The Goda War Read online

  The Goda War

  Deborah Chester

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1989 by Deborah Chester

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition February 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-587-2

  More from Deborah Chester

  Time Trap Series

  Time Trap

  Showdown

  Pieces of Eight

  Restoration

  Turncoat

  Termination

  Ruby Throne Series

  Reign of Shadows

  Shadow War

  Realm of Light

  Anthi Series

  The Children of Anthi

  Requiem for Anthi

  The Omcri Matrix

  The Goda War

  In memory of my pal Ace…

  Nullus amicus magis dilectus est.

  1

  The imperial flagship Aruba flamed across the twilightjade sky in a comet of coral and blue fire, a grim omen of defeat as it passed overhead in a low arc, following the sun spinning below the black horizon.

  Crouched on one knee atop a sandy knoll overlooking the beleaguered capital city of Impryn, Dire-lord Brock bowed his head at this final sighting of the ship he had been aboard only minutes before. His fingers dug into the loose earth and were pricked by sharp burrs. He welcomed the pain, so tiny beneath the greater agonies. Reality…had he truly managed to flick so far? Gingerly he pressed the center of his armor corselet. His atrox had never ached like this before. He must have strained it in flicking all the way down to the planet surface with the suprin in tow.

  He drew in a deep breath, trying to clear his nostrils of the stench of burned flesh and clothing, and winced, crossing both arms over his chest. Even the thumping of his heart, still racing from that desperate split-second escape as the bridge of the Aruba exploded into a fiery inferno, jolted his atrox mercilessly. He sank lower with a groan, fighting down fear of serious internal damage while he used the Disciplines to push back the pain. Had a Sedkethran ever flicked four hundred thousand kilomyls before? Of course the great, noncorporeal mystics could. But he was no mystic. He was only an outcast to his own people’s philosophy.

  A distant staccato of disruptor fire, alien to his ears, and the replying rattle of heavy strifers jerked him around. He stared down into the broad valley of the slow-winding Marupish River where the capital city of Impryn sprawled. Cannon set on wide dispersal flared green and scarlet in random flashes across the night sky, momentarily illuminating buildings and transender towers like a malfunctioning video freezing one frame after another in a disjointed pattern upon its screen. Ground jets screamed through the air, either intercepting Colonid drop bombs aimed at the city’s force shields, or exploding from collision with deadly sensor missiles. A drop bomb got through the defense grids, and blue electricity crackled for hundreds of myls across the central area of Impryn. City lights abruptly went dark except at the farthest perimeters. Brock straightened to his feet, forgetting the need to stay low as he watched in despair.

  Come back up, he pleaded silently, torn between his duty to tend the suprin and his desire to be down there in the beleaguered city, helping.

  Power flickered back on in erratic patterns, but the central area remained dark. The palace was now defenseless unless ground shock troops could hold it.

  But how could they? Beyond a few ancient fighting techniques used primarily for traditional ceremonies, elite Chaimu warriors concentrated their entire training upon space maneuvers. Primary imperial defense systems were designed to rebuff anyone foolish enough to attack a Held planet, with the Heldfleet then swooping in to finish off the attack. Chaimu considered it an insult to fight upon the ground. They thought only of space and of parsectal tactics. Yet here were the Colonids—barbaric castoffs of the old-humans. They had come blasting through every defense system with suicidal boldness and were already installed upon Darjahl Imperial, landing all sorts of armored land crawlers that were battering steady inroads through outmoded and long-unused city defense points.

  Brock cast a look up at the dark sky. The stars were blanked from sight by thick clouds. The air was close and heavy from the threat of a storm. The stench of strifer discharge and nust gas rolled up from the valley, intensified by the humidity and warmth of the night. How was the Heldfleet doing up there beyond the atmosphere? Were they holding? Or had Esmir Eondal lost heart at the destruction of the suprin’s own ship and ordered surrender? Did they think the suprin dead?

  Reaching for his communicator, Brock found only a melted lump fused to the flank of his corselet. His charge armor had saved his life, but only just. He touched the split running between his left shoulder and chest. His left arm was burned badly, making movement difficult. But his injury was nothing in comparison to the suprin’s. In his mind’s eye Brock stood again on the bridge of the flagship Aruba, his body fired by the rush of adrenaline, every trained muscle poised to strike, every sense straining to concentrate over the distractions of orders in Battlespeak lashing back and forth, the screaming of the injured, the fear, anger, and desperation, and most of all the disbelief that this could be happening to Heldfleet’s finest as ship after ship fell from formation, dragging half-severed pylons crackling with escaping radiation like birds trying piteously to fly with broken wings or with side bulkheads gaping open like burst fruit spilling out tiny crewmen bodies into the cold grave of space. Brock had been standing directly behind navigations, keeping one eye constantly upon the suprin, the other upon the tactical screens, his mind filtering all the incoming reports from various parts of the ship just as the modore was doing at his station beside the suprin, who was speaking into a separate communications link to the sub-esmirs on the upper bridge. They, in turn, were linked to Esmir Eondal’s heavy cruiser on the port side.

