And it might not have any trouble at all dealing with me, either. Images from the history chips flickered through his mind, the Horror a thousand years and more ago seeming like yesterday’s news. The century-long war against the Adamantines—those cold intelligences, embodied in metal and crystal and unleashed by the Hegemony in a vain quest for domination of the Exiles—had deeply scarred the psyche of humankind. The Hegemony had lost control, if indeed they’d ever had it, and at the last had fought side by side with the Exiles against their own creations. To this day, rumor had it, remnants of the ancient enemy still lurked in remote corners of the Thousand Suns—and it was well known that a peerage and unimaginable riches awaited the person who led the Navy to a hibernating Adamantine. Like most of the people of the Heart Stars, Tallis no more questioned the Ban than he questioned the existence of Arthelion and the Emerald Throne. Thou shalt not duplicate the human mind.
But Barca lay far outside the Heart Stars, hard up on the Shiidra Reaches. They had not experienced the Horror, so they didn’t share that fear. Their Tikeris androids, legal but obscenely close to infringing the Ban, were infamous throughout the Thousand Suns, as were the fearsome Ogres, used with such effect against the Shiidra. The Barcan salesman on Rifthaven had been very persuasive, insisting that the logos wasn’t really intelligent, and glossing over the fact that discovery of it by the authorities would earn Tallis, at the very least, exile to Gehenna, and in some jurisdictions, an agonizing death. And if the crew found out...
The salesman had promised total secrecy as part of the deal, and he’d had some fascinating simulations of ship-to-ship combat. The logos could speak to him via pinbeam, and hear his sub-vocalized commands, anywhere in the ship. No one else could hear it or command it, the Barcan had told him. And with optional eye implants—Tallis could almost hear the dealer’s unctuous tones—the logos could display data that no one else could see. The glory would be his alone. Tallis had been thoroughly sold on the concept, had even submitted to the surgery on both eyes, visions of glory and riches dancing in his head, right up until the installers had him switch it on for the final tests.
Dead brains. Corpse voices. Tallis shuddered at the memory. The flat baritone voice, speaking disembodied inside his head, had given him nightmares for the next month, and he had never dared switch it on again.
“Five minutes,” said sho-Imbris.
His inner vision began serving up images of the coming attack. The swirl of ship-to-ship actions would be terrifying in its randomness, unlike any raid he’d ever dared. And the mere possibility of a cruiser—Tallis perceived that image viscerally, for he’d been a galley-slub on the old Terror when it was ripped by a cruiser in ambush. There was no other sound quite like the squeal of a ruptor bolt hitting a hull.
His fear of the logos and the terror of the coming battle balanced painfully in his mind. He’d have to play back the conversation with Hreem for the machine—but there was no reason to feel shame. The logos couldn’t laugh, and probably wouldn’t understand the emotional aspects of the scene.
Tallis sneaked a look around the bridge. No one was watching. He forced his shaking fingers to touch the code pads in a complex pattern, and the logos began to wake up. Flickering ghost light, apparent only to his eyes, darted sector by sector across the tactical screens, testing his corneal implants. Tallis clenched his teeth, willing himself not to shiver as the dead baritone led him through the wake-up routine in a technological litany of question and response.
o0o
No one could fault Pham Anderic, the communications tech, on the condition of his console, all oiled wood and gleaming metal. He stared at a particularly well-polished section of metal, watching in fascination as his captain tensed abruptly. It almost looked like Tallis was having a seizure: his eyes shifted as if scanning a display, his jaw clenched, and he rocked slightly in his seat.
Anderic checked the screens, but they showed only a featureless starfield, overlaid by ship traces. What was going on? Now Tallis’s throat contracted. He’s talking to himself! This intense interior conversation lasted some time.
“Navigation.” Tallis’s voice broke the tense silence on the bridge.
“One hundred twenty-eight seconds, sir.”
“I know.” Tallis’s voice was tight, with an undertone of strain. “Recalculate. Drop us in as close to the Node as you can and orient me. Sensors.”
