Sword of the Lamb (21 page)

“All right, Rich, but
you
must understand if I worry about you. What exactly are your ‘means’ of entering compounds unofficially?”

Rich felt a brief mental disequilibrium. He knew its cause, and it didn’t bother him except that it would be evident to Alexand in a fleeting blankness of expression. Then he surrendered to a sigh of relief at the chime of the pager.

Alexand rose, his frown of annoyance hiding something close to dread. “Damn. That means Mother and Father are ready to leave.” He went to the dressing room and emerged with his cloak, tossing it carelessly around his shoulders. “Don’t wait up for me. It will undoubtedly be a long night.”

Rich activated the chair and accompanied him to the door. “It will only
seem
long to you. I’ll probably be awake anyway when you return. Alex . . .” He paused, at a loss for words. So little time, and so much to be said; so much that couldn’t be put into words.

Alexand reached out for his hand. “If you aren’t awake, I’ll roust you out. After all, tomorrow my incarceration resumes.”

“I’ll be awake.”

“
Satya
!”

But the Shepherd was gone, back into the compound; the grate over the storm drain barred an empty darkness. Rich sagged against the compound wall. It seemed to be shaking, and he stared across the pedway channel to the opposite wall, then above to the elevated ’ways, rattling with the pounding footfalls of squads of brown-and-green-clad Selasid guards rushing toward the compound gates at the head of the channel. The walls would fall, he’d be trapped, buried alive. . . .

Screaming—or was it only the sirens shrieking in mad disharmony? No, he
could
hear the screams of agony and terror from behind the walls. Or perhaps they were only echoes out of his memory.

“Oh, Holy God . . . help me. . . . Alex, where . . .”

He couldn’t even hear his own words in the rending roar of sound—men and machines pounding toward the compound, making devastation of disaster. It was so dark, and yet it had been midafternoon when he sat in Satva’s chapel only . . .

Only minutes ago?

Smoke. It was the smoke that eclipsed the light, welling out over the walls, pooling in this narrow channel. He was coughing, eyes burning, running with tears. The transit plaza at the open end of the channel—he must reach it somehow. His hands shook on the grips of the crutches. They were already on maximum lift, but his muscles were trembling uncontrollably. He lurched a few steps toward the plaza, staggered against the wall. Dark shapes were moving toward him; at first he couldn’t make sense of them. A Conpol squad, an agglomeration of black shapes, white helmets bobbing in the haze. They passed him as if he didn’t exist, and he himself wasn’t sure of his own existence except for the pain that bound every shivering muscle.

He slid down against the wall, his legs wouldn’t hold him; he crouched there, fumbling under his cloak for his pocketcom. He couldn’t die here.

Alexand . . . help me. . . .

No. Fenn. It was Fenn Lacroy’s voice he heard now faintly on the ’com. It took so long to explain, to get the words out and make them understandable.

But he would be here. Fenn would come, would help him.

Rich huddled against the wall, racked with pain and grief. Satva . . . the old man would never survive this.

But Richard Lamb would. Alexand was coming.

No—Fenn. Fenn was coming.

Alexand was in Sidny, hundreds of kilometers away.

Outside the control booth the darkness was absolute except for the red and blue lights weaving their intricate patterns. The only sounds were the humming and ticking of instruments, and at irregular intervals voices emerging from the earpiece of his transceiver headset, and the sound of his own voice as he spoke into the disk connected to it by a fine, curved rod and poised a few centimeters from his lips. In the black void outside, the lights had definite forms: the bristling spheres of deep-space Troop Carrier Corsairs, the flagships; the elongated shark-shapes of Corvets, spiked along their flanks with X
⁷
gun-mounts; the sleek, darting arrows of Falcons. Alexand’s voice was quiet, as mechanical as the instruments surrounding him.

“Rank 2 Falcons, deploy on tangent vectors. Rank 3, hold your positions relative flagship.” His eyes flicked up from the stat screens as ten red lights moved under the impetus of his command. A voice buzzed in his ears even as he saw the flash of white light.

“Falcon R2-A on line to Red flagship. R2-C is hit.”

A V-shaped wedge of lights was taking shape near the Blue Corsair flagship. Alexand glanced at the position screen and the navcomp board and spoke into the mike again.

“Red flagship to Corvets 2,3, and 6. Move out at arc vectors 45°/30°/70° RF. Stand by for attack on Blue Falcon wedge. F-R2-A, close in on Corvets in guard formation at Blue flagship.” The blue wedge was moving toward the red flagship, but the red Corvets were arcing behind and holding. “Rank 3 Falcons, move out to radial shield formation at fifty kilometers RF. F-R3-A, prepare to close with Blue attack wedge on my order. Flagship artillery, deploy mine screen at forty kilometer radius.” He looked up and saw the tiny fireflies exploding from the Red flagship.

