Requiem for the Conqueror

Chapter 9

Sinklar braced himself against the bed and stood. The two weeks he'd spent in the hospital would hold him for the rest of his life. Inflamed pink and red scar tissue mottled his left side in an irregular pattern. Experiencing a reverential awe, Sinklar ran his fingers over the tight surface of the angry flesh, marveling at the smooth texture he touched.

That's my body. Rebel blasters did that to me. Funny, during the running, I never knew I was so badly injured. It should have hurt. I should have been screaming from pain.

He took one last glance at the putrid green of the hospital walls and reached for his clothing. The undersmock rested gently on his skin as he pulled it over his head. Sinklar slipped into fresh new combat armor, unhappy with the stiffness in his arms and legs. The hospital unit they'd cocooned him in had also built more brawn on his thin lanky limbs. Electromagnetic cellular stimulation and increased vascularization of the striated muscle tissue occurred as a side effect of the healing process. He cocked his head, happy that the machine had finally tended to his ruptured ear. Even the ringing had disappeared.

He checked himself in the mirror. He looked fit as he strapped the weapons belt onto his lean hips. In the reflection, his long pensive face stared back the same as it always had: one eye gray, the other a tawny yellow. His wispy brown hair glinted with slight tints of red, his nose a bit knobby at the end.

He walked down the hall to the assignment desk and handed his card to the chunky woman who sat behind the desk. She wore the insignia of a First Physician.

"Private Fist, Sinklar, Company B, Second Section, First Targan Assault Division," the woman observed, pulling his records from the file. She glanced up with flat blue eyes.

"I'm marking your file as Al — fit for combat. They want to see you in Operations, Personnel section. I'm notifying comm you're on the way."

"Thank you, ma'am," Sinklar rapped out a salute and left, getting directions from a harried clerk-secretary in the hallway.

A bustle of new people scurried through the halls of the converted concert hall they'd made into the Regan Expeditionary Headquarters. Rega had responded with a vengeance after the virtual annihilation of the first pacification divisions.

Outside Operations, he had to wait twenty minutes before being called in. A panel of five Personnel Second officers took his salute.

"Private Fist." One of the officers looked up from the comm monitor before speaking to the others behind a privacy screen. One by one they studied him, each hidden behind a bureaucratically-stiff face. "Would you please scan the following report and make a declaration of accuracy for the panel?"

Sinklar was handed a flimsy. Scanning the page, he read a general statement of his escape with MacRuder and Gretta up to the point when they were picked up by the patro craft.

"Accurate to my knowledge, sir, with the exception that I disagree with the final conclusion that I single-handedly saved their lives. We worked as a team. And one last correction, sir. I noticed that the report states and I quote, 'Private Fist's concern regarding the possible rebel strike to the post office command center was ignored by Sergeant Jeen Hamlish.' That wasn't the case, sir. I didn't have time to inform the sergeant." He handed the flimsy back.

The lead Personnel Second nodded. "Your objections are noted, Private." He looked at his colleagues who nodded one by one. "Further, considering those objections so stated, the board hereby promotes you to Sergeant Third of the Second Section of the First Targan Assault Division. Corporal First MacRuder of your Section will relinquish command to you at the D Block Barracks. Pick up your orders, promotion, and equipment at the Supply Depot. Dismissed."

Sinklar snapped a salute, swallowed, and left at a trot. It

took more questioning to find Supply. After he made his way through the line, they handed him sergeant's chevrons, a new assault rifle, and compete field pack, including orders. Dazed, he finally found D block — a commandeered residential section just behind the energy barriers of the perimeter. And a seedy one at that, he thought, seeing a private clearing old bedding platforms from what had obviously been a whorehouse.

Halfway up the barracks steps, he heard MacRuder's barking voice. Turning, he spotted the corporal running a bunch of wide-eyed, panting privates across the open square where trollops had once hawked their bodies.

"Hey! Mac!" Sinklar raised a hand.

