The Thrones of Kronos (82 page)

“Missile impact, aft port bay, minor damage,” Metije
snarled.

Marim looked up at the screens, shaking back her hair. Hreem
also glanced at the screens then back at her. Maybe he should just throw her
off the bridge until this was over, except he wanted to watch her see the
Telvarna
vaporized. How she handled
herself would tell him how much she could be trusted.

The music changed. Everyone on the crew ignored it—everyone
except Marim. She waggled her head in time to the rhythm, her bright yellow
curls bouncing.

Hreem took the
Lith
out for a look-back, watching the action just completed from a few
light-seconds out. How did Vi’ya manage to emerge so closely each time? There
was no clue on the screen.

“Emergence pulse!” Erbee shouted again. Another hit.

“You logos-loving
idiots
!”
Hreem yelled at his crew, waving his jac. “Act sharp! It’s only a chatzing
Columbiad!”

He calculated quickly from the vectors revealed by the
look-back, jumped the
Lith
, and
grinned ferally as the destroyer emerged only a few light-seconds from the
Telvarna
, with the missile tube vectored
almost straight on.

He slapped the missile pad, but on the screen the
Telvarna
skipped once again and the
skip-missile’s reddish chain-of-pearls wake lanced out into empty space, a
clean miss. Hreem pounded his fist on his pod arm. How could she
do
that? It was like she was reading
their—

Reading our minds.

Then, before he could conn the ship after the little vessel,
it emerged behind the
Lith
and struck
at his radiants.

“Missile strike, radiant quadrant four, efficiency down ten
percent,” reported Metije.

The
Telvarna
vanished, but its vector was advantageous, as was almost always the case in a
stern strike by a vessel whose main missile launchers faced forward.

Hreem snapped out a new course and as they shuddered into
skip again, he glared at Marim. Then he had it: Suneater, his chamber. Marim in
bed, yelling, “Get out of my mind!”

With a bellow of rage he leapt out of his pod, grabbed her
around the throat, and threw her to the deck. Shock silenced the bridge; Marim
lay at his feet, her blue eyes distended.

“She’s getting it from you!” he yelled.

“No!” Her mouth opened, pink and round, but before she could
speak again—could make up some lie—his jac was in his hand, and he aimed right
at her face and fired.

The bolt sizzled, filling the air with the stink of burned
flesh.

Then the bridge lights went out, and flickered back on in
emergency mode. Cursing in rage, Hreem vaulted back into his pod, slamming his
hand on the comm. “Engineering, get the chatzing power back on-line!”

“They’ve shut us down! The hyper-relay’s down!”

Hreem cursed louder, looking for someone to blame—to kill.

He stopped mid-curse when the screen flickered to life, and
Hreem stared up into Vi’ya’s merciless black eyes.

o0o

It took no thought for Jaim to control his breathing. This
was one of the first lessons taught one who walks the difficult path of the
Ulanshu. Wreathing through his disintegrating consciousness was KetzenLach’s
music, its themes binding him through memory to the here and now. Pain
fire-lined every movement, but he kept the physical reaction in a distant part
of his mind as he concentrated on the task at hand.

At last he looked up into the screen, watching the terror in
Hreem’s crew, the rage in Hreem’s face.

Unheeded, the music rippled through both bridges, and Jaim
felt the close presence of his Watchers: Reth Silverknife, Markham, and now
Marim. Behind, stretching into the darkness that smeared the edges of his
vision, he sensed a host of others; whether this disembodied crowd was real or
a delusion caused by his drugs and wound no longer mattered.

Hreem snarled, “So what’s your price, piss-for-brains? You
want me to beg?”

Jaim glanced sideways at Vi’ya, sensing waves of fiery pain
flickering at the edges of his control.

“I want you to die,” Vi’ya said, and nodded at Jaim.

He lifted his hand one more time and tabbed the key.

The music had stopped. In silence he watched the missile
speed away. In silence the million-degree nuclear detonation tore into
unprotected hull metal, and the
Lith
disintegrated, blooming into a final, lacy beauty, an ironic epitaph for the
ugliness that had been Hreem’s life.

And as the rose of plasma faded, so, too, did Jaim’s sight,
but it no longer mattered, and he slid from his pod into the welcome embrace of
darkness.

