Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (24 page)

“The Mashiah? You mean Mikael Calas. But if we have him—”

“No, not Calas, though I thought so at first, too. It’s a child, apparently. We don’t know his identity, but the rumors of his birth have spread like wildfire through the Gamant forces. The level of galactic fear is rising. Already Gamant civilians have launched attacks on the loyal Magisterial populaces of a variety of planets and stations, screaming, ‘Mashiah! Mashiah!’“

Before Mastema could comment, Slothen continued, “Please keep in mind as well, that Palaia Zohar is on its final approach. Already the gravitational pull is enormous. Our engineers are working overtime to keep the station in stable orbit.”

“What does that have to do with this unknown Gamant Mashiah?”

Slothen’s wormlike hair writhed and twisted in agitation. Mastema felt his own wriggle in response. “Master, there are legends—we’ve been aware of them for centuries—of this Mashiah opening a Great Gate to the Light Everlasting through which he destroys us and saves his people. Zohar seems to be the logical corollary to the Gate.”

Mastema felt his pulse race. In his memories, a golden alien whispered,
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Magistrate, that single drop of heavenly dew will plunge your empire into the eternal pit of darkness unless you capture it…. When Mikael stands in the mountains on high and opens that gate, all that you and yours have built will come crashing down … he’ll destroy you.”

Mastema laced his fingers together anxiously. “Slothen, how long until the situation with Zohar grows critical?”

“We reach perihelion in four days.”

“Then that’s undoubtedly when the Underground troops will level their assault. Are you prepared for that?”

“Yes. We are. We have a very special weapon, Master. It’s been years in the developmental stage, but as of a few days ago, we believe it’s perfected.”

“And what is this weapon?”

Slothen got up from behind his desk and grimaced at the rifle fire blazing in the distance. Against the lemon-colored skies, his azure skin had a greenish cast. An eerie light had invaded his eyes. “I need to show you. You would doubt it if I simply told you about how it works. Let’s finish our discussion here and we’ll go next door and I’ll let you judge its efficacy for yourself.”

“All right. I’ll wait. In the meantime, tell me when Calas will arrive?”

“Three days.”

“Good. I want the boy delivered to me the instant he sets foot on Palaia. And keep searching for Tahn. You
must
find him soon or we’re all doomed. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, Master. I don’t fully understand the correlation you see between Calas and Tahn, but I trust your judgment implicitly. Is there anything else you’d like to know before we—”

“No, I want to see this weapon first, then we’ll discuss the rest of our strategy.”

Mastema reached down to the com unit on his gurney to signal Osman, but Slothen’s voice stopped him.

“Master, there’s one other thing I need to tell you.” Slothen folded four of his arms over his stomach and chest.

“What is it?”

“The military governor of Horeb, the planet where Mikael Calas was captured, mysteriously appeared here in our hospital yesterday. It’s very strange. He claims he was standing on the balcony of his palace when a whirling maw of blackness opened up and swallowed him. The next thing he knew, he was here. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Mastema’s face slackened. He peered disquietingly at Slothen. “What does he know of Calas and Tahn? Have you questioned him??

“No, sir, not yet. He was raving when we found him. He’s still under sedation. We’re regrowing one of his hands, which was sliced off in the fighting on Horeb. Should I set up a meeting with him for you?”

“Immediately! I want to see your weapon first—then Governor Ornias.”

Mastema signaled his medical staff. Slothen’s door slipped open and Osman and Querido entered, standing stiffly at attention. Mastema tugged his striped blanket up to his thin neck and cocked his head. “Let’s go, Slothen.”

“Yes,” Slothen affirmed as he strode toward Mastema’s gurney. “The viewing room is just next door.”

Aktariel emerged into an ancient city. He left the vortex open behind him, letting its cool winds flutter his plum-colored robe. Magnificent buildings covered the grassy rolling hills that spread in a multishaded green blanket into the distance. He tiredly leaned a shoulder against one of the Appian arches and studied the graceful sweep and soar of the aqueduct.

“Rachel,”
he whispered tautly. “Where are you?” In rage and fear, he shouted,
“And where is that child?”

