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  Aldo feinted low then, just as the other was beginning to feel safe. Goll made his first serious mistake, lowering his own blade to parry the thrust rather than retreating. Aldo could tell he was a man who hated to retreat. That was a dangerous attitude to have as a fencer. Aldo used all his speed and precision to bring the tip of his own weapon up and managed to score a grazing blow on the Commander’s left arm.

  There was a lavender flash, and spurt of blood spilled down upon Goll’s whites. The blood flow quickly ceased. One benefit of using powered swords was their tendency to instantly cauterize the wounds they created. Goll’s left arm hung now, almost useless.

  Aldo withdrew a step. After all, he wasn’t here to kill the fool.

  “I’ve struck the first touch, sir.”

  “Indeed you have.”

  Obviously in pain, but still keeping his guard up, Goll stared at him. If anything, he seemed more enraged than before. Aldo’s smile, for the very first time, faltered. Would the fool not see reason? He could not hope to win. He’d met many angry, prideful men on the field of honor. Most quickly grew contrite when seriously injured.

  “Defend yourself!” shouted Commander Goll. He came on then, and amazingly, his attacks were more accurate, his skill greater. Rather than being paralyzed by fear and pain, he was wild with the desire for revenge.

  Aldo flicked his eyes to his elderly master: Brigadier Klaus Druzman. His master widened his blue-marble eyes and made a small fluttering movement with his hands, indicating his bafflement. Aldo flicked his eyes back to his opponent then, lest he be run through by this madman.

  Aldo’s master, like Aldo himself, was a gentleman who bordered upon the world of the rogue. Klaus Druzman’s vice, however, was that of gambling rather than dueling. There was nothing inherently wrong with gambling in the southern cantons, but Druzman was a man who almost never lost a hand of cards. He achieved his startling series of victories, naturally, by cheating. Often his victims suspected him, and occasionally they demanded satisfaction on the field of honor. Druzman was prepared for this eventuality, and would immediately claim fatigue due to his great age. He was, in fact, over a century old. If the abused debtor insisted upon dueling, he would ask to be allowed to use a stand-in. Aldo Moreno, a gifted swordsman, was always on call to fight as Druzman’s appointed champion in such cases. The system had been admirably effective. No one had ever gotten away without paying their debts to Brigadier Klaus Druzman.

  Blades flashed and sparked. The clashing weapons rang with violence and strength of arms. Both men were soon breathing hard. Blood trickled anew from Commander Goll’s arm, but he paid the wound no heed. Aldo, who had been giving ground steadily before the other’s onslaught, stopped his retreat and performed a shockingly fast riposte. He struck suddenly, for the heart, knowing he would be parried, but wanting to scare his opponent and shake him off this suicidal path. Goll parried the chest attack in quarte. But the scare did not slow his furious assault. The two men had come too close for effective swordplay. Instead of withdrawing, Goll pushed their swords and bodies together.

  The two crackling rapiers flowed ozone in a hot gush up into Aldo’s face. They struggled for a moment, shoving.

  “Hold!” said the arbiter. “Step back.”

  The two men pushed apart and stepped back, returning to en garde. But suddenly, something unexpected was done. Something foul—something against the rules of honor. As they parted to stand en garde again, Commander Goll’s blade flashed out low and slapped against Aldo’s thigh.

  The pain was excruciating. The cut itself wasn’t bad, but jolt from the power-blade, laid firmly against a spot with little grounding or protection, numbed Aldo’s leg so that he was almost unable to use it.

  In automatic answer, Aldo flicked his sword out and carved a new chunk from Commander Goll’s left shoulder, which he had thrown up to take the riposte.

  Commander Goll danced back now, arm flapping grotesquely. Blood ran everywhere. The crowd of gentle-folk that had come to watch a Sunday duel on a fine spring day gasped in horror.

  “Foul!” roared the arbiter. “Foul, Commander Goll. You have dishonored yourself!”

  “This contest is at an end,” said Brigadier Druzman, stepping forward.

