The Rifter's Covenant (2 page)

The imager relaying
the horror was located about a kilometer up one of the end-caps of the doomed
sync. Below it the lush verdure of a forest stretched into hazy distance below
hook-shaped clouds, curving up on either side to become a verdigris sky until
it was lost from sight behind the sun-bright diffusers. In the foreground a
flock of red and black birds sketched a frantic, screeching tracery of protest
against the distant landscape where, sixty degrees antispinwise, a deadly haze
hid the fatal wound inflicted by the missile from the Hreem’s
Flower of Lith
.

Silence gripped the
shipmoot. Some of the faces mirrored shock, but not enough of them, Lochiel and
Bayrut saw. The Kelly trinity, with three votes, was unreadable.

The novosti was
still speaking. Lochiel forced herself to listen.

“. . . and
these Rifters, under the command of the infamous jacker known as Hreem the
Faithless, had aimed their missile precisely. It opened a 150-meter rupture in
the sync, which ordinarily could have been repaired before the partial pressure
of oxygen fell to lethal levels. But the missile also destroyed a crucial valve
cluster in the hydrostabilizers and opened a major conduit from a lake,
rendering it impossible for the engineers to reestablish dynamic stability.”

The image switched
to the novosti, his face rigid with horror—and imperfectly suppressed
excitement.

He went on in a
forced-sounding measured cadence, “Even though, in accordance with the Family
Ozman’s Orthodox Teilhardian beliefs, the sync was only sparsely populated, it
was not possible to evacuate all the inhabitants before the habitat’s rotation
entered a chaotic domain as the spin axis precessed toward the more stable
short-axis orientation.”

The image switched
again, and someone sucked in a harsh breath when the screen revealed a chaos
almost unrecognizable as the interior of a habitat. Clots of water, earth, and
organic material churned, lit by the dim glow of the diffusers as the sync
oscillated out of control.

“Temenarch Vitessa
Ozman refused evacuation, giving her place on the Family yacht to one of the
children of the village below the Residence. Fewer than four thousand of the
oneill’s inhabitants survived.”

A bright haze
filled the screen as the habitat, stressed beyond its design parameters,
finally ruptured and its atmosphere fled into space. The image flickered,
pulled back: against the bright ring of the remaining habitats around
Malachronte, the debris of what had been Sync Ozman spread slowly into a trash
reef that did not hide the dragonfly shape of Hreem’s destroyer, the
Flower of Lith
.

The image switched
to a group of commentators. As they began describing what they’d just seen,
Lochiel cut the sound and turned to face her officers and shareholders.

No one moved.

Bayrut,
Shiavona
’s first officer, broke the
silence; anger flattened his customarily precise tenor: “And now we’re taking
orders from him.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“Charterly was a
greedy chatzer.” Luz-Cremont, the weapons specialist, leaned forward, his eyes
blinking rapidly. “But he had style, and he knew there were some limits you
don’t cross. Not like this Hreem.”

Hope penetrated
Lochiel’s sick grief. Luz-Cremont was usually a troublemaker; now it sounded
like he might support her lifemates and her in their plan to break away.

Things had been so
much simpler under Charterly, until he had bought it two weeks earlier in a
savage action in the Dolorosa system, where the Panarchist Navy administered a
brutal mauling to his fleet, despite the loss of a battlecruiser. The
remnants—including the
Shiavona
—had
been posted by Barrodagh to Hreem’s fleet for refitting here in the Malachronte
system.

The Dol’jharian
influence had caused enough strife in the fleet. But now, with Charterly’s
death and the dispersal of his fleet, shipboard alliances and allegiances
cracked even further.

“Even the Shiidra
never fired on a Highdwelling,” Messina spoke up, her olive complexion
yellowish with nausea. No surprise. She grew up a Highdweller. As did
Luz-Cremont.

“At least Hreem
doesn’t have to worry about LJO,” said Vidocq. She shrugged and stretched back
in her pod with a semblance of ease, but her watchful gaze and tight shoulders
betrayed her.

Lochiel could not
look at her, lest her hatred reveal itself.
She
seemed like a good choice at the time.
Bayrut’s unwavering gaze watched for
the subtlest clue of betrayal.

The shareholders around
them shuffled and muttered; at either side of Vidocq, Dai Gan and Y’Lassian exchanged
glances and subtle signals of agreement.

