The Thrones of Kronos (79 page)

Then an adit midway between the two opposed groups snapped
open, and a high, familiar voice quavered out: “Vi’ya?”

It was Marim.

Vi’ya whispered something to Brandon.

Anaris evidently recognized Marim’s voice as well. “Let her
come in,” he said, speaking to Brandon as though there were no one else
present. “Just one more liability for you.”

Marim peeked out of the adit, then advanced cautiously
across the bay. But before she reached them she stopped, midway between the
Tarkans and the Marines. And in that moment, when all eyes were on her, a bulky
figure glided through the puckered opening, followed by another.

Jaim heard the whine of powered armor from Marines and
Tarkans alike as they brought their weapons to bear, but the Ogres merely took
up stations to either side of the adit as two more came out, taking positions
further into the bay.

For a moment nothing happened. Then Jaim felt the acid of
hate and vengeance claw at his guts as Hreem the Faithless stepped into the
landing bay, one hand clutching a compad, the other a jac.

“Telos,” Lokri whispered. “Look at the chatzer! Has he
crawled all the way here through the disposers?”

“Don’t try anything,” Hreem snarled at Vi’ya. “Or your
little brain-burners. My Ogres are homed on you and your crew.”

Vi’ya ignored him. “Marim?” She held out a hand.

Jaim watched as Marim hesitated, then shook her merry,
bright curls. “I’m bunkin’ out before Lokri does it to me,” she said defiantly.

Lokri said nothing, his mouth grim.

It was done.
Jaim
forced his attention back to Anaris, who had been watching carefully. He jerked
his chin at Hreem. “I assume you want a ship?” From the angle of his face, Jaim
could see that Anaris was still watching Vi’ya.
He’s going to strike at Brandon through her.

“Three ships here—and three groups,” Hreem said. “Seems
fair. The
Lith
’ll fight better with
me aboard. No matter what happens here, there’s nicks to kill out there,
right?”

Anaris laughed. “Indeed. Very well.” He issued orders
rapidly.

The nearer corvette’s crew filed out of the aft port and
joined the Tarkans. Hreem sent two Ogres into the corvette; they soon emerged,
green lights glowing.

Now Jaim understood. When they left the Suneater, unable to
escape in skip, there’d be two ships against one. Either that or no one would
escape. Brandon had no choice, despite the odds.

Anaris turned back to Brandon, smiling. “Now, if you’ll
release the bulkhead punches, I will direct my secretary to release the
Telvarna
to you.”

“Have him stand in the lock,” Brandon replied.

Anaris raised a comm to his lips. The lock of the
Telvarna
whined open, revealing
Morrighon’s stumpy form, clutching a jac. One of the Marines swiveled and aimed
her weapon at the Bori. Jaim heard Rhapulo issue a command. With a clatter the
bulkhead punch fell off Hreem’s corvette.

At a nod from Brandon, Lokri and Montrose ran up the ramp of
the
Telvarna
, ignoring Morrighon as
he descended and crossed the bay to Anaris’s side. When the
Telvarna’s
weapons came to life again,
the bulkhead punch clattered free from the other corvette, and its weapons
homed on the
Telvarna
.

“Now,” said Anaris, “it remains only to withdraw, one by
one, to our respective ships—”

He stopped as Brandon moved forward, his armor whining. The
Tarkans raised their weapons, but Anaris put one hand down, palm back,
commanding them to wait.

No,” said the Panarch, stopping in front of the Dol’jharian.

“What remains is this.” He reached out and with a movement
incongruous in its delicacy, seized the right sleeve of Anaris’s garment in his
gauntlet and ripped it off.

Anaris did not flinch, but he swayed to one side as the
greater strength of the servo-armor wrenched at him.

“Arran ni-paliach
ima-Eusabian etta mi dyn-achee. Esarrh du espilchu achrechor corrgha-tu yeilis
mi!”
the Panarch said, voice ringing off the bay’s walls.

Vi’ya did not speak. At the bewildered looks from the
others, Jaim translated swiftly, “The paliach of the Eusabians has failed in
the face of my power. Here claim I the spoils in your body yielded to me.”

Anaris stepped back, his face grim as Brandon spoke past him
to Chur-Mellikath and the Tarkans.

Jaim continued translating. “It was I who consigned Jerrode
Eusabian to death.”

