Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (38 page)

YOU ARE OURS
.

The three Hibernians staggered, as though a blast of wind had caught them off-balance. Then they stood paralyzed, staring incredulously at the outland tourists.

YOU WILL FOLLOW US
.

In single file, the trio marched after their captors into a narrow, sheltered corridor of broken limestone overgrown with vinelike succulents. The force of the gale was cut off, although it still roared overhead. The rain and the cruifall had stopped.

YOU … AND YOU. SIT THERE
.

The men sank down onto the messy shingle among the shells and flotsam. Their faces were slack but their eyes were alive with anger. The woman stood swaying, helpless, her glance darting from one predator to another in bewilderment. The Hydra tore off the woman’s sou’wester hat, releasing a cascade of chestnut hair. She was no more than twenty years old, with rosy cheeks and full lips. Strong hands ripped open the fasteners of the red-smeared yellow slicksuit and the young woman stepped dazedly out of it, clad in clean white polypro underwear. Her figure was richly curved, the nipples of her full breasts straining against the taut fabric. When the Hydra gripped the victim’s shoulders her mouth opened in a voiceless scream that rang in the minds of the others. The two men moaned but did not move.

Hydra said: This one is ready for your/
your
feeding [image].

Fury had removed his overcoat and fur hat. His eyes were transmuted to luminous blue as he studied the petrified Hibernian woman. Finally, he reached out and touched the top of her head with a single finger. There was a blinding flash. An odor of burning hair filled the air and the prey went limp in Hydra’s supporting arms. The head fell forward and on the crown was a peculiar design like a many-petaled flower, scorched into the skin of the scalp.

Take her Fury come and
take her!

He came up behind the body, enfolding it in his arms and crushing it against his aroused flesh. His aura sprang forth, dazzling emerald shot through with azure, engulfing the two of them. Instinctively, he pressed his lips to the font of life at the victim’s crown, stopping her heart for the first time.

me
/me how to do this dearest Hydra.>

You
/you already know. But see [image] the seven chakra points along the head and spine? Drink from them as
you
/you take her.

I
/I see …>

Hydra’s own feeding aura kindled, ravenous gold edged with carmine. She plucked the older man from the ground as though he were a doll, stripped him naked, and expertly broke his neck. When his head sagged forward she embraced him, burying her face in the grizzled curls of his pate and setting him afire. Her hands, gripping his haunches, ground his pelvis against her own, forcing him into her.

This way! her mind shouted to Fury. This way! She and her victim disappeared in an exultant neural flare and she fed, beginning with the most rarefied psychic energy-font and slowly proceeding to the root. At the end, the body was a charred ruin and she was sated. Only her lips still glowed in the thickening dusk.

Fury had finished with the woman but his own metapsychic corona still blazed hungrily. He threw his arms wide in imperious command. Hydra brought him the last victim, stripped and ready, and watched until the consummation, when the final four-pointed chakra flower at the base of the young man’s spine died like an ember.

The three bodies were burnt black, coiled into a curious posture resembling a pugilist with cocked fists. Each had seven stigmata formed of delicately patterned white ash imprinted along the seared vertebral column and hairless skull.

“I am finally whole,” Fury said quietly, lifting his head and smiling at the Hydra. “All of the metafaculties are fully empowered
at last.” He showed her and she gasped in awe, then fell on her knees.

“Do anything with me,” she whispered.

“Share a little of the totality, my dearest little one, and never doubt again.” Gently, he brought her head against him and they merged in a final explosion of vital energies.

The storm was over and the wind was dying. They restored their clothing and walked back to the beach, where crashing surf surged around the mutilated sea-monster. The ollphéist was quite dead. Fury studied the formidable creature for a moment, then used his restored psychokinetic power to set its carcass adrift in the sea.

After blasting the human remains to cinders and scattering them over the water, Ruslan Terekev carefully placed a single tentacle-claw with a torn piece of slicksuit snagged on it among the rocks above the high-tide line, where it would surely be found. His PK levitated the Mercedes back onto the highway and tidied up the scene of the crime. The hacked-off body parts of the animal, the abandoned tools and tote, and the crawler vehicle were left as mute testimony to yet another tragedy of the sea.