Messina flicked a questioning
glance Lochiel’s way. When Lochiel responded with her own questioning
brow-lift, Messina said to Vidocq. “Nullwit. If there was even one Malachronte
Downsider on the sync when it blew, Local Justice applies—if there’s such a
thing as justice left, now that Dol’jhar’s in charge.”

“You call that
being in charge?” Ambrose’s quiet baritone cut through the background chatter.
The taciturn damage-control officer tilted his chin at the screen, still
silently relaying further coverage of the Ozman atrocity. “You’ve seen the relays
from the hyperwave. And no one knows what the ships without a hyperwave are up
to, until long after the event.”

“
We
don’t have a hyperwave.” Lochiel stated
the obvious so she could study the reactions in the faces around her. She stood
up and indicated the image-feed. “So Barrodagh gets data on us third hand, and
Hreem only a bit faster.”

Feeling Bayrut’s
and Messina’s tension—they were waiting for her to broach the plan the three of
them had conceived—she nevertheless permitted a silence to build. Something was
wrong. She sensed it, but couldn’t pinpoint the cause.

“You maybe
suggesting we duck out, Captain?” Vidocq’s tone was even, her head cocked so
that her flame-colored hair-spikes tilted.

Several of the
minor shareholders standing against the bulkhead exchanged glances, and one or
two betrayed the signs of privacies, though that was forbidden during
shipmoots. But all that was as expected: Vidocq had been building her own
clique among them by dividing their interests from the major owners.

“Hell of a time to
decide that.” Y’Lassian’s voice was outraged. “So far we’ve had the snot beat
out of us, and hardly a sniff of loot. Seems to me that Hreem’s fleet’s done a
lot better.”

“Yeah,” said Trono,
one of the minor shareholders. “And I hear those Barcan nacker-waggers’re
stinking rich, bein’ a protectorate and all.” She smirked to either side,
looking for support from her cronies.

Lochiel grunted in
disgust. “You saw what Hreem did to that Panarchist sync. Do you think a man
proud of the tag ‘The Faithless’ is going to figure he owes us anything once he
gets what he wants? Or Dol’jhar, for that matter?”

Vidocq sneered.
“Hreem is generous, I hear, if you’re loyal. Have to be, to keep a fleet.
‘Faithless’ only means religion is blunge, everyone knows that.” She glanced
around with confidence. “You wanna go hide somewhere on the Fringes? Lord of
Vengeance has a long reach and a longer memory, I hear.” She grinned. “Or are
ya gonna go to the nicks?”

“Don’t count the
nicks out yet.” Ambrose poked his long nose forward in emphasis, the chimes on
his chest-long Serapisti braids tinkling. “You saw what happened at Dolorosa.
Even against our skipmissiles they nearly blew us all to hell. And what we
didn’t see in the hyperwave reports that Charterly and Hreem relayed to us
tells me that a lot more Sodality ships have discovered the same thing, only
worse.”

“Right,” said
Messina. “There’s more than a few ships in-system that were never part of
Hreem’s gang. Leftovers, probably, from fleets the nicks smashed. And if
Eusabian’s so sure of himself, why is that little slug Barrodagh pulling more
and more of us into the worst part of the Rift to guard that Suneater thing
nobody’ll even talk about?”

During the
protracted pause following her question, some of the minor shareholders shifted
uncomfortably. Many were watching Vidocq.

On the silenced
viewscreen, the death of Sync Ozman had begun to play again.

Lochiel finally
identified what had been bothering her. The Kelly trinity was no longer
together; in fact, threy had spread as far from one another as she had ever
seen them. Shtoink, the Intermittor, still stood where she had been when the
meeting began, but Nyuck2 and Wu4 had drifted several paces away to either side
along the bulkheads.

A thrill of fear
burned through Lochiel’s nerves, and she saw it mirrored in Messina’s wide gray
eyes.

“You know we’ve had
a good run,” Lochiel said finally. Again she stated the obvious, in order to
gauge the reactions around her. She had to be sure because there would not be a
second chance
.
“We stayed within the Sodality
Code, and when we did take on nicks, it was fair dealing. Nothing like that.”
She tipped her head toward the screen. “Result, though the Navy probably knows
who we are, they didn’t try too hard to plasma us.”

She pointed again
at the recorded agony on-screen, being reshown from another angle. “What I’m
saying—asking—is if we really want to be a part of that.”

Luz-Cremont spoke
again. “Seems to me there’s another reason to maybe think the nicks’d be a
better deal.”

