Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 50

He smiles.

Nabu li Pazua awoke suddenly, convinced that something was wrong.

He surveyed his immediate surroundings with a master's telepathic touch, hoping to discover the source of his alarm. In this small room, in the adjoining chambers outside, in this whole section of the building, there was nothing that might have disturbed his sleep. Perhaps his own stream of consciousness? He reviewed the dream which was only now fading from memory, and found in its content nothing to arouse suspicion. No, whatever had disturbed him was clearly external to his own person. And it was wrong.

He scanned the mental horizon for the source of his discomfort, found it in a stranger's thoughts. There-a tendril of concentration so faint that it almost evaded his perception. He touched it with all his skill, seeking its source and purpose. Something to do with the Border, it seemed. No; he tested that possibility, discarded it. Someone connected with the Border, then.

Anzha? Could she be planning her revenge at last? In theory, her conditioning made such action impossible, but she had broken so many rules already-why not that one as well?

He opened himself to the foreign thoughtstream-so weak, so indecipherable- and overlaid it with Anzha's own mental signature. To his relief, the two failed to match.

Feran? He tested that thought as well, though he seriously doubted that the Probe could span Holding and Empire without relay, and again the answer was negative.

That left no one-at least, no one li Pazua had ever heard of. From that direction, once could almost imagine a Braxin source. Except of course that there were no Braxin psychics.

Or were there?

He took what he knew of the Braxin mindset-and he knew a lot, having trained Ferian del Kanar for his defection- and he compared it to the alien thought. To his horror, he found that the two images were very similar.

All right, he told himself, be calm, think it out. A Braxin source (the distance alone made it incredible!) focused upon the Inst.i.tute, or upon Llornu, or li Pazua himself. With what purpose? The contact was too weak for him to read that clearly, but one thing was painfully clear: it was hostility that had strengthened the signal, making it strong enough to reach across Holding and Empire and awaken him in the night.

Some kind of imminent attack? he ventured.

Yes.

It could be anything, provided it touched upon his person (or his cause, they were the same thing), and provided that culmination of the Braxin's plan was in the immediate future. Only such a combination was capable of channeling surface thoughts to him with such intensity, perhaps without the sender's approval.

Attack! They had prepared defenses, had never expected to need them. Li Pazua tried to calm himself enough to manage a cool, rational sending. To the first rung of Llornu's special defense network: relay.

Five psychics were on guard, quickly roused from lethargy when he filled their minds with his warning. They would warn the others, spreading word in an instant with flawless precision, setting various plans in motion with far more effi- ciency than non-sentient technology could ever hope to equal.

He trembled, waiting.

~ Director? It was his relay captain, a skilled Communicant. ~ All stations alerted. That meant machines were scanning the heavens for activity, telepaths were searching the boundaries of thought for threat, computers were a.n.a.lyzing the psychefiles of Llornu's current population. Would it be enough? Li Pazua wished he had some idea what kind of threat they were dealing with; it would narrow the search considerably. How much time did they have?

~What is it we're looking for? the relay team group-queried.

~ I don't know! He paused, trying to give a name to that feeling which had crept with icy claws into the heart of him. Dread? Terror? ~ Hostile focus, manifestation expected shortly. Maintain full alert, telepathic and mechanical.

It could be an a.s.sa.s.sin, plotting li Pazua's demise, which had worked its way into his awareness. Or a saboteur, preparing weapons of destruction. Even a political enemy, negotiating Llornu's doom-any source that combined hostility with a Llornuan intent, focusing upon this moment in time . . . too many possibilities, too little information. Li Pazua fumed at his own impotence.

He reached out for contact with the psychics in the defense center, the ones in charge of Llornu's limited martial capacity. A Communicant was waiting to relay his consciousness to the operations center; he tapped into the man's senses even as the head psychic announced his presence. So far, the system was working well.

Briefly, Nabu regretted his decision to ban StarControl from the system. They could have used Security's help at a time like this. But that would have set a dangerous precedent, compromising Llornu's autonomy. And once the veil of se- crecy had been lifted, StarControl would hardly allow him to restore it. No, when Director ni Kahv had offered to fortify the Inst.i.tute, Nabu had made the only choice possible. Who had ever thought that Llornu would come under attack?

~What's going on? he asked.

~ There are fifteen objects in atmosphere. Thirty-two in-system. We're identifying them now.

He nodded, but the gesture didn't affect the body he was now sharing.

Normally, computers controlled all of Llornu's traffic, from the movement of pa.s.senger transports to manned and unmanned cargo freighters. Llornu had a large population, psychic and non-psychic, and supported a good deal of trade.

