Still, she was learning. She was there with me when the shuttlecraft landed to the west of the Castle as it always did, appearing out of the clouds and settling to the ground. The Elaborate set of airlocks and safeguards came into play, although they were less necessary with Kreegan on board.
Kreegan still wore his old priest’s robe, but I knew it would soon be exchanged for something else. I might not even know him the next time I saw him, although I felt sure I’d recognize that man anywhere. And one day, Kreegan, I told myself, we’d have more than a little chat.
Duke Kobe remained behind, although usually he was the one who used the shuttle. I wondered idly if Kreegan hadn’t made one mistake this time after all, since he knew that the broadcaster had been in place until this afternoon. It was entirely possible that the orbiting Confederacy troops would blast his little shuttle. But no, I told myself. They wouldn’t do it because that would involve a choice of record. That’s why they hired—created—people like me. Nobody up there would want to take the open responsibility without clearing it back to the Confederacy itself, and by that time Kreegan would have vanished to who knew where?
Besides, he had powerful friends. Would they permit him to be blown to bits? I doubted it. He was their most valuable ally, the man who knew how the Confederacy establishment thought. The aliens wouldn’t want to lose
He waved, smiled, and entered the shuttle, and the stairway retracted. I heard the soft whir of the engines starting up again, and, slowly at first, it started to lift.
“Cal,” I heard Ti say beside me.
“Yes, hon?” I responded and looked at her.
In that moment something in my head seemed to explode. My Warden cells seemed to flare, and the energy flowed from me, maximum energy, beyond my control, flowing straight at Ti! But she didn’t burn, nor even do more than shake slightly. Instead she turned and looked directly at that lifting body, heading slowly up into the clouds, cautiously trying to clear the mountains before full thrust.
I stood transfixed, unable to move, think, breathe.
The sound of the shuttle engines varied slightly, coughed, then sounded very, very wrong.
There was a sudden explosion, and a brightness in the clouds, and then, tumbling down, crashing again and again against the rocky mountainside, the shuttle plunged. It struck bottom with a thunderous roar and suddenly was bathed in a terrible glow, too bright to look at. Ti turned away, and I felt myself abruptly freed from that mysterious, terrible hold.
I turned, stunned, first in the direction of the shuttle, but it was now just a smoldering, bubbling and hissing mass of molten metal. Soon it, too, would be gone. When it cooled enough, I knew, the Warden cells would begin their relentless attack on the alien matter, reducing it to dust in a matter of days.
I turned back to Ti in shock. “Wha—What the hell did you do?”
She smiled, as evil and self-satisfied a smile as I had ever seen on another human being.
“Back at the witch village a few days ago—you remember?”
I could only nod dully.
“I swiped some of that potion. I drank it all this morning, just before coming down here. I was lucky. I was hopin’ to surprise you and be able to use your power before you could stop me. And I did.”
“But—but how?”
“Last night after dinner I talked a lot with Duke Kobe and Boss Tiel,” she told me. “I asked ’em a few simple questions. One of ’em was how they kept the shuttle level. Kob6 was particularly nice about showin’ me. Drew me a picture of somethin’ called a geoscope or some such. I asked him if the shuttle had a thing like that and he told me it did, but not like that. He told me what it looked like. And using your power, I just did the same thing to the shuttle that Kreegan did to Sumiko’s gun. I just took the spell off.”
“But—but it would be in a vacuum chamber!” I protested. “It shouldn’t have made any difference.”
“She did more than that, young man,” said a voice behind me. I whirled and saw Duke Kobe standing there, looking more thoughtful than angry. “You sure as hell have some power, son, and she hated old Marek worse than anybody should be hated by anybody, that’s for sure. I could see it, feel it, but I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling suddenly totally drained.
He shook his head in wonder. “The gyros didn’t get him, no matter what she thinks. She punched a hole with Warden cell material clear through the outer hull and right through the power supply!”
I sat down on the grass. “Oh, my God!”
“If nothing else, you can see now that even Sumiko didn’t have an idea of just what the power of a Lord could do,” the Duke noted.
I thought he was taking the death of Marek Kreegan pretty lightly and told him so.
He just smiled. “It’s the way of Lilith,” he said philosophically. “I did all the administrative work for the whole damned planet plus, yet I was still his toady. No, son, I had no love for Marek Kreegan.”
“Cal is Lord now!” Ti exclaimed forcefully. I could still feel her tug on me, but knowing what was going on, I found I could block it.
Kobe shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, little clever and ambitious one. He’s not. He didn’t kill Marek Kreegan—you did. I doubt if he could muster that much hate on his own. No, the position is open, pending someone claiming it and being able to hold on to it. That’ll take weeks, at least. In the meantime, I’ll act in his stead.” He sighed. “Damn. Guess I’ll have to attend that damned conference now myself.”
Ti flared at him, but I was now able to dampen her rage. In a few hours, I knew, the effect would wear off. In the meantime, I had to keep a really close watch on her.
I looked up at her, still a little stunned. “You don’t have any more of that juice, do you?”
She looked a little hurt at the question and stared down at me. “Would I lie to you?”
Epilogue
The man came out of it slowly, only vaguely aware of who and where he was. He removed the headset almost idly and rubbed his temples. He had a headache that was killing him.
He looked around the control cubicle for some time, as if not believing that he was really here, on the picket ship, in his own lab, and not down there somewhere, on Lilith.
Finally he managed something of a recovery. “Computer?”
“Responding,” a calm, male voice responded.
“You now have the raw data and the data filtered through me,” he noted. “Any conclusions?”
“For the first time the connection between the aliens and the Lords of the Diamond is confirmed,” the computer responded. “I also have an awful lot of data that asks more questions than it answers… Not enough now—but we do have another report in. I might also point out, sir, that Marek Kreegan knew only about Cal Tremon, so this might well mean that they do not suspect the other three.”
“That’s something,” he admitted grumpily. “Did you say we had another?”
“Yes, sir. Cerberus. Because of the peculiar nature of the Warden cell there it was not possible to do the organic mind-link, but we imposed a command on that subject agent to report when able and then forget he reported. It is a technological culture, sir, so that was possible. I believe we have a full accounting. Would you like me to play it for you?”