The Lost King (59 page)

"Thank you, Rian.
Bennett and the ship's surgeon between them have taken care of me."

"Nola's right,
sir," Tusk added. "You should be in bed. There's nothing
much going on now—"

"I'm shot full of
stimulus. If I went back to bed I'd float about three meters off of
it. I've been to the bridge, spoken to Captain Williams."

"Have you noticed
that he smiles all the time?" Tusk demanded of no one in
particular.

"He has lovely
eyes and very nice teeth, " Nola commented.

"What do his teeth
have to do with anything? They're probably not his, anyway."

"Oh, nothing."
Nola shrugged and grinned, crinkling the spray of freckles that
spattered across her nose. "Except maybe that's why he smiles a
lot. To show off his teeth."

"I know where I'd
like to see his teeth." Tusk's fist clenched. "Comin' out
the other side of his head. Jeez, Nola, why do you always have to—"

"That will do,
Tusca," cut in Dixter, wiping his hand across his sweating face.
He swayed where he stood. Bennett hurried solicitously to his side,
but the general irritably waved his aide away and latched on to a
control panel to steady himself. "I'm calling a meeting of all
pilots and their crews, now."

"Here, sir?"

"Yes, here,"
Dixter said, smiling faintly. The knuckles on the hand holding on to
the control panel were chalk white. "I doubt seriously if you
could pry me loose."

The mercenaries on
Defiant
had been given access to two flight decks—Charlie
and Delta. The decks were adjacent, but when the ship was cleared for
action and the blast doors were in place, the decks were cut off from
each other, the mercenary force split cleanly in two. Captain
Williams had offered Dixter's people the use of berths aboard
Defiant
—there were extras available, since the usual
contingent of fighter pilots had been transferred to other ships of
the fleet. The general firmly and politely turned down the offer. He
didn't like having his people spread out all over the ship, for one
thing. He didn't like the feet that the doors to these berths could
be sealed shut at the captain's command, for another. Dixter and his
troops bivouacked on the hangar decks, much to the disgust of the
Defiant's
flight crews.

Dixter
had
accepted Williams's offer of updated equipment and parts for his
planes. The mercenaries either did the repairs and modifications
themselves, or in cases where the equipment was unfamiliar, they
breathed down the backs of the mechanics installing it. Tusk threw XJ
into a state of near meltdown by dropping casual comments on the
wonders of the new on-board computer systems the Warlord had
developed and hinted broadly that he was considering having one
installed. XJ spent nine-tenths of its time in its remote, prowling
its perimeters, keeping a paranoid eye on the mechanics and zapping
any who inadvertently came too near.

The humans and aliens
of Dixter's Outlaws, as they came to call themselves, spent their
time on board
Defiant
tinkering with their planes, cooking,
gambling, squabbling among themselves or with the flight crews, and
loving. Nola Rian had signed on as Tusk's gunner.

"You don't think
I'm brave enough, do you?" Nola had said, with a toss of the
short brown curls, when this subject first came under discussion.

"Of course I do.
I've seen you in action, remember? It's just—"

"Then you don't
think I can learn to operate the gun. This sophisticated equipment is
too complicated for a girl from a backwater planet."

"Come off it,
Nola! I could teach you to operate the gun. Nothing to it. It's just
that it's going to be dangerous. It's not only the Corasians we're
gonna have to watch, it's the Warlord, too. Dixter doesn't trust him.
Neither do I. The Starlady warned us—"

"The Starlady?
She's wonderful, isn't she, Tusk? So tall and slender and
regal-looking, with hair like morning mist. If I were tall and
slender would you take me with you?"

"Damn it, Nola,
you come up with the weirdest notions. I don't want you tall and
slender. I like you short and pudgy. Well, you know what I mean. Why
do you do this to me? I don't want you along because I don't want
anything to happen to you, you little fool!"

"Well, I feel the
same way! I don't want you to go because I don't want anything to
happen to you!"

"But it's my job,
Nola—"

"And if you hired
me, it'd be my job, too. And we'd be together. But, if you don't want
me because I'm short and pudgy—"

"I never said
that—"

"—other
people happen to think differently. Link's already asked if I'd be
interested in being his co-pilot."