"Cump'neeeee, halt MacRuder's voice bawled over the pounding feet. "Sink! You're alive!" MacRuder started over at a trot. He stopped short at the chevrons and whistled. "By the Rotted Gods, they made you a sergeant. I was happy enough to make Corporal First."

"Yeah, they told me I'm your commander." He dropped his gaze awkwardly. What trouble did this brew for his newfound friendship. "Um, look I…"

"Shut up. I recommended it. Wonder how it happened they listened to a lowly Corporal First?" MacRuder turned and looked over his squad where they watched curiously. "Gretta and I, well, we're alive because of your leadership, Sink." He smiled. "I'm not enough of a crud that I don't recognize when I owe somebody my ass — at least, not yet anyway. And I like working with you. We make a great team."

"Yeah. Gretta's okay?"

MacRuder's eyes glinted. "Yeah, and she's been worried sick about you. They made her Corporal First, too. She's in charge of A Group and I've got B.", Sinklar shook his head. "I don't get it. Why all the promotions?"

MacRuder's smile fell. " 'Cause we're veterans, pal. We're still alive. Promotions come fast when a division takes almost ninety percent casualties. You, me, and Gretta are all that's left of the Second Section, Sink. Nobody else made it out of the Gods Rotted post office. Just us."

"Blessed Etarus!"

"Yeah, and you keep us alive. Gretta and me, well, we're counting on it."

"Anything I should know?" Sinklar asked, oddly nervous at the sudden responsibility that had dropped on him like so many bricks out of a crumbling wait.

"Yep, we're headed out tonight at dusk. I had orders to wait for a new CO.

That's you, buddy. Division First Atkin has ordered us to take a position on a road up in the hills. It's some sort of pass between here and the back country. They think the rebels are using it to get supplies into the city. Our ob is to cut that supply ine and hold it."

At his words two LCs roared overhead in a wide sweep, wings spreading and gear dropping. Sink had a sudden understanding of why D Block had been chosen for a staging barracks. LCs could land in the open square.

"Get the bloody hell out of the way, you bastards!" MacRuder ordered, waving his still standing troops out of the square. They scattered as the LCs settled in a vortex of dust and grit.

"Dumb!" MacRuder cursed. "Targans will rip these sheep apart!" And he left to berate his huddled command.

A ramp dropped and a flight tech came bouncing down and out. "That all of them?" he called over the growl of the LCs. "There's supposed,to be a whole Section!"

"All of who?" Sink asked.

"Second Section. We're transport. Something about getting them all to a pass west of here. Let's go! I've got two more drops to make today!"

"Rotted Gods, man, I just got here!" Sinklar bellowed. In desperation he turned and waved at MacRuder. "Mac, get some of those goons hopping! Clear those barracks of our people and let's get loaded. Detail some of those guys to find the other Groups. Let's go!" And with his new pack on his back and his assault rifle hooked into his armor, he scrambled up the ramp. Was that what command was all about? Just make it up as you go?

Sinklar stowed his gear, wondering what to do next, and went down to see if he could orchestrate the growing confusion. One by one, he directed the raw recruits to crash benches.

He glanced out of the LC and saw her as she came up the ramp, following an armored rabble which evidently made up

A Group. Sink's breath caught in his throat. Gretta's hair hung around her shoulder, a swinging mahogany brown wave behind her too-well formed features. Her blue eyes caught his and held. She stopped, slim body silhouetted in the afternoon light.

Sink started forward, mouth oddly dry. "Gretta?"

She smiled, eyes lighting. "You're all right? Oh, Sinklar, how I worried about you." Then she stepped into his arms, hugging him tightly.

"Sergeant Fist?" Came a call from the flight tech.

"Guess that's me."

"We'll talk when this is all settled." She winked at him and pushed him forward.

Sink sighed and followed the man back to engage in a paperwork nightmare.

