Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (11 page)

Kelric propelled himself into the bridge. Every screen was active, showing the panorama of space. No ESComm ships were visible to the eye. Yet.
As soon as Maccar saw Kelric, he motioned to him. Kelric grabbed a cable and skimmed up to the captain.
"We have a problem," Maccar said.
Kelric was doing his best not to imagine what would happen if ESComm caught the
Corona.
"Sir, I should be at my station."
"I'm afraid this has gone beyond anything you can do as weapons officer." Maccar grimaced. "Sixteen Solos are moving in formation with us now, closing ranks. They're well within firing range. It won't be long before we can see them."
Kelric silently swore. Solos were the ESComm equivalent of Jag fighters. He well knew their combat versatility; as a Jag pilot, he had engaged Solos more than any other ESComm craft. Against sixteen of them, Maccar had no chance of escape.
"How did they find us?" Kelric asked.
"Either they got lucky," Maccar said, "or ESComm has more squads available for the search than we expected."
"They've always had a lot of ships, especially if you count the raiders."
"They identified themselves as ESComm," Maccar said. "I doubt they're pirates. Even if they were, we've neither goods nor wealth for them to take. I sent the payment for our cargo with several of the frigates." He considered Kelric. "If they find you, they won't give a kiss in a quasar about the Halstaad Code of War. You're more valuable than ten times my cargo." He snapped his fingers. "They'll take you like that."
Kelric swallowed. "Only if they realize what I am."
"Can you barrier your mind?"
"I thought I was."
Maccar shook his head. "Commander, my Kyle rating is only one point eight. That doesn't even qualify me as a minimal empath. And I can feel you. Gods, man, you're like a nova."
Kelric felt a surreal numbness. "I've some brain damage. It interferes with my ability to shield my thoughts."
Quietly Maccar said, "Doctor Gonzales told me. Everything."
"It doesn't matter," he said. Not if the Traders captured him.
Maccar glanced out at space, at its stars and gleaming galaxies. No visible sign of the Solos showed yet.
He turned back to Kelric. "Our best bet is to hide you in one of the engine bays. The magnetic fields around the Klein containment bottles might throw off their sensors. Marko Jaes is clearing out a compartment. He's also rigging a shroud, something similar to what ships use for stealth runs."
Kelric's hope stirred. Could they hide him? The Traders had no reason to look for anything unusual. Or did they? His attack on the frigates had been surgically precise despite the apparent lack of warning. It could have given him away. He might also have alerted the warlord whose mind he touched. He had no idea if the Aristo felt that contact or if his frigate survived the attack.
Anatakala's voice came over the bridge channel. "Captain, we're getting the Solos on visual."
Kelric looked out at the screens. The Solos showed as bright slivers in space, distant and spread out, but growing in size as they converged on Maccar's vessel. It wouldn't be long before the ships had all slowed enough for ESComm to board the
Corona.
Maccar switched to the engineering comm channel. "Marko, are you ready?"
Marko Jaes's voice came over the comm. "All set, sir."
"Good." Maccar turned back to Kelric. Then he extended his hand. The small white disk of a geltab lay in his palm. "It's yours if you want it."
Kelric stared at the disk.
If you want it.
No. He didn't want it. But that made no difference. When he took the geltab, it lay cool in his palm. In his mouth, it would bring death within seconds.
Quietly Maccar said, "Gods speed, Commander."

The eight bays that housed the inversion engines were spread throughout the ship to minimize the chance of losing more than one at once. Kelric went to the fourth bay, a circular room that vibrated with a deep rumble.
Rising out of a round well in the deck, the engine column dominated the far side of the room. It shone with gold light, making the air glimmer. Cooling conduits spiraled around it, the liquid within sparkling from chemical reactions meant to keep the conduits visible even in the column's radiance. Consoles lined every bulkhead and formed a circular island in the center of the bay. Lights flickered on them like radiant necklaces.
The inversion engine was quiet, its power banked while the more mundane antimatter engines provided real-space propulsion. Kelric still remembered his first time in an engine room when a starship inverted. The shimmering in the air intensified until he could see nothing except the dazzling column.
Marko was walking toward him. The engineer moved oddly, as if leaning against an unseen hand. The gravity was at 130 percent now, raised when Maccar upped the cylinder's spin rate. It made Kelric's limp worse and increased his nausea. He knew why Maccar had changed the spin; if it bothered the Traders enough when they boarded, they might spend less time on the ship. Of course, they could easily order the rotation decreased. But anything that might shorten their stay was worth a try.
He crossed the bay with Marko. As they neared the column, its rumble grew into thunder. He had once listened to the roar of an engine during inversion. For several hours afterward his ears rang. He knew of techs who had repeatedly gone deaf and then had their ears repaired because they refused to block out that roar, determined to experience what they called "the splendor of inversion."