  “Nonsense!” Goll shouted back, clearly pleased with himself. “My weapon slipped. It was no more a foul than was the presence of no less than seven aces in the deck of cards we played with last night. It was all merely an oversight Druzman, just as you assured me.”

  Aldo, for his part, watched the interplay. Sweat beaded upon his brow. He didn’t want to lose to this angry fop. His leg, however, was all but useless. When dueling, a quick retreat before a charge was often the only thing that kept one alive.

  “The rules were stated,” said the arbiter, having regained his composure. “Neither has died. Both do not agree to resolve the argument.”

  “But he fouled my man!” shouted Brigadier Druzman, his face flushing red. “And both are incapacitated.”

  “Not I!” shouted Commander Goll. He flopped his left arm about in a disgusting parody of control. “I will not yield.”

  “Very well, the contest continues.”

  “Unless,” said Commander Goll, grinning at Aldo. “You sir! Do you wish to yield?”

  Aldo flicked his eyes to his master. Brigadier Druzman heaved a sigh and gave him a tiny nod of approval. He was given permission to quit.

  “What do you say, lapdog?” Commander Goll demanded of Aldo. He grinned, showing a mouthful of tightly clenched teeth.

  Aldo gritted his own teeth in anger and pain. He took a half-step forward. His right leg dragged, stiff and throbbing.

  “Let us finish the matter,” Aldo said.

  The small crowd gasped. Even Commander Goll looked surprised. He too, gave a nod. Some of his anger had faded now. He looked at Aldo with new respect. “Very well. As you wish.”

  Goll came on in a steady advance. Aldo knew that he would lunge suddenly, when he closed within range. Aldo was not able to lunge himself, nor was he capable of effective retreat. All he could do was parry and counter.

  The worst of it was watching the approach. His opponent took his sweet time. Aldo wasn’t sure if Commander Goll was enjoying the tension, or if he was simply being cautious, wanting make sure the kill didn’t cost him further injury.

  The final passage of arms was brief, and too fast for the crowd to follow. Aldo parried his opponent’s lunge, disengaged, and thrust high without compunction. The tip flashed electrically again, this time as it contacted Commander Werner Goll’s right eyeball. The point, being a monofilament of aligned molecules, glided through the skull and popped out of the back of the man’s head. The tip sizzled and sparked.

  The commander slumped down dead. Many gasped, some wept. Most of them shook their heads and frowned. Honor had not truly been served this day. The entire thing was a travesty. A grim farce. Even Aldo felt no elation, looking down upon his fallen opponent.

  Aldo looked up at the rooks that lined the whip-pines. Many of them lifted off and flapped with slow, lazy strokes of their wings. The show was over. They had sensed blood coming today, and they had been right again.

  As the crowd dispersed, Aldo’s master approached. He held out his hand. Aldo took it, as if shaking hands. The two men exchanged a data-bean. Aldo suspected it would be his final payment in the brigadier’s service.

  “I must ask, Brigadier Druzman,” Aldo said formally, “to be released from your service.”

  Druzman nodded. His pink skull and jowls were frosted with white hair. Every last lock of it that hadn’t fallen out due to his great age had been carefully groomed into an individual, spiraling curl. His hair resembled lamb’s wool upon a badly shaven lamb.

  “You’ll have to leave the canton,” said Druzman. His piercing blue eyes met Aldo’s.

  Aldo nodded. He could not believe his poor luck.

  Commander Goll’s seconds came close and cast many glaring looks toward Aldo. They hauled
away Goll’s corpse with ill grace. Goll had been a professional Fleet officer. His death would be missed. Dueling wasn’t exactly illegal, but killing another man in a duel could result in a murder charge. At the very least, he would be arrested and harassed by the local militia.

  “I’ll go north,” said Aldo, but he didn’t like the sound of it.

  Druzman nodded. “We had a good partnership.”

  Aldo didn’t respond.

  “Aldo?”

  Aldo looked up.

  “Did you have to kill him?”

  “No. But I did it, just the same.”

  Druzman shook his head. “That’s your problem. You pretend to be a professional rogue. But really, at the heart of it, you’re a killer.”

