Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (39 page)

“D has to come,” Valcua said. “An hour remains—and if he hasn’t come by daybreak, your life is forfeit. Though in truth, in your condition, you wouldn’t mind falling victim to me. Your older brother educated you well, didn’t he?”

Sue nodded.

Meanwhile, what was the eagerly awaited D doing outside the battlefield? The first thing he’d done was to select several experts at modification from among his troops. Out on the battlefield, engineers who scavenged parts from broken equipment to create something new were indispensable. On hearing D’s request, they were surprised at first, but then they smiled broadly.

“That’ll be a lot easier than turning a beast into a bird,” they assured him.

D went on to choose soldiers who professed to be excellent marksmen or were confident in their skill at hand-to-hand combat, and after a demonstration of their abilities he narrowed the selection down to five of each. For those good at hand-to-hand combat, D was their opponent. Coming at him with bayonets, spears, or swords, the soldiers were forced to surrender after a flashing movement of D’s right hand either snapped their blades or left their spears chopped in two. In the case of bayonets, the Hunter merely grabbed the gun and tossed it away every time, resulting in the elimination of every challenger.

D then turned his attention to the tank battalion lined up on the distant plain.

Thirty minutes passed.

The voice of the computer in Valcua’s command center rang out, announcing, “Forces approaching the south gate. Preparations for attack are complete.”

“Strictly by the book. Is that all D can come up with as a commander?” Valcua spat disdainfully, then ordered, “As soon as all his vehicles have entered the battlefield, blast them to pieces!”

The results were as hellish as the image the grand duke’s brain had conjured. The tanks under D’s command were powerless in the face of Valcua’s waiting tank battalion, which discharged their dimensional cannons in unison and banished the Hunter’s forces to another dimension.

“What’s his next attack?”

“There isn’t one.”

When the Ultimate Noble heard this reply, the first shade of suspicion skimmed across his face.

“Not coming on the attack? Why, that’s—”

At that instant, the door to the headquarters fell to the floor in flames. The handful of figures who rushed in quickly overpowered Valcua’s guards and soldiers, overrunning the room with their blades and laser rifles.

“Of all the underhanded . . .” Valcua groaned in a low voice, turning to look at Sue.

“D!”

With Sue behind him, the vision of beauty in black inquired in a soft tone, “What kind of marks did I get?” His voice was cold as ice, but he sounded slightly amused nonetheless.

“Given a full division, you opted for guerrilla warfare? Very well, I give you a perfect score, less one point.” The hoarse voice laughed. “That one point is for the commander personally heading such a reckless attack. And for coming to see me. What can an army do once it’s lost its commander? D, you don’t imagine that this settles everything, do you?” “Of course not.”

“Then face me. To tell the truth, I find it lamentable that the plains of this battlefield haven’t rung with the cries of soldiers for the last five millennia.”

“Okay,” D said, sheathing his sword on the spot. A stir went through his group. “Order your soldiers to retreat from the battlefield. Tell them they’re not to take up arms again. And they’re to turn the girl over to whomever wins.”

“Fine,” Valcua said, only too happy to comply.

Several minutes later, the two of them squared off on the vast plain that was to be their battlefield.

“Before we begin, I must ask you something,” said Valcua. “How were you able to make a lightning-fast strike against my headquarters?” That was undoubtedly the greatest mystery to Valcua.

“We took the engine and other parts from one of your tanks and made a stealth helicopter.”

“Oh really? I’m surprised you were able to make such modifications. That design shouldn’t have been possible.”

“Don’t you know the skill of the engineers you yourself created?” Valcua leaned back in a fit of laughter. The sound caused buildings to quake.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t really know anything about this part of my domain. Hmm. I don’t know how many soldiers there are, what they eat, or even where the food comes from. Come to think of it, it’s been a long time since I considered such things. My only thoughts were that if I had ten million troops, I would win the battle even if it cost all of their lives.”

Taking ten men alone as D had done and making a strike against the central command was alien to the Ultimate Noble’s way of thinking.

“I suppose I’m like a drunken fool who can move mountains and change the movements of the stars, yet can’t walk in a straight line. However, against you man to man, I can probably cut you down.” Glencalibur whistled from its sheath. Simultaneously, D drew his blade. His sword seemed to drink up the moonlight.

Both started running at the same time. The instant the two figures melted into one, red sparks scattered and the two switched positions.

“Oh, my!” exclaimed a hoarse voice.

A thread of black coursed down D’s forehead, spreading like the mesh of a net when it came to the bridge of his nose.

“Once Glencalibur has been drawn, it won’t be sheathed until it’s tasted blood.”

