at. Rocks shimmered and sparkled in the sun. Flowers shaped like dinner plates, which turned toward the sun and shook off layers of windblown dust to reveal their brilliant colors. Small animals scurried here and there, largely ignoring human and Nuag alike, intent on their various errands. Mara told them that while the clear weather wouldn't last long, it arrived with a certain regularity, and played an important part in the local ecology. Each period of clear weather functioned like a Terran spring, setting off a frenzy of feeding, mating, and other behaviors. As a result, many life forms had very short birth to death cycles, though some—the Nuags were a good example—had evolved adaptations allowing them to live to a ripe old age.

Once, McCade sighted a distant speck in the sky. It moved in wide lazy circles, riding the thermals upward. Thinking it a bird, he pointed, and asked Mara what kind it was. She took one glance and swore. "Wind Riders." She spat the words out one at a time. Moments later the speck disappeared into the distant haze. There was no way to tell if they'd been spotted, but the incident worked to dampen their spirits, and Mara urged the Nuags to move faster.

Night had come and gone, and all were walking in the early morning light when McCade heard the music. At first it seemed part of the gently rising wind. However, when the wind dropped off for a moment, and the music continued, he knew it was real. It had a strange haunting quality, quite unlike anything he'd heard before, yet familiar somehow. It managed to make him both happy and sad at the same time. Looking at the others McCade saw they heard it too. Their expressions reflected mixed emotions. Except for Mara. Her expression was different. She was happy—like someone greeting an old friend too long absent.

Now the wind reasserted itself, and as they walked the music became louder and louder, until the air seemed saturated with it, driving McCade's emotions up until he thought they could go no farther, and then releasing them to slide quickly downward, to start all over again.

A few minutes later they rounded a bend, and there, spread out below them, was Chimehome. The village was nestled in a small valley between twin mountain peaks. The valley served to protect the small collection of white domes from storms, and also acted as an acoustic enclosure for the huge wind chimes, which gave the place its name.

A single glance told McCade the chimes were a work of nature. Eons ago a spire of volcanic rock had been upthrust from the planet's molten core. Millions of years came and went. By now the rock had cooled, and the winds had come to rule the planet, bringing their endless cycles of good and bad weather. With them came the countless snows which blanketed the surrounding peaks with white, melted during brief periods of sunny weather, to run gurgling and splashing down into the valley below. As it passed, the water pushed and tugged at the small spire of rock, as though considering the various uses to which it might be put. Then, as if decided, it went to work. With eternal patience, the water probed and pulled, carving soft material away from hard, smoothing here, and shaping there. As the water dug deeper the spire grew taller, until finally it stood like a sentinel, guarding the valley from harm. And then one day, long before Nuags evolved from small animals which burrowed in the earth, the water cut one last tendon of volcanic flesh, and a large plate of delicately balanced rock broke free. For a moment it hung there, twisting slightly back and forth as the wind played with its new toy. Then a sudden gust pushed it sideways to strike a hard surface and the first note rang out. At first the chimes had only that single note to play, but as the years passed, and the water continued its marvelous work, other notes were added, until finally an intricate maze of delicately balanced rock produced an endless symphony of sound.

As they followed the path down into the valley below, McCade was amazed at how quickly his mind accepted the music produced by the chimes. Somehow it flowed in and around him without dominating his emotions or interfering with his thoughts. As they drew closer to the whitewashed domes which nestled together on the valley floor, he realized the whole place felt right somehow, as if expressing some internal harmony. Was that an expression of the Walkers and their philosophy? Or a manifestation of the place itself? There was no way to know, but the name Chimehome certainly fit, and the village seemed the perfect place for a monastery.

They had almost reached the village when a small group of people started up the path to meet them. They wore a variety of clothing, ranging from the somber to the gay, but all were smiling, and the young man leading them looked familiar somehow. Then McCade had it. The biosculptors had roughened his features slightly, but he was still tall, handsome, and blond like his sister. There was laughter in his sparkling blue eyes. As they shook hands the blond man smiled. "You must be Sam McCade. My name's Alex. I understand you've been looking for me."

