A Prison Unsought (2 page)

“Agreed,” Anaris replied, amused at
the Douloi distaste with which Gelasaar pronounced the last word. “He cannot
and will not.” He could sense control of the conversation passing to the
Panarch, as had always been the case on Arthelion during his fosterage there.
It was time to assert his authority. “But neither could Brandon.”

Gelasaar could not hide a wince of pain. Anaris enjoyed the
spurt of triumph following his conviction that he would not have seen even that
much had the Panarch not acknowledged the truth of his statement. Brandon had
abandoned the Panarchy by avoiding his Enkainion, though that action had
accidentally saved his life.

The Panarch spread his hands in a graceful Douloi gesture,
empty of mockery. “I am grateful to you for telling me Brandon lives. What have
you heard of him?”

It pleased Anaris that Gelasaar asked directly. For now he
would tell him the bare minimum. Perhaps later he would describe the
humiliation Brandon had inflicted on Eusabian in the Mandala.

“He was taken on board the
battlecruiser
Mbwa Kali
near
Rifthaven, in the company of a group of Rifters. By now he is no doubt safe on
Ares.”

“Safe?” the Panarch repeated. “No
more than you, I should say. Do you remember so little of your lessons in the
Mandala?”

Control had slipped away from Anaris again, but he forbore
to interrupt. He found an odd comfort in resuming the old relationship, bounded
by the newer comfort of authority. “Speak.”

“My eldest son was fond of saying
that politics is the continuation of war by other means,” the Panarch continued.
“I’m not sure if he knew that for the misquotation of an ancient theorist of
Lost Earth that it was, but it was and is true of the Panarchy. Suspicion,
intrigue, treachery, and violence—both subtle and overt—are the price we Douloi
pay for our privilege, so that, at least ideally, under us the Polloi may live
in freedom.”

The Panarch’s gaze lifted, diffuse, and Anaris could not
remember when Gelasaar had spoken so frankly. It was as if the loss of power
had liberated him.

Gelasaar blinked, and awareness returned. “Think, Anaris!
Ares must now be the last bastion of my government, for its location is unknown
to your father. There will be concentrated all the millennial subtlety of the
surviving Douloi, with Brandon at the focus of all their hopes and fears.”

Gelasaar paused, bracing against a growing ache in his
abdominal muscles and spine. “You know your opponent, Anaris—there is only one,
your father, and the terms of your engagement are fixed by ancient tradition
and religious force. On Ares my son can be sure of neither his friends nor his
enemies, nor can he be sure that one will not become the other at a moment’s
notice.”

Gelasaar paused, then gave his head a slow shake. “I did not
know him as well as I should have. There is no more that I can do.” The Panarch
paused, husbanding his breath. “But . . .” Gelasaar’s gaze
reached past Anaris to some vision of the future.

Anaris prompted, “But, Gelasaar?”

The Panarch sighed. “I would have you on the Emerald Throne
rather than your father, if we are defeated.” He turned his reflective to the
skull grinning down at them. “And I’m sure we have very little time. Both of
us.”

Anaris couldn’t decide whom he meant: himself and Anaris, or
himself and Brandon.

The Panarch turned back to him.

“Shall we agree to make the best
use of it?”

Admiral Trungpa Nyberg, Commander of Ares Station, peered
through his shuttle’s overhead port at the vast, curving hull of the
battlecruiser
Grozniy
, sculptured
into a confusion of forms and vacuum-sharpened shadow by weapons pods and
sensors and other less identifiable . . .

A spurt of amusement briefly eased his anxiety and fatigue
as a section of the hull resolved into the form of an improbably well-endowed
man. So he’d spotted the
Grozniy’s
shiplord.
Somewhere else on the enormous expanse of the battlecruiser’s hull reposed the
no doubt equally shapely shiplady, but it would take similar luck or a month’s
systematic search to locate it.

He’d sensed anticipation in the pilot guiding the shuttle at
the strictly enforced regulation crawl. She’d served on
Grozniy
, he recalled; was that the hint of a smile?

The respite was gone as the discriminators delivered another
report: three civ contractors were still missing aboard the
Wu Zetian
, holding up decon.

