by Jo Zebedee
“You can’t pretend to something you’ve given up.” Ormuz was angry. He should guard his tongue, he knew he should guard his tongue. The Admiral was his one hope. But he would not play politics when it was time for action.
Clearly surprised, the Admiral stared at Ormuz. Her gaze flickered to the others behind Ormuz: Rinharte, Finesz, Kordelasz, Varä, Skaria. She opened her mouth to speak but abruptly closed it. Reaching up, she ran a hand across her shaven scalp. “I have taken you on faith, Casimir,” she said sadly. “Have I erred?”
“No!” He immediately regretted his sarcastic comment. Placatingly, he added, “But you must decide, ma’am, if you’re to be the Admiral or Her Imperial Highness.”
“As either one, I am still your better.”
Ormuz couldn’t help himself: he laughed. There was no denying the truth of her statement.
“You find me amusing?” she demanded angrily.
“No, ma’am.” He stepped forward and halted at the Admiral’s desk. “I apologise for my behaviour. But we must leave immediately. There is nothing to be decided. We have a strategy and we must stick to it.”
“It is an ill-formed thing, Casimir,” the Admiral said morosely. “I would be ashamed to go into battle with such a strategy.”
“It’s a valid strategy,” Ormuz replied defensively.
“So you are now an expert on the subject.”
“Of course not. But…” He shrugged and smiled wryly. “Irresistible force and immovable object. We must be one or the other.”
“With a single battlecruiser and a squadron of destroyers?” countered the Admiral. “We will be over-run. I have not been commerce-raiding for the past six years for no reason. I use what I have.”
“We will have more when the time comes.”
“How, Casimir? This is what we must discuss. How can I plan when I do not know the forces at my disposal? I have spent years covertly extracting promises from my fellow captains, but I cannot know with any certitude how many will follow me when I call them to arms. We have the advantage of intelligence— We will have the advantage of intelligence but it is not enough.”
The Admiral dropped into her chair. With an airy wave of the hand, she told the others to take seats. Ormuz remained standing, gazing down at Vengeful’s captain. “‘Surprise is a potent weapon’,” he quoted.
She looked up at him, startled. “You’ve read the Fighting Instructions?”
Ormuz shrugged. “There was a copy aboard Divine Providence.”
“Divine…? Ah, the knights sinister data-freighter. They should not have had a copy but it does not surprise they owned one.” She gestured again. “But sit down. You have my word we will leave shortly.”
Ormuz turned and saw that the chair directly behind him had been left unoccupied. He took it. Glancing round, he noticed Finesz and Varä had taken chairs, while Kordelasz and Skaria stood at parade-rest against one bulkhead. Rinharte sat to his left. She was staring at a coat of arms on the bulkhead— No, not a coat of arms, a ship’s crest. Ormuz could not know what lay behind her expression but he wondered why something she had surely seen many times before should provoke such wistfulness. The crest itself was unspectacular and depicted, within a shield of gilded rope, a man standing besides a gallows, while a group to the other side conferred. All were dressed in a fashion not seen for millennia. At the top of the shield in its centre was the Emperor’s coat of arms, a star of five mailed fists, each holding different objects.
“Ah,” said the Admiral, “yes, Rizbeka, it is time for things to change.”
“She’s returning to her old name, ma’am?”
“No. Vengeful she will remain, although vengeance is no longer our mission. But there is a history embodied in that crest, Rizbeka, and we can be proud of it once again.”
“Imperial Respite,” Ormuz said, suddenly understanding. Before the Admiral’s mutiny, this battlecruiser had been Imperial Respite. And that was Imperial Respite’s crest.
“Ma’am,” prompted Voyna.
“Yes, to business. We must leave Linna but we have yet to choose a destination. We will meet the Serpent for battle but we have no knowledge of the forces he will field. We have no knowledge of the forces we will field.” She held up a hand to forestall Ormuz’s interruption. “Yes, Casimir, I know: you will find out these things for us. Perhaps it is time you explained how you intend to do this.”
