Ascendant Sun

by Catherine Asaro

  Far away, as if through layers of muffling cloth, he heard voices shouting. An air-needle hissed against his arm, running feet pounded, air rushed past his face.

  Then his mind disintegrated.

  3

  Cargo Man

  Hiss.

  Stop. Start. Stop.

  Phissssss.

  Kelric lay in a cocoon of warmth.

  The blurs above him resolved into a ceiling, a simple surface, ugly in fact, a dull white. The light fixture was a white half sphere, or what used to be white. Its plastiflex covering had long ago yellowed. He stared at it and listened to the hissing hum.

  After a while, he looked to the left. He was lying on a cot, a few hand spans away from another cot. A man slept there under an old blue blanket. Kelric turned his head to the right and saw another cot. The man in this one was singing in a low voice, the same phrase over and over, a tuneless hiss about dead birds. He gave no indication he knew the rest of the universe existed.

  Moving slowly, his body protesting with aches, Kelric sat up. The old blue blanket that had covered him slipped down to his waist. Slender insulation conduits threaded its weave. Some had worked out of the frayed cloth and scratched his skin. Bare-chested, he wore only a pair of sleep trousers, clean, but faded to gray from many washings. An antiquated IV patch was attached to his inner elbow. Fluid fed it through a plastiflex tube that stretched to a bag on the wall behind him. It was a crude setup; he couldn’t even leave the cot unless he pulled off the patch.

  He looked around the hospital ward. Cots crammed the large room, side by side and toe to head, hundreds, all occupied. The place smelled of disinfectant and plastic. For all those patients he saw only two medics, both in IRAS uniforms, a woman near the door and a harried man across the room.

  Fatigue pressed on him. Hunger gnawed at his stomach despite the IV. More than anything else, though, he felt relief. After his delirium of the past few days, he was grateful to be coherent. He hadn’t realized how bad his condition had become until it improved enough for him to notice the difference. His throat ached, his head throbbed, and fever heated his face. He didn’t care. He was alive. Alive. So he sat on his cot, barely thinking, content.

  After a while the medic across the room straightened up, rubbing his neck. He moved on, squeezing his way between cots, stopping often to talk with patients and check monitors. Kelric watched him, oddly comforted. The doctor had a pleasant face, as smooth as polished wood. Like most Edgewhirl natives, he wore his hair in two braids that fell to his waist.

  Eventually he reached Kelric’s cot. He spoke to Kelric in Skolian Flag, his voice rich with the Edgewhirl accent. “You look a lot better today.”

  It took Kelric a few seconds to answer. “I give thanks for your generous care.” Ach. Too formal. His ability to converse was as rusty as oxidized foil. He had grown up speaking Iotic and reverted to its cadences when he was tired. Almost no one used the archaic tongue anymore except the Ruby Dynasty and a few ancient houses descended from the otherwise vanished nobility of the Ruby Empire. He hoped the doctor didn’t recognize his accent; the fewer people who figured out his background, the better.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” the doctor asked.

  “Please do.” Kelric pushed back against the wall, making room. The singer in the next cot had fallen silent, except for an occasional rattling snore.

  The doctor sat down, facing Kelric. “I’m Tarjan. I was here when they brought you in yesterday.”

  “How long?” Kelric managed.

  “How long have you been here?” Tarjan asked. When Kelric nodded, Tarjan said, “About thirty hours.”

  Kelric sat for a moment. Then he said, “I had an odd sense yesterday when I passed out. As if I were disintegrating.” It felt strange to speak so much. Profligate.

  Tarjan answered in a gentle voice. “You were dying.”

  Dying. Kelric shook his head, more to clear it than to deny the words. “Can you fix it?”

  He only meant, could they fix him so he wouldn’t keel over if he stood up. But as soon as he saw Tarjan’s strained look, he knew the doctor had taken the literal meaning, not could he help Kelric back on his feet, but could he heal him.

  Tarjan spoke carefully. “Your malnutrition and exhaustion need only food and sleep.”

  “But?”

  “We can’t be sure,” he hedged.