Vidocq snapped
around, arms crossing in challenge.

Lochiel caught a
glance from Bayrut; he’d seen it, too.

Luz-Cremont was
rubbing his lower eyelids as he talked. “I mean, business when the nicks were
running things was pretty good, and like you said, they didn’t try too hard to
scrag us as long as we ran the line.” He dropped his hand and looked up,
blinking rapidly again. “Business now . . .” He shrugged. “When
the looting stops in the places the Dol’jharians don’t slag, where do the
sunbursts come from then?”

Lochiel saw a lot
of thoughtful expressions, even among some she’d judged solidly with Vidocq.
The Rifthaven Syndics had kept a balance between the fleet syndicates,
allotting them zones of operation so everyone had a shot at a good living. But
word was, they had drawn in tight to keep Rifthaven from being sucked into the
war. That left ruthless operators like Hreem and Neyvla-khan free to bludgeon
the smaller syndicates.

“You’re saying we
don’t have any choice, Luz?” Dai Gan spoke up, his gravelly voice even rougher
than usual.

It’s time.
Lochiel caught Bayrut’s eye.

“Luz is right,”
Bayrut interjected, shifting his stocky body to readiness. “We might have had a
chance if Charterly and half the fleet hadn’t been blown away, but now Hreem
will swallow us without a hiccup, and Barrodagh won’t raise a finger.”

“What I say,”
Lochiel began, pointing at the atrocity on the viewscreen, “is that we may end
up involved in something even worse if we join Hreem. You saw what Neyvla-khan
did to Minerva. So yes, I propose we go to the nicks. My cousin Cameron’s
destroyer detachment operates out of Ixpotl, which isn’t too far off course for
Barca.”

Vidocq shook her
head. “If we bring the Navy down on Hreem and Neyvla-khan, you can kiss
Rifthaven goodbye.”

“Rifthaven’s not in
charge of the Sodality anymore,” Lochiel replied. “Eusabian is.” She could feel
the mood in the room shifting.

Vidocq looked
around, evidently sensing the same change; she gave Lochiel an ugly look and
clawed her fingers through the front spike of her hair. Too quick. Too controlled.
It was a signal. For . . .?

“Cameron never
wrote me off,” Lochiel continued. “He told me when I left that the door to the
Riftskip opens both ways, as far as he’s concerned.” She motioned at the screen
again. “A lot of you are Highdwellers. What do you think a man deserves who
would do that?”

Luz-Cremont rubbed
a hand over his bald head, which gleamed with sweat. “You sure your nick cousin
will trade? A shot at Hreem and Neyvla-khan for amnesty?”

“Only one way to
find out,” Lochiel answered. “And I think I know Cameron well enough to guess
what he’ll say.”

“But will the Navy
back him?”

“They might shoot
him, if they don’t like the deal he makes with us,” Bayrut put in, “but they’ll
follow through. A naval officer’s word is law.”

“So we set up both
Hreem and Neyvla-khan?” Trono’s voice was doubtful. She was young, eager, and a
follower. Who would she choose to follow? Lochiel didn’t want to lose her . . .

“That’s up to my
cousin Cameron,” Lochiel said. “Are we agreed?”

During the silence,
Y’Lassian got up and ambled over the drink dispenser. At a glance from Lochiel,
Messina pushed away from the table to free her hands, and Bayrut moved casually
to join Y’Lassian at the dispenser, light shimmering over his elegant
cobalt-blue paneled coat.

Lochiel suppressed
the urge to smile at her lifemates. After nearly two decades, words were seldom
necessary anymore.

The pudgy
damage-control tech moved aside awkwardly as Bayrut approached him; he was
holding the drink in his right hand. He was left-handed.

Vidocq’s eyes
darted from side to side.

“I call for a
vote.” Lochiel said finally, forcing the matter.

What happened next
took her totally by surprise: a soft putt under the table, followed by a sting
in her leg. Her fingers fumbled for her jac when she saw Vidocq’s triumphant
sneer, but her muscles locked. She’d thought the violence would come from
Vidocq’s two toadies—until now Vidocq had been very careful never to initiate
trouble on her own.

She watched
helplessly as Y’Lassian threw his steaming drink into Bayrut’s face and drew
his jac. Messina was luckier. She got her jac out, then paused helplessly as
Vidocq stood: “It’s quartan. The ship is mine.” She brandished the gasgun in
her hand. “I’ve got more for anyone who doesn’t want to join me.”