Ruler of Naught (70 page)

Gormen turned back to his console and tapped at it. “Attack
profile is now entered, sir. Tac-level four, narrow-beam lazplaz attack,
engines only, then drunkwalk skips while we wait for a response.”

“Very well, Commander. Navigation, take us in to point-five
light-seconds. Engage.”

The fiveskip snarled. Then the screens cleared, a narrow
thread of light lanced out toward their target. One second later a rosette of
light bloomed where the frigate had been, churning as it faded away.

“Bloody hell,” snapped Armenhaut, jumping to his feet.
“Weapons, I wanted a Rifter frigate, not a Telos-damned ball of plasma.”

“I can’t be held responsible for shoddy maintenance on a
Rifter frigate. I put the lazplaz right on target.”

The answer should have been
Yes sir
. It would have
been, had ‘Weapons’ been anyone but Gertrud ban-Freyhart, cousin to one Archon,
niece of another, and grand-daughter of the primary Cartano line.

Armenhaut stood a moment longer, glaring at ban-Freyhart,
who gazed back with the faint eyebrow-lift of moral superiority. He wanted so
badly to throw her off the bridge he could taste the words, but he didn’t dare
for the same reason she was here in the first place. The same reason she was a
Lieutenant Commander, promoted (he’d found out too late) from place to place as
her long line of former captains got rid of her. Her fitrep full of empty
phrases that might as well have been summarized in two words:
powerful
relatives
.

So he turned to Commander Gormen, and forced his voice to
the cool Douloi cadence of control. “One of the hazards of dealing with
Rifters. Since we can hit any Rifter vessel several times before they can
react, we’ll dial down the power.”

Gormen stared at the viewscreen, his face wooden, and
Armenhaut hated the necessity to finesse ban-Freyhart’s failure. He could just
hear her talking to her relatives,
We were there to fight Rifters, weren’t
we? Captain Armenhaut made his opinion of Captain Ng clear, and so I thought,
an officer shows initiative...

“
Flammarion
is going to take this hypothetical
communications device.
Flammarion
is going to show the fleet how it’s to
be done, as we always do. After which we will have some target practice.” He
paused, and when the bridge responded with
AyKay, captain!
, he said, “Communications,
signal the squadron. Target volume two. Navigation, take us to the next
position. Engage.”

o0o

“Target pattern confirmed,” Rom-Sanchez sang out, proud of
the steadiness of his voice. “We’ve got them.” He turned to the captain.

The tactical plot showed a god’s-eye view of the middle
system, with the
Grozniy
, its attendant ships, and their target, the
Rifter destroyer
Finality Jones
, in the ecliptic just sunward of the
asteroid belt.

“They haven’t changed their tactical algorithm since the
last update to the signature banks,” he continued. “They’re still using the
Salim set... at leg five now.” On the viewscreen the Tenno shifted, echoing the
new information with the added dimensionality of Warrigal’s L-5 mods. He knew
she was down in the plot room, fine-tuning the Tenno response as they fought,
with the help of Commander Hurli and her team.

“Weapons, prepare for narrow-beam lazplaz attack,” Ng said.
“Target the engines and accelerator only. Fire on emergence. Navigation, take
us in to point-five light-seconds.” She paused, then said, “Engage.”

The fiveskip snarled; it was set to a high tac level for
precise control and high real velocity.

“Retargeting,” said Lt. Herrick at the weapons console, as
the fiveskip fell silent. “Firing.”

Rom-Sanchez found Herrick’s balding head and his grizzled
profile oddly reassuring, but then his life had been full of opposites since
Treymontaigne. The presence of an older office recalled to the bridge after
being promoted away somehow underscored the captain’s confidence in the younger
officers. Among whom Rom-Sanchez counted himself.

On the viewscreen a glowing thread marking the complex beam
of coherent light and near lightspeed plasma lanced out, intersecting a twinkle
distinguished from the stars around it only by the targeting cross imposed upon
it by the computer. It vanished, then lanced out again, then finally ceased
altogether.

The Tenno flickered again, poised in ambiguity.

