Mech

Four

“Imbecile!” hissed Mai Lee into the video unit. The luxurious hanging tapestries of the Planetary Senate Chambers lined the walls behind her. She was wearing the blue velvet robes of her office, and held a portable video unit in the palm of her hand. Her tense, harsh face was a wild network of lines that no surgery could completely erase. “Everyone is outraged! How could you fail at so simple a task?”

Ari Steinbach made a wry face, raising his eyebrows until they disappeared beneath his hanging blonde bangs. Out of sight of the video pick-up, he silently drummed his horkwood desk with his fingers.

“My operatives-”

“Your operatives are cheap, ineffective thugs,” she said from between her clenched teeth, trying to keep other nearby Senators from hearing. She poked her pen-shaped note-recorder at the video pick-up so that it seemed to lunge out of the screen at his end. “All you did was put him on his guard and get the damned Senate stirred up with headlines. The media is playing shots of the wrecked lobby and the bodies at every commercial break! The crazy Zimmermans have mobilized their estate armies in Grunstein and Slipape County.”

Ari nodded his head gloomily. After the failed assassination attempt, he had spent all night at militia headquarters, trying to cover his involvement and fend off the newsmen. Sergeant Borshe’s bloody corpse had done nothing to help matters, as his close relationship with Ari was known to the media. After a night of being run ragged by hungry newshounds, he had spent the day trying to calm the excitable aristocracy of the colony. All day reports of the powerful elite families pulling together their ‘security forces’, some of which had air assault and light grav-armor units, had flooded his desk.

He sighed and glanced out his window briefly, eyeing the heavy cobalt waves of the polar sea. So near to the pole the days were only four hours long during the winter and darkness was closing in fast. The skies were dark and pregnant; it looked as if they were in for a storm tonight. It might even snow if it lasted until morning.

“General!” she snapped, rapping her note-recorder on the audio pick-up so that a loud clacking noise sounded at the other end. Ari jumped and grimaced.

“Sorry, your Excellency,” said Ari distractedly. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, then rubbed his eyes and sipped his hot caf. “I’ve been here all night trying to clean up this mess. I might point out that you suggested this course of action.”

“And I might point out that you are on the edge of losing your lucrative office, General,” said Mai Lee with a flash of her merciless eyes. They were the eyes of a reptile, cold and devoid of compassion. “Listen, you just find where Droad is hiding this time. You just find him and call me. I will have my personal assets take care of matters after that.”

Ari heard his own involuntary sharp intake of breath. The old battleaxe was talking about committing her personal guard. Known as the Reavers, they were also giants, monstrous Korean men that normally guarded her hilltop palace in the Counties. Ari had seen them often on her estate, and he feared them. With under-sized heads, long gorilla-like arms and incredibly wide barrel chests they seemed only marginally human. As a group, they were mysterious, legendary for their cruelty and brutal professionalism. He was surprised that she would allow them to stray from her stronghold. It was obvious that Mai Lee was under terrific pressure from the Zimmermans and probably the Manchurians in the Senate as well.

“Recall that you are my creature, General. You can be destroyed as easily as you were created.”

Ari narrowed his eyes, feeling deep hate surging through him for this evil wraith-like woman. “Recall, Senator, that we’re in this together, and that you need me. In fact, I seem to be one of the few friends you have at the moment.”

Mai Lee seemed overcome with fury and Ari worried that he had overstepped himself. Her face was a rictus of hard-lined hatred. Then her eyes seemed to bulge less. Her face softened and sagged back into its normal shape.

“So,” she said, her voice becoming soft and silky, the way it must have been centuries before in the flower of her youth and beauty. “The puppet has teeth.”

The screen went blank, and Ari was left with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Unlike Zimmerman, he had no powerful family of his own to turn to in times of need. The Steinbachs owned a successful software publishing company in town, but they controlled no land or vast amounts of capital.

He decided it was time to put into action his emergency plans for the worst. Things were going poorly, he needed to move quickly before events took an even darker course.

Ari rose and drew an anti-snooper device from his desk. He turned the jammer on and set his windows to a metallic opaque setting. After securing the inside lock on his office door, he dragged a heavy pseudo-marble reproduction of a skald sculpture to one side. Using a knife from his desk, he cut a squarish hole in the thick carpet. Underneath was revealed a locked safe. He proceeded to disarm six security systems and type in the lock’s ten-digit hexadecimal code. The safe opened and he withdrew a satchel, identical to the one he used at the office. Switching the two satchels, he resealed the safe and reset the devices. Working with nervous speed, he replaced the carpet and the sculpture, eyeing it from many angles to make sure that the placement was identical. Satisfied, he rubbed his hands together as he donned his thick fur-lined coat and left the office.