I
T WAS DOWNRIGHT EERIE, THE WAY THE THING HAD BEGUN
.

Of course Patricia Castellane had been aware of Rory Muldowney’s secret stash of matériel for years—just as he knew that her contingent were busy building illicit CE hats with the connivance of the Japs. But Rory was furious all the same when Pat’s snotty executive assistant had come slithering up to him during an official reception on Okanagon late in 2078.

“I need your good advice, Dirigent,” Lynelle Rogers had said to him, after a bit of preliminary chitchat. “Consider a hypothetical situation. Suppose that a certain high planetary official of Rebellious inclination has put together a large collection of weaponry—good stuff, mostly big blasters customized for offense.”

Rory gave a great start. He was only a little drunk, and in spite of Lynelle’s coyly oblique phrasing, he knew at once what she was talking about. He managed a lame little laugh and began to edge away. She took hold of his arm.

“Suppose,” she went on, drawing him irresistibly toward a quiet corner, “that this official has kept the illicit treasure hidden away, adding to it year after year, hoping that one day it will prove useful when humanity bids for its freedom from the Galactic Milieu.”

He gaped at the woman, too incredulous even to voice a denial. She’d shocked him into instant sobriety. Lynelle Rogers plowed on.

“Without a delivery system,” said she, “without warships to mount the weapons on, the official’s wonderful arsenal is little more than useless junk … unless he’s foolish enough to think that the Rebellion should smuggle photon cannons and antimatter bombs stolen from the Krondaku into Concilium Orb, and hold the nerve center of the Galactic Milieu for ransom.”

A Dhia na bhfeart! Had the silly female gone mad, daring to
talk about such things? (And actually the ransom idea was one that he was especially taken with.)

Lynelle said, “Suppose that a certain person knew a way to get hold of warships for the Rebellion. Would you advise her to speak to the high planetary official with the hoard of weapons—or should she go straight to Marc Remillard with her information?”

Rory forced the woman back against the wall, looming over her, using both coercion and the down side of the redactive metafaculty to compel and hurt her.
Stop playing your feckin’ games dammit and tell me what you know!

Lynelle Rogers never stopped smiling. She opened her mind and showed him exactly how she thought the warships could be obtained.

He’d backed off then, laughing her to scorn. From
Astrakhan?
Crazy bitch!

The once-thriving shipbuilding industry of the fourth Russian colony was on the brink of ruin. The planet’s Milieu-loyalist female Dirigent was a futile mystic and its Intendant General, Ruslan Terekev (for all that he was a faithful adherent to the Rebel cause), was a fatuous, crony-ridden gobshite. Why, Astrakhan was no more likely to get the contract for the Fourteenth Sector colonization transports than it was to host the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!

And even if the impossible did occur, there was no way that the Rebellion could expropriate and arm those starships without the Milieu loyalists finding out about it.

 … Was there?

“Perhaps not,” Lynelle Rogers had said, as though the matter were suddenly of no concern to her. “All the same, if someone high in the Astrakhanian government should ever contact you with an unusual business proposal, be certain that Marc Remillard and the other Rebel leaders hear about it and take it seriously. Or else a certain high planetary official might find himself guarding a pile of dusty rubbish like some futile old dragon in an Irish fairytale—while the exotics force Unity down the human race’s throat.”

The bloody insolence! He’d told the woman to go to hell very politely, and later on at the party he chewed out Pat Castellane for spilling his great secret to a lunatic underling. Pat indignantly denied she’d done anything of the sort. But what else could she say without making herself look a fool?

Less than a week later Lynelle Rogers perished in a dreadful
mountain-climbing accident, her body crushed to a pulp in a glacial crevasse.

At that point Rory Muldowney gave a lot more thought to the strange conversation he’d had with Rogers—and also entertained some very nasty suspicions about Dirigent Patricia Castellane.

Months went by. A mind-boggling upheaval occurred on Astrakhan. Its debased buffoon of an Intendant General underwent an abrupt change of character and was transformed overnight into a political dynamo. Most stunning of all, the shipbuilding contract
was
eventually awarded to the Russian planet by the Polity Commerce Directorate, just as the late Rogers had predicted.