  “Tell me.” Kelric was too drained to wrestle with careful words. “I already know I’m damaged inside.”

  Tarjan exhaled. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “How bad?”

  “Of course, one can always hope—”

  “Doctor.” Kelric crumpled the threadbare blanket in his fist. “How bad?”

  Tarjan spoke quietly. “You need a new heart. New liver. At least one new kidney. Preferably two. You’re anemic. The lining of your stomach and intestines is degraded. Have you had nausea?” When Kelric nodded, the doctor said, “I’m afraid it may get worse. Also, the nanomeds in your body that provide health and maintenance, and delay aging, are mutating. They’re attacking their own host. You.” He paused. “You are a Jagernaut, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Tarjan simply nodded, as if it were perfectly normal to learn that a patient in his charity ward was a human weapon. “I figured that was why you have so much biomech in your body.” He regarded Kelric with concern. “The structural supports and high pressure bioplastics that enhance your musculature and skeleton are fraying, eaten by the mutated nanomeds. The micro-engines that control the system are corroded. About the only component with no damage is the microfusion reactor that powers you.”

  “It’s built to survive.” With a smile, Kelric added, “Can’t have my power source melting down inside of me.”

  He meant it as a joke, but he felt Tarjan’s unease. Kelric had forgotten how uncomfortable Jagernauts made people. That ISC’s versatile weapons were also human, empaths in fact, was a fact people all too often forgot.

  Tarjan rubbed his chin. “I’ve seen problems on Edgewhirl similar to yours. Some people can’t tolerate the traces of chlorine here. Gradually it poisons them. I’d say you’ve been dealing with a biosphere even more hostile to your chemistry. Your meds probably counteracted some of the effects, but they aren’t operating anywhere near full capacity. The problems must have been accumulating for years, even decades.”

  “Can you help?” Kelric asked.

  “I can treat the anemia. I may also have medicine to slow the mutation rate of your meds.” He exhaled. “But you need a full ISC hospital, one equipped to operate on Jagernauts, repair biomech damage, perform organ replacements or regeneration, flush out the defective meds in your body, and reseed you with healthy meds. That’s far more than we can do here.”

  It was what Kelric had expected. “Is there an ISC hospital in the region?”

  “Nothing. I checked as soon as we realized the severity of your condition.”

  “Any ISC base at all on-planet?” There had to be someone on this tiny world who could help him.

  “There’s a naval base on the Whitecap Coast of the Jadar continent,” Tarjan offered. “But they’ve neither the facilities to treat you nor transportation to take you offworld.”

  “No ships at all?” When the doctor shook his head, Kelric made an incredulous noise. “What happened to the ISC presence on this planet?”

  Tarjan gave him an odd look. “Same as everywhere else. The Glory Invasion.”

  Kelric had expected a comment on the Radiance War. Glory? Surely that didn’t refer to the preposterous name the Trader Aristos had given their capital world. Eube’s Glory. It took its name from Eube Qox, the Aristo who had founded the Eubian Concord. What a crock. Then again, no one had ever accused Eube Qox of modesty.

  “You can’t mean the Eube capital,” he said.

  Tarjan looked puzzled. “What else would I mean?”

  “Are you telling me that Imperator Skolia took ISC into the heart of Eubian territory?” Had his sister gone
mad? The Eubian capital was impregnable. “That’s suicide.”

  “Not according to the news broadcasts.”

  “Why? What do they say?”

  “ISC destroyed almost every military site in the system and then got out of there.” He paused. “Except for Imperator Skolia and the Imperial Heir, may they rest well.”

  So that was how his sister and brother had died. No wonder it earned them a ten-story memorial. Kelric couldn’t keep his anger out of his voice. “What the hell were the Imperator and Imperial Heir doing with an invasion fleet?”

  Surprise at Kelric’s lack of knowledge leaked from Tarjan’s mind. “Althor Valdoria, the Imperial Heir, had been an ESComm prisoner for two years.”

  Tarjan might as well have socked him in the stomach. Althor, a prisoner of war? Kelric didn’t want to imagine what his brother had endured during two years of ESComm interrogation. Death must have been a blessing. “And the Imperator?”

