The Thrones of Kronos (4 page)

In the meantime, it would talk again to the man who called
himself the Masque, for there was much of the world that was incomprehensible unless
filtered through a living mind.

For Jaspar was dead, and he knew it.

Tap-tap-tap, ratta-tap-tap-thump. Hreem’s fingers drummed
the arms of the captain’s pod, the only sound on his bridge.

The main screen showed the black hole binary of the
Suneater; Hreem was more interested in the fuzzy chips of light placed here and
there by the computer, indicating ships. The
Lith’s
kilometer of length gave its sensor array a respectable
baseline, even if it fell well short of the resolving power of a battlecruiser.

“They’re really hoppin’, Cap’n,” said Erbee, the scantech,
pointing his thumb at the display. “Jumpin’ all over the place.”

“Surprise,” said Piliar. Erbee glared at him, stung by the
sarcasm in his voice. “Wait till you’re seeing a cruiser in every twitch of
your console,” the weapons tech continued.

“Anything ever turn up, Riolo?” Hreem interrupted.

“No, Captain,” the Barcan tech replied, hitching up his
codpiece in the nervous tic that had once so irritated Hreem.

No longer. If he got too annoyed, a session with the shestek
washed it away. But it wasn’t reassuring that Riolo had been unable to decipher
any of the Suneater traffic they’d picked up.

That, too, was not surprising, after the example Barrodagh had
made of the
Crone of Aravis
. He’d
powered them down after catching their noderunner compromising Barrodagh’s
coded messages to Rifthaven. First the
Fist
of Dol’jhar
had removed their Urian tech, then had then tractored them into
an orbit that intersected the black hole. Hreem could still hear their screams
as the tidal effects tore them and their ship apart. Nobody else, it seemed,
was now willing to pit their crypto against the compute arrays on the Suneater.

Nobody’s going to shut
down the
Lith, he resolved. He’d had the techs start bringing the spin
reactors back up to standby before they left Barcan space—they could accomplish
the switchover in minutes now.

Hreem forced a little irritation into his voice. “How much
longer is that chatzing array going to take?”

“Couple of hours, I think,” Erbee replied. “
Satansclaw’s
signature is an easy one.”

A nervous motion from Riolo caught Hreem’s eye, and this
time anger stirred. “What’s narking at you, trog?”

“The Ogres, Captain. I am not finished with them.”

“Well, then, what are you doing here?” Hreem shouted,
ignoring the fact that he had neglected to change the Barcan’s watch. “Get off
the chatzing bridge and back to work.”

Hreem told himself that his moodiness was Norio’s fault.
He shouldn’t have left me.
The tempath
had always known what Hreem needed to relieve his stress, employing a host of
subtle techniques, and many not so subtle. The shestek merely drowned him in a
cataract of raw pleasure. It left him utterly relaxed, but that was all.

The truth was, despite the pleasure beyond anything he’d
ever experienced, he missed the chatzing little mindsnake—not that he’d ever
tell Norio, who had left him without even asking, after years of serving his
every wish.

But Barrodagh had deflected all his questions about Norio.
“I cannot reveal anything touching on the control of the Suneater,” he’d said.

And so I’ll use the
Ogres as my lever
, he thought, smiling as he resumed the rhythmic tapping
on his pod arm. And then . . . well, this might deliver the
compensation he craved for the battlecruiser he’d lost at Malachronte.

But first he needed to get to the Suneater, and Norio, where
he’d get them back to their old relationship. And then, if Norio’s power
sufficed to control the station . . .

I will control Norio.

Tallis Y’Marmor fought the urge to touch his eyepatch and
stretched his hands out along the arms of his command pod. His glance fell on
his console, reminding him of the code that would summon the logos, and he
winced. No need for that anymore. He could disable those codes—he could blow
his console up—and the logos would still talk to him in the usual ghost
flickers that no one else could see.

Or maybe
en clair
,
in front of all the crew, if it decided to.

Tallis wouldn’t let it get that far. If it wanted to
communicate, he listened. He glanced at Kira Lennart, now his first officer
since she had liberated Tallis from his confinement in the bilge bay. She
insisted that there was a way around the damned logos.
“If we can wake up the eidolon, we might have a chance,”
she’d
whispered into his ear in the aftermath of passion, while Luri snored on the
other side of her.