It was a valid request: the Admiral had indeed taken Ormuz on faith. He had kept his ability a secret, telling others only what he had learnt in the nomosphere. Perhaps he had worried that revealing his secret would allow others to duplicate it. It might well be everyone could visit the nomosphere, they simply did not know how to do so. Perhaps he had merely found the route by accident, he was no one special after all.
It was, he knew, foolishness. But he had not been confident enough of the uniqueness of his ability to advertise it. Now he had no choice.
“How,” he asked, “do starships travel from one world to another?” He gave no one the chance to speak and answered himself: “They use the toposphere, another universe, where interstellar distances can be covered in a matter of weeks. Why such a thing should exist, I don’t know. But since it does… it’s not so foolish to suggest that other universes, with other strange properties unique to themselves, might also exist. There could be an infinite number or—” He shrugged— “there might only be, say, seven. I have no idea. But imagine there were one where— No, I’m explaining it badly.” He paused, frowned. And started again:
“Information: you can’t see it, you can’t touch it. Yet it can change, it can travel, be carried. It has a very real impact on our lives, on the universe. There must be something to it, some… properties it must possess that allows it to do that. Those properties manifest in the nomosphere, information manifests in the nomosphere.”
“The what?” asked Varä.
“Hush,” admonished the Admiral. “Let Casimir explain.”
“I can’t explain it,” Ormuz admitted. “I just know it exists. In the nomosphere, information is real and physical. You can pick it up, you can hold it.” He looked about the day cabin and was gratified to see no one appeared sceptical. He took a deep breath.
“I can access the nomosphere,” he said. “I can access that information.”
“How?” demanded the Admiral.
“I don’t know how. But only when I’m asleep. And only when I’m in the toposphere. The, er, barrier is weaker from there. In the nomosphere, I have access to all the information in the Empire. And beyond, perhaps.” He had never looked; the thought of doing so had never occurred to him.
“So,” said the Admiral, “you can eavesdrop on signals between ships?”
Ormuz nodded. “And much else.”
“The Serpent has this talent too?”
“Yes.” Ormuz was not yet ready to admit he had met the Serpent in the nomosphere, but: “That’s how he knew to send Regimental-Lieutenant Merenilo to Darrus. He must have intercepted a message from the knights sinister asking Captain Plessant to meet someone on that world. He knew where I’d be at a particular time and so decided to send someone to get rid of an embarrassing mistake.”
“How is it you can do this?” asked the Admiral.
Ormuz shrugged. “The ability is apparently genetic. Perhaps engineered.”
“By whom?” asked Finesz, intrigued.
Ormuz turned to the OPI officer. “I’ve no idea. I’ve reason to believe the ability goes back generations but I don’t know its origins. It’s plainly beyond the Empire’s capabilities. And that of the Old Empire, too.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rinharte. “We can’t do it, the Old Empire couldn’t do it—who else is there?”
“The Anyol,” suggested Ormuz. Nothing factual was known about the legendary Anyol, the race who had once inhabited the galaxy, but myth painted them as masters of magical technologies. Certainly, without the topologic drive foun
d in three wrecked starships in orbit about Geneza there would have been no Old Empire. And after more than four thousand years, those hulks were the only evidence of the Anyol ever discovered.
“Or the Baal,” added Finesz.
Ormuz turned and scowled at her. “The Baal are no more,” he said. Emperor Edkar I had destroyed them 1,200 years ago—and seized the Throne on his triumphant return to Geneza. Ormuz had no desire to be associated with an ancient enemy.
“Ma’am?” murmured Voyna. The Admiral looked up at him and nodded for him to continue. To Ormuz, he said, “Is there any limiting factor to this nomosphere? Time or distance?”
“No. Providing I can make sense of the data.”
“So if you were to intercept a signal from clear across the Empire… It’s effectively instantaneous interstellar communication.”
“We still have to return to the real universe to act on the information,” Ormuz pointed out. “That could be weeks later. And then there’s the time-lag too.”
