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| Whom The Gods Recall |
Whom The Gods Recall
The ship was a Class 'D' Imperial Cruiser-a small ship by comparison to the mammoth battleships which made up the Empire's, but entirely serviceable for present purposes. Anything larger would have been unmanageable for the skeleton crew onboard.
The original crew had surrendered at Ucasim; the rebels had immediately added the ship to their own fleet after only the most cursory of inspections to ensure that the craft was not a spacegoing boobytrap. Panore Delavan was in sole command. She was enjoying the sensation when she had time to think about it. Her background qualified her for the Admiralty far better than it justified her position as an Alliance General, and this was probably the closest she would ever come to it. She did not, however, have much time to contemplate the matter. ETA was less than seven standard hours, and a great deal-perhaps the outcome of the rest of the war- would depend upon having a clear-cut plan of action when they emerged from hyperspace.
You're sure Rieekan's going to send in the fleet to back us up?" A grim faced Avenal asked. He lowered his voice. "Will the Council let him?"
Uncharacteristically, Delavan hesitated. She wasn't sure of anything at this point, but she didn't care to admit that she might have finally overplayed her hand. Simmering anger crept into her voice, lending a deadly sharpness to her indigo eyes.
"If they want to win this misbegotten war."
"Well, now, there's a good question." Avenal drawled. He smiled cynically. "Forget I asked."
Behind them a door swished open.
"Excuse me, General," Jai Frona waited for her to acknowledge the interruption, his impish features abnormally worried. "They're ready for the briefing."
Panore gestured to a pair of Imperial droids Avenal had deftly mind-stripped and reprogrammed for Alliance loyalties.
"You - monitor the automated stations."
She rose from the command chair, aware that the next few minutes would determine the success or failure of a plan that even Rieekan had called sheer insanity.
He wondered, just for an instant, what had ever given him the idea that anyone who was entirely sane went to war in the first place.
"It will be imperative to land ground troops as soon as possible; and to do that," Panore paused, letting her gaze travel around the briefing room. Two-thirds of the crew was present, mostly survivors of her ill-fated Debilline Base, plus a few personnel she had commandeered from the Republic. Even so, the room seemed empty and echoing.
Had she been superstitious she would have thought it an omen, a foreshadowing of things to come. Even with the Alliance fleet at their backs, they would be pathetically outnumbered.
"To do that, we have to take out the control complex at Malebolge Central."
There was a minute of unbroken silence.
"How?" Davve Maius asked flatly. "Central coordinates all the port traffic south of Torchia. First sign of trouble, they can shield the whole port. You couldn't take it out even with a Star Destroyer. Sure as hell can't do it with this thing."
He gestured derisively at his surroundings, tacitly implying the ship as a whole.
Panore merely looked at him. He had a point, but it was irrelevant. He wasn't the one who would be doing it. She knew who would, and she had not yet let herself look in his direction.
"From the inside. It's the only way."
"Sure."Cathin snorted. The pilot's sepia features showed exasperation. "You just walk up with a bomb in your hand and they'll let you in, right? Come ON, Delavan!"
"The main circuitry's underground." Esher Nivi contributed glumly. "Even if you could get to it, there must be a thousand independent master boards. They're all sealed off from each other - an ordinary bomb wouldn't begin to do the job; and setting up any kind of chain-reaction is probably not even possible. It would take hours anyway."
He turned his head, looking at those seated behind him, a humorless laugh issuing from his throat.
"But if somebody wants to guard my back while I go in and take a look around..."
"There's another way." A quiet, flat voice came from the far side of the room.
"Sure." Cathin said sarcastically. "All kinds of ways. We could all stand in front of the towers and wave blasters in their faces. Maybe send in a bunch of dancing girls to distract'em."
"That's enough, Dunet." Panore warned. Suddenly, her throat felt constricted, as though a trapped breath had lodged halfway between her lips and lungs.
Reluctantly, she looked to the source of the suggestion, meeting a pair of half-dead Alderaani eyes.
Teyduardo Derryn had lived when his world had died; lived in a silence bounded by screams that never stopped, knowing that the screams would remain forever, following him into the silence of his own death.