Sink didn't meet his other corporals until the LCs had lifted. Mac introduced him to Hauws, First for C Group;

Ayms for D; Kap was first for E; and Shiksta for heavy ordnance. Of them all, only he, Gretta and Mac, had seen combat experience. The rest, including the privates, were totally green, fresh draftees from various parts of the Empire. Some didn't even speak Regan.

"All right," Sink told them as he leaned back against the crash webbing. "Mac, you and Gretta go out first. We'll assume we're not landing in an ambush. Pray to the Rotted Gods intelligence is better than that. I looked at the map. We're being set down in the pass. Off to the right is a rocky knoll. I want a thin perimeter laid out around that knoll as best you can organize it. Groups C, D, and E will fill in the gaps. Shiksta, I want the heavy stuff set up where you can give covering fire to any part of the perimeter. Understood? Good, let's hope nobody shoots at us."

They all nodded assent.

"Now, the first thing you do is dig in. Get your people down in the dirt."

Hauws asked, "What about regulations on health and exposure to foreign soils? I mean, I was a health inspector on Ashtan and you'd be surprised at the organisms that grow in Targan soil."

Sinklar blinked. "And you'd be surprised at how a human body looks when a pulse gun explodes it. Dig or die. You make the choice. Any other questions, Corporal?"

Hauws swallowed. "No, sir."

"Uh, sir?" Kap asked. "From what you lined out, how do we justify quick mobility

as stipulated in the attack command manual?"

"What do we attack?" Sinklar asked dryly.

"Their assault columns, sir." Kap's red face screwed up with concern, as he struggled to remember. "It says in the manual that assault columns can be disrupted by rapid hit and run tactics. Such actions depend on rapid deployment and quick mobility." He jerked his head, as if satisfied he'd gotten the rote right.

Sinklar pursed his lips. "I read the manual Corporal Kap. That manual killed exactly ninety-seven percent of the Second Section in Kaspa. This is not an assault on a planet. This is a different kind of war — one the manuals don't talk about."

He looked into their suddenly nervous eyes. Mouths worked silently. They waited, jittery at the thought of hearing more heresy. Ayms was wringing his hands. Shiksta tapped his foot energetically, eyes lowered.

Sink nodded at their disquiet. "Yeah, I know. No one has fought a war like this for a long time. They call it social revolution. In the old times, it was called a guerrilla war. You wil rarely see the people shooting at you. They won't come in assault columns. They'll fire out of the dark, hit when you least expect it, where you least suspect it."

"But that's in violation of Imperial honor," Hauws declared indignantly. "That's savage!"

"And terribly human. It's the oldest form of war, one someone either reinvented, or dug out of the history books." And at that he frowned. "I wonder."

Mac cocked his head. "Boys, you better pry the wax out of your ears. Gretta and I told you. We been there. What are you onto, Sink?"

"Just thinking. Two hundred years ago, at the start of the Imperial period, the governments had an interplanetary conference on war and the manner of its conduct. At the time, comprehensive and sophisticated programs of military education swept Free Space. That's where the concepts of honor in war were founded. I wonder, could it have been a political attempt to alienate the people from guerrilla war? Social programming by the political elite?"

"Got me" Mac told him. "I never heard the term before."

Sinklar nodded. "Yeah, well, like I said, it's old. I wonder if the Empire has any idea what it's up against?"

"So, if it gets too bad, the Star Butcher will show up and the Targans will melt!" Ayms grinned and looked back and forth.

"Perhaps," Sinklar mumbled, lost in his thoughts. "Or perhaps the masterminds behind this revolt have dug something out of the past to handle the Butcher, too."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the LCs dipped and decelerated at five gs. Idly, Sinklar wondered if they ever slowed gradually.

He got one wish. No one shot at them as they unloaded. He even got his perimeter established in the rocky ground and all the ordnance set up with good covering fire. One thing about green troops, they let him make an innovative deployment without arguing the rule book with him.

They didn't get hit until dark. Sink got to test his strategy first hand. From that moment on Second Section learned what war was all about — but they only took eleven casualties: three dead and eight wounded by the time dawn reddened the eastern sky.

