Inherit the Stars (27 page)

Kivita's tears mingled with the line of blood along Cheseia's right temple.

“I'll . . . I'll tell him.” The words came out in heaves. Kivita's fingers brushed over the Ascali's face, exquisite even in death.

A faint breath exited Cheseia's lips.

Swallowing a sob, Kivita examined the wound. A deep graze.

Body numb, Kivita ripped off Cheseia's tunic and bandaged the wound. The white garment reddened with blood.

Kivita crawled to the console, flicked off the emergency beacon, and keyed the radio to the frequency on
Luccan's Wish
.

“Jandeel? Navon? Somebody send a medic to
Frevyx
at Airlock Eight! Hurry!”

“I truly . . . want to die,” Cheseia whispered in a weak voice.

Kivita knelt and pulled Cheseia against her chest. “Yeah, and I truly didn't want to be your friend when I first met you. But, dammit, I am.”

Cheseia's eyes widened. Her tears coursed over Kivita's arms and made splotches in the blood on the floor. “You truly . . . ?” The Ascali fainted.

What would happen now? Cheseia had saved her life, had loved the same man she did, then betrayed Sar and her both. Kivita gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she should have let Cheseia end her life.

Deep in her heart, though, Kivita found no hatred. Spotting the Ascali's blood on her new tattoo, a throb pierced her heart. How many would die so that others could live in peace, free of ignorance? All those video streams she'd seen while on
Luccan's Wish
, showing Inheritor cruelty . . . Cheseia was the latest victim. Those who'd forced her friend to betray the Thedes gave Kivita a purpose.

“I swear I won't stop until everyone is free.” Ignoring her own tears, Kivita kissed Cheseia's forehead.

•   •   •

Four guards in polyarmor waited at the infirmary door while the Aldaakian medic finished with Cheseia. The sleeping Ascali had been given thogens, and a bandage now swathed her temples. Root-spice disinfectant permeated the air. Navon, Jandeel, and the other Sages stood nearby, while Kivita knelt beside Cheseia's cot, her jaw tight.

“She'll recover with just a scratch. I recommend rest in cryostasis—where we all should be.” The medic left.

“You should have let her go through with it.” Jandeel scowled at Cheseia's inert form. “There can be little doubt Sar Redryll has been taken. The Inheritors are following us even now.”

Kivita squeezed Cheseia's hand and stood. “I know she's done wrong. I know she's not to be trusted. I'm angry, too. But I won't let you kill her. What's done is done. I say we focus on what we can change.”

Jandeel sighed. “Kivita, I'm not advocating her execution. But she cannot leave custody.”

“She is right: all our energies must be dedicated to what befalls us when we exit this jump,” Navon said.
“No one, other than those in this room, can know our voyage has been compromised.”

“They have a right to know.” Jandeel crossed his arms. “You would lead us into a trap, blind?”

Navon's brow creased. “No, but I think—”

“What did you want to tell me earlier?” Kivita stood between them. Arguing would get them nowhere. She'd been nowhere most of her life. Now it was time to leave it.

Navon paced between the other cots, hands behind his back. “We have finally deciphered the name of the coordinates' destination. They lead to a red-giant star system called Bos-Euex. Nothing is known to exist there.”

“But nobody's ever explored this system, right? Those coordinates don't even exist in Inheritor charting. No beacon signals from Vim derelicts, nothing.” Kivita shifted her feet, not wanting to leave Cheseia's side. With everyone after her since the salvage on Vstrunn, Kivita felt responsible for Cheseia's predicament. Someone had maneuvered them both like pieces on a Tannocci chessboard.

“I fear we are being led along on this course.” Navon stopped pacing. “The Inheritors and Sarrhdtuu have gone to great lengths to use you and then hunt you, Kivita.”

“What else can we do?” The Naxan Sage clicked twice.

“There's never been a Vim signal in any of the recorded histories,” Jandeel said. “We must investigate it. This is what Luccan himself hoped for, Navon.”

Kivita cleared her throat. “Maybe we haven't dug deep enough.”