Next to Anderic, Oolger swiveled around as Tallis continued. “Immediately on emergence, look for targets close to the Node or another Sync, so we can fight with our back to something they won’t want to hit.”
Oolger turned back to his console and began setting up a pattern for emergence. Tallis had no new commands for Anderic, so the tech could listen as Tallis rebriefed the other monitors for emergence. It was a performance totally at odds with the captain’s usual behavior. Tallis was an agonizingly painstaking planner without a trace of inspiration, and he never, never changed his plans like this.
As Anderic watched, the conviction grew that there was definitely something going on that could be manipulated to good advantage, with a little inside information from Luri.
Ah, Luri. Anderic’s nacker stirred; the memory of her soft abundance unfocused his eyes for a time, until the ship shuddered into skip.
o0o
CHARVANN
Omilov gazed at the portrait of the Kyriarch Ilara, lost in memory.
The reading lamp sensed his lack of movement and turned itself out, and he drowsed a little, but the night was passing all too slowly, and the turmoil of his thoughts defeated the effects of the dreamberry tea. When he roused, Kilelis was already descending toward the western hills. In its faint light, the statues dotting the moonlight-black expanse of the lawn outside the study windows seemed poised on the edge of movement.
He stood up and stretched. As the light sprang back on, his reflection blotted out the outside world in the window. He studied his appearance for a moment: tall, tending to corpulence, though less so in the face than elsewhere, with wiry, gray-shot black hair lying close to his skull, and the pendulous fleshy earlobes that marked the Omilov line as far back as images had been recorded. From where he stood the reading lamp shone up into his face, throwing the shadows of his bushy eyebrows up across his high forehead, giving him a menacing look that made a smile quirk the edge of his mouth. He turned away, pulling his lounge coat tighter around him. Perhaps a walk on the terrace in the fresh night air would calm his thoughts.
He paused at the terrace door to override the lights, which would otherwise go on automatically, and realized the override was already engaged. He eased the door open to find a slender male figure standing some distance away, gazing out over the grounds of the estate toward the darkened eastern horizon.
His slippers made a faint gritty noise on the paving, warning the solitary figure that he had company. He recognized Brandon’s profile, side-lit against the stars.
The young man did not turn around as Omilov came up beside him, and they stood in companionable silence for a time. The night air was cool. A vagrant breeze teased at Omilov’s neck and he drew his collar tighter.
But Omilov finally decided he must speak. “You said you left before the ritual, Brandon. I must ask you why.” He hesitated, then added, “It would be best that I know before your family’s retainers arrive to discuss this with us all.”
Brandon faced him. “No one knows I’m here. We arrived as private citizens of a Highdweller community—Deralze saw to that. And we will shortly be gone again, if you fear that Semion has somehow managed to follow us.”
Omilov raised a hand, but Brandon forestalled him as he moved away from the rail. “Sebastian, how long have you known my father?”
Omilov wondered what was behind the question—Brandon knew the answer very well. “Almost thirty-five years.” But if you respect someone, you don’t get information without giving; he offered something that Brandon might not know. “I was a rogate in the xenoarchaeology department of the Con
cilium Exterioris at the time. We first met after a rather unusual situation I found myself in on a planet outside the Thousand Suns.”
Brandon glanced his way. “You never mentioned that before.”
Omilov chuckled. “You were a very inquisitive boy. The best way of dealing with your incessant questions was to make sure you didn’t know what to ask about.” His mood sobered, oppressed by the inescapable truth: Brandon had abandoned his Enkainion, and in coming here, had implicated Omilov. No matter what he thought.
“I don’t have to worry about that now, so I can tell you this much: the planet has no name, and never will. It is under quarantine, Class Null—ships skipping into the system are destroyed without warning. For a time, it seemed better to flame it clean of life, and if knowledge of it ever becomes general, that will be its fate. The whole matter is under the Panarch’s seal.”
There was a long pause. In the distance a night lizard uttered its eerie cries, like the sobbing of a woman, a sorrowful counterpoint to the cheerful song of the leaptoads.