Skyla had never considered the impact Staffa had made on her life; He'd always been there. She chewed her lip, feeling uneasy. She found herself lonely with him gone.

He'd been worried about her. That thought stuck as she leaned back from the console in her small bridge. Tapping a stylus, she studied the vector on which the CV should have returned to Ashtan. In her plush personal cruiser, she mapped the radiation spike and pinpointed the direction in which the highly dissipated reaction was moving. The acute sensors picked up positron dancing out of the past to annihilate themselves. Fro the frequency, her superior instruments calculated half-life possibility and tied the origin to Staffa's acceleration.

No, he hadn't returned to Ashtan. Instead, he'd laid his tracks straight for Etaria, and what? One of those Priestesses? He had the choice of how many women in the Itreatic

Asteroids? Or the pick of women from any of the conquered worlds, for that matter. No, this was Staff a being clever. Etaria remained on open port.

From there, he could lose his trail.

The computer locked a line-of-sight laser onto receive in the Itreatic Asteroids. Tasha's anxious face formed in the monitor. "You've got a fix?" he asked.

"Etaria," she told him. "I'm off. I'll holler if I find anything. Be ready."

"Affirmative. and good luck."

She killed the connection and studied the course plot, the worry-cap easy on her head. To hesitate is to lose the trail. Damn you, Staffa, why are you putting me through this?

Skyla laid in the course and settled into her cushioned command chair. No matter what Staffa might think, he didn't have the skills to be turned loose among civilized people. He might be a brilliant tactician and a superb mercenary, but what did he know about the vipers out there? Especially ones like she had grown up around?

She triggered the main drives and built Delta V for the jump, noting with satisfaction that she was eating most of the vanished CV's radiation. Excellent, that put her right on target.

And if I'd had a child? Yes, I'd be just as preoccupied as Staffa is.

"Getting to be a sentimental old bitch," she muttered under her breath, adding more thrust to the fusion reactor and tightening the bounce-back collar.

"Be ust like him, though, to be up to his neck in trouble by the time I get to Etaria. Probably have to call out the whole fleet to break him out of it." Where after Etaria? "Targa? That's what the Praetor told him. There are a lot of Seddi on Targa."

She shook a fist in victory. If passage could be arranged to Targa from anywhere, it would be from Rega or Etaria.

She vented an explosive sigh as she stared at the starfilled monitor and studied the ship's feedback as it rolled into her brain via the shiny worry-cap. Her agile mind stored and sorted ship's data, maintaining the delicate nav systems.

Simultaneously, a consuming curiosity ate at her. Just what sort of woman had Chrysla been? How had she man-

aged to put a lock on Staffa's hard heart? Had she met him with iron and defiance in her soul, or given him her love and soft compliance? What did it take to win Staffa kar Therma's love? Chrysla had been his perfect woman. How did he expect to replace her?

She mulled it over as she stared out into the star-gray heavens and suffered an increasing anxiety. He had only been gone from Itreata for somewhat more than twentyfour hours. How much trouble could he get into in that time?

"Oh, Staffa, I hope I'm not too late."

Ily Takka studied the scanner input, watching the small cruiser as it built for jump. "What do you think, Commander?"

"Three person cruiser Minister. Could be anybody." The commander pulled on his nose nervously, as always, afraid to meet her probing black eyes.

"How many credits would you make that craft to be worth on the open market Commander?" Ily asked, voice soft, eyes narrowing.

"From the style and the g's it's putting out, I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand ICs, Minister."

"Indeed, and I sincerely doubt that just any of Staffa's people can. But we don't know that, do we?" She tapped her chin with a stylus. "Official business, perhaps? Or the Wing Commander running to tell Staffa we've already made offers? You have the destination triangulated?"

"Etaira, Minister. No doubt about it." He paused, taking a quick look at the navigator who nodded vigorous agreement.

"Hmm, isn't her cruiser accelerating rather rapidly?" Ily frowned, wishing she were more familiar with such things.

