The Lost King (60 page)

The Corasians,
therefore, have never developed a battle strategy. Hordes rarely have
need for one. They conquer by sheer force of numbers, by overrunning
and beating down any opposition, by sending wave after wave of the
collective body in to the attack until the enemy gives way out of
sheer exhaustion. Sagan had planned his own strategy to react to this
type of mindless assault. It should work. As far as Sagan could see,
the overall design of the enemy ship itself hadn't changed in
seventeen years and the flood of reports he received from his
analysts aboard
Phoenix
indicated few modifications made to
the vessel. Yet the Warlord had the feeling—call it the
instinct of the warrior—that something was about to go wrong.

The enemy had waited
seventeen years before attacking . . . for what?

For that.

Sagan's visual sighting
and the instrument sightings aboard
Phoenix
occurred almost
simultaneously. He understood what was happening in an instant; the
reports of his analysts merely confirmed his fears.

The Corasians weren't
streaming out of the mothership in erratic mobs. They were flying out
in disciplined order in groups, and in the center of each group of
small black dots, which were the fighters, was a large black blob,
which was, according to the computers on board
Phoenix
, a
gigantic computer—a brain. The collective body had split and
become innumerable collective bodies, and apparently each body had
its own brain. Each body would be able to think for itself and act
accordingly. Instead of commanding "Kill," the brain could
command "Kill this way," or "Kill that way,"
which is, in warfare, the definition of strategy.

This is what they had
been working on for years. It had taken a creative mind to design
it—a mind the Corasians didn't possess, a mind like the one
that belonged to a former university professor, Peter Robes.

The Warlord placed his
palm on a control pad from which protruded five needles in a circular
pattern. The needles inserted into the flesh in exactly the same
manner as those of the bloodsword and with almost the same effect.
Sagan could operate this plane by his brain's impulses. He drove the
needles into his palm.

"By God, I'll live
through this," Derek Sagan vowed, watching the Corasians spread
out in organized groups, taking up formations, "just to have the
satisfaction, Peter Robes, of making you wish I hadn't!"

Sagan felt the plane
become another part of his physical body, another appendage like his
hand or his foot. Unlike the bloodsword, the spaceplane had its own
energy source and didn't completely sap the body's. Of course, it
took a toll, just as performing any strenuous exertion takes a mental
and a physical toll. Thus the need for discipline.

Having sworn his oath,
the Warlord prayed to God to grant him the strength and the wisdom to
live to fulfill it.

Sagan wasn't
disappointed. The faith of the priest's son was rewarded. He had an
idea.

"Computer,"
the Warlord said, his gaze fixed on the brains of the enemy. "Analyze
and report on the following ..."

Meanwhile war arose,
and fields were fought in Heaven . . .

John Milton,
Paradise
Lost

One of the galaxy's
most skilled pilots, a pilot whose exploits even then were legend,
had just received a sharp reprimand from her squadron leader. Maigrey
bit her lip and mumbled something into her commlink about a computer
malfunction.

"Oh, shut up,"
she said crossly to the computer, which was indignantly denying such
an accusation.

Who would have guessed
the controls on the Scimitar would be so blasted sensitive? She had
meant to go up, but not quite that far up—a move that had
nearly caused her to crash into the belly of
Phoenix
. Her
skill had saved her, but only barely. Maigrey's face beneath her
helmet flushed hotly and she thanked God that Sagan hadn't been
around to witness that little maneuver. At least now she knew better.

Once she was accustomed
to flying it, she discovered that the short-range Scimitar handled
quite well and she paid the Warlord a mental compliment that was not
without a certain amount of pain. They had spent many pleasant hours,
years ago, designing their own ideal spaceplanes. She recognized many
of Sagan's old ideas and one or two of her own in this model.

That brought a sigh,
and she quickly shifted her mind back from a shattered past to a
dismal present. Maigrey glanced over at Dion's plane—Blue Four.
He was flying perfectly, yet she had the distinct impression
something was wrong with him. This impression didn't come from any
power of the Blood Royal, it was simply there, a part of her. She
wondered if she was beginning to experience maternal feelings.

