Prophet and the Blood March (Prophet of ConFree) (36 page)

"...wiles and wickedness..." Bees choked.

"may God rebuke him, we humbly pray," Dorak said.

"may God rebuke him!" Bees repeated. Then she screamed and thrashed around, spitting blood.

"and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host,"

"and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host," Bees shouted in despair.

"by the power of God..."

"by the power of God!"

"cast into hell Satan and all the other evil demons who prowl through the galaxy seeking the ruins of souls!"

"Amen!" Bees shrieked.

"Coward Worm, are you still there?"

"The power of hate is stronger than the power of love, you fool! Yes, Galistos is still here. I do not fear your mythical God! I laugh at your pitiful efforts!"

"Open your mouth, Bees." She did it, with a lot of effort. Dorak emptied a little vial of liquid into her mouth.

"Swallow it, Bees! It's holy water, Worm. God's fire!" Bees let out a piercing shriek and again began thrashing around in her restraints. Her clothing was still smoking.

"Getting hot in there, coward?" Dorak asked. "Why don’t you come out of there and face me? Yes, face me. Try me, you miserable worm. Oh, but I forget. You are a coward, hiding inside a woman. But that's all right. We have plenty more holy water. And we've got a priest on the way, too. We hope you're having a good day, Worm. We'll be back shortly. We'll be back, Bees! Don't despair!" Dorak carefully removed his hand from Bees' grip, picked up the crucifix and led us out of the room. Once we were outside, he doubled over in agony. One hand was trembling.

"I think she broke my hand," he said. "I'll need some medical care and painkillers before we go in there again. Let's make it quick."

Δ

Honeyhair and Blondie and Mary fixed up Dorak real quick in the clinic. They had been watching the proceedings over the medview, and I could tell they had been crying. I watched as Honeyhair finished bandaging his hand.

"Are you really going to do it, Dorak?" the Prof asked in concern.

"I would prefer just to drive it away, but it will be looking for a new host. And I'm not sure I can drive it out of Bees – and away – if it doesn't want to go."

"But then we'll have just exchanged one problem for another."

"Yes. But Bees will be free. And Father Speirs is on the way."

I suddenly realized what Dorak was planning. Deadman! Where do we find people like this? The man was a soldier and a saint. An agent of God – just like Bees.

Δ

"Nobody here is afraid of you, Worm. Nobody," Dorak said. "We're going to expel you from the body and soul of this holy woman – and you're going to be remembered just like people remember a particularly nasty bout of diarrhea. So why don't you save yourself a lot of trouble and leave now – before the priest gets here?"

Bees was exhausted, moaning, her face all burnt from the cross.

"Kill her, Dorak," the creature hissed. "Then I leave. I leave when her heart stops beating."

"Coward Worm. You are afraid of me, aren't you?"

An evil, guttural laugh, from Bees.

"You claim to be a mighty serpent," Dorak said, "but I say you are a terrified little parasite worm, hiding from the world inside your woman-womb, too frightened to face anyone else. Face me, you despicable parasite! Why are you afraid of me? Do I look so formidable? I laugh at you. I scorn you. What do you call yourself? Gasalot? Garaglog? Gottago? What was it?"

"Galistos!" Bees snarled in fury.

"Quite an imposing name for a little worm like you. Why don't you try possessing Dorak, Worm? Oh, I know why. Because you're a sniveling coward. And you know I'd strangle you, crush you, the instant you enter me. Well, we'll let you enjoy your mommy a bit longer. Then we're going to burn you to ashes with holy water."

Bees let out a piercing scream, tearing at her bonds, and then collapsed, unconscious. Something black and evil and smoky swirled briefly around us all, then shot into Dorak. Dorak staggered and fell, twitching. Arie and I caught him and dragged him from the room. He was unconscious.

"Medical!" the Prof shouted. "Release Bees and treat her! Security, get here now. Scout, go to Bees. Arie, cuff Dorak. Now let's get Dorak to another isolation room and strap him down."

I was shaken, stunned by developments. I could hardly believe it. Dorak was a hero – a genuine hero.

