Staffa denied the memory of that day while his fist knotted and trembled.
The Praetor eyed the blasted city beyond the armored window. "Do you remember,
Staffa? Can you recall the conversations we shared? How you became the son I never had? You loved me then and I… I loved you."
Silence stretched as Staffa bit his lip; the stinging pain kept his concentration pure. This man had. Memories began to flash through his mind in ghostly images: Times when there had been laughter, joy, and security; life without assassins and blood and ships that flared death into the star-frosted emptiness of space; warm rooms, teachers, and breakfast in bed. The crushing loneliness, loneliness so terrible that only his studies relieved it.
"Ha!" the elder exploded, breaking the spell. "How powerful you became! Too powerful for Myklene. You frightened the Council. They wanted you eliminated. Only a degenerate society allows predators to stalk unleashed in its midst." He paused. "But I couldn't let them destroy you. I risked everything. Had you smuggled away. Gave you a ship, and, in the way I predicted, an occupation. I wonder if the old devils ever thought such innocent action would bring their destruction?"
"What of my wife and son?" Staffa thundered, slamming his fist against the hospital unit with force enough to jerk the Praetor's head.
"You know the term 'Achilles' heel'?" The brown eyes studied him thoughtfully.
"It's old. I don't know the origin. It refers to a vulnerability, one unknown to most others."
"Your weakness Commander! Your vulnerability. I took them! I stole your Chrysla away! Don't!" he cried as Staffa approached. "Harm me, and you shall never know their fate!"
Staffa stopped short, quivering hands already reaching for the old man's head.
"W-where?"
The old man nodded in enjoyment. "First, I will bargain."
"At peril of your LIFE!"
"For the disposition of my life."
Staffa trembled. The contract! His honor demanded that he fulfill every letter of the agreement between the Companions and the Sassan ruler. To compromise his honor for this vile…
"I-1 … accept. WHERE ARE THEY?" Staffa's senses cleared in the rush of adrenaline. The age freckles on the old man's face stood out like sunspots against the grainy sweat-filled pores on sallow tan. Hard blood vessels laced a blue-red maze under delicate skin.
A ghastly chuckle was followed by, "Your son is out there- somewhere. I don't know exactly. I gave him to the Seddi. Part of an old bargain I'd made. A child… for a child. I think they took him to Targa. That was before you… Well, you know."
Wretched chill formed at the base of Staffa's brain to drain down his spine. Targa! Where the Companions had killed millions suppressing the Seddi revolt. He saw again the mounded rubble, the piled corpses of rotting dead littering the war-torn streets. His son? One of those? "H-how long. ago?"
.. "Eighteen years. Maybe ten months before you blasted the place. " And then, "There were survivors, you know. No one ever caught up with the Seddi."
Fragments of thoughts refused to coalesce. A vision of particle beams raking Targa's scabby topography surfaced in Staffa's mind. He remembered the bridge lights dimming as the gravity flux generators surged and the monitors showed a city crumbling into wreckage. Another vision showed a diving LC attack ship firing bolt after energy bolt into an urban area, fountains of fire and debris rising in the hellfire.
"That's where I'd start looking," the Praetor mumbled on. "Left him with the Seddi-but you'd better hurry. I hear they're in trouble again. You know how the Seddi operate-like a cancer in a restless host. Targa's seething."
Staffa's voice grated like a skid on sand. "And Chrysla? She was left there, too?" No, not my Chrysla, not her. Had her soft flesh been left to rot with the rest of the Targan dead? Could one of those bloody chunks of meat have been her?
"No. Commander. But first, you will never let the
Sassans have me. That is our deal-my price, if you will. I don't want them raping my mind with their probes. Understood?"
Staffa worked his lips, relief washing through him. He closed his eyes, aware
of the sweat beading on his face. "I promised them that if you survived the combat…. Part of the contract that you'd…. I signed. My honor."
"Honor? What care I for your honor? No. You'll kill me." The Praetor laughed humorlessly. "I still control you, Staffa. "
"Never!" "Then you'll never know the whereabouts of Chrysla, Commander."
"Damn you! Tell me, Praetor. Tell me!" "You will not allow the Sassans-"
"ALL RIGHT!" Staffa lunged for the hospital, sliding the heavy unit across the floor as if it were a reading stand. "Whatever you want. But where?"
The Praetor smiled thinly, enjoying another small victory. "She was here, Commander," he uttered
softly. "On Myklene."
Staffa closed his- eyes and took a deep breath, relief flooding as powerfully as a tide across the desert sands of Etaria. "I kept her in my palace. None of her needs went unattended. "
"Where is she now? Where did you send her?" After all these years, he and Chrysla….
"I had hoped to dicker with you, Commander. As I say, you have one weakness-your family. Outside of your desire to see me destroyed, only your obsession with her could overcome your precious honor when it comes to contracts. I use my weapons well."
"By the Rotted Gods, Praetor, where is she?"
"She was on the Pylos. I had her in my quarters. I thought I'd have time to contact you before the fighting, to use her as a bargaining… "
"Your flagship… was… destroyed." I blew Pylos apart. With my own hands, I triggered the guns… thinking I was destroying you, old man. Realization left him devastated… as butchered internally as the city beyond the window.
A slight nod. "Your ship… I believe you call her the Chrysia-how ironic-blew her into plasma, Commander."
Staffa pulled himself upright, gutted, and started for the door. The room seemed to reel as if it rested on gimbals. Chrysla? No… not this. He could imagine the scene: decks rupturing; metal twisting and shrieking; violent plasma jetting hot and deadly; Chrysla's final scream.
"Our deal, Commander!" the Praetor called frantically. Staffa looked back with dead eyes. His voice stuck in his throat. "I have a contract with the Sassans."
One final betrayal of this man he had once loved.
"You have no soul, Staffa. And now, I damn you." The Praetor's lip quivered and a knowing glint sharpened in his eyes. In a perfectly modulated voice, he said, "You are my creation. You're a machine… a construct of human flesh. Did you hear me, Staffa? I said you're a machine. A construct. A creation."
A surge, like a jolt of electricity, coursed through Staffa's brain. His body flushed and he staggered. Bracing against the wall, he stared at the Praetor through tearing eyes. "What… did you. "
"The last of the mental triggers, Staffa." The Praetor watched him from half-lidded weary eyes. "I hid that trigger in the deepest part of your psyche-the sense of identity. I expected you to find the others, but I knew you wouldn't search your sense of self. It's too frightening-even for you. So I left my final weapon there… and with it, I damn you to the hell of your own devising. May God rot your inhuman self. Staffa, you are a man accursed."
"I am no more than you made me." Staffa rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the sweat that beaded on his skin. His thoughts faded and slipped away. Damn the treasonous old bastard! What had he done? A thousand voices wailed in Staffa's head. His imagination spun image after image of Chrysla dying in agony as Pylos blew apart and decompressed around her.
The Praetor beamed at him, suddenly crafty. "Then it won't hurt you to know your Chrysla was a most remarkable woman. She provided me with a great deal of warmth in my last years. You know, she had a mole on her right breast-just under the nipple. When we would lie together,