A Prison Unsought (79 page)

A shattering bang stopped her. The ship rocked: the shields
were down. They stared at each other, dreading the next impact. When it came,
it was worse than she had expected. “We can’t take this, no matter what those
chatzing nicks say. If they punch through and that spore-blunge the sensors
detected gets in . . .” She shuddered. They didn’t have any
breathing masks on the bridge; the Panarchists had them all.

Resolution hardened Kaniffer’s face. “We’ve still got the
outer lock, right?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

Kaniffer waved her to silence. “Set up the image feed from
the engine room to the external holojac.” He turned away and set the com to
external sonic broadcast.

“We’ll make a deal with you out
there. We’ve got something you’ll want even more than the ship, and we’ll give
them to you if you’ll let us go.”

Outside, Londri stared as a wavering image began to take
shape in the smoke wreathing the shuttle. Like ghosts wakened to the light of
day, she saw, indistinct, the shapes of several elderly people clustered about
some incomprehensible shapes, a world’s ransom in metal gleaming around them.

Stepan gasped. His eyes widened. His mouth gaped, working as
though he were trying to speak. He gestured at the image, his hand shaking, but
the ship spoke first.

“This is the Panarch of the Thousand
Suns, overthrown and exiled to Gehenna by order of the Avatar. If you cease
your attack we will give him and his Privy Council to you. If you do not, we
will kill him and deprive you of the revenge you never thought you’d have.”

Londri’s breath stopped.
“Within
your grasp the author of your woe.”
Would it truly fall to her to revenge
the centuries of suffering imposed upon the people of Gehenna by the Panarchy?
She turned to Stepan.

He nodded, struggling to speak. “It is. It is the Panarch.
And some of his council. But they are armed.”

She looked again, more
closely, and spied angular metal objects cradled in the arms of two of the
Panarchists.

Then how can we kill
them? It is a lie, like everything else they do and say.

She stood up, heedless of any danger from the ship, feeling
a measureless anger well up from a dark fortress deep within her soul. It was
as though every one of her mothers, clear back to the arrival of humanity in
the merciless prison of Gehenna, screamed with rage for every child lost.

Whirling about, she seized the war horn from the herald and
blew furiously into it, and, as though impelled by one mind, the men and women
of the armies of Gehenna poured into the clearing, screaming furiously,
flinging a hail of rocks and fire and smoke.

“The
Samedi
has
launched a ship,” Sub-Lieutenant Wychyrski reported. “It appears to be corvette
class. It skipped.”

“Probably half the crew has
mutinied and is jumping ship,” Krajno said, grim satisfaction in his voice.

“I can’t match the signature,”
Wychyrski continued.

“Try the Dol’jharian section of the
registry,” said the Aerenarch. It was the first time he had spoken.

Ng looked his way as Wychyrski pursed her lips.

“It’s Anaris,” the Aerenarch went
on, his voice light.

“Confirmed,” Wychyrski said,
absently raking her fingers through her curls in a quick gesture. “Dol’jharian
Lakku-class corvette.”

“No threat to us,” Rom-Sanchez
added.

Several second passed, then Wychyrski looked startled.
“That’s odd. Emergence at plus twenty-five light-seconds. He’s staying to watch.”

In response to Ng’s questioning look, the Aerenarch
shrugged, then smiled slightly. “When we were young, I could predict his
actions fairly well—I had to. Now . . .” He turned his hands
palms up.

“
Samedi
skipped,” said Rom-Sanchez.

“Tactical skip, now,” Ng commanded,
and the fiveskip burped.

The Rifter ship fought with the desperation of a cornered
rat. To her surprise, Ng found that the removal of the third dimension of
spatial warfare was an equalizing factor, a fact underscored sometime later by
the smash of a skipmissile impact.

The bridge canted as the ship shuddered.

“Skipmissile hit. Aft alpha ruptor
turret not reporting. Shields oscillating.”

“Tactical skip. Now.” The fiveskip
burped. “Bring us about, thirty-five degrees, skip ten light-seconds on
acquisition.”

On the main screen the Knot flickered angrily in stuttering
vividness, like two curving walls of light closing in to crush the
Grozniy
and its opponent.

“Knot status.”

“Lobe closure
accelerating. Margin thirty-four percent and falling.”