  When in the forward line the battlecruiser Ramsa had blown, her bridge shattering and her port engines exploding so that she careened into the next ship, there had been no choice but for the Aruba to move from her protected position to help plug up the gap.

  Modore Istan paused in the midst of a rapid-fire chain of orders to the weapons stations and glanced at the suprin. “The Superior Life must clear the bridge. The center of the ship—”

  “Fore shields, brace!” shouted someone. “R-level blast direct on in three seconds.”

  Brock whirled from his place, already moving toward the suprin. The Aruba’s only chance of survival from an R-level blast was to maneuver enough to deflect the worst of it off her flank shields. But in this formation the ships were too tightly bunched to move with sufficient independence. None could sustain such a blast, not on fore shields.

  Brock could move faster than any creature alive. He could move faster than time itself. But there were only three seconds, and it took three seconds to reach the suprin…

  Now, standing there upon the crest of the hill, Brock clenched his fists, feeling again the concussion of the blast that tumbled bodies into exploding instrumentation, feeling again the sharp ache as space sucked the air from his lungs, feeling the scorch of fire and his own sick despair as he was knocked back, the suprin exposed on top of him to take the brunt as the upp
er bridge collapsed onto the lower. A dire-lord was supposed to die for his suprin, not the other way around. He had flicked too late, too late, too late!

  Brock coughed, and lifted a hand to rub his face as though by doing so he could erase the guilt. He had been afraid to flick so far, and that fear might have cost the suprin his life. Brock had learned how to live with his own people’s rejection in order to serve the suprin. But how would he live with his failure to save the suprin whom he had sacrificed everything for?

  The phut-phut of Colonid weaponry started up again, sounding much closer. He would have to alter position soon, but if he moved much farther from the city’s edge he was likely to run into a nest of Colonid outbases. He bared his teeth, running a series of decisions through his mind. This was no safe place. If he could get the suprin to the underground bunkers networked beneath Impryn…

  Another ship entered Daijahl Imperial’s atmosphere, its configuration hidden in a trail of crimson and black. It roared overhead, too close, too close! There was a highpitched scream like that from a dying animal, and then a mighty explosion rocked the world, filling the night sky with a ball of flame, and flinging Brock flat to the ground. He lay there stunned with his face buried in the coarse sand, aching with shame. It was the end of Held, the enormous Chaimu empire that had stretched across the galaxy. How could it be happening?

  “Dire-lord.”

  That hoarse whisper reached through the ringing in Brock’s ears. He shook himself, stiffening his arms to support him as he levered up.

  “Suprin?” he answered, coughing as he reinforced the Disciplines holding down the pain of his wounds. He scrambled across the sand to where the suprin lay propped up within the slash of a shallow gully and reached out his hand for the suprin’s jaw to put him back in a light trance.

  The suprin’s seared, bloody fingers caught his and held them. “No,” he whispered, his agony seeping across Brock’s empathy threshold. “The ship. My fleet. What…

  “The Aruba has been destroyed,” said Brock, straining to draw more of the suprin’s pain into himself. “I have no word concerning the rest of the battle.”

  “Call them!”

  Brock hesitated a moment, reluctant to answer. “It is not possible. My communicator is destroyed.”

  The suprin’s blackened face was increasingly visible as, to the north, a vast ball of flame from the crash spread toward the sky. A jut of sharply ridged nose and jaw stood out against the leaping shadows. Red gleamed faintly as the suprin’s eyes moved, searching for Brock’s face.

  “Use your mind, dire-lord. Use whatever you have to contact the esmir!” A spasm of coughing wracked him.

  Brock tightened his clasp, drawing the pain into himself as he willed the suprin to live. The life force seemed to be fading with every ragged breath, and yet the suprin fought. His fingers crooked around Brock’s burned arm, causing Brock to wince sharply.

  “They must know, Dire-lord. Tell them—” Another spasm shook the suprin.

  Brock held onto him desperately, seeking to keep him alive by sheer willpower. How he longed now for one of his own kind, a Sedkethran healer who, with a touch, could erase the suprin’s agony. Brock’s mind leapt out, seeking one who might be in the city. But he encountered no spark of an answer. Sedkethrans rarely visited Daijahl Imperial; they never stayed. His own mental loneliness, so horrible an exile at first, so commonplace to him now, echoed around him.

  As for obeying the suprin’s order, it was impossible. The suprin was growing so weak, Brock did not dare release contact with him, and to touch another mind such as Esmir Eondal’s would be to flood it with the suprin’s pain. He could not do such a thing to a non-Sedkethran, certainly not in the heat of a battle.

  “Nairin…” whispered the suprin, his voice a ghastly rattle in his throat. “My son…”

  Brock bowed his head, grieving for the man he had served so many years with love and respect. For Suprin Utdi he had defied his own heritage, his own race, and the Elder Council of Felca. He had endured a terrible exile in order to serve Utdi the Great. A Sedkethran was not permitted to love, and yet Brock had loved…like a son loves his father, like a servant loves his kind master. He had been both son and slave to Utdi. He had been more. He had been Utdi’s shield, more relied upon than any technological marvel of protection from assassination. And that had created its own bond. Yet, in the end, at the most crucial moment he had failed the suprin. The swirled scar Brock wore on his right cheek, marking his position as bodyguard to the Held Suprin, seemed to burn anew through his flesh.