A light sprang out of Brandon’s armor, and a misty scene
took shape on the deck before the Tarkans, who watched as Eusabian raged
ineffectively inside the Urian bubble while the Panarch’s recorded laughter
resounded through the bay. Jaim could see the impact on those Tarkans with open
helmets.

“And where is the skull of Urtigen?”

Again, the light flickered, this time displaying the skull
of Eusabian’s father rolling down a corridor toward a group of Tarkans as
plasma beams flared off their armor.

“I will tell you—I used it as an
eskillith
ball in combat.” As Jaim translated, he saw a wintry
smile from Vi’ya.

The light flickered out.

“The house of Eusabian is dishonored. I give you your lives:
go home and choose a leader more worthy of your strength.”

For a moment no one moved. Then the Tarkans turned away and
started filing toward the corvette.

Anaris looked up, the veins on his forehead beating.

“Ni-retorr!”
he
shouted, facing the retreating Tarkans, evoking the eponym of their name: those
who do not retreat. As they paused, he raised and extended his arms.

“Darakh ettu hurreash,
Urtigen-dalla!
” he cried out, evoking the beginning of the eglarrh
demachi-Dirazh’ul, in which Jerrode Eusabian had made him his heir, linking him
to the spirits of his forefathers. “Bestow upon us your presence, great
Urtigen.”

Blood burst from Anaris’s nose, his clothing stood away from
his body, and Jaim gasped as the Dol’jharian’s feet left the deck.
“Tsurokh ni-vesh entasz antorrh, epu
catenn-mi breach i-Dol!”
he proclaimed. Turn not away your eyes, for through
you I am linked to the spirit of Dol.

Every tendon and muscle was visible, rigid as iron. As the
echo of his words died away, Jaim could hear a distant rumbling, like the roar
of an avalanche. It grew louder; the deck shuddered underfoot. The Bori cried
out in fear, and several of the grays cast themselves face down.

Then lightning laced the back wall of the bay, and it
erupted outward, hurling a small, browned-ivory object into Anaris’s
outstretched hands.

Anaris’s white teeth gleamed through the blood on his face
as his feet slammed down on the deck and he held up the skull of Urtigen
Eusabian.

“Urtigen mizpeshi!”
the Tarkans shouted.
“Anaris
darakh-kreshch!”
Jaim heard the vow of loyalty unto death in the ritual
acclamation of power: The mercy of Urtigen! Anaris anointed!

Brandon whirled, slapping his faceplate shut; Jaim saw the
Tarkans raise their weapons.

Then the entire bay flared with actinic light and the
station howled agonizingly around them as a tremendous jolt threw them off
their feet. The flaring afterimage made it impossible to see anything, but with
the inner vision of his Ulanshu training, Jaim visualized the bay as it had
been, and Hreem raising his compad to his mouth, his gaze fixed on Vi’ya. He
heard the Rifter’s voice begin a shout: “Ogres, attack—”

Jaim lunged forward, triggered his jac, blindly but not
without aim.

Hreem yelped as the compad exploded, and then a searing pain
tore through Jaim. He started to fall, but Brandon was there to catch him.

The impact of the first asteroid fragment seared through
Ivard like the jac-bolt he’d taken under the Palace on Arthelion. The cathedral
image wavered around him, the stained-glass windows threatening to shatter back
into synesthetic chaos.

He leaned forward, clutching at the keyboard and provoking
an awful discord. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and the man leaned past
him, pointing at some of the stops on the organ. “Listen! Learn! I can help
little more. This—” He indicated a stop. “—and this and this are the defenses
of the Suneater. The field is more than just an energy sink. Use it.”

“But what are the others?” Ivard cried, waving his hands at
the confusion of controls and ranks of keyboards.

The man’s voice sounded distant now. “Try them. Feel them.
Watch the windows. I can spare you no more attention, for I must prepare. It is
all in your hands.” His voice blended into a complex melody of crystalline
chimes that faded away as the humanity the Presence had simulated to speak to
him dissipated. But he could still feel It, like a thunderhead building behind
him as It gathered itself for some mighty effort beyond his comprehension.

Ivard looked around at the profusion of windows. In his
mind, the blue flicker expanded from a point, pervading him with a sense of
warmth. He remembered how overcome he’d been on the Kelly ship, before he
learned to sort impressions. He tentatively pulled at a stop, then another,
pressed a key, then another. Gradually he began to see and hear a pattern. He
suppressed his other senses, for they didn’t fit the image, and he was afraid
of losing his way in chaos again.

