The Thrones of Kronos (16 page)

But now a new one stalked Ivard’s mind, shouldering aside a
memory of the Kelly Archon’s. The vast stone heads carved into the mountain of
the Blessed Three gradually faded into a red-shot darkness where Ivard wandered
until he found himself within a red-walled chamber, empty except for a
pervasive terror. He saw nothing, but sensed a vast, insatiable hunger welling
up around him, cutting him off from the rest of the Unity. Little pangs of
emotion—lust, regret, embarrassment, and others increasingly painful—probed at
the edges of his mind until with a sudden, soundless clang a door behind him
was flung open. Yellow glare poured past him. . . .

The shout yanked Sedry out of her work trance. She checked
the others.

Ivard sat upright on his cot, the shock of another of his
nightmares blanching his face. Lucifur resettled across Ivard’s legs with a
throaty feline growl of protest.

“Another dream?” Montrose laid down his book and moved to
Ivard’s bedside.

Marim swiveled away from the game console, then returned to
playing.

Ivard nodded. “Same thing,” he replied. His reluctance to
say more was obvious, and Sedry was glad of it. “Something hungry,” he’d said
of an earlier, less intense dream.

Sedry shuddered. That was not a comfortable phrase to hear,
inside an alien construct that was itself an archetype of digestion. She
wondered how his dreams affected the others of the Unity.

Vi’ya as usual showed nothing of her thoughts.

“Got to be the food,” Lokri said wryly, looking up from the
other side of the game console. “I’ve been dreaming of all the meals I just
picked over at the Galadium. Never again.”

Everyone laughed, venting stress and regret rather than real
humor.

Sedry returned to her console in her attempt to clean up
what little dataspace she was permitted. She smiled sadly: the game chips
Morrighon had gotten her had been heavily used, full of what might have been
interesting strategies. She’d never know. She wanted games for the amount of
local dataspace they consumed, for which she had other uses, and for the
interactive space on the chip.

Sedry pulled a chip out of its slot, wondering whose
creative efforts she’d sacrificed for storage space. But the system was too
dirty to leave anything static in local storage, even if she didn’t have to
worry about the crypto capabilities of the huge distributed array they were
sure the Dol’jharians were running.

She looked up, and as she had expected, met Vi’ya’s gaze.
Are you a full telepath now, my captain?

She remembered Vi’ya’s first attempt: the way the station
shivered like a great creature wakening from hibernation. The moans she’d
heard, like a chorus of desolation, had made her feel sick. But only during
such a ruction could she hope to datadive any deeper without detection.

Vi’ya nodded. Telepathy or not, she’d received the message
Sedry intended:
I’ll fix the narks during
your next attempt.

Montrose picked up his book again, tabbed it to recover his
page, then smiled across it at her, his gaze dropping to the console. He meant
to reassure her, and she felt it, not in his message, but in his nearness and
concern.

The door opened, and Lar hustled in.

Marim laughed, an automatic rather than an infectious sound.
They’d all laughed the first few times they watched Lar’s unique way of
entering chambers, even after he explained to Sedry about having heard that the
station walls had absorbed at least two people—one dead and one alive.

Marim still found it funny after Vi’ya told them that this
rumor was true. Marim laughed to be defiant, Sedry thought—and she laughed at
Lar, because he was the servant of the enemy.

“Noholate, Malath Ombric,” Sedry said in Bori, and smiled
when Lar’s pleasant round face brightened with a pleased grin.

“You are a fast learner,” he said, clearly gratified.
“Though the Servants of Dol don’t speak Bori except in private.”

“It’s a beautiful language,” Sedry said. “And a break from
Dol’jharian, which is interesting, but makes my throat hurt.”

Lar laughed soundlessly, his gaze shifting to the console,
as if assessing how the unseen listener would interpret his response. He said
in a now-wooden voice, “Serach Barrodagh has summoned you.”

“Now?” Sedry said, closing down the console with one hand.

Lar nodded.

“Very well,” she said, hiding how her heartbeat had begun
accelerating.

Montrose frowned, his bushy brows meeting over his misshapen
nose. Vi’ya looked tense, but not as tired as she had the day after her first
attempt to start up the station. She gave Sedry a tiny nod—as if to remind her
that, whatever happened with Barrodagh, she was not without allies.

