Free Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio

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onto the ground. They hissed like snakes.
    “That’s that,” he said, satisfied. “It’s as I
thought. They were all drugged.”
    “Who was drugged?” I asked.
    He took off his goggles and dropped them onto
his workbench. “Practically everybody,” he said, giving me a sober
look. I opened my mouth but he plowed on, as if I were a science
student in his own lecture hall. “It is called mocra, and it’s
culled from the bark of the rinto tree. It is one of the most
dangerous substances on Mars. I doubt you’ve ever heard of it,
because, long before you were born, nearly every rinto tree on the
planet was cut down and destroyed. This was before even the first
republic was formed. Because it is such a dangerous and unstable
narcotic, mocra never became a large problem, but the potential for
disaster was there and so King Augustus, your great grandfather,
decreed that all the trees be eliminated, thereby eliminating the
problem. But here...”
    He spread his hands out, highlighting our own
copse of rinto trees.
    “And,” he continued, “that’s how Frane
controlled the Baldies – before she sent them to their deaths
against you.”
    “She drugged them...” I said.
    “Oh, yes, no doubt. She must have
experimented for months or years before she found a dosage that
would make the Baldies malleable. But there’s no doubt she did. It
is usually made into a paste from dry powder, and is always red in
color. It dissolves quickly in liquids of any kind. Do you recall
smelling a particularly spicy odor on the battlefield
yesterday?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “That was from the drug. Its ingestion
produces that almost minty smell.”
    “And—”
    He held up a paw. “I haven’t finished, your
majesty. That same smell permeated the army’s camp last night. It’s
what alerted me to trouble. It was put into every chow bucket over
every camp fire, and eaten by nearly every soldier in the army.
Enough to produce complete disablement of the army. They became
disoriented, and then, at that dosage, they went to sleep. I doubt
many of them ever woke up.”
    “Merciful One,” I swore. “And the others, the
officers, they were merely slaughtered. And I trusted the
gypsies...”
    “Gypsies? There were no gypsies in camp,”
Copernicus said with conviction.
    “Carion and his men were a gypsy band, sent
from Miklos.”
    Copernicus shook his head. “Most assuredly
not. I grew up dealing with gypsies, and that group that joined up
just before the battle looked more liked raiders to me. In fact, I
assumed that an alliance had been made, for this battle alone. They
follow nothing but coin. They are mercenaries.”
    I was stunned by General Reis’s incompetence
– even though his failure to vet our allies had cost him his life.
Ultimately, though, the responsibility still rested with me, and my
mood became even darker.
    Copernicus must have sensed this, because he
said in a soothing voice, “You must remember, your majesty, that
20/20 hindsight is the clearest vision of all. It would have been
very easy for those raiders to fool you. If only I had not been so
caught up in my own studies, and had sought to ask...”
    Now his own mood darkened.
    “Well,” I said, “we can sit here and brood on
our stupidity, or we can move on and live.”
    He looked at me, and a small smile lit his
brown-furred face. “I agree, your majesty. If we follow my plan,
and get to my home, there are inquiries I can make there, even as
you hide from those who would destroy you.”
    “I will defeat Frane yet, if it is the last
thing I accomplish on this world.”
    “That’s the spirit!” he cried. He set about
cleaning and packing all of his chemical apparatus, and then broke
apart his table, scattering the assembled pieces so that they were
once more part of the natural landscape.
    “We have food for a week, and two good
horses, and two good riders, and all the will in the world!”
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “Only that we have