The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Romarnan’s lips curled. “That’s part of Darranagh’s crowd.”

  Tat looked up in surprise and disgust. “Mean, gossip about them’s true? They do Karusch-na biznai on each other?”

  Romarnan shrugged. “Lots of Bori do it. Bet they even speak Dol’jharian under the sheets.”

  Tat snickered, then frowned at her spoon. “Darranagh’s kitchen staff. Somehow makes this gunk taste even worse.”

  Romarnan grinned. “Don’t dare add anything to the food, perverts or not. Automatic chem checks before it even goes out.”

  “What, so can’t sneak some flavor in by Ur-fruit?”

  Romarnan shrugged. “Always been that way. Catennach used to use poison a lot, to gain position. Sometimes other chem is administered by food. Antivirals, like that. Dunno. Even asking kitchen staff about that is big trouble.”

  Tat sighed, spooning the last of the food into her mouth. It did not gain in flavor as it cooled off. She knew she needed the nourishment. She was always tired.

  The door opened again, and two Bori entered. Tat recognized Farniol, Morrighon’s secretary. Farniol glanced Tat’s way, sending her pulse racing. This time in fear.

  Romarnan’s mouth tightened—he’d noticed the tension in Farniol’s face as well. What fresh hell was this?

  With an eye to the busy Catennach, Tat adjusted her position so she could see Farniol as she got her food. When the secretary turned away, her body hid one hand from the Catennach side of the room. Under the tray, Farniol’s fingers tapped in the Check log sign.

  She and Romarnan finished quickly and left, going in different directions.

  At her console, she pulled up her secure log and ran Farniol’s message through decryption. Then she sat back and stared with fascinated horror at the vid of a big, hairy man on his back humping away at the air with a huge pinkish thing attached to his groin. Tat looked again at the header at the bottom of the vid. This had come from Barrodagh’s logs. Did he like watching this blunge? More important, why’d Farniol tag it?

  She recognized the man, of course: Hreem the Faithless. Tat hated the thought of one of the worst jackers in the Riftskip being on the station, as if things weren’t bad enough. There were certain names every Rifter knew: Neyvla-khan; Hreem the Faithless; Aroga Blackheart; Robwizer vonHolle; Esheilagh of Nayardhe. Tat had only seen Hreem twice, both times wandering around with Marim from the Telvarna Rifters, who was supposed to be his enemy.

  A strange shadow in the ceiling above the man’s writhing body made Tat reach forward to adjust the resolution control, then she stopped. The shadow rapidly resolved into a weird bulge that opened. A human skeleton erupted from it and fell on Hreem, who screamed and threw it violently across the chamber.

  Horror gripped her. Hreem thought the skeleton was that of Norio Danali—the tempath before Vi’ya.

  And the station itself had forced it out.

  After a blip, an even more terrifying sight: a group of grays in a room, and as they watched in shock, one of them was propelled by hands erupting from floor and walls right into the wall. The sounds made her throat lurch in nausea.

  At the end, she took several breaths to still her stirring guts, and when she looked up, she jumped when she saw Morrighon watching over her shoulder. That’s what exhaustion did—caused you to betray yourself.

  She waited sickly for condemnation or threats.

  “Do you know what that is?” He spoke as one who did.

  Tat had to breathe before she could trust her voice. “I’m not sure, but I think Ivard knows. Lar says he’s talked about dreams. It’s something in the station.”

  “It’s Norio,” Morrighon said. “Or his . . . revenant.” He paused. “Do you have any ideas on how to get rid of it? Using, perhaps, the stasis clamps?”

  Of course, their overlords would tell no one, Tat reflected—there’d be widespread panic. But the news will get out, sooner or later. “Not me. Not alone. But . . . maybe—if I could talk to someone else—we might be able to come up with a plan,” Tat said, knowing it was a risk even mentioning someone else. She did not dare name Sedry.

  On the screen bulged the pucker that had swallowed the gray. It could happen to anyone. Tat did not need to be telepathic to know he was thinking the same thing she was.

  “There have been other incidents as well,” Morrighon said. “Barrodagh hopes to suppress the news.”