Striding briskly, but not quite trotting, he took the elevator to the underground garage and climbed into his waiting limo. He directed the driver to head for the cross-colony autobahn, rather than toward his home in the hills overlooking the old colony domes. He settled into the backseat, holding his satchel on his lap like a sleeping child.

It was dark outside now and the wind was a growing, low-pitched howl. The first heavy raindrops splattered the limo’s windows as it reached the gates of the spaceport.

When Mai Lee returned to the main conference chambers located on the floor directly below the Senate floor, most of the faces that meant anything in the power structure of Garm were waiting there for her. They were like a panicked herd of jaxes, she thought. Then she amended the thought, seeing the dangerous look in many of their eyes. No, they were more like a panicked lynch-mob, and they smelled their witch.

Most knew that something big had hit, many of them knew that the new governor had arrived, and a few even knew that the militia had made a stab at assassination and cut their own fingers. What everyone knew was that it was all Mai Lee’s fault.

“You told us you had planned for this eventuality,” said the formidable figure of Johan Zimmerman, gripping his robes at his chest and giving her a look of utter contempt.

“You said they wouldn’t come for years yet,” whined a thin-faced Senator from New Manchuria with six-inch long rat-tail mustaches. He dropped his eyes as her glare swept over him.

“The Cluster Nexus will drop troops when they hear of it!” shouted the Thane of the Slipape Territories, the bright florescent lights reflecting from his shiny bald scalp. He was one of the few individuals in the group who truly owed no fealty to either the Zimmermans or the Manchurians. He valued nothing more than his political independence, and thus had only enough power to prove annoying to the others. “You crazy southern bastards have tried to kill the legitimate governor twice in a row and this time you missed!”

“Shut your hole, you old fool!” shouted back Mertrude Evans, a staunch supporter of the powerful Zimmermans. Mertrude was an immensely fat woman with protruding eyes. She was at least as colorful in personality as was the Thane himself. She was an environmentalist, he an exploiter, both were fanatical in their cause. Their long-standing mutual hatred was well known and generally tiresome for the others.

Johan Zimmerman raised his hands overhead in a dramatic gesture for calm. Due to his political clout, he soon got it. With a sweeping motion of his arms, he gestured toward Mai Lee, who still stood in the entryway, reviewing them all coldly. “Let’s hear what the Lady has to say.”

Acknowledging her greatest competitor with a curt nod, Mai Lee addressed the assembly. “Senators, we are all on the same side. Let’s not forget where our profits come from, regardless of our political differences concerning the management of our planet. Nexus influence constitutes the removal of power from this body, and is to be avoided at all costs. On this I hope we all agree.”

There were several heads nodding and a general murmur of agreement rose from the Senators. The Thane, however, saw fit to interrupt her. “Of course we all want the Nexus to keep their noses away from our arse. That’s not the point, woman!”

“What is the point, you old goat?” demanded Mertrude, unable to restrain herself, so great was her dislike for the Thane. Johan Zimmerman quieted her with a blunt stare of disapproval.

“The point is,” boomed the Thane, ignoring Mertrude. “That you could do all this in a much more subtle fashion, rather than trying to kill the man and his retinue on his first day planetside! A hand-cannon to the head, that’s all you Manchurians understand, isn’t it? Your political objectives for personal power have caused you to put us all in jeopardy. I vote that we remove you as our protectorate and find a new man to run the militia. Ari Steinbach is a coward and a cretin!”

For a moment, Mai Lee marveled at the man’s bravery. Perhaps he was unaware of the danger he was placing himself in. As an unaligned member of the Senate, he had no faction sworn to avenge any sudden accidents that might befall him. Indeed, the stunned silence and furtive glances that followed his speech seemed to unnerve him just a bit. He looked flustered for a moment, then raised up his eyes and locked them with Mai Lee’s.

“The problem will be taken care of.” Mentally, she marked the Thane for a dead man, when she could find the time to dispose of him properly.

“When?” asked Johan Zimmerman.

