I let out a long, slow breath. I didn’t have enough data to make any definitive predictions. I needed information.
I went to the console by the wall. Its chair molded to my body, pushing my back into good posture, straight instead of slouching. Then I went to work. After so long, it felt odd to look up Seth on the webs. I couldn’t help but be curious; I hadn’t heard news of him for years. It no longer hurt to think about him; time had eroded the sharp edges of those memories, shading them in softer colors.
The ship’s public databases had almost nothing on Seth. So I hacked the secured accounts in the ISC intelligence network onboard. They had a whole dossier on him. ISC used spy programs to monitor the interstellar webs, keeping track of anyone they thought might be of interest, which certainly included William Seth Rockworth HI, Allied admiral and former Ruby consort.
Seth still lived in the Appalachian Mountains. He had retired after a long career in the navy and now spent his days reading and gardening. His second wife had passed away fifteen years ago. He had six children, many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and more, a huge extended family. He also worked with refugees, finding homes for children orphaned in the war. He had taken four into his home and given them his last name: Jay, Lisa, Peter, and Kelly Rockworth.
His refugee work didn’t surprise me. Beneath his brash exterior, he had always had a tender heart. His foster children had a Skolian mother and Trader father, both lost in the war. If they went to their Trader relatives, they would become slaves. The Skolians didn’t want them. Apparently an Allied relief agency had sent them to Earth.
It took awhile, but I finally located a holo of Seth standing with the children. His appearance startled me. Gray streaked his black hair, lines showed around his eyes and mouth, and he had gained weight Even so, he still looked like the dashing naval captain I had fallen for all those decades ago.
The foster children were striking. The oldest boy was about sixteen. He had black hair and brown eyes and stood about six-feet-two, with a gangly frame that would fill out into a well-built physique. He was grinning at a toddler he held in his arms, an angelic boy with yellow hair. A girl of about thirteen stood next to them, a beauty, but with odd hair, blond, lavender, and black mixed together. A dark-haired boy of about nine stood in front of them, laughing at whoever was taking the holo.
Despite the obvious good nature of the people in that image, a chill went up my neck. I couldn’t mistake the oldest boy’s heritage. Aristo. It showed in the classic planes of his face, the high cheekbones, even the way he held himself. I shuddered, wanting to turn off the holo. But he wasn’t pure Aristo, not with brown eyes and normal hair. He might have disguised his appearance, but I couldn’t imagine Seth taking in an Aristo youth. More likely, one of the boy’s progenitors had been an Aristo who had children with a pleasure slave. It was hard to tell with the other children, but they had enough resemblance to one another that they could be related.
That boy, the oldest. What about him caught my attention?
I evolved new models in my mind, trying to explain the children. For some strange reason, a sense of Eldrinson and Soz kept coming up. Odd. The same thing had happened when I had tried to predict outcomes of the Radiance War. I had told Eldrinson, but he could see no reason why he should come up so much. Soz had said the same. Or so they claimed. But they protected their minds with Rhon barriers. I had kept at them about it, until finally Eldrinson told me this: Put Jaibriol Qox in your equations. Gently.
That had been the last time I had seen him; it had been only moments before he and Roca had left for Earth.
Well, so. I had already put Jaibriol II in my equations. He was the Trader emperor, after all. He had to be there. But gently! Aristos tortured people. I had tried the suggestion anyway, using gentler aspects of the emperor, but the models still hadn’t converged. Not then.
What about now?
I added my recent experiences to those models. New patterns began to develop in my mind. Viquara Iquar suddenly appeared. Jaibriol II’s mother. She had died in the war, along with her consort, Kryx Quaelen. As the Minister of Trade, Quaelen had wielded a great influence. Some claimed he and Viquara were the true powers behind the throne.
So what did I have? A lot of very powerful, very dead people. Viquara. Quaelen. Jaibriol H. Soz. Althor. What the hell had five major interstellar leaders been doing in the middle of battle? It was crazy.
Even more bizarre, my models suggested these people had some connection to those four refugee children on Earth. Why?