And now the time had come.
In his tortured mind he could see the red-robed goddess Derehi standing hand-in-hand with her white-clad sister, Fate, and Death opening their arms to embrace him as their lips curled up in welcoming smiles. A feeling of utter calm flowed over him as Derehi came to stand at his side, her deathly sibling kneeling to press a kiss of fatal promise to his hand.
He blinked, and they were gone from his vision; but he still felt the imprint of cool lips on his fingers and the pressure of an invisible hand resting lightly upon his forearm.
Voices buzzed around him, but he was hardly aware of them; feeling only the distance that separated him from the still-living.
His gaze fell, for an instant, on the beautiful brown-haired girl standing in the shadow of one of the bracing beams.
Simi. Simi, who had unwisely loved him, tried to draw him back; too young to understand that Life and Death were Derehi's sisters, obeying her beckon whenever she called.
He could also see green-gowned Ylstari, the preserver of life, draping her mantle of protection over the girl as she stood in the murky shadows, wrapping her in tacit safety.
His eyes traveled to the woman who stood in front of the group.
Delevan, who must know as surely as he did that Derehi stood in the room, sisters at hand. He watched Ylstari move, unseen, through the assembly, pausing to touch an unfelt fingertip to a cheek, an arm, showing him those marked, indisputably, for life beyond this day.
Derryn blinked again. Ylstari's apparition faded into thin air. Slowly, he focused on Delavan's watchful features, answered the question she hadn't asked.
"We have some trooper suits aboard. Give me one of them. I'll line it with explosives."
"And do what?" Someone demanded in an almost jeering tone.
"Walk in. Detonate from inside the tower itself, right at the primary controls. They'll back-burn to the main boards." He spoke in a flat, expressionless voice. There was no fear, no feeling at all. He had already passed far beyond the realm of such things.
"Yeah, that'd do it." Esher Nivi said sickly.
"All right." Panore Delavan said in a strangely quiet voice. "Materiel's and time?"
"Tivona high-grade explosives to line the suit, a web-type detonator. Four hours."
Delevan gave a slight nod.
"Esher, go with him, see he has what he needs. Final briefing at 0615, ship's time."
Teyduardo Derryn rose from his seat, unaware of the eyes that followed his progress; oblivious to the sound of Nivi's footsteps behind him. They thought him mad, had thought him mad for years; not understanding that it had all been set down in Derehi's careful ledger at the moment of his birth - that the gods left man to find his own way save when Fate chose to intervene.
He had lived by Derehi's whim, that he might die by her choosing; that those marked for her vengeance might die by his hand.
Teyduardo Derryn understood, and he was content.
Panore closed her eyes for a split second. It would be a quick death; a quick, horrible death.
Duardo Derryn, every eye upon him, walked from the room with the even, measured footsteps which had become his trademark. The same even, measured manner with which he did everything now.
Esher Nivi followed, a decided greenish tint to his fair skin, looking as if it were merely a matter of time before he lost whatever meal he had most recently consumed.
Cathin's voice rose above the others, tone edged with the impatient disgust with which she characteristically faced the horrors of war.
"Aw, he's Alderaani. He's been crazy ever since they blew the place up."
"Line the shell - and with a web detonator - " Maius gestured expansively. "And, SPLAT! One whacko Alderaani all over the walls." A macabre grin rested on his face, fading after a moment to blank-eyed nothingness. "Only there won't be any walls left."
"Didn't think he knew explosives." Another voice said. "Didn't he usta be a pilot?"
Panore's eyes moved from point to point, from face to face, finally coming to rest on a solitary figure standing in the shadows of one of the dark blue-grey bracing beams. Simi Camaelle stood as one turned to stone, dark eyes huge in an ashen face.
After an instant, Panore looked away.
No doubt, she thought, she should take care not to turn her back on Camaelle after this; but it was the best chance for the Alliance, and Duardo's hope for salvation.
Even so, as she left the briefing room, the lyrics of a song she'd once heard the girl sing echoed hauntingly in her mind.