Rom-Sanchez watched, aware of his heartbeat thumping in his
temples, grateful anew that Captain Ng had confirmed him as alpha crew for this
engagement. He’d been afraid that all the time he had to spend training other
officers would let Nilotis catch up with him—fellow Loonies had feared the same
for their positions.

He glanced at Wychyrski and Ammant, now resigned to his new
nickname, “Vomit Comet.”
Better than Prettyboy
, he’d said when the
Loonies met up for a private celebration of their promotions. And Nilotis, who
had been an enormous help, hadn’t suffered by Rom-Sanchez’s promotion—he was
now alpha tactical on
Babur Khan.

Rom-Sanchez thought back to his debriefing after
Treymontaigne, once the most pressing of the repairs had been made. He’d
planned all kinds of stirring, heroic responses, but then he’d sat across from
the captain, and had her steady gaze on his face as she asked,
So how did
you feel about combat?

The stirring words had dried up, and he said,
I hated it.
But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else
.

Her chin had lifted in that expression he’d come to know as
approval. He saw that same expression now as she surveyed the bridge crew.

o0o

“You have the freedom of Desrien. Make what use of it you
will.”

Marim snorted a laugh as she bustled away. She felt a whole
lot lighter—she’d definitely make use of the place. After all, if a person
didn’t look out for herself, who would?

The cathedral was a typical dirt-bound construct, with a
heavy symmetry that dragged at her bones. All up and down. Marim considered the
groined stonework far overhead. That was kind of hoorah, sort of like old
Benewals’ palace at the spin axis back home. Everybody said he’d had treasure.
All nullers did. Maybe they had treasures here. Probably up high.

She looked around for a staircase—somehow she was pretty
sure they didn’t have lifts here, and surely not lev-tubes. She checked a
couple times to make sure the old woman hadn’t followed her, like the
busybiddies in Scerren, where she’d grown up. She didn’t need a lecture about
religious stuff from some old bore.

She found a foursquare staircase with a central well that
dwindled above her into distance. Here!

Marim bounded up the first layer of steps, but that soon
became plodding. Seriously out of breath, she cursed the lack of tech, and her
aching thighs.

She finally reached a huge room with a confusion of bronze
bells clustered overhead, ropes depending from them through the floor. There
was a single large cupboard—no lock on it—that she swiftly opened. Nothing.
Just rags and cans, a neat rank of odd tools.

No treasure here. A groined arch framed a vista of soft
distance which Marim merely glanced at. Looking out a different way she saw
other towers, but she’d have to go all the way back down and back up to check
them out.

She was tired. She climbed out the opening and stretched out
on a wide ledge that seemed to run all around the top of the tower. It was warm
in the sunlight. She yawned and stretched herself full length.
Just for a
moment, until my legs stop hurting.
She shut her eyes, and the Dreamtime
took her.

She fell and fell, the useless broken wings flapping
around her for kilometer after kilometer until the inner hull rushed up to
smash her—

Marim’s entire body wrenched, shocking her awake. She sucked
in air, and discovered she lay on a ledge hundreds of feet up, but not in the
safe, sane low-gee part of a habitat. She was stuck in a full planetary gee field.
I
could have rolled off—

She wiped her eyes, sobbing for breath as she scrambled back
into the tower.
This place is trying to kill me!

It was late, the horizon gobbling the sun. She wanted to
find the others. She wanted to tell Ivard about the dream because he would get
scared, too, and when you share fear, that somehow makes it less. She wanted to
get Lokri to joke her out of the fear. She wanted to hear Vi'ya condemn dreams
as foolishness, like ghosts and demons.
I want to be with them
, she
thought.

Her thighs hurt even more on the way down, which seemed
endless. She didn’t even care about treasure anymore, just getting away. Even a
Navy brig was better than this.

o0o

Ng’s eyes flicked back to the viewscreen as it flickered to
a close-in view of
Finality Jones
. Plasma sparkled from a rent in the
destroyer’s aft section. Its radiants flared, then guttered out. There was a
blast of plasma from midway along the ship’s missile tube. It bent, its complex
struts crumpling as the stricken ship began to yaw.

“That’s got it.” Ng drummed her armrest. “Resume assigned
drunkwalk.”

