by Diane Carey
Kai was bent over the communications board, no longer hearing her. His brow was furrowed as he read an incoming message. His adjutant was also bent over the message, and a moment later, the master engineer. A subtle bleeping from the decoder said the message came from outside the Swarm.
“What is it, Kai?” Idrys demanded.
“A ...” The subcommander leaned down even further to reread the message. “It comes ... from the Supreme Praetor’s citadel. I am ...” He stood straight then, and she could see only his back, the tension in his neck, the balling of his fists. Stiffly, he nodded to his adjutant, then to the master engineer.
In a single movement, the three officers turned to Idrys.
Idrys put her weight on her good leg and turned in her seat. Some innate wisdom warned her to remain seated. Two reasons—to avoid the challenge implied by standing up, and to show them plainly that she alone deserved to sit there.
“Commander ...” Kai began.
“Speak, if you can,” she said sharply.
Kai cleared his throat. “Commander, you have been named accessory to the assassination of your kinsman, Senior Senator Illiat d’Yn. I must place you under arrest.”
She bolted to her feet, gripping the armrests of the chair. “My uncle!” she gasped. “Murdered?”
The bridge officers stared, horrified at the prospect, as Kai went on. “The order to hold you for questioning comes from the Senate Council. The charge is complicity in the murder of a member of your own house.”
“Kai!” She stumbled toward him.
He backed away, frozen by revulsion and by a necessary coldness.
Another voice chilled the bridge even further. Ry’iak. “This must be some mistake.”
[94] Idrys whirled to look at him. As she expected, his expression proved he wasn’t surprised at all by this turn of events.
“Centurion,” Kai addressed, “Escort the commander to detention. No privileges.”
The bridge centurion summoned two guards from the doorway. The three of them came to stand beside Idrys.
Idrys gathered herself and willed her legs to operate. At the last moment before leaving the bridge, she turned to the subcommander. “Kai—”
“Commander?”
“You must notify Primus Kilyle of this.”
“That is out of order, Commander.”
“But it must be done. I ask you to make it a priority.” With her eyes she pleaded that he break the standard order, that he do one more thing to remain an individual before allowing irrevocable process to swallow them all.
He dipped his head in acknowledgment, but made no promises. As he watched her being escorted from the bridge, a keen awareness of his own vulnerabilities came home to him. He was in command now. A greater target.
When the bridge panel closed, the Praetor’s eye moved to the center of the cubicle and gazed at the closed door. “The commander is sentimental. How pitiful that she could plot to murder a kinsman. Ah, but I’ve been fooled before ...”
Kai ignored the younger man and turned to his adjutant. “Have the Supreme Praetor’s message sent down to Primus Kilyle’s quarters and notify him of the commander’s arrest.”
Ry’iak turned. “Subcommander,” he said carefully, “it’s dangerous to break the order of advisement. Your first duty as commander of the flagship is to notify the other commanders of the Swarm, then to—”
“My first duty as commander,” Kai interrupted, “is to fulfill my last duty to the former commander.” He waited until his words were firmly absorbed and the Senate Proctor had been stared into silence. Only then did he turn again to his adjutant. “Continue as I directed.”
The adjutant nodded, and punched up the onboard code for Primus Kilyle’s quarters.
She sat unmoving, controlling her emotions, though they were a deep and running river. But there were guards on the other side of the energy field, and her grief, if she allowed them to see it, would be [95] interpreted as a weakness. So she simply sat on the cold metal bench, staring sightless at the wall. The only sound other than her own heartbeat was the unnerving sizzle of the energy field.
“Idrys.”
She looked up, feeling drugged. With a blink, she pushed herself up. “Primus!”
The force field cast a strange ghostly glow around t’Cael’s lean form and made his blue coat seem almost green, but the sight couldn’t have been more welcome. Idrys had to control herself from trying to go right through the energy wall.
“Are you well in there?” he asked.
