Part 24 (2/2)

Another blast flung me into a collapsing tent. I became tangled in guy-ropes and thrashed about for some moments before I could extricate myself Standing, I noticed a figure to one side, silhouetted by an azure conflagration. I made to move off, but it raised a hand. A hand holding a gun.

'I should have had you killed back in England,' Baron Maupertuis screamed above the pandemonium. 'You will pay in coins of agony for the trouble you have caused me!'

I tensed, ready to dive, but a cold caress of metal at the nape of my neck made me pause.

'The Baron would prefer to keep you alive for the moment, old boy,' Colonel Warburton's voice drawled in my ear, 'but I think you'd look just as good dead.'

'Haven't you got other things to worry about?' I asked as another of the Ry'lehans' infernal devices exploded nearby.

Maupertuis looked wildly around, his ash-blond hair falling in lank strands around his gaunt face.

'What have you done? My army! You have destroyed my army!'

'Look elsewhere for your attackers, Baron. Much as I would wish to take credit, I cannot'

'Then who . . .?'

'Your intended victims.'

He sneered.

'The natives of this G.o.d-forsaken planet are lily-livered philosophers. They rejected arms millenniums ago.'

'Your hooded friend obviously misinformed you,' I continued, anxious to divert the Baron's attention for as long as possible from whatever plans they had for me. A hit, a very palpable hit. Something moved behind his eyes: a flicker of annoyance, and perhaps even distrust.

'You know nothing.'

I decided to make a stab in the dark.

'I know that you have been played for a fool by whoever it is that you work for.'

A series of explosions punctuated my words.

'Baron,' Warburton interrupted from behind me, 'perhaps we should...'

'Insects!' the Baron screamed at his troops as they milled around us. 'You were supposed to be an all-consuming fire, spreading out to conquer this planet in the name of the Empire! Now you run like insects!' His cold gaze turned to Warburton.

'You a.s.sured me that their training had turned them into an efficient fighting machine. You guaranteed that they were ready for anything!'

The pressure of Warburton's pistol vanished from my neck. Surrept.i.tiously I edged sideways.

'You gave me a month!' Warburton snapped. 'It takes years to build up an army, and you gave me a month!'

'It was not my decision,' Maupertuis said coldly. 'I agreed with your strategy. I was overruled.'

'Whoever our mysterious benefactor is, he knows as much about building a fighting force as I do about ballet dancing.'

Maupertuis looked around. The camp was almost deserted now. The landscape of burning tents was bereft of movement.

'As I have no army,' he said calmly, 'and no need of a ballet tutor, it would seem that I no longer require your services.'

He shot Colonel Warburton between the eyes. I watched with mixed feelings as Warburton stumbled backwards, staring at Maupertuis with a puzzled expression on his face. Blood streamed from the wound.

'Gloria?' he said in a quiet, almost conversational tone, then fell to his knees. 'Gloria . . .?'

He pitched forward onto his face. His fingers clutched at the cold, hard ground for a moment, and then a great shudder ran through his body.

'G.o.d forgive your sins,' I murmured to his departing spirit.

'There is no sin,' Maupertuis said, swinging his pistol so that I was staring down the rifled barrel. 'There is only disobedience in the face of a higher authority.'

'And who elected you to be a higher authority?' I said scathingly. 'You bring the whole human race into disrepute.'

As an epitaph, I wish I had been given time to polish it a bit, but it would do.

As Maupertius's finger tightened on the trigger, and I watched the tiny gleam at the end of the barrel that I knew was the tip of the bullet that would shortly be tearing through my brain, I tried to recall Holmes's face as an example to give me courage. I could not. All I could remember was an afternoon thirty years ago, when the bright Australian sun shone down upon a creek, and my father and brother and I sat and fished together. It was the happiest day of my life, but I had not realized it until now.

The world seemed to explode around me. My eyes were filled with a red mist. So this was death.

The mist settled on my face. It was sticky and tasted of salt and hot metal. I licked it from my lips. I had spent enough of my youth tying off spurting arteries that I recognized it as blood. Mine? Reflexively I wiped a hand across my eyes.

Maupertuis was still standing in front of me, gun raised, but there was a large hole in the middle of his chest. The rim was charred and I could see the edges of his rib-cage projecting into the void where his heart should have been.

His face was n.o.ble in death. n.o.ble and unreal, like a marble statue. He fell like a statue too: without bending.

A young woman stood behind him. She was holding a device the size of a Maxim gun, but a lot sleeker.

'Hi,' she said. 'My name's Ace. And you're grateful.'

Chapter 14.

In which Ace and Watson pit themselves against nature, and come out on top. top.

She was wearing a smooth armoured bodice like the carapace of some glossy black beetle. Her s.h.i.+rt and leggings seemed to be composed of some fine-mesh metal weave. She was wearing spectacles, but of such a deep hue that I could not make out her eyes. I could not help but wonder how she could see out of them in the dark. She was so shorn of the identifying badges of her gender that the only clues were her long hair, her voice and the curve of her bodice.

Her weapon was trained firmly upon my midriff.

'My name is Watson,' I said, and swallowed. All I could see in her spectacles was my own distorted reflection. I hoped that the panic evident in my expression was caused by the distortion rather than the circ.u.mstances. 'Doctor John Watson, at your service. I presume that you are another of the Doctor's companions, Miss . . . ah?'

'Ace, like I said. And what makes you think I'm with the Doc?'

'A wild guess. He seems to have a fondness for leaving young ladies in situations fraught with danger.'

She looked around.

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