But computers could err, and certainly they could be misinformed; it was important to have humans verifying identification at a time like this. ~ Let me know when you have something, He shifted his awareness to the guards of the aether.

Harr'yd, a gifted psychic-receptive, shared consciousness with him. Not all the telepaths a.s.signed to this duty were in the same room, but a network of thought bound them together as certainly as if they were.

~ Dyri and Calsua verified the signal, Harr'yd told him. ~ Source: apparently Braxin. A note of wonder accompanied that information. ~ Spatial focus is general rather than specific. Dyri feels that the ultimate target will be conceptual as opposed to material. Although that may involve a material a.s.sault.

A sinking sensation filled the pit of li Pazua's stomach as he realized what all that implied. ~ The Inst.i.tute?

~ Possibly. Temporal focus seems to be in the immediate future- Yes, he knew all that. And more was becoming clear to him, parcels of alien thought which he had previously been unable to identify. Waiting-that was what he had perceived, the sense of someone waiting, antic.i.p.ating the destruction of everything they had worked for.

He returned to that defense center. ~ Progress?

He was given a glimpse of the main flatscreen, with the paths of six objects etched across the heavens. ~ These are still unidentified, a Communicant reported; there was a tinge of fear in his surface mind.

Those were it, then. ~ Find out what thev are. Our defense fields?

~ Already established. Director.

But are they adequate? li Pazua wondered.

Llornu was not equipped for war. They had never expected to fight. The Inst.i.tute's last Director had put in basic defense fields in response to StarControl's advice. In li Pazua's lifetime, Ebre ni Kahv had urged him to accept that Llornu might well become a military target. But the Inst.i.tute was above such petty concerns as war and conquest; it served Knowledge, which was the domain of all humankind. Who would want to destroy that?

~ !!!Objects entering lower atmosphere!

It was Anzha lyu who had brought them to this pa.s.s. She had turned telepathy into a weapon, negating the inst.i.tute's treasured neutrality. d.a.m.n her! What had Braxi ever cared about Llornu, before she came along?

~We have an identifiction, one of the guards projected; his thoughts were thick with death. ~ Battle drones, from Tirrah. Should we- ~ Fire! he answered quickly.

War had come to Llornu.

Zatar reviews his planning, is pleased. He has seen to it that Llornu will not be warned of the coming attack, by a complicated network of misinformation which has resulted in no one but himself knowing the details of the a.s.sault. The outlaws on Tirrah who constructed his battle-drones did so without asking questions; the astrogator who programmed their course thought he was programming for cargo transports. Bits and pieces of fact, peppered with strategic untruths, served up to carefully chosen men . . . there is no way that any of them will focus their thoughts upon Llornu today, giving him away.

Zatar has seen to it.

As for himself, he is too far away for it to matter; so Feran a.s.sured him. Thus he revels in his plans, projecting his triumph out to the stars and daring Llornu to antic.i.p.ate him. In moments the attack will be underway; there is nothing they can do to stop it. The glory of Llornu will be leveled at last, which serves both Braxi and his own ambition. And it is because he is not psychic, because he is parted from them by the breadth of two great nations, but most of all because his planning has been perfect, that he can laugh his triumph to the Void, unnoticed-while the Inst.i.tute meets its destiny.

The bombs fell like rain, dropping to Llornu's surface at seemingly random intervals, powdering the landscape with hot white flashes. Li Pazua's men tried to pick them off as they fell, but there were too many, and there was no pattern to their descent. They seemed to be coming from two of the drones, and so li Pazua concentrated his firepower upon those mechanisms; but while he did so hundreds died, screaming their fear and their pain into the thoughtwinds of the psychic community.

So much loss-and for what purpose? He could understand an attack upon the capital complex. That was where the Inst.i.tute's files were housed, where the most damage might be done. But so far, not a single drone had addressed itself to that target. Instead they fired at random upon the planet, striking terror into psychic and non-psychic alike as they blasted the outlying communities with white-hot death. Why?

A flare in the night, blossoming into molten fragments of destruction. "One down," Karallen muttered. It was safer to speak, to trust to the limited power of words, than to brave the h.e.l.l of psychic sensitivity. The planetmind had become a sea of desperation and fear; if one opened up to it, even for a instant, there was no telling what might happen.

And there it was: what the strange attack had accomplished. By making enough psychics suffer, by causing the thoughtwinds to be filled with their pain and their fear, the enemy had severed mind from mind-had negated Llornu's single great advantage. Now the psychics were no more than human; even less-they, who were now limited to physical communication, were the least practiced in using it.