The music from the hyperwave rose to a crescendo and then
subsided. Margot Ng groped for the difference she heard: too complex to be
called a mere key change. No, a theme was missing, and the subtraction of its
dissonant, compelling tones sounded like a transition to a major key.

“Power loss on
Flower
of Lith
,” sang Wychyrski.

With immense satisfaction Margot Ng watched as the
Telvarna
came about and launched a
single missile against the now-helpless destroyer. As the nuclear fireball
dissipated, the Columbiad skipped out. Had Vi’ya detected, by whatever occult
means she had, the emergence of another threat?

“Tactical skip,” Ng said. No sense in taking any chances.

The fiveskip burred and Ng turned her mind to the rest of
the battle, ferociously unabated. The
Telvarna
could obviously take care of itself.

The character of the battle was changing as the chaos of
music and propaganda on the hyperwave steadily eroded Juvaszt’s control of
events. Ng guessed by now his communications were little better than hers.
Certainly the tenno indicated a growing lack of coordination between Rifter units,
while her control had changed not at all. In fact, it was improving slightly as
naval units ejected tacponders every time they skipped.

“Seems there are advantages to EM, after all,” Captain
Krajno said, following her gaze.

“Right. Take the conn: it’s time we pursue an active role.”

“AyKay. But that’ll give the
Fist
a better line on us.”

“Can’t be helped.” Ng gestured at the tactical screen.

“Addition of a battlecruiser to any of these actions,”
Rom-Sanchez said, highlighting several ship-to-ship actions onscreen, “would
likely tip the balance.”

Ng studied the display, then tapped her console. A bright
circle sprang up around one action. “This one first.”

Krajno nodded. As he issued his orders, Ng studied the
tactical screens more carefully. The
Fist
—with
Anaris Eusabian now commanding—seemed to be assembling a new strategy, and it
was this that occupied her mind. When she had time to look again, she realized Brandon
was no longer at her side.

A few minutes later a fireball announced the demise of another
Rifter destroyer. Krajno ordered a tactical skip, then turned to Ng. “Where
next?”

Ng had no time to answer as Siglnt’s console blipped.

“Emergence pulse.”

“Tactical skip, now,” Krajno ordered. The fiveskip burped.

“ID:
Telvarna
,”
said Wychyrski.

Comment ricocheted round the bridge, like an electrical
charge, then the monitors returned to their tasks. But Ng felt a change in the
atmosphere—excitement, anticipation, which had nothing to do with the battle.

“Hold course,” said Krajno. “We’ll let them find us.”

So Perthes had figured it out, too.

It was only minutes later that the forward gamma landing bay
reported: “
Telvarna
is in.”

“Admiral?” queried Krajno.

She indicated the next action, and as Krajno took them out,
she tabbed her screen to the landing bay. Surprise bloomed through her tired
body when she saw the Marine honor guard lined up in full-dress uniforms. She
glanced inquiringly at Krajno, who gave her a slight shrug. He had not ordered
it—but his expression made it clear that he approved.

The old, plasma-scarred Columbiad’s ramp lowered, and the
first ones out, marching in a neat unit, were the Marine volunteers, dressed in
a wild variety of clothing apparently borrowed from
Telvarna’s
stores. Right behind them were the others, or the remainder
of the others, in no order: Ng recognized each one as they emerged, led by the
sauntering comtech who had borne for so many years a false charge of murder.
Gone was the insouciant little DC-tech, and the youth who had bonded with the
Kelly. In their places were three Bori who had earlier been identified last
with the
Samedi
under Emmet
Fasthand—an unsavory data-scavenger.

But there was no time to consider the vagaries of Rifter
allegiance.
This war has changed
everything,
Ng thought as Vi’ya trod down the ramp followed by the little
Eya’a. Vi’ya had the drivetech’s arm around her shoulders as he stumbled; his
shock and pain were visible even at this distance.

The two noderunners also moved with sagging steps, supported
by others, the Bori woman looking confused, the older woman gazing down at the
ground.
That one is the ex-Navy commander
.
She knew Thetris’s history, and again considered the changes the war would
make. Watching the woman’s sober face, Ng knew what she must be feeling.
Some of the changes will be for the better,
she thought grimly.