Δ

We only received one day's notice that the Brights were coming. They told us through the DX Q-link. Then the next day they touched down at Quaba starport in a giant snow-white starship that was so beautiful and awesome it made my heart speed up. Right up front was the emblem of the White Hand. It was kind of like the Legion Cross. When you saw that mark you knew you'd best be very careful, and on your best behavior.

"Welcome to the Confederation of Free Worlds," I said, as the lead Bright delegation exited their ship and took their places where we indicated. I was telepathing the same thing as I spoke. I was getting good at that. Saka and I and the Prof and Nan the Man were there. Bees and Ice should have been there too but they had very good reasons for missing this one. We were clustered around the Director General of ConFree, the Minister of Interstellar Relations, the Minister of War, the Director of the ConFree Legion, the Director of Galactic Information, and a whole lot of others. I knew the entire inhabited galaxy was going to be viewing the images of this event – well, maybe not the slave states in the Gulf, but everybody else. Surprisingly, I was not in the least bit nervous. By that time I had no interest at all in the opinions or perceptions of the people of the inhabited galaxy. I cared about Delta Research and nothing else.

Martial Breakblade led the Bright delegation. We were all in the formal Legion black uniforms and the Brights were all in white uniforms. "Martial Breakblade," I said and telepathed, "I wish to present Antara Tarantos-Hannah, the Director-General of the Confederation of Free Worlds. Director Hannah, this is His Excellency Minister Resident Martial Breakblade of the official Liaison Office of the government of Bright Haven."

"Greetings and a warm welcome from the Confederation of Free Worlds," Tara began. A light breeze touched her silky hair and it floated gently around her face. I was standing right next to her, stunned by her raw beauty. "This is a historic moment and represents the formalization of what already exists – a strong and enduring friendship of two peoples from separate universes. Our young soldiers have fought side by side against common enemies and our alliance has been sealed with blood. I pledge, in the name of the people of the Confederation of Free Worlds, to do all I can to nurture and encourage this bond of blood." I was doing the telepathing of her speech which was made easier by the draft copy of her remarks which her secretary had passed me earlier.

"The people of the Confederation of Free Worlds and the people of the United Mocain Coalition are grateful for the kind treatment that your knights offered to the captive female humans that they rescued from the thoughtless dead subhumans. The Confederation of Free Worlds welcomes the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Bright Haven as soon as Bright Haven is prepared to agree. In the meantime we will ensure that your staff is happy here. We are certain they will enjoy the hospitality that we offer."

When Tara was through, Martial Breakblade replied, and Saka interpreted his thoughts into Inter. "Greetings to all humans of the Confederation of Free Worlds from the government and people of Bright Haven. We are pleased to initiate formal contact between our two peoples. We pledge friendship and cooperation. We appreciate the help proffered by the Confederation of Free Worlds and the United Mocain Coalition in freeing our captive females from the thoughtless dead. We will never forget that your young soldiers fought by our side against the Demon plague. We regard you as friends and allies against the forces of evil, and we view our relationship as one that is blessed by God." Saka was good. It was not easy to be so precise in interpreting Bright telepathing into human speech, but Saka did it.

As the initial contact broke up and we were ushering the Brights toward a line of aircars that was to take them to their liaison office, I heard Tara urgently instruct the Galactic Information chief, Snow Leopard: "Now let's find out what the hell was with that asteroid thing – soon as you can!"

We ferried the Bright delegation to their new offices in a mini fleet of aircars, meandering through Quaba City to orient them to the surroundings. Their embassy building was a brand-new structure on the edge of town, a sparkling white stone multi-story edifice that looked a bit like a cathedral to the future. We had put in every convenience but were pretty sure they would be changing it later to reflect what they liked. We even installed toilets that never stopped flowing because we had seen that on our visit to Vezhedak. There was a big aircar pad out back.