The outlook was dismal indeed.

Li Pazua pulled out of his host-body just as a tide of rising insanity threatened to engulf him. Cursing, he returned his awareness to his own body and bolted from his room, heading toward the nearest exit. A quick sprint across Capital Park brought him to the Inst.i.tute's main building, where the defense center was located; he tried not to look up as he ran, knowing that nothing but a sh.e.l.l of balanced energies stood between him and the enemy. Five halls, two staircases- the lift was too far away-he planned the journey in his mind as he raced from one building to the next, cursing the circ.u.mstances that made physical travel necessary. When he came to the defense center, he had to stand by the door for a minute, leaning against its frame and trying to catch his breath.

The outlook was not good. The five remaining drones had turned their attention to the main array of buildings. They seemed adept at dodging the Inst.i.tute's fire, or perhaps li Pazua's people were simply too inexperienced to hit them. Again he wished for StarControl. Too late, too late. You made your choice! "Be careful," he muttered, using the warning to announce his presence. It was all that he could do.

Suddenly, one of the battle-drones dove for the main building. It was all that li Pazua could do to keep breathing; his hands clasped so tightly that blood was drawn, he watched as the fledgling warriors sought to cut the drone down in mid- flight. And they hit it-but it absorbed the energy of their attack, dispersed it, and threw itself against the building's forcedome in one final, blazing explosion.

For a moment all screens went white, as Llornu's forcefields absorbed the strength of the a.s.sault. Li Pazua found himself praying. G.o.d of our Founding, Father of the Firstborn, do not let all our work be destroyed, I beg of you. . . . He looked up in time to see the night sky displayed anew.

"Forcefields intact," Karallen announced. There was an audible sigh of relief from all the room's occupants.

"d.a.m.n!" Susha's voice was shaking; the strain of keeping her mind safely closed was telling on her. "Here comes another one."

It came, and like its predecessor it concentrated all its power in one suicidal plunge. They tried to stop it, but the most they could manage was to burn off its outer forcefield. Then it struck, and the screens blazed white-hot as their own fields fought to protect them.

This time the display took much longer to clear. How much of this can we take?

li Pazua wondered.

"Choose one," he instructed the defense crew. "Focus all your fire on it, regardless of what the others do. We can't take them out once they're diving.

Maybe this will work." And if they come two at once. . . . Then the Llornuans would die, li Pazua realized, along with all their work. The thought of it filled him with rage, which in turn increased his sensitivity. He had to fight to tune out the cries of the dying while his psychic warriors chose a drone, and focused their fire upon it.

"Number five is diving!" Susha warned.

"Keep going!" They had to destroy these things, or sheer numbers would defeat them. Li Pazua held his breath as the third suicide-drone fell toward them, as they kept the outer forcefield down in order to fire upon its companion-a hit, there, and then another, they were getting it!-and then the field was brought back up, just in time.

Drone number five was stronger than the others, or else the defense fields were getting weaker. It took long minutes for the screens to clear, and when they did so they were not fully functional.

"We got one," Susha announced. Her hair, sweat-soaked, was plastered to her face. "That means one more to go. Hasha . . ."

"We can do it." Li Pazua glanced at the generator readings. Bad, very bad . . .

one more dive like the others and they'd be Stardust. They had to get this one before it got them.

But as they focused their aim upon it, it began to drift away.

"What the-"

"It doesn't matter," li Pazua said hurriedly. "Destroy it!"

Malfunction? Change in plans? Whatever the cause, it was moving away from them as the last of their aggressive power was vented upon its forcefield. After a moment, the drone began to glow. And an instant later-an eternity, to those watching-the drone itself imploded, scattering the enemy's remains in a burst of pyrotechnics across the wounded landscape.

For a moment there was silence, psychic and physical.

"We got it," Susha whispered.

"Is that the last?"

"Find out," li Pazua ordered. "Full scan of the system.

"And damage reports?" Karallen asked softly.

Oh, Hasha-the dead, the dying, the suffering. . . . "Yes. As soon as you can. Use the equipment," he added, and the message was clear: don't open yourselves to what's out there.

There were hundreds of psychics living on Llornu, and thousands of people who lacked the talent but preferred that society. Lovers who had tasted telepathic union and now could enjoy nothing less; scholars of the genetic arts who reveled in the Inst.i.tute's research facilities; sociologists and morale adjusters who struggled to reduce the bizarre Llornuan culture to a collection of finite statistics: innocents, all of them, psychic and physical alike. He could understand why Braxi would strike at the central grounds, where the Inst.i.tute's records were stored, but why the murder of so many innocent souls'?