I mulled over possible scenarios. Before Viquara had wed Kryx Quaelen, she had been married to the Trader emperor. He too had died without an heir. Since Viquara had no claim to the throne through blood, it left her marginalized, without power. Then she conveniently produced Jaibriol II, her son, whom everyone thought had been dead for seventeen years. Genetic testing had proved that yes, he was indeed the emperor’s son. Apparently they had hidden him away to protect him from assassination. And now, guess what? Here we had a sixteen-year-old-boy with Aristo heritage hidden on Earth.
If that boy was Viquara’s son or grandson, what the blazes would Seth be doing with him? And then we had Kryx Quaelen. As Trade Minister he traveled extensively and had probably fathered many children. That didn’t explain why Soz kept coming up in my models. Well. So. She had been in exile for seventeen years, pursuing Jaibriol on some planet. We had only her word that she never found him. Could they have had children? Gods, what an atrocious prospect. I didn’t even want to think about the implications.
It all held a grim fascination, like watching a disaster in slow motion. I ran an analysis on Seth’s foster family, asking for a comparison of their appearance with holos of Jaibriol, Viquara, Kryx, Soz, Eldrinson, and Seth.
The results came back fast: secured.
Secured? What the hell?
It took me another hour to unravel the tangle of safeguards that blocked my investigation. The security programs were disguised, invisible to anyone with less experience in the webs than myself, which meant most everyone alive. Whoever had hidden them was an expert, someone with close to my ability in unraveling such systems and probably more military knowledge. That meant either Soz or Kelric. Althor had the military experience, but he didn’t have that extra flash of brilliance Soz and Kelric possessed. Given that Kelric was dead, that left Soz.
The computer finally gave me the analysis: it was within the realm of possibility that Seth’s foster children were offspring of Eldrinson, Soz, Kryx, or Jaibriol. It also gave me a long list of other possible parents, some far more probable than the four on my original list. Neither Seth nor Viquara appeared on either list. Seth’s absence made sense; his only relation to the Ruby Dynasty was through marriage. But Viquara was Jaibriol’s mother. If he appeared, she ought to be a candidate as well.
I rubbed my chin, baffled. Then I reviewed what I knew. Eighteen years ago ISC had captured Jaibriol II. He escaped and Soz went after him. ISC found the debris of their ships. Two empires grieved for their deaths. No one knew their lifeboats had crashed on a world with no human settlements. They came down on different continents. Survival had been a struggle. Soz searched for Jaibriol, but a world is a big place. Viquara’s people found him first, many years later. The sensors that had survived the crash of Soz’s lifeboat warned her when the Trader ships came. She found their landing site after they left Using a transmitter they discarded, she called for help. Then she came home—and went after the Traders with a vengeance.
So. Soz and Jaibriol. Two people stranded for years on a planet with no other humans. Circumstances push them together. They have children. The idea of Soz bearing an Aristo’s children seemed as likely as Soz growing a second head, but I couldn’t ignore it. Had Qox forced her? I remembered her brooding, fierce moods. Pride could have kept her silent; as Imperator, she would never want it known she had borne Jaibriol Qox’s children. It could be explosive. I couldn’t imagine Soz abandoning her children, not even if an A
risto had sired them, but she might take them to Seth.
I just didn’t see how Jaibriol could force her. It fit no profile I had of Soz’s behavior. With her military training, she could have flattened him. The only way she would sleep with him was of her own free will. Gods. What a disagreeable thought. The computer spewed error messages everywhere, more from my outrage than from the prediction.
Maybe Eldrinson had fathered the children with an Aristo woman. Taking them to Seth would make sense if Eldrinson had custody, though how he would have managed that I had no idea. Nor could I imagine him cheating on Roca. Could an Aristo woman have forced him? Possibly. Methods existed. Jaibriol II had briefly held Eldrinson hostage during his escape from ISC eighteen years ago. Hah! Maybe Jaibriol was female. Stranger things had happened. Hell, he could be both male and female.
“Ach.” I pushed my hand through my hair. This was getting me nowhere.
