The Thrones of Kronos (78 page)

The few Tarkans they encountered fell swiftly to Vi’ya’s
anger; Montrose shuddered at their amplified screams, remembering the horror
under the Palace on Arthelion.

But it was not Tarkans that resisted their progress so much
as Ogres. The Dol’jharians seemed to have thrown their entire reserve against
them, and the Marines’ supply of Kelly triskels was dwindling fast.

“Looks to me like they’re after the brain-burners,” the
dyarch in charge of Brandon’s squad said after one encounter. Montrose saw
Vi’ya’s eyes narrow, but she said nothing.

Anaris wants Vi’ya
separated from the Eya’a,
Montrose thought. Was this a bad sign—or a really
bad sign?

“Those that Hreem didn’t get to,” Lokri drawled.

Vi’ya halted, one foot in the air before she placed it
carefully back down. The Eya’a chittered briefly. Montrose stopped as something
fluttered at the back of his mind, a faint touch, a sound—

“KetzenLach,” he exclaimed. Memory propelled him back to
Desrien and the man at the great organ in New Glastonbury.

“Ivard,” Vi’ya whispered, her eyes wide, her gaze fixed far
beyond the confines of their corridor.

As Montrose leaned against the wall to regain his balance,
Vi’ya frowned. “I can’t reach him.” She closed her eyes, thumbing her temples
in a gesture the crew had been seeing every day for months. “He is . . .
with . . . the Presence.”

Brandon’s blue eyes narrowed as he watched her. The other
Marines waited, the Bori whispering in the background.

“Thirty-one minutes,” the dyarch said.

Vi’ya straightened and walked on swiftly. Everyone else fell
in with her pace. One corridor, two, smoke-filled and scorched, then the
Marines halted. Montrose could hear orders crackling out of the faceplates
before they closed them.

“They’re going to stage a feint while the two squads in
position take care of the corvettes,” Brandon said quickly. “Then we’ll come
through the back of the bay, with the
Telvarna
between us and the Dol’jharians.”

They waited a short time, then Montrose heard the crump of
heavy jacs and a couple of shuddering explosions, followed by a whisper of
amplified shouts muffled by the intervening quantum-plast.

Then Brandon raised a fist. “They did it!” His head bent as
he listened to his helmet comm; through the open faceplate they heard the
twitter of voices. Then he looked up. “Follow me.”

Montrose hefted his jac, noting that the charge registered
just below half. He ran with the others down a short passageway, toward a
pucker braced open by metal rods. Montrose looked through, his heart lifting
when he spied the familiar shape of the
Telvarna
,
with the actinic light of the accretion disk, visible beyond through the
e-lock, glinting off its scarred hull.

Vi’ya vaulted up the ramp to the aft port lock and tapped at
the access console.

Nothing happened. She punched at it again—and this time
there was a reaction. The antipersonnel ports snapped open and the snouts of
the projectors within swiveled to cover her. She stepped back a pace and stared
upward in silent disbelief.

For a moment no one moved. Then a voice rang out from beyond
the
Telvarna
, unamplified but
clear—and familiar. “The ship is mine. I suggest we discuss the next move in
the game.”

“Anaris,” Jaim said, his teeth showing.

Before anyone else could react, Brandon took the ramp in a
quick leap, and side by side he and Vi’ya came down. Montrose saw that he was
grinning, a mixture of anger and anticipation. He raised his hand to dog down
his faceplate, then paused.

“Meliarch,” he said, “I’m taking command.” There was a
barely perceptible hesitation, then the meliarch nodded silently.

“Follow my lead,” Brandon continued. “We’ll let Anaris choke
on his own assumptions.” He slapped his helmet closed and motioned the Marines
forward.

Anaris watched in satisfaction as the Marines cautiously
deployed around the
Telvarna
, the
light from the black hole and the red giant beyond glinting off their armor.
They stayed close to the hull so its main weapons couldn’t be brought to bear.
At his orders, the weapons on the two corvettes remained quiescent—the bulkhead
punches the Marines had placed against their hulls ruled out their use, unless
he wished to lose their engines.

It may come to that,
he thought. Only one ship was needed to get him off the Suneater. If he could
be sure the
Telvarna
would be left
functional, he wouldn’t hesitate.