Before Valcua had finished speaking, D’s sword danced out. As the mysterious blade bore down on him like a black tsunami, Valcua managed to knock it away, but his stance was badly broken. Ignoring his sword as it sailed into the air, D had thrown himself at the Ultimate Noble’s chest, driving the dagger in his left hand through the armor beneath Valcua’s robe and into his accursed heart.

“You bastard!” Valcua groaned as he swung Glencalibur down, but D’s blade stopped it and the Hunter’s dagger gouged even deeper into the grand duke’s heart.

Heaven and earth took on a blue glow, for lightning had struck on this moonlit night. It wasn’t D that was hit but rather the blade of Glencalibur, though the Hunter was also singed by the electromagnetic waves.

Giving off flames and black smoke, the two men separated. A split second before they did, Glencalibur made a movement Valcua had never intended, splitting D’s right shoulder open. Black blood sprayed out.

The magical sword was raised again for another blow against D, but it then crashed to the ground. Valcua had fallen.

From all sides people pressed forward, carrying off Valcua and charging D simultaneously. A sword gleamed in the hands of each. However, before they could swarm over D, other figures flew in from the sidelines with flashes of laser fire and naked steel, scattering Valcua’s followers and spiriting D away.

D walked without any aid from his rescuers. Half his face and the right side of his body were stained with black blood, but if he’d swung the sword he’d transferred to his left hand, Valcua’s underlings would’ve invariably found that their heads had parted company with their bodies. Apparently his supporters understood as much, and none of them offered D a shoulder to lean on.

They guided D underground and got him onto a high-speed transport. Resembling a ski gondola, it ran toward the center of the territory at several hundred miles per hour. Leaving half the group on the platform, the other five boarded with him.

“Where are we going?” D asked.

“We’re bringing you to the medical treatment center,” one answered. Though assigned to D, they had once been Valcua’s soldiers.

“This is Valcua’s castle. Someone will come after us in no time. His computer oversees any treatment.”

“If we switch it over to manual mode, we should be able to stop the bleeding, sterilize the wound, and get you sewn up.”

“This wound won’t close!” said the hoarse voice, stunning the soldiers. “Glencalibur is just the sort of sword you’d expect the Ultimate Noble to love. No matter how I try to stop it, you just keep bleeding. This calls for radical treatment!”

“Wow, your left hand can talk?” one of the others said, his brow crinkling as he stared at it intently.

“What are you looking at? I ought to charge you admission!” the hand snapped, startling the man. “Instead of hitting some quack medical center, there’s someplace better to go. First off, let’s hurry to the reactor.”

The group halted before a massive door.

“Beyond this lies the antiproton reactor.”

D nodded, saying, “You men head back.”

“The defense systems are operational. They pose a danger to you in your current condition. We’ll accompany you.”

“Oh, and why is that?” D asked in a terribly hoarse voice. “I thought you boys had been given orders to rejoin your unit once the surprise attack was over. So, why don’t you go already?” “We are prepared to die,” the first one said.

“Even if ours is an artificial life, that doesn’t mean we don’t fear death. And when our colleagues are slain, we feel sadness too.” “Yet we were told we were bom to die before we were sent to serve you, sir,” the third one said. “But you wouldn’t let anyone die. With just ten men you made a tactical strike against Lord Valcua to decide the battle—and that is something only a bom commander can do.” “You spared our lives—and now we’re here, ready to give them for you, sir. We who didn’t want to die have decided to give our lives for you—so please allow us to do so.”

“I can’t,” D said softly, yet his words had the knife edge of the wind to them. His face was pale as paraffin, and he continued to lose blood. “I’ll take the life I came here for. The rest of you should enjoy yours.” And saying just this, the young man in black turned, his coat whipping out around him. Particle cannons mounted on the ceiling and walls turned on D without a sound and then deactivated. Saying nothing, D turned toward the entrance to the reactor.

The other men were frozen in place, but someone’s recitation of an ancient poem rang in their ears.

Piercing wind,

Freezing river of Yi.

The hero fords,

And he never returns!

It was unclear what kind of trick he used; the Hunter simply seemed to press his left hand to the door to force it open, and as the men watched him disappear into the white light, all they could do was stand in stunned amazement.

The reactor—the energy source for the Ultimate Noble—didn’t work by nuclear fission or fusion. The energy that maintained life

in his domain all came from contact between protons and antiprotons. Because Valcua’s reactor produced energy that was far purer than any of the other forms of power currently in use in the world, the extremely delicate combination of the particles was conducted with a devilish attention to detail.