"I'm going to check the Archives." he murmured. There were physicians who could handle the wounded far better than he could; he needed to see that their records were safe, to rea.s.sure himself that although lives had been lost, their purpose endured. Contact with the Archives would be his shield against insanity when the chaos of the thoughtwinds began to break down his barriers, when the newborn terror of his world engulfed him.

If not for that warning, we might all be dead. Thank the Founding that our enemy forgot our strength: that the thoughts of an a.s.sa.s.sin mark his purpose like a beacon. We owe our lives to our enemy's lack of mental control.

The Archives were buried deep beneath the surface of the planet, in a series of vaults fortified against man and nature. Originally they had relied upon the tons of earth which surrounded them for their protection; then, after the quakes of '234, they were rebuilt to withstand any disaster. The result was a strange admixture of primitive tunnels and gleaming catwalks, of natural caverns b.u.t.tressed with a spiderweb of forcefield relays, of pseudometal cabinets filled with hardcopy backups and a glistening array of the Empire's finest computerware. Though the myriad halls and winding tunnels were contained in a perfect sphere, it was impossible to see at any one point how many rooms there were, or what form they might take, or where this twisting path-now a stone- paved walkway, afterward a catwalk that spanned the breadth of a ma.s.sive cavern-might lead next. The only real evidence of the Archives' structure lay in the generator situated at its central point. From there a thousand silver threads shot out to the sphere's circ.u.mference, the struts of a forcefield a.s.sembly so powerful that were Llornu itself destroyed, the Archival Sphere-and the Inst.i.tute's records-would endure.

Here was the lifeblood of the Inst.i.tute, the culmination of all their work. Here the precious records were stored, complex genetic scans and their a.s.sociated psychefiles, biohistories of all known psychics (as well as projected histories for those who had died before the Inst.i.tute was founded), and millions upon millions of comparative a.n.a.lyses that crosschecked the patterns of amino acids against the measures of psychic talent, hoping to discover a relationship between them. Here there were rooms equipped for the a.n.a.lysis of DNA, and chambers filled with sample strands, held in stasis. Here, li Pazua thought, was the Inst.i.tute; all the rest existed so that this might endure.

He walked across paths that spanned the irregular chambers, touching the surfaces of sleeping machines as if to a.s.sure himself that they did, indeed, exist.

Not that there was ever any doubt. No enemy fire, no act of nature, and (most important of all) no despoiling radiation could reach this place, where the Inst.i.tute's hopes were housed. The Archives were unscathed.

With pride he walked through the underground chambers, drawing strength from the hope that this place represented. He stopped only when he noticed that the flatscreen of one computer was not wholly blank. Walking up to it, he frowned. A malfunction, no doubt; well, it happened. Or perhaps someone working down here had forgotten to clear the board when he left. That was possible.

Then he read the display, and the world spun maddeningly about him as he tried to absorb its message.

TRIGGER SEQUENCE AFFIRMED.

DETONATION SEQUENCE STAGE ONE.

He struck the control marked PROGRAM IDENTIFICATION. A file number appeared; it could mean anything. He tried to call up the program, but for some reason the computer wouldn't respond.

At last, in desperation, he asked it for the so-called trigger sequence. That, apparently, was not protected.

THREE SURGES IN MAINBASE DEFENSE FIELD, it told him. It proceeded to list specifics: how long between surges (just how long had it taken for each drone to dive at them?), strength of each surge (it was right, it was right . . .), to be followed by a period of inactivity.

That was why the last drone had pulled back . . . Hasha help them all, the attack was merely an attempt to focus their attention elsewhere, while this, the true a.s.sault, was triggered by their own defenses!

He tried to call for help-and the wall of pain was so intense that it sent him gasping back to his own body, unable to bear the torment of Llornu's thoughtstreams. Who was there to hear him, anyway? They were all trying their best to close themselves off, to shut off those senses which even now could save them.

He tried to stop the program from running.

DETONATION SEQUENCE STAGE TWO it responded, oblivious to his efforts.

There was a noise from the other end of the Archives; he searched for the source, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Somewhere between the banks of computers, squeezed beneath the walkways, buried in rock, perhaps in the files themselves! someone had planted something-and he, li Pazua, had caused it to go off.

"Hasha forgive me," he whispered, as the display altered one last time.