"Weapons First?" the commander called, "Can you get a Doppler on that craft in the targeting comp?"

"Aye, sir!" The Weapons First bent over a monitor, fixing the targeting comp on the moving dot of light. "She's pulling almost sixty g's sir."

The commander frowned. "Good ship Minister. She's got some pretty powerful gravity compensating equipment in there. I raise my estimate. You might not buy that craft for less than six hundred thousand ICs."

"And how many g's can we pull?" Ily raised an eyebrow.

The commander swallowed. "My crew, ma'am, can take forty g's by straining our equipment. With you aboard, I wouldn't want to pull more than thirty to leave us a high enough safest margin percentage just in case—"

"We will accelerate at forty g's Commander." She nodded her satisfaction as she narrowed her eyes. "We can always slow on the other side, but I want us close when she comes out."

"Ma'am, do you understand what kind of energy we're talking about? Forty g's is like slamming your body—"

"I gave you an order."

"Yes, ma'am," the commander agreed with a heavy sigh. "But first, we'll need to get you into combat armor. This won't be much fun if you insist on—"

"I do Commander. Where's this combat armor. Show me what I have to do."

"Yes, ma'am."

As she walked off the bridge, a klaxon started wailing. "Prepare for high g acceleration! All hands, high g acceleration! Stow all loose objects and prepare for forty g's, ladies and gentlemen."

And Skyla, my dear, Ily thought, next time we meet wil be in the Regan Empire — and so many things can happen in my Empire!

Bruen thought Butla looked like a restful tiger. Tension pervaded the air, even here, in the chambers below Vespa. The rock walls of the chamber showed signs of the passing of ages. Scars marked on the stone where various changes had been made to the room. Places like this were old, very old, dating to the terraforming of the planet. No wonder they were tense. They had taken so much on themselves, all in a wild gamble orchestrated by the thrice-cursed Mag Comm.

Hyde coughed hoarsely in the silence. He sat on the

opposite side of the table from Bruen while Ret sat at the head.

Butla Ret twisted sideways in the chair, muscles dancing under his midnight flesh, eyes thoughtful as he looked down his long flat nose. He wore a Master's off-white robe that was loosely belted around his slim waist. "On the surface Kaspa appears to be completely in Regan control. They patrol in Groups, always ready to return fire. When we snipe at them, they retaliate by blowing away entire buildings — despite the civilians. Fear is becoming a way of life in the capital."

Bruen shifted his eyes to Hyde, chin propped on a creased palm. "Indeed. Wel, we expected this. So far so good. Fear feeds discontent, the desire to return to a state of normalcy."

Butla formed his fingers into a fist, watching the muscles ripple in his forearm. "So far, the Regans have acted predictably, Magister," his deep bass rumbled, "and pray to God they continue to."

"You still agree that we should let them have free reign for a while?" Hyde asked.

Butla lifted a slab of shoulder. "I can't see us making any headway while they maintain such vigilance. This new Division First of theirs, um, Atkin is his name, he's scared, worried about his career should the Regans suffer another disaster."

Bruen nodded. "And his worry in turn worries you?"

Butla Ret's dark eyes flashed, "You tell me such behavior isn't dangerous, then I just might believe it."

Bruen sniffed and eased his aching hip. "Of course not, Butla. The man is paranoid; as his unreasonable fear increases, so does the probability that he will react unpredictably. It's a vicious cycle this type of revolution engenders."

Ret stretched his thick legs, arms crossed. "And what would you suggest, Magister?"

"How tight is the security in the Regan military compounds?" Bruen leaned back, closing his eyes, tracing the possibilities. How would the Regans react? What countermoves would they make within the limited perceptual framework of the future they insisted on maintaining? His mind delighted itself with the permutations. In the range of

potential responses, none seemed to play against them. But which future observation

would become phase reality

"They allow no Targans past the checkpoints."

"But you could get inside?"

Butla's expression barely changed; however, his voice chided, "Master! These are Regans! They haven't the slightest hint of what the word 'security' means, let alone how to enforce it."