A bell chimed. Then the El said, “You have a visitor. Vazar Majda.”
I stretched my arms, working out the kinks. “All right. Let her in.”
A graceful horseshoe arch separated my bedroom from the main room of the suite, an unexpected touch of elegance on the battle cruiser. I went through it and found Vazar standing in the living room, surrounded by blue furniture and white walls with floor-to-ceiling holo-panels of radiant nebulae, the fiery nurseries for newly born stars.
“My greetings, Dehya.” Against the glittering backdrop, she looked like a warrior goddess of the stars. She wore her regular uniform now, snug black leather studded by silver clasps and picotech conduits. It did nothing to disguise her spectacular figure, which before her marriage had inspired amorous pursuit from numerous men, and some women too. She had the classic black eyes and aquiline nose of Majda. Her glossy dark hair tousled around her shoulders. She had been the perfect choice for Althor’s wife, cementing ties between the Ruby Dynasty and House of Majda. Never mind that both she and Althor were actually in love with Coop, their co-husband, a commoner totally unacceptable to the nobility, a lithe blond artist whose angelic beauty left even me breathless.
Vazar put one hand on her hip and regarded me curiously. “Are you going to stare at me all night?”
“Heya, Vaz.” I rubbed my hands along my arms, selfconscious in my sleep shift with a fully battle-ready Jagernaut looming in my rooms. Vazar came unarmed of course, but she was a weapon herself, her body enhanced and augmented into a versatile killing machine.
“How are you?” I asked. Her face looked drawn.
She grimaced as if I had asked about hostile troop deployments. “I can’t sleep.”
I motioned her to a couch against one wall, its blue aircushions strewn with white silken pillows. “Please. Be comfortable.”
“Comfortable?” She snorted. “Whenever I’m in your rooms, I feel like I’m going to break something.” But she went over and sat, her black uniform a dramatic contrast to the pale blue sofa, her long legs stretched out across my white carpet, her heavy boots digging trenches in the pile.
I crossed the room to a crystal cabinet. “Would you like a drink?”
“If it has some life to it.”
I pulled out a bottle that read Blazer’s Starland Ambrosia. I had never tried it, but I had heard Blazer’s Starland was some sort of rowdy amusement-park-cum-space-station. I poured us each a drink, then went over and sat on the sofa. As Vazar took her glass, I tipped my crystal tumbler to my lips and swallowed. The liquid went down my throat as smooth as velvet, caressing my throat.
Then it detonated.
“Good gods!” I gasped, my eyes watering. “What is that?”
Vazar downed hers in one swallow. She lowered her glass and made a semi-approving noise. “Not bad.”
I blinked at her empty glass. “How do you do that?”
She leaned back on the sofa and stared at the opposite wall. “It’s nothing.”
“Vaz.” I watched her closely. She looked like hell. From experience, I knew she would evade questions about herself, so I used a roundabout approach. “How is Coop?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted restlessly. “I haven’t been able to get a message through to the Qrbiter since the war.” Vazar suddenly pushed to her feet and strode to the cabinet. She came back with the bottle of Blazer’s rocket fuel. When she dropped down onto the sofa, the cushions sunk under her weight. Then she poured herself another glass and handed me the bottle. “It’s all yours, Pharaoh.”
I watched her drain her glass. She clenched it so tightly, her knuckles had turned white. I gently pried the tumbler out of her fist. Her fingers felt like steel cords. Then I set the glass on the floor and put the bottle of “ambrosia” next to it.
She glared at me. “What did you do that for?”
I spoke softly. “The hurt will still be there tomorrow. You’ll just have it with a hangover.”
For a moment she simply looked at me, as if she hadn’t decided whether to explode or pour herself another drink. Then she sat forward, planted her booted feet wide, rested her elbows on her knees, and leaned her head in her hands. She spoke to the floor. “It’s flaming fucked.”
“At least it’s over for Althor. No more pain.”