Then another voice, “F-R3-A on line to Red flagship. Blue Falcon attack wedge now within range.”

“Stand by, R3-A. Flagship to Falcon Rank I and Corvets 1, 5, and 9. Close in on Blue flagship. Fire at will.” A series of white flashes erupted in the darkness. “Hold strike reports until further notice.”

The Blue flagship was under attack, but its protective complement of Falcons was almost entirely concentrated in the attack wedge aimed at the Red flagship. If the Blue commander ordered a retreat, Alexand knew his forces would be dangerously divided. He smiled faintly as the wedge drove steadily toward the Red flagship. No retreat would be ordered; his strategy was based on that assumption.

“Flagship to F-R3-A. Close in on Blue wedge. Corvets 2, 3, and 6, proceed with flanking attack. Falcon Rank 2, hold your positions.” He paused, watching the lights. The Blue wedge was under heavy attack, but it didn’t turn back. “R2-A, deploy three Falcons to support attack on Blue flagship. You will hold your position with the remaining two Falcons. Flagship open for strike reports.”

He listened intently, his eyes shifting constantly from the monitors to the lights. The mine screen was taking its toll now, and the Blue wedge was crumbling. A moment later he saw a white flash at the Blue flagship and the strike reports were overridden by another voice.

“Red Corvet 5 to flagship. Blue flagship has been hit.”

Alexand leaned back, taking a deep breath. The sound screen clicked off, and he heard a murmur of comment; the holojector chamber became only an open space as the lights came on, a circular area surrounded by a row of seats occupied by thirty black-uniformed cadets. He removed his headset and looked across the circle to the other control booth—to the “enemy.”

From the beginning, Cornel Tomas Vincen had taken a sardonic delight in pitting his two high born students against each other at every opportunity. Again, Alexand found himself matching wits with Karlis Selasis.

Cornel Vincen rose from his monitoring console midway on the circle between Alexand and Karlis.

“Well, Corpral Woolf, that was rather well executed. Corpral Selasis, I hope you’re aware of the error that gave Woolf his advantage?”

Karlis shot a venomous glance across to Alexand, then turned to Vincen attentively. “Of course, sir.”

“And your error, Corpral?”

“Uh—well, I assume you mean the . . . attack wedge.”

“Exactly. You left your flagship exposed. However—” He turned to Alexand. “You took a great risk, Corpral. Had Selasis elected to retreat, most of your ships would’ve been trapped between his flagship and the Falcon wedge.”

Alexand only nodded respectfully. “Yes, sir.”

Vincen addressed the class as a whole now. “This was a relatively simple exercise: two forces of equal armament in an open field. The problem was at the outset in that the Blue forces were lying in ambush for Red’s emergence from SynchShift. Corpral Woolf’s gambit in sending the Scout out of SS first was good, but I might add seldom effective in actual battle conditions.”

Alexand took note of that last phrase, and it had a hollow ring. Confleet had no enemies to engage on this scale or on these terms. It was all a game, a dogmatized fallacy that served no purpose except its own perpetuation.

“But all factors considered,” Vincen was saying, “both contenders in this exercise conducted themselves well. Now, our next exercise—” He stopped, frowning in annoyance at a soft buzz. He took out his pocketcom. “Cornel Vincen on line.”

The cadets concentrated more attention on this interruption than on his previous remarks, and when Vincen looked across at Alexand, their eyes also shifted to him.

“Yes, of course. I’ll send him down immediately.” Alexand felt a premonitory chill as Vincen put away his ’com, paused a moment, then said, “Corpral Woolf, there’s an emergency message for you in the comcenter. Report immediately to Leftant Ames.”

Alexand came to his feet and somehow managed to bring his right hand to his left shoulder in a salute and get out the expected, “Yes, sir.”

It took more time to traverse the few kilometers from the Confleet IP port in Concordia to the Estate than it had to reach the city from Sidny. Hilding was waiting at the port with a House Faeton-limo and had an express grid priority clearance, but the tangle of traffic still kept them hovering with no forward movement for minutes at a time.

Hilding glanced back into the passenger compartment. “I’m sorry, my lord. There’s been an uprising, you know. The Selasid Estate compounds.”

Alexand only stared resentfully out the window at the snarled confusion, noting the high concentration of black Conpol ’cars. The uprising was of no interest to him except that it was responsible for this delay.

