Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (29 page)

“Stop it! Why are you doing this?”

Sue tried to escape, but she was held in place with fiendish might as Callas whispered to her in a normal voice, “There’s something I’d like to ask you. How do you think I feel about the grand duke?”

“That’s silly . . . Surely you must love such a—”

“I hate him,” Callas said softly. “The man who turned me into a killer, the man who forced a merciful mother to sell out her own daughter, the man who never noticed my love for him, or if he did notice never returned even an iota of those feelings—what else could I do but hate him?”

Now revealed, the emotions that had smoldered in her heart of ice bore down on Sue like a wildfire.

“I thought you were just like me,” Callas whispered in the ear of the girl whose fears had been revived. “Thought you were like us in the old days—five thousand years ago. I thought you were a human scared of the Nobility and unable to do anything but scamper about. And as you fled, I thought you’d hate the Nobility more than anyone.”

“That. . . was a long time ago.”

Delivered in robotic fashion, Sue’s reply made Callas grin.

“A long time ago? A long time, as in five thousand years? You were a foe of the Nobility until the day before yesterday! And all it took was some persuasion on the part of your older brother to make you love the grand duke—that I can’t stand for. No matter what the grand duke may do to me later, I’m going to deal with you myself right here. Now, listen to my song.”

The deadly words were borne on a melody that tried to fill the girl’s trembling ear.

Just before it could, Callas felt a pall of terror take over her face and turned to look.

D was standing there. The hem of his coat fluttered in the night breeze that had just started to blow, and the handsome features reflected in his foe’s gaze were enough to make even the moon pale in comparison. And then he began to walk toward Callas and Sue with bewitching strides.

Almost everything had been taken care of. Artificial lightning bolts of several hundred million volts hammered relentlessly at the car, and the androids’ laser cannons blasted at Braujou and the survey party, but they didn’t budge at all, meeting the attack with the weapons in the car and monstrous strength, and in the blink of an eye their mechanical assailants had been reduced to scrap.

“Ha, ha! Valcua’s stupid octopuses! Did they actually think they could do anything to Count Braujou’s car?” the count jeered.

By his side, Duchess Miranda spat, “Octopuses? How uncouth.”

This time, the beautiful woman had been the only one to refrain from fighting, but now she was out of the vehicle and looking over the sprawling android wreckage.

“Long ago, a battle this size would’ve left the entire plain reeking of blood, but now all that drifts in the air is the stink of melted circuits. What a lamentable age we live in.”

“There are no survivors. Well, let’s go look for Sue. Back to the car,” Braujou told the former survey-party members, who bared their fangs.

But a second later, a strange phenomenon occurred. A gigantic, club-wielding arm reached out of empty space, and before anyone had even noticed it, the gale it whipped up had sent thuds and vermilion flying as half their number dropped to the ground with heads split open.

“Oh, who do we have here?” the count asked, sounding delighted.

After the five surviving survey-party members had fallen back, a crimson mist danced in space, and then a giant appeared from thin air.

After taking a glance at the bloodied club he carried and the animal hides he wore, Braujou asked, “You’re Seurat, aren’t you?”

He just wanted to be sure.

One giant nodded to the other. “Indeed . . . I. .. am.”

“If you’re one of Valcua’s seven, I can slay you now, and that will only leave the woman known as Callas. Now, to take care of another small fry .. .”

Whipping out his long spear, Count Braujou started to walk over to him.

“Have at you!”

The count made a jab with his spear. It was somehow gentle, and yet no one could’ve dodged it, and any attempt to parry it would’ve been knocked aside.

Batting the spear away with his club, Seurat pounced. After going about a yard, his body leaned forward and to the right, and with the club in his hand, he crashed back to earth about fifteen feet away. Seurat hadn’t batted Braujou’s spear away—he’d been sent flying, but it was unclear if the gigantic assassin understood as much. However, he used all the spring in his body to leap up and hurl his club at Braujou.

Sneering at such a simplistic and primitive attack, Count Braujou knocked it aside, and then leveled his spear for a second assault. But his spear wasn’t there. Not realizing that all five fingers that had gripped it were broken, the count turned his gaze behind him and to the left. The look he gave to the weapon jabbed into the ground at an angle some twenty yards away was a strange one. He couldn’t believe it. No other creature in the world had ever attempted to best him with pure brute strength and actually succeeded.

Hurrying over to his weapon, he pulled it out and aimed the tip of it at Seurat once more. The other giant had already assumed a stance. The count did likewise. Now, it wasn’t electromagnetic waves that began to rise from the steely earth but rather a hunger to kill.

D brought his blade down on Callas’s head.

The count’s spear made a horizontal swipe toward the base of Seurat’s neck.

Before a control panel in a strange laboratory, Valcua suddenly looked up into space.

t

At that moment, the entire plain was struck by a deadly gleam of blistering heat and crushing weight. The asteroid missile launched by a technician in the Capital had slammed into the earth’s surface without warning.

What would happen if an asteroid over one hundred yards in diameter traveled one hundred million miles to slam into the Earth’s surface? Needless to say, the impact would probably flatten every building above ground, and the dust thrown up into the air would block the light of the sun. Mountain ranges would be erased, land would rise or fall, and even the shapes and locations of the very continents would be altered. And if the asteroid were to be purposely summoned by a human being, the fate that would await mankind after its impact would be nothing shy of courageous self-sacrifice. Rather than chalk this decision up to human ignorance about the consequences, it might instead be attributed to fear of the Ultimate Noble pushing them over the line. The Ultimate Noble was a terrifying being; they desired him dead so badly they’d allow themselves to be destroyed in the process.

The asteroid missile itself wasn’t a weapon from battles between Nobles, but rather something that had been developed for the front lines in the war against the aliens. Such missiles came to number more than one hundred thousand, and it was said there’d even been plans to turn Pluto and Jupiter into weapons. Valcua had altered the space around the asteroid belt where these

weapons floated, creating a kind of teleportation field. Using it, asteroids could travel to the far reaches of the Milky Way in an instant and inflict all the devastation anyone could ever desire. Using its quantum engines and control unit to adjust its angle of descent toward the target, it could strike Valcua’s kingdom a scant thirty seconds after ignition. This time, it took the asteroid one day to reach the atmosphere. Something had gone wrong with the computer controlling the teleportation field over the great span of years.

Five hundred million tons of asteroid were moving at a speed of just over sixteen hundred feet per second when they slammed into the steel plain. However, the black-steel wasteland stretched out in the moonlight, not showing the slightest signs of devastation. Not even fragments of the asteroid lay on the plain as the wind blew dolefully across it.

“Asteroid AX2894006 disappeared a millisecond after making contact with the Earth’s surface.’’

Valcua’s ears caught Kima’s floating voice.

“Although 99 percent of the shock wave and atmospheric anomalies were absorbed, I believe a small amount of its influence was unavoidable.”

“The new government in the Capital?” Valcua inquired without any real interest.

“Undoubtedly.”

“In retaliation, we shall burn ten million people alive later.”

“Understood, milord.”

After Kima’s reply, Valcua returned to his bizarre task. He was taking the facilities and equipment that remained in his kingdom, consolidating them, breaking things down, and making them more powerful and dangerous—in order to get rid of D. He didn’t for one second entertain the notion that the handsome assassin might’ve been destroyed by the likes of an asteroid strike.