  What else could he do? He was helpless. The suprin was dying, slipping away with each harsh breath. The injuries were too severe for Brock’s minor empathic abilities to salvage. He could do nothing more. He wasn’t a healer. He had spurned that training, revered most upon Felca, in favor of the arts of war. He had learned to kill rather than to save lives. Without the proper training, he might easily die in trying to do more.

  Yet, what good was a dire-lord without a suprin to protect?

  Brock concentrated, feeling the slight pain in his atrox as he started to drift, and ignored it as he lowered his own thresholds to merge with the suprin. There was the sharp flinch from feeling the suprin’s terrible wounds, and Brock had to battle his own instincts of survival in order not to draw back. He went deeper into the pain and began to shake not only from those raw, bloody burns but also from the inner assaults of the suprin’s system. He felt the twisting influence of skial, the metered drug the suprin took to elude age. Fear seized him. No Sedkethran permitted any foreign substance into his system, especially pleasure drugs, which could render his natural abilities erratic and uncontrollable. Brock did not know the techniques of protecting himself. But it was too late to draw back now. There was a shudder in his chest as though his damaged atrox could not handle the demands of healing another as well as himself.

  Suddenly everything within him seemed to be draining away. Brock snapped contact, his hands thrusting him physically away from the suprin’s tortured body. Brock fell to the ground, still convulsed with the suprin’s pain. For a moment he knew nothing but agony flooding him in a red wash of intensity. Then his mind seemed to separate from his body, and he was floating, his thoughts kicking themselves into minute fragments without cohesion.

  The skial! What was it doing to him? The link! How could he break it? He was still too close!

  He flicked rapidly without pattern or purpose, unable to stop himself, terrified in some distant corner of consciousness that he would rematerialize in a solid object. Time whirled about him, out of control. He felt his atrox swelling, bursting, and he seemed to be flung completely off the planet before he was snapped back like a toy on a string.

  Brock opened his eyes, coming back to an awareness of reality. He was struck by how hot it had become, as though he stood in the midst of an inferno. There was a loud roaring all around him. His eyes were dazzled, unable to register anything save an intense red.

  Fire! The fire from the crash. It must have spread to this knoll during the time he had been unconscious.

  He blinked, lifting an arm to shield his face from the intense heat. He was dazed, unable to get his bearings. Then urgency grabbed him. He must get out!

  With a cry he rolled, going over and over, and then scrambled back across sand and burrweeds to where the suprin lay slumped in the gully. The flames, fed by dry sandgrass and the low-growing scrub trees dotting the hills surrounding the city, grew higher and higher around him. Grimacing against the heat that now seemed to be peeling the flesh from his face, Brock gathered the suprin’s body in his arms and stood up. In doing so, he felt again a sharp burst within his atrox, and he went cold all over inside.

  “Please!” he whispered, unable to draw a breath. “Once more.” And he flicked just as the flames reached out hungrily for their prey.

  2

  Tiny rivulets of consciousness seeped slowly through him. He became aware of sound far away, big booming muffled noises th
at shook the earth beneath him. He became aware of being cold, blissfully cold, and that coldness soothed him for it meant that he had escaped the fire.

  Brock opened his eyes. He was lying on his stomach in the dark. A pebble under his right cheekbone was cutting into his flesh. He frowned and tried to move his head. It seemed to weigh five times more than usual. He dislodged the pebble, then rested for a while before he rolled over onto his right side. Each movement exhausted him. He could not remember being this weak since childhood on Felca when the magstrusi had starved him into learning the Disciplines.

  Sitting up seemed impossible. He finally managed it by degrees, levering himself up onto his elbow, then gradually stiffening his arm until at last he was up, quivering with fatigue, and feeling as though a giant pair of hands had twisted him in half. At least it was cold, wonderfully cold. He reveled in the low temperature, his senses bathing in the cool damp air. He was very stiff. He must have been here a long time.

  How long?

  Memories came swarming back. The fire! The suprin!

  Brock jerked to his feet, only to stagger, gasping and doubling over with his fists pressed to his chest. He sank down to his knees, helpless for a long while.

  His atrox, he remembered dimly, trying to let himself float away from the pain. He had damaged it, possibly ruptured it in that last attempt to flick the suprin to the safety of the underground bunkers. Obviously he had made it, but where was the suprin?

  As the agony faded to a bearable degree, he slowly straightened and climbed back to his feet. Putting an unsteady hand to his brow, he began to search mentally for the suprin. He found a feeble spark of response a short distance away.

  It took an eternity to walk there in the darkness. Each step required all his strength and concentration. The booming, which had ceased for a while, resumed. It was louder, closer. The walls and floor shook, making him stumble. A little splatter of dust rained down upon his shoulder. He paused in the darkness, uncertain of his bearings, blind except for his higher senses.