Right now he had no desire to experience the splendor of anything except escaping the Traders. He took the headset Marko offered and slid it on, bringing the mike to his mouth. Plugs molded into his ears, shaped by the nanobots that saturated their malleable structure. Marko's voice came over the plugs, too low for Kelric to hear. The nanobots altered the insulation properties of the plugs until Marko came across clear and strong.
"I removed the secondary cooling coil from one cubicle in the bay," he was saying. He took Kelric to the waist-high rail that circled the well. "The secondary coils serve as backup for the engine and also cool the well."
Holding the rail, Kelric looked down. The well was three meters deep, large enough to hide even someone his height. About a meter separated its curving wall from the engine column.
Marko pressed a ridge on the railing. Below them, a section of the well slid open, revealing a ladder. Marko climbed down, followed by Kelric. At the bottom, he could hear the magnificent hum of the engine even through his earplugs. The noise receded as the bots altered the structure of his plugs to make them better sound insulators. The plugs also cooled off, probably an effect of the chemical changes within them. He wondered if they heated up when their insulation properties decreased.
The engine column rose up next to them, so bright it made him squint. Light swirled in its depths, then twisted out of real space. It mesmerized him, the shifting, unreal depths of this portal onto another universe.
"You all right?" Marko asked.
"Yes." Kelric smiled slightly. "It's been a long time since I was this close to one."
Marko gave him a nod that acknowledged what Kelric didn't say, the wonder and terrible beauty of the engine's contained power.
Next to the ladder, lights glowed on a vertical control strip. Marko entered commands and a floor-to-ceiling panel slid aside in the well, revealing a chamber. Normally a coil would have filled the narrow compartment. Now it stood empty.
Kelric walked into the chamber. It was a hand span taller than him and barely wide enough for his shoulders. When he turned to Marko, his arms rubbed the walls. Even with the door open, he felt claustrophobic.
"I've set up a sensor shroud," Marko said. "It works against X rays, UV, IR, and radio waves. A holofield will disguise this panel and an acoustical shield will hide it from sound probes. Neutrinos are harder to fool, but we can create false 'shadows' to make you look like a cooling coil."
Kelric gave him a wan grin. "I just hope you don't need the real coil."
"I've plenty more around the well." Marko tried to smile. "Good luck, Commander."
Kelric felt the geltab in his fist. "Thanks."
Then Marko closed the panel. Trapped inside the pitch-black chamber, Kelric fought a surge of claustrophobia. Taking a breath, he closed his eyes and invoked the meditative exercises he had learned as a child, when he was trained to use and protect his Kyle abilities.
Placid. Calm. Serene.
An opaque lake with a still surface.
A thought insinuated itself into his attempted serenity. What if no one let him out? He had no food, water, or light. He couldn't even
move.
Cut it out,
he thought. He turned sideways to give himself more room. With his shoulders along the diagonal, the fit wasn't as tight.
How long had he been here? Five minutes? Bolt probably knew, if its internal chronometer worked. He still couldn't talk to the node. It added to his sense of isolation, more here than on Coba, where no one had intelligent machines to enhance their intellect.
With nothing to do, he counted seconds. After ten minutes he gave up in boredom. Shifting position, he tried to ease the stiffness in his legs. He wished he could stretch his arms or sit down. Again he tried to meditate. Placid. Serene. Hell, he felt about as serene as an antimatter missile.
He became aware of a change. The rumbling was growing louder. His earplugs muted the sound, but its level was rising too fast for them to keep up.
The engine was preparing to invert.
With alarm, he realized he was about to serve the same function as a cooling coil. The compartment was heating up. Many coils packed the well, so the loss of one shouldn't dramatically affect their performance. But it only took a little to cook a human being.
The rumble became a roar. It reminded him of being trapped with Soz in the spine-cave, as lightning crashed around them, threatening to split open the mountain.
The wrench of inversion hit hard. He was twisting through a Klein bottle, one that existed in complex space and time. The sensation grew more and more intense until finally he groaned, his voice lost in the engine's thunder.
The noise faded so fast he thought he had gone deaf. Then his earplugs compensated and a subdued hum came to him. He worked up his hands and touched his face; why, he wasn't sure, maybe to verify he was still solid. The walls vibrated around him as the engine carried the ship through otherspace.
His thoughts circled. Why did they invert? He wanted to believe they were headed back to Skolian territory, that soon someone would release him. It was far more probable, though, that ESComm was taking them into custody for an inquiry into the
Chrysalis
incident.
Even a few hours ago, Maccar might have successfully argued that he had responded to a hostile threat. The record showed the menacing approach of the Eubian ships. To avoid a diplomatic incident, the Traders would have probably acted to minimize the fallout: a fast private inquiry, a fine for Maccar, and a public apology from the captain to the
Chrysalis.
ESComm would then escort the
Corona
back to Skolian space with a warning never to return.
But a few hours ago, before news of Eldrin's capture broke, the
Chrysalis
wouldn't have sent frigates against Maccar. Now Eube had every reason to seek hostilities. What would happen to Maccar and his people? A very public trial. Breast-beating and accusations. ESComm wouldn't release the
Corona
with just a fine now. Kelric knew he had to stay hidden. He had a duty to keep himself from being taken by the Traders. He would die here, if not from suffocation or heat, then from thirst and starvation.