"His co-pilot!
That bastard doesn't have room for a co-pilot. His ego's so big it
takes up the whole cockpit!"

Which, of course,
settled everything. The only one left to convince had been XJ, who
was totally opposed to having a female gunner until Tusk assured him
that Nola was working for nothing, after which assurance the computer
came up with all kinds of statistics proving that the female of the
human species reacted better under stress than the male.

When the enemy was
sighted, the alert was sounded, but
Defiant
was not yet on
full alert status. The ship was hanging back, out of the forefront of
the battle. There had been considerable activity around the
Defiant
's
hull, work crews swarming over it day and night, seeming to be trying
desperately to affect repairs. There was nothing at all wrong with
Defiant
, but Sagan hoped the Corasians would think there was.
Though he didn't expect them to remove the ship from their
calculations altogether—the aliens were too intelligent for
that old trick—the Warlord did hope that they would at least
refigure the equation and come up with the wrong answer.

"As you know, for
we've gone over the game plan, we're to sit out the first half,"
Dixter told his assembled Outlaws. "When the enemy's been
knocked around pretty good and they've used up—hopefully—all
their substitutes and their time-outs, then we go in."

"I don't like it,
sir!" This was Colonel Glicka, the alien with the tentacles
who'd been at the meeting. "I think it's a trap. The Warlord's
going to leave us cooped up here to be slaughtered like pigs in a
barrel."

"Pigs in a
barrel?" Link said, nudging Nola, who giggled.

"It's the only way
the translator knew how to translate the metaphor," Tusk
snapped.

"Metaphor!"
Link whistled. "Wow, this boy's been to college."

"Damn it, Link,
I'm— Sorry, sir."

Tusk caught Dixter's
stern eye and subsided, squatting back down on the desk and
contenting himself with glowering at the handsome, grinning Link.
Nola shook out her curls, glanced at Tusk from beneath a fringe of
dark lashes, and giggled again.

"It's a classic
battle plan, people. One used successfully by Philip of Macedon
against the Greeks, more recently by Zachis Zelben against the
off-worlders in System Qsub046. You hit the enemy with a solid front.
They push and suddenly the front's middle begins to give and sag,
drawing the enemy in deeper and deeper with a planned retreat. When
the enemy's trapped in the center, you bring up your left and right
flanks, send in reinforcements. I hope that translated all right?
It's like catching a cat in a sack. We're the strings."

He glanced at the
alien, who wiggled a tentacle but still looked unhappy. The
mercenaries said nothing, but exchanged grim glances. They knew that
the cat was, in reality, a tiger and they were trying to catch it in
a very small bag.

"Understood? Any
questions? Then, dismissed. Go to your planes and await my signal.
Tusk, a word." The general motioned. Tusk loped forward.

"I'll take care of
Nola," called out the irrepressible Link. "Don't hurry
back."

"I'll wait for
you, Tusk. Right here," Nola said.

Smiling at Tusk, she
deliberately shrugged off Link's encircling arm.

Man, Tusk thought, a
guy never knows where he stands. Maybe that was the attraction. After
all, I don't really like short, pudgy women. . . .

"Yes, sir?"

The general
relinquished his hold on the control panel and, glancing at the
Defiant
's work crews, who were still busy around the planes,
Dixter drew Tusk to one side.

"Tusk, I'll be
relaying commands to you and the others from the bridge. Pass the
word: Be careful going out and coming back. Got that?"

"Yes, sir. Do you
really think he's going to try something, sir? The Warlord gave us a
pardon, after all, and, I mean, whatever else Derek Sagan may be,
he's known to be just and honorable. He keeps his word. I think we're
worried about nothing."

Dixter glanced over the
mercenary's shoulder and saw Nola, waiting for Tusk, her face
cheerful and smiling. She and Tusk both knew about the Adonian, Snaga
Ohme. The other mercenaries, if they didn't know the Adonian weapons
dealer by now, knew about the torpedo launcher. They all know that
something big was coming down.

"You're right,
Tusk," the general said, forcing his aching facial muscles into
a smile. He clapped the mercenary on the back. "It's the space
sickness. Or maybe it's these stimulants. I'm jumping at my own
shadow. But just let's be safe, okay? Don't take orders from anyone
but me."

"Yes, sir.
Anything else, sir?"

