The last servant loaded the last painting, and Parral hurried up the ramp. He could hear the rifle fire approaching closer and closer. So? Let them loot the mansion. As the port closed, he managed a tiny moment of concern for his sister, Sofia, who'd disappeared some hours before. Then he shrugged. Perhaps she thinks she can do better with her bedmate Sten than with her brother.
Parral headed for the control room. The exec had been holding the ship on thirty-second-takeoff point for almost an hour. As Parral sank into the acceleration couch, the pilot began final countdown.
Outside, a haze built from the Yukawa drive, and the carefully sculpted gardens of Parral withered and died.
Five seconds and counting...
"Talamein has blessed us," Mathias crooned as he focused the helmet sights across the mansion grounds. "We are chosen by Talamein for his purpose." His fingers touched ready-buttons on the firing panel.
Mathias and ten of his Companions had hastily set up the S/A missile ramp on the avenue behind Parral's mansion. Mathias closed the helmet face, and his viewpoint became the restricted dual-eyes of the missile, the launch-tube looming to either side, and, visible at the center, the heat-waved trees of the mansion gardens. "I have it," he announced.
His hands went around the twin joysticks of the missile control panel. "Launch on command sequence."
"Standing by," a Companion announced.
"Systems on standby. All systems on ready condition."
Mathias felt the tremble as, a thousand meters away, Parral's ship lifted from the estate. Prematurely he keyed the launch button on top one of the joysticks, and suddenly his vision became broad and fish-eyed as the missile came out of the tube, hissing fifty meters up into the atmosphere.
Mathias kept his other thumb poised on the number-two joystick's primary drive switch. The launch button now automatically became the manual-det switch.
Mathias orbited the missile, waiting for Parral's ship to come out of ground-clutter, and then, as the sleek torpedo swept back around, he had the missile's sensors on IR visual.
"Normal vision," he snapped. A companion flipped the switch on the primary switch and the missile howled up through Mach 8, crosshairs centered on the nose of Parral's ship as it clawed for height. The gray steel closed in Mathias' eyes until there was nothing but the heat-shimmer and the metal and then his eyes went blank.
Mathias yanked the helmet from his head in time to see the fireball sweep down the nose of Parrel's ship, catch the fuel tanks, and become an elongated cigar of flame, debris slowly pinwheeling back down toward the ground.
His Companions were cheering as Mathias dropped out of the command seat. Mathias allowed himself a laugh, then turned his face serious.
"Not I," he said as the cheering suddenly stopped. "But Talamein. I count myself blessed that Talamein has chosen me as the tool for his vengence, for the beginnings that shall make the Faith into the fire-hardened sword the Original Prophet intended. For this—which I vision as merely the beginning— we shall give thanks."
Which was why, when Sten and Alex burst through the brush, they found the ten men knelt in prayer, seemingly to an empty short-range portable missile launcher.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SOFIA SAT ON a small boulder just at the water's edge. She was staring out to where the huge waves she loved were still continuing their thunder, regardless of man's change.
Twenty meters behind her, just on the fringe of the black sand, Sten waited.
He'd found Sofia in hysterics in the mansion as his troops swept through, moving the servants out from the wall of flame that Parral's crashed ship had started. He'd slammed a med-shot trank into her arm and ordered her moved to his own headquarters. Then, and it was very hard, he forced his mind back to business, to the endless details of what happens when you've won a war and what to do next.
The first, of course, had been a chain-coded message sent on Parral's high-power transmitter, to a clean transponder on some worldlet just outside the Lupus Cluster. The message, a short series of code breaks, read:
GOOD GUYS CHOSEN AND VICTORIOUS. GOOD GUYS ARE THEODOMIR. PHASE A & B COMPLETE. APPROPRIATE ACTION IN YOUR DEPARTMENT NOW.
Within three Imperial hours, the message had been through the Mercury Corps chain and was in Mahoney's and the Emperor's hands. And a return message went back:
STAND BY. IMPERIAL CONFIRMATION ON WAY. DO NOT EMBARRASS THE EMPEROR. LAYING ON OF HANDS WILL COMMENCE IN ONE WEEK. DO YOU PREFER PROMOTION, MEDAL, OR LONG LEAVE? YOUR PERFORMANCE DEEMED IN THE SNEAKY TRADITION OF MANTIS.
Which left only minor details until the Emperor and his entourage showed up to confirm Theodomir as the rightful Prophet and leader of the Lupus Cluster. Minor details like burying the dead, nurturing the sick, keeping the mercenaries from outrageous looting, and... and Sofia.
And so they had gone to that black beach. Neither Sofia nor Sten had said anything until the grav-sled set down. Then Sofia dropped her clothes and paced to the boulder where she had sat silently for almost two hours now.
Suddenly Sofia rose and walked back to Sten. She curled down onto the sand beside him.
"You did not kill my brother?"
"No. I did not."
Would you have if you had the chance?"
"Probably."
Sofia nodded. "You and your soldiers will be leaving now."
"Yes."
"I will go with you."
Sten hesitated—he didn't think it would be a good idea for Bet to meet Sofia even though Bet was no longer his lover. And explaining that Sten was neither a colonel or an ex-soldier would prove interesting.
Sofia shrugged. "You will be taking a vacation with your pay?"
"Probably."
"I will spend it with you." Baronial habits die hard. "And then," Sofia went on, "I shall go. I have always wanted to see the Imperial Court."
Sten covered a slight sigh of relief. Love is wonderful, but it does not last as long as soldiering. Unfortunately.
"For a while, at least, I will not wish to see Nebta," Sofia finished. Sten had no comment. She took his hand, and they rose and walked into the small hut on the edge of the beach.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
FIVE HERO CLASS Imperial battleships hung in stationary orbit above Sanctus. The hovering sharks were attended by a cruiser squadron and three full destroyer squadrons. The formation was backed by a half fleet of auxiliary ships, planetary-assault craft, and two battalions of the First Guards Division.
When the Emperor came to dedicate a building or to legitimatize a conqueror, he preferred to have no surprises—least of all those that began with a bang and directed some sort of projectile in his direction.
The fiche that the courier ship had delivered weighed almost a full kilo and contained everything there was to know or do about its subject:
Protocol Manual for Imperial Visits.
It included such pieces of information as to what weaponry an honor guard could carry (no crew-served weapons, no individual edge weapons, individual weapons with their firing-section disarmed, no magazines in weapons); length of welcoming speech (no more than five minutes); number of people permitted to speak on landing (three maximum); quartering requirements for Imperial security (one barracks plus apartments adjoining the Imperial suite); dietary requirements for security element \'7bnormal Imperial diet for plainclothesmen; dhal, rice, and fowl or soyasteak for Gurkhas): and so on and on, endlessly.