Vazar lowered her arms so her hands were hanging between her knees. She regarded me with a bleak gaze. “ISC fixes our brains so that interrogation disrupts our neural activity. It’s like pressing the delete key. Zap. No more memory. Althor also had his mind set so he couldn’t speak about Coop, me, and Ryder.”
It didn’t surprise me. Vazar and Althor had been friends for decades. They had both wanted Coop. So they had all married. Although I had never fathomed their three-way marriage, I knew Althor would have done anything for them. I hadn’t thought Coop had any interest in women, but thirteen years ago Vazar had borne him a child, a boy called Ryder Jalam Majda.
“Althor wanted to protect you all,” I said gently.
“I know.” She poured herself more Blazer’s. “But in the end he probably didn’t even remember us.”
I touched her arm. “Jon Casestar tells me the evacuation of Onyx Platform succeeded.”
Vazar stared into her glass. “Hell of a job.”
I watched her vanquish her drink in one long gulp. “The Traders didn’t know enough about the Onyx perimeter defenses to stop the evacuation. Two billion people escaped.”
“That’s right” She frowned at her empty glass.
“Vaz.” I leaned forward, trying to get through to her. “Althor set up the Onyx system. If he had broken under interrogation, the Traders would have known our defenses well enough to stop the evacuation.” I spoke quietly. “Your husband saved two billion people. He’s a war hero.”
She fixed me with a stare. “I know what you’re doing. It doesn’t make him any less dead.” After a pause, she added, “But thank you.”
I wondered if Eldrin wished he were dead now. Would he forget Taquinil and me? His absence left a vacuum. We had been married for fifty-seven years. On the day Eldrin and I wed, Coop hadn’t even been born. Even now, at thirty-eight, Coop looked like a boy. Vazar could pass for thirty, though she was actually in her mid-sixties. The same had been true for Althor, who would have been almost seventy now.
I spoke tiredly. “We’re too old.” Taking a swallow of my drink, I gulped as its warmth exploded through me. “It doesn’t matter how young we look. We’ve lost the edge of youth.”
“Youth is a waste of time,” Vazar muttered. “Overrated. When I was young, I was wild and confused.”
I smiled. “Now you’re wild and opinionated.”
She slanted me a wry look. “You sound like my cousin.”
By “cousin,” I knew she meant General Naaj Majda, Matriarch of the House of Majda. Naaj had a great deal of power. Too much. “Jon Casestar tells me Naaj has taken over the duties of the Imperator.” It meant she commanded ISC.
Vazar regarded me uneasily. “You going to throw her in the brig?”
“Now why would I do that?” I asked dry
ly.
Vazar just said, “Hereditary.” We both knew the title of Imperator went only to the Ruby Dynasty.
“A hereditary position with no heirs,” I said.
She spoke carefully. “Six of your sister’s children are still alive.”
“So they are.” Vazar was well aware that none of them had the training to lead ISC. Most had never even left their rural home on the planet Lyshriol. Roca would be a better choice for Imperator. Although she was a diplomat radier than a military officer, she had extensive experience with the power structure of Skolia. But no one was going to inherit anything unless they had the freedom to assume that title. And Roca didn’t right now.
I set my glass on the ground. “What is this business about Earth refusing to let Eldrinson and Roca go?”
Surprise flickered on her face. “Jon already briefed you?”
I hadn’t needed a briefing. My models had predicted their captivity. I just wished I had been wrong. As provided for in the Iceland Treaty, we had sent them to Earth for safety during the war, not only Roca and Eldrinson, but also Kurj’s widow, Ami, and her little boy Kurjson. The Allieds had also provided military forces to support ISC in safeguarding the planet Lyshriol, where Roca and Eldrinson had raised their family and where their surviving children still lived.
“I don’t know the details,” I said. “What happened?”
She picked up the bottle. “Naaj contacted the Allieds to arrange passage home for your family. Earth refused.”
“They can’t do that.”
“No? Well, the vermin-infested fu—”
“Vaz.” Noble birth or no, she could swear worse than the proverbial star-sailor when she got going.
“Sorry.” Then she poured more whiskey. “The Allieds are keeping them in ‘protective custody.’”
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