Brandon gazed over the dimly lit grounds, his voice pensive. “You were one of his closest friends when I was growing up. I remember how different he was when just you and he were together, different from when he was surrounded by the Court.”
“Different,” echoed Omilov, faintly questioning.
Brandon smiled, his hands moving aimlessly across the pale marble of the balustrade, fingertips almost caressing it.
“You know why you two had to stay with me,” Omilov said, sorting his words. “How often have we discussed the dangers of those days after your mother was killed. And later,” Omilov added with care. “When the dangers were a little different.”
“Anaris.” Brandon made a slight shrug, his fingers tapping a pattern. “My incessant questions were different, then... but you always answered them, didn’t you?” He laughed. “That’s why I came here, before I—” He shrugged, then whirled to face Omilov. “Sebastian, when you left Arthelion—retired—ten years ago, you were at the peak of your career. You could have had a seat on the Council of Pursuivance—the Chivalate is regarded as a stepping-stone to that, is it not? You had my father’s ear, powerful friends at Court and in the Magisterium. Many people spend their lives trying to gain what you had. You might even have ended up on the Privy Council. But you left.”
Omilov answered carefully, addressing both the spoken question and the unspoken. “One of the things you must have heard your father say, probably many times, was that no single person could rule the Thousand Suns.”
“‘Ruler of all, ruler of naught, power unlimited, a prison unsought,’” Brandon quoted softly.
“Your father lives that and suffers that. Like every one of his forty-six predecessors, he has to rely on other people, thousands of other people, most of whom he has never met and whom he can judge only third-hand.” Omilov found he had pressed his palms together in front of his stomach, fingers extended outward, a habit when speaking intensely that was familiar to all his students. He relaxed them with conscious effort. “And like all of his predecessors, he sometimes makes mistakes.”
He shook his head. “I tried to tell him about a person very close to him, in whom I believe his trust is misplaced. He would not, could not, listen: your father’s most outstanding virtue is his loyalty. And I could not stop speaking the truth to Gelasaar, could not therefore stop hurting our friendship. Finally—” Omilov hesitated. “Finally a very loyal and able man was destroyed, and I could do nothing to prevent it, even as I saw it happening. At that point I knew I could not remain on Arthelion any longer.”
Brandon nodded, and the last traces of pretense and guardedness faded quickly from his face, like ice under the hot sun of a sudden spring. “Markham vlith-L’Ranja’s father, Archon of Lusor,” he said abruptly. “My father condoned—”
The garden flooded with an actinic glare brighter than the sun, throwing sharp, acid-edged shadows across the grounds. Omilov squeezed his streaming eyes shut, garish afterimages etched into his vision. His skin prickled as the air charged with static electricity, then the light abruptly dimmed and began to fade. A flock of jezeels erupted from a nearby grove of trees, protesting the sudden onslaught of this strange new daylight.
Omilov’s vision returned slowly. When he could see again, Brandon was gazing up at a rapidly fading point of light about a third of the sky eastward of Tira. The night sky looked blurry. Most of the stars were now invisible, the brighter ones visible only as dim smears of light, the two moons dim mirrors of watery blue light. From the northern horizon faint streamers of auroral flame reached south.
“The Shield is up,” said Brandon. “That must have been one of the resonance generators.”
“An accident?”
“No.” Brandon’s tones were decisive. Though Brandon’s Academy training had been interrupted, he was better qualified to interpret this event than a gnostor of xenology.
“No, it must be some kind of attack. If that was one of the resonators, inner space is now open to fiveskip—it’s a classic maneuver,” Brandon added with a quirk of self-mockery, “according to what I was taught.”
The door to the terrace banged open and Lenic Deralze appeared, visibly relaxing when he recognized them. Then his face hardened as he gazed upward. Osri emerged, followed by some of the household staff, their faces pale and strained. They had to squeeze past Deralze, who appeared not to notice them.