  “She went in to get him. And to avenge the death of her brother, Kurj Skolia.”

  Kelric just looked at him. Tarjan had no idea his words were like blows. “How did Kurj Skolia die?”

  “You don’t know that either?”

  Kelric wanted to grab his shoulders and shake the answers out of him. “No.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend,” Tarjan said gently. He pushed one of his braids over his shoulder. “Two years ago, ESComm ambushed his fleet in deep space. They destroyed all but the bridge of his flagship. When it was over, the Eubian emperor went in to claim Imperator Skolia as his prisoner.”

  “You mean Emperor Ur Qox?” Eighteen years ago, Ur Qox had been emperor, but Kelric had no idea who sat on the Carnelian Throne now. That sounded like Qox’s style, though; come in after the work was done and take credit.

  “That’s right.” Tarjan watched him with puzzlement. “Qox’s people believed they had Imperator Skolia defeated.”

  Kelric knew his brother. Kurj had been called the Fist of Skolia with good reason. “But they didn’t.”

  “No. He rigged the antimatter containment bottles on his ship and sprung the trap when Qox came onboard.” Quietly Tarjan said, “The resulting explosion obliterated the ships. Both the Imperator and Emperor Qox died.”

  So Kurj died taking Ur Qox with him. It helped to know his half brother would have considered it an honorable end. “Then Sauscony Valdoria became Imperator?”

  “That’s right.”

  Kelric scowled. “What was she doing with the invasion fleet? The Imperator has no business going into battle.” How could she have taken such a chance with her life? It was far more precious than Eube’s inanely titled Glory.

  Tarjan spread his hands. “I don’t claim to know the workings of the ISC mind. I only know the rumors.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They say the Triad couldn’t support both her and the Ruby Pharaoh. They couldn’t both survive. Their minds were too alike, whatever that means. Apparently the Imperator wanted her death to have a meaning.”

  Kelric knew exactly what it meant. If two minds in the Triad were too alike, they resonated until it tore apart the three-way link. It was how Kurj’s father had died: the link shattered when Kurj joined the Triad. It wasn’t possible to “resign” from the Triad; a member’s neural connections became so intertwined with the link that pulling out left a person brain-dead.

  “Is that how the Ruby Pharaoh died?” Kelric asked. “A Triad failure?”

  “No one seems to know,” Tarjan said. “She’s just gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Apparently. There hasn’t been much news.”

  Kelric frowned. The more answers he got, the less he knew. “And the ISC bases here?”

  “ISC pulled in ships from all over the Imperialate for the invasion.”

  “How many ships did we lose?”

  The doctor gave him another curious look. “They started with eight hundred thousand and returned with seventy thousand. Most of the casualties were drones crewed by EI brains.”

  Kelric stared at him. “We lost over ninety percent of our fleet? With our forces that depleted, we’re ripe for ESComm attack.”

  “There is no ESComm,” Tarjan said bluntly. “We destroyed them. Broke their back and put a stake through their heart.”

  It suddenly hit Kelric that he didn’t know the most crucial detail of the war. Caught up in his grief over his family, he had never asked the obvious question. “Who won?”

  Tarjan finally gave in to his curiosity. “Where have you been, that you know so little about all this?”

  Where indeed? He needed a cover story. He would have to think it through before he said anything, though; better to remain silent than make mistakes now he couldn’t undo later.

  When it became clear Kelric didn’t intend to answer, the doctor said, “We don’t know who won.”

  How could they not know? “Why not?”

  “Both ISC and ESComm are crippled. We have no Ruby Dynasty, they have no emperor. Imperator Kurj killed Emperor Ur Qox. Imperator Sauscony killed Ur Qox’s son.”

  Kelric blinked. “Ur Qox had an heir?”

  “Yes. Jaibriol the Second.”

  Jaibriol the Second. So Ur Qox had named his misbegotten son after his infamous father. If the second Jaibriol had been as brutal as the first, then Soz truly gave her life for the betterment of humanity.