McCade was alone in the observatory. Outside, the storm still raged, though more slowly now, much of its energy expended during the night. The rising sun was a dusty glow in the distance, still barely visible through the curtain of windblown sand. Eventually the wind would die away, but until then they were prisoners of the storm.

McCade lit another in a long series of cigars, blowing the blue smoke upward, to gather toward the top of the transparent duraplast dome. It swirled there for a moment, until the nearest exhaust vent sucked it away to become part of the storm. The last day and a half had left him with mixed emotions. On the one hand there was the satisfaction of finding Prince Alexander, and on the other, there was the growing fear of losing him. The longer the storm kept them captive, the more time Claudia had to find them. And that would be very bad, not just for them personally, but for the Empire as a whole.

Reluctantly, and against his better judgment, McCade had come to admire Prince Alexander, or Alex, as he preferred to be called. This was no spoiled princeling, insulated from the real world, and demanding respect he didn't deserve. No, there was a quality to the man. A questioning spirit, which had caused him to gamble his inheritance, plus a wealth of intelligence and courage which had seen him through when he'd lost. Those qualities, combined with a self-deprecating wit, made the prince hard to resist. It was as if Alexander had inherited his father's pragmatisim, but invested it with a genuine concern for other people. They had talked for many hours, waiting for the storm to pass. Alexander had put him immediately at ease by saying, "I already know about my father's death, Sam, and have for weeks."

Seeing McCade's confusion, the prince smiled. "I know all this must seem very strange to you, Sam—Chimehome, the Walkers, and the rest. Believe me, I felt the same way at first, but it's all quite real, and very useful. My father's death is a good example. You've heard about what the Walkers call the flux? Good. Well, the concept fascinated me from the start. However, the elders were reluctant to provide me with instruction. They are rightfully wary of novices who care little about learning The Way, and seek instead special powers with which to elevate their own egos, or gain advantage over others. But I argued long and hard, worked to understand the principles which light The Way, and finally received their permission. I was taught to meditate, to work through a variety of exercises, and, most of all, to consider what good I might accomplish if I succeeded. For as the elders pointed out, such abilities are nothing but tools, worthless unless applied to some purpose.

"So one day, there I was, working my way through a series of exercises, and not making much progress, when suddenly I was somewhere else, standing in a matrix of multicolored energy. It pulsed and flowed all around me, and somehow in its movement I saw shapes and patterns, people and events, all moving and interacting in accordance with their own free will, and the immutable laws of the universe. Millions and billions of variables forming to create endless combinations of cause and effect. It was incredible, Sam."

As Alexander spoke, his eyes glowed, and his whole face seemed to light up. "For one splendid moment it all made sense. Each life seemingly isolated, but part of the whole, just as each drop forms part of the ocean. At first I couldn't understand what I saw, overwhelmed by the sheer size and complexity of it all, but eventually I began to focus on smaller areas, and things began to have meaning. Here and there I saw patterns emerge, saw energies gather, build, and then release themselves to create what we know as reality. It was then that I saw my father's death, knew it had already taken place, and understood the forces it had set in motion."

For the first time since they'd met, McCade saw Alexander's face darken, as if a cloud had just passed between him and the sun. "Up ahead, I saw a branching, a division of energies which I somehow knew represented two possible futures, each equally possible based on past events, each dependent on the free will of certain individuals. In one case Claudia took the throne, and the tendril of energy which symbolized her rule led off into what seemed like a final darkness. The other path was mine. It was weaker, less likely, but led to a future which seemed to swirl and shift with many possibilities, some good, some bad. And then it was over, and I've never managed to duplicate the experience since." Here Alexander laughed. "So beware, Sam, even if I take the throne, the Empire's problems aren't over."

McCade half smiled, and flicked some cigar ash toward a nearby receptacle. "I'm glad you said that, Alex. Otherwise it would be tempting to shoot you here and now. One Claudia's enough."