“I’m here,” she said. “It’s all I can say.”
He nodded slowly, then turned to the senior guard. “I want the commander released. Remand her to my personal custody.”
The guard came to attention and tensely said, “My Lord Primus, I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Such a release would require authorization from each commander in the Swarm, plus a marked dictate from the Senate Council, plus an injunction from the Grand Primus stating—”
“Enough,” t’Cael snapped. A constant amazement, how the praetorial system was learning to tie its own hands, and how quickly the ropes could be tightened. He folded his arms, pressed one finger against his lips, and strolled back to the center of the energy wall. “It seems you stay,” he said to Idrys.
“And with my imprisonment, they bind you,” she reminded. Her hands shook. “Collusion in the murder of my own kin ... the suggestion alone will never lift from my reputation.”
“It was a carefully chosen charge,” t’Cael said. “A heinous sin as well as a political crime. Little else could so effectively and so swiftly cast revulsion over you in the eyes of the Swarm.”
She moved closer to the energy field. “My uncle,” she murmured. “Do you think they really did ...”
Sympathy cut through him. He drew his arms in tighter against his chest. “Without doubt.”
Misery and fury twisted Idrys’ small mouth. “All to remove you from power?” she choked, her eyes clouding.
“From one perspective, yes,” he answered. “Those who wish to excise me had only to find those who wished to remove your uncle from the Senate. In times past, the Council of Clans carried more [96] weight than the Praetorate. Now, the Supreme Praetor cannot be removed by the Council. But the Praetor isn’t yet powerful enough to defy the Council as he desires, at least not openly. All must be done with a mesh of scapegoats and accusations. A tidy patting of backs was involved in this one, I’m certain.”
“And effective,” she said bitterly. “Ry’iak.”
T’Cael nodded. “He is a canker.”
“How can it be? How can he have timed it so perfectly?”
“By planning ahead. Somehow he has set wheels in motion which were awaiting his signal.” T’Cael paced slowly to the edge of the force field and made a leisurely turn. “I should have anticipated this.”
“How could you?” she asked from behind the annoying buzz. “I don’t understand.”
“Ry’iak is a well-connected youngster who speaks of the glories of battle yet has never been in one. He could never be Senate Proctor on his own. He has help in the Supreme Praetor’s alcazar. He’s being advised. I should have known he would have an alternate plan.”
“A plan to assassinate my uncle?” Her voice cracked.
“By assassinating your uncle, these elements win three victories, Idrys. Your uncle ... you ... and me.”
“But how? How?”
Calmly he explained. “Ry’iak failed to intimidate me. I frightened him momentarily, but I underestimated his cockiness. His plan is now to undermine you.”
“Because he knows I am loyal to you,” she finished, weakened.
“Of course. He knows I depend on you. Cripple the legs, and the head will fall. The crew is loyal to you, but suspicious of me. He can use that. He knows I can’t use the crew as efficiently as you can, so he had to eliminate you. And Ry’iak is in a position to use them very well. Now all he has to do s shift their
loyalty from you to the Praetor.”
Furious at her impotence, Idrys spun around and paced the cell. “I did beg you to attend the bridge,” she said with a shuddering breath. “Time after time I begged it. Now you pay the price of your seclusion.”
“Quite true.” T’Cael’s round, dark eyes widened in agreement. “Bide here as well as you can. I’ll try to engineer a release, if only a temporary one.”
Once again Idrys crowded the force field. She felt the energy sizzle against the fine hairs around her face. “An even bigger problem for you,” she said. “The edges of order will fray very fast now, if Ry’iak is [97] allowed to sink his fangs into the hearts of the crew. You’ll have to hold tight if a mutiny is to be avoided. Mistakes at this point will be fatal for both of us.”
T’Cael nodded serenely. “The two of us will be lost in a flood of fatalities, Commander, with the Empire continuing in this pathetic direction. Meanwhile, we row through the danger and hope fear hasn’t taken over entirely. Even Ry’iak is being used, though he doesn’t have the brains to realize it yet. Very sad.”
