World Killers Page 16

  Lang made sure the door was secure, then turned toward a dim corner of his sanctum.

  "Scott, did you get all that?"

  Scott Bernard, Lang's apprentice and godson, emerged-a slender, dark-haired, unsmiling kid of thirteen or so, small for his age. "The machines are in some sort of flux, Doctor."

  Heels clacking on the hardtop, Edwards walked back toward his limo as his personal bodyguards fell in beside him. The wrist module still read true; he laughed.

  Nothing I say can be held against me!

  That left a number of other concerns, but suddenly the most pressing among them was Minmei. Edwards made a rasping, pantherish sound as he slid into his limo.

  God! It would be so easy to break her will by physical or chemical means-to turn her into something that would obey his every word and whim, satisfy his every hunger.

  The hell of it was he wanted Minmei, not some brainwiped zombie that looked and talked like her. He wanted her to love him.

  And she would. If he had to turn the universe upside down and shake it like a toy to make her do so, she would love him.

  The limo rolled out under the security spotlights, flanked by security vehicles, about to swoop under the security umbrella of Ghost VTs.

  "Wait!"

  Surface-effect braking thrusters blared; people pulled guns and Guardian-mode fighters swooped in, while the security net crackled with confused transmissions.

  Edwards was out of the limo virtually over the lap of a hulking bodyguard. "Did you see him? There, up there*"

  But the spot to which he was pointing, the top of a nearby building, was empty. Even as VT spotlights converged on it, he could see that.

  Adams was out of the front seat. "What was it, sir?"

  Edwards kept his eyes trained on the spot. Don't let them see you sweat! You can't afford to show any weakness!

  "Nothing; a trick of the light. Let's get 'em rolling."

  When the convoy was moving again, he replayed the split-second glimpse and couldn't convince himself that he had been wrong.

  A human figure, poised on the roof almost nonchalantly. Watching.

  Waiting...

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The frictions among the Sentinels were many, and the Grail of defeating the Regent was sometimes the single thing that kept them from a disastrous falling-out.

  It is noteworthy that none of them noticed how immune Tesla grew to their irritability, frustration, retribution, and so on. They were physical warriors, under attack-though they didn't know it-from a metaphysical foe who'd gotten inside their own lines.

  Ann London, Ring of Iron: The Sentinels in Conflict

  hat's the matter, Lieutenant Commander Baker? Don't I look 'strac'?"

  Jack Baker eyed Gnea. "I, uh, I just wish my academy commandant could see you, is all."

  Such an encounter would offer a chance to brush up on his cardiopulmonary resuscitation technique, Jack figured, because Commodore Steinfeld would certainly have a heart attack if she ever got a glance at Gnea.

  Just as Lisa had taken to wearing Praxian accessories, most Sentinels pretty much dressed as they saw fit. Prolonged campaigning had seen to it that virtually nobody had a regulation wardrobe anymore, and people wore what came to hand or caught their fancy.

  A case in point was Gnea. The ringmail G-string and studded dragonskin halter top were in keeping with Praxian fashion, but the REF dress uniform jacket was a bit of a shock. The high-waisted mess jacket was decked out with brush epaulets, decorations and ribbons, fourrageres, and insignia.

  She pirouetted to show off her new acquisition. "Commander Grant's exec and I are just about the same size, so we swapped," she said, brushing the embroidery on her cuffs. Jack wondered how the economy-size Lieutenant Commander Shimoda was enjoying her new gryphon-fur shawl. Certainly Gnea, a six-foot-four teenager with legs that wouldn't quit, did things for that jacket that, in Jack's private opinion, merited a medal.

  "Anyway, what did you want to see me about, Jack?"

  He realized guiltily that he had been admiring her long-waisted figure and gave a start, glancing around by reflex and expecting Karen Penn to be scowling at him. Dammit! The

  two were at one another's throat as often as they were caught up in their romantic friendship, and Karen had certainly never said or done anything proprietary. But somehow, he found, he couldn't look at another woman anymore without the fear of being clobbered.

  "The admiral's noticed that Tesla's been keeping a low profile since the Haydon IV tea party," he said. "In fact, nobody's seen him. For that matter, Burak's been conspicuously out of sight, too. So I figured I'd sort of take a stroll and hunt them up."

  Gnea had been a confidant of Burak's, at least back when the Sentinels first showed up on Tirol. So, enlisting her in the project was one of the first things that had come to Jack's mind.

  "Yes, I noticed that," Gnea said with a pensive look on her face. "It's time someone found out just what those two are up to, isn't it?" She fell in next to him and they started off, she a half-head taller but both of them comfortable with each other's company.

  "Burak and I don't talk much anymore, you know," the amazon went on. "I just-once he became acquainted with Tesla, he started talking like some kind of savior. It was one thing to sympathize with him but a completely different one to put up with that-what would Humans call it? Napoleonic complex?"