The fiveskip burped again as the navigator re-engaged the evasive
program, known to other ships in the fleet to make it easier to find each other,
that would increase their chance of avoiding surprise attack by ships
responding to the distress call of their victim.
If it has a hyperwave.
The
program was harder on the engines than the standard drunkwalks devised before
the hyperwave had overturned so much Naval experience.

They waited, time crawling as each time they emerged and
relocated
Finality Jones
. Finally, as the commander stirred impatiently
in his pod, Ng shook her head.

“That’s it, then. No hyperwave on this one.” She paused,
distaste souring her throat at the necessary next order. The heat of battle was
the proper setting for death—not deliberate executions. “Weapons, shoot ruptor,
one turret, full power.”

The
Finality Jones
disintegrated into a blast of
light and glowing threads of light that dissipated rapidly.

“Communications, signal the squadron. Target volume two.
Dispatch this engagement record for tacponder distribution, full-sphere burst.”

The communications console twittered. “Record dispatched, Captain.”

“Navigation, take us to the next battle coordinates.”

As the fiveskip engaged, Ng wondered what kind of luck
Armenhaut and KepSingh were having. The older officer she wasn’t worried about.
KepSingh had jumped at the offer of Mdeino Nilotis as tactical officer for the
battle, and had drilled himself and his crew mercilessly while they waited at
the rendezvous.

“I just wish I was young enough for Augment,” he’d said.

But Armenhaut.
The new Tenno had defeated him, she
was sure—he’d attended only the first briefing—and his wounded pride had moved
him to refuse her offer of Sublieutenant Hjivarno for tactical support onboard
Flammarion
.
She could have ordered him to accept the transfer, but there’d be no
cooperation and thus no tactical advantage. She refused to put one of her
officers—not to mention one of her Loonies—in that situation.

“Courier from
Shahmat
. Possible contact, destroyer.”

Ng redirected the squadron—or rather, issued the orders that
would redirect each ship when the orders reached it via courier, beam, or
transponder.

She wasn’t surprised by how quickly the frigate had
reported. The Navy had centuries of stored tactical sets to render operations
outside light cones easier. With three squadrons, each composed of a
battlecruiser, three frigates, and assorted corvettes, the odds had been they
would encounter what they sought fairly soon—especially considering how thickly
strewn with tacponders the Arthelion system was. Even Ng had been surprised at
their density.
But then, they’ve had almost a thousand years to place them.
The combination of thousands of tacponders and efficient use of courier ships
gave them communications almost as good as if they had Eusabian’s FTL comms in
each ship. But not quite.

And Eusabian has that advantage across the entire
Thousand Suns.
The thought reassured her of the rightness of her actions,
but that didn’t stop the ache at the thought of the cost they would doubtless
pay. She could not prevent her mind from shooting straight to Metellus,
slashing at the
Fist of Dol’jhar
above Arthelion.

“... and I will pay whatever price demanded by my oath
and honor... ”
The fragment of the Naval Oath resonated in her bones, and
though she meant to keep busy and rational, the viewscreen replaced itself with
memory of Metellus’s ardent face their last night, his warm touch, the tickle
of his breath on her throat. They paid the price of honor with each separation,
but she knew that the one left behind would bear the cost of loyalty.

Gelasaar hai-Arkad sat between two Tarkans as the transtube
decelerated with distressing force. The prison tunic the Dol’jharians had
issued him itched, but that was not half so distressing to his fastidious
nature as the smell—his captors’ ideas of hygiene fell well short of his own.

It hadn’t been so long ago that his worries were planetary
economies and millions of lives; now his concerns had narrowed to bad laundry
practices and unpalatable food. And the ever-present drag of 1.2 gees.

A soft laugh escaped him as he remembered his former
longings for a simpler life.

“Prayers which heaven in enormous vengeance grants.”

He spoke out loud, provoking a change from alertness to
wariness in one of the Tarkans.
Do you understand Uni?
Perhaps only the
word “vengeance”: that, a Dol’jharian might be expected to understand in any
tongue.
Probably thinks I’m curse-weaving against his master.