“All the same,” insisted Voyna, “you could read a signal from, say, Podboi, a signal that would take half a year to reach Linna.”
“Yes,” admitted Ormuz.
“What if the signal is enciphered?” asked Rinharte.
“Something about the nomosphere transforms information to raw data. Ciphers and codes are ineffective.”
“We can discover precisely what the Serpent intends,” mused the Admiral. “It gives us a certain advantage.”
This was true but there were other considerations. Ormuz felt it only fair to point them out: “He will have taken precautions, ma’am. He’ll know to disguise his signals so their meaning is not apparent without prior knowledge. And he’s more skilled in the nomosphere than I am.”
She looked up sharply. “Then where is our advantage? How can we hope to succeed?”
“His forces, those regiments he’s suborned, will be scattered far and wide. He has no choice but to send signals which make clear their new orders. Those, I can read.”
“So it is a thin advantage at best,” the Admiral commented. “But perhaps it is enough…”
After discussion, the Admiral chose the nearby minor world of Urkia as Vengeful’s destination. A week’s travel from Linna, it would give Ormuz seven days on each leg of the journey in the toposphere. From there, he could access the nomosphere and learn what he must. The council of war broke up shortly afterwards. Inspector Finesz returned to Linna aboard a launch. She took with her a “guest”. Vengeful laid in a course for the planetary system’s sole gas giant, a nine-hour journey.
A pair of marines escorted Ormuz and Varä to the mezzanine deck overlooking the great hall and the cabin they would share during the journey. The cabin was well-fitted and panelled throughout in wood. A pair of high-sided cots sat one to each side, extensive cupboard-space beneath them. A narrow hatch at the end of one cot led into an en suite toilet.
“It’s referred to as a ‘head’,” Varä said matter-of-factly. The marquess grimaced as he dropped onto one of the cots and felt the thinness of the mattress.
“I know,” returned Ormuz. “I used to work on a data-freighter, if you remember.”
“I never understood why, though,” Varä continued. “It’s not as if there’s a resemblance between the… you know… and the human skull.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Actually, now I think about it…” He shuddered. “Not a pretty image.”
“It’s called a head,” explained Ormuz patiently, “because in the days when ships used to sail on a world’s oceans, the sailors would hang their backsides over the prow of the ship.”
The marquess grinned. “Now that’s a more amenable image.”
Ormuz closed the hatch to the head and crossed to his cot. He clambered onto it, drew up his legs and sat cross-legged, his back against the bulkhead. “Now it starts,” he said in a voice laden with doom.
“What does?”
“This war, Varä, this war we’re fighting.”
The marquess stretched out on his cot, his hands laced behind his head. “I thought it had already begun. Lady Aszabella? The aerodrome?”
“They were attempts to prevent it from starting. In that, they failed.”
“Lady Aszabella…” Varä chuckled. “I shouldn’t call her— I’m sorry: him—that, should I?”
“Would you have seen through his disguise?” Ormuz asked, interested. He had certainly professed knowledge of such impersonations.
“Probably not. He was very good.”
“They’re all clones,” Ormuz said.
“What? Who?”
“Rizbeka said Lady… the… Aszabella was identical to the six assassins who attacked her on Kapuluan.”
“How bizarre. An army of identical soldiers. Why doesn’t the Serpent use them instead of Imperial regiments?”
“Perhaps he’s limited in the number he can grow. And he’d have to wait twenty years before he could use them—they have to grow up, after all.”
“An army of clones…” murmured Varä. “So strange. It’s like something out of a bad melodrama.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
A passing steward informed Rinharte that the two lords could be found in the sports salon. She turned from knocking on the door to their cabin, flashed an aggrieved look at the steward and hurried along the balcony to the nearest ladder. Ormuz and Varä were indeed in Vengeful’s sports salon. The marquess was giving the ex-prole another lesson in swordsmanship. Rinharte, stepping out onto the viewing gallery, saw Marine-Captain Kordelasz in the shadows, leaning against a post, his arms crossed, and watching the pair below. Joining him, she asked light-heartedly, “Is he any good?”