The trooper suit lay in carefully disassembled, gleaming white pieces , waiting to be reassembled with the single missing component-the living component.
The detonator had been wired into the underside of the right arm.
Esher Nivi was sitting on a short bench against the wall, staring at nothing. His longish, blonde hair was in disarray; as if he'd run desperate hands through it and forgotten to smooth it back down.
"Where's Derryn?" Panore asked tonelessly.
"Went to his quarters." Esher's unfocused blue eyes gazed past her, unblinking. "He never said a word, General. Not a word."
"He never does." She considered the suit a bit longer. "All right Nivi, get out of here."
Like a robot following orders, Esher got up and walked to the door. War, Panore thought to herself, was hell on idealists.
She remained alone in the small room for several minutes longer, then stepped into the corridor, locking the door behind her.
Quarters for the cruiser's former officers lined a narrow passageway in the heart of the ship. Teyduardo Derryn was routinely assigned private quarters to enable other Alliance personnel to sleep undisturbed by his nocturnal restlessness, and would have retreated to one of them as was his right.
Instinctively, Panore halted at the most distant, the last, cabin on the left side. Pressing the signal button mounted at eye level she heard a faint hiss from the mesh square below it; faulty circuitry wasn't confined to the Alliance.
No one spoke to inquire her identity or purpose; she hadn't expected it.
"Delevan." She said tersely. The speaker hissed again as it deactivated; the door opened silently.
She stepped inside. The cabin was dim, filled with the taste and smell of dead memories. Duardo Derryn was lying on the bunk, staring at the ceiling. The shadows played softly over his scarred face, suggesting the dance of starlight on a lightly cratered moon.
An estranged wife, two sons, parents, a grandfather, three brothers and a sister - all had died with Alderaan, and Duardo Derryn had lived.
She had known he would volunteer, even guessed - half-correctly - at the method he would employ.
It was a cold universe, she thought. A damn cold universe.
"You're late." Derryn's voice was uninflected. He had neither moved nor turned his eyes from the ceiling's monotonous surface.
Panore shrugged slightly. "I thought Camaelle might be here."
He didn't answer immediately. Finally, in a faintly rough, faintly hoarse voice, he said, "Little girl."
Panore, in turn, said nothing for a time.
At nineteen, Simi Camaelle hardly qualified as a child any longer. Rumor contended that Derryn himself had occasionally managed to overlook Simi's youth these last few months. They knew each other from the old days, she and Derryn; and from the later ones as well. She knew exactly how damaged he was, knew the form and shape of his madness, knew the silent rage which burned in his brain and the guilt which consumed him. If Camaelle had managed to pierce those barricades, even temporarily, she certainly wasn't a little girl in any sense of the words. And if - IF - she had been able to cope with Derryn, the girl had an intelligence and resourcefulness that the Alliance had utterly wasted.
"Do your want me to leave?" She asked him at last.
"No."
Again, there was silence. The air seemed heavy and thick, almost sticky; even the gravity seemed greater of a sudden, pulling her feet to the deck. It came, she knew, as much from her own guilt, her own memories of Debilline Base, as it did from the proximity of Derryn's brooding stillness.
Abruptly-like a cat, she thought, an alert and deadly black-haired cat- Derryn sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, settling into a half-hunched position with his elbows balanced on his knees, hands clasped before him.
"You think I'm insane."
"No." Panore replied calmly. "I know you are."
She watched his dark lashes lift, revealing eyes that, for the first time since Alderaan, showed a spark of animation.
"It doesn't make any difference to me."She continued impassively. "It never has. If Rieekan, or Mon Mothma, were here you wouldn't get this mission. They'd send a sane man to do a madman's job."
The dark, unblinking eyes stared at her for a moment; then, still silent, Derryn held up both hands, palms outward.
Once, before Alderaan, he had been a pilot. She still remembered an aborted take-off, seeing him stumble from the ship and gasp out a request to be replaced, his hands violently trembling. He had never flown again. He had become no more than an unskilled, half-useless member of the ranks; entrusted with only the most routine tasks, because his mind wandered, it was said. Because his hands trembled and the hint of insanity lurked behind his lusterless eyes.
