The Mandate of Heaven (8 page)

“Hurry,” he ordered.  “Stay with the ship until I come for you and whatever you do keep that book safe.  If anything happens to me read it.  It will answer all your questions.”

With those final words, the concealed entrance swung shut in my face and it was only in the dim light that I could finally see what rested in my hands—my father’s journal.  He’d often stated that it was his life’s work, a small attempt at restitution for whatever crimes he’d committed in the past.  I knew that he would never part with it, not while he still drew breath.  Therefore, ignoring his edict, I frantically started to look for the release lever, to open the door.  Only to find that the door would only open a crack as somehow my father had jammed it shut from the other side.

So I was only able to watch and observe, in horror, at the events that unfurled next.

*****

It could have only been a few minutes later when I heard barking, Lucifer I assumed.  This was immediately followed by a loud
crack
of gunfire, followed by somebody crying out in pain.  I would recognise my father’s voice anywhere and redoubled my efforts to open the door, but it would not budge.

I stilled a moment later when I heard footsteps on the other side of the door.  Putting my eye to the small crack in the door, I could just make out the scene in my father’s study.  He was the first to enter, stumbling, almost falling, while clutching a dark shape to his chest.  I could just make out the still form of Lucifer, in his arms, as he gently laid him on the ground.  My father looked up, back towards the entrance to his study, at something, or somebody, only he could see.  The little light cast by the fireplace clearly illuminated his shocked expression and the deep gash on his forehead, blood trickling down his cheek, but he didn’t even seem to notice, instead all of his attention was focused towards the entrance.

“That wasn’t necessary!” he shouted. Fury burning in his eyes, visible even in the dim light of the room.

“I’m sure Lucas would disagree,” a rough voice replied, as another figure stepped out of the shadows into the room.  I’d never seen him before, but would have recognised him anywhere.  He was tall, about my height, with blond hair and blue eyes. He could have been considered handsome, were it not for the jagged gash running along the length of his face. Starting just under his eye it ran almost to his chin.  The skin was puckered and raw, an old wound that had never healed properly.

My gaze followed his outstretched arm that was pointing to another man, Lucas I assumed, as he was nursing his hand.  Even in the firelight I could see blood dripping from his wrist.

“Javier, I thought you said no names,” Lucas complained reproachfully, but Javier simply ignored him, continuing to stare intently at my father, with a gaze that bordered on the fanatical.

I could make out a further four others, as they each filed into the room, making six in total.  They spread out until they formed a loose semi-circle with my father kneeling in front, bent over the still form of Lucifer.  While I had never seen them before, they all looked similar; tall, muscular, with vacant expressions on their face.  Men used to violence and long since immune to its ugliness.  Even if their expressions didn’t give them away, the heavy weapons that each held in their hands were clear symbols of their intent.  All wore some sort of body armour, which covered their upper bodies, arms and legs, leaving just their faces visible.

“Search him,” Javier ordered, motioning towards Lucas at his side.  With his injury he was the only one without a weapon, although he had many close to hand.

Lucas carefully approached, taking care not to block the others field of fire and roughly pulled my father to his feet, pushing him back against the desk, carefully, but expertly frisking him.  He stepped back a few minutes later with a quick shake of his head, returning to Javier’s side.

“Turn around, slowly,” Javier barked and for a brief moment I wondered if he was talking to me, but I observed my father slowly shuffle around, still leaning heavily against his desk. One of his eyes was swollen shut, I assumed from the same blow as the still bleeding head wound.

“My how you’ve lead us on a merry chase.  I’ve been hunting you for thirty years.  My master was most displeased when I informed him that you had survived.  He made his displeasure clearly known to me.  I think I probably owe you for that—”

Before I could register the movement, he took a sudden step forward, slamming his fist into my father’s stomach. My father crumpled like a paper bag and would have fallen had the man not immediately followed this up with a wicked uppercut that caught my father under the jaw.  This time it was just the desk that broke his fall.  The only sound in the room was the laboured breathing from my father, as Javier stepped back into the semi-circle of his men.

It took a long time for my father to recover, his hacking coughs a clear indication that he struggled to breathe, but finally he pushed himself off the table, turning once more to face his antagonists.  “You look a mite young to have been looking for so long. I don’t remember kicking over a nursery in my wilder years,” my father frowned.

“My Lord is a powerful man and he rewards his most loyal subjects well.”  Javier smiled cruelly, exacerbated by the injury to his face.  It was a callous look that seemed to belong to an older, more jaded man.

“It’s also against the Rules.”  Father leaned across his desk and spat blood into the bin beside the table.

“My master is a God.  What does he care about petty rules?” Javier barked with laughter.

“Justice catches up with everyone, eventually.  Even me.”  My father shrugged.  “Although I expected you somewhat…earlier,” he added with a hint of reproach in his voice.

Javier’s face darkened with anger and he took a step forward, but was halted by father’s next words.  “After all, I’ve had thirty years to wonder how your master will react when the news becomes common knowledge.”

“What news?”

“The conspiracy to murder a High-Lord’s daughter, what else?”

My breath caught in my throat as Javier stilled for a moment but he finally shook his head.  “Yesterday’s news, anyway you have no proof.”

“Proof?” father laughed.  “What on Arcturus do I need proof for?  Even just the accusation will cause enough scandal that it will echo amongst the High-Lords for decades to come.  Coming from me, the very mouth of the assassin? It’ll be incendiary and that doesn’t even take into account the last letter that Lady Jessica Hadley wrote.  I suppose you’d call it a Last Will and Testament, but between you and I, some of the accusations that she makes,” he shook his head as if in disbelief.  “They’re words stained in her own blood.”

“Letter? Give it to me.”

“You’ve got to be joking.  My life will be forfeit the moment that I hand it over to you.”