  Aldo set to work tending his injured leg. He didn’t argue with Druzman. There was no need.

  Eight

  The Savant had been hard at work for days. First, the trach had subdued the small population of local humans. Somehow, it had almost died in the process, however. Before expiring, it had managed to drag back on its broad, flat back a number of the humans to the lifepod.

  Huddling inside, freezing, she had suspected the worst when the trach had returned with the first one. The membrane was suddenly tingling with its passage. Was this another human intruder, coming to investigate, or worse to cleanse all life that festered still in the lifepod?

  A datablip calmed her nerves. It was the trach, carrying a stiff body inside and throwing it upon the snarl of flaccid veins that made up the floor of the lifepod. She waited impatiently as it carried each one back, four in all. The interior of the tiny ship was stacked with stiff corpses. Their tangled limbs and frosty body fluids were everywhere.

  When the entire harvest was secure, she realized how badly injured the trach was. It had served its duty well, but now must be put down and recycled. As its last duty, the trach resealed the crack in the lifepod, spraying its own life-giving juices out to coat the membranes. A new crusty resin shell was formed. Burning what supplies she had to provide chemical heat, she let the trach fold up its legs and die amongst the collected crop of humans.

  The Savant’s purpose was unlike most other Imperium forms. She was a scientist, and experimenter. She built specialized forms, growing them from genetic seeds. Unlike the Parents, who gave birth to whatever form they needed from a prescribed list of available genetic designs, the savants were able to design their own. She was, in her way, more of a craftsman than a queen-mother.

  She thawed her five corpses by wrapping her body around each in turn and exuding chemical heat. She took stock of them once they were unfrozen. One trach and four humans. She probed each of them, deciding what to make of the group. She had bio-seeds available for spawning the basic forms of her race. But she needed an incubator. And without the trach, she was presently defenseless. She had to assume that the humans were not yet wiped out and would come looking for her. She had to rebuild this pile of dead flesh into efficient servants.

  She found among the aliens that the Boldo-creature was probably the best combat specimen. Unfortunately, he was also the most damaged. Still, she felt it was worth the effort. The Mala form and the Zindelo-creature were both badly mangled, and inferior. She decided to use them along with the exhausted trach as raw materials. She turned last to the Kizzy-creature, which was a puzzle.

  This one was barely damaged at all. Only frost and the bubbling lung damage that vacuum seemed to cause to all these creatures was evident. Curious, the Savant investigated further. It was too bad she couldn’t ask the trach about it, as it had already expired. How had this Kizzy-creature died? If she could figure out a way to kill the humans without doing any damage, the entire invasion effort would be advanced.

  After a thorough examination, she determined the cause of death to be exposure to vacuum. The subject’s faceplate had indeed been open upon capture. Was it possible that the human had determined it was about to die, and simply opened its own faceplate to allow itself to expire without violence? A puzzling concept. The Savant knew that she had briefly contemplated her own suicide while stuck in the lifepod, but of course her species was too powerfully controlled by genetic compulsions to carry through with such a thought. Perhaps, the humans were able to act upon such impulses. Interesting.

  In any case, she decided to make the Kizzy-creature her platform for biological construction. With radical modifications, the Kizzy-creature’s reproductive system could be restructured into a birthing model. The Boldo-creature, with a few extra limbs and sensory equipment upgrades, would serve as the combat model.

  Now that her plan was clearly outlined, the Savant went to work. She wrapped the Kizzy and Boldo creatures into individual cocoons and impregnated them with bio-seeds using invasive nerve-needles. She had formed the bio-seeds inside her own body, organically creating the genetic structures she needed. Given time, carefully maintained conditions and enough raw materials, the bio-seeds would quickly sprout and grow into the required organs. Very soon, the two humans would be almost unrecognizable.

  If the Savant had been capable of a smile, she would have worn one then. She felt truly happy for the first time since she had awakened in her lifepod floating in the cold void. It would be hard work, but she had finally begun to believe this invasion had a chance, slim though it might be.