Navon looked at her, brows knitted. “Explain yourself.”

“What if I pool information from all the datacores we have? I haven't studied every one yet—and never at the same time.” Kivita raised her brows and cocked her head to one side.

“Can you handle that?” Jandeel asked.

“No, she cannot. No one ever has.” Navon wrung his hands and neared Kivita. “You are gifted, but even you might burn out your brain with that sort of activity. There is no guarantee that all the knowledge stored in our datacores is still valid. Some of this data may have become obsolete centuries ago.”

She clasped both his hands in hers; his thick ones dwarfed her slender ones. “We need answers more than ever. I can hold it—I know. Everything I've been taught by you all or shown by a datacore, I can repeat verbatim. If we're heading for a trap, then we might be dead already. C'mon. We have nothing to lose.”

“We can't lose you,” Jandeel said.

“You won't,” Kivita said.

“We will gather in my quarters,” Navon said. “Jandeel, retrieve the datacores from the library.”

Cheseia murmured on her cot. Kivita walked over and knelt beside her, while the others filed toward the infirmary door.

“I should truly, certainly die,” Cheseia moaned.

“Hush. Things have been set into motion now. Just rest and heal up.”

“And then what? I certainly have no future now,” Cheseia said.

“That might go for the rest of us. You see me quitting?” Kivita clasped her hand. “Most won't forgive you
for this. Maybe I shouldn't, either. You won't be executed, but I can't promise anything besides that. What did Dunaar Thev tell you? What did he want?”

“The Rector only truly wanted the location of
Luccan's Wish
. I also assuredly told him that Sar had loved you once. I have been so surely jealous of you. After Tejuit, when I saw how Sar definitely wanted you, and now this . . . I hate myself.” Tears welled in Cheseia's eyes.

“And Zhara?”

“She and I secretly stowed aboard a Thede sympathizer's starship and left Sygma.” Cheseia winced and touched her right temple. “Months after we left, Inheritor agents unfortunately captured my sister. I was ordered to lovingly attach myself to Sar. Ascali Blood Bond forced me to certainly honor Zhara's life, being her sister. She truly wanted to see other worlds. . . .”

“So, why didn't your mother come along?” Kivita asked in a whisper.

Cheseia gave her a sad smile. “She surely still worshipped Revelas, god of the Ascali on Sygma. She definitely thought we were heretics to think Revelas was just a silly starship, and that we should certainly not travel the Cetturo Arm. She tragically disowned Zhara and me, the greatest insult in Ascali society. I unfortunately have not seen her since.”

Kivita touched her hand. “You ever think about her?”

“Every day.” Cheseia touched the braid in Kivita's hair. “Maybe you can skillfully braid me one later.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Kivita rose and exited the infirmary. Navon waited in the corridor.

“She might not have revealed those things under
interrogation,” Navon said. “Her sorrow is palpable, I must admit. An Ascali regards a Blood Bond breakable only by death.”

“I can't bring myself to despise her. She doesn't need any pity, either.”

“Nobility really does come from within, not from a crown,” he said.

Shaking her head, Kivita touched the wrist tattoo. Cheseia's blood still stained the skin around it. “I'm not a queen.”

He linked arms with her and headed for the nearest elevator. “You may not have a choice any longer.”

As Navon led Kivita into his quarters, his gentle yet firm grip on her arm eased some of her tension. Jandeel and the other Sages waited inside, their faces grim. The Juxj Star, along with all the datacores the Thedes possessed, lay on a grass mat.

“Remember your training,” Navon said. “Do not force the knowledge from the datacores.”

Taking a deep breath, Kivita moved toward the mat. Jandeel touched her shoulder. “If you falter . . .”

Kivita sat on the mat, the datacores ringing her like a barrier. Shielding her from what may be coming.

This might be it. She took another deep breath, trying to calm her rising pulse. What she'd always wanted lay ahead: discovering what was really out there. The more she learned from her new friends and the datacores, the more she wanted to know.