“Your life ended thirty years ago, since then you’ve been living on borrowed time.”

“Well, we seem to find ourselves at an impasse then,” father shrugged unconcernedly.  “Give my regards to your Lord the next time you see him.  I don’t think you’ll be receiving many more
rewards
from him.  Not once he’s finished cleaning up your mess.”

“What do you want?” the question came out in a strangled tone of voice.

“A better offer.  I’ll transcribe a copy of what Lady Jessica wrote; you take it back to your master and let him decide.  We’ll wait here for his response.  I’ve got thirty-nine rooms, so you can make yourselves comfortable while you wait.”

“You’re mad.”

“Once in a lifetime offer,” father smirked.  “Take it, or kill me.  Either way I can’t lose.”

“Write the damn letter.”

*****

I watched, transfixed, as father stumbled back behind his desk, slumping heavily into his chair, sliding a fresh sheet of paper in front of him.  As he put pen to paper I wondered what he was going to write.  However, barely halfway through the first word, he had to stop, his hand was trembling so badly. Eventually he reached across the desk and drained what little he had left in his wine glass.  After this he resumed writing, the room deathly silent, nothing but the scratching of his pen and the occasional popping from the fire. He stopped writing once again and this time shook the pen, as it seemed to have run dry.

“By the High-Lords, somebody get him a pen, before I stab him with it,” Javier ranted angrily.

“I’ve got it,” father drawled, raising his hand to halt their advance.  Sliding open a desk draw he withdrew a new pen, raising it high for all to see, demonstrating that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword—or gun.  A few more words and he abruptly stopped, looking up, as if suddenly recalling the half dozen of them, arrayed around the desk, guns all pointing directly at him, fingers resting on triggers.

“Excuse my manners, can I get anybody a drink, while you wait?”

The roar of fury from Javier was enough to shake the bookshelves.  “The next time you put down that pen, you’d better have finished, otherwise I will kill you myself.”  Raising his own heavy pistol, his finger depressing the trigger slightly.

“Fine, whatever,” father shrugged, resuming his writing.  “I was just trying to be a courteous host.  You know, for so long I’ve lived in fear of you finding me, as I eventually knew that you would—”

“You’re right to fear my master, as his reach is boundless and as you will soon find out, utterly merciless.”

“—but the thing is, that after living with fear for so long, you start to just take it for granted and I hardly feared your Lord’s retribution.  There are far worse things in life than death, I should certainly know.”  With that my father put his pen down and pushed the letter forward a couple of inches, clearly demonstrating that he had finished.

Javier took a step forward to retrieve it, but was stopped from doing so by the palm of my father’s hand, coming down, to rest atop the letter.

Leaning forward, my father looked up at the disfigured man leaning across from him.  “I didn't kill her you know,” he stated in a firm voice.  “Your man did that and would have done the same to me, had I not fired first.”

My breath caught in my throat, as I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but instinctively knew that it was the truth.   Somehow I knew that these words were really intended for me.

“He was our insurance policy,” Javier shrugged indifferently.  “While we could have dispatched her at any time, it would have been messy.  My Lord wanted no loose strings attached.  You kill the girl, the heroic guard slays the lone, crazed assassin.  All nice and neat, it’s a timeless classic.”

My father lifted his hand from the letter, allowing Javier to retrieve it, turning back towards the large decanter of wine resting on the side of his desk.  Removing the stopper, he prepared to pour the contents into his empty glass.  “I never cared about my life,” my father carried on regardless, interrupting Javier whose eyes had drifted down to the document, having finally lowered his pistol.  “But I cared a lot about hers.  She didn’t deserve that fate, but something, better.  She had her whole life in front of her.  I was holding her in my arms, at the very end.  As I watched her life drain away I swore to myself that I would find those responsible—”

“Seems we did that for you,” Javier smirked, motioning to the half-dozen men around him.

“—and watch as you all
burn
,” my father hissed, venomously.

For the full decanter of wine was no longer in his hand, but instead whirling through the air in their direction.  Shocked at the unexpected action the men automatically reacted—stepping aside, watching the spiralling bottle go end-over-end, but by doing so they all momentarily took their eyes off my father.

I was the only one to realise that his hands were no longer empty, but now grasping the fusion pistol that he had withdrawn from the desk, at the same time he had reached for a new pen.

The beam from the pistol instantly reached temperatures of well over one million degrees centigrade, striking the crystal decanter dead-centre, its contents instantly ignited, sending shards of glass and burning liquid spraying in all directions.  The resulting fireball engulfed the room, consuming the men arrayed around it.  Even muffled behind the door their screams of pain, as the flames consumed them, were clearly audible.  The fireball didn’t stop there however, but ignited the carpet and then the ancient books.  In the space of a few heartbeats the room turned into a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

And into this picture, through smoke and fire, stepped my father—the devil reincarnated, with his fusion pistol glowing, the white light piercing the blaze, reaching out towards his victims, time and time again.

The armour they wore was useless against such a thing, the beam piercing the entire way through them.  Between the smoke, flames and speed of the assault they were blinded; two dead before the others even had time to react.  Javier only saved himself at the very last moment, from the unerring accuracy of father’s pistol, when he jerked Lucas in front of him, absorbing the blast.  Discarding the now dead body, with a curse, Javier frantically tried to bring his own weapon to bear, having holstered it prior to picking up the letter.

He would never have made it in time, as already my father was adjusting his aim to fire again, were it not for with a cry, another stepped from the flames.  His dark body armour smoking, with small patches of flames clearly visible, still burning, where the flaming liquid had engulfed him.  He towered over my father, a veritable giant of a man, possibly forty years younger and over a hundred pounds heavier.  Swinging his assault rifle as if a club, directly at my father’s head—