Thieves of Light

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

To Bhodi's disappointment, two days later his gunnery work was unexpectedly interrupted when Pike and Parcival were called away on a mission. Their departure was so abrupt that Pike left Bhodi no assignments and made no arrangements for him to continue his work in the combat gunnery center.

"Sorry," Haj said with a shrug. "There's one reservation in advance, for tomorrow in the firing range. I can let you have that, since your instructor made the request. But a challenger alone has to wait in line behind all the other instructors for training time, and I can tell you right now that someone's going to snap up the slots Ferthewillihan was using."

"The firing range? There must be some mistake," Bhodi protested. "I'm way past that. What about the maze room? That's where I really need to be."

Haj shook his head. "Impossible. The maze room is fully scheduled-and I would not be responsible for placing you in it without proper preparation in any case."

"Why? What goes on there?"

The training supervisor frowned. "If Ferthewillihan told you about the maze room, I don't understand why he didn't explain its purpose."

"I didn't hear about it from Pike. I heard about it from another challenger, down at the gunnery center." Seeing Haj's look of disapproval, Bhodi added, "I wasn't snooping. He was scheduled to go in that afternoon and was nervous. Made him chatty."

Haj regarded Bhodi sternly. "Challengers are to discuss their training only with their instructors. Each program is unique, and all that can come out of comparing one with another is confusion."

Scanning down a list on his display, Haj continued, "I see that you were next scheduled to work with Parcival on field maintenance of arms and equipment. I am reluctant to seek a substitute for Ferthewillihan unless that becomes absolutely necessary. But as you haven't begun working with Parcival, I could possibly seek a replacement among the other Guardians on-station-"

"No," Bhodi said quickly.

"Very well. I understand your preference to take instruction from within the platoon-"

That was not it at all. Bhodi did not want to be sidetracked into the kind of tedious detail that "field maintenance" promised to include, especially in light of whom he had been scheduled to study with. But Bhodi said nothing to correct the misimpression.

"What I would suggest is that you approach Tivia about some supervised practice. Ja-Nin is a discipline, not a tool. It needs your constant attention, and I'm afraid you have been neglecting it in your enthusiasm for gunnery."

"No to that, too."

"What?"

"Look, let's be straight," Bhodi said. "I know that that's not what Li-hon wants me for."

"Why do you think that?"

Bhodi realized belatedly that he was in danger of putting Pike in dutch with the training supervisor, and he tried his best to cover up. "Look, it's just obvious that's not my role on the team. I'll never be good enough to take on a Destructor or a Dog hand-to-hand. And what even Tivia would do against six limbs is something I'd like to know. So why should I spin my wheels over Ja-Nin when I could be sharpening up on what I am good at?"

"Is that how you see it?" Haj asked stiffly.

"Yeah."

"Then I suggest you speak to Sergeant Li-hon about your problem," Haj said. "Perhaps he will be able to find a solution."

"Can he get me into the maze room?"

"Li-hon is the most respected instructor of strategy and tactics in the entire Force, as well as the most senior," Haj said in a curiously emotionless voice. "As such he may request priority time in any training facility for any of his students."

"Which means me, right? He's my sergeant, so he must be my S amp;T instructor."

"He is when he says he is. It's customary for a challenger to master all other disciplines before beginning his study of strategy and tactics. I doubt very much that Li-hon will find reason to make an exception in your case."

"But he could, right? So I will go talk to him."

"Do that," Haj said. "I am sure he will have interesting things to say."

The great lizard lay curled on his side in the corner of the room, cushioned by the shredded padding of his nest.

"Nar-lex-ko-li-hon."

He blinked in the darkness of his quarters. "Yes, First Guardian?"

"There is a problem-"

Li-hon sighed. "A new problem or an old problem?"

"A new problem which concerns an old problem."

"That would be Bhodi Li."

"Yes. Haj-til-ko-van has submitted a supervisor's recommendation for peremptory dismissal. It is most strongly worded. He said the boy is completely unfit for further training. He blames Pike."

Li-hon struggled to a sitting position. "Let me see the rec."

A full wall of the chamber flashed into light. Li-hon quickly scanned the symbols projected there. "Haj is too harsh," he pronounced. "Pike did what was necessary."

"It is beyond refutation that humans lack discipline and motivation. In that Bhodi has proved himself no exception. Is there not now enough reason to think that it is Parcival who is the exception, and give up the effort to find warriors among the human population?"

"They show more than enough motivation when they know the reason why," Li-hon disputed.

"And hasn't Bhodi Li been told of the Arrian menace? Is he ignorant of the threat to his homeworld?"

"The threat is still not real to him. He still thinks that he will somehow be safer going home."

"Then the problem is an immature mind. He is unable to grasp a need greater than his own."