We’ve got to finish
them, and fast, before FF finishes us both.
But the restraint imposed upon them
by the need to interrogate the Rifters about the Panarch was telling on
them—the Rifter, with no such inhibition, fought more violently with every pass
of the deadly dance taking place in the Gehenna system, taking them farther and
farther from the planet.

Wychyrski stiffened, and began tapping frantically at her
console. “I’m picking up a distress call. Ammant!”

The handsome young sub-lieutenant on communications said
tersely, “Trying to clean it up.”

A few seconds later the bridge com crackled to life.

“. . . SHUTTLE
GROUNDED . . . ENGINES . . . ATTACK BY PLANETARY . . .
OFF . . .”

A sudden intake of breath next to her pulled Ng’s head
around: the Aerenarch’s blue gaze intensified. “That is my father’s voice,” he
said.

The signal faded and vanished back into noise.

“Then they left the shuttle on the
surface?” asked Rom-Sanchez.

“They must have overcome the crew,”
the Aerenarch said.

“Skipmissile status,” Ng snapped.
“This changes things entirely.”

“Skipmissile charge at ninety
percent.” The oscillating plasma had been held too long; their first shot might
not tell.

“The second one will,” said Krajno,
notifying Ng that she had spoken aloud, but she didn’t pause.

“Navigation, bring us about,
two-ninety degrees. It’s time for the kill.”

“Over there!” screeched Neesach,
gesturing wildly.

Kaniffer squinted into the setting sun, swiveled the cannon
around, and tabbed the fire button, snarling with satisfaction as a catapult
exploded into flaming pieces. Then he swiveled it back and swept the beam of
plasma along a line of attackers, exulting as they exploded into bloody smoke.

Outside, Londri watched, horrified despite her anger, as a
finger of sun-bright flame, like a straight lightning bolt and as loud, reached
out from the top of the ship. Where it touched, warriors vanished, their bodies
exploding into a red fog.

But still the attackers came on. Several squads fanned out in
a self-sacrificial effort to distract the fire-thrower from the sapper teams
with the rams, while the light catapults thrummed and creaked. The flame
reached out with terrifying ease, tracing a path of ruin and agony among her
people. Now the ever-present smoke bore the stench of burned flesh.

Inside the shuttle, Neesach reached over Kaniffer’s
shoulder, stabbing at the fire-control screen and leaving a greasy mark on it.
“Shoot there!”

“Get away from me, you
logos-licker! This is no vid-game!” Kaniffer yelled as he directed the cannon
toward the clot of Gehennans she’d indicated, but he caught only some
stragglers.

But the distraction had accomplished its purpose. A ram team
dashed under the maximum depression of the fire-thrower, and began battering at
the lock, while the rest of the assaulting force fell back. “You
missed
’em, genz I’ll-take-the-cannon!
Now what’re ya gonna do?” Neesach shrieked.

Kaniffer winced, wondering when his ears would start
bleeding as he elevated the cannon and picked off another catapult, then
another.

“If you’d stop yelling in my ear
with that whiny Shiidra-orgasm voice of yours . . . Owww!”

Neesach slapped his face hard and Kaniffer shoved her
violently backward. She fell over a console, screaming in shrill fury, and
Kaniffer laughed, then choked as a catapult bolt hurtled straight at the cannon
and jammed its vertical traverse. He jerked at the control, cursing loudly on a
rising note of panic as the attackers, yelling in triumph, surrounded the
shuttle, battering at it in a frenzy of triumphant hate.

The end came suddenly. One moment the
Samedi
gleamed sleekly in the light of the IT primary, its radiants
flaring, then, as Morrighon watched with satisfaction, a painfully bright point
of light blossomed over the destroyer’s bridge, caving in the hull like the
blow of an angry god’s fist.

“The cruiser has lost patience with
our Rifter allies,” Anaris said with a smile.

For a beat, nothing further happened. Then the
Samedi
’s shields flickered, bits of hull
plating flew off, and the missile tube twisted drastically and spun away.

Ruptor strike
,
Morrighon thought, his tension increasing. But he dared not suggest their
leaving: Anaris manipulated the screens with rapidity, indicating his
fascination with the situation. It would only annoy him to point out their
increased risk.

