Carnelians (9 page)

Red yanked away his arm. “Clothes fine!”

Her sinking feeling was growing worse. “You’ve covered up your wrists and your neck,” she said softly. “Your wrist guards and your collar. All the signs of who owns you.”

He crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders. “Not have to show.”

“I want to see them.”

“No!”

“Show me,” she said. “Or I’ll put you out, and no more food for you.”

“No.” He met her gaze defiantly. “Not cut off my hands.”

Good gods. “I’d never do that! Never.” She almost stuttered. “No matter what you got there on your wrists. Not even if it’s worth more than this entire hexagon.”

“Even if worth more than city?”

Aliana went cold. “Even that.”

At first he just looked at her. Then he pushed back his sleeve, uncovering the grimy skin on the back of his hand. He pushed his sleeve farther, above his wrist—

“Gods,” she whispered. Even expecting something unusual, she wasn’t prepared.
So brilliant.
A slave guard several centimeters wide circled his wrist, made from what looked like solid diamond.

“Is that
real?
” she asked.

Red jerked down his sleeve, covering the sparkle. “Real diamond.”

“You got that around your neck, too?”

“And ankles.”

“Do the guards and collar include a mesh system that networks into your body?”

His face paled. “Yes.”

“So no one can take them off without killing you.”

“Except Admiral Muze.”

“You’re
Admiral Muze’s
provider?” Flaming hell! “You mean the Highton Aristo who heads the Muze Line? The joint commander of Eubian Space Command?”

He watched her with his large eyes. “Yes.”

“But
how?
” She motioned at him, taking it all in, his raggedy hair and dirty clothes.

“He throw me away,” Red said. “I crawl out of trash processor before it process me.”

“He threw you out? Like
garbage?
”

“Yes. I garbage. He tired of me.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Aliana stood up and went to a sink by the wall. As she leaned over it, the sink’s excuse for a brain sort of figured out what she wanted and turned on a fountain of water. The liquid hit Aliana smack in the face. It was so ridiculous, she choked on a laugh and forgot to be sick.

“You feel bad?” Red asked.

She turned to him, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I’m okay.” Lowering her arm, she said, “Are you all right?”

“No more hungry,” he said, as if that were enough.

“Does Admiral Muze know you ran away?”

“Not run away,” he said matter-of-factly. “Thrown out. Am trash.”

“Aren’t we all,” Aliana said bitterly. “A bunch of rejects. I’m the bastard no one wants. My fight instructor is a decommissioned Razer. And here you are, a thrown-away provider. Don’t we make a great crew.”

He regarded her warily. “I not understand.”

“Neither do I, not really.” She sat at the table. “Listen, Red. You say, ‘I don’t understand.’ ”

“I did say.”

“You used different grammar.”

“You teach me to talk good. Yes?”

“I’ll try.” She winced. “Not that my speech is all that great. But it’ll do.”

He looked as if he had his doubts. But he said only, “Bath here?”

Aliana motioned to a hexagon portal across the room. “In there. You go clean up. I’ll get you some clothes.” Softly she said, “With long sleeves and a high collar.”

His stiff posture eased a bit. “I thank.”

“Sure.” She wondered what the blazes she was going to do with her new provider—and what would happen if Admiral Muze found out she had Red.

VII: Triple Strike

VII
Triple Strike

WELCOME

It came to Dehya as a sense of greeting rather than an actual word.

Welcome,
she answered.

The Kyle mesh spread out like a silvery web, undulating within a blue universe that enveloped her thoughts. Her mind saturated the mesh.

Had Dehya been one of the 999,999 out of every million people who didn’t have enough telepathic ability to access the Kyle, she wouldn’t have known how a person could mold the web. Had she been just a telop, or telepathic operator, she still wouldn’t have been strong enough to notice the changes as the mesh evolved. Were she that one in a trillion who might be sensitive enough, the changes would still barely register. Even some of her own family, the most powerful psions alive, might not notice the more subtle shifts.

Dehya didn’t just detect the changes—she caused them.