The image of New Glastonbury’s organ had to come from
Montrose. Ivard remembered how, before Markham died, the
Telvarna
always seemed full of music. The Kelly band around his
wrist throbbed, anamnesis of the music that had pervaded his life as he grew up
among Markham and Vi’ya’s crew. The music was still there! It flowed from his
fingers, and one of the colored windows glowed brilliantly. It was the
Telvarna
!

He heard a contrapuntal sweep of themes weave into his
playing, harmonious against a background of dissonance: the heroic chords of
Montrose; Vi’ya’s complicated melody, all in minor key; for Lokri a brilliant
counterpoint; for Jaim a steady arpeggio of power. And behind them, two other
themes, one an echo of the other.

Nearby were two other windows, other chords, these dissonant
and dark, less firmly linked. He sensed Marim: her theme, also embellished with
that familiar echo, was entwined with an ugly, stomping rhythm that he knew must
be Hreem the Faithless, and grief wrung at his heart.

She’d bunked them all out, then.

And from the other window, now nearer to
Telvarna
, the cruelly deliberate yet
subtly woven measures of Anaris, and the lesser themes of his minions. Both
were closing in on his friends.

His gaze leapt to the stops the man had shown him: the
defenses of the Suneater. Other windows lit as he manipulated them, and he
heard the groaning discord of a dying sun, the cry of the billionfold deaths of
atoms devoured by the singularity. Then the driving ponderous themes of
incoming asteroids exploded from the deeper pipes. But as he worked, he heard
those deep tones falter, as if slowing, and felt the pressure against his
fingers on the keys increase. Meaning exploded in his mind.

Feverishly he sought and found another window, heard another
familiar theme, wove it together with
Telvarna
,
brought in Vi’ya’s melody, reached out…

o0o

“Lokri, bring up Lar on DC,” Vi’ya commanded.

Lokri obeyed as Lar struggled to balance the tianqi under
the terrible overload imposed by the almost three hundred refugees from the
Suneater—far beyond what the Columbiad’s systems had been designed to cope
with. The bridge stank of blood and sweat and vomit, and Lokri winced at the
thought of what the rest of the ship must be like.

The urgency of the situation was almost a relief. It kept
(for the moment) the rawness of grief from ripping him apart as every meter
carried them further from the Suneater, and Ivard.

“Corvettes are faster,” Brandon said from his seat at Fire
Control. He’d shed his armor and now wore only a singlet, sweat-stained and
grimy, and a pair of trousers borrowed from Lokri. He triggered a
counter-missile strike; Lokri felt the ship shudder, then jolt as they detonated
an incoming missile.

Markham had said once,
You
haven’t lived until you have been in love.
Others had spouted similar
words—sophistry, Lokri had thought. Sentiment. No one, ever, had told him how
agonizing love was.

Or maybe they’d tried, in their own way, he thought as he
glanced at Vi’ya, who had worn black every day since Markham was shot down. And
Jaim, still wearing those mourning braids.

Vi’ya’s profile was grim as she tried to steer the
Telvarna
free of the two attacking
ships. Only the Colombiad’s superior maneuverability, even impaired as it was
by the mass of far too many passengers, and her skill, had kept them intact
following the mad scramble into the ships and away from the Suneater after the
first asteroid struck.
Can she keep this
up for two days?

And beyond it all loomed the swelling red giant, waxing in
intensity every moment, reminding them that even if they could outrun their
enemies, there was still the coming wavefront of destruction.

Lokri glanced at Lysanter, who was hunched over a console
linked to the hyperwave Anaris had had installed, trying to set up the
Telvarna’s
arrays for discrimination
through the hash of jamming the nicks were throwing out. The scientist
straightened up, fists against his kidneys as though his back ached; he became
aware of Lokri’s gaze and shook his head. He still hadn’t reached the
Grozniy
, then.

Another near miss hammered the ship. From Hreem, according
to the glyphs and short interpretation echoed from Brandon’s console. That
corvette was following them the closest. Marim had to be conning the ship so
that Hreem could handle weapons.
I didn’t
call her back,
he thought bleakly.
That
wasn’t love. It was at most a kind of possession. And now she wants me dead as
badly as Hreem wants Vi’ya.