Panore regarded the perfectly steady fingers displayed before her.
"Well, that's one thing off my mind." She commented with a deliberate lack of feeling. "Be a hell of a thing for the detonator to go off early because you had shaking hands."
One corner of his mouth curled slightly; not quite a smile, not quite the suggestion of a smile. Duardo Derryn had forgotten how.
He let the silence stay unbroken for a minute, his expression returning to its chiseled stone blankness. He dropped his hands into a clasped position again, eyes staring into the dimness of the past.
"Thought you'd gotten soft." He said eventually.
She returned his look steadily.
"You were wrong."
Again, just for an instant-or perhaps it was a trick of the light- the outer corner of his lips seemed to curl upward.
"ETA is two hours." Panore said when the stillness has stretched out to cover a handful of minutes. "Final briefing in one." She paused, considering him. "Any last requests?"
He bent his head for a moment, seeming to study his scuffed boots, then looked up.
"From tower central," His voice retained it's typical hoarseness, but it was a note of unbreakable, freshly-tempered steel. "Blow the main panels. They'll burn out the boards in under four minutes. The boards are relay-linked to the other towers. Once the master boards are out, the control towers at the other ports will have no way of knowing what's going on at central. You'll have total chaos at half the principal ports on Malebolge."
It was probably the longest speech Duardo Derryn had made since Alderaan's destruction.
Above the bed there was a small viewport, perhaps the measure of two hands across. Panore looked at it, at the blackness that showed through the thickly layered duroglass. After a few seconds, she looked back at Derryn; at the dark, suddenly piercing eyes, the glittering brightness that burned like a fire within them.
She realized, with no great surprise, that his last request had already been granted.
Duardo Derryn's last request was death.
There had been absolute silence in the shuttle bay. No word spoken, not a muscle moved on the part of those watching.
Panore Delavan had displayed as little emotion as Derryn himself; both stone-faced and silent, both indifferent to the eyes upon them.
At the shuttle Delavan had simply and mutely offered him her hand. Most of the onlookers had thought it a singularly cold send-off for a man who was sacrificing his life for the Alliance.
Simi pressed her hands to the cold glass before her, tears streaking her face.
Derryn's act had nothing to do with the Alliance. It was a matter of vengeance, of checks and balances, of madness; the benefits to the Alliance were just a by-product. A small part of Malebolge was going to die; one small blow struck for the memory of Alderaan.
And, in the end, she had been only a little girl in his eyes; to be sent away while the adults got on with business.
"When all is done,and the gods receive you." Panore Delavan's voice quoted impassively from behind her. "It may be that only they will remember. Why, therefore, do you ask for mortal memory when the gods do not forget?"
The words were- had been- Derryn's favorite quotation.
"I won't either." Simi said bitterly, her voice quivering.
"No." The older woman said. "I don't imagine you will."
As circumspectly as she could, Simi tried to wipe the dampness from her face before turning toward the Husodane General.
Delavan was, temporarily, her commanding officer. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say. Delavan dealt swiftly, and efficiently, with the slightest sign of mutiny; and now, under battle conditions, the General's power's were absolute.
She hated her, nonetheless; hated her for everything, but especially for stealing those last minutes with Derryn that should have belonged to Simi Camaelle.
"You'd better see it through to the end."Delavan said flatly. "I need someone on the distance scanners anyway."
The cold, indigo eyes weighed her worth, rendered judgement in an instant's reckoning.
"But you'll be no good to anyone if you break down."
Simi angrily blinked back the watery residue of tears. Rieekan or Madine would have relieved her of duty; Mon Mothma would have done the same while delivering a drooling speech on the necessity of martyrs. At least Delavan had spared her that; gave her some credit for the ability to do her job.
"You see," Panore Delavan said quietly, "I happen to disagree with Derryn on one crucial point; I don't think you're a little girl."
The risks of speaking her mind vanished from Simi's awareness, swallowed up in the burning hatred.
"You really know how to twist the knife, don't you?"
