Ruler of Naught (24 page)

When Ivard had finished, Osri said, “How frequently does
this happen?”

“You mean the Kelly ribbon, or someone in the crew getting
zapped?”

“The fights. And deaths.”

Ivard shrugged. “Depends on what kind of action we see—and
how often. Other than Jakarr’s try to take over on Dis, when you came, we
haven’t lost many since... oh, since Markham died. Few burns the last brush we
had with Hreem, the one at the booster field on Morigi II.”

“The reward must be considerable for you to take such
risks.”

Ivard nodded. “Is! When we pull one. Been a long while,
though, which is one of the reasons Jakarr acted like he did. Wanted to go
raiding. Vi’ya said we had to stick to raiding slavers, Hreem being number one
choice.”

“Stick to slavers... ” Osri repeated. “I believe I heard
someone in Merryn refer to this Hreem madman as a slave-runner, but—” He
frowned. “Surely this all takes place out-octant!”

“Most. Not all, though. And of course, there’s the Dol’jharian
planets, the ones that got Quarantined after the war. Markham liked raiding
them. They got slaves, though no one much goes there or leaves. Or did,” he
amended soberly.

“So that is the connection between Eusabian of Dol’jhar and
Hreem? Buying slaves?” Osri looked skeptical.

Ivard grinned. “Don’t know. Maybe. They’d have to be special
ones. Vi’ya said the cheapest commodities on Dol’jhar are people and ash.”

Interest lifted Osri’s heavy brow. “You’ve been to Dol’jhar?”

“No. Had to be first crew for that. I was getting close,
when...” Ivard closed his eyes. Grief for Markham tasted blue and cold, waking
up the grief for Greywing.

So you steal Hreem’s, ah, cargoes of slaves, and resell
them?”

Ivard took a breath, and tried to fight the blue away. “No,
we sell the cargoes. Slave-runners almost always carry other illegal stuff.” It
was taking too much effort to speak, but he tried. “Worth a lot on Rifthaven.
Let the slaves go on an out-octant world, usually.”

Osri’s black brows crimped with disbelief. “Finish your
food,” he said. “And drink this.”

o0o

“... and when I asked the boy if this woman jacks slaveships
for revenge or for profit, he said, ‘Both.’”

Sebastian Omilov sipped at the hot drink his son had brought
and observed him over the rim of his cup.

Osri frowned. “Not that I believe that they let the slaves
go. He’d have to say that, knowing how stiff is the penalty for getting caught
in such a trade. ‘Slaves.’ Distasteful word.”

Distasteful.
“Evil, I should say. Tragic.” Omilov
spoke in an undertone, and as always his son scarcely listened.

Not that he ignored his father, or cut in—he was too polite
for that. But he paused for him to speak, and then went on in a musing tone,
exactly as if Omilov had been silent, “He probably said it hoping that I would
not report to the authorities the names of the individuals on this ship. But I
shall.” He touched his bare wrist. “Though I cannot record their admissions as
evidence, I will remember.”

Omilov suppressed a sigh, studying Osri’s face, so familiar,
so odd a blend of his own features and his mother’s.

And so readable.

Osri’s emotions changed the angle of the black brows so like
Sebastian’s own, and lengthened the long upper lip that Risiena’s Ghettierus
genes had given him. Risiena was just the same way—but unlike her son, she
could hide her thoughts when she chose. It was just that she seldom chose to.
She didn’t have to, behaving like the absolute ruler of the Ghetterius’s terraformed
moon, a status actually lost centuries past when Aghlevar was brought into the
Panarchy.

Sebastian became aware that a pause had stretched to
silence. He looked up. Osri’s eyes were narrowed in exasperation. “You were
not listening to me, Father.”

I could not love his mother, but I do love him. But I
don’t seem to be able to protect him anymore.

“I apologize, Osri. I must be more tired than I’d thought.”

Quick concern narrowed the dense black eyes. “What did that
old monster do to you?”

“Eased my recovery considerably,” Omilov murmured. “Whatever
else he has done, Montrose is a superb physician. Osri, we are here, under
their control. Our duty is to aid the Aerenarch—”

“But he does nothing.” Osri gritted his teeth. “And when he
did take action, it was to lead them—not just to permit them, but to lead
them—on a raid of the Ivory Antechamber. This ship, according to that fool of a
boy, is packed with the artifacts they stole. And Brandon watched them do it,
saying it was better they had the things than the Dol’jharians use them for
target practice.”

