— Herv? Fassin sent.
“Got some sort of targeting—” Apsile began, then broke off as the craft shook again and slewed wildly across the sky.
“We are indeed being targeted by something,” Hatherence announced. “Master Technician,” she shouted across the frequencies. “Are you yet able to release us?”
“Eh? What? No! I—”
“Master Technician, attempt to perform a roll or part of an internal loop on my command,” Hatherence told him. “Ishall release us.”
“You will?” Apsile shouted.
“I shall. I will. I carry weapons. Now, excuse me, and good luck.”
— Wait a minute, Fassin began.
“Seer Taak,” the colonel said tersely, “shield your senses.” The big discus hanging beside him sent a pulse of blinding blue-white light straight downward at the doors, which blew away in a brief gout of sparks. Rushing yellow-brown clouds spun by outside. Fassin’s little arrowcraft was seeing spots. It got busy shuffling its damaged sensors round for working ones. He guessed he hadn’t shielded his senses in time. He shut them down now. “Releasing in three seconds,” the colonel said. “Make your manoeuvre now if you please, Master Technician.”
A blast of radiation and a spike of heat from above coincided with a sudden roll. The cradle holding Fassin in the drop ship gave way, sending him shooting from the hold like a cannon ball. The colonel in her oerileithe esuit came whirling after him a moment later, quickly drawing level. He glimpsed the drop ship above, still rolling, then saw a violet ray appear suddenly to one side, slicing through the gas around them, searing his barely mended vision. The beam just missed the carrier craft, then clouds of yellow fog rolled quickly up between them and the drop ship and it was just him and the colonel, a tiny arrow shape and a spinning coin of dirty grey, hurtling down into the vast chaotic skies of Nasqueron.
* * *
“ ‘It is a given amongst those who care to study such matters that there is, within certain species, a distinct class of being so contemptuous and suspicious of their fellow creats that they court only hatred and fear, counting these the most sincere emotional reactions they may hope to excite, because they are unlikely to have been feigned.’ ” The Archimandrite Luseferous looked up at the head on the wall. The head stared straight across the cabin, eyes wide with pain and terror and madness.
The assassin had died not long after they’d set out on their long journey towards Ulubis, the upper set of fangs finally penetrating his brain deeply enough to produce death. The Archimandrite had had the fellow’s eyelids slit open again when the medical people said death was likely within a few days; he’d wanted to see the look on the man’s face when he died.
Luseferous had been asleep when death had finally come for the nameless assassin, but he’d watched the recording many times. (All that happened was that the man’s face stopped contorting, his eyes rolled backwards and then came slowly back down, slightly cross-eyed, while the life-signs read-out accompanying the visuals registered first the heart stopping and then a few minutes later the brain flat-lining. Luseferous would have preferred something more dramatic, but you couldn’t have everything.) He’d had the fellow’s head removed and mounted near that of the rebel chief Stinausin, pretty much in the first head’s eye line, so that was what Stinausin had to look at all day.
The Archimandrite glanced up at the staring, nameless head. “What do you think?” He looked over the passage again, lips moving but not actually reading it aloud. He pursed his lips. “I think I agree with what’s being said, but I can’t help feeling there’s a hint of criticism implied at the same time.” He shook his head, closed the ancient book and glanced at the cover. “Never heard of him,” he muttered.
But at least, he reflected, this holier-than-thou intellectual had a name. It had come to annoy Luseferous rather a lot that he didn’t have a name for the failed assassin. Yes, the fellow had failed, yes, he had paid dearly for his crime, and yes, he was dead and now reduced to a mere trophy. But somehow the fact that his name had never been revealed had begun to strike Luseferous as almost a kind of triumph for the assassin, as though successfully withholding this nugget of information meant that Luseferous’s victory over the wretch would never quite be complete. He had already sent word back to Leseum to have the matter investigated more thoroughly.
His chief personal secretary appeared behind the sheet of mirrored diamond forming the main inner door of the stateroom-study.
“Yes?”
“Sir, the Marshal Lascert, sir.”
“Two minutes.”
“Sir.”
He saw the Beyonder marshal in the primary stateroom of the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII, his fleet flagship. (Luseferous thought terms like “battleship’ and “fleet carrier’ and so on sounded old-fashioned and too common.) He’d had the craft remodelled to provide accommodation befitting his rank, but there had come a point where the naval architects had actually started to cry because letting what they called “voids’ grow beyond a certain volume weakened the ship too much. The result was that the stateroom wasn’t really as extensive or as intimidating as he’d have liked, so he’d had some mirrors installed and a few holo projectors which made it look bigger, though he always had the nagging feeling that people could see through the illusion. The style he’d chosen was New Brutalist: lots of exposed faux concrete and rusty pipes. He’d taken a fancy to the name but had gone off the look almost immediately.
He entered with only his private secretary going before him. Guards, courtiers, admin, army and naval people bowed as he strode past.
“Marshal.”
“Archimandrite.” The Beyonder marshal was a woman, dressed in light armour which looked like it had been polished up but still gave off an impression of practicality and scruffiness. She was tall, slim and proud-looking, if somewhat flat-chested for Luseferous’s taste. Bald women always repelled him anyway. She gave a formal nod that was probably the very least acknowledgement of his status that anybody who didn’t patently hate him and-or was about to die had given him for several decades. He couldn’t decide whether he found it insulting or refreshing. Two senior officers behind her were jajuejein, currently in their standard tumbleweed configuration, no part of their glittering plate armour higher than the marshal’s waist. He suspected that the woman had been selected because she was human, just because he was; almost all the Beyonder High Command were non-human.
He sat. It wasn’t really a throne, but it was an impressive seat on a dais. The Beyonder marshal could stand. “You wanted to talk, Marshal Lascert.”
“I speak on behalf of the Transgress, the True Free and the BiAlliance. We have wanted to talk to you for some time,” the marshal said smoothly. Deep voice for a woman. “Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.”
“A pleasure, I’m sure. So. How goes your end of our little war? Last you heard, obviously.”
“It goes well, as far as we know.” The marshal smiled. Lights reflected on her bald scalp. “I understand your own campaign has gone from victory to victory.”
He waved a hand. “The opposition has been light,” he said. “Your main fleet should be at the outskirts of Ulubis system in, what? One more year?”
“Something like that.”
“This is somewhat later than we had all planned for.”
“It is a big invasion fleet. It took time to put together,” Luseferous said, trying to show that he resented her implied criticism while also giving the impression that what she thought was of no great importance to him.
They were behind schedule, though. He had personally assured these — temporary — allies of his that he would be ready to invade nearly a full half-year earlier than it now looked would be possible. He supposed it was his fault, if fault it was. He liked to keep his fleet together rather than let it split up according to speed and then re-form as needed for the invasion proper. His admirals and generals insisted (though not too strongly if they knew what was good for them) that they didn’t need all units of the fleet to be together at all times, but Luseferous preferred it. It seemed more cohesive, more impressive, just more tidy and pleasing somehow.