Chapter Nineteen
Free Corps: an association of Startroopers and would-be Startroopers who think of themselves as citizens of the Nexus stranded for a lifetime amidst the barbarians of Dalar ken Halvar.
These people typically speak the Code Seven Commonspeak of the Nexus and dream of the Day of Days when the Chasm Gates will be resurrected, and the local universe will once more be linked to the multiverse of the Nexus.
So sharpening his sword – a hero.
Then cut himself, and in that taste – He found his throat split open, split to bleed And red poured rust to waste – on desert sands – Hastening from Forum Three, Hatch took himself off to the Combat College's cure-all clinic, and was shortly bending over the patched-up body of Scorpio Fax, and endeavoring to rouse Fax to wakefulness.
'Can you hear me?' said Hatch, uncertain whether Scorpio Fax was resting, sleeping or sunk in a coma.
Fax's eyes flickered, opened.
'Grief,' said Fax. 'That dorgi.'
'Give you a hard time, did it?' said Hatch.
He recalled that the dorgi had been sulking in its lair when he had last entered the Combat College. After such sulks, it often challenged people with a ferocity just short of the homicidal.
'A hard time?' said Fax. 'Did it ever! I came through the lockway, I was – I was cut up bad and it – you can imagine.'
'I can imagine,' affirmed Hatch.
The dorgi was a constant cause for worry. These sentrymachines were deliberately designed to be slightly erratic, marginally unpredictable and most definitely stupid. The random elements in their behavior were (in theory) supposed to make it difficult for any intruder to plan a path past them with confidence.
So dorgis made good perimeter guards (in theory, at least), but on account of their inherent and progressive instability they were supposed to be checked out by a machine psychologist at least once every three years. The beast which guarded the lockway was more than twenty thousand years overdue for such a check, and was getting more and more eccentric with each passing century.
Hatch suspected that, had the Chasm Gates not collapsed, all dorgis would soon have been done away with, for surely the Nexus authorities would have realized that a machine created in the image of erraticism was not a good idea. But the closure of the Chasm Gates had made every passing technological caprice of the Chasm Gate era into a semi-permanent fixture of the Combat College.
Semi-permanent, rather than permanent, because everything wears out sooner or later. The Combat College dorgi should have worn out long ago, since it had a design life of only seven thousand years. But this one was still going strong, and sooner or later it would kill one person – or several. Hatch was sure of it.
'Well,' said Fax, 'get on with it.'
'Get on with what?' said Hatch.
'You didn't come here just to admire the scenery, did you?
You want something. You want Lupus dead.'
'No,' said Hatch. 'Not Lupus.'
'Who, then?'
'Gan Oliver.'
'Why Gan Oliver? Why not Lupus?'
'I trust to my judgment,' said Hatch.
Lupus Lon Oliver was 27, a man full-grown by the reckoning of some societies, but in Dalar ken Halvar he counted as no more than a boy, for he done nothing in life except to indulge himself in his own education. Manfred Gan Oliver, on the other hand, was aged 57, and so was approaching the prime of political life. Those he had grown up with were in positions of power, and Gan Oliver had cultivated them as they eased themselves into those positions. He had, too, the authority which comes with age, for people would listen to him when they would never listen to a boy.
Furthermore, Hatch judged Lupus to be a romantic and Gan Oliver to be a realist, and on that account alone he feared Gan Oliver the more.
'You're sure it's Gan Oliver you want?' said Fax.
'Lupus I can handle myself,' said Hatch, hoping this was so.
'So why… why should I favor you with Gan Oliver's death?' said Fax.
So saying, Scorpio Fax looked up at Hatch, looked up from his sickbed and remembered. Scorpio Fax remembered how Asodo Hatch had recruited him to kill Impala Fax, the Butcher of Shintoto. Fax had done as much. And remembered. Blood on his hands, blood on the floor, blood daily and nightly in waking dreams and sleeping.
'We are at war,' said Hatch. 'At war, with Dalar ken Halvar the prize. If Gan Oliver wins, we're dead men, both of us. You must strike him down to save your own life. What more reward could you want?'
'I want – '
Fax knew just what he wanted, but could not bring himself to say it. He was not sure how Hatch would react, but suspected the big-built Frangoni would be angry, maybe murderously so.
'Kill me Gan Oliver,' said Hatch, 'and you can have anything you want. Anything.'
'Even your sister?'
'My sister!' said Hatch, startled.
'Yes,' said Fax, who looked positively terrified as he made the confession. 'I – I'm in love with Penelope.'
'Grief of gods!' said Hatch.
'You – you've chosen another? As – as her husband, I mean? Is she betrothed?'
'Penelope,' said Hatch, who thought it would be unfair to conceal the complications from the infatuated Fax, 'is betrothed to no man, though Lupus Lon Oliver has declared her love for him.
Furthermore, Penelope has declared her reciprocal love for Lon Oliver.'
'Well,' said Fax, with sturdy resolution, 'she can hardly love him once he's dead.'
'Quite so,' said Hatch. 'But if you're going to kill Lon Oliver, then strike him down in secret, else Penelope will have your testicles by way of revenge.'
'It's as good as done,' said Fax fiercely.
'But if you're going to kill young Lupus Lon Oliver,' said Hatch, 'then you do so on your own account. Remember it's the father I want. Manfred. Kill Manfred, and I'll give you my sister – at least to the extent that she's mine to give.'
'Manfred, then,' said Fax. 'But – how dod I kill him?'
'That's over to you,' said Hatch. 'But do it soon!'
Then Hatch took his leave and headed for the combat bays. One the way he met Lupus Lon Oliver. Following close behind the redskinned Ebrell Islander was the grayskinned Combat Cadet of Janjuladoola race, the ever- reticent Jeltisketh Echo. Hatch immediately deduced that Echo had been recruited as Lon Oliver's bodyguard.
'Hail fellow, well met,' said Lupus. 'Are you ready for the singlefighters?'
'Singlefighters?' said Hatch. 'Who told you we'd have singlefighters?'
'It's a guess, of course,' said Lupus. 'But I'm right, I'm sure of it.'
'Maybe,' said Hatch, hoping that they would not be dueling with singlefighters.
'Definitely,' said Lupus. 'You'll go down in flames, Hatch.
Then they'll kick you out. And my father will be waiting for you when you get kicked out.'
Hatch made no reply to this, because he could quite easily imagine this exchange of pleasantries escalating quite suddenly into bloody battle. Rather than risk a brawl, he kept his lips sealed, strode through the open doorway of the nearest functional combat bay and settled himself in the initiation seat. It sighed faintly as it took his weight.
In the open doorway, a sheet of kaleidoscope started to form, then collapsed into hissing slob. Hatch swore, and leapt out of the initiation seat. He was certainly not going to sit helplessly in an initiation seat while he was