“When I see fit,” she said, baring her ancient teeth just a fraction. Spinning around in a whirl of blue fabric, she left the chambers and mounted the steps to the flitter pad. She boarded her private flitter and directed the pilot to her home estate, which sprawled over thousands of square miles, half in New Manchuria and half in the aristocratic Slipape Counties. On the way she cursed the governor, cursed the Thane, and cursed Ari Steinbach.

Mai Lee had returned to her estate to meditate after the debacle in the Senate Chambers. She levitated near the ceiling, while a panorama of Old Earth played on the holo-plate.

The communications module disguised as an arrangement of orchids chimed three times before she responded. “What is it? I am highly stressed this evening.”

“There has been a crime in the estate village, Empress,” said a soft voice. “The people require your judgment.”

“Ah,” said Mai Lee, rising into a sitting position. “Just the thing I need to relax.”

The holo-plate images of Old Earth evaporated to be replaced by the wooded hills around her estate. The speaker hidden in the flowers narrated. “This very day a serious crime was committed by the second son of a powercart driver. Instead of delivering his jaxes to the tax collectors at the gates of the marketplace for proper accounting, he drove his load of livestock off the road and into the forests.”

Following along with the narration, the holo-plate played a computer simulation of the crime. The jaxes shrilled and stamped as the cart bumped through the trees.

“There he staged a crude robbery, in which the powercart was rammed into a tree and emptied of its valuable cargo. After killing the jaxes and stashing them for later illegal sale, he tore his own clothes in a conspicuous manner and rolled through a muddy thicket to appear as if he had been beaten. Staggering back to the village, he was horrified to find his story was not believed.”

“How was the crime discovered?” asked Mai Lee. Her shoulders were relaxed and she even sported a grim smile. Passing judgment on criminals always agreed with her.

“The village’s chief enforcer deserves considerable credit for discovering the critical flaw in the man’s story: he still retained the code-card for operating the powercart, which although damaged, could have been driven away. Allowing the man to retain the code-card seemed an unlikely oversight on the part of these otherwise intelligent and ruthless thieves. Launching a full investigation, the enforcer soon learned the truth. Due to the flagrant nature of the crime, we recommend no leniency under estate law.”

“Of course not,” snapped Mai Lee. “The man attempted to steal from me.”

“What punishment shall be delivered, Empress?”

Mai Lee sat back and floated for a minute or so, entertaining various ideas. “Have him drawn and quartered in the town square,” she said finally. “That always makes a good show. I need a good show right now.”

“It shall be done,” said the orchids, then fell silent.

Mai Lee meditated while the punishment was prepared. When it finally came, she was all but quivering in anticipation. Depicted in stark 3D perfection she watched as the four hydro-powered engines chugged into life in the town square.

Soon the cables running to the man’s limbs drew tight and lifted his body from the ground. The engines, normally used to generate power for the village, coughed steam and revved up the scale. They were placed into their lowest gears and the throttles were opened. As a tug-of-war, the contest between man and machine was uneven. With a horrible ripping noise, first one arm gave, then the other. The two remaining contestant engines dragged their victim across the compound. Each held one leg and rapidly took up the slack in the cable. He flopped about in a frenzy of motion. This quickly subsided into a feeble quivering as the cables again went taunt and the left leg gave out with a distinct popping sound. The engines were stopped and the enforcer directed the tearful family members to clean up the mess.

The Great Lady herself watched the entire enterprise on live holo. It seemed to be over with too soon. She sighed as the man expired. She needed more intense relief from the stresses represented by Lucas Droad and the bumbling General Steinbach. She needed relaxation, a diversion, and a release of tension. The execution had not quenched her thirst for sensation. She tapped her nails on the control console thoughtfully, watching as the dismembered corpse was dragged away leaving a pink trail in the sand. Her penciled-on eyebrows jerked up, and would have risen above her hairline had she not gone completely bald over a century ago. She smiled for the first time in a week as she thought of her battlesuit hidden beneath the castle. This scandal in the village might be just the thing for a little sport. She would have to clip all her nails down to the quick in order to drive the suit again, but it would be worth it. She believed, as her father had before her, that peasants were best dealt with in a heavy-handed fashion. Occasionally, a reminder of their status was in order.

Long after darkness had fallen over the village that huddled beneath the castle walls and the cookfires had died down for the night, a team of four barrel-chested brutes from the palace guard stalked through the narrow mud-splattered alleys. The gorilla-like men were unarmed, but as they weighed over three hundred pounds each and were exquisitely combat-trained, they needed no weapons. At the house of the criminal family, almost everyone slept except for a young boy that couldn’t so easily forget his big brother. He lay huddled at the foot of the family shrine, breathing the last of the incense.

