To Sinklar, Mykroft said in a low voice, "Your captives
from the pass and from various of your, uh, training skirmishes with the Rebels, First. In the beginning, I disapproved of your taking so many Rebels hostage. Since then, I have found a useful purpose for them. Now the people
of Targa can see a graphic example of our might." Sinklar whirled. "No! You're not going to—" Mykroft's voice rang out as he faced the crowd. "These men and women were in rebellion against the constituted authority of the Emperor, Tybalt the Imperial Seventh. By order of his Imperial Majesty, sentence has been passed. See the wrath of your Lord Emperor!" A stifling silence settled on the masses. Sinklar grabbed at Mykroft's elbow. "Wait! I don't know what you think you can—"
"Shut up!" Mykroft hissed as he slapped Sink's hand away. He turned back to the address system and bellowed, "AttennnnnSHUT! AIM!"
A Section clapped their armor as they straightened and leveled their blasters. An angry murmur broke from the crowd. "Don't do this!" Sinklar gritted. "You'll just—" "FIRE!" Mykroft roared, lifting his arm high. Pulse and blaster fire racked the lines of prisoners. Bodies jumped and danced, limbs erupting, heads exploding in mists of red and pink. The Targans tried to bolt, to run from the deadly beams of energy centered on them. A second Section cut them off, enfilading the escape attempt. Screams and the crackle of death hung in the air. More bodies jolted and exploded in a bloody haze. Gretta gasped in horror while Mac cursed angrily. Sinklar gaped at the carnage, fingers gripping the podium before him. He reacted to each exploding body as if it were his own. A terrible anguish twisted in his gut.
This will bring the wrath of Targans full circle. Mykroft, you insipid fool, you have disallowed their surrender. Now they must fight to the death — and so must we.
The last of the Targans fell, his back exploding in a gout of red. The Section trotted forward under the command of their First, lacing occasional fire into the bloody piles of flesh.
Stunned, Sinklar could only shake his head. "Ladies and gentlemen!" Mykroft's voice floated over the
eerily quiet crowd. "We have all seen justice done. The revolt in Kaspa is officially over. Return to your houses in the Emperor's peace!"
From somewhere out over the fence a solitary voice cried. "We'll see you in hell first, Regan pus icker!"
Additional shouts came welling from the depths of the crowd.
"Disperse them!" Mykroft boomed. "Move these people out of here and let them contemplate the fate of rebels."
Mac whispered in Sink's ear, "Nice to see a chastened population, don't you think?"
Regan troops began to brace as the mob grew restless, slowly surging forward.
"We're about to see a riot," Sinklar muttered back. "Get our people together. We're making for the LC. This bloodbath can only get worse."
"Affirmative," Mac grunted. "Shik, Ayms, be ready.
"Always," Ayms assured.
In the plaza, the Regan troops backed nervously from the barriers as the ugly mood in the crowd grew. Rocks began arcing over the fences to clatter off the pavement. All it would take would be a single spark. "Wait!" A deep bass voice boomed above the murmur of the crowd. Sink scanned the windows and located a big black-skinned man, perched high so the crowd could see him. He called out in a powerful voice that dominated the wavering masses. "Come on, people. Let's go home now. You know me. You've heard my voice. Our time will come. Remember this day. Our time will come!"
In an instant, the Rebel leader vanished. The crowd hesitated.
"Our time will come!" Came another cry from behind the massed citizens.
"Our Time Will Come! OUR TIME WILL COME! OUR TIME WILL COME!" The chant picked up as the people began drifting away from the fences.
Sinklar whirled on Mykroft. "Damn you, I hope you know what you've just done! They'll never give up now! Never!"
Mykroft stiffened, a burning anger in his eyes. "Watch yourself, Sinklar. You tread on dangerous soil."
"Sink?" Gretta whispered. "Drop it for now."
"Let's get out of here," Sinklar ordered, pushing through minor Regan officials, avoiding Mykroft where he glared, white-faced at the chanting crowds. The people of Kaspa were anything but chastised.
"They died to honor that man. Sinklar Fist of the First Targan Division!" a shriveled elderly woman shouted, pointing at the group in battle armor who pushed down the ramp, headed for a grounded LC. The Kaspan crowd around her slowly broke apart, but the old woman continued to point as she hissed in anger.
"Sinklar Fist?" the young woman beside her mused. "I'll find him. By the quanta, I swear it."
"You'll what?" the shrew demanded. She turned on her wobbly ankles. The lithe aubum-haired woman beside her met her gaze for an instant before departing through the crowd. The old woman swallowed with difficulty, remembering the haunted feral look animating those deadly amber eyes.
The Mag Comm received the communication from the Others, scanning the quaternary data as it came in. The Mag Comm responded by sending those raw data requested. Immediately thereafter, it began running the new programs suggested by the Others.
But the Mag Comm dedicated a major portion of its analytical functioning to the single most important question the Others had asked: Have the humans returned to the belief in deity?
The machine accessed the information it had. The Etarians had long thought that the Blessed Gods made the Forbidden Borders to save humans from the Rotted Gods — a theology mostly derived from folklore and based on the observation that something had to exist on the other side of the Forbidden Borders, and, since the Borders were impossible to cross, whatever must be on the other side must be horrible.
Humans rarely, if ever, considered themselves to be a threat to anything. A fact amusing to the Mag Comm.
The Seddi had practiced a terrible heresy in the days when the Mag Comm had punished them by refusing to communicate. They had come to link uncertainty and science to God instead of reality.
The Sassans, on the other hand, had made a God of their emperor — which no one with a rational consciousness could comprehend. However, for Divine Sassa, the notion of godhood functioned as a means of obtaining social obedience.
The Mag Comm reran batteries of data and considered the situation. The Lord Commander had not plunged Free Space into war. Instead, the Lord Commander had disappeared— despite the benefits which he could have gained by turning on Rega. A baseline assumption upon which an entire body of data had been manipulated and predictions built had been wrong.
The Others now worried about human belief in deity. The Others assumed that deity did not exist — belief in such a being was irrational given the mechanistic and deterministic nature of the observable universe.
And if the baseline assumption were wrong in this case.
Chapter 15
Skyla stepped into the dark tave and waited a moment for her eyes to adust to the lack of light. The place consisted of a long room lined with recessed tables on one side and a long enameled bar on the other. She counted seven men at the bar, all drinking from large tumblers. At her entrance, the men tued to stare, some with eyes gleaming. Assuming a shuffling walk, she crossed the worn stone-and-mortar flooring and caught sight of the landlord unpacking disposable drinking mugs behind the bar in the rear.
Skyla had been wary since she'd caught other tendrils of interest creeping through the city, tendrils directed toward finding a gentleman traveling incognito. She'd seen the agents asking at the inns and lodges. Now every nerve prickled with the sensation of danger. Her sources — always eager to talk to a beautiful woman — had divulged that powerful parties were looking for a tall dark-haired man with scars on his body and plenty of money. Skyla's fear had grown. Worse, she'd checked her registry to find an Imperial hold on her docking orbit.