A fierce pang of anger and pleasure twisted Montrose’s insides. “Go on.”
“You will have to understand at the outset that I am a traitor,” she said, her gaze still steady, but her trembling voice revealing the emotional cost of her words. “I have lied and schemed, but I am not lying now.” She paused for a deep breath. “I worked for a democratic revolution in Cloud Shelani, Phoenix Nord. I stayed in contact after my promotion, when I was shifted to Arthelion. We wanted a voice in the government, not more aristocrats squandering money on their vices.
“I found out too late that my promotion, and thence the orders that I interfered with and relayed, had been influenced by those who did not have a better government in mind. They were in league with Dol’jhar,” she said, her voice so flat that Montrose felt her cold pool of misery and self-judged guilt in his own gut.
“But I threw myself into undoing as much damage as I could before the last of us were pulled off Arthelion. Some may say I was lucky to live,” she finished, and had to swallow three times before she could force her voice to work.
Montrose found himself holding his breath. Though he had not met the woman before she’d walked into this room, he knew without question that she embraced the pain of her disease as justice meted out.
“I ended up here,” she said, her voice thready despite his drug. Her gaze remained steady, and Montrose stepped closer the better to hear. “The Archon Srivashti, formerly of Timberwell, sent me a message not long after my arrival threatening to reveal my treachery to Nyberg if I did not supply him with certain evidence. I did so only because I knew that if he betrayed me he would find someone else, who might not have my abilities.” She gave Montrose a wintry smile. “My expertise is in noderunning, not in revolution. I gave him what he wanted, but I was also able to penetrate his security by using certain facts he let slip. His codes did not take long to break,” she added with slight disdain. “And I found some curious references.”
She stopped and cautiously essayed a deeper breath. “I did not tell you how I found out too late: that was because of a message sent me by my contact, one Martin Cheruld, Aegios, Brangornie Node.”
She cocked her head, awaiting his reaction. The name seemed vaguely familiar.
“The dupe whose machinations at the Node controlling access to Dol’jhar was instrumental in setting up the attack. He plotted to put Galen on the throne. Or so he thought. What I subsequently discovered was his correspondence with Archon Srivashti, and deeper than that, much deeper in the Rouge Nord octant, the manipulation of data by Hesthar al-Gessinav.”
Montrose nodded, not surprised at all.
“The packet headers on that data led me exponentially deeper, to a communication I believe to have originated from Barrodagh, Eusabian’s factotum. I cannot, however, decipher it—but that may change as I gain access to more recent messages still propagating.”
Montrose shook his head slowly as he tried to take it all in.
Sedry paused, her brow furrowed. “How much do you know about the DataNet?”
“Enough to use it like anyone else,” he replied frankly. He flexed his hands. “But my talents lie in other directions.”
“Ah, yes. Golgol as well as medtech. An interesting nexus.” Sedry smiled wanly. “My fondness for rich foods is what got me to this point, but I have never experienced Golgol cuisine.”
He noted with approval that she said “experienced,” not “eaten.”
“Well, the traffic on the DataNet propagates throughout the Thousand Suns according to an immensely complicated set of distributed algorithms designed to make sure that all data lasts some time, and more important data lasts longer. Below a certain level, the priority is automatically assigned, but the really interesting work is done in the Anachronic Hubs and their substations in the various sectors.”
“But hasn’t the DataNet been destroyed?”
She laughed, then her face whitened and she caught her breath. “It would take an act of Telos to destroy the DataNet. Every interstellar journey, no matter what the ship, is a part of it.”
Montrose accepted that. The Telvarna had often carried data. Infonetics didn’t care about your identity: Vi’ya had commented once that they really didn’t even care if you delivered it, since the same packets were no doubt replicated on hundreds of other ships. But he’d never thought about the implications of that.