Because he was still awake, he caught sight of the men outside the hut and tried to climb out a window, shrieking in alarm. He surprised one of the small-brained brutes that struck him with a bit too much force, snapping the thin neck and killing him instantly. The boy’s body was tossed back through the window, landing on a mat with his three sisters. Then the giants forced the doors and immediately the rapes and beatings began in earnest.

Mai Lee drove her battlesuit out from under the castle and up into the courtyard via a secret tunnel that slanted down into the deeps. The tunnel opened at the base of the fountain that dominated the mosaic gardens in front of the main keep. Anyone who might have witnessed her appearance would have seen a black monster in the shape of an ancient, terrestrial allosaurus materialize in the gardens. Standing over seven feet high and weighing several tons, the collapsium-armored battlesuit indeed resembled a reptile. It had huge rear legs, stubby gun barrels that thrust from the chest like foreclaws and a computer-controlled rear tail that moved incessantly to balance the machine. With a heavy stride that crushed vegetation and cracked flagstones, she set off down the hill toward the village.

The battlesuit had been custom-made for her on the distant Nexus, back before such things had been rigorously recorded. She had ordered it partly for protection against assassination and partly for sport. The proud technicians that had brought it with them over so many light-years had trained her in its use and helped her set up special security codes so that no other could operate it. As a precaution, she had turned the chest-guns on them at the end of the final operator’s lesson. Since then, countless murders had been performed in the guise of the estate dragon, which had become something of a folk legend in the region over the years.

Hearing the terror-stricken cries of pain coming from the hut of the criminal family, the villagers had reacted by extinguishing all fires and artificial lights and bolting their pathetically thin doors. When the first rasping, crashing footfalls of the dragon were heard and recognized, however, the mood changed to one of panic.

“Gi!” they cried, voicing the local name for the legendary monster. Many of the villagers fled for their lives into the fields, others buried themselves in makeshift hiding places, trembling in fright. Only the bravest and the most foolhardy snuck to their darkened windows to catch a glimpse of Gi.

The monster walked directly through the town square itself. The fore claws thrust into the empty windows of the shops with vicious swipes, its tail whipped about, striking down tent poles and smashing trade goods. From the great head a blue glow was visible where the eyes and mouth should be, and a faint blue radiance could be seen outlining the major plates in its armored body.

Purposefully and unerringly, it strode directly to the alleyway where the family of criminals lived and struck down the front door of the hut by simply walking through it. Inside the huts, the cries of woe took on an even more chilling note, the note of people faced with imminent death.

Mai Lee was enjoying herself more than she had in years. For too long, she realized now, she had been willing to content herself with watching the video-feed of her bumbling minions artlessly executing her will. Tonight was different. Now the blood was on her hands directly, now the victims looked directly at her as they screamed in mortal terror. Inside the suit, her eyes were wide and staring, her heart pounded with true excitement, her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a death’s head grin.

First, she killed the oldest male by shoving one of the chest-mounted gun barrels into his belly and ramming him against the wall of the hut. The gun barrel ran through him like a spear. He was already dying but she loosed a burst of forty rounds into his chest cavity anyway, blowing a hole through the back wall of the hut.

She turned the machine around and reached with one foot to crush the life from a boy that lay supine on the floor, but halted. From the impossible angle of the boy’s neck, it was clear that he was already dead. A rush of wild rage swept over her.

“My instructions were quite clear,” her amplified voice boomed inside the hut. “I was to perform all the actual executions myself. Who is responsible for this?”

“Oh great Gi, forgive him, but Jin killed the boy,” one of the brutes ratted quickly, gesturing toward a giant that was in the act of brutalizing a young woman. The other giants, a worried look in their eyes, quickly assented, pointing to the slack-jawed Jin.

“They lie-” he began.

He got no further as the dragon’s mouth opened and the blue glow inside grew in intensity. With a sudden gush of burning superheated gas, Jin, the girl, and two other peasants were engulfed in searing blue vapor. The surviving palace guards vaulted out of the windows and through the ruined door, running through the mud toward the castle.

Mai Lee, enjoying herself thoroughly again, continued her work in the hut until it was leveled. The sound of the chest guns ripped the air; the flares of livid blue ignited the horizon. Before she marched Gi back up the flagstones to reenter the garden, three huts had been burned and twelve people lay dead.