"Yes. But that, at least, is open to change."

"Then you intend to dispute Haj-til-ko-van's recommendation?"

"Yes. Please record it."

"Haj-til-ko-van will be displeased."

"That doesn't matter. Not to me, anyway."

"You understand that this makes you a partner in Bhodi Li's challenge."

"In my mind, I always was," Li-hon said. "Where is Bhodi now?"

"En route to see you. Now in Corridor Gold, Section Yellow, about two minutes away."

"Can you delay him until I get out? This conversation will go better in the platoon room than here. And that way I won't have to make a scene about being disturbed in my quarters."

"I will delay him at the section boundary touchpoint."

It seemed to Bhodi that everyone and everything was determined to squelch his enthusiasm for continuing his training. Bhodi was eager to prove himself, to face the next hurdle and transcend it. But the First Guardian had stolen his instructor, Pike had run off and forgotten him, Haj had been uncooperative right up to the point when he located Li-hon for Bhodi, and now the boundary sensor at the Section Green entry point was refusing to acknowledge his presence and pass him through.

"Nothing to worry about," the boundary-keeper said as an intermittent stream of traffic in both directions passed through without difficulty. "It happens sometimes. Just keep trying."

Bhodi did, touching his bracelet to the sensor every time there was a break in the traffic. Each time, the response lamp above the saloon-door-style gate stayed dark, glowing neither red to pass him through nor violet to turn him aside.

More than five minutes slid by before he finally connected with the station's traffic management computer and passed through the touchpoint. But his frustration did not end there. When he reached the Command Quad and found what he thought was the doorway to which Haj had given him directions, the door did not open for his bracelet, and there was no response to the chime that he presumed sounded inside.

So either Haj had been in error, or Bhodi was in the wrong place. It was hard to be sure which, because Bhodi could not read all the symbols beside the threshold. The numerals were right-21-but maybe the rest didn't say Nar-lex-ko-li-hon, or Command Quad. For all he knew, the symbols said Laundry, High Voltage, or Employees Only.

Why do they have to have such a damned complicated alphabet, Bhodi fumed as he retraced his steps to the section boundary. Forty-two letters and it all looks like sloppy Chinese. If they can give me this translator plug, why can't they give me some sort of computer contact lens that'll make it look like English to me? Because they like to make everything harder than it has to be, that's why At the touchpoint, Bhodi filed a where-is query with the boundary-keeper. He was told that Li-hon was in the Ninth's platoon room, located two levels down along the Section Green's outermost corridor.

I wonder where he'll be when I get there, Bhodi thought. Are we playing spacetime hide-and-seek?

But he forgot his annoyance when he reached Level 10. It was not physique alone, but something in their faces that told Bhodi that the people he saw in the corridors were Guardians. He had moved into Intellistar's inner world.

That impression was confirmed by Bhodi's first glimpse of Platoon Row. He stood looking down the length of a long, dimly lit lounge. Most of the seating areas were empty, but near the far end a half dozen Guardians in combat suits were clustered together. The left wall was solid glass-or whatever the Alliance used in place of it-and looked out to space and a spectacular starscape. To the right was a line of widely spaced thresholds interspersed with large, colorful emblems hung like medieval heraldry on the wall.

As Bhodi started along the row, his eyes scanned ahead and found an emblem he knew. It was the same symbol that appeared on the sleeve of Li-hon's fatigues-the emblem of the Ninth Platoon. He stopped at the door nearest it, paused, then touched and went inside.

Li-hon was seated in the hexagonal pit that dominated the center of the room, perched on a stool and poring over the glowing display lying on the table at the center of the pit. But Bhodi almost didn't notice Li-hon, for his eye was drawn immediately to the back wall. The upper third of the wall was filled with portraits of individual Qeth, Celtans, and other Alliance species. There were more than fifty portraits in all, three rows across and a third of a fourth row.

"Ah, Bhodi," Li-hon said, rising up. "Haj said you might be trying to find me."

"Who are they?" Bhodi asked, still staring at the wall of faces.

"That's the Ninth's Wall of Honor," Li-hon said, turning to look that way himself.

"You've got your own Hall of Fame," Bhodi said approvingly. Then he added, "I guess there's a lot of tradition here. The platoon's had a lot of heroes."

Li-hon turned back to Bhodi. "I'm afraid you misunderstand, Bhodi Li. These are faces of the warriors who fell wearing the insignia of the Ninth. We remember them for their service to the Light, not individual deeds. Character makes a soldier. Circumstance makes a hero."

Bhodi gulped. Heroes were one thing; dead heroes something entirely different. Suddenly he wasn't quite as eager as he had been.

"I understand you are interested in beginning a study of strategy and tactics," Li-hon continued.