“As a matter of fact.” Sedry paused to draw another deep breath. “Ares is still connected. Via couriers smuggling data in and out of Nodes not controlled by Dol’jharians. Barrodagh has ensured that the Rifters leave ship traffic alone now—he needs the DataNet as much as we do.”
She leaned out, her hands on her knees, then continued. “Cheruld must have sent a large packet of data to Ares at the same time he sent it to Arthelion when he discovered he’d been duped. But he wasn’t at a high enough level to send direct to Ares, and the data never arrived here. Our only hope is that it is still propagating from its path to Arthelion and thence to Lao Tse.”
“So what you are hoping is that eventually the data you need will show up here?”
“It may have already. But I can’t use brain-suck anymore. The pain is too great.”
Montrose shook his head, frowning. “You could have killed yourself, stimulating your limbic system like that. Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“I am under sentence of death, anyway,” she said.
“So are we all. Why rush it?” he replied genially.
“I wanted to wait until I had enough to convince someone to get me an audience with the Panarch. Once he is alerted, deeper noderunners than I can quickly get to the bottom of this. I dared not go through the bureaucracy. Srivashti must have agents salted throughout it.” She smiled again, more hopefully. “And, when my search for a conduit to His Majesty turned up your name, and I saw you were also a physician, I thought perhaps I could be heard before something happened to me—either naturally or not.”
She massaged at her left arm again. Montrose noticed how neat and calm her hands were. “So now you have it,” Sedry said. She dipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out a chip. “What I have so far is here.”
Montrose took it from her. “Well, then, the first order of business is scouring out your arteries, if your heart is strong enough.” He stilled her protest with an upraised hand. “That will enable you to run the DataNet some more, if you like, to prepare an even more convincing case.”
Sedry Thetris closed her eyes, and as Montrose gave her instructions while preparing for his procedure, he pretended not to see the gleam of tears under her lashes.
She either trusted him or resigned herself to death, permitting him to put her out for the administration of the atherolytic agents, whose action could be quite painful.
As he went about his duties for the remainder of his shift, he thought about trust, and loyalty, and revenge. He enjoyed a vivid image of his hands about Tau Srivashti’s throat; was he willing to surrender that visceral satisfaction for the processes of Panarchic justice?
Yes, he decided, if he could be sure of seeing the murderer of Timberwell’s hopes—and therefore of his wife and children—ground up in the gears of justice.
And that depended on Brandon Arkad.
Inside the Enclave, protocol was relaxed. No titles, no questions of precedence, exactly as it had been when they were all aboard the Telvarna. Montrose and Jaim remained Rifters—they had jobs within the Panarchist realm, but they maintained their separate identities, which Brandon had not questioned.
Brandon had chosen to embrace the culture he had seemed to turn his back on, and events had now had brought him to its leadership.
Montrose stayed with him because he liked him. Liked his honesty, and his appreciation for those around him, of whatever degree.
The questions now: was that a sham? Montrose was often asked to share his observations, which he enjoyed doing. That very evening he was going to serve at a strictly social affair, sifting the political undert
ones.
Did this . . . loyalty, for lack of another word, really go two ways? There was no question of Brandon’s interest in justice; his anger, and subsequent action in forcing the already-overtaxed Navy into investigation of Licross after Ixvan’s story about the Reef, was proof enough of that. But data manipulation struck at the foundation of his rule. And his elevation of Hesthar al-Gessinav to his Privy Council, despite his sure knowledge that she had plotted against him with the cabal, argued that he possessed a pragmatic view of rulership that might dictate a different outcome to the matter of Tau Srivashti than Montrose desired.
I have never tested him, Montrose thought as he washed up after repairing a shattered bone. Now the time has come.
FIVE
The meeting room of the Privy Council was a bubble on top of the Circle with a spacious view of the oneill’s interior. Underneath its dyplast dome, an arbor of flowering plants formed a shady ceiling above the round table and the comfortable chairs surrounding it.