Morrighon turned his gaze back to the Rifter ship, now an
expanding ball of plasma. Beyond, the full crescent of the system’s fifth
planet gleamed whitely. Two of its moons were also visible, with a third speck
that was the
Grozniy
.

“They wouldn’t have done that if
they didn’t feel certain of finding the Panarch,” Morrighon ventured.

“Of course,” Anaris replied, still
intent on the screen. “A battlecruiser’s sensors are far better than ours. I would
guess they heard a distress call. That will serve our purposes as well as
theirs.” He tapped at his console, then smiled faintly, as though some thought
had just occurred to him.

“Communications.”

“Sir.”

“Hail the battlecruiser.”

The standard recording squealed out, then Anaris brought the
ship about and engaged the fiveskip.

When they emerged, the fifth planet loomed large ahead, one
of its moons off to their port side. Anaris blipped the fiveskip twice more.

“Communications.”

“Sir.”

“Deploy a relay around the moon.”

The relay launched with a barely perceptible whoosh.
Morrighon caught a brief glimpse of it streaking away. As it emerged out of the
EM shadow of the moon, the relayed image of the battlecruiser bloomed on the
corvette’s screen.

“Two-point-five-light-second delay,”
the Tarkan at Communications stated. “Reply incoming.”

The com hissed, then a woman’s voice filled the bridge.
“This is His Majesty’s battlecruiser
Grozniy
,
Captain Margot O’Reilly Ng commanding.”

Anaris sat back and laughed. With a return of his earlier
nausea, Morrighon recognized this as the ship that had fought so fiercely at
Arthelion. There was now no chance Anaris would do the sensible thing and
leave.

An image bloomed on-screen, replacing the stars with the
interior of a Panarchist battlecruiser. A small, trim woman sat in the command
pod, her Naval uniform impeccable. Anaris gave a sudden, wicked smile.

Cold terror pooled in Morrighon’s churning guts.

A slim young man stood behind the captain: curling dark
hair, blue eyes, and a bone structure instantly familiar. Morrighon stared at
Brandon vlith-Arkad, now heir to his father’s throne. The young man seemed to
gaze right back at him, brows quirked. But he did not speak.

The Panarchist captain said neutrally, “I take it you are
Anaris, heir to Eusabian of Dol’jhar?”

“That was a splendid battle over
Arthelion, Captain,” Anaris said. “Juvaszt and the others are still picking
apart your tactics.”

Morrighon counted his heartbeats during the long-seeming
delay. Too many.

“As we are theirs,” the captain
returned, her voice still neutral.

“It seems a shame that so much
effort—so much entertainment—went for nothing,” Anaris went on.

After the delay, the captain lifted one shoulder in a slight
shrug. “So goes war,” she said. One of her hands moved on her chair arm: a
command, Morrighon knew. Brandon vlith-Arkad stood motionless, hands behind
him.

Anaris lifted his head. “Still no Naval commission,
Brandon?”

After five seconds, the Panarch’s heir said with mendacious
regret, “I’ve so little free time.”

Anaris smiled, his voice edged like mono-thread, “Allow me
to congratulate you on your accession.”

Morrighon tried to stifle a snort of laughter, and his nose
burned. A jab at the dead brothers—no! A jab at the Panarch!

But after the delay, Brandon’s mouth smiled, but his gaze
was steady. “Did you want to swear fealty?”

Anaris laughed and cut the connection.

Aboard the
Grozniy
,
Wychyrski reported, “He skipped.”

“Knot status,” Ng demanded.

“Margin eighteen percent and
falling. Still flattening.”

“He can make far better speed than
we can under these conditions,” said Rom-Sanchez.

“Does that class vessel have
orbit-to-ground weapons?” Ng asked, leaning forward.

“No, sir.”

“Then we have to get there before
the Panarch lifts off. SigInt, grab that signal back. See if you can punch
through a response.”

Wychyrski tried, then shrugged. “Not from here.”

“Keep trying, each emergence.
Navigation, plot me a minimum perturbation course, to arrive at Gehenna with
minimal relative velocity.”

System FF imposed a delicate balance between the less
destabilizing effect of low-frequency, high-tac-level skip, with the high real
velocity it imparted, and the more destabilizing effects of low-tac, with its
lower real velocity that would leave them able to rendezvous more easily with
the shuttle.