Bruen looked at Hyde. Can I take this gamble? From intelligence sources, Tybalt would most likely install a sycophant in Atkin's place. Even if a capable man were hired to replace him, it would take time to reorganize. In the meantime, we can operate to increase Regan imbalance. We must hold out until Staffa can be brought within our reach. If we can't, all is lost!

"Then you could remove Division First Atkin?" Bruen asked through the constriction in his throat.

Butla's lips parted to reveal straight white teeth. "I have been waiting, Magister. Killing occasional Regan soldiers in the dark has proved sport but not challenge." Butla straightened, excitement in his eyes. "Further, we can maximize on this. I could decapitate the First Division in one night's work. At the same time, if the opportunity presents itself, I might be able to make a substantial contribution to our intelligence net regarding Then strategy and tactics."

"Do so!" Hyde managed, cackling gleefully. His sharp response triggered a coughing fit. The old man's face contorted as he bent double, fighting for air.

Bruen placed a friendly hand on the Magister's shoulder. "Old friend, I fear for you. This affliction continues to worsen."

Hyde waved it off, groping his way to his feet. Still hacking, hand over mouth, he shuffled out of the room, a pathetic broken figure.

Butla sat hunched, head down, hands knotted in his lap.

"I don't know how long he'll last," Bruen admitted with a sigh. "There comes a point beyond which not even the best of medicine can help. Magister Hyde has reached that. The quanta, you understand. Nothing lasts forever — not even a great and kind man."

Ret's voice gentled. "He was my instructor when I first came here as a novice Initiate. He… taught me of love

and God and future when all I had was hatred, anger, and confusion in my soul."

Bruen smiled. "Then he also taught you that observation creates a phase reality through entropy. Phase reality imparts experience of the Now. Experience is knowledge and that, in turn, is stored in energy — which is indestructible. Death, dear Butla, is nothing more than a redistribution of energy which"… in the end is brought to God through entropy when the universe colapses," Butla Ret finished. His smile was warm, relieved. "Yes, Magister, he taught me those things. I fear not for his immortal soul. I regret the loss of his company and goodness. I will experience pain and hollowness at his passing."

"We create our own suffering, Butla."

"Free will, the element of choice, Magister," the assassin pointed out, lifting a huge hand in a motion of futility. "The result of a self-redefinition — the search to establish normality — in a phase reality of constantly changing observation in the eternal Now." He shook his head. "What damage we do to ourselves and others."

"Learning never comes cheaply, Butla." Bruen pulled at his ear. He hesitated before asking, "And Arta?" He watched Ret's thoughts shift from introspection to satisfaction.

"She's doing most remarkably, Magister." Ret grinned to himself, enjoying some vision in his mind. "You should have seen the first time I put her in a dark hallway full of debris. You know, boards, broken glass, stacked tin cans, bits of string hanging from the ceiling." Reg's grin spread. "I turned off the lights and she threw a fit. Practically killed herself in the first meter."

"But she's improved."

Ret steepled his fingers. "A great deal of pleasure comes to a teacher who guides a student he knows will one day surpass him in his mastery. She is such a one. She will be very, very good, Magister."

"And in the doja?" Bruen asked softly, imagining Arta, naked on the thick pads, a stun knife in her hand as she attempted to penetrate the total darkness. She would be standing, legs bent and braced, lithe, her pose alert for the

slightest sound, the least movement of the air against her skin or hair. Extending her senses to feel for her antagonist.

Ret laughed. "I have never had a pupil who learned or modified the situation

as readily as she, Magister. True, I shocked her time and time again with the electric prod, but she has constantly improved, changing tactics from lying still near a wall to switching back to the changing room — even hanging from the walls above my reach."

A deep reverberating laugh exploded from Butla. "She's at the stage now where she hates me with a vengeance because I make it seem so easy while she is blind to her own improvement." He paused, sharp black eyes on Bruen. "I am taking her with me when I kill Atkin."