There were thirty of them. Breakblade said this was the advance delegation, focused on setting up the offices for more folks who would come later. Saka and I were to be assigned to the embassy until further notice. We called it the embassy although officially it was a liaison office. We had a whole army of folks on call all day and night to service the Brights. A fleet of aircars and drivers was standing by in the aircar pad. We distributed visual-heavy welcome handbooks to all, and lots of 3D city maps. We even handed out credit cards to them all for incidental purchases, courtesy of the ConFree taxpayers. This was clearly Number One on ConFree's list of priorities.

Δ

The following day we had the first official conference, in the major conference room of the embassy. Breakblade and four companions attended. On our side was Galactic Info's maximum leader Snow Leopard, our own Ambassador James Wester alias Thinker, the Prof, Nan the Man, Saka and me. We sat around a giant gleaming table that was too big for the number of attendees. Hot dox and cold calansi was available for all. After some feel-good formalistic foreplay, we got down to business. Saka and I had our questions all printed out so that made it easy.

We wish to inquire about the asteroid that recently departed an asteroid belt in the system of the planet Terra, location shown on this starchart, I telepathed. This asteroid was guided towards the planet Terra by a plasma pulse deflection unit, shown here.
We slid some images across the table to the Brights.
We were concerned because the asteroid was targeted directly on Terra and would have struck the planet with catastrophic destruction and widespread loss of life. It appeared to us that this was a deliberate act of war against Terra. Our initial information indicated that this installation was built by Brights. We did not understand why you would do this. We subsequently visited the asteroid, destroyed the deflection tower, built our own, and nudged the asteroid's course away from Terra. Can you comment on the asteroid, the installation, and the motivation for targeting Terra?

The B's all examined the images carefully. We had given them plenty to look at. The B's were flashing thoughts back and forth and Saka and I were eagerly attempting to read them. There did not seem to be any effort to shield their thoughts. I captured telepathed thought-fragments interrupted by other thought-fragments.

What's this? What's this...deflector…why would anyone do that…I've worked with deflectors, this is…do they think it's us…Terra, Terra. They're the ones who just declared war on us, right…haven't seen anything like…no, they wouldn't do that without…well why didn't they ask us?

Finally Breakblade directed his thoughts to us.
This device is not one of ours. We did not construct it. We know nothing about this asteroid. We are checking with Central right now, but I can confidently assert that we have never visited this asteroid and certainly have no plans to target Terra for destruction. Why would we do that? How can you believe we would do that after welcoming us as friends and allies? Was your welcome insincere?
Saka interpreted the answer into Inter and it caused a little stir. Snow Leopard answered.

"Please tell his Excellency that we apologize for the question but we note that the illegal regime on Terra recently declared war on Bright Haven and we thought that might have prompted this unusual action." I telepathed that to the Brights.

Breakblade smiled when he responded.
Words are not important. The declaration of war was amusing but of no concern to us. Should they take any action against us we will retaliate by instantly annihilating their military capabilities. Sending an asteroid to devastate their planet seems to us to be a slow and very messy way of expressing our displeasure. Also it would kill billions of innocents. We prefer to avoid that whenever possible. After all, we think of ourselves as messengers of God. Yes, he is a vengeful God but he is also merciful to the innocent.

"Another reason we thought it might be a Bright action," Snow Leopard said, "was that one of our prophets had a vision of the asteroid strike and saw a Bright starcraft flying over the devastation after the strike."

It is impossible to comment on that
, Breakblade telepathed.
Prophesies can be very tricky. Sometimes what you see is only a possibility. Had it actually happened, we might have sent a recon craft to document the event. As you know, our forces are still pursuing pirate gangs in Terra's sector. But we did not send that asteroid to Terra. Had you consulted with us, we would have told you that and might have been able to help you.

"We have so far been unable to discover exactly who constructed the device and activated it to destroy Terra," Snow Leopard said. "But when preparing the deflector tower for destruction we were attacked by numerous spiritual beings from Dimension Two, which is the dimension where our departed souls normally dwell. These were malevolent spirits who attempted to take possession of some of our soldiers. You can see from the images what the tower looked like. We have been unable to identify who constructed it. It certainly was not constructed by departed souls. Do you have any ideas?"