Would they force Vi’ya to try again today?
I guess I’ll know if the Tarkans come to
lock us up again,
Sedry thought.
Unless
Barrodagh has something else in mind.

Lar hit the control with a fist and hopped through the door.
Sedry followed, Marim’s snickers floating behind.

As they walked, Sedry watched the interactions of Eusabian’s
servants. Despite the fact that nearly everyone was dressed in featureless gray
tech overalls, there appeared to be a precise hierarchy in place. Lar often
raised a hand to halt her as other gray-clad people—many of them short in
stature, with the round skulls and curly brown hair characteristic of most
Bori—passed, or Tarkans, or the soldiery in gray uniforms. Twice Lar had the
precedence; the first time, she happened to be watching one of the Bori they
passed, and saw a hand twitch on her coveralls, fingers flickering in a subtle
hand signal.

Instantly intrigued, without moving her head she shifted her
gaze to Lar—and caught the end of a hand signal from him, then they passed on.
Neither of the Bori looked at the other.

A semaphore code? More intrigued than ever, Sedry resolved
to spend more time in her language studies.

Then they reached Barrodagh’s office. A gaunt-faced Bori
aide waved them directly into the inner chamber, where, Sedry noted, all the
furnishings and equipment were located well away from the walls.

“Senz-lo Barrodagh,” Lar said in Dol’jharian, “here is Sedry
Thetris.”

“Wait outside.” Barrodagh dropped his compad onto a desk
littered with data chips, flimsies, at least one map, and the remains of a
scant meal, judging from the single small plate.

As Lar’s steps diminished behind them, Sedry watched Barrodagh
move to a screen. His skin was tightly drawn over his bones, its pallor the
unhealthy hue of someone whose liver was full of toxins. Did he live on drugs,
then? His lips were dry and thinned, as if he held his face in rigid control,
even in sleep; one eye squinted slightly. Anticipated pain? Paralysis? His gaze
was intelligent, angry, and distrustful.

“I thought I recognized your name,” he said without
preamble, speaking in accentless Uni. “Arthelion. You have some fame as a
talented noderunner—Commander.” He said this last in a nasty tone.

“Ex-commander,” Sedry said calmly. “Is the DataNet so
fragmented, then?”

Barrodagh stared at her, then his lips creased in a kind of
sneering smile. “So the Navy found you out?”

“Just as I found out you were backing our revolution,” she
said. “It was inevitable; why should we work so hard just to exchange one
autocratic rule for another?”

“You worked very hard to undo everything we had in place,”
Barrodagh said. “A remarkable effort. Worthy of a patriot.” He spat the last
word out.

“I wish my former commanders had seen expedience as
patriotism,” she said. “Else I’d probably be somewhere out there right now,
laboring on a much better plan.”

Barrodagh sat back, his fingers working like spiders at his
compad. “I wondered why a navy commander showed up with an escaped Dol’jharian
slave, a murderer, a bond-breaker, and a troublemaker from the cesspit the
Panarchists call Timberwell. And what was the DC-tech before she signed on, a
thief?”

Sedry lifted her hands. “I don’t know. Etiquette among
Rifters is, you don’t ask about someone’s past unless offered data. Marim
hasn’t, at least not since I joined them.”

“You met them in prison on Ares?”

“They call it detention,” Sedry said. Even though she and
Vi’ya had worked hard on this story—for Sedry had known that it was not a
matter of whether but when Barrodagh would equate her with her actions on
Arthelion—she hated lying.

“And how did you manage to escape? Ares is supposed to be
the Panarchy’s most formidable stronghold.”

“That was before it was flooded with refugees,” Sedry said.
“Food riots, if you have enough people, can overcome even military discipline.
One of the riots was a cover to break out compatriots in detention, and we used
the opportunity.”

“They hadn’t sealed off your fiveskip?” Barrodagh asked.

“Of course they had,” Sedry said. “But we just hid out in
the Reef with the refugees not permitted to land, and repaired the fiveskip.
Reef’s worse than Rifthaven. No order at all.”

Barrodagh laughed, a painful, rasping sound. “So it’s been a
successful strike against them, just revealing the coordinates for Ares, eh?”

She shrugged. “What we saw, it’s bad.”

“Ah yes, you were incarcerated, so you know little of
military developments, am I correct?”

