Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (42 page)

"Fellow citizens!" de Tomas began, addressing the assembly. "While the valiant Archbishop General Lambsblood's Army of the Lord was fighting the demon invaders, these men," he gestured at the leaders, "were enriching themselves from the spoils of war, diverting vast sums from the public treasury into their own pockets, cheating the faithful members of their sects of their rightful emoluments and perquisites!"

Leader Nirmal Bastar jumped up and began to shout something in protest but was slammed back into his seat by the SG man standing behind him. The audience was too astonished to react.

"I have conducted a full investigation, the details of which will be fully disclosed to the world in the coming days," de Tomas continued. "I hereby arrest these men on the charge of treason and illegal speculation." People in the audience began to shout, some in protest, others in anger. De Tomas allowed them to call out for a few moments and then signaled Senior Stormleader Gorman.

"Be silent!" Gorman ordered. At his command, each SG man roared,

"ARRRAH!" and leveled his rifle at the crowd, which instantly subsided into its seats.

"With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, I am reluctantly assuming, temporarily, the mantle of government," de Tomas went on. "In the coming days, working with your cooperation, we shall establish a council to conduct the affairs of government on our world. Until then I am imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the city of Haven. This is necessary because certain lawless elements of our society will no doubt try to take advantage of the current situation. The men of my Special Group shall deal with them. In addition—" He paused dramatically.

"—We have reason to believe some of the demon aliens might still be alive and hiding in caves and swamps. Have no fear. Archbishop General Lambsblood and his troops will find them and wipe them out.

"Fellow citizens, friends, Kingdomites!" de Tomas went on, raising his arms.

"Leave this hall now in an orderly manner, in peace, as the Great Buddha, the Prophet Mohammed, and your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would have mankind live and love one another, and in the complete confidence that your lives are safe and your affairs unimpeded in any way! Return to your homes! Tomorrow I shall address the entire world and we shall all march forward, arm in arm, toward peace and reconstruction!"

Reluctantly at first, as if only partly absorbing what de Tomas had just announced, people began to stand. After a few moments, as the true impact of what de Tomas had said sunk in, they began filing in an orderly manner toward the exits.

SG men seized the five leaders and hauled them to their feet. Manacles were placed on their wrists.

"Goddamn hell!" Jayben Spears cursed quietly. He began elbowing his way through the crowd toward de Tomas, who stood on the dais giving his lieutenants orders. "De Tomas!" Spears shouted. "A word! A word!"

"Should I throw him out?" an Overstormer asked.

De Tomas shook his head. "Mr. Ambassador!" He turned and greeted Spears affably. "I thought I saw you sitting way back there." He gestured for two enlisted SG men to help Spears up onto the dais, but Spears shook them off angrily and mounted the stairs on his own.

"De Tomas, I'd like a word with you in private, please," Spears gasped, out of breath not from the exercise, but because of his anger.

De Tomas nodded toward an alcove off to one side. He reached out to take Spears by the elbow, but the ambassador shook off the hand with a snort and stomped off into the alcove. There, he turned and faced de Tomas. "You fuck! You rotten shit! Do you think I don't see what you're doing here!" Spears began.

"My, my, Mr. Ambassador, such language from a diplomat!"

Spears caught his breath, controlling himself. "You are nothing more than a murderer, de Tomas, and you are creating a police state here."

De Tomas only shrugged. "Kingdom has always been a police state, or hadn't you noticed?"

De Tomas's easy cynicism and calm further infuriated Jayben Spears. "You bastard!" Spears hissed, shoving a forefinger into de Tomas's face. "You have gone too far now, and I am going to—owww!" De Tomas reached out and seized Spears's wrist, squeezing it in an iron grip. He easily forced the older man backward and down onto a small settee set in one corner of the alcove.

"Now you listen to me," de Tomas said, letting go of Spears's wrist. "This is an internal affair and you have no authority here. Furthermore, Spears, don't take that high and mighty tone with me. You Confederation government people have always put your interests before those of the member worlds, and you personally, Spears, despised those fools out there, despised everything about this world. If you had your way, you'd have disposed of the leaders a long time ago. Now my advice to you is to get your ass back to Interstellar City and keep it there."