The Panarch stepped forward to greet them, neat and
straight-backed in formal mourning white; he’d managed to stop for a fast
shower and a change of clothing on his long journey back to the landing bay.
She could not hear what was said, but the Marines gave a great shout and then
the tableau broke up as the wounded were carried off one way, the others led
elsewhere.

Behind her, the continuous murmur of battle data flowed by.
A sharp whisper, from the otherwise unflappable Mzinga, brought her focus back:
“They’re coming up here.”

Ng caught Krajno’s eye, smiled, and straightened her tunic.
A short time later the hatch hissed open and the Panarch and Vi’ya walked in
side by side.

Rising as one, the entire bridge crew faced them and pounded
right fists against their chests, the highest military accolade, usually
reserved for one of their own. Brandon had stepped a little away from Captain
Vi’ya, making it clear that the accolade was for her alone; for the first time Ng
saw a reaction in the woman’s face, a flush of dusky rose under the smooth dark
brown skin.

It was for Margot to say something, but just as she opened
her mouth she saw Vi’ya’s black eyes narrow, and Brandon’s gaze jerked to the
screens monitoring the chaos of the hyperwave transmissions.

Ng ignored the flurry of activity at the communications
consoles as she followed the Panarch’s gaze. The screen flickered, and one
section expanded to reveal the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette of a man, his
back turned, outlined against the blue-white savagery of the singularity’s
accretion disk. At his feet a bony lump crouched. The flaring light of
annihilated matter revealed it to be a thin, pale-skinned man, his gaunt face
buried in trembling, skeletal fingers.

“Communications,” Ng snapped. “Cease jamming.”

The screen cleared and the image lost some of its
fractalization.

“Jerrode Eusabian,” Brandon said.

Slowly the figure turned around, and now, one by one, the
other transmissions on the hyperwave ceased, leaving the image sharp and
distinct.

Commander Hurli at Communications tapped at her console,
transferring subsidiary channels to other consoles so that Jerrode Eusabian’s
face and shoulders filled the screen. His dark hair was outlined by a halo of
light refracted from behind. Light reflected dully upward from the gray tunic
of the man at his feet, throwing the lines graven in his face into relief. In
his ceaselessly moving fingers writhed a silken cord as Eusabian’s eyes scanned
the bridge.

“Hekaath.”
His
voice was a low, hoarse rumble, like distant thunder.
“Emmer te gowen.”

Ng heard rapid tapping from one of the communications
consoles. A line of print scrolled under the image.

The unbreakable bond,
it read. You are gathered.

There was no human sound on the bridge, no voices from the
hyperwave save Eusabian’s. But over it all the music mounted, triumphant,
trans-human, fusing the moment into an emotional gestalt the like of which Ng
knew none of them would ever again experience.

A strange basso squeal hummed through the bridge. The image
went negative; Eusabian’s eyes briefly became wells of white flame while the
accretion disk became a lightless void. Ng’s memory flashed an image of the
secret temple of the Ultschen, revealed after al-Gessinav’s death, and its icon
of Nothing above the bloody altar.

When the strange distortion passed, Eusabian’s eyes
refocused, as though he was seeing them from a great distance. He began
speaking again, almost chanting.

“Darakh-il emmer
entasz eg pendeschi palia-mi ni-tsuren kurrhan. Pali-mi kurrhar bi omha
emreth-te, dira-mi bi omha mizpeshi, hach-ka mi bi tyram-te, dasz te emmer
prochar mi-retann epas Morat-jhar.”

Forever I visit upon
you and your lineage my ever-following vengeance. So will my vengeance haunt
all your destinies, my curses all your blessings, my spirit all your dreams,
that you may ever anticipate with fear my return from the kingdom of death.

He lifted his hands, thrusting the complexly-knotted cord at
them, and some trick of the distorted space around him transformed the movement
into the striking of a snake.

“Eglarrrrrrrrr . . . rr . . .
r . . .” Midway through his final word the image began to
fractalize and his voice slowed, droning down through a subsonic rumble, like a
mistuned tianqi, that briefly reached into Ng’s viscera with invisible fingers
of panic that swiftly passed as silence fell and his image froze, broken and
gray as a ruined statue.