The more she learned, the more she realized just how much she didn't know.

Closing her eyes, Kivita concentrated on the stones, crystals, and the Juxj Star. One by one their specific ambiences touched her mind, each one different. The crystals were bright, scintillating pulses of data, while the
rocks crunched against her mind. The Juxj Star tried to flood her thoughts like before. Electrical sensations traveled along her scalp, penetrating her cranium.

The usual cold pain started in her temples, but this time it varied in degrees of intensity as each datacore threatened to batter down her psyche. Sweat traveled down her back. It hurt to breathe. Kivita licked her lips and repeated Navon's instruction in her consciousness.

Focus. Attune. Absorb.

“Slowly,” Navon whispered, his voice miles away.

Concentrating, she compiled all the data signatures from the items. Kivita shivered as numbers, letters, and images pushed at the walls of her consciousness. Where before the datacores had offered glimpses, now they displayed long, branching paths. Countless lifetimes passed in her mind, and Kivita clasped her persona by a thin thread of willpower. So much data flooding her like an ocean . . . Mouthing a silent cry, Kivita channeled it all into one stream. Imagery and numbers from separate datacores linked and combined.

All of it led to a yellow star ringed by Vim starships.

Viewpoints shifted in Kivita's mind, each becoming a snapshot of the scene. The ships resembled those she'd seen before, siphoning energy from the main sequence star. In one image the vessels appeared stable, well-maintained. Next, each one had deteriorated to drifting hulks filled with energy dumps, datacores, and blobs of green jelly.

The floor seemed to vanish beneath her, and she wobbled. Her temples throbbed.

“Kivita?” Navon's voice sounded farther away than the vistas in her thoughts.

Without answering, she concentrated anew. Focus, attune, absorb. Willing the headache away, Kivita kept the stream of data going.

The Vim derelicts now orbited various stars: red giants, aging orange suns, young blue ones, or antediluvian white dwarfs. In each case, the basic orbital distance remained the same between the ships and the sun.

Just like all the wreckage in the Cetturo Arm.

Swaying, she spread her arms to steady herself. Breaths came in heavy gasps.

“Wait—let her keep going,” Jandeel whispered.

The imagery transformed into a scorched, body-ridden starship bridge. A cracked, hundred-foot-tall viewport showed a healthy yellow sun in the distance. Sarrhdtuu warriors in carapace armor waited, while the viewer stepped over a dying Kith. Coils tightened around the viewer's waist.

“No,” Kivita mumbled as sharp pains lanced into her skull.

The Sarrhdtuu squeezed, and the viewer, thrashing in pain, accessed a terminal by thought alone. Readouts along the holo console indicated the ship had begun siphoning the star's hydrogen, disrupting its internal-fusion process.

Kivita coughed. Her fingertips burned.

The scene changed. Now the same bridge was covered in vacuum frost. The star outside had swelled into a massive red giant.

The data flow altered and displayed several Ascali gathered in a circle on an arboreal world covered in green foliage. As one, the Ascali raised their gorgeous voices in song. Within the circle, a captive Sarrhdtuu warrior lay stunned
by the aural resonance. Memories of Rhyer's journeys to Sygma, and Shekelor's comment about Cheseia on Tejuit, nudged her curiosity.

Licking her lips, Kivita plunged her mind into the datacores' shared information stream. She could hold it.

Nothing new emerged, except more scenes of the Sarrhdtuu destroying Vim projects.

“Tell me, Mother,” she murmured. Terredyn Narbas had sent her thoughts into the Juxj Star, trillions of miles from Susuron. The gem datacore from Vstrunn loomed larger in her mind than the other datacores combined. Kivita stiffened; the time for peeling away the red gem's deeper layers had passed. Inhaling a ragged breath, she inserted her mind into them.

Crystallized neurons within the Juxj Star fired in reply. The barrier around Kivita collapsed with reality itself.

Observing the coral-ringed Susuron Palace through Terredyn's view, Kivita stared out the courtroom window. Night ruled the sky where stars twinkled in a visual code beyond human ken. Kivita gripped the windowsill, her legs numbing.