Spears, massaging his wrist, glared up at de Tomas. "I'm filing a report on you,"

he gasped, "and I'm recommending a police force be sent here to restore order to this place." But even as he said it, Jayben Spears knew his threat was a hollow one.

De Tomas was right—he despised the Kingdomites, and what was happening now was a purely internal affair. Even if the Confederation dispatched a fact-finding mission to Kingdom, de Tomas could easily handle their inquiries.

"A report on me?" De Tomas laughed. "Be my guest, Mr. Ambassador! But be assured, I am filing one on you, and you shall be removed subsequently from your post."

"Mr. Ambassador! Mr. Ambassador!" someone shouted. It was Carlisle. Two SG

men were restraining him.

"Release him!" de Tomas said, stepping aside to let Spears out. "The Ambassador and I have concluded our discussion." He smiled and bowed at Spears.

"What happened to your wrist?" Prentiss asked Spears as they rode back to Interstellar City.

"Nothing," Spears answered, then hid his bruised hand inside his coat. They drove in silence for a while. "Prentiss, you know what has just happened, don't you?"

Prentiss nodded. Spears sighed. "I should never have accepted this assignment. I'm powerless to do anything now but file reports that will be ignored. I think I've reached the end of the line."

"He did that?" Prentiss meant Spears's injured wrist.

"Yeah, I think he broke the goddamned thing," Spears said, taking his hand from his coat. "I'm lucky he didn't haul me off to Wayvelsburg. Be warned: don't shake your finger in de Tomas's face, Prentiss."

Carlisle pulled over and stopped the landcar. All around them, up and down the street, which had been mostly cleared of rubble, people were celebrating. "They don't know what they're in for, do they?" Carlisle asked.

"Oh, they don't care, Prentiss. The lives of ordinary people in a dictatorship are seldom affected by the politics of tyranny, so long as they have their bread and circuses. These people are used to obeying somebody, whether it's their mullahs, their priests, their whatnots. A man like this de Tomas will have them believing he's a god in no time."

"Do you really believe that, sir?"

Spears looked at his station chief. "Nah. That's just the way I'm feeling right now."

"Sir, I want to tell you, you are the bravest and most principled man I've ever served under. I wish you'd stay on here. I really do."

Spears looked at Carlisle. "Well, thank you, Prentiss," he replied, his voice husky.

"I—well, let's go back to the embassy and have a couple of drinks and we'll think about it."

Carlisle smiled and moved the car back onto the street.

"Goddamn, Prentiss," Spears said, holding up his wrist, flexing his fingers experimentally. "I guess it's not broken after all. Probably just sprained. Now I really do owe that sonofabitch payback!"

The assembled ministers were slaughtered in the Great Hall where they sat, gunned down by the men of the Special Group, and then the hall was sealed. The five Ecumenical Leaders, however, were taken back to Wayvelsberg and executed slowly in a soundproof chamber, hung from hooks in the ceiling of the room until the life wheezed out of them. The proceedings were filmed as each man struggled for breath at the end. The bodies were burned afterward.

There would be no public trial of the leaders. In the events that were to come on the world known as the Kingdom of Yaweh and His Saints and Their Apostles, no one would ever notice.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"Are we ready, my dear Gorman?" de Tomas asked.

"We are, sir," the Senior Stormleader replied. He had never seen de Tomas in such a jovial mood. The coup had been a total success—surprisingly easy, in fact—but that was not the only reason the new ruler of Kingdom was so excited. He was about to make his first public address. Until then, few Kingdomites had known much about Dominic de Tomas personally, although every child knew what the Collegium stood for and what it did. But all that had changed. He was confident that they would not only come to know him well, but love him.

When de Tomas had announced his intention of making a public announcement of the coup, Herten Gorman had been opposed to the idea. "Do you think that is wise, ah, I mean necessary, sir?" he'd said. The thought of de Tomas going on camera before the entire world struck him as ludicrous, possibly even dangerous to the success of their recent coup. His sallow complexion and saturnine features marked de Tomas for what he really was—an inquisitor and an assassin. Like most such men, he was not photogenic.

