The Thrones of Kronos (49 page)

She shut the water off, dressed, and moved to her console,
tabbing it to life. So what was behind the dream?

She sighed again, scanning the directory. Useless to reread
all the reports.
Grozniy
was in
transit and would have no hyperwave until they reached the Suneater staging
point and transferred the one there from Koestler’s ship. So there was no news
and no way to get any. She already knew the data in the latest reports.

An unwelcome vision of the time stretching ahead made her
temples pang. Physically it was a fine opportunity to rest and recoup after the
stresses of those recent weeks on Ares. The rational being who had ordered the
furnishing of this cabin had set regular drills and had made positive speeches
about the benefits of rest, liberal use of rec time in physical activity, and
more drill.

The woman inside of the rational being, Ng thought wryly,
hated the cold-blooded waiting for the inevitable, a wait made all the worse by
the impossibility of communications.

Again came the ugly image of Metellus Hayashi drifting
frozen in space. She covered her eyes with her hands and probed for its
meaning.

If they haven’t killed
him, then I—

All at once it was there—or almost there. Her mind wanted to
shy away, but she forced herself to contemplate the enormity of the decision
she would probably be called upon to make.

In the end, it would be on her word whether the asteroids
aimed at the station were launched or not. It might be on her word that not
only the Dol’jharians on the Suneater would be destroyed but the
Telvarna
Rifters who had gone ahead to
try to wrest control of it, and whatever civilians the Dol’jharians had forced
to labor for them.

And the Marines on the battle lances.

And among them the
Panarch.

That was it.

The memory of her own lover, Metellus Hayashi, and how war
had sundered them, had prompted her to set up the logistical train that would
enable the Panarch to be among those destined to land on the station. It was
irrelevant that the choice to follow the logistical train had been his; given
the same circumstances, and the same opportunity, she would have done the same.

The full weight of responsibility was hers. No matter how
terrible the battle, how little time there might be to consider the shifting
statistics, it would be she who either saved or spent the life of Brandon
Arkad, forty-eighth Panarch of the Thousand Suns.

o0o

Under the careful ministrations of the young technician,
Brandon sat passively while the last piece of his new battle armor was fitted
on: the helmet.

For those seconds he was totally isolated, locked into half
a ton of dyplast and battle alloy.

He breathed deeply of the smell of newness, memory tugging
at him. He closed his eyes as subtle prods and pulls of clamps completed the
fitting process. Then he had it: the booster field on Merryn, being fitted into
his acceleration suit for escape from the besieging Rifter fleet of Hreem the
Faithless.

But this time he wasn’t running away. Vi’ya had given him
his life, and thus the Panarchy, and her love, and thus his future. He could do
no less than to give them back.

Brandon waited until a double tap on his helmet indicated it
was time to energize the suit to five percent.

He did, and watched with interest as a moiré pattern
splashed across his visual field, as described in the chip the armorer,
Meliarch Chaz, had given him with her request that he familiarize himself with
its data.

Not content to view it once or twice, he had made it his
business to memorize its contents. So he knew how to trigger the suit’s
diagnostic sequence. Delighted, he watched as the moiré mutated into a web of
colored lines and vectors blooming across the faceplate. Then swift rankings of
glyphs and alphanumerics flickered.
So
far, it’s not so different from piloting a ship.

Then a voice said in his ear, “Diagnostic sequence AyKay.
May we test the manual controls, sire?”

“Of course,” he responded. “Whatever we’re supposed to be
doing, let’s do it.”

Chaz hesitated, then said woodenly, “Thank you, sire. First,
set your comm to the common channel.”

Brandon did not wait for her to describe its location—he
signed the correct pattern with minute twitches of his fingers.

“AyKay.” Ah. She had not intended to tell him where the
common channel was. She’d expected him to know. “But less actual muscle
motion—if you’d been full power and holding a jac, you’d have twisted it into a
mobius. Now your medtech.”