The Tarkans stirred at the proximity of the enemy. The
adrenaline of the recent fighting was making them restless.

He watched as Vi’ya walked around the hull of her ship, the
Eya’a on either side, followed closely by a Marine, his jac pointed straight at
her. Even her brain-burners couldn’t save her—the Marine doubtless had his
weapon set to deadman mode, and only a few grams of pressure separated her from
instant death.

Every line of her body expressed fury, and Anaris grinned.
Not only did he have her precious ship, but she was prisoner of the Panarchists
she so recently escaped. No matter what happened, she would owe her life to
someone else. How that must gall her!

The brain-burners were still with her, and she’d managed to
collect the rest of her crew and a rabble of Bori and even a few grays, no
doubt rounded up by the Panarchists with their foolish ideas about
noncombatants. Well, the unquestioning obedience of the grays might be useful.
His TK could deal with the others, even though some of them were armed. All
that remained was to separate them from the Panarchists.

“Meliarch,” he called. “These noncombatants are also mine. I
suggest the standard protocol: an exchange of ships.”

At that moment the light glaring through the e-lock
flickered and began to wax steadily; Anaris saw the red giant swell as the
shock wave from the collapse of its core reached the surface. Supernova!

Silence ruled for an unmeasured time. Then the Marine
guarding Vi’ya moved slightly and his voice boomed out, “The Panarchy doesn’t
recognize the ownership of sophonts.” Anaris decided his armor must have been
damaged in the combat, for his voice was distorted into electronic flatness.

“Do not waste our time,” Anaris said, gesturing at the
exploding sun. “You know how little is left.”

“Less time than you think, Anaris Eusabian.”

The unknown Marine’s Dol’jharian accent, speaking his name,
was flawless, but that was not what held Anaris’s attention. He had given him
his father’s title! Did he then know the fate of the Avatar? Or was it a feint,
a distraction? From behind came a faint whine from Chur-Mellikath’s armor.

Surprised at this turn of events, Anaris walked out between
the two groups, waving the Tarkans to remain in position. The Panarchists would
not provoke a firefight with so many civilians exposed. The Marine with Vi’ya
turned to face him, his mirrored faceplate throwing Anaris’s reflection back at
him in menacing distortion.

But now his weapon no longer bore on Vi’ya. In fact, none of
the Marines’ did. Exultantly he sent his thought at her, felt it reach her like
a single jac-bolt above the slow drone of alien music.
Vi’ya!

And this time, an answer came back, but not from her.

Shall we amend
one-who-moves-through-walls with fi?
With the Eya’a’s thought came his own
image, and he recoiled from the cold tenor of the alien question and knew
himself close to death.

Then the Marine popped his faceplate open and Anaris stared
across the landing bay into a pair of blue eyes he knew.

It was Brandon Arkad.

o0o

Hreem fretted as they neared the landing bay. Thanks to the
little Ogre-killing machines, his mechanized guard was still dwindling. He’d
long ago turned what remained to silent mode to avoid drawing attention, and
reluctantly gave up dispatching Ogres to hunt down Vi’ya and her crew. Twice
they narrowly avoided encounters with armored soldiers—whether Tarkans or
Marines, Hreem neither knew nor cared.

They came across another band of Catennach who’d been cut
down by jac-fire. Marim paused to pick up a still-flickering compad, first
wiping the blood on its former owner’s clothing.

“Whatya want that for?” Hreem was instantly suspicious.

“Maybe I can tap into the station, locate some imagers, and
get a better idea of what we’re up against.” She looked up at him, her face
haggard. “Or maybe you don’t mind losing the rest of your Ogres, coming up
against Tarkans or Marines?”

Hreem snarled soundlessly, but said nothing as she tapped at
the little device. She sucked in her breath. “Sgatshi!”

“What?” Hreem glanced around nervously, his skin prickling.
He didn’t want any more surprises.

“Station’s arrays are down. I’m tapped into their comm.”

“So, that’s good.”

“Yeah, but the asteroids are on their way in. We got less
than thirty minutes to get the hell out of here.” She tried and failed to
suppress a giggle, and Hreem heard an edge of hysteria in it. “Not to worry,
though,” she continued. “After we escape that, we only need to worry about a
supernova.”

Hreem tucked his jac under his arm and grabbed the compad
from her, then threw it back at her. “So what? We’ll be gone by then, long’s
you get us to the bay.”

