Primary Inversion (15 page)

      
I pushed him away. “I’m sorry.”

      
At first he wouldn’t let go. Finally, when I didn’t respond, he dropped his arms. “I hope this man Rex appreciates his fortune.”

      
“I shouldn’t have come here.”

      
“Stay. Please.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. It was a Vscript, the written record of a virtual telegram. “I received this two hours ago. I want you to tell me your version of what it means.”

      
I took the card—and barely kept my mouth from dropping open. Its seal was unmistakable; it came from his father, the emperor. The heading indicated it had been decoded by Jaibriol’s console, so it must have been sent in secret. The man who ruled the Trader Empire had certainly never meant an Imperial Jagernaut to see it.

      
The Highton message was brief:
J’briol—I have sent flags to smooth the situation on Tams. Proceed there to oversee.

      
I closed my eyes, then opened them and reread it to make sure I had it right. “What have you been told this means?”

      
“Nothing. But I can guess. Smoothing the situation must mean he plans to intimidate them, maybe fire on the planet.” He spoke freely, willingly divulging information to an enemy officer without even the guarded tone he used with his own retinue. “My father wants me there by the time the action is finished to see first hand how to deal with a problem like Tams.” Self-disgust filled his voice. “I am not much of an heir. I think he means for that to change.”

      
“You think Tams is a problem?”

      
“Yes.”

      
I clenched my fist, crumpling the Vscript. “That ‘problem’ comes from a lot of desperate people terrified of their Highton conquerors.”

      
“Sauscony.” He took hold of my shoulders. “You see the situation through your own biases. I know you believe them. But I see it differently.”

      
I jerked away, wondering if I should hate him after all. “Then see this, Highton.” I crammed the card back into his hand. “We’ve intercepted these coded messages before. A ‘flag’ is a battle cruiser and its associated warships. You want to know what ‘smoothing’ means? Those warships are going to destroy the Tams atmosphere.”

      
“How can you believe such a lie?”

      
“Lie?” I wanted to shake him. “I’ve
seen
it. Your father had it done to both CJ4 and Bullseye when the people overthrew their Aristo lords there.”

      
His anger flared. “The people of CJ4 destroyed themselves with chemical warfare. I’ve never heard of Bullseye. Perhaps your propaganda ministers created it.”

      
“I don’t need to convince you.” My voice quieted. “Your life may have been sheltered, but you’re no fool. As soon as you start living among the Hightons, you’ll know the truth. You must already suspect, despite what you say, or you would have never asked me here tonight.”

      
No arrogance showed on his face, only pain. “If my father tells me the truth, I must believe you are a monster. I should kill you now before you have a chance to become Imperator of Skolia. If you tell me the truth, my father is a monster and he is the one I should kill.” He spread his hands. “Kill a person I love? I could never do it. Not my father. Not you.”

      
I stared at him. “How can you think you love me? You’ve only known me a few hours.”

      
“We’ve known each other our entire lives.” He touched my temple. “We lived them together tonight.”

      
I pushed his hand away. He was wrong. I could never love the Trader Emperor’s son.

      
“It won’t go away, Sauscony.” He met my gaze steadily. “No matter how you deny it, we will live with what happened tonight for the rest of our lives. If I become Emperor and you become Imperator, we will have to live with it even as we swear to destroy everything the other most values.”

      
“You won’t value what you inherit.” I barely kept my voice calm. “You’ll hate everything it represents. And you’ll live in terror, knowing you’re only a breath away from becoming its victim.”

      
“If that is true, then I will change it.”

      
“Change it? Gods, Jaibriol, the structure of your empire is built, from its foundations up, on the Aristo need for providers. It’s not a social problem you can correct or a few evil people you can remove from office. You can no more stop the brutality of the Aristos than you can eliminate their drive to eat or sleep. If you try, they’ll crucify you.”

      
His fist clenched. “You’re wrong.”

      
I spoke gently. “I’m sorry for what your life is going to become. I wish I could change it.”

      
“I don’t want pity. I want you.”

      
His longing was so intense I could almost touch it, the ache of a man denied human contact his entire life, a child denied love from the day of his birth. And I wanted him so much it burned. But if I admitted it even here, where no one but he and I would ever know, I could never face anyone else I loved.

      
“I can’t stay with you,” I said.

      
He took a deep breath and spoke in his cold Highton accent. “Then go.”

      
Somehow I made myself turn and walk away into the shadows.

VI

Blackstar Squad

I raced back to the Inn, calling with my mind to Rex, Helda and Taas:
Get up. NOW.
As I strode into the hotel, Rex was running down the staircase that swept into the lobby like the train of a blood-red wedding dress. I ran past the startled clerk and met Rex halfway up the stairs.

      
“I found out why the Aristo is here.” I paused, out of breath. “He’s Qox’s son.”

      
Rex stared at me. “
What?
”

      
“The Heir.” Saying it out loud, I heard how fantastic it sounded. “That man we saw—he’s the Highton Heir.”

      
Helda and Taas appeared at the top of the stairs, striding around the corner in time to hear my statement. They made in down to where I stood with Rex in two seconds.

      
“His name is Jaibriol,” I said. “Jaibriol Qox.” I looked around at them. “It’s why Rex and I thought he was familiar. He looks like his grandfather.”

      
“How you find all this out?” Helda asked.

      
“I figured out where he was staying. I broke into his mesh system there. His father sent him a coded message about Tams.”

      
“You’ve been busy,” Rex said.

      
I grimaced. “I’ve been arrested, mug shot, lined up with five clones, questioned by the politest police alive and gone to the hospital to see two providers who escaped when I crashed Qox’s mansion. They asked the Allieds for sanctuary.”

      
“You did all that in one night?” Taas asked.