“You must remember that those artifacts are part of the
Arkad inheritance. I believe the law would dictate that they belong to
Brandon—and of course, his father—to dispose of as they will.”

Osri’s lips pressed in a thin line, and for the first time,
his gaze dropped. “I thought it was our duty to recover them.”

“That is for the Panarch to say.” Omilov watched his son accept
this in silence, and then a new thought occurred to him, for the first time
ever:
He’s hiding something from me.

Then Osri stood, running his thumb absently along the edge
of the bed. “There is less than a week remaining before we reach their base.”
Osri closed his fingers into a fist. “This talk of slaves. They might sell us,
and I believe Brandon will stand by and watch.”

“You forget that of all of us, he is the main target,”
Omilov reminded him.

o0o

Ng’s stomach lurched.

“Final cis-lunar drone reconnaissance uploaded,” Wychyrski
sang out, her fingers moving rapidly over her console. The stealthed platforms
had been accelerated to fractional-cee velocity across the ecliptic by
corvettes, their data downloaded via laser after their pass. Physical retrieval
could wait until after the battle.

The tactical screen rippled as the god’s-eye view of the
system adjusted and the Tenno flickered into another new and momentarily unfamiliar
configuration. Ng’s stomach lurched again, matching the pang behind her eyes
and a ripple in her vision, prodromal to the visual migraines that were,
finally, barely, under control. Her body sang with a weird energy that had the
affect of anxiety tinged with an emotional tenor akin to sexual energy, the
latter something she had never associated with combat—a combination she found
repellent.

Considering the witch’s brew of hormones and agents coursing
through her body, it wasn’t surprising that it felt like she was fourteen
again.
It’s too much like my first year in the Academy, including learning
the Tenno.
The new, trans-relativistic glyphs Warrigal and Rom-Sanchez had
devised were still hard to parse, despite the Augmented practice in the
simulator.

Her gaze roamed across the Loonies on the bridge—something
about the Augment agents had imprinted that term on her mind, another minor
irritation. But irritation was far from her feeling about the junior officers
who’d found a game the royal road to an accelerated career.

Warrigal of course. Ng glanced at the ensign, busy at a
console configured for tactical support, with Lieutenant Commander Nilotis next
to her, intent as the tactical data flooded in. And Rom-Sanchez, who had been
on the lower orbit even before Treymontaigne. But Wychyrski was coming on
splendidly as well, going a long way toward justifying the risk Ng had taken in
putting her in alpha crew, young as she was.

No, it wasn’t her youth. Ng had also been extremely young,
and knew what prejudices rode right alongside the special treatment that
shadowed one who was appreciably junior to one’s peers. It was Wychyrski’s
immaturity in other ways. Nothing that ever showed up in fitreps... unless you
were skilled at reading the patterns behind the word choices.

“Tactical,” said Ng.

“Cis-lunar dispositions confirmed,” replied Rom-Sanchez.
“First tranche Alpha, Xaloc-class frigate, six corvettes. The frigate is almost
certainly the only ship there with a hyperwave. There may be more corvettes or
smaller ships concealed by the Highdwellings.”

That completed the tactical picture. As predicted, the
Grozniy’s
sensors had detected three more Rifter squadrons—destroyer, frigate, and
smaller. Two followed a tight drunkwalk centered on each of the two standard emergence
points. The other destroyer’s skip orbit was centered on the planet. In all,
four ships with hyperwave.

“Launch corvette squadrons,” said Ng.

Commander Krajno tabbed his console. “Corvettes away. One
minute to Treymontaigne emergence.”

On the viewscreen two of the squadrons—two corvettes
each—came into view as they left the bays of the
Grozniy
, their radiants
flaring. Ng smiled, admiring their lean beauty; adapted for atmospheric flight,
the fairings and swept-back thorns of their weapons pods lent them the aspect
of predatory sea creatures, sleek and deadly.

They dwindled swiftly and she lost them in the starfield.
On-screen the emergence countdown ticked off the seconds.

In her mind’s eye, she envisioned the red bursts of light as
they leapt out of fourspace toward Treymontaigne. Then emergence in and around cis-lunar
space before vanishing back into fivespace, scattering their crop of dragon’s
teeth. The cutters would add their minim later, during the fog of battle: tacponders
to monitor the action, gee-mines to cripple fiveskips, and
leeches—sneak-missiles armed with shaped charges—to stab through shields and
hull metal with fingers of nuclear flame.