He did so, with mild satisfaction as the diagnostic screen
reported a barely elevated pulse rate. But then, Ulanshu Kinesics were required
basics for Marines, so that control was doubtless expected. Chaz’s attitude
seemed to confirm that, for she merely gave him orders with increasing speed.

Brandon recognized what each control was; his hesitations
were all in finding or triggering them. During this sequence he was too busy to
think at all. At the end, when she had pronounced the manual systems AyKay, he
filed away as another datum about Marine expectations: “Becoming familiar” with
something means learning it.

“Now we’ll begin with movement sequences, if we may, sire.”

He turned his head a millimeter as the suit techs departed.
He was alone with the Meliarch, who sat in a thick-walled dyplast cubicle at
the side of the room.

Brandon carefully initiated the sequences that permitted
movement of the armor, mindful of its terrible strength even when only
partially powered. As he did, he assessed his relationship with Lyuba Chaz.

She’d just appeared one day as he was en route between one
military meeting and another, and let him know that the preparations for the
lances that were destined to penetrate the Suneater were going on in the aft
alpha armory section, and if he wished to view the proceedings, he was invited
to appear at five the next morning.

Once there, he’d only found Chaz present. She said that if
he wished to be on one of those lances, she would accommodate him with the
necessary armor.

There had been no discussion of who, or what, or why, but he
knew that Margot Ng had to be behind the offer, and it was with a new
appreciation of his high admiral that he had encountered her at a soiree later
that day. Of course, she gave no hint she knew anything about Chaz, or armor,
or even lance attacks.

He’d met twice with Chaz on Ares after that, once for
measurements and then for segment fittings. There could be no margin for error
in these fittings. As he’d sat patiently through the laborious process, he
remembered watching vids when he was small, in which the heroes would don their
fallen comrades’ armor and leap instantly into battle. In reality, the armor
was so very personalized even an identical twin might find his or her sibling’s
armor an uncomfortable fit.

And discomfort—the slightest tightness here or loose fit
there—could mean death.

Now he paced lumberingly around the mostly bare room.

“AyKay,” came the dispassionate voice. “Next, if you will,
sire, pick up one of the cubes—biggest one first.”

He turned, not toward the table where a line of objects lay
waiting, but to Chaz. “You don’t need to ask my permission, Meliarch. Just tell
me what to do. As if I was a new recruit.”

“A new recruit,” Chaz said dryly, “would not be permitted to
touch the armor until he had had a full year of training, sire.”

Brandon had reached the table. Moving his gauntlet with
care, he reached for the block of dyplast—but misjudged a fraction, and his
armored knuckles brushed against it. The cube spun through the air, hit a wall
and ricocheted back. He watched until it came to rest, though there was no
danger of his being hurt even if it had hit him. Then he bent, and closed his
fingers gently around it. The armor whined as he straightened up slowly and
carefully. Holding the cube, he said, “Then as the Panarch, I request you to
speak plainly.”

The meliarch hesitated again, then she tapped at her console
and stepped down, walking slowly toward him.

He popped his faceplate and waited until she was right
before him, a plain, older woman, lean and strong-looking, her face seamed. She
tipped her head back to meet his eyes. Hers were dark with strictly controlled
emotion. “What I think, sire,” she said, “is that you ought to give up this
mission.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a liability that could get some good people
killed.”

Anger flashed through him, to be dismissed. He’d asked her
to speak, and she had spoken. He couldn’t address a problem until it had been
identified. “If what?” he prompted.

“If you try to fight with a team. Or alone, because they’ll
have to drop out and come rescue you. That’s their oath. They take it
seriously. As do I. Or I wouldn’t talk out like this.”

Again a flash of anger suffused him, and he breathed deeply,
dismissing it. He was no longer the powerless Krysarch, forced to endure
meaningless lectures on his worthlessness for his own good. He could speak the
briefest command and have her ruined, both figuratively and literally.
And is there some wish here to bite at the
Douloi slummer?
Maybe, but to dismiss her on that account would leave him
as ignorant as she named him.

