The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (35 page)

An indistinct sense of strain came to her: the Chair couldn't connect well with her mind. Whether it was because she wasn't in the Triad or because she was just too different, Soz had no idea. But this wasn't working. It couldn't./?* with her. She needed more memory; or not more, but memory of the right kind.

Soz thought of the red-robed women known as Memories on her home world. Although rare in the general population, they were a familiar presence at her father's casde. The Bard was a historian and a judge; as such, he worked closely with them. The Lyshrioli could neither read nor write; the Memories used their holographic minds to store knowledge. Soz's ISC doctors believed Soz had inherited the genes that produced a Memory. It wasn't as useful a trait for her as for people on Lyshriol; everyone in her life as a cadet could read and write just fine. The illiteracy of the Lyshrioli didn't seem deliberate, though. Scholars believed Soz's people had been designed to mimic an ancient computer. Maybe they were only partially right. Perhaps the intent had been to increase their ability to work with the ancient Ruby machines.

She tried again.
I am your Memory.

Nothing changed in her link to the Chair.

Soz concentrated on the image of a Memory she knew, Shaliece, an elderly woman, one of her father's advisors at Casde Windward. While the battle between Devon's forces and ESComm raged in microsecond pulses, Soz strove to calm her mind into the clarity she had always sensed from Shaliece. The Memory wouldn't have said, Help me. She would have said, Show me how to help myself.

Soz thought,
Show me what I can do.

Soz diligendy tried to behold something. Nothing changed.

Well, almost nothing. Her view of the grids sharpened. The Chair had improved the resolution of her mindscape. No, that wasn't it. It had accessed the extra memory in her node.

Whispers tugged at her awareness like a conversation half overheard. After a fraction of a second, she realized the Chair had extended her capacity to link to the ISC flotilla ships. It hadn't managed to link her to any ESComm meshes, but it had improved her ability to work with her own forces. She became aware of smaller anomalies in the grid, finer shadings of color. Taking a deep breath, she went deeper into her mindscape and redoubled her efforts to optimize the ISC forces.

Her heightened awareness didn't manifest in any dramatic manner. She didn't explode the remaining ESComm forces or rip apart their communications. No spectacular displays of energy suddenly appeared. She managed nothing more than a slighdy improved sensing capability for the ISC ships. They became a shade faster at evading weapons fire and a shade better at hitting their targets. It was a small change—

But it was enough.

The rate of loss decreased for the ISC flotilla and increased for the invaders. The ISC forces dropped to 321 ships and ESComm to about 530.

Then a Jag exploded—and Soz screamed. She was more closely connected to the telepaths, especially with the Chair expanding her awareness. She wanted to curl up into a fetal ball and quit. But she couldn't or many more would die. She forced herself to keep going, holding links within the flotilla together much as she had held together the Kyle web before. A shiver tingled through her mind, a whisper of precognition, perhaps real, perhaps false: someday she would do this on a much greater scale. She pushed the distracting thought aside and focused on the flotilla mesh.

ISC 288 ships: ESComm 453.

Soz dimly heard sirens, and a large bar on her grid erupted in red. She concentrated on the rupture, and data poured into her mind. The quasis that protected the batde cruiser was weakening. Deck thirty-five had taken a severe Annihilator hit. Soz threw her support into the systems directing resources and repairs for the damaged area. She sped up the

summons racing through the cruiser's mesh, calling medics to the injured. ISC 253: ESComm 386.

Another alarm was going off, this one closer. A psicon in a corner of Soz's mindscape warned that the medical systems watching her had recorded a dangerously high blood pressure and pulse. It urgendy advised her to report to the nearest medical station. Soz just gritted her teeth.

ISC 239: ESComm 298.

An ESComm Asp fired a tau missile at an ISC Jack-knife. The Jack's quasis failed and the missile tore it apart from within. In desperation, the ISC crew rammed the dying Jack straight into the Asp. The two ships detonated"—and a hundred deaths wrenched through Soz's mind. She cried in agony, in shock, in grief. This batde had taken everything she had, even resources she hadn't known she possessed, and it wasn't enough. Their people kept dying and nothing she did would stop it. Never again would she see military strategy as only a puzzle to solve. Warfare had taken on a crushingly human aspect.