Their flight path brought into view the edge of a
kilometer-long wound gouged into the
Grozniy’s
hull. As the shuttle passed over the chasm, winks of light in its depth
revealed demo crews still blasting away wreckage. Captain Ng had fought the
ship to the edge of destruction.

Nyberg became aware of his personal aide standing beside
him. “Admiral, Vice Admiral Willsones requests an interview at your earliest
convenience.” His voice was apologetic.

ASAP, Nyberg translated. He said, “If she’s in that much of
a hurry, she can catch me at the dock,” and resumed listening to the relays.

The problem was, everyone now wanted everything done ASAP. Including
Trungpa Nyberg.

He shut his eyes and breathed out, knowing that his
anxiety-driven impatience would not move anyone the faster. From the pilot in
her pod to the rawest recruit out there handling cables, everyone was working
at capacity.
And beyond
, he thought,
when he recognized the running lights of the captain’s barge belonging to
Margot Ng, the Hero of the Battle of Arthelion, as she personally supervised
the careful teardown of the ruptor turret destroyed by a glancing skipmissile
hit from a Rifter destroyer.

A shudder ran through the shuttle as the locks engaged. A
hiss, a subdued clank, and the hatch opened. He walked out to find the tall,
thin form of Vice-Admiral Damana Willsones at the forefront of those waiting,
her age-white hair clipped close to her head.

Willsones breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Nyberg step
out. Roll out. Nearly as broad as he was tall, Nyberg reflected an ancestry of
enormously strong men of sturdy frame and musculature protected by an
impressive layer of fat. Way back when they were young pups at the Minerva Naval
academy, his probie nickname had been Battleblimp—a term of disparagement that
had altered to respect when he’d outperformed most of their classmates in every
physical sport but sprinting.

Dire as the situation was, Willsones took a moment to
appreciate Nyberg’s presence, everyone around him deferring as if he projected
a force field. A high stickler for his officers’ and enlisteds’ fitness, he did
not exempt himself; though his uniform strained a bit between the buttons over
that mighty chest and belly, the power in his stride had not lessened a whit,
nor had it in the alert blue eyes, but the dark skin of his face was darkened
still more by the circles around those eyes, and his short blond hair had gone
silver.
He’s getting old
, she
thought.

He probably thinks the
same about me
, came the prompt answer, with a too-brief flutter of humor.
Then the humor was gone as they both saluted.

He gestured for her to fall in step beside him, and flashed
her a sharp glance of inquiry as she considered how best to word her news.

There was no ‘best’ here. Only the relative mercy of
simplicity. “There’s something you’d better see right away.” She disclosed the
chip on her palm, and watched his expression change from impatience—the
unexpressed
why couldn’t you just relay
it to my office?
—to the smooth mask that acknowledged the dire implication
of whatever it was she saw fit to bring, in person, on a chip that she didn’t
trust to network crypto.

Nyberg abandoned his inspection tour in an abrupt change of
direction. They threaded through the crowded corridor at a brisk pace, as
everyone gave way and saluted.

Nyberg began what for him was small talk. “Captain Ng is out
there herself supervising the repairs. Is there a reason that I ought to know?”

“Nothing more, I believe, than the
urgent wish to be battle-ready yesterday. Her crew seems to like her visiting,
but she doesn’t hover. I glimpsed her babysitting comms when I started my
watch,” Willsones said.

‘Comms’ in this instance had to
mean the top secret room in the Communications level, housing that Urian
hyperwave Ng had fought a bloody battle to capture.

Nyberg knew that Captain Ng often visited it, to observe
first-hand what the Dol’jharians and their Rifter forces were broadcasting to
one another. The hyperrelay broadcast was apparently instantaneous—something
hitherto nobody had thought possible, accounting for the speed with which the
Dol’jharian onslaught had brought down the strategic centers of the Panarchy.

Teams of cryptographers labored non-stop to decode the
Dol’jharian communications, while being horrified and sometimes entertained by
the Rifters’ less strategically significant but wild broadcasts
en clair
; scuttlebutt, officially
unnoticed, whispered of a highly prized vid involving a man, two women, a pot
of melted chocolate, and a floating eyeball in zero gee—with an obviously-added
chorus of panting, groaning, and a commentary furnished by some Rifter with a
excellent command of Dol’jharian invective.