She tapped at the compad a while longer while Hreem paced,
cursing monotonously. His skin itched from chunks of drying food that kept
falling down his neck, and his clothing stank from the drying slop and blood
all over him. He burned to take it all out of that black-eyed Vi’ya’s hide, a
piece at a time.

“Lots of imagers gone,” Marim said, her voice calmer now.
“Gotta be Marines or Tarkans, so we’ll stay away from them.” She stood up.
“C’mon. We should be able to get pretty close.”

A few minutes later she stopped, motioning Hreem back. “The
bay’s just ahead.” She dropped to her hands and knees, pulling a small mirror
tool from her pocket and poking it around the corner. “Two Tarkans on guard.”

The deck thumped. Hreem heard amplified yelling and the
sizzle of jac-bolts, dulled by distance and the intervening walls. Marim
extended the tool around the corner again. “They’re gone.” She tapped at the
compad. “I found an imager they overlooked. We can nark into the landing bay.”

He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“Look,” she said. “The Marines got to the corvettes.”

Hreem saw the dull metal ovoids she indicated, clinging to
the hulls of the two Dol’jharian ships: bulkhead punches. Nearby, several
armored figures lay still; impossible to tell if they were Marines or Tarkans.
Beyond he could see the black hole and the red giant, now swelling visibly.
Well, it’d be some time before the shock wave got here, and he intended to be
far away by then.

“And there’s no Ogres,” Marim said. They watched as the
Marines filed around the
Telvarna
.

“None of those little machines, either,” said Hreem. He
looked back at the four Ogres standing silently behind them, feeling a wash of
sudden optimism.

Marim whistled softly. “Look at the weapons. They’re not
pointing at the Tarkans—they’ve got someone on the
Telvarna
.”

“Standoff,” said Hreem, feeling even better. Then his breath
stopped as he caught sight of Vi’ya among the Marines. “Chatz! They got her.”
Rage and disappointment filled him.

Marim shot him an odd look. He ignored her as he watched
Anaris stalk across the bay toward the Marines. Then the Marine facing Anaris
popped his faceplate open.

“Sanctus Hicura!” Marim’s voice was strangled with surprise,
but Hreem wasn’t listening. He knew that face—that Arkad had gotten away from
him once, but now he was here, now he was Panarch, and that changed everything.

“That’s just what we needed!” he exulted. The Panarchists
would be extra careful not to start anything with the Panarch among them. “Can
we get in there?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Let’s go, then.” He motioned with his jac.

“Wait.” She seemed to have difficulty speaking, and his
suspicions soared again.

“What? You been holding out on me, after all?”

“No! It didn’t make any difference, and they didn’t tell me
until we were on our way, but you gotta know now. The nicks sent us to nacker
up the station.” She must have seen his anger, for she hurried on. “But look!
Anaris doesn’t know. He thinks Vi’ya wants to escape from the Marines, and
you’re still an ally, right? He’ll try to use you against them—this is what we
need!”

Hreem glared at Marim for a long time. He’d heard the anger
in her voice:
“
. . . 
they didn’t tell me until we were on our
way.”
If she’d dropped her eyes, he would have killed her, but she didn’t.
He nodded. “Yeah. Well, then, you’re gonna be the first one through the
hatch—you know the drill.”

She shrugged sharply and got to her feet.

“Go on,” he said, prodding her with the jac. “You’re good at
talking your way outta trouble. Let’s see you talk us out from under those
asteroids.”

o0o

Jaim watched Anaris’s black eyes widen, then narrow. The
clues were all there, and Jaim could almost feel the swiftness with which the
Dol’jharian assembled them into comprehension. Very soon, within seconds,
Anaris had it all—or almost all.

The expression on Anaris’s face matched that on Brandon’s
with unnerving similarity.
There is
history here.
Personal history. Perhaps it was the residue of the Unity, or
else it was the myriad subtle signs of muscle, breath, pupil dilation but Jaim
sensed a twist of sexual violence running far deeper than that which had taken
place between Anaris and Vi’ya during the Karusch-na Rahali.

Then Anaris’s eyelids twitched, revealing intent, and Jaim
braced for the order to the Tarkans to open fire. He gripped his jac tighter.
None of them would survive—Anaris must know that.