He turned without ceremony and started away.
“Where are you going?” she called, looking at him at an image-warping angle through the force field.
He cast her one more glance.
“To the bridge. You’ll be joining me very soon.”
Chapter Nine
“ALL RIGHT, CHILDREN. This is it.”
Captain April swirled onto the bridge and down to his command chair with such exuberance that his cardigan flapped at his sides like a cape. Everyone on the bridge fell into a sudden and quite childlike flu of excitement which put butterflies in even the most professional stomach. Sanawey manned the astrotelemetry station, Florida the helm, Hart and two staff engineers on loan from the impulse power deck the engineering console: George stood at the hand rail behind his captain, just being George. April looked around, making eye contact with every person around him, acknowledging both their presence and their contribution to the moment.
At last, he turned to George. His half-smile reappeared.
“Still your prerogative, George.”
George touched the bridge hand rail as a sheepish grin pulled up one corner of his mouth, and said, “Don’t forget what happened last time.”
A collective chuckle rippled around the bridge crew. It told George that they didn’t think of him as a Jonah.
“I brought you for good luck,” April said. He gestured to the command console and Carlos Florida, who was waiting for orders. “Off with you, First Officer. Make the empress fly.”
George went to stand beside Florida and clasped his hands behind [99] his back to control the faint chill in his fingers. “Ahead, twenty percent sublight.”
“Twenty percent sublight, aye.”
Almost imperceptibly, the starship began to hum. On the big viewscreen, the spacedock slowly fell away to port and starboard, and all was space.
Before them was the shimmering beauty of a lifeless star system, a sun and its three uninhabitable planets, and a little cluster of asteroids.
“Test the sensors, George,” April said, almost whispering.
George blinked and looked around, then understood. Tests. Of course. Muscle-stretching.
“Mr. Sanawey, specify composition of the asteroids we’re coming up to,” he requested, a little more stiffly than he intended.
“Aye, sir,” Sanawey’s tunnel-deep voice responded. The big man bent over a viewscope and did something with the controls near him at the library computer station. “Asteroids consist primarily of iron, titanium, nickel, and small amounts of gold, as well as traces of various inert ores. Largest reads out at roughly two thousand metric tons, and they break down to stones of about a pound or so in the dust field. Nice and boring.”
April twisted around in his chair. “How do those instruments feel, Claw?”
“They feel like they know what they’re doing, sir. There’s even a percentage breakdown of ore content and density. We can get as detailed as we need to.”
“Magnificent.” He turned once again to face the view. “Go on, George.”
“Mr. Florida, plot a course,” George continued. “Make it an obstacle course through those asteroids to the end of the belt and back again. Zigzag to port and starboard, plus full overturn. Just make use of the space you have and shake down the controls.”
Florida looked up. “Really?”
“Sure, really. Arrange something that tests maneuverability at sublight.”
“Quite right,” April said from behind them. “And monitor gravitational compensation systems as well.”
Florida raised his eyebrows but said nothing more. It took him a few moments to plot that kind of course, during which time George was careful not to look at anybody.
“Plotted,” Florida said. “I think.”
[100] “What do you mean, you think?” George asked.
“The asteroids aren’t stationary to one another, sir. They’re constantly moving apart and together. It’s not really a plottable course, in the true sense of plotting a course.”
“That’s perfect,” George said. “Random gyrations.”
“It is?”
“How else can we know how the ship responds to direct control by hand? Can’t rely on computers for everything, can we?”
Florida couldn’t quite manage to agree.
April punched his intercom, and his voice echoed throughout the ship. “All hands, alert for maneuverability and gravitational testing of the starship’s systems. Brace yourselves.” He nodded to Florida. “Execute.”
Florida caressed his board. The ship veered into the asteroid belt.