Nyberg wrested his focus back to Willsones. “. . . and
before I turned in, I saw Ng among the captains bearing Mandros Nukiel off to
be roast-and-toasted after his court martial. I am beginning to think the woman
never sleeps.”

Nyberg grimaced at the reminder of that court martial. Life
had become strange enough without the weird, really, the
sinister
influence of Desrien. “Nobody sleeps anymore.”

Willsones’s white brows hitched upward. “None of us can
outrun the truth,” she murmured as they stepped into a lift. An accusation? No.
As the doors closed she uttered a truism—“Ares is a battle station. It was
never intended to house the refugees from countless worlds”—that made it clear
her ‘truth’ encompassed them all.

The doors slid open, and neither spoke as they entered his
office, which was a hum of ordered activity. With a practiced ear Nyberg
assessed the voices, and observed the angles of head, shoulder, hand as the
staff saluted. No incipient panic. Nyberg saw the impulse to catch him for some
urgent matter, but he shook his head and closed himself and Willsones in the
inner office, something he did rarely, meaning
interrupt only if the station is exploding
.

“Speaking of comms,” Willsones
said, aware that prolonging the inevitable was weak. “Specifically the Urian
hyperwave. When we met outside the chamber, Captain Ng told me she believes
those little white psi-killers are sensitive to Urian objects.”

“The Eya’a,” Nyberg said.

Willsones grimaced. “Forgive me. I understand that they have
been granted ambassadorial status as sophonts, but their reputation . . .”
She made a gesture of warding.

“As yet they haven’t used their psi
powers to boil any of our brains,” Nyberg observed with a brief smile. “Anyway,
Phinboul in Xeno suspects that that there is some psychic connection between
the Eya’a and Urian artifacts, but there is no mutual vocabulary even with the
Rifter captain translating. And of course we dare not pursue it. She must not
discover that we captured the Urian hyperwave. And we cannot interrogate the
Eya’a separately from her.”

Willsones crossed her arms, her expression fierce. “But you
can separate this Rifter captain from them. If you haven’t done that and
interrogated her, why not?”

“Because,” Nyberg exhaled the word
on a sigh, “the Aerenarch requested that the Rifters who brought the Eya’a, as
the actual rescuers of himself and both Lieutenant Omilov and his father, be
granted preferred status within the confines of D-5.”

Willsones knuckled her temples. She had, without consulting
Lt. Osri Omilov, given the order to distract the novosti by identifying him as
the rescuer of the Aerenarch. Since the news feeds, constrained by martial law,
were prevented from interviewing the Rifters, they’d gleefully pounced on the
story, and the entire station had been full of talk about the miraculous escape
from Charvann by the Aerenarch and his boyhood friend.

In actuality, neither the Aerenarch nor young Osri, a
navigation instructor on leave visiting his father when Rifters attacked
Charvann, would have made it out of the system were it not for the Rifters now
imprisoned in Detention Level 5.

Osri was invited everywhere, by captains as well as Osri’s
own peers, and everywhere bludgeoned with questions. Willsones had heard plenty
about the L’Ranja Whoopie and other escapades that sounded like something out
of a really imaginative wiredream—but not from him. Osri was, if possible, even
more laconic than his father Sebastian, a retired Gnostor of Xenoarchaelogy,
and not given to hyperbole.

“I hope at least you are keeping
those—the Eya’a far, far from Communications,” she said.

“My first order after I read the
Xeno report.” Nyberg eyed her, then leaned a fist on his desk. “Damana. You
pulled me off-course with a must-see, then sidetracked me with the Eya’a. I
take it whatever is coming is bad. Shall we get it over with?” He tapped his
console.

“I wanted you to see it alone,
Trungpa. And sit down. This is going to hurt.”

Chill flashed through his nerves as they moved to chairs at
the side table, and she tabbed the console. “I haven’t watched it all yet. We
found it in the cryptobanks aboard the
Sola
Astarte
, arrived with the latest wave of refugees yesterday. The fact that
it was hidden makes it certain that someone hoped to use it for political
effect. Licrosse is holding a Kestian Harkatsus, his passengers, and his crew
at the staging point, pending your orders.”