  "I dunno," Jack said. "I majored in Wood Shop."

  Gnea let that pass without finding out what it meant; one had to understand that Jack liked to be obscure.

  Burak wasn't in his quarters, and so they went to the compartment that had been assigned to Tesla. The Invid wasn't there-just as he hadn't been there for days. But Jack had learned the unpleasant facts of what it was like to turn in an unsatisfactory report to Rick Hunter, and so he snooped around the place, opening empty closets and looking through empty drawers.

  But it was Gnea, studying the deck the way a Praxian huntress was expected to examine the ground, who came across something that merited their attention. "What's this?"

  Jack squatted next to her. "Mung." He knew the look and smell of it well: a mixture of dirt and grease, moisture and machine oil. It was as common to certain starship ancillary power compartments as it had been a generation before to the power, plants of nuclear submarines. The mung looked like it had come off Tesla's bare footsole.

  Finding the right compartment didn't take long; looking for places near the ship's power section where the security monitors were out of service narrowed it down. On the third try, Jack and Gnea stepped through a hatch and found themselves facing Burak.

  Jack was one of those who wore sidearms aboard ship nowadays, and Gnea had always practiced the habit. He had his Badger out and cocked, and she had two feet of glimmering blue blade in the air.

  Burak looked subdued, almost frightened. But he bowed, his long horns dipping. "We wondered when you would come."

  Jack waffled, torn between the urge to get to the bottom of things and the impulse to call for backup. Then something moved in the shadows of a corner.

  "Yes," a voice said. "We looked forward to it."

  Two slits of red light, like miniature furnace mouths, opened. Laserlike beams leapt out at lack and Gnea. Jack tried with all his might to pull the Badger's trigger, even though the muzzle was pointed away from Tesla; he was hoping the sheer shock of the assault pistol's report would free him up, let him slew the gun around at the Invid.

  Gnea had raised the sword high, a very image of war, but she was as immobile as Jack while the rays from Tesla's eyes played across them exactingly, almost intimately.

  Rocked as he was by the numbing impact of Tesla's will, Jack still saw that the scientist had undergone profound changes. He now resembled the artists' sketches that had been made to the Praxians' descriptions of the Regis.

  The snout had pulled in; the mouth was now conventionally humanoid. Tesla was much bigger, though
that was tough to judge precisely since he was sitting in a kind of lotus position. He was hairless, his musculature so well defined that he might have been a figure from an anatomy text, his nerves and blood vessels visible in a way that suggested he had no skin, no epidermis at all.

  "Gaze upon me."

  Jack and Gnea found that they had no choice. The emanations from the Invid's eyes saw to that. "You will be my eyes and ears in the ship, and among the councils of the Sentinels, and on Spheris," Tesla said. It sounded to the dazzled Jack like something that was his own idea.

  "Keep the others at bay," the thing sitting on the deck said. "I need time to complete my Transformation. And then..."

  The being in the corner of the compartment began to rise, like a Robotech mechamorphosis shape-shifting, until it stood with the top of its skull nearly touching the overhead.

  A thread of saliva was dangling from Gnea's chin; Jack Baker's eyes seemed about to roll up in his head. But both of them made acknowledging sounds.

  "Make yourselves available for the most important missions and find access to the most sensitive data," Tesla said. "Your lives are of value only in that they serve me."

  Lisa considered her fighting stance and wondered if she shouldn't be a little lower, a little more straddle-legged.

  After all, Bela was-what?-six six or so? And yet her stance was as low as Lisa's own, solid and yet fluid.

  Not to mention those big hands, and the sheer muscle of the Sentinels' number-one amazon. Still, Lisa had learned to look for certain hints and signs of vulnerability, possible avenues of attack, that she would never have been able to spot a few months before.

  Lisa faked a hand combination and came in low for a foot sweep. Bela leaped over it, kicking in turn, but Lisa wasn't where she was supposed to be; she had reversed course, her spinning foot catching Bela right over the ear.

  There was a solid thwack, and even though Bela's sparring helmet and Lisa's footpads were thick, the Praxian was brought up short-more by surprise than by pain.

  Nonetheless, she had Lisa's foot in those big-boned hands before Lisa, a fraction slow on the recovery, could withdraw it. In another second, Lisa was on the mat and slapping it in surrender, as Bela exerted pressure on the leghold she had gotten.

  They rose and clasped one another's forearm, to signal the end of the match, then moved toward the sidelines as they removed their pads. Another amazon and Susan Graham, the young communications and public-info officer, were squaring off; a number of the REF women had followed Lisa's example and asked the Praxians to tutor them in combat arts.

  "You faked me out," Lisa grated, cross with herself for falling for it. "I thought I finally had you."

  "You did." Bela patted her shoulder. "But part of the fighting arts is to keep on coming at your opponent, no matter what."

  She regarded Lisa for a moment. "But then, you already know that."