The Kyle rumbled through her with a power that would kill almost anyone. Yet it had never bothered her. She loved it here. Sometimes she wished she could stay forever. The web itself greeted her, no interface, no links, no nodes. She spoke directly to it, for she created and evolved that mesh until she became a part that ever-growing entity.

Carnelians Finale,
she thought.

The blue around her morphed into a meadow speckled with white flowers. Earth. She stood beneath the yellow sun that had shone on the birth of her race. Her people could no longer call Earth their world; they had lost that birthright thousands of years ago when unknown beings had stolen her ancestors from Earth and left them stranded on another world with barely the ability to survive. It had taken those lost humans five thousand years to find their home again, but when they had finally arrived, the people of this blue world hadn’t welcomed them.

She supposed it was no surprise. By that time, her people had fractured into Skolia and Eube, two belligerent empires that dwarfed the Allied Worlds of Earth. The only reason Eube didn’t try to conquer Earth was because they couldn’t spare the resources from their relentless drive to subjugate the Skolian Imperialate. In her more honest moments, Dehya had to admit that if the Eubians didn’t exist, demanding all the resources Skolia commanded, her own people might have also arrived on Earth as conquerors rather than lost children seeking their origins.

As Dehya crossed the meadow, grass rippled around her knees, green filaments glistening with picoware. Codes flitted within the translucent blades, flicking into existence, then disappearing to some other state of being. The sunlight had a vivid quality, almost vibrant, and a faint smell of flowers scented the air.

A heartbeat underlay it all.

The pulse was so much a part of the landscape that at first Dehya barely noticed. Gradually it increased in power until it shook through her. Not a heartbeat. Drums. As she walked up a hill under the cloud-flecked sky, musical chords joined the drums. They glistened like waves in the air, pulsing through different colors.

She stopped at the top of the hill. The slope rolled away from her feet in a meadow of rippling filaments glinting with a trillion data pathways through the Kyle. Musical data. A song thundered, and Del’s voice soared on the notes:

I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare.

I’m here and I’m real; I’ll lay your guilt bare.

“And so you have,” Dehya murmured. A deeply intense part of her wanted his song to go on forever, shouting the atrocities of the Hightons. The other part, the sovereign who wanted peace, knew they had to stop its spread.

PROCEDURE?
the Kyle asked.

Isolate the pathways that this song is taking through your mesh,
Dehya thought.

WORKING.
Within barely a moment, it thought,
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ISOLATE ALL THE PATHWAYS WITHOUT DAMAGING MY NETWORKS.

Dehya walked down the slope and filaments rose around her, flashing with the thoughts of a billion minds listening to “Carnelians Finale.”
Damage how?

OBSERVE.

The lights within a nearby reed faded. As they disappeared, the reed crumpled and turned black. Some person in the mesh had just lost their stream of “Carnelians Finale.”

Stop,
Dehya thought.
Release the block around that pathway.

LINK REESTABLISHED.
Lights flickered erratically within the reed. It turned green, but with a withered look. Somewhere, someone was probably cursing the vagaries of the mesh.

The wind rustled Dehya’s hair and sent the filaments whispering against each other.
Do these pathways all originate on Earth?
she asked.
All transmitting the song into space?

YES.

She thought of all the other “meadows” throughout the Kyle, trillions upon trillions for every planet, star system, and interstellar community. It would be impossible to eradicate this song; it had become too intertwined with human civilization. Even crashing the Kyle mesh wouldn’t stop it; the music would continue in smaller communities until the Kyle re-established itself.

THE SONG WILL KILL IF NO ANTIDOTE IS FOUND,
the Kyle told her.
IT IS A PLAGUE OF ANGER THAT INFECTS AND INFLAMES.

Show me.

The meadow blurred until it all ran together. She stood in a vague universe of green with lights glittering in the distance. The green shaded into red as the scene resolved into a room. Telop chairs with empty virtual reality suits were arrayed in the ruddy shadows, set before panels blinking with lights: red, gold, blue, purple. A solitary man occupied one chair, a telop who received messages from non-Kyle webs and sent them through Kyle space. He was listening to “Carnelians Finale” as he worked. Stirred by the song, his anger blasted into the Kyle along with the messages he was routing, like a dark red wave that struck Dehya with great force. She doubted he even realized he was broadcasting his fury.

