Part 23 (2/2)

He must have looked startled, for Zatar asked, ”Commander?”

”A report from my First Sword ... he came against a fighter who managed to evade him by antic.i.p.ating his attack.” Wasn't that what had happened in each one of those fateful battles-that the enemy had known, somehow, what Herek had planned to do?

”Please continue,” Zatar urged him.

”That's all. It seemed unnatural to him-” Just as those battles did. He looked up at the Braxana and offered, stunned, ”There is a pattern. But how do we determine its source?”

”One thing at a time. Is this pilot's confrontation in your records?”

”Of course. Along with a composite a.n.a.lysis of the fighter in question.”

”Compiled by-?”

”First Sword Sezal.”

”Excellent. I'll want to see it-and him. You'll arrange it?”

He bowed. ”Of course, my Lord.” Muscles were relaxing now that had been knotted for days-since he'd learned of Zatar's a.s.signment to the Sentira. The flood of tension from his body left calm in its wake, and with it hope. ”I am the Commander's servant.”

”Yes.” The Braxana nodded. ”And a good one.”

He gave the compliment a moment to sink in, then added, ”I do not intend to lose you.”

It was hard to keep the men in line.

At first they were merely sullen; hostility surfaced now and again, but on the whole things were quiet.

Then the storm began.

Who is this man, anyway? What right has he got to march in here and take over?

Questions Sezal himself had asked. How could he hope to answer them?

Just what in Ar's name is a Lord Commander? What's Herek going to do now-wait upon him hand and foot? Who's in charge when we're under attack, that's what I want to know!

Herek and Zatar were in constant conference-sharing notes, feeling their way around an awkward relations.h.i.+p. It was not yet necessary for the pilots to be briefed. When it was time to fight, they would be told who was doing what.

Wouldn't they?

He's a groundling, a blessed useless aristocrat. Put him out there in the Void and he'll go crazy. What's he doing here?

They were his own thoughts, sometimes his own words. It was hard to silence men when they spoke the truth.

He's fine on flatscreen, but has he ever been on a wars.h.i.+p before? What does he think will happen when we come up against the enemy? Does he expect everyone to wait while he consults his maps and his charts and whatever blessed else he's got going on in there?

He could only remind them that Zatar was Braxana, he was their ruler, he had the right to kill them at will. It quieted them, but only briefly.

For they were afraid. Not of his power, but of the man himself. They saw him in the corridors and were stunned by his physical perfection. They came into the gym and saw him working out there, his woolen costume stretched tight against his flesh as he drove himself on and on without stop, managing feats of strength that Sezal's men could only dream of.

And there lay the crux of the matter. Zatar played upon their deepest insecurities, causing them to reevaluate who and what they were. They were used to being valued above all others; now someone new had been added to the top of the social ladder. They had lived in a world without cla.s.s distinctions; now, inspired by the presence of a fullbred Lord, some of them recalled their lower- cla.s.s origins and cursed the name that had awakened bad memories. They were strong men in their own right, but when they saw his strength they wondered at their own relative weakness; when they stood before him the very slightness of build which made them successful pilots seemed a badge of shame, a less than masculine framework.

Easier to curse him, then, to recite over and over the list of his limitations. He has never fought. He wouldn't know how to fight. He is a rich and spoiled Lord who will take one look at the War and turn tail for home. You would certainly never catch him out there in the Void, with nothing but a forcefield between him and the enemy!

It gave them some comfort, to put it in those terms. Sezal found that he could not silence them. He managed to confine the worst of such outbursts to small, enclosed areas. The pilot's quarters, mostly. And that should have made them safe.

But he remembered what Herek had said, and he was afraid. The Braxana have ways of knowing what goes on, even in private.Were they being watched? Had Zatar in fact heard their outbursts? Was he biding his time until he could invoke the demon of Whim Death to thin their ranks, or was he planning a more subtle vengeance?

Like all good Braxins, they feared for themselves.

He feared for Herek.

With a sign of exasperation, Zatar turned the starmap off. The pattern of losses defied a.n.a.lysis. Battle after battle had been reconstructed for his study, yet he was no closer to finding an answer than he had been on Garran.

