Chapter 11
“WHAT DO YOU mean, five air rovers?”
Barcon Ordam suppressed a tremor of fear as Governor Sorkost rose from behind his huge desk, looted from the Zelos city museum. The man might be old, portly, and soft, but he was still the voice—and the power—of the Coalition on Ziem, and thus to be feared.
“I . . . sir . . .”
“You cannot be saying five brand-new air rovers, barely off the transport ship, are gone?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
The governor leaned forward, his knobbed, heavily veined hands propping up his considerable weight. Barcon tried not to look at the left one, where two fingers were missing. Rumor had it they’d been lost in the first invasion of Trios decades ago, on the other side of the galaxy, when Gradle Sorkost had been in the merciless General Corling’s command. Some even said the old Trios king himself had taken the fingers off, before he’d been captured and executed.
Others, less admiring, speculated Sorkost had chewed them off in his haste to gobble up a tasty dinner.
The only thing that mattered to Ordam was that Sorkost had the power, the only civilian power on Ziem greater than his own.
“How,” Sorkost ground out, “did this happen?”
He’d practiced this, wanting to present a calm, impersonal report, hoping his tone and delivery would divorce him from the facts, at least in Sorkost’s mind. But he couldn’t control the timorous undertone in his voice as he began.
“They came in at night. Overpowered and contained the guards with some primitive rope device we’ve never seen before. No one heard anything except screeching animals of some kind. They left no trace. Not even a footprint. No one knows how many of them there were.”
“So they merely floated in and stole five air rovers, and no one saw anything?”
Barcon resisted the urge to loosen the collar that suddenly seemed too tight. Still, he chose his words carefully, to avoid any semblance of connection or responsibility. “One guard was hit from a distance. The others were attacked from behind.”
Sorkost’s already narrow gaze tightened even more as his jaw clenched. His voice came out in a hiss that lingered on the “s.”
“It was that skalworm raider, wasn’t it?”
“That is not certain,” Barcon said. “One man thought he saw that silver helmet, but he is unsure. But it is . . . logical to assume so. No one else dares.”
“So much for your idea to spread the word that he was dead, you fool. It probably provoked him to this.”
Barcon cringed inwardly. He tried desperately to think of a way to extricate himself from this. The Coalition had a tendency to blame whoever was handiest when things went wrong, and right now, he was in the direct line of fire.
There was a knock on the door, and Barcon cringed again, wondering who had the temerity to interrupt the governor at a moment like this. The lowly trooper who entered at Sorkost’s angry shout scuttled in, saluted, dropped something on the governor’s desk, mumbled something about it being found at the scene, and then escaped before he was even acknowledged. Something Barcon was certain he would pay for dearly later. But he understood; better a certain punishment later than possible death at the hands of the enraged governor now.
Sorkost stared down at the card on his desk. Barcon swallowed against the sudden, horrified tightness in his throat; he didn’t have to see it to know it was the calling card of that damnable renegade. He knew it bore the image of the famous curved Ziem saber, and those two ominous words: Without Warning. Which this raid had certainly been.
The Raider.
Again.
Damn the bastard.
The governor slowly turned around.
“Tell me, Barcon Ordam,” he said, too calmly now, “how did they get to the transport annex in the first place? Do we not have the mountain trails guarded?”
Barcon took a breath. This, at least, could not be laid at his door. “A new troop has rotated in. It is assumed that is how they got past, because the new men did not know all the paths.”
“Were they not shown, trained?” Sorkost demanded.
“Of course, but only on maps, when they arrived yesterday. And they are not yet used to the mist.”
Sorkost went very still. Too still. “Are you saying this change of force took place only yesterday?”
Barcon stopped himself from gaping. Barely. Did the man not know the movements of his own forces? “Yes, sir.”
“And on that very night that damnable marauder attempts—nay, succeeds in this raid?”
“Sir?”
“Are you blind as well as stupid? Do you think this a coincidence?”
Barcon had in fact not thought of it at all, but he was not about to admit that to the governor. Especially not when his rage was becoming both palpable and towering. “I did wonder,” he began.
“We have a traitor in our midst. Someone betrayed us to this mutilated blackguard, and I will have his head.”
Barcon’s mind raced, not something he was adept at even under normal circumstances. He preferred plenty of time and planning and calculating exactly how much he could get away with. The approach had served him well. After all, had he not handed Ziem over to them, intact and with the mines still functional? And when they and their equipment had been unable to counter the mist of Ziem, had he not pointed out the most vulnerable of the native miners, who could be forced to work for them?
They owed him. And he would not allow himself to be blamed for this. “And his entrails, governor, I’m certain,” he said, his tone as obsequious as he thought Sorkost would tolerate.
“Get me Frall!” the governor shouted.
Relief that Sorkost was apparently going to channel his rage elsewhere flooded Barcon. And then he remembered, and apprehension filled him anew. If the proper target of his fury was not available, he knew too well Sorkost was likely to vent it on the nearest target. Which was equally likely to be him.
“Frall isn’t here. A new post commander came in with the new guards.”
“Then get me him, whoever in hades it is!”
“Immediately, sir!” Barcon turned on his heel. He wished more than anything to run, and in fact did the last few steps to the door. He didn’t draw another breath until he was safely outside and the door was closed behind him.
He ordered the guard—despite the fact that there had been little trace of rebellion other than that hideously scarred raider in years, Sorkost maintained the pretense that he needed guarding—to get the new post commander here instantly. He sent another messenger for Jepson Kerrold, his liaison in matters of state. He would have him handle this from here on. For having come from one of the most elite families on Ziem—at one time, anyway—the man was rather useless, too terrified of even the lowliest Coalition official to do much good. But Barcon had no hesitation about sending him into the breach for just that reason; if a Coalition official became irritated enough with Kerrold to cut off his head, it would be no great loss to him. No, if he needed something actually done, he used Kerrold as a distraction and called in Jakel, the agent who saw to his dirtier work with a brutal efficiency.
Orders given, Ordam retreated to his own office, a suite of rooms looking out over the town square. The office that had once belonged to Torstan Davorin, a fact that gave him no small amount of glee, and was the reason he’d chosen it of all the ones available to him.
This was where the true power was. The power he wanted, anyway. Power over the people of Zelos, and by extension all of Ziem. And he had achieved it. He had shown all those who had belittled him over the years, those who had laughed at his awkwardness, his way of speaking, the way his ears sat upon his head. He had shown all those who had preferred the likes of the Davorins, especially that craven Drake, who in the end hadn’t had the nerve to stand up to anyone.
He’d always suspected there was a coward hiding behind that dashing, handsome exterior, and it was one of the greatest satisfactions of his success that the entire planet knew it now. Especially the women, who had once fluttered at the man, whispering over his pure Ziem eyes, thick black hair, and even, disgustingly, publicly slavering over his taut, strong body. While they looked past he himself with dismissive or even derisive glances.
It was not his fault his eyes were so pale, barely blue at all. Or that he was thin, and his ears stuck out a bit. At least he was not a slimehog like Sorkost, concerned only with the delights of the flesh.
It would all come out right in the end. He knew that. What he had done, and continued to do, was the best thing for Ziem. It was not his fault they could not yet see that, that they were much better off with the presence and support of the Coalition.
But someday they would see it. This would pass and he would maintain the position he had worked so hard to attain. Eventually even the Raider would fall; the odds would see to that. The man was reckless, and by now likely blinded by his successes, small though they were. He would one day—hopefully soon—take that risk too far and come to a messy end. Barcon simply had to be patient.
And he had learned long ago how to be patient.