He clenched the geltab. The darkness pressed on him like a weight,
smothering—
"No." He closed his eyes, willing his mind to relax.
The fear receded. He had to face reality, though. If ESComm had taken the ship, the geltab offered his only real choice. He said a silent good-bye to his children, the six-year-old daughter he had known only as an infant and the teenage son he had never met. Ixpar was neither child's mother; she had only gained custody of them the day he escaped Coba.
He thought of Dashiva, his second Coban wife, a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty who had ruled the most conservative city-state. His son's mother. Although Kelric had come to care for her, the cultural gulf between them had been too wide to bridge. In the end, the game of politics played by the twelve Managers on Coba wrested him from her Calanya. But that separation was only a physical manifestation of the chasm that had always existed between them.
With Savina it had been different. Frazzled, mischievous, and charming, she had carried him off to her mountain fortress, seduced him, and then married him. Gods help him, but he had loved her. She died giving birth to their daughter. Like almost everyone else he had ever loved, she had goddamned
died.
He tried to put away his anger. His parents lived. His mother. Roca Skolia. Legends of her beauty flourished among three empires. He had never seen her that way, though. What he recalled most from his childhood was her tenderness as she soothed his nightmares or cleaned his scraped knees. As an adult, he saw her political acumen, her skill as a diplomat, her grace as a dancer. Tall and statuesque, with gold hair, large gold eyes, creamy golden skin, and an angel's face— he wasn't blind to what everyone else saw. But for him it all paled compared to the beauty of the woman inside, the mother whose unconditional love helped mold his character.
Both his parents had been that way. His father was one of the finest men he had ever known. There was so much he wished he had said.
Father, did I tell you how much I looked up to you? Or how much it meant to know your joy in your children?
He regretted all the words he had never spoken. It was too late to tell his father he loved him. He feared he would die alone, unable to tell anyone.

Kelric slept awhile, leaning against the wall. He awoke with his left leg and arm numb. He massaged them in the cramped space until his circulation returned. Always, he kept the geltab in his fist.
He lost all sense of time. Sliding to one knee, he found a bottle of water Marko had left him. He drank in huge gulps. If they didn't dock soon, he would become dehydrated. Could he risk coming out after the Traders evacuated the ship? They would probably be at an ESComm base. If he left his hiding place, he would set off alarms.
Kelric stood up and slid his arm up to his face. He pressed the geltab against his cheek. It felt cool on his skin. He needed only swallow it for the poison to work.
No. He lowered his hand. Hope wasn't gone yet.
Time passed.
To ease his boredom, he worked out Quis strategies in his mind. The patterns evolved, as they always evolved for him, complex and symbolic. He interpreted the results, reading what his subconscious put into the dice, then manipulating those structures to see what he could derive from them.
An odd pattern formed. It took a while to decipher because it referred to someone he barely knew. Jay Rockworth. The Dawn Corps youth on Edgewhirl. Each time he made patterns of Eube and Skolia, he came up with Jay Rockworth. Why? What did a high-school boy from Earth have to do with anything?
Rockworth. He knew the name. From where?
William Seth Rockworth III.
That was it. Seth. Dehya's ex-husband. Seth had become her consort as part of the Iceland Treaty between the Allied Worlds and Skolia. Although such arranged marriages were rare now on Earth, Skolians still used them to establish treaties. Modern customs and the extended life spans of present-day humans intervened, though: after several decades, Seth and Dehya had divorced. Neither the Allied nor Skolian government acknowledged the divorce, since technically that would dissolve the treaty. So ties between the Rockworth and Skolia families remained.
Kelric had met Seth during several diplomatic missions to Earth, when ISC or the Assembly had wanted a member of the Ruby Dynasty along for show. Kelric had earned the dubious honor of being picked most often for that role. As the youngest in his family, he ranked low in their "get out of official functions" hierarchy. That wasn't why ISC had chosen him so often, though. It seemed the Public Affairs office had considered him usefully photogenic and less likely than his siblings to say anything controversial.
Seth was a retired naval admiral. Eighteen years ago he had been the oldest living human, just making it into the era of life-extending biotech. If he still lived, he would be well over a century and a half old now.
Kelric had no idea how common the Rockworth name was on Earth. He knew only Seth's line. The admiral had many descendants, though. Jay Rockworth, maybe? Although the boy didn't resemble Seth, that wouldn't mean much if he were more than a generation removed. For that matter, if Jay had blood ties to such a wealthy family, he could probably afford to make himself look however he wanted. His physique and features were so classically perfect it wouldn't surprise Kelric if he had been bodysculpted.
So why did Jay look familiar? It made no sense.
A change in the engine's rumble interrupted his thoughts. He tensed, listening. It wasn't so much a difference in the engine as— what? The scrape of ceramoplex—
The panel of his compartment slid open.