As Osri joined Omilov and Brandon, he pointed to the south. “What’s that?” His eyes widened in consternation as he breathed, “It can’t be the S’lift!”
To the south a long string of faint, blue-white points of light slowly rose past the bright star that was the Node. A fainter string could be made out above it. Omilov said, “What is this we’re seeing? That is the orbital elevator cable, is it not?”
Deralze spoke quietly. “It’s been severed by the defense Shield, and the emergency thrusters are trying to push it out of Charvann’s orbital plane so it won’t slice through the Node or any of the Highdwellings.”
Brandon gestured upward. “That other cable is the hohmann freight launcher—it’s also been cut loose so it won’t drag the Node out of orbit. I’ve seen a chip of the attack on Alpheios, during the last major Shiidra incursion...
“Shiidra!” exclaimed someone. “Telos ward us!” The thought of the vicious, dog-like sophonts and their flattened, ellipsoidal ships, an ever-recurring scourge of the Thousand Suns, stirred a murmur of nervous comment from the servants.
“Artorus II smashed the Shiidra out-octant from here over a hundred years ago.”
Omilov noted with approval that this last was uttered by Parraker, the majordomo. He was adept at controlling rumor: under his steady hand the froth of gossip and innuendo that plagued so many house staffs was notably absent.
“Actually, that particular Shiidra clade simply fell apart,” said Osri. “They lost only a few ships, along with the single outpost from which they raided the Panarchy.”
Parraker pressed his lips together ever so slightly, making his salt-and-pepper mustache bristle a bit, as the murmurs broke out again. Omilov sighed. Like his mother’s, Osri’s pride made him almost invariably choose correctness over charity.
“It’s unlikely, without that outpost, that the Shiidra would choose to attack a planet so far in-octant, and if I remember rightly, there’s a particularly effective Writ-holder operating out-octant from Charvann.” Brandon spoke in the formal modality, a rarity for him. The subtle intonation he used, by placing the matter immediately on a more formal basis, employed the class consciousness of the staff to enforce belief in his statement. “Whoever the attackers are, they are human.”
Osri’s face soured. He could not very well contradict the direct statement of a social superior, especially without supporting evidence, so he had to remain silent and accept the unspoken rebuke.
Well done, Brandon, Omilov thought, careful that none of the rueful amusement he felt showed on his face.
Parraker began to herd the staff back into the house. Distant thunder rumbled, while the auroral display grew brighter, more slowly than at first. A wind sprang up, carrying on it a faint electrical smell.
“Why don’t you two join me in the library?” Omilov suggested mildly, aware of nervous staff ears behind him. “We’ll be more comfortable there, and perhaps the DataNet will have some information on what is happening.”
Just as they were entering the house, another bright flash, less glaring than the first, illuminated the terrace—several smaller flashes in rapid succession, leaving behind blurry, rapidly fading coins of light in the sky.
“Ship-to-ship action.” Deralze had taken up a stance directly behind Brandon; whatever his position had been an hour ago, he was now on duty. Omilov wondered if he was armed, and concluded ruefully that the silent, dour man was probably a walking armory.
“It can’t be,” Osri murmured. “Why would anyone attack Charvann? There’s nothing here.”
“You mean, nothing of military significance.” Omilov motioned the others into the house. “The Archon once told me there are Rifters based somewhere out there. He thought they were harmless, but maybe they decided to change that.”
Brandon glanced up sharply, but it was Osri who spoke.
“Rifters? Riffraff, pirates, and slave-traders, attacking a major planet?” He made a slashing gesture with one hand. “The Navy will soon put a stop to that!”
A glance at the remaining staff satisfied Omilov that Osri had undone some of the damage of his earlier tactless comment. He shut the door, muting the thunder and the rising wind.
There was a sense of comfort in a night of shocks to find the library looking and smelling as it always did. False comfort, he thought as the crossed the thick sea-green carpet into the large, high-ceilinged room, paneled in dark woods. Around three of the walls a balcony, with spiral stairs at either end, gave access to a second level of bookshelves.
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