So, another test, dearest Arta. At the same time, look at the concern in Butla's eyes. Dearest Gods, no! He can't come to love her! Impossible. I must handle this most carefully.

"You are fond of her," Bruen remarked casually as he tried to calm the first creepers of disturbance weaving through his brain.

Butla Ret tilted his head back, broad jaw working from side to side. "Yes, Magister. I am."

Bruen shifted, irritated at the pain in his hip. "You know about the trigger? I don't have to remind you what woud happen if—"

"I understand." Ret nodded slowly, sadly. "Yes, Magister. I'm not a fool. I know what I deal with."

Yes, I suppose you do. And if you only knew who she is — who she is intended for — could you still keep your hands off her, Butla, my old friend?

Bruen grunted a sour chuckle. "She was made for love. That inherent quality has condemned her from the moment of her birth." He frowned, a hollowness in his guts. "What sort of existence do we have, Buta, when an ability to love is damnation?"

"The purpose of God—"

"Yes, yes, I know!" Bruen snapped in irritation. Why does Arta always leave me off balance? "I don't always have to like the way things are, do I?"

Ret's gaze dropped. "No, Magister. We, the Seddi, have already taken a hand in attempting to change that phase reality. You, Magister, made that decision so long ago. You

can see what we've done. Today, at least, humanity has a chance."

Bruen barked an acid laugh,irritated at himself for foolish sentimentality, irritated with Butla because he naively hoped — and that sullied his own cynicism.

"We've increased suffering in this little corner of Free Space, Butla." He resettled himself in the gravchair, moving his pained hip to a different position. "And what else? Rega and Sassa are balanced precariously on the edge of oblivion. The Star Butcher waits, licking his lips for the scraps. That machine down there in the rock is a malignant cancer sending dendrites throughout human society. It's—"

"We have it fooled," Butla reminded.

"Do we?" Bruen's hands spread. "Yes, we… I lie to it constantly, feeding it a bit of misinformation here and another there, but what do we know about its purpose? What is it? Who built it? I don't think its origins were human. There's something alien and incomprehensible about the Mag Comm. Oh, sure, we've seen some of the banks — all technologically impossible to us. Consider. In another day and age, Butla, we would call that. thing a God!" He paused. "And we're enslaved by its powers. Without it, Makarta would die. Without its coputational powers, we can't run our statistics, or access our historical files — or even keep track of our field agents. We need it to do our work."

Bruen laughed at Ret's suddenly cowed expression. "You see, my friend, you begin to understand the dilemma of having that 'power' constantly under our feet. To those of us who know it — deal with it — the question hovers forever in the backs of our minds. Do we manipulate it? Or do we each manipulate each other? Or — and most frightening— does it only allow us to think we manipulate it?"

His thoughts drifted. "There are no parameters of accurate measurement. Why does it order the things it does? At times, I get an eerie feeling that we've become toys, pieces to move about the table for its own amusement — but to what purpose?"

Bruen jerked himself straight, aware of the fear that had come to possess his voice. Doddering old fool, you're too old, too tired to keep control of your own systems! I must get more sleep. Too much is at stake these days.

Ret stared at him, somber-eyed. "Magister, you live a nightmare. What if you fail to veil your mind one of these days? That reality dangles out there

beyond the quantum wave functions, bouncing that potential reality back in so many possibilities. How. how do you deal with the knowledge that you might be betraying all of humanity?"

Bruen placed bone-thin fingers to his temples, pressing slightly and rotating his hands. "I just do." He raised a hand in protest. "No, my friend, I know that is no answer. The only other thing I can tell you is that I have faith. What? Heresy from a Seddi Magister? Perhaps. I think, however, that you of all people can understand."

"Why me, Magister?"

Bruen's smile was a wispy thing. "You, Magister Assassin, carry the burden of death constantly within your fingertips. What if your poison reaches the wrong person, kills the innocent? What if the man we remove was just about to betray his cause? God built the universe on uncertainty. The quanta are God's joke on reality; they affect everything. You share my burden — the power of life and death based on future probabilities of human action."