Dehya surrounded herself with a bubble that filtered six channels: sight, audio, vocal, tactile, smell, and empathy. The red cast of the scene faded as the filter muted the power of the song.

What would happen if we disrupted his stream of the song?
she asked.

THAT WOULD ANGER HIM AS MUCH AS THE SONG INFLAMES THOSE WHO RECEIVE IT FROM HIM.

It might be possible to ameliorate—

Dehya never finished the thought. The bubble around her exploded as pain slammed through her mind. She screamed in the dark—

Command centers honeycombed the hull of the Orbiter space station, functional spaces that contrasted with the beauty of the Ground and Sky interior. The most active center was the War Room. Consoles filled its amphitheatre, staffed with telops in VR chairs, their bodies encased in black suits with opalescent sheens, their heads covered by visored helmets. No space was left unused; robot arms with console cups at the end carried other telops through the air as they worked.

Kelric entered high above the amphitheatre, several stories up, on a walkway that circled just below the holodome ceiling. Four catwalks stretched from the walkway to the center of the domed area like giant spokes on a wheel. They terminated at the “hub,” a gigantic Command Chair. The dome arched above it, glowing with holos of the nebulae visible in space outside of the Orbiter. If anyone in the amphitheatre looked up, they would see the massive chair silhouetted against that starscape like a technological throne suspended among glittering star fields.

Kelric limped along a catwalk, and it swung slightly with his weight. His leg felt worse than usual today, stiff and unresponsive. When he reached the chair, he lowered himself into it and laid his large arms on the blocky armrests. Lights glinted inside the chair’s translucent black surfaces. A hum came from above him as a hood lowered, forming a cavern for his head. A web of conduits settled into his hair, extending threads into his scalp. The chair’s exoskeleton closed around him and inserted prongs into sockets in his wrists, lower spine, and neck. A visor clicked into place over his eyes, submerging him in darkness.

Activating simulation modulator transfer in v-space.
That thought came from Bolt, the node implanted in his spine.

What the blazes does that mean?
Kelric asked.

I’m turning on your helmet.
Bolt wasn’t supposed to have emotions, but his response felt far too amused to Kelric. His node was having fun with him.

The darkness lightened and left Kelric floating in interstellar space, surrounded by nebulae like cosmic gem dust.
Pretty simulation,
Kelric thought.

It does have aesthetic qualities that humans associate with beauty.

Kelric smiled.
But of course you don’t.

Of course not.

He laughed softly.
Bolt, you know that’s bull-bollocks.

You don’t have to cuss at me.
Then Bolt added,
You’re right, though, it is pretty.

That it is. So let’s go to the planet.

Continuing simulation.
The view changed as if Kelric was arrowing through space. Then Bolt added,
You know, cussing with alliteration doesn’t make it any classier.

Since when did cussing bother you?
Kelric asked, curious.
You’ve heard me do it for decades.
An orange star was swelling in view in front of him. He wondered why Bolt didn’t just switch the simulation so they were at the planet.

The profanity bothers your wife,
Bolt said.

No, it doesn’t. I’m an empath. I’d know if it bothered her.

Bolt transmitted a sense of rebuke.

You’re inside me,
Kelric thought.
If I don’t see it, why would you?

I’m paying attention.

She swears all the time.

She doesn’t mind it from women.

For flaming sake.
Yes, I know, my wife is a barbaric sexist matriarch. Given the opportunity, she’d lock all men up in seclusion.

I never said that. She’s a modern, enlightened woman.

And you’re a military mesh node. Not a marital advisor.

Bolt sent him the glyph of a grinning cat.

You enjoy giving me a hard time,
Kelric thought.

I would never do such a thing,
Bolt assured him. It would have been more convincing if the node hadn’t sounded so amused.