Conquerors' Pride

25

Buried away, looking frail and old. And barely breathing.

"What's happened to him?" Cavanagh asked as one of Bronski's men wrapped the diagnostic band of a Peacekeeper medic box around his wrist.

"I don't know," Bronski said, sniffing the air suspiciously as he looked around the room. "Stress, maybe. Old age." He glanced around, gestured to one of his men. "Daschka, I want you to start checking out the area. All the bordering apartments, likely outside spots for bouncer setups—you know the routine. Leave Cho Ming on the door; you can take everyone else. You find any Mrachanis hanging around, you put 'em under detention—my authority and to hell with any diplomatic niceties."

"Right," Daschka nodded. "You heard him, gentlemen. Let's go."

He left, taking the rest of Bronski's squad with him.

"What are they looking for?" Cavanagh asked, taking a couple of experimental sniffs of his own. He couldn't smell anything.

"There's a smell in here that could be the residue from a hypnotic inducer," Kolchin told him. "If the Mrachanis were in a hurry to get information out of Sholom, they might have used something like that."

"Or abused something like that," Bronski growled. "Hypnotics are tricky to handle, and I doubt the Mrachanis have had much practice using them on humans."

"You might be surprised," Cavanagh said. He looked over at Lee, glowering out one of the windows. "Certainly seems to have been worth the effort to come find him."

Lee didn't reply. He hadn't said much at all since Bronski had pulled rank on him and taken them off Phormbi sixteen hours ago. "Well, they were certainly treating him like peerage otherwise," Bronski commented, glancing around the apartment. "We're definitely going to want to backtrack this. Find out when and how they got him to move in here."

"Sir, I've got a positive on a foreign substance in his bloodstream," the man crouched over Sholom said. "You were right on the nose: it reads out as a hypnotic. The box is mixing up a counteractive—he should be all right in a few minutes."

"Good job, Eisen," Bronski said. "Stay with him."

"Yes, sir."

There was a movement across the apartment, and Cavanagh turned to see Bronski's man Garcia come in. One look at his face—

"What is it?" Bronski asked.

"You asked me to go pull the Peacekeeper file from the last skitter into Mra-mig," Garcia said, his voice as grim as his face. "I didn't think this was something I should put across the phone system. Seems the Conquerors have hit Dorcas, Kalevala, and Massif."

Bronski's lip twitched. "Confirmed?"

"We've got two confirmations on the Dorcas attack: one from a man named McPhee from Parlimin VanDiver's staff, the other from the captain of Lord Cavanagh's private yacht. No information yet as to damage or situation. The Massif and Kalevala hits have yet to be confirmed. Command is sending task forces to check things out."

"Yeah," Bronski growled. "Well, it's started."

"Yes, sir." Garcia looked at Cavanagh. "One other interesting bit of information in that packet: Lord Cavanagh's son and daughter have been charged with grand theft of Peacekeeper property."

"I knew it," Lee snapped, turning away from the window. "I told you he was dirty, Bronski—I told you a hundred times. But you wouldn't listen."

"Shut up, Lee," Bronski said. "The report say whether the son and daughter are in custody?"

"The son isn't," Garcia said. "He's off somewhere with some stolen Peacekeeper fighters—there weren't any other details. The daughter is in detention on Dorcas."

Cavanagh's chest tightened. "On Dorcas?" he demanded. "You just said Dorcas was under attack."

Garcia shrugged. "Apparently, this VanDiver aide was supposed to take her out, but at the last minute the local commander decided to keep her there. That's all we know."

"Probably all we're going to know for a while, too," Bronski said. "All right. Daschka's out looking for whatever surveillance post the Mrachanis had set up here. Go give him a hand."

"Yes, sir." Turning, Garcia left the apartment.

"We have to get out there right away," Cavanagh said quietly to Kolchin as Garcia left the apartment. "Call Hill—tell him to charter us a ship. We'll need to get to Avon, connect back up with the Cavatina, and get out to Dorcas."

He'd been talking quietly. Apparently, not quietly enough. "Don't even think it, Cavanagh," Bronski said, looking over at him. "You're not going anywhere until we get all this straightened out."

"Brigadier, my daughter's in a war zone."

"And you're especially not going into a war zone," Bronski added. His lip twisted, a glimmer of sympathy edging through the professional cast-metal set of his face. "Look, I know how you feel. But the last thing we need is a civilian spinning around getting in the way. Let the professionals deal with it, all right? They'll get an attack fleet there; NorCoord will put CIRCE back together—"

"CIRCE," a weak voice murmured.