With any luck, the targets in high orbit would already be
crippled when the
Grozniy
emerged after its apparently standard
approach. And if not, the dragon’s teeth would be waiting for any enemy who
emerged within range during the ensuing battle.

Now they had but a minute before the Rifters detected the emergence
pulses of the corvettes and notified the other ships via hyperwave.

Ng’s fingers tingled as she, poised over them over her
console; the familiar intensity of battle-readiness gripped her.

“Ruptor turrets ready, skipmissile charged,” said Krajno.

“Very well. On emergence, ruptor barrages first by size,
target skipmissile on destroyer or frigate only. Take us in,” she said.

“Ten light-minutes out and over Treymontaigne,” the
navigator sang out when the fiveskip disengaged.

“Major targets: frigate bearing 144 mark 32, plus 13
light-seconds, destroyer Alpha -3 bearing 237 mark 61, plus 80 light-seconds!”
Hjivarno at Fire Control shouted, her voice overriding the emergence bells. “Vectored!”

The bridge trembled faintly as the ruptor turrets bearing on
the targets discharged a probabilistic barrage. They were unlikely to connect,
but the discharge didn’t cost them much. If the targets were still using the
tactical sets predicted by their SigInt profiles, they might run into the
spread.

The starfield on the screen was slewing as the ship came
about. “Shoot skipmissile on acquisition,” Ng said, using the bridge cadence.
Telos was with them: against all odds they’d emerged—barely—within range. It
was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The reddish chain wake of the skipmissile filled the image
and faded. “Skipmissile charging,” Hjivarno sang out.

“... eight, seven, six, five... ” The navigator counted down
the thirteen seconds since emergence, by the end of which they had to skip. If
the frigate possessed a hyperwave after all, that was the only way to avoid
being targeted by a destroyer in FTL contact.

”Tactical skip executed,” said Lieutenant Mzinga.

“Major targets bearing 145 mark 32, plus 15 light-seconds,
frigate; 236 mark 61, plus 83 light-seconds, destroyer.” A few seconds later: “Skipmissile
missed,” then, before the crew could react, “ruptor strike, frigate, target
destroyed!”

The viewscreen flickered to a closer view, revealing the
roiling smear of plasma characteristic of a ship torn apart by intense gee
fields.

“Skip pulse, 145 Mark 32, 18 light seconds. Sub-corvette of
some sort. No ID.” Wychyrski’s voice rang out above the cheering of the crew. Ng
let them; the release of anger would calm them for the more difficult action
ahead.

The Tenno rippled, confirming what Ng already knew. The
little ship was on its way to alert the destroyer, but it didn’t matter. She
glanced at the tactical countdown indicating the status of the corvette
squadrons assigned to cis-lunar space. It reached zero as she watched. The
destroyer would be on its way to Treymontaigne within seconds, now.

“Commander, take us to Treymontaigne.”

Krajno tabbed his console. “Fiveskip to tac-level five.
Engaging.” The burr of the fiveskip was harsh, almost teeth-aching. With a
lower frequency, they would emerge near Treymontaigne at a tremendous real
velocity, reducing their exposure to the supermissiles of the foe.

“Cis-lunar Treymontaigne, planetary plus 100,000 kilometers,
estimated velocity on emergence 25,000 kps.” Ng fought a reflexive shiver:
close to a tenth cee within planetary space was a risk in itself, even without
an enemy. But they would be headed through the ecliptic, and their retuned
shields would count for something, if they encountered any ship or solid object
unlucky enough to be in their path.

“Emergence.”

“Major targets bearing 13 mark 62, plus 95,000 kilometers,
destroyer; 349 mark 279, plus 115,000 kilometers, frigate; minor targets... ”

Fire Control’s voice faded from her mind as Ng concentrated
on the Tenno.

“Negative on major targets,” she stated. They were too close
to the Highdwellings, and the destroyer would be between them and the planet,
making it impossibly dangerous to use a skipmissile on it—a miss would kill a
billion-plus people on the planet. “Ruptors shoot on minor targets three, four,
seven at will. Pulse the dragon’s teeth for reorientation on major targets.”