Hesthar al-Gessinav hated it instantly. The overarching landscapes looming on either side appeared to be threatening to fall on her. She dreamed too often, here on claustrophobic Ares, of a green, overtopping wave of water sweeping her away.
But as she took her place at the table, exultation overcame repugnance. While that fool Torigan skulked in the shadows with his toadies, and Srivashti withdrew to the fastness of his yacht to mask his resentment in sybaritic pleasures, she had attained the Privy Council. She thought briefly of the disgraced Harkatsus—the man didn’t even have the grace to commit suicide, living on as a perpetual embarrassment to his Family. And Srivashti had revealed a turgid sentimentality by taking up with his son, who couldn’t even bring him substantial connections.
There was no need for her to acknowledge their weaknesses. Now she was head of Gessinav, and, after this first meeting of the Privy Council, the DataNet would be hers—not just the Rouge Nord octant, but all of it. All of it.
She breathed deeply, tasting triumph and finding it good. But it did not do to relax vigilance: she could always gloat later. She sniffed the air again. The tianqi was set to Convocation mode. She wished instead for something more conducive to relaxation, although the rustle of clothing and the soft hush of feet on the thick carpet as other councilors entered was pleasant enough.
Hesthar watched as the positions around the table slowly filled, mentally ticking off their usefulness or threat to her: Sebastian Omilov in the Panarch’s camp, but distracted to uselessness by the Suneater; Eloatri, a dreamer, lost in her sentimental religious fantasies. Hesthar rubbed the tattoo on her forearm where the god had bitten her. Desrien had long ago banished the Ultscheni. Fools. They did not know what true power was.
Anger breathed through her as Admiral Nyberg entered and she saw the two officers with him. The woman, Margot Ng, she dismissed. She was Polloi, career Navy, and owed her present status to the new Panarch. But she’d expected better of Koestler. Did he think himself another Jaspar?
Thick hatred curdled her throat as Jeph Koestler’s eyes slid past her without acknowledgment. He’d done well for himself, and had the solid backing of nearly five thousand loyal spacers and officers, any of whom would rather pull bilge duty under his command than captain another ship. With him as ally, she would have been irresistible.
For she had her clients, too. In fact, until some fool put the coordinates of Ares on the DataNet, enabling refugees to bypass the secret marshaling centers, her influence in the local DataNet had enabled her to bring in a disproportionate number of her own people. It was harder now, but she still felt the sense of holding Ares in the palm of her hand. And soon, when Torigan finally disposed of the Kendrian case, she would close her fingers and take it.
Already she controlled nearly all the newsfeeds, carefully distorting their view of the war by drumming up resentment against Rifters, and thus Kendrian. All except Ares 25. But with the total command of the DataNet this first meeting of the Privy Council would bestow on her, she would crush those two novosti.
But who was the old woman in the uniform of a rear admiral who had just entered along with Anton Faseult, head of Security?
Without fanfare, the new Panarch entered the room and seated himself. The others—including Nyberg—sat as well, except for the four officers. They were not members of the Council, but advisers to it.
“Admirals, please.” Brandon smiled and gestured. The four sat, Koestler somewhat slowly. Hesthar breathed out; she hoped he hurt a great deal.
My loyalty is not for sale, he’d said to her. And if it were, you’d certainly have no coin to buy it with. As if she needed to purchase anyone’s cooperation. Those with any sense had come to her, Torigan the first of them, long ago. For, in a way more sweeping than the ancients had ever conceived, knowledge truly was power. She had utterly controlled the Rouge Nord DataNet. After this meeting, she would hold the keys to the deep Mandalic levels of the Net, and thus control of every octant. Nothing would withstand her power.
She waited, concealing her impatience as the Panarch formalized his appointments, briefly detailing to each member of the Council his or her spheres of responsibility. Brandon Arkad had been a surprise; even her wide-flung nets of data had revealed no hint of his talents. She wondered how much Semion had known. The new Panarch, untrained, was little more than half her age, but she would not let either fact lull her into complacency. He was as dangerous as any of his ancestors. More, perhaps, than most.