They all looked down at the old man lying on the floor. "Mr. Sholom?" Bronski said, dropping to one knee beside him". "I'm Brigadier Petr Bronski of NorCoord Military Intelligence. How are you feeling?"

"Absolutely wonderful," Sholom said, a dreamy smile creasing his face. "I'm floating where no one has ever seen."

"Yeah," Bronski said. "Well, it'll wear off soon enough. Anyway, you're safe now."

Sholom's smile turned bittersweet. "Safe, you say? Safe? No. It's all false, sir—all of it. No one is safe. The Conquerors are coming."

Bronski frowned at Eisen. "What is all this?"

"Residual effects of the hypnotic," Eisen told him. "I've seen this before. There'll be a few minutes of it while he comes back up out of the overdose."

"Okay. It's all right, Mr. Sholom. You'll be all right in a minute."

"Will I?" Sholom countered. "Will I really?" He shook his head. "None of us are going to be safe, Brigadier Bronski. Not from the Conquerors; not from anyone. I know, you see," he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially. "I figured it out. No one knew that I had; but I did. And I never told anyone. It was a fluke of nature, you see. A million-to-one coincidence. Maybe even a billion to one. But NorCoord was clever. Or maybe just desperate. Or maybe just too proud to pass up the chance. They took what happened and ran with it. Came up with a soap-bubble explanation and name and a way to use it. And it worked. It ended the war."

Bronski looked at Eisen again, got a puzzled shrug in return. "I don't understand," he said to Sholom. "What are you talking about?"

"Celadon, of course," Sholom said quietly. Suddenly the dreaminess was gone from his face; and in its place was the same guilt-tinged fear that Cavanagh had seen in Fibbit's threading of him. "It was the surge from a massive solar flare. That's all it was. Coming up just as the Pawolian ships sprung their trap. It came up behind them, you see, just as they left the protective cover of the planetary umbra. They couldn't see it coming, of course—they were in the umbra. A million-to-one coincidence. Maybe a billion to one."

"Sir?" Eisen put in urgently, jerking his head toward Cavanagh. "I don't think civilians should be hearing this."

"It's all right," Bronski said, his voice grim. "Anyway, it's already too late. Go on, Mr. Sholom. What happened then?"

Sholom's lip twisted. "What do you mean, what happened then? It killed them, of course, that's what happened then. All that radiation surged right up through the drive nozzles where there weren't any dipole protection fields. And then it just bounced around inside the ships. Focused and concentrated by all that superdense metal and liquid reflectors that were there to keep radiation out." He gazed out at nothing. "Bounced around until it killed them."

Bronski's face was that of a man walking through a graveyard at midnight. "Are you saying," he asked quietly, "that CIRCE doesn't exist?"

Sholom shook his head. "It doesn't. It never did. I figured it out, you see. I wondered why no one had even heard of something like that being in development until it was announced after Celadon. It was because there was never anything. I figured it out. But I didn't say anything."

"Why not?" Cavanagh asked.

Sholom shook his head again, his eyes filling with tears. "It was keeping the peace; don't you see? It was the threat of CIRCE that kept the Pawoles from fighting. It kept the Yycromae from fighting. It kept everyone from fighting."

"It's not going to keep the Conquerors from fighting," Kolchin said.

Sholom closed his eyes. "I know," he murmured. "I know. Perhaps NorCoord should have admitted it a long time ago. Such pride, to think they could use a myth to ensure peace. Such foolish, foolish pride..."

He trailed off, and for a long minute the room was silent. Cavanagh stared at the old man, the pounding of his heart like the sound of the universe crashing down around him. CIRCE had given him his life once, ending a war that might otherwise have killed him. Later it had given him hours of fear as he waited for it to begin the series of wars that would rip the Commonwealth apart and burn civilization down to ash. And then, three weeks ago, it had once again given him hope. Hope, this time, that the unstoppable Conquerors could in fact be stopped.

And none of it had been real. None of it.

Bronski took a deep breath. "Is he stable yet? Eisen?"

Eisen's eyes seemed to come back from a long way away. "Yes, sir, he'll be fine," he said, the words coming out with difficulty.

"All right," Bronski said. "Everyone in this room is hereby remanded to full quarantine confinement. Get that strap off him—"

"Wait a minute," Lee cut him off as Eisen set to work on the medic box. "You can't lock us up like junior officers, Brigadier. As a member of Parlimin VanDiver's staff—"

"Shut it down, Lee," Bronski advised him. "At the moment I don't care a Meert's moltings who or what you are. You're going into quarantine until I can find out whether any of this is true. And what the hell we do if it is."

"There'll be records," Cavanagh murmured. "Radiation records from the NorCoord ships at the battle. Brigadier, what about my daughter? I cant just sit back and do nothing when she's in danger like this."

