Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (23 page)

The proximity alert squawked, bringing me back from my thoughts, just as Evelyn studied the heads-up readouts and announced, “Three sub-atmospheric craft approaching fast.”

I nodded calmly.

“As expected. Stay on course.”

My eyes moved to the rear display, where three small dots had grown very quickly into three formidable-looking aircraft, wings swept back and guns evident. I toggled a switch on the console.

“Hello,” I said, with as much friendliness as I could muster.

“Intruder vessel,” came back the terse reply, “state your business on Candis.”

“I assume Buchner is still in charge around here,” I said. “If so, we would like to see him.”

A short pause, then one of the aircraft overtook us, its tail showing up in our forward display.

“Maintain current course. Do not alter heading or speed. Follow me into the landing bay.”

“Understood,” I said, then switched off the microphone.

“Jealous of their security here, aren’t they?” Evelyn said, her eyes fixed on the multiple guns currently trained on us from in front and behind.

“With reason.”

“You seem to be taking it in stride.”

“It is expected. And they are taking us where I want to go.”

Shrugging, she continued to steer us along behind the lead escort craft.

We dropped altitude steadily, until we descended through a final bank of clouds and emerged over a mountainous region covered in snow and ice. Banking about, we dropped to just a few hundred feet over the flattest portion of the landscape in view, and cruised along at high speed until we suddenly roared out over the edge of a cliff. The ground dropped away beneath us in a dizzying transition, and the lead escort arced around in a broad curve, leading us back the way we had just come. Ahead of us, the cliff face reared up like a titan’s hand. The escort dropped still lower, below the level of the cliff, and Evelyn glanced at me, frowning. I gestured in an offhanded “steady as she goes” sort of way, and she sighed and followed the other craft down.

As we neared the cliff face, a broad, rectangular panel in its surface slid slowly aside, revealing a dark chamber within. Lights flared on inside, and the first escort darted through the opening.

“Of course,” Evelyn sighed, slowing our velocity and aiming for the landing bay. “I knew that was coming.”

We passed inside the big facility, following the flashing landing lights until we came to a halt and settled to rest near a doorway in the interior wall. Evelyn shut down the engines and we climbed out of our seats, making our way through the ship and to the hatch.

Four armed guards, clad all in dark gray with red trim, waited for us outside. I did not recognize them. General thugs—hired help—I decided upon a quick glance. But their uniforms—questionable in taste but clearly expensive—bespoke money backing them up, as one would expect. They had formidable-looking guns clutched in their beefy paws, and decidedly unfriendly looks on their faces. One of them gestured through the doorway, and we proceeded along with them through the opening and into the mountainside.

The corridor through which we marched was narrow and dark, with very few doors leading off of it. The walls were a dull, bland gray color, much like the personalities of our guards and quite similar to the landscape outside—cold, dim, and drab. It was all meant to lull us off our guard, though. I did not doubt that dozens of spy-eyes and analyzers were studying us every step of the way. The average visitor would possess few secrets after taking a walk down this hallway.

We rounded a corner and came abruptly to a dead end. The guards stood motionless, waiting for something. After a moment the wall in front of us slid soundlessly aside, bright light pouring out from the room beyond. We stepped through into a space of color and light and beauty—a change as sudden as if I had opened a portal into a pocket cosmos.

The panel slid closed behind us, leaving us standing within the large office I remembered from my previous visit. The wall to our left appeared to be a giant aquarium, complete with dozens of colorful, exotic fish flickering here and there, though I could not immediately tell if the marine life was real or a holo simulation. The wall to our right shifted colors and textures repeatedly, every few seconds, changing from dark stone to red brick to brown earth: the ultimate touch for the indecisive businessman decorating his office. At the near end of this wall stood an ancient grandfather clock, its pendulum ticking softly and rhythmically. The floor, which had first seemed to be a bright pink shag carpet, had morphed into sand, and I even found my boots sinking slightly beneath the surface as gentle waves washed over them. The ceiling above shimmered with the view of a sky seen through dense trees at twilight, as from a recording taken on some planet far more hospitable and attractive than this one. Individually, each of these design elements represented a decorating faux pas; taken together they achieved some sort of apotheosis of utterly ridiculous bad taste, a veritable morass of ugly.

At the far end of the room, as out of place as anything else, sat a large, wooden desk, filling most of the space. It seemed a thousand years old or more, and was covered with all sorts of odd knickknacks, from a sailing ship in a bottle to a small teddy bear.

Behind that desk sat the single most disconcerting element of all. He was an old, wrinkled man, ruddy of skin and sparse of hair—though what there was of it was an almost colorless gray—clad in an immaculate, dark blue suit. I noticed him amid all the distractions when he coughed a wheezy, hacking cough and made some vague motion toward one of the goons.

I knew him. Ridiculous as he was, I remembered him well, and I still felt the power he commanded.

Buchner.