  Karen Penn was sitting back on her heels at the edge of the mat, like other Humans and Praxians, waiting for her turn to spar. She was one of the few REF members there who

  could hold their own against an amazon opponent-could give as good as she got and, often, win.

  There were no males of any species present. The Praxians didn't object to more general training sessions and tournaments, and in fact welcomed the chance to compete with and learn from their Sentinels comrades. There had been some monumental clashes, and the Karbarrans, in particular, demonstrated how much they loved a good-natured brawl.

  But certain classes and workouts were reserved for females alone. Karen seemed to find a kind of serenity in them. Lisa had thought about confronting Karen with the real problem, but had more than enough command time to know that unless it was somehow impairing that person's professional performance, a subordinate's love life was best left for her or him to handle.

  Certainly, the physical, mental, and emotional wringer of the Sentinels' campaigns seemed to have worked a change in Jack; anyone with eyes could see that he was more open and giving with Karen. But the two had worked up determined defenses against one another, and Karen was loath to drop hers.

  If Penn and Baker never admitted to themselves or each other that they were in love, it would be too bad, but a matter that others would be well advised to keep out of, Lisa decided.

  The next bout was as good as Lisa and Bela's or better: two Praxian middleweights, veteran fighters and as fast as rattlers, were mixing it up. Blocks and parries came as fast as kicks and punches; the amazons at the sidelines began rooting and cheering. Neither woman on the mat could score a point on the other, though they were using everything they knew.

  In the midst of it all, nobody noticed a newcomer enter the hold. Then the ref shouted the winning point as a blow landed, and somebody became aware of who was, against all tradition and decorum, standing there.

  The amazons were less offended or outraged than amazed. Baldan II took advantage of the sudden silence that fell over the compartment to walk toward Lisa and Bela, who stood watching him.

  His feet were bare, and yet they didn't make the glassy tinkling Lisa would have expected on the hard deckplates. Instead, there was a kind of steady rising and falling vibration, like someone running their wetted finger around the rim of a crystal goblet.

  Lisa saw that the Spherisian wasn't looking at her, and stepped aside as Baldan came to stand before Bela. Bela held her padded sparring helmet in her long-fingered hands, her strange avian eyes as wary as a hawk's.

  "You know the plan for scouting Spheris," Baldan said. "There are some few days yet, before I have to leave. I ask you to teach me some of the fighting skills you know, for I know none."

  The amazons murmured, some of them holding their halberds uneasily or putting a hand to a shortsword hilt. No male was permitted to invade the sequestered training places.

  Bela looked down at him. He was already, in size and form, a being resembling a Terran nearing the end of his teens. Baldan wore only a brief waistclout.

  He was not translucent, but rather seemed to give off light that he had gathered from sources around him. His facets, convexes, concaves, and planes without number had made him a being almost too beautiful to believe, shining with the youth that was in him.

  Bela's voice, usually a hearty shout, was now only a husky near-whisper. "You must learn those things from others; no male is allowed here."

  He was ready for that. "By your own laws, you cannot refuse entry to a godchild."

  Bela looked up sharply, eyes wide, shock and anger and a sort of involuntary tenderness mixed together. "Godchild?"

  "You saved my life, you and Miriya Parina. By your own laws, that makes me your godchild, and your responsibility."

  A Chinese obligation, Lisa thought. She was thinking back on the moment when Bela emerged from Miriya's VT, cradling the quartzlike egg that was to become Baldan II.

  Lisa figured that Bela's sudden lack of balance had nothing to do with the biology-as-destiny or melting-mama theories of instinctive female behavior. But it had everything to do with a feeling of connectedness, and a satisfaction in having done the right thing.

  The amazon looked him over. "But-are you sure you won't shatter?"

  He turned and did a diving roll along the deck, the singing of his shifting facets and angles sounding like celestial music. Coming to his feet in the same move, he faced her with a luminous smile.

  "If I were breakable, I'd have been broken long since, Godmother."

  Bela threw her head back and laughed, and other Praxians joined in, first a few, then all. Lisa stood to one side with Karen Penn, looking on as Bela handed her godson a

  complete suit of pads and a helmet. "Things have to change with the times,"-Bela shrugged-"even Praxian rules."

  There are things coming out of this war, byproducts, that are almost as important as victory, it occurred to Lisa.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  You're free to be THE BEST "YOU" THAT YOU CAN POSSIBLY BE! You
're OKAY! So take charge of your life and learn how to be YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND!

  Also, get PERSONAL POWER over your POTENTIAL and LEARN HOW TO ASSERT IT!! Grok yourself fully during QUALITY TIME!! Dare to be great! Remember: TODAY IS THE

  FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!

  Kermit Busganglion, The Hand That's Dealt You

  The REF had always been intimidated by the stupendous Royal Hall of the Robotech Masters on Tirol-had never in their total muster been able to fill more than a portion of it.