against the pain in his hand and slowly began to increase the pressure his finger was putting on the trigger. When the trigger was depressed halfway to its firing point, the pain eased.
Stop mad-thing! You must not damage me! wailed Fryx. A wave of fear and rage swept over Garth, emotional spillover from his rider. He eased his grip on the trigger.
“Will there be further attempts to coerce me?” he asked. His feet had slowed from an odd jig to a slow shuffle. To stop his idle movements, he sat cross-legged on the granite boulder.
His mind was silent.
He again applied pressure to the trigger.
Halt! How can you so easily play with your life? demanded Fryx, in a frenzied state. What if the gun were to go off with fractionally less pressure this time than the last? What if the manufacture of the weapon wasn’t up to the specifications? How can you bet our lives upon the assumed competence of some unknown other? Do you realize what would happen if anything went wrong?
“Then we would die, here in the jungle, together,” said Garth with remarkable disinterest.
You are indeed a mad-thing. I can’t believe my fantastic misfortune in finding a host of your quality.
“Self-pity will gain you nothing.”
You must halt this game of death-threats. You are playing with higher stakes than you know.
“What stakes?” demanded Garth with sudden interest. He stood up again and jumped down from the boulder. He began to pace about the darkened camp, absently stepping over the cooling bodies of the dead skalds. “What is it that caused you to break our trust, to come forward from your meditations and take up the reins of my mind in such an intrusive manner? I know that this is not a pleasant thing for you.”
Indeed not. Unless it is in conjunction with communing with another rider, I find it most repulsive to expose my nervous system to your outer world of filth and pestilence. I came forward only out of the greatest need.
Fryx proceeded to explain at length that he had sensed a presence from the dark past, that of the Imperium. Seedships must have come home to Garm. Parents had landed and the Imperium had begun to pacify the world as had been done here a thousand years ago, he was sure of it. Only he and perhaps a handful of other riders were both old enough to remember the old wars with the Imperium and sensitive enough to detect the presence of the enemy.
In the end, as dawn broke over the steamy jungle campsite, the two came to an odd pact. Convinced that his rider was really heading for Grunstein, the capital of the colony, with vital news concerning the Imperium, Garth decided to travel that way. The huge effort that Fryx had gone to, so unlike he and his kind, made him believe. In any case, he had nowhere else to go, nothing better to do.
At the very least, the endless painful battles for dominance with Fryx would stop for a time.
Driving the inquisitors’ vehicle non-stop to Bauru, the skald and the rider worked together for the first time in days. Each of them slept in shifts while the mind of the other drove Garth’s body and the vehicle.
As evening closed over the jungles, a haunting figure arrived at the Bauru Colonial Shuttleport and purchased a one-way ticket to Grunstein Interplanetary. Wearing a black hat and matching black cape, both coated with dried stinking slime from the jungles, the man strode down the jetway and climbed aboard the shuttle. His neighboring passengers moved away with expressions of distaste, many asking the stewards for a seat in another section of the cabin.
Unconcernedly, Garth leered at them with wild, staring eyes. Settling back into the sparse cushions of the economy class, both the minds in his skull fell asleep, exhausted.
Sixteen
“The war is going badly, Chamberlain,” Mai Lee told the orchids. It was a nicer arrangement than usual today, full of crimson blossoms with accents of lavender. “The planet is being overrun.”
Mai Lee seemed calm enough, but beneath her placid surface raged a torrent of anger. The orchids wisely chose to remain silent.
On the huge holo-stage that dominated the room were displayed multiple battle scenes. All around the Slipape Counties other estates were in flames. Images of slaughter dominated the broken ruins of Castle Zimmerman in particular.
“All so quickly, my most pressing concern has shifted from Droad to this new assault,” she lamented. “With amazing speed, these aliens are destroying hundreds of years of history. They’re so easily wiping out enemies that I’ve struggled with for centuries. I find it all somewhat annoying. I’ve come to loathe most of my fellow aristocrats, but still, they were mine to loathe, if you catch my meaning.”
“Certainly, Empress,” said the orchids hesitantly. “Ah-there is another urgent call from the Zimmerman High Command.”
Mai Lee waved her hand imperially. “Display it.”
A red-faced older man wavered into being just to the left of the hummingbirds. His hair was in disarray and he carried a gun in his hand. “Mai Lee, I’ve retreated to the forests just north of your lands. You must come to our aid. Most of the kindred are dead. The Castle of my ancestors has fallen, but we can retake it with your troops, I’m sure of it.”
“Ah, so the great Zimmermans finally swallow their pride,” she said with an obscenely girlish giggle. She placed her fingertips together in a butterfly pattern and leaned back to bask in the moment.
“We must join forces! No one will be spared! They come right up from the ground, drop from the skies, hundreds of monsters,” Zimmerman looked down, shaken, reliving a recent memory. “They’re so fast!”
“But my fortress is stronger than yours.”
Zimmerman shook his head emphatically. “It doesn’t matter. You haven’t really prepared for an attack from beneath. Even though the hill you’re on is mostly rock, it won’t matter. They’ll come, they have good weapons now, and there are more of them every time. They’ll come and wipe you out as they did the rest of us.”
Mai Lee tilted back further, the picture of happy relaxation. It seemed that his every gloomy word gave her greater pleasure. Finally, she snapped upright. “I’ll take to the field, but not to save your precious plot of miniature forests and family treasures. I’ll take to the field if you’ll join me, if you’ll place your remaining vehicles and knights under my banner.”
Zimmerman glowered and blustered for a moment, his bushy white brows stormy with indecision. “Why would you leave your stronghold?”
“A painful decision, let me assure you,” said Mai Lee. “But a necessary one. I’ve studied these creatures and their tactics. Just as you pointed out, our fortresses were never built to defend against the kind of attacks they launch. They are serving only as traps for our forces, convenient concentration points for the aliens to destroy us.”
“All the same, what will you do in the field? Wait for them to come out and attack you? Before I commit my forces I must know how you plan to fight them.”
“My science staff has studied these aliens and concluded that they are a fast-growing, short-lived species. Genetically, all the different types are very similar, whether they fly, dig or march. It is my belief that they have a small number of queens, as would ants or termites. If we kill these queens, they will stop multiplying. We must carry our attack to the enemy, destroy whatever is generating all these appalling creatures. Just defending our lands is a losing proposition.”
“That’s all very well, but how do we find this queen?”
“Some days ago I captured one of these creatures and discovered that they use in-grown quartz crystals to communicate via radio waves. Triangulating carefully, we have located one of their nests, and I wish to assault it.”
“You’ll attack the nest, with our help? No hanging back at the last moment and using my knights as cannon fodder?”
Mai Lee snorted. “Your weaponeers are best used in ranged combat, where their plasma cannons would be put to good use. I myself will lead my troops down into the nest.”
“Ah, so you will be marching in your battlesuit, I presume?”