“Casimir?” replied Kordelasz, glancing disinterestedly at the lieutenant-commander before returning his attention to the duelling lords. “I don’t think I’ve got anything to worry about. But he has a gift. Given time and training, he could make master.”
“He could?” Rinharte was surprised. She had never really thought of Ormuz as someone who possessed martial prowess. He had been a cabin-boy, a prole, after all.
“Just think how good Ahasz must be,” Kordelasz mused. “With that natural ability and years of training with the best tutors money can buy…”
Rinharte saw the thrust of the conversation. “You’d like to meet him, wouldn’t you?”
The marine-captain turned towards her. He seemed relaxed, and yet still he loomed dangerously. Something feral glittered in his eyes. His smile tightened. “Meet Ahasz? Yes, I would.” He shrugged negligently but Rinharte was not fooled by his insouciance. “Perhaps,” he added, “I’ll get the chance… if Casimir comes through.”
“You might not walk away from a duel with the Serpent,” Rinharte pointed out.
“So?” Kordelasz turned back to watch the two young lords, no longer interested in the conversation.
Rinharte turned her attention to the salon. Two figures circled each other warily, both wearing faceless ovoid masks. Ormuz and Varä were not running through exercises but actually fighting a mock duel. One wore a red long-sleeved leotard and yellow tights, the other dark green and tan. She did not need the colour-schemes to identify which was which—long black hair hung down in a plait from the back of the red-clad figure’s mask and a shorter reddish pony-tail from the other’s. As she watched, Varä’s blade flickered out. Its point moved too fast to see but it clearly hit its target.
“Ow!” Ormuz jumped back. A pale-blue diamond appeared on his green-clad chest, brightest at the point of impact and fading out at the edges. He put his free hand to the mark.
“You’re dead, Casimir,” Varä told him gleefully. “Your blade was in the wrong quarter. That hit got you in the heart.”
“I thought you were going low,” Ormuz said sullenly. “I was ready to parry.”
“Watch the hand, not the point,” the marquess admonished. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“His footwork was good though,” re
marked Kordelasz to Rinharte.
Varä called out, “Now let’s go again.”
Kordelasz offered further commentary: “He gets distracted by the blade—understandable since Varä likes to make it dance. But if he had been in the right quarter, Varä left himself open for a riposte with that lunge.”
Rinharte, no aficionado of swordsmanship, let the marine-captain’s explanation wash over her. She fought to survive and providing she had sufficient skill to do that, she was happy. Admittedly, there had been a couple of close calls in recent weeks… But sword-fighting for the sake of sword-fighting? She could see no attraction in that.
The pair below began another bout. Several times, Varä attacked and was rebuffed. Ormuz managed to riposte twice but the marquess’s sword whipped to the correct quarter and the clang of blades meeting rang out. A minute or two of circling followed the last parry, both combatants shuffling about, swords held high and parallel to the ground.
Varä side-stepped, dropped his elbow, and flicked his blade into a new quarter. His elbow moved in and out as he attacked, his sword shifting too fast to see. Ormuz danced desperately to meet each new attack and succeeded in getting his blade to the marquess’s. Clatters, clangs and slithers echoed across the sports salon.
“Yes!” hissed Kordelasz.
The marquess back-pedalled away from Ormuz, dropping his sword to the floor as he did so. Ormuz put up his blade as Varä bent to pick up his sword. Straightening, he said, “That’s enough for today, I think.”
“I got you!” Ormuz crowed.
“A lucky jab.” But Varä reached up and pressed a hand to the biceps of his sword-arm. There was a yellow sunburst spread across his upper arm.
“Does it matter if it was lucky?”
“Casimir, you can’t rely on luck. You need skill.” Varä removed the button from the point of his sword and slid the blade into the scabbard hanging from his belt. “But you’re definitely improving.”
Ormuz attempted to sheathe his own blade but had forgotten the button blunting its point. He fiddled to remove it and then carefully inserted the sword into its scabbard.
