The Master of Muscigny (The First Admiral Series Book 5) (10 page)

It was just another one of those unexpected things that happened on operations. But, it was another headache that Gummell felt he did not need. Seven local ruffians out for some vicious entertainment were one such headache. The orders from First Admiral Caudwell were clear, no one was to be killed unless in dire emergency. The orders also instructed as few witnesses as possible to avoid awkward questions. A leper colony was not something that would be unduly missed by the local population. There might be a bit of head scratching and local speculation amongst the gossips, but the most likely explanation would be that they all just moved away in the night. Now, there were seven young men who could identify the presence of the Landing Troopers at the time of the lepers’ disappearance. Gummell knew that one or two witnesses would be dismissed as cranks or lunatics, but seven was an entirely different story.

“Stand by!” a female called from the Troop Transport. “First Carrier coming up!”

Moments later, a host of Integration and Medical Technicians began to scramble down the ramps to receive the first of the lepers. The first Personnel Carrier zipped up the rocky slope, the anti-gravity generator humming quietly, and pivoted to allow access to the rear ramp. Some of the escorting Technicians vaulted over the high sides of the Carrier to assist with the unloading as the rear ramp lowered and the first lepers were helped down by strong, willing hands.

Daniel noticed several of the lepers still clutched their bowls and bread close to their chests as they were scanned once more. The Medical Technicians made sure that no one had been missed with the anti-bacterial medication before allowing them onto the Troop Transport. Once given the all-clear, they were escorted, shuffling slowly, up the ramp of the Troop Transport to further waiting help. As Daniel continued to watch, one of the shuffling lepers on the ramp stumbled.

Instinctively, Daniel stepped forward and caught the falling figure’s arm, preventing a catastrophic fall from the ramp.

“Steady there friend,” Daniel said as the escorting Technician recovered the figure.

“God bless you, Daniel,” a soft female voice said as the figure drew the black shawl over her disfigured face.

“And, God bless you, Tirza,” Daniel smiled softly.

As the figure disappeared into the Troop Transport, Daniel felt a strange mixture of happiness that Tirza was going to the hospital these creatures had created, and the sadness that he would miss Tirza and her quiet friendship.

And, as Tirza disappeared, another Personnel Carrier stopped in front of Gummell, this one driven by a Landing Trooper.

“Right, on your feet you lot!” the Trooper ordered, clambering from the driving seat over into the well of the vehicle as the rear ramp lowered. “Out, the lot of you!” he barked.

Seven scruffy and unkempt young adult male figures rose to their feet in the well of the Personnel Carrier, their arms pinioned to their sides with the force-shielding restraints that had been applied by the Troopers at the checkpoint.

“Come on, move,” the Trooper ordered applying his boot to the backside of the prisoner teetering on the edge of the ramp. The helpless, bound prisoner, a large muscular young man, tumbled forwards onto his face on the ramp before being hauled to his feet by two other Troopers and shoved before Gummell.

Held by the restraints at the wrist, elbow and upper arms, the surly looking young man stared with defiance at this new creature, who at least had a face. The Landing Troopers had orders to remain visored at all times, and so this was the first face he had seen of the strange creatures.

For a moment, Gummell scrutinised the powerfully built young man as his cohorts were unloaded from the Personnel Carrier with no little kindness, and was met with the insolent stare of a creature who was not afraid of anything.

“Report!” Gummell barked to the Landing Trooper from the Personnel Carrier.

“Checkpoint Five, sir, Trooper Garak reporting,” the Landing Trooper snapped to attention. “Standing watch at Checkpoint Five, sir, when these…individuals…approached from the west, sir, we challenged them to return from whence they had come, in accordance with standing orders, whereupon the leader, this one, sir, decided to make an issue of it with Sergeant Zill by drawing a weapon, sir,” the Trooper continued throwing a short dagger onto the ground.

“Continue, Trooper Garak,”

“As this one here attacked Sergeant Zill, his comrades also drew weapons and attacked the other members of the section. We were forced to defend ourselves, disarm our attackers and take them into custody, SIR!”

With a sigh, Gummell visualised the short, brutal and viciously one-sided battle that was described by the Trooper as ‘disarming our attackers’ and ‘taking them into custody’. The veracity of the image was confirmed by the cuts and bruises on the other young men brought before him.

“Name?” Gummell asked the leader of the group.

“Get lost!” the muscular youth replied with a defiant hiss.

“Answer the Officer!” Trooper Garak snarled jamming the spindly stock of his seven-barrelled pulsar rifle heavily into the youth’s midriff, doubling him over with a loud gasp. Gasping with pain, the muscular youth was hauled to his feet once again.

“We’ll try that again, name?”

“I said get lost,” the youth replied, and braced for another strike as Garak raised the pulsar rifle once more.

“Wait!” Daniel called out from behind Gummell causing Garak to pause. “His name is Lothar.”

“You!” Lothar snarled at Daniel. “I should have known that you were behind all this leper-lover.”

