As he spoke, Varinnia’s assistant nodded in agreement. “Later, Mr. Webster, later,” Andrew sighed. “Continue, Commander.”
“In the long term, this will be a political war as well. I know that doesn’t bear on the issue at hand, but I had to mention it. I suspect that Hazin is urging the emperor to attack in order to divert him. You see, if they didn’t fight us, they’d fight among themselves. Perhaps their nobility would turn on this cult of Hazin’s and destroy it.”
“If only we could trigger that.”
“I don’t know how,” Richard replied. “I wish I did.”
“There’s one final question for this morning,” Andrew said. “Assuming we face their fleet within the next four to six weeks before the storm season strikes. What do we do?”
“Based on what he said,” Webster replied, “surrender the ships or pull out.”
Andrew looked over at Webster with a flash of anger in his eyes. “We can’t withdraw, nor will we ever surrender.”
“We fight, and they get blown apart and thousands of good men die for a hollow gesture based on political considerations.”
Richard stepped back from the two as an argument ensued. Long ago, while still a slave, he had learned that when rulers fight, the lowly should be nowhere in sight.
As he moved to the edge of the group, his attention focused on the half-completed ship.
“I always feared these were not enough.”
Varinnia was by his side, Adam behind her. He nodded, sensing it was best to say nothing.
“Beautiful ships, but the problem with the sea is, so much rides on so little. A dozen ships can decide the fate of a nation. On land, with massed armies, you can fight a battle, lose it, perhaps even lose near on to an entire army as we did several times, but with the right backing industrially, by the time your opponent advances you can have a new army in place and quickly adapt your tactics to what you’ve learned from the last fight.
“At sea it comes down to a few thousand men, a few ships. Lose that fleet, and before you have time to build a new one they are standing off your harbors, destroying the crucial yards needed to rebuild. One battle at sea, maybe two, and the issue is basically decided. Maybe in a way that is better. I’ve always dreaded the mass slaughter created by the weaponry I helped to build.”
“Admiral Bullfinch calls it the power of a fleet in existence,” Richard replied. “Says that he used to talk about it with his roommate when he was at the old Naval Academy back on earth.”
“So these ships will die if they go to face the Kazan.”
“They’ll be sunk the moment they come into range of their guns.”
She looked at Keane and Webster, who were still arguing, then turned back to Richard. “Tell me, is there a way that they can fight without having to come within range?”
As she spoke, Richard could see Adam standing behind her, ready to burst with excitement. “I think Lieutenant Rosovich has the answer to that,” he replied.
ELEVEN
“What is it, Sean?”
Ashamed that she had caught him thus, he slipped out of the bed and retreated to the small veranda attached to their bedroom in the palace of Hazin.
Slipping on a light robe, Karinia came out to join him. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, “I woke up, and it sounded like you were crying.”
He lowered his head, covering his eyes with his hands. “Nothing,” he whispered. “A bad dream, that’s all.”
“Tell me about it.” She sat down beside him, hands lightly touching his shoulders, rubbing them.
“My mother. I dreamed she was still alive, back in Roum. She asked me why I had done what I have.”
“Done what?”
“Stayed here,” and he uncovered his face.
Ever so gently she touched the tears on his cheeks as if they were some strange curiosity she had never experienced before. She touched a teardrop on her fingertip to her lips.
“And my father, yelling drunkenly. Funny, that’s one of the few memories I have of him from when I was a boy. Him drunk.”
“Did he hit your mother?”
“No. He was never like that. A good-natured mick, they called him. He’d laugh too loudly, always with some of his friends from the army when he came to Roum. He’d give me some present, then have the servants shoo me off to bed. In the morning he’d be gone and my mother would cry for days afterward. He was with her in the dream, asking me the same thing.”
“You regret staying?”
He looked over at her and forced a smile. “For you? No, of course not.”
He let his fingers lightly trace the line of her jaw. His hand cupped her cheek for a second, then fell away. He stood up, leaning over the railing. Below was the main courtyard of the temple. In this, the hour before dawn, initiates of the first order, Kazan and human, were dimly visible, lying on the flagstone pavement with arms spread wide. At dusk they had drunk of the holy waters, and even now they drifted in their visions. Occasionally one would moan softly.
Guards paced back and forth between the rows. Several of the bodies were completely still, blood splattered around them, their heads neatly laid to one side. Even as he watched, one of them, caught in a horrible vision, began to stand up, crying out. He was dead within seconds, body collapsing, spraying blood. He had failed, falling victim to the inner terror. He had not learned stillness in the face of fear.
“Ghastly in its power,” Sean whispered.
“The first thing you learn,” Karinia replied. “Weakness is the destroyer.”
He stepped back from the spectacle below, looking over at her. “My tears were weakness.”
She smiled. “No. Just love.” She moved into his arms. “I vaguely remember my mother,” she whispered. “My father, any of our fathers, none of us know. He is simply selected, then is gone.”
“Were you selected for me?” Sean asked.
She slipped from his embrace, returning to the bed, beckoning for him to follow, which he did.
As he lay down beside her, she lightly traced a fingertip across his chest. “Yes, I was selected.”
He pulled back slightly and sat up.
“Don’t be angry. Consider it an honor, my love. It was Hazin who told me to go to you. I obeyed, but after I met you the obedience became pleasure.”
He shook his head. “It makes it seem false.”
“Why? Because that is not how it is done in your old world?”
He nodded.
“Hazin wanted you for the Order. There is nothing wrong in that. If not for that, you would be dead now.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What, then?”
“Arranged like that.”
“Don’t they do that where you come from? The Chin still arrange marriages, don’t they?”
“How do you know that?”
She smiled. “I just know. Consider it an honor conferred by Hazin. You are not of us, yet he wishes your blood to be joined with us. I should have been destined for someone pure, of ten generations or more, but he chose you. That indicates his regard.”
Sean looked over at her, not sure how to react. She seemed a dream of perfection, yet beneath the softness of her light olive skin, she had a strength that at times, in moments of passion, seemed capable of overwhelming him.
She was not the first woman he had been with. There had been Svetlana, one of the girls at the Roaring Mouse, and even Lavinia back in Roum, who, at age eighteen, he had at times thought of in terms far more than passion. He had made her vague promises about finishing the academy and his first tour of duty, at which point the military freed him and would allow him to marry. He wondered where Lavinia was now, if she mourned him, if she still cared or had already forgotten him with someone else.
The way I’ve forgotten her, he thought. He looked over at Karinia. She was different, and he wondered if in some way she was not even quite human.
Yet that was indeed what had convinced him to stay. It was not the visions given to him by Hazin, the cunning and oh so persuasive arguments of the inevitability of history on this world, or even the quest to find a Portal and thereby reach the power of the stars. No, it was the raw, primal power of this race the Kazan were breeding. They were the inevitable culmination of man, and once unleashed, nothing, and especially the Republic, with all its turmoil and teeming, foolish voices, could stand against them.