"Yes." Delavan agreed indifferently. "That's where I differ from the rest of the imbeciles in the Alliance. I don't have to keep my distance. I can sleep with a man one night, and send him out to die the next day without blinking an eye; which is what you think I've done, isn't it?" The half-smile that slid across her lips showed a predator's cruelty. "If you're not careful, in five or ten years, you'll be no better."
"So what?" Simi retorted.
"Mmmm." Panore considered her for another second then turned to walk the short distance to the bridge. Mute, Simi followed, a mental chronometer clicking off the minutes that remained in Teyduardo Derryn's life while another part of her brain stumbled into wakefulness, forcing her to concentrate on the reality before her.
"Frona - Camaelle will take over the scanners." Delavan's voice directed. "Dunet, be ready to leave orbit on my order. Our ships start coming out of hyper in thirty-nine minutes. If the tower is still operational, we're going to have a real problem on our hands."
Simi glanced automatically at the readout as she took over the station Frona had just vacated.
"Magnification?" She asked, her voice shaky. Some of the Imperial control panels were unfamiliar to her and she frowned, trying to determine which controls did what.
"It's this one." Jai Frona said, returning he reached over her shoulder to point to it, simultaneously pressing his other hand to her upper arm in a comforting gesture. "You okay, Simi?"
"Sure." Simi Camaelle said in a flat, dead voice. "Never been better in my whole fucking life."
"I want maximum magnification, center screen." Panore ordered.
The image ran through a spectrum of changes, finally focusing into a surprisingly clear view of Malebolge's most important port. She looked at it in silence, startled by what she saw.
"Upgraded by ten powers at least." She said to herself.
If this was what a Class 'D' ship was equipped with these days, she shuddered to think of what the Star Destroyers had available. The magnification was good enough that they could see figures moving on the ground. Resolution, even at this distance was of sufficient clarity to almost make out individual features.
"How long will we be in the range of Central's signal at our current speed?"
"Another eight minutes."Cathin answered. "Derryn should be in the complex by now."
"Frona? Anything?"
"Negative. Just the usual chatter."
"So far, so good."Panore murmured. One Imperial cruiser was in the same standard orbit they were using, but not within firing range. With any luck, the Rebel fleet would take care of it before it became a problem. There were numerous other Imperial craft in the skies, plus the usual amount of freighters and passenger ships awaiting permission to make landfall; but only the cruiser worried her for the moment.
Her strategy had been predicated on the reports-fortunately accurate ones- that Derryn was able to get into the control tower or near enough for practical purposes. Too many assumptions; and if any of them were erroneous she'd have a hell of a lot more to worry about than one Imp cruiser -and in very short order.
There had been no opportunity to test the ship's shields. If they were up to standard it made no sense for the crew to have surrendered at Ucasim unless, Panore reasoned, the captain was a coward at heart or the man had an eye to the future. In her experience she'd found few Imps who were either born cowards or particularly far-sighted.
She had a bad feeling that the shields might not hold.
"Five minutes." Camaelle said.
Panore bit her lip, chewing on it nervously.
They could gain a little time by reducing their orbital speed, however such a move could well draw unwanted attention. Not to mention bringing the cruiser within attack range and confusing the hell out of the Rebel fleet.
With an effort, she kept her fingers still; not wanting to make her crew any more nervous than they already were by tapping her fingernails against the arm of the command chair.
"Four minutes." Frona announced.
"There it is." Camaelle's voice was taut.
The center screen turned white, a blur of fire, smoke and flying debris. Several of the bridge crew instinctively threw up a protecting hand before their heads. The brightness was painful; Panore's eyes narrowed against the light.
"Reduce magnification." She ordered. The image flickered several times then stabilized into a more distant view.
Great billowing clouds of smoke rose from what had been, a few seconds earlier, Malebolge Central Spaceport. The control tower was completely gone and several of the adjoining buildings were in flames. The landing field itself appeared largely undamaged except for the area nearest the tower.
"Bring up three and four."She commanded sharply. "Frona? Ground signals?"
"Negative. Static. Our fleet's coming out of hyper."
"And not a moment too soon." Panore commented.