"The chance for error." Ret rumbled in a deep bass. "But Magister, for me, I must judge the value of each life one by one. You, most venerable teacher, must judge the future of all humanity."

"I throw a Seddi paradox back at you, Butla Ret. If the God mind is one, and if the God mind is infinitely divisible into awareness, which reality phase do you judge, and which do I? According to the quanta, it's all the same — and all different."

"You are very good, Magister, you have shifted attention away from my question. Soon you will have us steered into the solipsistic perspective of existence. I repeat, however, how do you bear responsibility for the probability of your own failure?" Ret cocked his head, black eyes gleaming as he laced his fingers together.

Bruen sniffed wearily and sighed. "I do so because no one else can. Does that surprise you?" He smiled, seeing disbelief in Butla's eyes. "It does? Very well, are you ready to sit down before the machine and attempt to deflect it while it's within your mind, sharing your thoughts?"

"No, Magister." A shudder shook Ret's massive shoulders.

Bruen nodded. "You see, Butla. tike Arta, I, too, was condemned from birth. My parallels are very like hers. No one else can fill her role. She is unique in that, just as I myself am unique in dealing with the Mag Comm. Our lives consist of nothing more than individual phase realities which happened to fit a probabilistic niche some thing happened to observe. That's a frightening thought — be it true or not."

Butla Ret's lips twitched. "And God has built uncertainty into the very underpinnings of the universe."

"Now you see the true nightmare of existence, my friend."

Staffa kar Therma lay on cold stone, unaware of the world around him and the mildly curious stares of his companions. Instead, he fought the dream that wound through his aching head. and succumbed to defeat.

He twisted and ran, bolts of energy seeking his vulnerable body. The corridor down which his bare feet pelted had been bent by explosions that had wrenched blasted steel into jagged edges. Here and there an overhead panel provided just enough light to show him the way through eerie shadows.

Behind him, the faceless pursuers howled, shrieked, and cursed as they shot at his fleeing back.

Fiery air ripped in and out of Staffa's searing lungs. Ahead of him, a bulkhead exploded in fire and destruction. The concussion smashed him onto his back, impaling his shivering flesh on one of the torn petal edges of metal that thrust up from the floor.

Staffa's throat tore in violent screams as he felt the cold metal slipping through his back and slicing neatly through peritoneum and spinal column. At first his intestines slid away from the edge, squirming to avoid the invasion that finally severed them, spilling hot brown digestive juices into his body to bu and begin eating away at the very flesh they served.

Staffa whimpered as he looked down, seeing the bulge beneath hard belly muscles, feeling steel cutting inside, pok-

ing the white skin of his stomach up in a steeple while the widening edge filled him, foreign, hard, cold.

In slow motion, the point formed under his stretching skin, lifting his naval, turning it inside out.

His choking lungs exploded again as the keen gray point broke through the

strained skin that slipped rubberlike and clinging along the lifting edge. It stopped, protruding — a gleaming peak of death over the snowy-white of his skin.

His brain terror-locked. He choked on fear and disbelief. A wretched sob shook his lungs while cold from the steel slowly spread through his gut, seeking his vitality, drawing i his life into the impersonal metal.

He became aware of the shuffling of millions of feet. Unable to tear his straining eyes from the spear of geaming gray lancing from his tortured gut, he heard the mutter of their voices, thick with hatred: watching. watching him 1 die.:

He screamed again, refusing to look up, refusing to see the damnation in their haunted dead eyes.

A slow murmur stirred them. "You are one of us now, Star Butcher! One of us!" It rustled in his mind, chilling, cursing.

They shuffled aside and Chrysla stepped out to stare at him with haunted yelow eyes. With one slim white hand, i she reached down and pressed a firing stud to blast him.:

"NO!" Staffa screamed, knowing it was all a dream — one from which he could not force himself to awaken. A dream he must live forever.