“Lothar, don’t be a fool. These creatures have flying ships and can light up the darkness, they can kill you in the blink of an eye...”

“Shut up leper-lover, keep your tall stories for frightening your leper friends. I’ll deal with you when your friends are gone.”

“What are you doing here at this time of the morning, Lothar, don’t you have work or a family to look after?” Gummell asked.

“Go chase yourself,”

“Interrogation Disk,” Gummell ordered.

Trooper Garak reached into the pocket of his overall uniform and produced a small circular piece of black metal, which he pressed onto Lothar’s right temple just behind the eye. Originally designed to elicit information from enemy soldiers newly captured on the battlefield about their comrades’ dispositions, the Interrogation Disk was a highly efficient synapse stimulator.

It detected when someone was telling lies or being evasive by reading their biometric signs and then delivering a sharp, painful burst of Kathalan radiation which stimulated the nerve connections in the brain to produce an unbearable agony.

“Name?” Gummell began again.

“I said...AAAAAARGH!” Lothar began defiantly as the Disk kicked in.

With a loud shriek, Lothar fell to the ground feeling as if his head were being pierced by a million red-hot needles. Three seconds later, the Disk deactivated leaving Lothar gasping and sweating despite the early morning chill.

“I said name?”

“Go to….AAAAAARGH!!”

On the ground, Lothar screamed and began to thrash, his arms still pinioned, as he felt that his head was about to explode. After three seconds of agony, the disk deactivated once again.

“The next one will kill you. Name?”

“Lothar,” the youth replied with a gasp.

“Better! What were you doing here, Lothar?”

“We came to get something to eat and have a bit of fun with the leper-lover.”

“What do you work as?”

“We don’t work, we steal what we can and hide from the soldiers.”

“What about your family? Do they know that you’re a thief?”

“Don’t have a family, mother’s dead, no idea who my father is.”

“What about the rest of you? Are you all orphans too?”

To a chorus of ‘yes, sir’ and terrified nods, the other six young men all indicated that they had no family either.

“Put them in the Transport,” Gummell ordered. “We’ll take them with us, well done Trooper Garak,” he praised and dismissed the visored Trooper.

“Are you taking them to the hospital, too?” Daniel asked as the seven pinioned young men were dragged and driven towards the Troop Transporter.

“No, we’ll give them a chance to do something productive with their lives.”

“Sir, we’re just loading the last of them into the Transport,” an Integration Technician announced as Gummell approached the big, light-blue ship.

“Good,” Gummell replied, pleased that the operation had gone off with very few hitches. “Get the dead loaded onto one of the Med-Evacs, and then get everyone out of here.”

“Sir!”

Down in the colony, Daniel saw another black Shuttle lifting off. The dead were leaving.

Landing Troopers were running back to the other shuttles from their perimeter duties as the empty Personnel Carrier was loaded back into the transport.

Climbing determinedly up the ramp, Gummell scanned the area to make sure there was no trace of their ever having been there as the Personnel Carrier with the Troopers from Checkpoint Five returned. Climbing into the Transport, Gummell turned to Daniel as the ramp was drawn back into the ship. The heavy anti-gravity generator began to whine as Gummell raised his hand to Daniel.

Raising his hand in reply, Daniel felt the disappointment of not being able to go and see the marvellous hospital where his many friends in the colony would now be living. Turning away, Daniel thought that the sadness would overwhelm him, when he heard a loud whistle from behind him over the rising whine of the slowly lifting Transport.

“Come on, you young fool!” a grinning Gummell beckoned to Daniel from the open hatch of the transport.

With a broad smile, and a heart leaping with joy, Daniel dashed towards the rising ship and flung himself at the hatch. Gummell caught Daniel’s arms as he tried to wriggle the lower half of his body over the lip of the hatch. For a moment, Daniel felt like he was going to fall back out again. But another hand caught the waistband of his breeches and hauled him bodily into the ship. Sprawling on the cold, hard deck floor, Daniel gasped with exertion and delight as the hatch snapped closed behind him.

“And, tomorrow, my young friend, we’re going to come back and see if any more lepers have turned up,” Gummell promised, standing over the sprawling Daniel.

With a smile, Daniel rolled onto his back to try to catch his breath amidst the chaos of the Landing Bay.

Gummell, meanwhile, was starting to review some of the initial reports from the Medical personnel. Looking over at the gasping Daniel, Gummell smiled to himself and considered that sometimes in life; when you are scrabbling through the dirt, disease and corruption of the universe and all the terrible things it has to offer...

Sometimes, just sometimes, you find a diamond.

Planet Geminus - The Citadel, Damascus, March 30
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Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, was a man of simple tastes.

The robes and finery that he wore in public were replaced by plainer and less cumbersome items of clothing in his private life. The simple black robe that he wore in private allowed him to shrug off the cares of daily life and of ruling an empire that stretched from the borders of Nubia to the Armenian mountains. In the quiet seclusion of his Private Apartments, the Sultan tended to injured birds in large wooden cages; helping him to contemplate the affairs of state. In a time of constant killing, torture and bloodshed, the simple pleasure of healing other creatures helped to settle his already troubled mind.