  #

  The Savant set to work with dedication and energy. First, the Boldo-creature walked the entire base, expunging any encountered resistance. He found only a few terrified humans. They tried to stop the Boldo-creature with gunfire, using their preferred close-range ballistic weaponry. Firing sprays of high-velocity pellets, the Savant found the enemy hand-cannons to be primitive but effective weapons. The modified Boldo’s carapace had withstood the blasts relatively intact. He had, as was his designed purpose, closed with the enemy, marching into the blaze of a half-dozen hand-cannons.

  Once in close quarters, the Boldo-creature’s orbs snaked out on stalks that had been withdrawn for protection. The cusps popped open, exposing the orbs but also allowing for much greater speed and accuracy. What must have seemed like a slow-moving, unstoppable tank of flesh to the humans now turned into a threshing machine once he was in their midst. The Boldo-creature’s horn-blades, long and curved, swept heads from bodies with each stroke. It had been determined this was the most efficient approach to disposing of humans. They were easily destroyed by the removal of their single brain, which was inexplicably grown inside the top head-appendage. Like harvesting seed-pods from a field of starch-producing plants, the Boldo-creature slaughtered them most efficiently.

  A few managed to get off shots at close range, blowing off portions of the Boldo-creature’s anatomy. It would take a few days to regrow stalks and orbs, in particular. The central mass had been penetrated, despite the thickness of the carapace. The Savant felt fortunate that the enemy didn’t have any bigger guns available, or the struggle might have gone less smoothly.

  As it was, the corridors were soon silent. The walls dripped with crimson protoplasm. Twitching bodies were stacked and brought to a large central area that seemed to have served as a feeding center for the humans. Benches and tables were pushed aside and the bodies were stacked up for the Savant to work with at her leisure. She ordered the Boldo-creature with an openly transmitted datablip to rest and feed on the human foodstuffs until she could get there.

  The Savant built a bubble of resin to keep warm for transport to the human nest. The vacuum would kill her delicate bio-system with any lengthy exposure. She attached the bubble onto the Kizzy-creature’s back and slipped inside. Looking like a giant hump-back, the Kizzy creature staggered with the weight, but held. The knees in particular, the Savant noted, were weak points. She had found many such flaws in their physiology. Who had designed these ungainly humans? She was annoyed with the level of modifications they needed to become effective.

  The trip from the lifepod to the base was harrowing, but successful. When she was finally deposited in the midst of a mass of
workable protoplasm, she felt better. Deciding to err on the side of caution, she immediately built a fresh combat creature from the best of the males. Then she had the Kizzy-creature base herself and impregnated her growth sacks with bio-seeds. She needed some standard types, such as arls to pilot ships, hests to work the equipment and shrades to scout every centimeter of the base. She grew no culus creatures to fly with the shrades. In this environment there was no room to fly, and no air on the moon’s surface to allow it outside. The shrades would have to hump about on their own.

  There had been, to the best of the Savant’s knowledge, very few transmissions from this base. Some incoming transmissions had been detected, but nothing yet that indicated a counterattack was imminent. She had a little time, she figured. The beachhead she’d managed to form here was very vulnerable right now. She still had the element of surprise and confusion, but that couldn’t last forever. One good bomb dropped upon this nest would extinguish all hope for the Imperium in the Kale system. She could not afford any mistakes.

  Accordingly, she ordered all her creatures to give her only the shortest, dampened transmissions. Their datablips were to be compressed and transmitted with minimal power and directionally focused. The aliens would only know that one of their bases had gone silent. They could not be allowed to suspect the truth.

  Overall, the Savant was very pleased with herself. She had managed to take the human nest, and now reigned supreme within. The pathetic aliens had put up little resistance. The only thought that kept her outlook from turning jubilant was the memory of the nife’s transmitted records from Garm. At first, the aliens had been easily defeated on every front. They had been taken utterly by surprise and seemed all but helpless. After those early victories, however, the aliens had pulled together and gathered their strength. They had turned out to be formidable fighters when organized and comprehending of the danger they faced.