ISC 214: ESComm 213.

ISC 199: ESComm 118.

ISC 182: ESComm 43.

As the ESComm numbers plummeted, a sob escaped Soz. The flotilla was going to make it. This sliver of the invasion would fail to reach Metropoli. Had it succeeded, it could have committed an unprecedented massacre. That bloodbath was averted by the barest margin.

ISC 180: ESComm 12.

ISC 179: ESComm 0.

The remains of the flotilla limped into Metropoli, 178 ships and the cruiser. Soz heard voices over her comm, some excited, some weary, all relieved. She couldn't join their celebration. She didn't know—and never would—whether or not her decision to withdraw support from Kurj's force had made the difference in achieving mat hard-fought victory.

Soz returned her attention to the distant struggle between the main invasion and defense fleets, the batde Kurj was directing from his Triad Chair. She resumed her work for Kurj, and she sent reports to Devon Majda, who transmitted

updates to the flotilla and Metropoli. So it was that they all heard—and cheered—when the news came: ESComm was in retreat.

The rest of it came more slowly, and silenced the cheers. ISC had taken gruesome losses, a third of a million ships.

Reeling with grief, Soz remembered Kurj's words from last year: The problem, Soz, is that to lead well you have to know how to lose. You can't always win. You can't always be right. She had thought she knew what he was telling her, but she had been so very wrong. She would have to live with a bitter knowledge for the rest of her life, that in defending the flotilla and Metropoli, she had condemned an untold number of men and women to die.

The worst of it was, she would never know if she had made the right choice.

Eldrin stood in one of ten long queues formed by the refugees outside the starport, leading to a row of outdoor gates. People were crowding off the many ships putting into Baylow and coming here, thousands of them, with heat beating on their backs.

Sweat plastered Eldrin's shirt to his skin. The air smelled strange, too sweet. This world had been terraformed, so the air should be breathable, but it made him nauseous. Nor did the gravity help. He felt too light. After his ordeal on the ship, he was queasy, weak, lightheaded. His exhaustion went deep. Although bearable now, his craving for phorine remained. He would live with the miserable specter of its power over him for the rest of his life.

He had the two children with him, and he stood holding the girl's hand. The boy stood next to her, trying to be brave but obviously scared. About seven, he was old enough to have

19

Baylow Station

a better understanding of their situation. He reminded Eldrin of Taquinil, with his dark hair and alert gaze. What if something had happened to Taquinil? Or Dehya? He had to believe they were all right.

He spoke to the children in Flag, as he had many times today. "I'm Eldrin." He touched the boy's shoulder. "And you?"

The boy regarded him with solemn eyes and the girl clutched his hand. Neither had spoken in days.

"Ah, well," Eldrin murmured. "I would be afraid, too."

The girl moved closer to him. He laid an arm on her shoulders and wished he could find their guardians.

The line moved forward. Resdess with the wait, Eldrin thought,
Allegro, do you have any data about this place?

His node answered. I have a summary from the El on the freighter. It accessed visual centers of his brain, and a translucent display appeared in the air. Baylow orbited a yellow sun, which orbited a bigger, cooler star. The yellow sun appeared white from the planet, and the distant star was like a brass stud, smaller in the sky despite its large size because it was so far away. Allegro estimated that "day" here lasted tens, even hundreds of hours.

Right now, both suns were up. The sky had a blue-green tinge, which bothered Eldrin. Sweat dripped down his neck, and he tugged at his collar. He had on a white shirt and gray slacks, all self-cleaning. The captain of the freighter had also let his passengers break open soap-bots from the ship's mess, and Kaywood had tended Eldrin with them during the four-day ride. The doctor seemed to think this was a small thing, but it had made an immense difference to his patient.

A woman in front of Eldrin pulled up her hair and fanned her neck. The girl with Eldrin fidgeted with her brother's shirt, which hung out of his trousers, and he glared at her. They moved another few steps toward the gate. The official there was a member of the Imperial Relief Allocation Service, a civilian group ran by the government. The blue and white circle of the IRAS insignia gleamed on the shoulders of her khaki jumpsuit.