"No, go ahead.
You've got someone waiting for you."

"Yes, sir. Thank
you, sir." Tusk grinned, saluted, and hurried off.

Dixter watched the
young man rejoin the young woman, saw their arms steal around each
other, their heads lean together. He could almost hear Tusk's voice
whispering, "The old man sure is jumpy!"

Tusk doesn't know—none
of them know—that this is all my fault, Dixter reflected. Why
the devil couldn't I have left well enough alone? But, no, I had to
go snooping around. Ah, well, the general reminded himself. Perhaps
it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. In Sagan's eyes, we had
probably doomed ourselves simply by being on that planet.

"Sir.' It was
Bennett, hovering.

"Yes, Bennett?"

"Captain
Williams's compliments, sir, and would you come to the "bridge?"

Bennett's tone was
approving. Captain Wililams had been extremely respectful and polite.
The captain may have been the scion of a corrupt and rotting system
of government, he may be hand in glove with the Warlord, which—as
Bennett knew—his general considered tantamount to being hand in
glove with the powers of darkness, but Captain Williams, at least,
knew how to talk to a general.

"Bennett, did you
ever notice that Captain Williams smiles a lot?" General Dixter
asked, wending his way through the corridors of
Conquest
.

"Captain Williams
has exceptionally fine teeth, sir."

So does a shark, John
Dixter thought.

Lord Sagan watched,
from his white, spearheaded fighter, squadron after squadron lift in
deadly grace from
Phoenix
and the other two ships of the line.
Each fighter shot out in perfect formation, with the exception of one
in the last squadron— Blue Squadron. The Warlord saw Dion's
plane operating smoothly: he would have been vastly surprised
otherwise. He had programmed the computer to do everything, including
making certain the boy's nose was wiped.

It was another plane in
the squadron that was behaving oddly—number six. When leaving
the flight deck, it had gone into a forward roll, nearly crashing
against
Phoenix
's hull! The pilot's skillful handling had
saved the plane, but Sagan was inserting a note into his computer to
put that pilot on report. He stared at the Scimitar closely. There
was definitely something odd about that plane! Something . . .
familiar.

"My lord,"
came the communication. "All squadrons away. Red Squadron and
Green have both engaged the enemy."

The Warlord shifted his
attention to the battle being fought before his eyes. Other citizen
generals would have remained on
Phoenix
, observing the battle
on a gigantic lighted computer screen, seeing the planes as small
blips, and issuing orders accordingly. Lord Sagan had tried such a
command post once, after President Robes had assured him that a
citizen general was far too valuable to his galaxy to risk losing him
in battle. Sagan had ended by putting his fist through the screen and
ordering his fighter.

If he had been Philip
of Macedon, he would have been sitting on his horse atop a high
ridge, watching the heave and surge of bodies below. As it was, his
fighter was positioned high in space, his escorts hanging motionless
at his side, watching the small sparks—the divine sparks, as
Maigrey would have said—flare and flicker or flare and burst
and die.

The dance, from his
sealed-off and closed-up vantage point, was performed in eerie
silence.

Would it make a
difference, Sagan wondered briefly, if we heard the screams of the
dying? Would wars end if we had to listen? He supposed not. Philip
had certainly heard enough screams during his lifetime as a
conqueror. And at the end, he'd heard his own.

Sagan shook his head.
The Warlord's philosophic musings were cut short. The Corasian
mothership was in sight.

The huge, black, ugly,
missile-shaped vessel floated ponderously into view, visible only in
that she was a blot against the stars. Corasians have no need for
lights. They don't have eyes, can't see, and do not waste energy
lighting a ship. The Corasians operated strictly by computer signal,
computer command. It had been the computer which gave the aliens the
means to conquer the stars.

"Mothership"
was a term used in a literal sense. This terrible black egg would
hatch a swarm of deadly offspring. Corasians are not creative.
Creativity implies one mind thinking differently from another. The
Corasians are a collective mind. Each entity thinks the same as every
other. They are completely equal; there is no authority because there
is no need for authority. All have the same goal, determined
collectively in response to the collective need. If the goal is to
build computers, the collective body builds computers. If the goal is
to take over a planet, the collective body takes over a planet. If
the goal is to kill, the collective body kills.