They drove back again to the beginning, keeping the dogs at a slower pace. While they were questing to and fro, Sergi leaped out of the farthest treetop, landing on all fours, then ran over the nearest blind ridge to where the lizards were waiting.
He’d met them before. Alkirin had sent them to the island twice… no, three times. The first time Alkirin had used toothless, old animals, just to frighten the boy and teach him about the creatures. They had very poor sense of smell, but unusually keen eyesight. They would chase down and eat anything that moved.
As soon as they saw him, the three lizards, each twice the length of a man, swarmed toward him. Sergi’s face tightened when he saw how big they were. He had only the gun he had taken from the jet-copter pilot. He looked around for a hiding place that they could not fit into. Ventilation ducts for the underground facility poked up through the earth at intervals, surrounded by a haze of electrical filaments as fine as hair. There was always a dead animal or two lying by the intake, electrocuted when it tried to land on the spongy mass. It was the gardeners’ responsibility to move them before the stench suffused the lower levels of the castle. Alkirin had had four of the ducts widened enough for a human body to fit through, but one, and only one, gave passage into the castle. Sergi kept running, dodging back and forth. The lizards’ ungainly waddle was deceptive. They moved far faster than one thought they could, but Sergi knew exactly what they were capable of. He led them toward the first of the protruding ducts. With a mighty leap, he dove over the first mass of wires, landing on top of the duct. The lizards came after him. The leader piled into the invisible filaments. A loud crack! and a blaze of blue light, and the lead lizard fell dead, twitching. Its companions, smelling cooked meat, began to tear into it with their dagger-sharp teeth. In the meantime, Sergi, his face shiny with sweat, swung down over the top of the duct. It was wide enough for him, but this one, alas, terminated in a dead end. Alkirin clicked his tongue as Sergi, using very juvenile bad language, backed out and went looking for another one.
The dogs came yelping over the crest. They made straight for Sergi. The youth went on guard with the stolen sidearm in one hand and a belt wound around the others. The dogs surrounded him as the men poured out of their little vehicles, shouting. Sergi spun and snapped out a foot, kicking in the throats of the nearest two dogs. They collapsed, coughing blood. A guard leveled his weapon. Sergi was quicker. He shot the man in the forehead. The guard fell. Sergi ducked as the others responded, filling the air with bullets.
Alkirin watched with pleasure as Sergi destroyed the guard squad and its animals. With only thirteen bullets left in the magazine of his gun, he had to make every shot count. When they were gone, he waded into unarmed combat using the martial arts techniques of the best of the Skonzi-ka masters. All nine men fell, dead or wounded, and the lead hound died from a shot between the eyes. The others lay on the ground, wounded and whining. His opponents vanquished, Sergi discarded his useless gun in favor of one of the guards’ weapons, then went looking for another way in. Alkirin nodded with approval.
After two more false leads, Sergi found the air passage that led into the castle cellar. He crawled on elbows and knees through the ventilation system. He emerged into the darkness of a dusty storeroom. Alkirin continued to watch Sergi’s progress on infrared. More guards were being dispatched. Sergi must know he had little time to accomplish his goal. As if he were inside the youth’s mind, Alkirin followed every step of his progress.
Tamica had brought the boy to meet Alkirin for the first time when Sergi was eight years old. The old man sensed the keen, inquisitive nature Sergi got from his mother, and permitted himself to answer any questions the boy had. Once engaged upon a topic, Sergi could not be deterred from eliciting every fact, and got impatient when those facts were slow in forthcoming. Alkirin admired the single-mindedness, and a ruthlessness that reminded him of himself. Sergi had a facility for memorization, and retained every fact he was given, even correcting the old man when he made deliberate errors to test Sergi. Alkirin almost felt sentimental, as he answered unflinching questions from a small, bloody-minded boy about torture, murder, and conquest, assuring the boy his reputation for terrible reprisal was true. He told Sergi all about building his empire from a single village, how he now controlled the fate of nations, the very lives of all its citizens, and kept the rest of the world guessing how, and all from the humble origins of a mercenary soldier younger than Sergi was now.
He had gone further, showing the boy his headquarters, describing in detail all the places where enemies had perished, the archives where information on government finances were kept, and most especially, he led Sergi past a short hallway on the second basement level that featured a dead-drop door that he claimed was meant to trap invaders. The room was a dead end from which there was no possibility of escape. An intruder locked within would surely die there of starvation, hunger, and madness within days. He took Sergi past that hallway every time he visited, making certain that it was impressed in his memory.
It was. The first thing the boy did on entering was to ensure that the hallway was still where he remembered it to be. At the risk of being discovered by a security patrol, Sergi felt all the walls and examined the switch on the panel outside. Alkirin approved. The military scholar who had educated the boy in strategy and tactics was worth every credit he had been paid.
Alkirin had also made certain that the boy had overseen a guard captain opening one of the armories on the same level and memorized the locking codes. Those had been changed a thousand times since Sergi’s last visit, but carefully reset to that set of numbers and symbols as the black jet-copter was landing. Nothing must be left to chance.
The new guard patrols combed the levels one by one, trying to discover the invader who had come in through the vent. Alkirin had told none but his “trusted” few who it was. He didn’t want Sergi to feel that he was being manipulated, even if he was.
The youth’s jungle training had served him well. He managed to squeeze into unbelievably tight niches or cling to the ceilings of corridors as patrols jogged through in search of him. He broke into a laboratory and stole a handful of chemicals, which he mixed up and spread on the floor. The first dog handlers to lead their animals through the corridor were astonished as their charges howled and broke loose, their brown eyes tearing. Alkirin hoped the chemicals’ effect was temporary. Those dogs were highly trained. Besides, he was fond of dogs. It was one of his soft spots.
Sergi moved from place to place, picking up an item here, breaking into computers and changing settings there. He must have planned his incursion to the very last letter over the course of the years. It cost the lives of seven scientists, two computer programmers, an innocent file clerk who was in the wrong office, and a dozen lower-level guards.
Alkirin allowed the hide-and-seek to go on for five or six hours, then called for his personal body-guard. The seven men and one woman who answered the summons were the best-trained, most deadly fighters that he had ever had work for him.
“I wish to visit the financial center in the third basement,” he said.
None of their faces changed, but he knew their minds must be racing. All of them must have been thinking that there was something wrong; he must know that the invader had not yet been captured. But they did not question Alkirin. No one did. All of them drew weapons. He took his place in their midst. The first two guards scouted outside the room, then gave the signal to the others to escort Alkirin out. He allowed himself to look sedate and calm, but his mind raced, ensuring that his calculations were all correct, and all preparations were made.