So he said, “Speak further. Help me to understand.”

And watched as some of her resentment eased. “This isn’t
like piloting a ship. My old dyarch, when I first trained, said the worst recruits
were the ones who used to pilot shuttles and the like, because they had to
unlearn that before they could learn armor. He said, ‘No matter how hot a yacht
you got, you are never goin’ to walk it down a smoke-filled corridor, tear open
a lock, or bypass a console lock to get a probe into a computer.’”

Brandon nodded. “If I tell you I do not intend to fight?”

The resentment was gone now, leaving perplexity. “Then I
don’t see why you need to go at all.”

“Because it’s very possible I may be able to supply some SigInt
that would be impossible to obtain any other way.”

Chaz compressed her lips into a thin seam, then shook her
head. “I always followed orders, but I tell you out straight, I was never the
kind to see clearly enough to make them. Maybe you do need to be there, instead
of on the flagship . . .”

Her reluctance reminded him that just as he needed to trust
her expertise, she needed to be able to trust his.

“It’s the Rifter tempath, Meliarch. During our efforts
against the three traitors, she and the Eya’a learned my mental signature. She
may be able to feed me information when we board the station. I won’t be there
to sight-see. Or to get in the way of the meliarch who’ll be overseeing our
landing attacks.”

Chaz looked straight into his eyes for a long beat, then
nodded and exhaled. “All right, then. You’ve told me as much as you can, that’s
plain. And you let me speak plain, which eases my mind even if it doesn’t
change anything. I can see you worked on your intro data. What you’re missing
now is the weeks of sim training before the recruit ever gets to touch the
armor, and then the months of single training, and then the squad training.”
She looked at his armor dubiously. “And that doesn’t even include those new
quantum interface blunges in your gauntlets, that none of us have ever used
before.”

Brandon smiled. “I will hold in my mind the firm conviction
that I am as unreliable as a two-year-old with a loaded jac.”

She returned the smile, then retreated to her post. “With
that as our baseline, we’d best get started, sire. If in a week we can get you
around a corner without punching a hole in the wall, we’ll graduate you to
three-year-old. How’s that?”

Bringing his hand up with excruciating care, he saluted.
“AyKay, Meliarch.”

“My father is bored,” Anaris said.

Morrighon nodded. Only minutes ago Lysanter had informed him
of the Avatar’s intention to watch the opening of the first ship in the new
ship bay that the tempath’s last effort had revealed. Anaris must have sensed
something of his satisfaction, for his lord’s tone suddenly sharpened.

“You find that amusing?”

“No, lord.”
That is
the disadvantage of the intimacy that means power in the Catennach,
he
thought. “Merely in the reflection that in this, and only this, Barrodagh’s
motives are aligned with ours.”

In another of the lightning changes in mood that Morrighon
attributed to the intensifying stress of the succession struggle—and to Captain
V’ya’s influence—Anaris laughed.

“To keep him amused.” The Dol’jharian stood up, his powerful
body dominating the space around him. “That is what we shall do.”

Morrighon turned toward the door, then paused. Anaris looked
back over his shoulder, his expression amused. “Not that way, my little Bori.”

Shocked into that horrible sense that his bladder was full,
Morrighon could only heft his compad in wordless protest.

Anaris smiled sardonically. “Tatriman’s trace program will
work as well in the walls as in the corridors,” he said. “Probably better. And
we cannot get there before my father otherwise.”

He intends to
challenge the Avatar soon.
The thought added to Morrighon’s misery. So far
he’d avoided being subjected to Anaris’s uncanny mode of transport, merely assisting
by having Tat craft a worm to eliminate the traces left in the stasis computers
by his lord’s TK manipulations, so his comings and goings couldn’t be tracked.

Now he had no choice, and his brain insisted on remembering
the image of the hapless gray thrown into the wall as a sacrifice. It was no
comfort that this way, at least, they’d avoid the Ogres now on guard everywhere.
Morrighon much preferred their immobile threat to the prospect of being
swallowed by the walls.