"Blue Six."
The squadron leader. "You're out of formation! Is something
wrong?"

"No, sir, Squadron
Leader. Sorry, sir. Just keyed up for action, sir."

"Stuck back in the
rear, I doubt if we'll see much of that! Stay alert, Six."

Squadron Leader did not
sound at all happy. Maigrey couldn't blame him. She was receiving
reports that the enemy was in visual range, but you couldn't prove it
by her. Babysitting. Glancing back at Dion's ship, Maigrey sighed
again. She was a Guardian, after all. She had pledged her life to her
king. She wished she could see what was going on!

Maigrey was about to
instruct her computer to provide a visual of the enemy formation,
realized she didn't need to. She saw the enemy, suddenly and clearly,
through Sagan's eyes. She saw and she understood, just as did the
Warlord, the change in Corasian tactics. His idea came to her
clearly—their gravest danger could be their only hope. But it
had to be proven, it had to be risked. Of course, he was going to
attempt it alone. She recalled lines of the poet, John Milton.

Wherefore do I
assume

These royalties, . .
.

Refusing to accept
as great a share

Of hazard as of
honour. . . .

Proud as Lucifer, so
the saying went. Maigrey looked again at Dion's plane, her soul
writhing in an agony of indecision. There was something wrong, she
knew it. The boy was too quiet, his computer—so far—had
done all the talking. Maigrey was tempted to ask him to connect with
the bloodsword. They could communicate that way, their thoughts
revealed to each other. But she swallowed the words before they
reached her lips. She didn't dare. That would reveal herself to
everyone, and Sagan was quite capable of locking a tractor beam on
her and having her dragged back to the ship.

I'm a Guardian. I
should stay here and keep an eye on him, she thought. But then again,
defending your king didn't necessarily mean tripping along at his
heels, being prepared to fling your body in front of his. Sometimes
it means being in the vanguard of his army. . . .

As Squadron Leader
said, Dion certainly wasn't going to be in any danger back here. And
he had the rest of the squadron to watch out for him, to babysit.

"Six! Where the
devil do you think you're going? Get back in formation. That's an
order. Six! Blue Six! I'm bringing you up on charges, Six! This is
cowardice! Desertion in the face of the enemy!"

"You want your
pound of flesh, Squadron Leader," Maigrey murmured, "you'll
have to stand in line!"

Dion, sitting in his
shining toy, had just realized what it meant to be a king—or
perhaps "puppet king" would be a better choice of words. He
was to be shut up in a prison—a prison that was wonderful and
filled with marvels—and he was to be given everything he could
ever want. He was to be
given
it. And he would take it and be
happy or his prison would become a tomb, his jailer his executioner.

"Maigrey tried to
tell me. I wouldn't listen, I wouldn't believe. I didn't want to
believe! I wanted to think that he was truly doing for me what he
claimed. I wanted to think he respected me. And this-—this is
what I get!"

"I do not
understand your disparaging tone, sir," the computer said. "This
spaceplane is equipped with the very latest in technology, much of it
added within the last few days, as I was myself, and all designed to
keep you safe and sound, sir. I might venture to state, sir, that you
are far better protected here than you were in your mother's womb."

Dion began to laugh.
"Having been born in a palace in the midst of a revolution, I'll
grant you that one, computer. Hey, what's happening? Where's that guy
going? Squadron Leader, Six is—"

"I will handle all
communications between yourself and Squadron Leader, sir," the
computer said, cutting Dion off in mid-report. "As for Six, pay
no attention to it. The pilot appears to have gone berserk."

Dion tried turning the
plane—a small experiment.

"I'm afraid I
cannot allow you to make that maneuver, sir. That would be leaving
formation, and we do not want to leave formation, do we, sir?"

Platus had been an
acknowledged genius with computers. He'd passed much of his ability
on to Dion. The young man sat back in the pilot's chair and pondered,
staring grimly at the computer.