His father’s message had been terse and to the point. Rich had collapsed at the University this afternoon. Alexand had been granted an emergency leave, and Confleet was providing transportation to Concordia.

Collapsed. What did that mean?

But Alexand hadn’t asked for an explanation. His only thought had been to get home to Rich as quickly as possible, but it was nearly dark when Hilding set the Faeton down on the private roof off the family wing. Alexand didn’t expect anyone to be waiting for him there, and particularly not Fenn Lacroy. But it was Fenn who hurried toward him as he left the ’car. Alexand waited for him, finding a new source of anxiety in his tense posture and worried frown.

“Fenn, how is Rich?”

Lacroy glanced back at the guards at the entry, keeping his voice low. “He’ll recover, my lord, but he wanted me to tell you what happened. Rich didn’t tell your parents the whole story. He didn’t want to—to worry them.”

“
What
whole story? What happened?”

Lacroy hesitated; he seemed to have a hard time putting the words together. “Well, it’s true he ’commed me to pick him up this afternoon when he . . . got sick, but he wasn’t at the University. He was outside the Selasid compound where the riots broke out.”

“Fenn, was he . . . inside the compound when the uprising began?”

He nodded bleakly. “Yes, my lord. The Bonds got him out safely before the compound was sealed off, but it was . . .” He averted his eyes, his ruddy features unnaturally pale. “He—he just seemed to break down once I got him into the ’car. He was . . . weeping.”

Alexand had to fight the urge to double over, as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach. He turned blindly toward the entry, almost stumbling in his haste and with the dizziness that made the ground move under his feet. He hardly gave the doors time to open, and a hapless guard had to move quickly to avoid a collision, nor did his pace abate until he turned into the corridor on which the anteroom into his and Rich’s suites opened.

The crowd gathered there making him pause, if only briefly. They were all Bonds, perhaps twenty of them, waiting silently, patiently. He recognized Tuck, and Gillis, Rich’s valet. And Harlequin sitting cross-legged against the wall, the electroharp in his lap, his hands resting on the mute strings. None of them spoke, or seemed to move; they only watched Alexand pass with eyes full of silent questions.

In Rich’s room he stopped short, wondering at the pressing quiet. His parents were standing near the bed, and Dr. Stel was at Rich’s side, but at first Alexand was only aware of his brother, who lay motionless, eyes closed, his arms stretched out at his sides; his long, graceful hands seemed too frail to hold onto life.

Alexand looked over at his parents, standing arm in arm. Phillip Woolf seemed outwardly unmoved, but the pain lurked behind his disciplined features. It was in his mother’s face, too, and not so well hidden. Alexand went to her and held her in his arms as she’d held him when he was a child.

“Mother, I’m sorry.”

She nodded, looking up at him with clouded eyes. “Thank the God you’re here. He was asking for you.”

If Woolf’s smile lacked warmth, it was only because of his distraction, an inward bewilderment.

“Alex, did you have any trouble getting here?”

“Some. Conpol declared an emergency state.”

“What? Oh—-yes, the Selasid uprising.” He showed no hint of awareness that it had anything to do with Rich’s collapse.

Alexand looked over at Rich and asked, “What is Dr. Stel’s diagnosis?”

Woolf’s shoulders moved in a half shrug. “Nervous strain and exhaustion. He’s been pushing himself too hard with his work.” He glanced at Alexand. “Don’t mistake me, I’m glad for his interest in his studies, but sometimes I wish he wouldn’t take it quite so seriously.” He seemed about to add more, then looked at the door, frowning vaguely. “Are those Bonds still holding vigil in the hall?”

Vigil. An apt term, yet there was a caustic edge to it.

Alexand said, “Yes, they’re still there.”

“Phillip . . .” Elise reached out for his hand. “Don’t send them away. You know how they feel about Rich.”

After a moment he managed a smile for her. “Yes, of course, darling.”

Alexand turned and crossed to the bed, and Rich stirred, a tenuous moan escaping him.

Dr. Stel said, “I’ve given him a light sedative. I can’t give him too much; he’s too close to shock.”

Alexand eased down on the side of the bed, numbed at Rich’s deathly pallor, the feverish brilliance of his eyes when they opened. His hand moved uncertainly, seeking Alexand’s.

“Alex . . . you’re here.”

“I’m here.”

Rich nodded, his head turning against the pillow as his eyes closed again.

“A Testing . . . the Holy Mezion tests the Blessed to . . .”

“Rich?”

There was no answer. He sank again into sleep.