The guard led us up to the desk and then stepped back. We waited. I was in no particular hurry, and felt no desire to push things unless absolutely necessary.

Buchner studied a display on his desk for a long moment, a frown cutting its way through the lines, before he finally looked up at us. His face smoothed to a placid, welcoming smile, but his eyes lost none of their intensity.

“Well, well,” he said. “I had nearly decided you must be Markos the Liberator. But no, too young, too young. You have to be the son, yes? I do see a strong resemblance.”

His voice was raw, a croaking sound, oddly accented, and nearly drowned out in the whoosh of the wave effect at our feet.

“No, you were right the first time,” I said.

His eyes widened and he leaned forward, staring at me, seemingly caught between a dismissive laugh and a gasp of awe, unsure of which way to go.

“But—how?”

“There are ways,” I said. “Given sufficient wealth or power, there are always ways. You know this.”

Blinking, he nodded once, clearly mystified. “To some degree, perhaps,” he muttered under his breath. “But
this
…”

I shrugged.

His smile returned then, broadening into a predatory, leering grin.

“Wealth… Power… These are things I possess, too,” he said. “Perhaps you will tell me of these ways you mentioned.”

“Perhaps,” I replied, nodding. I gestured at the hulking figures around us. “Still dressing your men like bellhops, I see.”

“Yes, it is you,” he said with a laugh, sitting back. “Well. So good to see you again.”

His eyes shifted momentarily to Evelyn, just long enough to get a sense of her, and to give both of us the creeps.

“You I do not know,” he said. “Your face does not turn up, no, on any of my databases. Not on the networks, either. Which,” he said, shrugging, “could be a very good thing. Or else a very bad thing. So far, I do not know which.”

He turned his attention back to me.

“I do hope you know with whom you are consorting, lad, because she could easily be Terran Alliance Intelligence—”

“Navy, actually,” Evelyn announced.

To Buchner’s credit, he only slightly recoiled at those words, though shocked expressions flashed across the faces of his thugs in the office. I can only imagine my own face revealed a similar look. I thought she had understood that we were among very independent, anti-authoritarian people, with little love for the weak, disorganized Outer Worlds governments, much less the powerful and hated Terran Alliance. Perhaps I had not made this clear enough. Or perhaps she simply did not care. Either way, the situation had just become exponentially more complicated.

Two of the goons instinctively stepped forward, protective of their boss. The others went for their weapons.

“Twelve years of service on Alliance scows,” she was saying amid the tumult of thugs brandishing their various implements of violence, “was more than enough to make me look for… other ways of making a living.”

Buchner raised a hand, and the movement around him ceased instantly. He leaned forward, squinting at her more closely.

“So, you are saying, then, that you were once a naval officer for the Alliance… but are no longer in their service?”

Evelyn nodded.

“And we should be believing this why?”

“Because why else would I be here, alone—or, rather, in the company of the Liberator of the Outer Worlds, of all people? Why would I even admit my old allegiance if I hadn’t already discarded it?”

“Because you know we would have found out sooner, rather than later, eh? And you wish to circumvent, yes, to get around this revelation when it appears.”

He grinned his leering grin.

“I know your mind, I think.”

“If the Terran Alliance were interested in you, or your operation, or in Candis in general, believe me, you wouldn’t be looking at one disgruntled former Navy officer,” she replied. “You would be facing an armada of battleships. Point of fact, you wouldn’t even be here now. Just a big, smoking crater.”

“You think so much of your former employers, then?”

“I respect their power, their abilities, even if I don’t care for their internal politics and their arrogant attitudes anymore.”

Buchner still looked skeptical, but his side of the conversation had already moved subtly from accusing her of lying to accepting, to some degree, that she was no longer with the Navy. For my part, I was fascinated by her performance, wondering how much—if any—of it were true, and curious as to just what she would say next.

It turned out to be, “Now, you have business with my new employer here, so I will just step aside and let you gentlemen carry on.”

Buchner pursed his lips, considered for a brief moment, then turned to me. Within the space of a few seconds, he seemed to have forgotten Evelyn entirely. That was fine with me.

“So,” he said as one of his underlings silently offered us drinks, “what business does the great Liberator have with me and my humble organization today, then?”

I accepted a glass of what appeared to be scotch with a polite nod, and said, “The stones. The ones we spoke about some time ago.”

Buchner frowned, stroked his chin, picked up a display pad from his desktop and made a fuss of scanning through the listings, set it down again, and harrumphed, “I am not certain of which of my holdings you speak, Markos. We have discussed different items on different occasions, of course.”

He smiled suddenly.

“Why, recall the diamond you acquired from me a few years ago. For a lady on… Majondra, I believe, yes? Beautiful, beautiful.”

He glanced at Evelyn.

“Or perhaps we should not be so quick to recall that incident, maybe, eh?”

I ignored his banter and replied, “You know the stones I mean. Small. Reddish. Virtually worthless.”