Maybe. In the meantime, he cooperated with the logos. Though
nearly everyone in his crew was convinced that he had opened the lock on
Anderic, the former captain, Tallis knew who had really done it—and the
nightmares he’d had of Anderic’s body tumbling out into the infinity of space
had functioned as a warning ever since. Fortunately the logos made few demands,
and most of those were involved in carrying out the duties assigned by Juvaszt,
anyway.

The scantech, Oolger, sat upright. “Transponder pulse!”

Tallis’s heart banged in his chest. Again!

“What are they doing?” someone else on the bridge spoke
Tallis’s thought aloud.

Oolger shrugged. “Dunno. But this here is the fourth time.”

Four transponders in their patrol sector triggered. At least
they’d found nothing each time.

“I wonder if the others ships are getting the same pattern,”
sho-Imbris at navigation said.

Tallis scowled, not knowing how to answer. He maintained a
prudent silence, as if he had any control over the situation.

He hadn’t. There was no way of knowing; Juvaszt would say nothing,
and after the
Crone
business there
wasn’t any comm traffic from other Rifter ships at the Suneater, except for
bursts of EM when Juvaszt’s orders let them get close enough to each other,
which was less and less often.

Tallis said to sho-Imbris, “Plot a course. Communications,
relay the pulse to the
Fist
via
hyperwave, with our course.”

The crew straightened up, their tension obvious. Under
Tallis’ tailored uniform, his armpits seemed to have sprung leaks. He
surreptitiously tabbed up the tianqi, and calming scents wafted gently into the
air currents.

Not that it will help,
Tallis thought miserably.
We all know the
nicks are coming. And Barrodagh’s got us out here between them and him.

Was it the start of the attack this time? Once—it seemed
five lifetimes ago—Tallis would have enjoyed the prestige that being harbinger
of the attack would have brought to the
Satansclaw
and to him. But too much had happened to show him how little control over his
own fate—and now his own chatzing ship—he really had. Maybe Juvaszt would order
several ships to check out the pulse. Then the
Satansclaw
wouldn’t be the only target.

The acknowledgment came back from the Dol’jharian flagship,
where Juvaszt coordinated the patrols around the Suneater. “Standing orders,”
the Dol’jharian communications officer said in a bored voice, and blanked the
comm without waiting for a reply: investigate, no backup.

Tallis swallowed, and when he knew he had control over his
voice, he gave orders to Oolger at the scan console, and they skipped within a
light-second of the transponder.

And Oolger found nothing. Nothing except the cluster of
rocks the transponder had been placed to protect, lest the nicks accelerate
them toward the station.

There was no sense in trying to see what had skipped in; the
wavefront was already well beyond the resolving power of the
Satansclaw’s
array for a single event.
But anyone watching from outside has all the
time they need to resolve us.

He issued orders to return to their assigned patrol, trying
to slow the racing of his heart by steady breathing.

No sooner had they accomplished the skip than Oolger’s
console beeped. The scantech sat up straight. “There’s a ship out there! . . . One
light-minute.”

It was waiting for us!
Tallis reflexively hit the skip pad, triggering the preset tactical skip.
“Ninn! Shields, and get a skip-missile ready.” Tallis bit at his thumbnail,
then forced his hand down. “Oolger?”

“Reacquired,” Oolger said a few seconds later. “Resolving.”
After a pause that seemed interminable the scantech said with disbelief,
“Signature is
Flower of Lith.
”

Tallis sighed. While in no way would he ever rejoice at the
sight of Hreem, at least he knew Hreem wouldn’t shoot at him. Or so he hoped.

As if in answer, Lennart said flatly, “EM incoming. Sodality
code.”

At a nod from Tallis, she put the communication up on the
screen, and there was Hreem, lounging back in his pod with a nasty smile on his
lips. As he spoke, he scratched at the thick pelt of curling hair in the
unfastened front of his gold-trimmed scarlet tunic, and Tallis shuddered. “You
nacker-brain, Y’Marmor, come in to one light-second. We need to talk, but
staring at you for two minutes between words won’t help my appetite any.”