“Don’t know any,” Sedry said. “When we left, we saw four
battle-scarred cruisers on the Cap.”

“Four?” Barrodagh rubbed at his cheek, then yanked his hand
down. “Larghior says you wish employment.” The distrust was back in his voice.

Sedry said, “It’s boring, sitting in that room with nothing
to do. I don’t care what kind of work. I’ll wire compute arrays, or fix
consoles, or whatever you want. You don’t have to let me anywhere near your
command center.”

“I am glad,” he said, sneering again, “not to have to
disappoint you.” He tabbed a summons. “Send Larghior in here.” Turning back to
Sedry, he said, “Well. We could use extra labor. Except when your captain is
working. Then you and your crewmates must be together, under our watch.
Security requirement.”

Sedry shrugged. “Don’t like what happens to the station. Just
as soon hide in my bed.”

Barrodagh’s expression was so strange she winced; what must
his emotional aura be like? Vi’ya would probably get sick.

Commander Leontois Efriq looked down the aisle between the
assembled ranks of officers and crew gathered in the forward beta landing bay,
through the open bay door at the waspish shape of the Rifter destroyer
Gloire
, its lines distorted to a shimmer
by the energies of the lock field. It hung unmoving, so close the blazon on its
hull was clear to his eyes: a stylized nova—concentric circle and ring of
flame—transfixed by a rapier.

At the back of the bay a trans-tube pod arrived with a
muffled whirr, and a few seconds later, Commodore Mandros Nukiel, commander of
the Suneater Staging Cloud, joined Efriq. The tangy personal scent he preferred
overlay the oil and ozone atmosphere of the bay.

A flare of light curved up over the hull of the
Gloire
, dimming into the angular form of
a shuttle as it came about to begin its approach to the
Mbwa Kali
.

The commodore’s face was somber, as usual. Efriq had been
Nukiel’s first officer ten years now, but early on in that relationship he’d
learned that Nukiel’s formal command persona was largely an accommodation to
others’ inevitable reaction to his stern features. Still, he sensed some
tension in his captain.

“There’s a new sign on the bulkhead in the junior officers’
mess,” Efriq said as he watched the shuttle approach, and when Nukiel glanced
his way, eyebrows lifted interrogatively, “Says ‘Rifthaven: 480 light-years.’”

Nukiel snorted, and Efriq murmured, “I wonder what we shall
find this time?”

The commodore’s lips twitched. “Not a Krysarch, certainly.
Whoever these are, they are getting a better reception than His Majesty did.”
He recollected the shock of finding the young man, now Panarch of the Thousand
Suns, aboard an old Columbiad, and he wondered how much the young Panarch’s
experience aboard a Rifter had affected his present mandate: the integration of
Rifter units into the Panarchic Suneater fleet.

The
Gloire
would
be the first Rifter vessel so integrated, the record of this meeting couriered
to Ares. The message from the Panarch had been clear. He was depending on
Commodore Nukiel to make this first encounter a model for the many to come.

The deep hum of the landing tractor resonated through their
bones as the Rifter shuttle eased through the lock field, rings of light
fleeing outward from its hull. It settled to the deck with the characteristic
spray of coronal discharge.

Commodore Nukiel and Efriq advanced as a warrant officer
discharged the shuttle. Its ramp swung smoothly down and clanged onto the deck.

Four Rifters descended in single file; the two tallest drew
the eye, one a handsome man of maybe forty years, his lean body set off
splendidly in an embroidered tunic of black and red and gold, his long red hair
braided and gemmed. Behind him walked a tall, sturdily built woman, dark of
face and gray of hair. She also wore a resplendent tunic and trousers, though
the colors and style were different; there was no attempt at a uniform here.

But they were last. Both Efriq and Nukiel realized that the
captain had to be in front, and they’d overlooked him. But from what little
scuttlebutt they’d been able to garner, it would be a very grave mistake to
dismiss Lucan Miph—or indeed, any of this crew.

Short and plump, in color indeterminate, Miph dressed in
plain brown, so that at a distance you couldn’t tell where skin ended and
covering began. He looked like a cross between a potato and a minor functionary
in some backwater bureaucracy. His walk was easy, and he looked around with an
air of interest—but his face belied that easy walk. His face was grooved with
deep lines, as if he’d suffered recent pain.