“Great Sultan,” the familiar voice of Grand Vizier Mustapha broke through the trilling of injured songbirds, “messages from our spies in Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem, the Sultan sighed inwardly; the thorn in his flesh, the itch that could not be scratched. His promise to recapture Jerusalem from the Christian invaders had still not been fulfilled. But time, he knew, would be on his side. The King of Jerusalem, Baldwin, would not live for long. The Christian King would produce no heirs, and with his death, the kingdom would descend into civil war as the Lords squabbled, bickered and slaughtered each other for the prize of an empty crown. When the fighting was over and the dust had settled, the Sultan knew that he could simply march his army into Jerusalem, swat aside what was left of their armies and retake the holy city for Islam. Then, he could die a happy man.

“What of them?” the Sultan asked, his attention taken by a finch with a damaged foot.

“Strange messages, Great Sultan.”

“Is Baldwin dead?”

“No, Great Sultan, the news is most troubling.”

“Well, speak!” Saladin demanded, taking a dead grub from the small wooden dish in his hand to feed the finch.

“Our spies say that Baldwin is cured of his leprosy, by a strange physician from a ship that fell from the sky.”

“Mustapha! Why do you report to me this nonsense?” He watched the finch greedily gobble the grub down.

“But, Great Sultan, it is from one of our most reliable informers…”

“It is nonsense!” Saladin barked, turning to scold the kneeling figure of his most trusted advisor. “These men send us fantasies and take our gold for nothing but to squander on women and hashish!”

“But, Great Sultan, the report of the strange ship falling from the sky matches with the falling star that the Astrologers saw last night.”

“Old women and fools!” Saladin snapped, throwing the rest of the grubs into the bird cage in anger and storming off into his bed chamber.

“Great Sultan, our spies in the Royal Palace say that the strangers who fell from the sky brought great wealth to Jerusalem in gold and silver and jewels,” the Vizier protested, scrabbling to his feet to follow his angry master.

“Tell me no more of these ravings, Mustapha!”

“See for yourself Great Sultan,” the Vizier held out the long scraps of parchment that had been plucked from the legs of pigeons that had flown from Jerusalem that morning. “These are reliable men, Great Sultan, they do not make up stories.”

Grabbing the parchments, Saladin began to read.

“A ship fell from the sky in flames...” he read aloud, discarding the first message with scorn.

“...the strangers brought chests of gold, silver, diamonds and rubies…” the second parchment was cast aside.

“…the physician cured the crippled left arm of Marc of Ibein,” Saladin suddenly paused as he scanned the third parchment.

“Marc of Ibelin,” Saladin said softly, remembering the young Christian knight with the damaged left arm he had met during a parley after a battle on the Egyptian border. “The son of Jacques of Ibelin has a crippled left arm.” Saladin’s mind raced at the implications.

Not even one of Mustapha’s spies had the wit or the brains to create a fantasy that would give the name of a brave, young knight known to the Sultan. The detail was accurate, and so the message must have a grain of truth to it, Saladin considered. Picking up the discarded messages, Saladin carried them over to the table in the corner of his bed chamber, where reports and parchments were strewn across its top. Setting down the long thin parchments, Saladin began to read them all carefully.

“Great Sultan…” Mustapha interrupted his chain of thought.

“Shush! Be silent,” Saladin admonished the Vizier quietly as he tried to piece together what the seemingly fantastical messages were saying.

“The ship that fell from the sky in flames...” Saladin mumbled to himself. “The Astrologers see a falling star,” he added as he rifled through the pigeon messages. “They bring gifts of gold, silver, diamonds and rubies… A bribe or a delivery from their homelands... a very rich delivery… to raise an army perhaps?” he muttered, his mind working to make sense of the puzzle.

“Great Sultan?” Mustapha tried to understand what his master was saying.

“The physician cured the crippled left arm of Marc of Ibelin,” Saladin mumbled again, the message troubling him, “...then the physician lifted the curse of leprosy from the King.”

Pacing across the bed chamber, Saladin rubbed his forehead as he contemplated what the messages could really mean. There had to be some truth in them, but what was it? Saladin cudgelled his wits. The wound on young Marc had been serious enough for him to lose the power of his left arm. If a physician could heal that, then they might well have the know-how to cure leprosy. And, if Baldwin’s leprosy had been cured, he would be fit and well enough to start campaigning again with his army.

“Mustapha, bring me the Court Physician,” Saladin ordered. “Then bring me commander Selim and start asking the prisoners about Marc of Ibelin. Torture them if you have to.”

“Great Sultan?”

“Just do it! And, get me more information from those worthless dogs in Jerusalem!”

If Baldwin was cured, Saladin considered anxiously, the dream of a triumphal march into a re-captured Jerusalem would be nothing more than a pipe dream. The nobles would rebel against his rule if he could not deliver on his promise.

And, his life would be worth nothing.