The closer they came to the gate, the more ill-at-ease Eldrin felt. He never spoke to anyone outside the Imperial court. It was one of the few things his family, the Assembly, and ISC agreed on; the less time the Ruby Consort spent in public, the better. He valued his privacy, and ISC liked it because it made him easier to protect. On Lyshriol he hadn't been guarded night and day, but he had just been a farm boy, far less a target for abduction or assassination. Here, without bodyguards, he felt uncertain. Anonymity was his shield.

He also wished his bodyguards were here for another reason; it would mean they were all right. He was responsible for their absence. He spent a great deal of time with the taciturn giant. He liked and respected them. He prayed someone at the port had seen to their needs better than he in the tumult of the evacuation.

No one here was likely to recognize him, though, given how rarely he appeared in public. Discretion seemed his best course. If he revealed himself, they would give him attention and resources other people needed. He had caused enough trouble for the refugees crammed in that cargo hold, forced to spend days with him while he screamed his throat raw. That was done with. The limited resources here should go to others.

The IRAS officer at the gate was dark-haired and tall like most Skolians, though nowhere near as imposing as the Abaj. She waved the woman ahead of them through the gate and beckoned to Eldrin.

This was it. As he went to the gate, he told himself he had no reason to be nervous. She looked him over, including his disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes. Even with top-notch nanos in the cloth, his shirt and trousers couldn't erase the effects of the past four days. He didn't know how he appeared, but he doubted it was good.

She spoke curtly in Flag. "Are these your children?" Her harsh tone startled him, and for the first time he realized they might take away the boy and girl. Given how scared they were, he doubted it would be a good idea, but he had no claim to them.

"Well?" the officer demanded.

"They were separated from their parents." He answered in Flag, his voice thick from his strained vocal cords. "I'm taking care of them."

She studied him with an appraising gaze. "Any injuries? We have doctors available."

He had seen how the officials here rushed Kaywood through processing because they needed doctors to treat the injured. Eldrin saw no reason to take up any medic's valuable time. His head felt as if it had been through a rock crusher, but he was fine now. Or maybe not fine, but well enough.

The officer frowned at him. "Can't you speak?"

He jerked at her hostile tone. Instinctively, he dropped his mental barriers and probed her mood. She wasn't an empath, so he only gleaned an impression, but it was enough to make him flush. She was sexually attracted to him and feared reprimands if she slipped up and let it show. So she was over-compensating.

"All right," she muttered to herself. "He won't talk. I'll deal with it." She flicked her finger through an icon above her holoboard and a new page appeared on its display.

"I'm sorry," Eldrin said. "Fm a little shaky."

Her posture relaxed. "It's not surprising, after all this." She undipped the light stylus from her board. "Name?"

"Eldrin Jarac Valdoria." He omitted his fourth name. Skolia. Only one family in the Skolian Imperialate could claim it. His other names weren't likely to identify him, but bis ID would trigger a flag in her system and spur a discreet notification to ISC.

She marked the form with her stylus. "Home?"

"Parthonia." He gave her the address of the mansion where he and Dehya sometimes stayed in Selei City. The Sunrise Palace in the hills had no address.

She directed her light stylus toward him. "This will scan your retinas, for your ID. If family or friends are searching for you, they can locate this record in our databases after the Kyle web comes back up."

He squinted as light played over his eyes. "The web is down?"

"Parts of it." Her voice was losing its edge. "Or it might be

us. We've had problems, having to set up this station too fast. We don't know what is happening out there."

Eldrin hoped the problems came from here rather than the Dyad. His certainty that they had been in trouble, in agony, could have come from the horror of his withdrawal, but he feared it was real.

"Do you have medical training?" she asked. "Engineering or communications? We're short on personnel."

"No. Nothing." Eldrin wished he had more to offer. Since his marriage to Dehya, he had spent most of his time caring for his son or creating his music. Even if he had been able to sing, which he no longer could, it had about as much utility here as mud.