Tallis glared at his crew. If anyone laughed . . .
but no one did. He nodded to sho-Imbris; the fiveskip burped.

When the screen cleared, Hreem was leaning forward in his
pod. “It took me half a day to resolve your coordinates, and when I skip in,
you’re not there. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Tallis said, striving to sound bored. “Something
popped the transponders in a rock reef, and our orders are to check. If it’s
the nicks, and they were going to snatch an asteroid for the attack, apparently
their nackers withered.”

Ninn sniggered, but the rest of the crew stayed silent.

Hreem scratched at his chest hair again, then waved a ringed
hand. “Happen before?”

“Four times since we got assigned to this patrol.”

Hreem’s grin stretched, and he guffawed. “You maggot,
Y’Marmor, that’s no attack. That’s harassment, just so you’ll pee your breeches.
Like I bet you’ve done four times.”

Hreem’s crew roared with laughter.

Tallis clenched his jaw, ready to cut the connection. Then
he remembered one bit of news that he was almost certain Hreem did not yet
have. It had taken the logos days to crack Barrodagh’s coded conversation with
the
Telvarna
, slowing repair efforts,
but now it might just pay off.

So Tallis only smiled, and he was delighted to note a few
seconds later that Hreem’s laughter now sounded forced. “What other news?”
Hreem said abruptly.

“They don’t tell us much,” Tallis said, spinning the words
out. He was really going to enjoy this. “We’re to prepare for the attack. Prevent
the nicks from grabbing asteroids to throw at the station. Barrodagh’s still
trying to power it up. According to our readings on our hyper-relay, we’ve
gotten a point-oh-three increase in power . . .” Again he paused, keeping his
face straight.

Interesting. Aside from the insults, Hreem seemed subtly
different. What had really happened with Norio? They’d been partners for years,
but not mates—Hreem was notoriously predatory and wouldn’t stay loyal to any
one person.

When Hreem did not respond immediately, Tallis continued.
“Ah. The Dol’jharians are extending their very large distributed array around
the Suneater with all the cutters and small ships from incoming vessels.”

Hreem shrugged. “You really love the sound of your voice,
don’t you, Y’Marmor? Anybody else’d say VLDA and be done with it. Spit it
out—you’ve obviously got something you really want to tell me, or else you’re
sittin’ on a four-meter joystick.”

Ignoring the laughter from the
Lith
again, Tallis said, “Another tempath came here, after Norio.”

Hreem’s eyes narrowed, and he made a sharp movement to cut
the noise on his bridge. “So?”

“I figured you ought to know.” Tallis paused, savoring the
slow burn flushing Hreem’s face. Just before he judged the other captain would
lose control, he continued. “The new one is Vi’ya of the
Telvarna
, and rumor has it that her reward, if she starts up the
Suneater, is to be your heart, on the point of her knife.”

As soon as he’d cleared his queue, Barrodagh smiled in
anticipation of activating Ferrasin’s new worms.
Now I will see what the Avatar is accessing from the computer
, he
thought with satisfaction. And Jesserian’s report already had the right gloss
on it: the accidental triggering of a forgotten defense system by a disobedient
Tarkan squad.

The satisfaction faded as he followed the noderunner’s
directions on activating the worms. Ferrasin was becoming too independent, and
there was no doubt Jesserian was conspiring with him. But there was little
Barrodagh could do about it until the Suneater was powered up and the
Panarchists destroyed.

Barrodagh hoped Vi’ya would never wake up from the coma
she’d fallen into after that unexplained power surge in the landing bay,
according to Lysanter most likely induced by the combination of Norio’s death
and the drugs the Tarkans had shot her with.

They could find other tempaths.

His anger flared at the thought of drugs. That was the first
of his grievances against Captain Vi’ya. While he’d been dealing with the
disaster in the landing bay, Morrighon must have gone to Norio’s quarters; when
Barrodagh was able to get there, the drugs were gone. How had Morrighon found
out he was using those drugs? It didn’t matter. He could say and do nothing.

He’d even checked the dispensary on the Rifter ship, but
found nothing. He shivered slightly. Something about the ship had been uncanny;
he’d been glad to leave after also confirming that the computers were
inaccessible without a major cryptographic effort. Perhaps he should put
Ferrasin on that next.