A message from deep space drifted into her mother's mind. Coordinates for an event a thousand years into the future—the same coordinates
Luccan's Wish
now headed toward. Safeguarding her daughter to ensure a Savant could return the message; plotting with Rhyer to awaken Kivita at the right moment. But no information on why he reared her on Haldon Prime in the presence of the Inheritors, or why he'd posed as a salvager.

Something within the Susuron Palace augmented the signal. But what could enhance a Savant's powers? Not even datacores could do that.

Terredyn's thoughts focused on a handsome man in a red Inheritor uniform. Dark hair, green eyes. The feudal surname of Ov came to mind. One of their bloodline, Broujel, had even become a Rector, Kivita knew from Jandeel's tutelage.

Kivita's vision blurred, as if Terredyn wept. A placard of the same man hung in a golden frame beside the windowsill. Terredyn kissed her fingers and laid them on the image.

Was the handsome man her father? She sank deeper into the Juxj Star's red-tinted depths, deeper into the recorded memories of her mother. Was he?

The datacores revealed nothing.

“Tell me,” she whispered, concentrating harder still.

The Juxj Star's red-tinted depths gave way to coldest darkness.

“Tell me!” she screamed.

Quivering, Kivita opened her eyes. Salty stickiness stung her cheeks from dried tears. The datacores, including the Juxj Star, floated around her like planets orbiting a star.

Navon, Jandeel, and the other Sages lay gasping on the floor. Each stared at her wide-eyed and gaping.

“She knew all along. . . . Your mother knew she would not live.” Navon pushed himself into a kneeling position.

Kivita stood, and the datacores came to rest on the mat. The Juxj Star glowed once.

“Yeah. Seems I answered that signal she wanted, too. From Vstrunn.” Hugging herself, Kivita staggered around the grass mat.

“This unites all the theories and beliefs of the Vim.” Jandeel wiped his damp forehead. “The Inheritors
joining the Vim and their healthy yellow suns in the galactic Core, the Aldaakian Archivers and their tales of reuniting with the Vim, the Ascali songs, the Arm's dying stars—it all makes sense now.”

“No.” Navon rose and steadied Kivita. “All this means is that the Vim could not cope with Sarrhdtuu aggression and abandoned the Cetturo Arm. This signal sent a millennium ago proves only that another Savant, at a second Vim antenna, sent it.”

Kivita shook her head. Why would her mother have given in to such a predetermined fate? Losing her throne, her daughter, her life, all so Kivita, someday, might return that mysterious signal? Rhyer had believed in and obeyed his queen. The Inheritors had killed Terredyn—the only known Savant capable of returning the message.

Why?

“They're using me against the Vim.” Kivita drew back from Navon. “That's why Dunaar hired me, that's why the Sarrhdtuu have tracked me—”

“The Sarrhdtuu wouldn't need you, or any of us, to find their enemies.” Jandeel's brows rose.

She sighed. “Yeah, and I told you my other idea: I might be a weapon. Every one of these visions has shown the Sarrhdtuu forcing Savants to do their bidding, and killing those who don't. Now we have proof of the Ascali combating the Sarrhdtuu in their own way. The Vim prepared us for something. C'mon, Jandeel, think about it.”

“A Naxan butter knife can also cut one's throat,” Jandeel said. “That doesn't mean it was intended for violent use.”

Luccan's Wish
shuddered.

The intercom crackled to life. “Navon, we have just exited the light jump, eight months early!” the pilot cried.

Navon, Jandeel, and the others froze with terror in their eyes.

Heart thudding, Kivita raced to the intercom console and pressed the button. “How? What's happened?”

“Seems to have been a wormhole or something,” the pilot replied. “We've entered a system with a gas giant orbiting a red-giant star. There's . . . there's a Vim derelict orbiting the planet, too. One hell of a strong beacon signal coming from it.”

“Any other ships?” Kivita asked in a tight voice.