  Tat ducked her head in a nod, her hair swinging forward to stick to her clammy face. She brushed it back with trembling fingers. “I just heard about things happening to the Bori sent to the surface.”

  “Here’s the latest.” Morrighon keyed his compad, and she stared down at the tiny vid. This time the space was a weird red room with pods and lumps in the walls: the header named it the New Ship Bay. Morrighon kept the sound muted, for which she was grateful; she saw hands and even a face erupt from the walls, driving a terrified gray tech back toward another wall, which opened a pucker and sucked him in.

  “No stasis clamps there,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I can’t do it alone.”

  Morrighon made an impatient movement. “Talk to your . . . compatriot. I have a meeting with the heir now. Following that, he intends to summon the tempath to discuss the next attempt to activate the station.”

  He knows about Sedry. “Then I better get to the crew room fast,” she said, taking another risk.

  And Morrighon said, “I’ll handle the telltale. Go.”

  o0o

  Tat’s coming.

  As Vi’ya stepped into the fresher, Ivard’s thought reached her; she’d been half-conscious of a flicker of communication between the Eya’a and the Kelly, but she had learned, for the sake of her sanity, to pay as little heed to this almost constant dialogue as one would the low mutter of a vid in a room.

  The shield she had worked so hard on Ares to erect around her mental perimeters had disappeared the moment she stepped on this station. She’d tried to rebuild it, but not until recently—when the cumulative effect of the sex-driven emotions of the station’s human parasites had faded, sudden as summer thunder—had she comprehended just how unsuccessful her attempt had been.

  Vi’ya threw off her clothes. Regret suffused her as stinging hot water needled her face.

  This was one of the burdens of being a telepath, but the victim had been Jaim, not herself. Jaim, and perhaps her crew. She could not imagine what changes her actions would cause in their lives.

  She shut off the shower, dried quickly, and pulled her flight-suit from the cleaner that had been ill-installed against a curved portion of wall. Hreem. Marim. She was not angry with Marim, she was angry at the situation that was forcing Marim out; one way or another, the days of wearing the black of sworn vengeance would end soon.

  Vi’ya stepped into the main room.

  “. . . gray working in the room with those Ur-ships got sucked right into a wall,” Tat was saying. She had obviously just arrived and was still breathing hard. “That skeleton. Hreem believed it was Norio Danali’s.”

  Vi’ya automatically sought Sedry Thetris’s calm gaze, and saw a nod. The nark had been disabled, then. “That’s correct,” Sedry said. “At the moment of Norio’s death, the station appears to have imprinted his, oh, psychic energies in a portion of its substance.” She paused, then continued. “If it helps any, think of it as a psychic cancer.”

  “Morrighon wants us to get rid of it. That’s why I’m here.”

  Marim frowned. “How about a trade? If Vi’ya and the others get rid of Norio, then you get us pass tags so those Ogres don’t zap us when they do get activated.”

  Tat shook her head. “I can’t promise those. I can get the tags, but without the proper codes they’re useless, and Barrodagh controls the codes.”

  Marim rolled her eyes and cursed.

  Drawing attention away from Marim, Vi’ya said, “We cannot promise to get rid of Norio, though we can try.”

  “We’ll need your help, though.” Sedry leane
d toward Tat, who gave a tight nod.

  “How?”

  “The quantum interfaces let us track him, and it may be that we could use the stasis clamps as a kind of scalpel to exorcise—excise him,” Sedry corrected herself with an odd smile.

  This was obviously language Tat could understand. “Morrighon will back us up.” She hugged her elbows close to her body. “I think he’s as scared as I am. And I’m scared. My cousin Dem is just the sort to get sucked into a wall.”

  Sedry said, “You and I can craft a worm to release control of the stasis clamps to us. With that, and with the help of Vi’ya and the others, I’m sure we can eliminate him.”

  “Others?” Tat’s eyes rolled fearfully, as if seeking hidden tempaths in the small room. “Oh! Yes. You mean the Eya’a.” Tat gave a short sigh. “Why not bring up the Suneater, so we can get rid of this thing from inside?”

  Vi’ya shook her head. “We cannot power up the station now.”