"Uh-yes. I know-I mean Haj told me it's not the usual procedure-"

"I think it's time," Li-hon said, "and that is more important than any fossilized habits."

"Uh-thanks." That was easy, Bhodi thought with some puzzlement. What was Haj talking about?

"I have an hour's work remaining," Li-hon said. "We can begin when it's completed."

"I could meet you at the transporter station-"

"No. Wait outside in the lounge until I'm ready."

"Okay. But shouldn't I go get my armor?"

"You won't need it," Li-hon said and settled back on his stool.

Bhodi was kept waiting in the lounge long enough for the space station's slow spin to bring Rejia into view twice. During that time, the only person Bhodi saw that he knew was Lord Baethan, who passed within two yards of him on his way to the platoon room. Predictably, the cyborg failed to notice or acknowledge Bhodi's presence; he might as well have been part of the chair he was seated in.

Shortly after Lord Baethan left, Li-hon appeared and called Bhodi in. He offered him a seat at the pit table- which Bhodi later learned was called the battle board-and then settled back on his stool. It was then that Bhodi learned the reason he did not need his armor: His studies with Li-hon were to begin not with a duel or an ambush, but a conversation.

"How closely have you studied the campaigns of Earth's great strategists-Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Sun Tzu, Genghis Khan, Napoleon?" Li-hon asked.

Bhodi almost laughed. "Well-I've heard of most of them. Military strategy isn't exactly a core subject in my high school."

"And yet it has always seemed to me that it would be, since your species seems to be constantly at war," Li-hon said. "Very well. What do the words 'strategy' and 'tactics' mean to you?"

Bhodi considered a moment. "I guess strategy is what you're trying to do, and tactics is how you try to do it."

"Reasonable. What, in your perception, are we trying to do?"

"We, meaning the Photon Alliance?"

"Yes."

"Well, whip the Arrians, of course."

"But how will we know we've won? What is our specific goal?"

Bhodi felt like he were being quizzed by Mrs. Martini about an assignment he hadn't read, and was enjoying it just about as much. "I guess to find the Arrian equivalent of Intellistar and bomb it to bits."

"No. You are confusing strategy and tactics." He touched a colored area on the battle board and a picture appeared in the center of the surface. It was the crater-surfaced mushroom-shaped space station he had seen in the Fraanic briefing. "This is called Scarrcastle-"

"How'd you get the picture?"

"An intelligence intercept. We have several spy buoys operating inside Arrian space."

"They probably have them here, too, huh?"

"Not inside this system," Li-hon said. "Our sweeps here are very thorough. But elsewhere-probably. Communications are scrambled on the presumption that they could be intercepted. But again you deflect me to a tactical question. The point I was making is that we know the location of the Arrian command base. We have never attempted an assault on it, and never will."

"Why? It seems to me the fastest way to end the war."

"Scarrcastle lies deep in the midst of the Darkness. To die in Darkness is to become separated from the Light forever. The First Guardian will never order her warriors to face that risk."

No wonder you've been fighting this war for two hundred years, Bhodi thought. "Then what are you trying to do?"

"The Force's sole strategic goal is to end the Arrian interference with the spread of the Light."

"Don't you want to go all the way-wipe them out and take their worlds, too?"

"No," Li-hon said firmly. "The Arrian homeworlds are irredeemably contaminated by the Darkness. We have no interest in them. Our mission is to the worlds that have never known Light or Darkness."

"All right. I have the picture."

"Then consider another question. What are the elements of victory?"

"Uh-get there first with the most warriors?"

"Ah. You know more of your strategic tradition than you admit."

"Huh?"

"That was Nathan Bedford Forrest's prescription for victory. He was a general in your American Civil War."

"I didn't know that," Bhodi admitted. "It just came off the top of my head."

"So much the better, since I would have had to convince you that Forrest was wrong," Li-hon said. "Listen carefully, Bhodi Li-no soldier, no force, is invulnerable. Neither size nor number nor experience nor firepower in itself is enough to guarantee victory. The winner of a combat is the one who best exploits his own advantages and conceals his own weaknesses."

"That makes sense."

"Does it make sense, too, that a warrior must therefore know his advantages and weaknesses?"

"Yes-"

"And he must see both clearly, without the exaggerations of pride and the illusions of ego?"

"I guess-"

Li-hon jabbed a meaty finger in the direction of the Wall of Honor. "Then start clearing away the veils from your own eyes, Bhodi Li, if you hope to be a Guardian," he said sharply. "I myself have hung fifteen of those portraits. I have no wish to hasten the time when my own joins them. I look forward to fighting beside you, but not enough to go into battle with a fool."

"I'm not a fool," Bhodi said, bristling.

Li-hon shook his head. "That remains to be seen."