"I'm sorry, Lord Cavanagh, but I've got no choice," Bronski gritted. "And to be perfectly honest, after that little private talk of ours on Phormbi, you were for the lockbox anyway. Eisen, go out and get Cho Ming off the door."

"Yes, sir," Eisen said, getting up and heading for the door.

"You're making a serious mistake, Brigadier," Lee said, biting out each word. "You can't make a parliamentary aide simply disappear."

"I can and I—damn!" Abruptly, Bronski grabbed for the inside of his jacket—

And froze there, his face stiff and unreadable, his eyes focused on something over Cavanagh's shoulder. Chest tightening again, Cavanagh turned to look.

Kolchin was standing there quietly, Eisen's limp form on the floor at his feet, Eisen's flechette gun in his hand. Pointed at Bronski. "Nice and slow, Brigadier," he advised. "Pull your hand out. Empty."

"Are you insane?" Bronski hissed, easing his hand away from his jacket again. "You can't get away with this."

"Lord Cavanagh needs to see to his daughter, sir," Kolchin said mildly. "He can't do that locked up in a quarantine cell."

"He's going to be there for life if you don't put that gun down," Bronski snarled. "Cavanagh—tell him."

Cavanagh looked at Kolchin. Bronski was right, of course. It was insane to think he could do anything for Melinda.

But to be locked up, unable to do anything at all, while the Conquerors began a war around her... "The Jutland fleet tried to stop the Conquerors," he reminded Bronski, stepping up beside him and carefully relieving him of his concealed flechette pistol. "They couldn't do it. If CIRCE is really nothing more than a well-crafted myth, we're going to need some brand-new approach to fighting them."

"And you're the one who's going to come up with this genius weapon?" Bronski bit out. "And while on the run from every cop and Peacekeeper in the Commonwealth? Get back on the ground, Cavanagh."

"The Commonwealth's going to have more pressing problems than chasing down a single fugitive," Cavanagh said. "Especially since there are a lot of people who are going to wonder why you're bothering with me. Don't worry; neither Kolchin nor I will say anything about what we've heard here today."

Lee took a step toward him. "Let me come with you," he said.

Cavanagh shook his head. "Sorry, Mr. Lee. Whatever the truth about CIRCE, massive panic is the last thing the Commonwealth needs right now. I can trust Kolchin to keep this to himself; I'm afraid I can't say the same about you and Jacy VanDiver. I'd put a double guard on him, Brigadier, if I were you."

"You're making a mistake, Cavanagh," Bronski said quietly. "A big, big mistake."

"It wouldn't be the first time. Kolchin, should I try to find something to tie them up with?"

Five minutes later they were ready to go. Two minutes after that, Kolchin having arranged for the guard at the door to join the group inside, they were driving down the street in Bronski's car.

"What about Hill?" Cavanagh asked as Kolchin maneuvered through the Mrach traffic. "Should I risk giving him a call?"

"Better not," Kolchin said. "Even if Bronski's people have left him his phone, odds are they'll be tapping into any messages that come into it. Besides, he'd never be able to sneak out without Fibbit noticing and kicking up a fuss."

Cavanagh nodded heavily. "So we're back to the Phormbi escape plan. Just a couple of days late."

"And with a lot more people on our tail." Kolchin threw him a hard look. "Sir, I want to make sure you understand what we're getting into here. We've become fugitives now; and I can promise you it won't be fun. If you want to go back, we can do it. I acted without orders; you'll still be pretty clean."

"They'll still lock me away," Cavanagh reminded him. "Bronski's already said he was going to do that. Anyway, I'm already in serious trouble over what Aric and Quinn did. What's a few more years added on to my sentence?"

Kolchin shrugged. "I suppose that's one way of looking at it."

Cavanagh looked up into the blue sky. "Whatever's happened on Dorcas, Melinda's right in the middle of it. I can't just sit this one out. Any more than I could for Pheylan."

Kolchin didn't answer. But it wasn't hard for Cavanagh to figure out what he was thinking. Pheylan could easily be already dead; and it was Cavanagh's refusal to accept that possibility that had now put Melinda in danger.

Or had already cost her her life.

"Where are we going?" he asked Kolchin.

"Back to that fighter/courier dump in the hills," Kolchin told him. "Even if the Mrachanis told Bronski where we picked up that courier, odds are he won't expect us to try the same place again. It's our best shot, anyway."

"The Mrachanis might be guarding it this time."

Kolchin smiled tightly. "Let them try."

Copyright © 1994 by Timothy Zahn.

Cover art copyright © 1994 by Paul Youll.

ISBN: 0-553-56892-2