  Tat’s already pale skin blanched. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “Must not,” Vi’ya said, and looked at the rest of her crew.

  Sedry nodded slowly, Montrose as well. Marim merely went on with the three-way game she’d begun with Ivard and Lokri, who with Jaim all gave Vi’ya subtle signals of approval. “Two reasons. The most immediate is one we can tell Morrighon and Barrodagh. If we power the station suddenly, we risk increasing Norio’s power. We must try to contain him without boosting that of the station.”

  “So we do that now,” Tat said, her voice shaky as she looked down at her compad. “I can’t stay long. Morrighon is going to come for you soon. The heir wants to talk before the attempt.”

  “I know why,” Vi’ya said. “Do not worry about it.”

  But Tat was going to worry, that was painfully clear in the pucker of question and worry creasing her brow. Vi’ya sustained an upwelling of pity. Vi’ya had learned that if one projected assurance to those depending upon one for strength, then it lent them strength.

  Tat shook her head. “You said two reasons. If we get rid of this Norio thing, why can’t you just start the station then? Everyone wants it—it’s clear the automatic power-up will take forever—and Eusabian will start getting impatient soon. All the underlings are terrified, and even Lysanter is nervous.”

  Vi’ya said, “Because the nicks are coming.”

  “I know that.” Tat’s voice squeaked up an octave. “That’s why we have to start this chatzer up!”

  Montrose shook his head. “You don’t understand. The nicks are coming to rescue us—we’re in it with them. This is a volunteer mission.”

  Sedry added, “I haven’t lied to you, but I have withheld data that you’ve probably sensed.”

  Tat’s face had turned grayish white around her huge eyes. “That code. I’ve seen it again. That’s the Ares nicks, then?”

  “Can’t be,” Sedry said. “If it had originated from Ares, then it would not have balked at my ID. The fact that my retirement was not logged indicates it was from Arthelion.” She pressed her lips together, then added, “And very deep.”

  “We have heard nothing from the nicks,” Vi’ya said. “But we are waiting for them to arrive.”

  “They are here,” Tat said softly, her eyes stark. Now she was sharing her own secrets—ones that would cost her life should she be exposed. “Traces all over Lysanter’s data. Skip-and-zap raids, transponder bombs, other blunge. They are here. Now. Barrodagh and Juvaszt goin’ rizzy. They know they’re out there, but not what they are waiting for.”

  The words impacted Vi’ya like a jac-bolt. Added to the continual stresses, the never-quite-banished exhaustion, the news unhinged her grasp of time and place as instinct reached across light-years for the blue-eyed, silent mate she knew was waiting—fighting against his own temporal and logistical stresses—for her to act. An oath fulfilled, a covenant kept: faith cleaving unto faith.

  She opened her eyes to discover the others watching her in silence. To Sedry she said, “It is time to send that signal.”

  Sedry compressed her mouth to a line as she nodded, self-possessed to the last. “We can try. Tat, we will need your help.”

  Vi’ya faced the others. “This is what we practiced for during those weeks aboard Telvarna. The Unity is not strong enough to do what needs to be done. This is the beginning of the end, and I will need each of you to give me your focus.”

  “This is the end. And I want to be alive for it,” Marim said. She seemed bored and restless, but there was no guilt in her face or in her emotional spectrum; no guilt and no interest. “I don’t see how I can stay alive if I let things like Norio’s ghost get at my brain—and for what? To be shot at by Ogres?”

  Ivard extended both his hands across the table. “You are needed,” he said softly, his green eyes utterly serious. “We all need you.”

  Marim stared back, her small hand tapping the table near Ivard’s supplicating fingers. And it seemed as if his plea would prevail. Though self-preservation and profit had always been her supreme motivators, even above pleasure, she had never been a coward.

  But then Lokri flipped his cards down, and touched her shoulder, and said, “Ante up, Marim. We’re all in this together.”

  Her chin lifted. Lokri’s silvery eyes narrowed; always, in his own way, preternaturally sensitive, he recognized his mistake the moment Vi’ya felt Marim’s emotional spectrum change, the ugly anger-laced jealousy foremost.