So then. Dion made up
his mind. It was to be murder.

Sagan flew through
"dark destruction." He did not travel, as Maigrey had
assumed he would, alone, but took two of his men with him, sending
another back to
Phoenix
with an urgent message for Admiral
Aks—a message the Warlord wanted delivered in person, a message
he didn't want intercepted by the enemy. The Warlord's target was one
of the brains of the Corasian fleet. Analysis had confirmed what
Sagan had surmised—knock out the brain and there was every
possibility that the body would flop about aimlessly. Of course, they
would still be faced with a horde, but the Warlord would far rather
fight a mindless horde than an organized and disciplined army.

Unfortunately, reaching
the brain would be like trying to reach the queen of a colony of fire
ants. Sagan could count on getting stung, perhaps to death.

But the Warlord was not
suicidal. Nor did he make the decision to attempt this himself out of
misplaced heroics. Because of his unique mind-controlled spaceplane,
he had the best chance to succeed. If this mission proved successful,
he could then afford to change his strategy, perhaps send in the
forces he was holding in reserve, their only goal to knock out the
brains. But Sagan first had to determine if, as he had said once to
Maigrey, "the sport was worth the candle."

Corasian fighters are
small and compact. They do not need to accommodate the body of a
pilot, because the plane is—literally—the pilot's body.
Corasians have no survival instinct. When told to kill, they latch on
to an enemy and hang on with mindless ferocity, attacking mercilessly
until either the enemy dies or they do. Even when guided by the
brains, the Corasians were slow to react and slow to maneuver.
Sudden, unlooked-for moves rattled them completely. A pilot fighting
the Corasians has the advantage of superior reaction time and
creative mind but, over the long duration of a battle, these grow
weak when fatigue and despair set in, when you seem to be battling
the leaves of the trees of a never-ending forest.

Sagan rarely allowed
himself to give way to fatigue and never to despair. His plane could
react in the instant of a thought. Flying with him were two of the
finest pilots in the galaxy. Yes, they had a chance. As a gambler, he
wouldn't have laid any money on it, but they had a chance.

The Warlord waited
until he saw one of the heavily armored, lumbering brains take up a
fixed position in the center of the battle zone.

"There's the
target," he instructed his wingmen. "We'll go down on top
of it."

The Warlord's
spearheaded plane dropped from the blackness. The wingmen were
slower, having been caught off guard by his sudden descent.

"Close formation,"
Sagan snapped, and the wingmen pulled in tighter, their planes
rocketing toward what continued to look like a small black patch cut
out of starry space.

They swooped into the
front lines, into the swirling melee of wheeling planes and
crisscrossing tracer fire and exploding rockets. Three Corasian
fighters, attracted by the technology of the Warlord's unusual
spaceplane, attempted to entangle Sagan in what was known as a
"web"—three interlocking tractor beams capable of
paralyzing a small fighter, allowing the Corasians to drag it and its
helpless pilot back to the mothership. Knowing what fate awaited him
there, a pilot caught in a web would invariably either self-destruct
or request his comrades to shoot him.

The Corasian spiders
trying to catch this particular fly discovered too late they had made
a mistake. Sagan vaporized them. The two wingmen soared behind their
leader through three puffs of smoke and flame. The wingmen had not
even fired.

Ignoring the battle,
the Warlord held steadfastly to his goal and soon left the main
assault behind. He was well past the front line of the fighting, deep
among the enemy ranks. And as he suspected, the brain was capable of
analyzing his attack. It had determined him to be a threat. A ring of
fighters protectively encircling the brain leapt to the attack.

Sagan spared a glance
at his computer. It was transmitting vast quantities of data on the
enemy brains including three-dimensional renderings of the structure
and the interior. The brain was shaped like a huge and ugly bell and
contained banks of computers operated by Corasians in their robot
bodies. Its central power source was located right in the center.
There was little chance of hitting it, therefore, from the round top
or the curved sides of the energy-shielded bell.