Tales of the Zorantian Brotherhood

About the Book

"This Brotherhood surely does not kill its guests. That would be barbaric."

Colonel Murthoc looked at her and at the boy who seemed as bewildered and spoke gently as though to the very young.

"Great Lady, you travel in the company of a Master of Darkness. You must have studied history."

The Brotherhood and the Masters are all of history between them, he thought, except for the purely local. At least, since the Darkness.

"The Brotherhood of Zoran has never loved the Masters. And the Masters have always hated the Brotherhood. They have fought for centuries, millennia. And this particular Master," he nodded in Baltash Fior´s direction. "Was with the fleet that destroyed the planet Zoran and, we thought, the Brotherhood."

And the Brotherhood always follows its own rules, barbaric as they sometimes seem to us, the so-called civilized worlds. If this is the Brotherhood of Zoran, they will kill us if they deem it necessary. He did not say this aloud; the children were already uneasy.

Fior spoke with a flat, invincible authority.

"I was on the command ship. They were destroyed."

"Obviously not," the colonel said.

Chances to question a Master of Darkness being rare, he was being deliberately provocative. He had himself ignored the evidence of the black uniforms and obviously military equipment when he had been brought to this room. He had no respect for smugglers and there was no question that it was a smuggler who had captured him.

"This is one base, a smuggler´s base," said Fior still certain. "We came out of hyperspace directly above Zoran. They had at most a few moments warning before the fleet began the bombardment. We felt them die. Millions of them."

He spoke with the detachment of a man discussing the ancient and no longer very important. Nat and Ylana were staring at him. Ylana began to shiver. The colonel, in spite of his knowledge of the Masters´ arrogance, was rather stunned by this display. A man who would confess offhandedly to killing millions expected the survivors to aid his plans. It did not seem to occur to him that they could kill him.

"It is his pride. These smugglers have to be the Brotherhood for him. His father was the same. They were always outlaws."

"They always fought for freedom." The colonel´s interjection was quietly emphatic.

"Against order." Fior was sounding tired as he made what was, for a Master, the ultimate accusation. He sat down in a chair. "The Brotherhood or a large piece of it surviving that attack? No. It is not possible, I tell you. A few of the children must have been off planet. We never expected to kill absolutely all of them. We always thought to use the survivors if we needed them. As I do now."

The colonel was working it through out loud.

"Did you notice the clan commander? Her uniform is the same; so is the insignia. I don´t think your Tar Abzoladan´s pride would allow that on an offworlder smuggler. She is young, I grant you, but that was not unusual. And a clan commander leads thousands of Brotherhood soldiers."

To his knowledge, no one had ever gotten an accurate count of a clan´s forces, but they were known to have been large and included ground units as well as fleet vessels. Each clan had been self-sufficient. Nor had there been any certainty about the number of clans. His father had thought at least a dozen.

"But she´s a woman. Women don´t command combat soldiers. Doesn´t that prove they´re short of men?" Nat´s voice trailed off in the face of the colonel´s astonishment.

About the Author

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