  “That’s not what I remember on Ares,” she said. “Everyone except me knew that plan. And the other day, everyone except me was in on the bunny fun.”

  Jaim closed his eyes as Marim slapped down her cards and rose, looking around in challenge. “Do what you want. I’m off to the rec room to look for my own fun.”

  And without a look backward, she left.

  Tat’s hands clutched her elbows, her emotions starkly clear to Vi’ya. The flicker of imagery from the Eya’a included a brief but vivid glimpse of Hreem the Faithless. Tat expected Marim to go to him, which meant she knew about that relationship. Which, in turn, proved that Barrodagh was behind it.

  Anger burned through Vi’ya.

  Lokri pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Vi’ya, it was my mistake. I’m sorry.”

  Vi’ya forced her voice to stay calm, steady, unemotional. “It is as well. If she feels so ambivalent, her strength would be diminished. Let her be, and chide her not. This is Barrodagh’s doing. He is trying to divide me from my crew.”

  The others made motions of agreement, and Vi’ya turned to Tat. “If we can successfully send our signal, the nicks will come, and we will do our best to start the station and turn over control to them.”

  “With Eusabian and his Ogres standing right there?” Tat asked, wringing her hands.

  “And Anaris your eighth?” Lokri grimaced.

  “Anaris,” Tat repeated. “Anaris? You didn’t say he was part of it!”

  Her fear was so strong that Vi’ya felt it as a physical jab, like an icicle through her eye into her brain.

  How much longer can I endure this? She had to endure it, and she had to shut out any thought of Brandon. No memory, no emotion, no thought.

  So what should she tell Anaris? How much to trust him? Would he be able to exploit the Unity when they were working together and find out what she wished to keep hidden?

  Again, there was no reason to burden Tat with any of this.

  “He has a psychic gift that can aid us, although this is not known,” Vi’ya said.

  Tat swallowed visibly and gave a jerky nod. “If you really can read minds when you’re doing whatever it is you do in that Throne Room, won’t he be able to read yours as well?”

  “We humans cannot read each other’s minds without the help of the Eya’a,” Vi’ya said. “And they don’t know Anaris enough to read his well—or to give him access to ours. With concentration purely on the task at hand, we will be able to convince him we are doing our best.”

  Ivard’s gaze flickered.<
br />
  Tat compressed her lips as she studied Jaim, who was still bruised along his jawline and temple. One hand rested below wrapped ribs. She grimaced. “They get him, too?” And when no one answered, she said, “Well, at least we’re safe from that now.”

  “Yes,” Vi’ya said.

  o0o

  “I would like to review your preparations for defense of the ship lock,” Morrighon said to Chur-Mellikath, the commander of the Tarkan forces on the Suneater.

  The Tarkan turned to the wall screen. Bright stars of light lingered where his finger touched it. “I have placed heavy-weapons squads here, here, and here, backed up by secondary forces in these locations. Furthermore . . .”

  Anaris relaxed in his chair, watching the byplay between the powerful, dour commander and Morrighon. As was proper behavior in the presence of one who was a single remove from absolute power, Chur-Mellikath did not look at Anaris directly, but the heir sensed something in the man’s demeanor that had been lacking in previous encounters. Since the Tarkan would not address him unless he asked a question, Anaris interrupted.

  “What effect might the disturbance—” He used a Dol’jharian word connoting an annoying but largely powerless enemy. “—have on your efforts?” He would not call Norio “chorahin.”

  Chur-Mellikath’s gaze flicked his way, then went diffuse. “Little or none, lord. We have control of the stasis clamps and can prevent it from interfering, should it attempt such.”

  Although the direction of Morrighon’s squinty gaze was impossible to gauge, Anaris sensed his focus, as if he had also noted the increase of tension in Chur-Mellikath.

  Anaris gestured to Morrighon to continue the briefing. Anaris would rather have run it himself, but to stray so from standard practice would diminish him in Chur-Mellikath’s eyes. In the past Anaris had regarded the Tarkans with contempt. Selected not for intellect or even imagination, their harsh training instilled the habit of unquestioning obedience.