"And why, my dear Herten, do you think a public address on this most auspicious occasion would be unwise or unnecessary?" De Tomas smiled sardonically.

"Well . . ."

"I want you to meet someone." At a signal, the door to an outer office opened and a trim young female walked in followed by two more young women. "Senior Stormleader Gorman, meet Gelli Alois and her assistants."

Astonished, Gorman rose, bowed politely, and took the young woman's hand in his. "Charmed, I am sure, miss," he said, brushing his lips lightly over the back of her well-manicured hand. She smiled up at the senior stormleader coquettishly.

Gorman, even out of uniform, was a handsome man.

"I am charmed likewise, Senior Stormleader. These are my assistants, Miss Rauber and Miss Madel." The two women bowed.

"Ladies, set up your equipment and start to work. Herten, these ladies were lately special assistants to that miserable pulpit thumper, Ralphy Bruce Preachintent. They were his makeup artists. They now work for me. Ladies, you may commence."

Before Gorman's eyes the three women began the transformation of Dominic de Tomas. They were done within the hour. As they stood back, admiring their work, Gorman could not resist clapping his hands enthusiastically. Even in the comparatively dim indoor lighting of de Tomas's den, his face glowed with radiant good-natured charm, so skillfully had the women applied their powders and rouges; his hair had been trimmed neatly and restyled carefully to reduce the length of his jaw, which ordinarily gave him a distinctly horsey look. The roseate glow of his skin actually made him look younger and vital, and brimming with good spirits.

"Well, what do you think?" de Tomas asked at last.

"I think they should go to work on me next," Gorman answered, and they all laughed. The way Gelli Alois tossed her head and winked at the senior stormleader, it was clear that she would like the opportunity to show him what she could do.

The hour had arrived. In the foyer, camera crews were setting up and technicians bustled everywhere. De Tomas was going to make his broadcast right in front of Heinrich the Fowler—the ancient unifier of the Germanic peoples revered by the Special Group as their hero.

De Tomas was in a jolly mood, joking with the technicians. Once again, Gorman was surprised. He'd never seen de Tomas like this. People were actually responding to him as he moved among them, joking with one person here, slapping another on the back there, asking questions about the broadcast equipment, bantering and making small talk. He remembered de Tomas in the torture chamber and wondered how anyone could achieve and maintain such a contrast as his leader was demonstrating just then.

Then Gorman realized that de Tomas lived in two worlds he carefully kept apart.

One was the world of his fantasy—Dean of the Collegium and, now, the supreme political power in the world, where he was endowed with unlimited power to shape and change, where his will held sway over that of everyone else who came within his sphere. In the other world, de Tomas was the avuncular, cosmopolitan man of the people, charming and witty, sincere, the arbiter of all the problems of the "little"

people of the world, a man to be respected and loved, but mostly loved. Gorman smiled. He had no doubt now that de Tomas would convey his public image with complete success. The only question was, which of his worlds was the fantasy and which the real?

De Tomas took his place behind the ornate, old-fashioned desk that had been brought into the foyer. Gelli Alois and her assistants fluttered around him, making minor adjustments to his makeup. At last he nodded to the technician in charge, who called for silence. At a nod from his leader, Gorman came to attention and shouted,

"Ah-TEN-HUT!" The Lifeguards who had been standing at parade rest around the walls of the foyer crashed to the position of attention. All was silent in the great hall.

"One, two, three," the chief technician whispered, then pointed a rigid forefinger at the Special Group bandleader. The stirring first bars of Franz Lizst's "Les Preludes"

echoed throughout the vast chamber. Then, as the music died away, Dominic de Tomas began to speak.

"My friends," he said gravely, "I have the most momentous news for every man, woman, and child in the world." As de Tomas spoke, Gorman slowly became convinced that his leader meant every word he was saying, though he knew he should have known better.

"Our glorious military forces, under the brilliant leadership of that valiant old soldier, Archbishop General Lambsblood, have succeeded at long last in expelling the demon invaders from our world. The demons are in full retreat and our forces are pursuing them.