“None so far,” the pilot replied. “But that signal is hampering our scanners.”

Kivita glanced at Navon. “In all my salvaging, I never came across a Vim derelict that close to a planet.”

Navon grunted. “We lack enough transports to evacuate this ship if need be. I will not risk all these lives on what must be a trap. Would you be willing to communicate with this derelict—the way your mother must have tried?”

The Naxan Sage clicked twice. “That is supposition. We should leave this system before we are caught. Cheseia's betrayal has already decided that.”

“We may not have much choice,” Jandeel said. “I believe in what Kivita can do.”

“Then so shall I.” Navon smiled sadly and handed the Juxj Star to Kivita.

“See, it glows again,” Kivita said, as the gem flared red in her grasp. “Maybe it recognizes me.”

“A star in hand. I hope it will always burn bright,” Navon whispered. “Keep it on your person. If we are to
evacuate
Luccan's Wish
, these datacores must be spread out among the Thedes.” He took the stone one and handed it to Jandeel. “Awaken everyone from cryostasis. We will gather in the observation deck on Level Four.”

•   •   •

The observation deck's large viewport was open, revealing a turquoise-hued gas giant. Storm swirls surged just beneath the planet's opaque atmosphere, matching the stony frowns on Thede faces. Kivita stood with crossed arms; Cheseia sat behind her. Four armed guards waited near the morose Ascali.

Jandeel pointed at Cheseia. “Cheseia is a traitor! Even now our enemies might be in this system with us. This system isn't safe. I say we make a jump now to Tannocci Space. Stand behind our queen!”

“Let us stay and fight any who comes! It's what Sar Redryll would have done!” a Sutaran called out.

Kivita's cheeks burned. Cheseia hung her bandaged head.

Many shouted in support, though several remained silent. Men, women, and children, fresh from cryostasis, all studied Kivita. Navon and the other Savants frowned, while the Sages whispered among themselves. A few people in maroon or purple clothes, including Rhii and Basheev, stood near Jandeel.

“I'm not anyone's queen,” Kivita said. “Look. I'm no better than any of you. Because of me, we're all in danger now. Cheseia's actions can't be undone, okay? She will be punished, but not with death. I think this ship should leave while a few of us take a look at this derelict with
Frevyx
. We can't just ignore what these coordinates have led us to.”

More than a few nodded in assent with her words, but Navon held up a hand.

“We must evacuate
Luccan's Wish
. Never before have the Inheritors tracked this ship. They will expect to find it here. If we are gone, the search will continue. So will our misery.”

“Where will we truly go?” an Ascali asked.

“I say we fight!” a man shouted.

“With what?” Maihh asked, then clicked once.

“Lead us, Queen Kivita!” someone cried.

Kivita stepped forward. All grew quiet and watched her with hopeful stares.

“Listen. I've learned so much from you all. I've learned the universe can be a better place if we don't give up. But I'm no Inheritor saint or Solar Advocate come to lead you to something better. It doesn't matter who my mother was or what I can do. We're all equals here. But it does matter what we do.” She swallowed, knowing all those adoring stares were something she couldn't live up to.

“We don't have the ships to evacuate everyone,” Jandeel said. “Some will have to remain aboard for such a decoy plan, Navon. Too many.”

“That is a ghastly choice,” the Tahe Sage said, pulling her white bindings tighter.

“Without null beacons, they'll track us, anyway!” a woman in the back yelled.

“It's me they want,” Kivita said in a loud voice, and the crowd quieted again. “So I'll stay.”

People bustled and shouted. Basheev gripped Kivita's hand, fear in his brown eyes. Navon tried to calm the crowd, but most ignored him. Cheseia touched Kivita's back with a trembling hand.

Closing her eyes, Kivita concentrated. This time it was harder to withhold data rather than share it with everyone in the room. Her skull numbed and her hearing dimmed. The image of her mother holding her on the Susuron beach reached everyone's mind within the observation deck. Voices died away; pushing and shoving ended. As she opened her eyes, everyone gaped at her.