His voice echoed from the hills, coming back to him sounding more desperate than he’d thought. He could sense a growing pattern in her jumps: Persia and Palestine, Crimea and Regus—aqueducts and artificial lakes.

“We’re so close, Rachel.
How can you do this to me?”
If he only had the time, he’d unravel the tangle she’d woven so skillfully. But he didn’t! He tramped back into the void.

CHAPTER 24

Mikos Williamson sat stiffly in his command chair aboard the
Marburg. A
short man with a bald head, slanting blue eyes, and a crooked nose, the captain’s bars on his shoulders shone with a fiery luster against the purple fabric of his uniform. On the forward screen, Sinai blazed with a blue-green sheen beneath the fires of the system’s sun. He could see the
Hammadi
paralleling their movements, searching the opposite side of the planet. They’d been orbiting Sinai for damned near eight hours straight. His butt hurt. His stomach growled. But he couldn’t leave the bridge, not when they were in the midst of a blue alert. Damn it. He didn’t even
like
Amirah Jossel. In fact, he despised her. The hotshot on the block, she’d shown him up in more than one battle.
Him! A
seasoned war veteran. He still fumed about it.

“This search is ridiculous,” he grumbled to himself. The
Marburg
had important business to take of. The people on Delores 2 needed the supplies his ship carried.

Irritated beyond reason, he plucked nervously at the loose green thread in his chair seat. Looking down at the lower level of the bridge, Williamson could see that all his bridge officers seemed equally unhappy with the current situation. They didn’t particularly adore Jossel either. Once every few minutes, somebody expelled an exasperated breath or muttered a curse. On the data screens that bent in an amber and green strip around the ceiling, Mikos could see all the information coming in from Sinai. The damned planet seethed like a tangle of gaseous maggots in a rotting corpse.

He grumbled distastefully and called to his navigation officer, Vela Kerr. “Vela, have we gotten anything coherent yet?”

She swiveled around in her chair to gaze at him through dark eyes. A medium-sized black woman with a short kinky halo of hair around her beautiful face, she had full lips and a narrow, aquiline nose. “If you mean, have we detected any evidence that Captain Jossel is being held prisoner in this ball of fuming hydrogen—no.” She crossed athletic arms over her ample breasts. “If you ask me, sir, I think we’re on the proverbial wild goose chase.”

Mikos rubbed his chin and spat a string of blasphemies to himself. “We’re chasing geese while the victims of war on Delores 2 are starving. Wonderful.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “If the terrorists used a distortion device—”

“They could have signaled us from anywhere. Yes. We’ve already checked all the possibilities. The signal was sent on such a dispersed beam that it echoed from every solid object in this system. Sinai, Horeb, and the asteroid belt that hovers between the tenth and eleventh planets reflected the most strongly. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Woloc didn’t dispatch at least one cruiser to search the belt. We could probably have eliminated one or more of the possibilities by now and saved time in the long run.”

“I suspect, Lieutenant, that Woloc was endeavoring to assure our safety. Terrorists are clearly in this area. Two cruisers together can fend off nearly any attacking vessel, but if separated—”

“Maybe
terrorists are involved, sir.” She lifted a brow challengingly.

“What are you talking about?”

Vela tapped a thumb against her left bicep. “Well, consider the details: Jossel is attacked in broad daylight in the middle of a major government complex, her security team is killed, she’s captured, and no one sees a thing? Either the person who did it is a goddamned magician—or it never happened.”

“Never …"He hooked blunt fingers around his chair arms and bent forward pensively. “You think this is a ruse? By whom? Governor Ornias? Well, he’s certainly not above such things, but—”

“Not necessarily Ornias, sir. This could be some sort of Magisterial exercise to test our strategic abilities.”

He blinked harshly. “An exercise? Why?”

She shrugged. “I’m saying it’s possible, You’ll recall that the Magistrates pulled a stunt very similar to this in the Wocet system almost a year ago.”