      
Helda smiled. “Why you need us, Soz?”

      
I took a breath. “Because Ur Qox is going to flood out Tams.”

      
“What does that mean?” Taas asked.

      
I regarded him steadily. “At Bullseye he did it by converting part of the planet’s moon into hydrogen. At CJ4 he used an asteroid. They pour hydrogen into the atmosphere and use gigantic discharges to make it react with the oxygen and produce water.” I grimaced. “It’s going to rain good and hard on Tams. When it’s over, there won’t be any oxygen left in the atmosphere and the surface will be flooded.” I thought of Allied religious texts I had read. No ark was going to save Tams. When Lucifer impersonated God, nobody survived.

      
Rex’s jaw stiffened. He and I had been with the battalion that found CJ4 after its destruction. ISC kept the record of what we had found under tight security. They didn’t want the panic they feared would happen if our people realized Qox could destroy our worlds the same way he had done his own, should our precarious defenses ever weakened.

      
“When does it happen?” Helda asked.

      
“He’s sent flags,” I said. “I doubt they’re there yet.”

      
“We have warn Tams,” Taas said. “Tell them to evacuate.”

      
Rex spoke quietly. “Evacuate in what?”

      
I felt as if my stomach dropped. What indeed? The Trader sabotage had destroyed the engines and EI pilots of the rebels’ space craft. How could Tams evacuate without functioning ships?

      
Taas looked from me to Rex. “Even without factories, they could still have been trying to rebuild their ship drives.”

      
“Rebuilding isn’t their biggest problem,” Rex said. “It’s the EI pilots that run the ships.”

      
“Tams is a mining station,” I said. “They don’t have the expertise to create an EI pilot from scratch, especially not this fast.”

      
“We can send them some,” Helda said. “We make them from the EI’s on our own ships.”

      
“Yes.” Taas tensed as if readying himself for launch. “We can put them in robot drones and launch from the stand-off weapons platform in E-sector.”

      
Rex considered the thought. “If the drones don’t make it through, we won’t have time for a second try before the Trader flags arrive.”

      
“The rebels have control of the ground defenses,” Taas pointed out.

      
“Even so,” Rex said. “The orbital defenses aren’t trifles, and the Trader military has those. We have to succeed on the first try. Once the flags get there, it’s over. We need to send in human pilots.”

      
They looked at me. I knew the decision they were waiting to hear. We all knew the odds. Warfare had evolved terrifyingly beyond the abilities of humans to fight it. Although drones with EI pilots couldn’t match the human mind when it came to innovation, no human could survive against the light speed processing abilities of a drone or its ability to endure immense accelerations.

      
Except a Jagernaut.

      
The enhanced link between our brains and our ships boosted our minds into the ship’s EI. Add to that the advances in the stasis technology that protected humans from g-forces and the end result was a weapon with the speed and endurance of a drone and the creativity of the human mind.

      
“We’re the only squad in this quadrant,” I said.

      
“When do we leave?” Taas asked.

      
That was it. No one said a word about our nil chance of success. They just waited to hear my answer, waited to follow me into a fight we couldn’t win. Even if we got the EI’s through to Tams, no way existed to evacuate six hundred million people in time.

      
Rex’s thought came to me.
If we save only one life, it’s worth it.

      
Rex…
I had been so afraid that what had happened tonight would destroy what I felt for him. But as soon as his thoughts touched mine, I knew our connection was as strong as ever. This was Rex, who had been with me for years, more than a friend, soon to be a husband. Now I had to do what I swore would never happen—send the man I loved into combat. Yes, I had been doing it for years, but I had never acknowledged the truth of that until tonight.

      
They watched me, waiting for orders.

      
“First we send a report to HQ,” I said. Backup would never reach us in time, but we had to try. “Then we leave.”

#

It was hours before sunrise when we jogged out of the gate at the starport. Our ships waited on the field, Jag starships, the single-pilot craft that gave Jagernauts their name. Technically the craft were JG-17 fighters. The name Jag came from “lightning jag,” a nickname test pilots had given the prototype, the JG-1.

      
The ships looked like alabaster works of art. On the ground, they were elongated, with wings extended. In flight, they would change according to our needs: spread wings for subsonic speeds; wings tight against the body in hypersonic flight; rounder shape to minimize surface area during interstellar flight; more rounded for stealth or battle. Right now, their weapons were retracted, hidden in protected bays.

      
I strode next to my Jag, my hand sliding across its surface like a skater on ice. It had a tellerene hull, a composite threaded with microscopic wires designed from fullerene tubes. Lightweight and fatigue resistant, tellerene retained its strength even at the high temperatures of hypersonic reentry. It was also self-repairing; the dangling bonds in a broken fullerene molecule reattached, mending the wire. The hull showed fewer of the pits, grooves and other damage from space travel, a smoothness that was one more factor in optimizing its performance. Like their pilots, Jags were top-of-the-line technology, fast and deadly.

      
I stopped midway between the nose and the tail. Had I not already known about the tiny silver prong there, I might never have found it in the featureless hull. As soon as I pushed my wrist against the prong, it snicked into my socket.

      
Connection,
my node thought.

      
Verified.
The response came from Blackstar, the ship’s EI.

      
The airlock whooshed opened, a tiny hole that widened into a human-sized oval so fast its edges shimmered. The outer and inner doors opened simultaneously; Blackstar had analyzed the atmosphere and found it acceptable.

      
As I climbed into the cabin, the inner hull activated, glowing with diffuse light. The cabin was small, less than two meters wide and three long. Equipment filled the free space and bulkhead compartments: cocoon seats and a bunk, gear, hand weapons, food dispenser, waste processor, water line, whatever I needed to survive in space.