George clung to the bridge rail as the pitch of the deck suddenly came high on the starboard side. He felt his body weight change as the artificial gravity fought to adjust, but the centrifugal force as they careened between space rocks nauseated him. There was a downturn that made the asteroids in the viewer seem to jump over them, and half the crew was scattered across the bridge as they lost grip.
Like a giant pendulum, the starship became an elegant courser involved in inelegant moves. She upended at Florida’s touch, and pitched violently to sub-port. Brand-new, untested bulkheads, structural beams, braces, framework sections, and every bolt and sash and joint was stressed.
George gritted his teeth and held on. “Go to forty percent sublight,” he shouted over the ship’s whine of protest.
“Forty percent,” Florida called back. He touched his controls with his free hand, since the other hand was holding on tight, and the ship’s merry-go-round doubled its speed.
“Keep your eyes on the gyrostats!” Engineer Hart called from her position at the subsystems monitor.
George had no idea who she was talking to, but he just hoped it wasn’t him because he also had no idea where to find gyrostats and he wasn’t about to let go in order to look for them. His arms and legs turned to iron as the starship brushed by a huge asteroid, then between two others in stiffer and stiffer maneuvers. To anyone who didn’t know better, it seemed that the ship’s gravitational compensators weren’t worth spitting on. In fact, if they hadn’t been working, and working perfectly for that matter, everyone on the bridge would [101] have been smacked through the bulkheads already and had his molecules sizzling in space by now.
“Go to seventy-five percent,” George ordered. “Break out of the belt and head for the gas giant. Take her between the rings!”
Florida’s hand crawled over his controls. “Point five ... point six ...”
The viewscreen compensated for the new sight—a vast gas planet suddenly at point-blank range, her brightly colored rings slapping down on them with unsettling speed.
“Point seven ... five.”
The crushing sensation intensified. Every breath was a concentrated effort now as the starship tested her capabilities in more and more sinewy maneuvers between the gaseous rings of the planet at such full-tilt speed that George gritted his teeth an
d hoped the nacelles didn’t rip off. With the whines and groans she made, the empress told them she was enjoying the action.
Suddenly April’s voice cut through the bridge noise. “Emergency stop!”
Florida leaned on his board, smashing toggles.
Shocked, George chose the wrong instant to look back toward April, trying to see in the captain’s face what the emergency was. Instead, he was torn from his place and flung headlong onto the forward deck as the ship slammed to a halt with an awful wail. He catapulted over the end of the rail and landed in a pile somewhere near the viewscreen. Around him, the starship bellowed.
The violent whine grew higher, then quite abruptly began to drop like noise in a bad dream. It became a howl, then a drawn-out moan, then finally little more than a buzz in his ears. He rolled over slowly.
The bridge crew dragged themselves to their feet. Even April, with a nice thick command chair to hold on to, had been thrown forward.
George held his breath and got up on one arm, trying to rearrange his mind enough to ask what the emergency was. He was first officer; he was supposed to know.
The bridge was shockingly quiet, its silence marred only by the sedate bleeping of various systems and the blinking of little colored lights everywhere, and the shuffle of humanity trying to get back on its feet.
April glanced around, but said nothing.
Carlos Florida got up to eye level with his controls and whispered, [102] “It worked ...” He pulled himself all the way up, looked around, and shouted, “It’s a starship!”
The bridge broke out in cheers.
George stared, not quite absorbing the significance, as a round of backthumping, handshaking, and bear hugging erupted. As he watched the crew, he realized the importance of such a moment among people who had spent months on the project. The excitement, the satisfaction, the desire for more—very contagious stuff.
April sensed George’s wish to thrust himself into those feelings on an even deeper level, but suppressed his awareness of it as he stepped around the command console, holding on to the rail, and came toward George with a bedazzled grin. He grasped George’s hand in both of his. “Tremendous performance, George! Brilliantly done! Simply brilliant! My God—” he gasped, turning to the others. “It is a ship, isn’t it?”