Her meditation changed to anticipation as the Panarch finally came to her. “Gnostor al-Gessinav, I have kept you until last, for you bear perhaps the most onerous responsibility. The DataNet is our tenuous connection to all our subjects now captive to Dol’jhar’s whim.”
Hesthar bowed, assuming the appropriately grave and humble expression she had practiced before her mirror.
But he was not finished. He nodded back, his blue gaze disgustingly reminiscent of his father’s as he said, “I would not have you bear this burden alone.”
Hesthar’s triumph abruptly evaporated, and she listened in shock and fierce anger, rigidly concealed, as Brandon turned to the old woman she hadn’t recognized. “This is Rear Admiral Damana Willsones, head of Ares Communications, which subsumes Infonetics in time of war. She will share your duties, both of you reporting to me . . .”
He moved on, but Hesthar barely heard. Of course he’d want a military presence to satisfy Nyberg and his cohorts. As if Hesthar couldn’t get around the old bint!
“. . . and I expect a great deal of you both,” he finished, then looked around. “Some of you do not know this, but we have a source of information that is proving to be invaluable. Vice-Admiral Ng captured one of the enemy’s superluminal communicators—a hyperwave—during the Battle of Arthelion. That, in fact, was the action’s goal.”
Hesthar simulated surprise, watching the others in the hope of discovering who hadn’t known and who had, but she could detect nothing. The admirals, of course, sat wooden-faced.
“We have broken some of the codes and are tracking the enemy’s movements. They are converging on the Suneater, whose location is now known to us.”
He smiled, inviting them to share a joke. “An appealing symmetry, were not the times so desperate, for I have summoned the fleet to Ares, whose location is known to Dol’jhar. Vice Admirals Koestler and Ng will report on the preparations for the expedition against the Suneater.” He glanced around the table, then said, “In the meantime, anything—anything at all—that can be gleaned from the hyperwave data about the Suneater has top priority.”
But what you needed to know was, and is, in the DataNet, Hesthar thought, enjoying the irony as she bowed along with the rest of them in acknowledgment of the Panarch’s speech. So far her phages had successfully destroyed two replicates of Cheruld’s data that she knew of. She had counted on access to Mandalic levels to destroy the rest; now she would have spend time walling off Willsones from those threads, while pretending cooperation.
“There
is, however,” he continued, “one bit of knowledge from the hyperwave that only one or two of you know, for I placed it under my seal as soon as it came in. Barrodagh has demanded, as he put it, ‘the participation of tempaths in the exploitation of the power of the Suneater.’ We must consider what this implies.”
Hesthar watched Omilov as he gazed gravely at the Panarch. Was that a scowl, or merely that those repulsively hairy eyebrows make him look ill-tempered? Eloatri, too, seemed more alert, although what it could possibly mean to that fool had to be irrelevant.
“Your Majesty,” Omilov said. “The one tempath whom I know to have inspected the Heart of Kronos, which is now aboard the Suneater, reported that part of it was missing. I had already surmised that it is the key to the power of that ancient machine.” The gnostor’s expression was troubled. “It is not unlikely that there is therefore a psychic aspect to the control of the Suneater. But I wonder how that came to the attention of the Dol’jharians?”
“We do not know,” Willsones said. “Traffic on the hyperwave includes nothing at all about the Suneater. There are no images, even. When Barrodagh—Eusabian’s voice—appears, nothing can be seen in his background. We can only surmise what this means.”
From that point the discussion turned to the readiness of the Fleet, and how long it would take to muster, given the slowness of courier communications across the vastness of the Thousand Suns. Hesthar listened carefully, but less for raw information and more to monitor the interplay of personalities, from which she hoped to garner lines of attack to further her own goals. She was bozzing all this anyway, as was everyone else. Any details she needed would be in her transcripts.
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