And yet . . . the feeling that something was wrong here, that some unspoken rule had been broken, grew stronger with each pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ft. There was no reason for it that he could put his glove on, but the more he watched the interplay of swords.h.i.+p and fighter, the more he observed guns.h.i.+ps laboriously dragging themselves into position and wars.h.i.+ps, the G.o.ds of interstellar battle, coming in behind them, the more he was certain that something was amiss.

Take Kley-or rather, take the battle which had preceded the loss of Kley. It was the custom of both sides to focus their attention on centers of civilian population: people could be conquered, empty s.p.a.ce could not. Besides, in the vastness of the War Border it was almost impossible to locate the enemy, much less come insync with his frame of reference. Or so Garran had always believed.

The key word was almost.

He called up that battle again and watched it unfold, brow furrowed in thought.

The enemy had come upon them unawares, striking at the talon's vulnerable flank. A long and b.l.o.o.d.y confrontation followed, in which numerous swords.h.i.+ps and even a guns.h.i.+p were damaged; Herek and his men fought well, but they were hard pressed to correct their initial disadvantage. By the time the Azeans broke off their offensive, a good part of the talon's mobility had been damaged.

Swords.h.i.+ps were vital to a planetary campaign: they alone could withstand the inferno of atmospheric friction, fighting natural gravity and dodging the best efforts of a land-based defense system to lay waste to choice targets, then fleeing too swiftly for outsync instruments to get a fix on them. Guns.h.i.+ps were for s.p.a.ce stations, blockades, the rare but deadly outsystem battles; it was on its swords.h.i.+ps that a talon depended when a grounded target must be convinced to surrender.

Herek had been concerned about the risk of going ahead with the Kleyan campaign-his log made that clear-but had decided to risk it. His swords.h.i.+p capacity had not been critically damaged. The Kleyan offensive had been coordi- nated with the efforts of two other talons, so that Azea's attention would be elsewhere when he struck. To delay his attack would lose him that advantage.

He made certain he had sufficient firepower to destroy a planet-he had, ten times over-and sent out scouts by the hundred to comb the nearby Void for s.h.i.+psign. Nothing. Reports from the Lyrellan system indicated that the bulk of Azea's fleet was there, and he knew that Talon-Commanders Rejik and Kamur would keep them occupied. It was all arranged. Now there was only Kley itself. . .

And disaster. Because the Azeans were waiting, five mothers.h.i.+ps and a horde of fighters, waiting to prey on the Sentira's weakened forces. A smaller number of s.h.i.+ps could not have defeated Herek, and even these five could not have done so had they not known, with frightening accuracy, the speed and angle of the talon's approach. By the time the battle had begun, it was already over. It was the first of many nightmares, a harbinger of the zhents to come . . . and the beginning of the end for the Holding's greatest Commander.

So where in Ar's name was Azea getting its information?

He dismissed the starmap display, called up a composite image of Sezal's recent adversary. The First Sword's a.n.a.lysis of the fighter had been both thorough and disturbing. He had stripped the s.h.i.+p of its only nonvital ma.s.s, but still could not explain its alarming capacity. Nor was he content with that result. To cut the basema.s.s down to absolute minimum, he had removed both the emergency grounding gear and the fighter's small store of rations. A pilot's survival often de- pended upon his ability to land on a planet and wait for a.s.sistance; that Azea might have discarded these things seemed highly improbable. But then, everything about this fighter was.

For instance, the identicode. CON:419FA12 it said. The Conqueror. Zatar had called up stats on that s.h.i.+p, had found nothing helpful. Its Starcommander was new to the Border, therefore low in seniority, with little authority . . . so what in Ar's name was the Conqueror's prize fighter doing in someone else's campaign?

Not for the first time he thought: They're breaking the rules.

In war, there are no rules.

Established fact: fighters traveled in units. Each unit was answerable to its mothers.h.i.+p. Units might be allied in their action, but the lines of authority were always clear. Fighters from different mothers.h.i.+ps might do battle side by side, but they did not mix.

Had the Conqueror discarded that tradition?

It was while he was thinking along those lines that a strange feeling came over him. A whisper he could barely hear flitted across his awareness; he felt as though a pair of eyes had been fixed upon his back. He turned around, half-expecting to find that someone had entered the room. But the door was still closed-sealed, in fact-and except for him the room was empty.

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