"Warp transmission, Imperial Code A62, originated Malebolge 001-957."A droid announced.
And that, Panore thought, would be the signal to the commander of the Imperial fleet. In a matter of minutes the skies would be filled with Star Destroyers expecting to find Alliance ships in defensive positions. With any luck at all, the last of the Rebel ships would have completed their tricky maneuver, blinking into hyperspace and executing yet another pinpoint turn-around to come back in on the heels of the Empire's finest.
"Dunet, take us out of orbit and bring us around. Nivi, engage the shields." She glanced, briefly, at Camaelle; but for her blanched features nothing betrayed the girl's emotions at the moment. "Frona, signal the flagship. Tell them the tower is out." Her hands closed around the narrow arms of the command chair, eyes again tracking the display of smoke-obscured movement from the ground.
"Here we go, boys and girls." Dunet said cheerfully.
Panore flipped the switch beside her right hand.
"All personnel, stand by."
Very soon now, she thought with a clinical kind of detachment, they would know what the shields were worth. It was quite possible that Teyduardo Derryn would not make his journey to the gods alone.
"Anybody heard from the others?" Dave Maius, his light brown hair matted with sweat and cherubic face dirt-streaked, tried to focus exhausted eyes on the scene before him.
"The advance troops, or any of'em?"
"No." Panore Delavan's features were carved from ice. Imperial disruptors had effectively blocked all local communications, rendering everything by short-range comlinks useless. In the distance, the sounds of ongoing battle served up a hideous background symphony.
Simi stared at the now quiet port; at the molten debris that had been the tower, the holes melted through the landing field surface by the intense heat of the explosion.
In addition to the fliers patrolling overhead, hastily assembled portable cannons dotted the periphery and blaster-wielding rebels nervously made their rounds of the inner area, alert for any signs of intruders. Bodies, and parts of bodies, lay in bloody puddled beside the remains of fire-gutted ships.
"Sim?"
Simi looked dully at Cathin Dunet, who had approached and now gently gathered Simi into a silent embrace. For a moment, Simi hid here face against her friend's shoulder, then backed away holding Cathin at arm's length.
"I'm okay." She whispered.
"Dunet, find us an armored aircar." Delavan ordered. "There's only one way to find out what's happening. I'm going in."
Cathin swore, but picked up a transmitter and flipped it on.
"Mishal, do you copy? You see an armored aircar over there anyplace?"
Simi stood numbly, the distant laser fire sounding as a whine in her ears.
"Camaelle."
"Yes, General?"
"Unless something breaks loose here, you're off duty until further orders. The rest of the relief personnel should be here within the hour."
The ice mask of Panore Delavan's face showed no hint of emotion.
"For what it's worth, your assumption was wrong. Also, for what it's worth, you were the one person who might have distracted him."
Simi merely shrugged. She didn't care anymore. Duardo was dead; the rest of it no longer made any difference.
After a minute, she heard Delavan giving orders to the man being left in charge of the Debilline unit.
"When the Wiwoans make landfall, divide them up. Keep enough for relief personnel, send the rest of them in as back-up for the assault on the catacombs. Whatever you do, make damn sure you hold this port."
Somewhere near the shattered, burnt-out shell that had been the tower, someone was whistling a cheerful, upbeat melody while he scavenged for anything of value to be taken from the lifeless bodies.
The hum of an aircar's engine approached. Simi watched it settle down a few meters from the cluster of rebels who looked too exhausted to step aside, even if it had landed on top of them. No one else had been relieved of duty, and some were more ready to drop in their tracks than she was.
"Out of the cookpan, into the fire." Esher Nivi muttered, pushing past her to scramble into the hovering vehicle.
Slowly, Simi turned, again coming face to face with Panore Delavan.
"I don't want to stay here. Permission to go in with you, General?"
There was a fraction of a second's hesitation.
"Granted, Dunet. Maius, let's go."
Simi Camaelle stood quite still for a moment, staring at the scavenger and the rubble that was Teyduardo Derryn's grave. Then, wearily, she picked up a heavy, extra-range blaster, checked the charge level and followed Panore Delavan to the waiting armored car.
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