“Yes, that’s true.” He meditatively fingered his ear. Jossel had bested him on that one, too. Maybe that’s what this was, a test to see if he’d fall for the same bait? Name of God! That would give the military advisory council an almost flawless excuse to court-martial him. “Blast! Do you think Jossel cooked this up with the MAC and is monitoring all of us!” The very thought grated like sandpaper on his eyes.

On the forward monitor, red flares of gas shot out from Sinai, piercing the blue-green haze like veins of blood. At the very edge of his vision, he thought he caught movement, as though a dark serpentine shadow slithered across the floor to his left. He swerved around in his chair, staring breathlessly, but only the white bridge walls and and gray carpet met his probing gaze. In the far reaches of his mind, he thought he heard a voice whispering urgently. An uneasy feeling crept through him. He physically shook himself to get rid of it.
Too damned long without a solid meal.

His com officer, Sung Toktaga, turned to him. A petite Oriental woman with long black hair, she had an oblong head and delicate features. “Regardless of whether or not this is a test, sir, I think Vela’s right. Somebody ought to be searching that asteroid belt. Those rocks are small and uncomplicated enough that one pass would probably be enough to eliminate that area.”

Williamson stared intently at the forward screen, watching the gases that cloaked Sinai shift and flare as though they’d caught fire. An actinic marmalade burst roiled into space. The voice in his head seemed to grow stronger, pushing him.

“Yes,” he heard himself muse quietly. The word startled him. Had he meant to say that? He nervously chewed the insides of his cheeks. It did make sense to search the belt. If Jossel and the MAC had orchestrated some sort of strategic test, then he’d save himself by having fathomed the flaw in the game plan.
Damn Jossel!
In all the battles where she’d taken the glory, she’d pulled some trick to win. The memories gnawed at him. And Jossel always accepted her medals and praise humbly, never lauding herself, giving all the credit to her crew. It irritated Williamson until he wanted to wring her neck. He viciously picked at the loose thread on his chair again.

Impulsively, he commanded, “All right, Vela. Take us out of orbit. We’ll go search that asteroid belt and then return here. Toktaga, contact Captain Stein and tell her we’ll be gone for an estimated six hours.”

“Understood, sir.” Her hands darted over her console and the com aura glowed to life around her head.

The stars emerged as they left the flaming splendor of Sinai and sailed out into space. The elliptical galaxy, NGC 147, dusted the heavens. At this proximity, individual stars in the midst of the feature shimmered brilliantly. Williamson felt suddenly irritable. As though he’d been maneuvered into something he didn’t quite feel comfortable doing, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why not.

Mastema cast a quick glance at Slothen who sat in a chair beside him in the dark. Gibor seemed unaffected, as though he’d seen this same display a thousand times. Mastema clamped his jaw tightly and reclined on his gurney, hands crossed in his lap, gaze focused intently on the holographic film that played out in the center of the room before them. The clarity of the projection left him amazed. It could have been real and happening now….

A young blonde girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, slumped in a probe chair with her eyes wide open. She wore a pale blue robe, long and flowing—the kind old Gamants considered orthodox. Slothen paced in front of her, talking softly, reassuringly. The child nodded and smiled at Slothen affectionately. She seemed calm, except for the constant twitching of her small hands that lay palms up on her thighs.

“Good, Amirah,”
Slothen praised. He patted her cheek.
“You’re doing fine. Now please shove the probe helmet off your head and stand up.”

“Yes, sir.”
Amirah stepped out of the chair and tripped obliviously over the edge of a rug. She caught her balance and stood rigidly, apparently completely unaware of her surroundings. The only thing she seemed to see was Slothen.

“All right, Amirah. Wake up now. There, that’s good.”

The child shook long blonde hair over her narrow shoulders and gazed at Slothen curiously.
“Are we finished for today, Magistrate?”

“Almost,”
Slothen assured gently.
“Are you anxious to see your grandmother?”

Amirah’s pretty face beamed joyously.
“Oh, yes, sir. She didn’t want to come, you know. She hates Palaia Station. I don’t know why.”

