But Pertinax never noticed. He was, in fact, talking again.
“Enough of this talk. Now, I want the both of you to come with me—hands in the air and walk carefully, no sudden moves—and we’ll get down inside the base and wait for reinforcements from the Patrol—” he was saying.
Standing just behind him, now, Gundorm Varl recognized Pertinax’s whining, nasal tones. The grim expression on his face turned to blank surprise—then lit with a great glow of unholy joy. He carefully holstered his pistol, and slowly, lovingly raised another “weapon”—his riding-whip.
He lifted it high above his head, gloating down on the unconscious Pertinax who stood still with his back turned to the giant Barnassian—then brought the whip down in a swift, shrieking arc—
Pertinax stiffened as if struck by lightning.
The pistol fell from suddenly nerveless hands.
His eyes stretched wide with shock—with a horrible recognition.
The whip rose—and descended again.
His dour little mouth opened in an incredible screech of indignity and pain.
Leaving that situation in firm and very capable hands, Raul whirled and sprang to the laser controls, closing the lever that switched on the automatic firing and sighting relays. Instantly the battery roared into action. Thin beams of intolerable brilliance spat from the muzzles of the guns. Above, the nebula was shadowed with the bellies of hurtling ships. Abruptly, one detonated in an eye-dazzling flare of intense light.
“One!” Wilm crowed, his dirty face splitting wide in a fighting grin. Raul smiled in answer.
“Two! and—three!”
(Behind them, over the roar of the lasers, they could hear certain, curious thumping, thrashing shounds—punctuated with shrill yelps and squeals of unendurable pain. Grinning happily, they pretended to ignore this and focused their attention on the action aloft.)
“Four!”
“Five—by Arion!”
Now the Pelairi ships were breaking formation, dipping and swerving like mad to elude the stinging beams of superheat. But the lasers were multi-mounted, and the radar was capable of independent tracking. The beams diverged, each gun hunting down and destroying ships on its own.
The sky was full of blossoming fires. In their panic to escape, ships rammed into each other blindly. And now the sky was raining fiery masses of semi-molten metal like some hellish kind of hail.
(Behind them, the thumping and thrashing sounds came to an end, and there was nothing to be heard but muffled sobbings and dull groans.)
Rather self-consciously, Gundorm Varl strutted up to join them, massaging the tired muscles in his right arm. He gazed up at the destruction of the enemy fleet.
“Ah! That’s a beautiful sight, sir! Truly—it does my eyes good to see it. And I’m enjoyin’ it all the more, if I may say so, for havin’ had a little wholesome exercise!”
Above, the broken fleet was hurtling back into the Rift, still pursued by probing lasers.
It was all over.
TWELVE
SOME HOURS LATER, the Border Patrol squadron that Pertinax had summoned from Valadon’s garrison arrived, and aboard it was Brice Hallen himself. The squadron took up parking orbit around Ophmar, and Raid Linton and Wilm Bardry came up to it in the Arthon’s skimmer, which was still serviceable despite a punctured observation blister.
They met with Hallen on the bridge: Bardry, laconic and very matter-of-fact, now that the action was over; Linton, very uncomfortable in his gaudy suit of Rilké ceremonial finery.
Hallen shook hands with them both, and complimented them gravely on a good job very well done.
“Commander, let me also say that I’m damn glad you turned out to be as trustworthy as Wilm, here, assured me you were—and as I’d hoped and prayed you were.”
“Thank you, sir,” Raul said, stiffly.
Hallen turned to Wilm.
“How’d you talk him into your scheme, Wilm? Oh, sure, of course. You reassured him by telling him what happened to Carrinpson.”
Bardry blinked.
“You know,” he marveled, “I completely forgot about Carringson.”
Raul’s ears picked at the name, which had unpleasant connotations to him.
“What’s this about Caningson?” he asked. Wilm smiled, vaguely foolish.
“Well, hell, Raul, one of the prime arguments I was going to use on you was to point out that all governments are not wicked. Often, they’re just slow, very slow to do the proper thing. And one of the points I was going to make to support this contention, was to tell you why I was on the Harel Palldon with you, under incognito, during the war.”
“Well—why were you, Wilm?”
“Gathering evidence against Vice-Admiral Camngson. We’d had reports he was abusing his authority, and running his command like a private little empire all his own. The ‘scorching’ of neutral Darogir, without even giving the poor bastards a chance to capitulate, was a prime bit of evidence against him. Well … anyway … it took a long time to get the court-martial underway, but it finally went through. They broke him and bounced him out of Naval service.”
Linton felt a small warmth deep down within him as the cold knot of an old wound dissolved.
Wilm Bardry lit a cigaret and slouched back, legs dangling, in one of the capacious deck chairs.
“Sometimes it takes a government a long time to discover an error in policy, or of omission. But, by and large, these errors are discovered—and, usually, I think, corrected.”
Raul smiled a little.
“Perhaps you’re right ...”
Hallen said, earnestly: “No government is perfect, but we all try. Sometimes the wrong man gets in, as Pertinax got in, but we find out what kind of stuff he’s made of sooner or later, and he gets taken care of in time—as we’re going to take care of Pertinax. And Mather, by the way. And speaking of that, now that the job of Border Administrator is vacant—or will be just as soon as I get back to Omphale—I think I have just the right man for the job.”
“Who?” Linton inquired.
“You,” Brice Hallen grinned. “Of course, you’ll probably err as much as Mather did—but in the other direction, for a change. You’ll be too much for the natives, instead of against them as Mather was, but—hell—it’ll be an interesting change, and maybe it’ll work. Mather’s ‘keep-them-diseased-ignorant-and-illiterate’ policy seems to have failed on all counts—and it almost resulted in a very dangerous and destructive little war that could have raised half the Border worlds against us. So maybe we’ll try the other tack for a while, and see how that method works out. One things sure, after this little fracas on Ophmar, you’ll have every native in the Cluster squarely on your side, solidly behind you, ready to go along with anything you suggest.”
Raul cleared his throat a little.
“Well, Administrator. It’s an interesting offer—and I may accept you on it, later. But right now, I still have a job— as commanding officer of the Kahani’s forces down there. And I’ve got to finish up that piece of uncompleted business, before I can think about anything else.”