Rory had felt the hairs stir at the nape of his neck when that little piece of news reached him. But it was nothing compared to the jolt he got when Ruslan Terekev called him not long afterward on the subspace communicator, proposing an unofficial visit to Hibernia. The Russian said he wanted to discuss forming an astronautical consortium between their two worlds—“and we must also talk over other matters important to the future of the Human Polity.”

Of course the consortium notion was a farce. The Hibernian economy was based primarily on agriculture and light manufacturing, with no astronautics industry worth mentioning. But Rory agreed to the meeting all the same, and then he reported the entire unlikely tale to the leader of the Rebel Party, just as Lynelle Rogers had told him to do.

Surprisingly, Marc Remillard didn’t laugh.

On the day of the conference Rory flew over to the mainland himself to collect the two Russians from Granuaile House. Thanks be to heaven the rain was over. The wretched cruimh had dessicated overnight and turned to dust, blown to hell and gone by the clean north wind, and the sky above Loch Mór was a cloudless iris-blue.

The visitors were waiting for him in the parlorlike lobby of the inn. The Astrakhanian IG was sturdy as a block of bog oak, daunting and portentous of mien. Above his prominent nose, piercing dark eyes sunk in deceptive laugh-wrinkles hinted at formidable metapsychic powers. His broad Slavic mouth opened stingily when he spoke and then slammed shut like a drawer.

The IG’s Chief of Staff, Lyudmila Arsanova, turned out to be an ebony-haired smasheroo wearing an elegant leather outfit that enhanced her lovely figure. She stood frowning at her boss’s side, exuding the chilling vibes of a thoroughgoing ballbuster. If these two were lovers, as recent Rebel intelligence reports had
speculated, Rory had no doubt which one called the tune in the dance of sweet comhriachtain!

He bid the pair the traditional ten thousand welcomes to Hibernia and said he hoped they’d enjoyed their drive yesterday.

“It was a most interesting experience.” Ruslan Terekev smiled minimally. “However, I am sorry to tell you that last night we were interrupted at dinner by a police officer, who informed us that a grisly incident had taken place on the coast just west of here. Three local beachcombers disappeared after a sea-beast they were harvesting apparently attacked them and dragged them off into the water. This policeman interrogated us at some length, since we had passed close by the scene of the accident. We informed him that we had no useful information, but he did not seem entirely satisfied.”

“The Intendant General is deeply concerned,” Lyudmila Arsanova said sternly, “that the security of our secret meeting might be compromised if we should be required to submit to further questioning by the authorities.”

“Soddin’ idiot coppers,” Rory muttered. “We’ll just see about that.”

He found a teleview and dealt briskly with the Garda at Gaillimh while the Russians hovered. Not a trace had been found of the sea-monster’s victims (the voracious ollpheist rarely made leftovers), but even if bodies were found, the visitors would not have to appear as witnesses in the inquiry. The officer who had spoken to them was young and overly zealous. The Garda would never dream of inconveniencing distinguished guests of Dirigent Muldowney.

“I hope that satisfies you,” Rory said, as the screen went gray.

Lyudmila nodded. “It was necessary to be absolutely certain. Such officious meddling in the affairs of persons of importance would never be tolerated on Astrakhan.”

“We must proceed now to the island with no further delay,” Ruslan Terekev declared. “Please settle our bill. We will wait in your rhocraft.” He hoisted his own valise and went stumping out the front door of the inn without another word, the woman close on his heels.

Rory raised his eyes to heaven, held his temper admirably, and used his personal credit card.

On the brief trip from the mainland to Inisfáil, Lyudmila Arsanova remained wrapped in inscrutable silence while Terekev’s responses to the Dirigent’s attempts at conversation were abbreviated and brusque. Even when a spectacular flight
of huge azure theropterids boiled up from one of the limestone stacks offshore and headed out to sea in a joyous corkscrewing feeding frenzy, the Astrakhanian IG’s only comment was, “Very pretty.”

Rory sighed inwardly. Well, these two beauties hadn’t been invited for their winsome charm. He landed the egg on the pad behind his country house and ushered the Russians up the graveled path.