  Tarjan spoke tiredly. “Eube is broken, we’re broken. Perhaps now, finally, these leaders of ours, what remains of them, will go to the peace table.” He gave Kelric a wan smile. “That would be something, eh? Genuine peace negotiations between Skolia and Eube.”

  “Yes.” Kelric absorbed that thought.

  Would this be his opportunity then, to usher in an era of peace? It gave him hope. Although he had earned his reputation for ferocity as a Jagernaut, he would rather have studied math. Introverted and contemplative, he preferred equations to battles. In his youth he had been a good test pilot, reveling in those solitary flights. But the further he rose in rank, the less he wanted a military career. Choice, however, had never played a role in his life. His education, career, marriages, even his freedom, had been arranged by others to suit the purpose of politics, first among his people and later on Coba.

  Before he ushered in anything, though, he had to become Imperator, which meant joining the Triad. To do that, he had to reach one of the three Locks. The Orbiter space station carried the First Lock, and the planet Raylicon had the Second. The Third was at Onyx Platform, a city of space habitats floating among the stars.

  “How long before I can leave here?” Kelric asked.

  “I’d like you to stay two more days.” Tarjan rubbed his neck, obviously trying to ease his knotted muscles. “You need to be here longer, but we don’t have the space. I’m sorry.”

  He felt the doctor’s exhaustion. Too many patients: too few resources. Tarjan feared he was turning out people too ill to leave.

  Kelric put a scowl on his face. “You expect me to lie here doing nothing for two damn days? I think not.” In truth, he felt ready to collapse after sitting up a few minutes. But maybe he could ease this overworked doctor’s undeserved guilt.

  Tarjan wasn’t fooled. He smiled. “Don’t worry. You’ll sleep most of the time.”

  Kelric didn’t doubt it.

  The hangar was out near the cargo warehouses, about two klicks from the domestic terminal at the starport. Kelric walked across the huge, empty airfield, inhaling the morning air. It smelled better here than in the city, without the sweet scent of vines.

  He felt healthier than in years. How long had he been anemic? The doctors on Coba had given him iron to rectify what they understood of the condition, but apparently it hadn’t been the right treatment. Tarjan’s methods worked wonders. Or maybe it was the medicine he prescribed to slow the mutation rate of Kelric’s nanomeds, leaving his healthy meds free to do more repairs. Even his muscles felt stronger. He barely limped at all.

  The IRAS clinic had laundered his clo
thes and found him a pair of socks and work boots. With two days of ample sleep and food, he felt ready to tackle life. And tackle it he would, until he earned enough to buy a new identity and passage offworld.

  The cargo master’s office was in a corner of the hangar. Holo inventories plastered the casecrete walls. In the back of the office, a woman sat behind a console, reading a schedule, her long legs propped up on the console amid scattered plasti-sheets. Gray streaked her braids. The brown jumpsuit she wore did nothing to hide her well-muscled build. Kelric doubted she had trouble with pickpockets in the starport.

  “Saints al-screaming-mighty,” she muttered. “Can’t they get the bloody flight times right?” She glared at Kelric. “What the hell do you want?”

  He blinked. “Work.” That one word came hard. On Coba, the only woman he ever spoke to was his wife, the governor of the city-state where he lived.

  She looked him up and down. “Half my servos are out, what with the Collapse. I could use a cargo handler. But it’s heavy work. If you’re looking for easy times, go somewhere else.”

  “Handler is fine.” He enjoyed heavy lifting. “How much?”

  “I’ll pay you one thousand centillas an hour.”

  He almost snorted. Did she think giving him the wage in centillas would make it sound like more? Ten Imperial dollars was nothing no matter how she named it. “Thirty dollars an hour,” he said.

  She laughed. “You got a high opinion of yourself.”

  “With good reason.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  She moved her hand in dismissal. “It’d wipe out what measly profit I wring from this business.”

  Kelric had no idea what a good wage was here. So he bluffed. “Twenty-five.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  She swore, making him wonder if he had pushed too hard and lost the job. Then she said, “All right. Twenty-five. But you better work that pretty ass of yours, boyo, or you’re out.”