Slothen put a hand on Amirah’s back and guided her to the center of the small, strangely empty probe room. Only the probe chair and helmet took up space in the far corner.
“Wait here, Amirah. I’ll get your grandmother for you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Slothen left the child alone in the room and the lights dimmed to near nothingness. Amirah wrung her hands nervously, looking around, obviously unable to see in the sudden blackness.

A few seconds later, the door through which Slothen had excited opened and two guards shoved an elderly Gamant woman with scraggly gray hair and seething eyes into the room. Blood soaked her long white robe in lurid patches.
“The savior is coming!”
the old woman shouted at her brutal guards.
“You’ll see! He’ll kill you all for the way you’ve treated Gamants!”

Amirah cried out and put a hand over her mouth as she gazed in horror at her grandmother’s injuries.
“Grandmama!”
she screamed and ran to the old woman. Slipping an arm around her grandmother’s waist, she held her up and tried to drag her to the probe chair.
“Oh, Grandmama, what did they do to you?”

A
din of Gamant voices, like a frantic platoon overrunning an enemy position, rang out over the room com. Then Slothen’s voice rose above the others:
“Now, Amirah. Hurry.”

The child’s eyes glazed. She weaved on her feet, stumbling as though the very room had turned upside down….

Slothen froze the holo—

He turned to Mastema with glittering lavender eyes. “She’s living the programming now. She thinks the battle has begun and the room is shaking.”

Mastema’s brows lowered in fascinated understanding. “She has no idea what’s happening to her?”

“No. None.”

“Go on. I want to see the rest.”

Slothen struck the patch to start the holo again—

Amirah grabbed her grandmother ferociously and pulled her to her feet, dragging her across the room toward the door as fast as she could.

“Amirah!”
the old woman screamed.
“What’s the matter? Put me down!”

“No, Grandmama, no!”
Amirah wept uncontrollably.
“Hurry! We have to hurry! It’s coming!”

The old woman struggled to wrench her wounded body out of the child’s wild, clawlike grip. They struggled against each other, but the old woman’s injuries left her too weak to break free.
“They’re doing this to you, Amirah! Let me go!”

“What? I don’t understand. Hurry! Grandmama, please, before it gets us! It’s almost here!”

The old woman tore free from Amirah’s grip and tumbled to the floor. She lay panting, staring up at the ceiling.
“Filthy demons!”
she cried out.
“What have you done to my granddaughter? Slothen? You
nahash!
The holy, serpent is coming! You hear me? He’ll wipe you and your government from the face of the universe!”

Amirah threw herself to the floor beside her grandmother and started jerking viciously on the old woman’s injured arm. Her grandmother sobbed in pain and tried to shove her granddaughter away.
“Stop it, Amirah! Don’t let them do this to you! Didn’t you hear a word I just said? We’ll be free soon! Don’t let them do this to you!”

Amirah shook her head violently in confusion.
“What does that mean, ‘nahash’? I don’t know what a holy serpent is, Grandmama! What is it?”

Abruptly, the door slipped open again, throwing a rectangle of amber light across the dark room. Slothen entered, a pistol in his hand. The old woman slid backward on the floor, weeping, cursing viciously—but the child simply stared blankly at the open door.

Slothen stopped the projection again—

“Jossel doesn’t fully see me. She sees only a shadow of me. This image has changed in her mind over the past several years. She’s separated me from the shadow, made us two distinct entities. It’s a bad sign. It means that the compartment we so painstakingly erected to protect the trigger is breaking down.

“What does that mean about the trigger? Is it faulty? Can we rely on it?”

“If the barriers remain intact, we can rely on it. If she breaks through them, there’s no way of knowing. It may continue to work. It may not. We erected an additional safety mechanism in case it happened sometime accidentally—hopefully it will work if she breaks through the programming deliberately, too. But, as you’ll soon witness, when we tested her resolve as a child, we chose the perfect subject—the only person in the world Amirah Jossel has ever loved.”

Mastema shifted to get more comfortable on his gurney. The frozen image of the old woman seemed to peer directly at him, hateful, deadly. “Turn it on again, Slothen I want to know the full story here.”