Marim tried to shut out the sounds. One meter closer to the door. Think of it that way. We’re dead, anyway, if we don’t move.
Someone tried to slither up to their position, and, terrified the newcomer would draw the Ogre, Marim kicked violently. A glimpse of terrified brown eyes, the glitter of tears, and once again the horrible noises—and she and Hreem slid again.
Three consoles from the door. But then, that long, wide two meters—We can’t make it. Stop it! Furious, she closed off the voice wailing in the back of her mind, the image of tears, the sounds of death, and looked at the door, not six meters away.
And realized that there were no sounds but her own harsh breathing. And Hreem’s. And the steady, amplified whine-thump of the Ogre as it vectored on them.
The door snapped open.
Hreem yelped. “Riolo! Stop that chatzer!”
Marim was too numb to react as a short, goggled Barcan walked in clutching a compad. Two Ogres followed him. He stared at the tableau, watching the blood-spattered Ogre advance on Hreem, his expression unreadable. The Ogre reached for Hreem and he shrieked, his voice as high as any of the Bori.
Then Riolo shouted, his voice overlaid by a weird electronic whine. “Hold!”
The Ogre froze.
“Attend.”
The Ogre glided back and took up station behind Riolo.
Riolo pointed at each of them in turn. “Ogres. Identify: Hreem. Identify: Marim.”
Hreem remained sprawled on the floor for a moment, then slowly got up, trembling, whether with rage or the aftermath of terror—or both—Marim couldn’t tell.
“What did you do?” he asked the Barcan, his voice husky.
Riolo held up the compad. “Programmed them to hear this as the voice of the Avatar. Total override. Lysanter and the Catennach never suspected that. They were looking for some sort of recognition override on you or me.”
Hreem got to his feet, his hands flexing slowly. “Good work. Let’s move. I’ve got some things to—”
The Barcan cut in, his voice emotionless. “We are better off making straight for the landing bay.”
“First I got to—”
“We have to get one of those corvettes. You can get your revenge better from the Lith,” Riolo said, still evenly, but his hands tightened on the compad, as if for emphasis.
Hreem gave a short nod. “Right you are, then,” he said. “Landing bay. Corvette.” Riolo turned away, and Marim felt a spurt of danger when Hreem nicked his chin at Riolo’s compad and jerked his thumb at her. She fought desperately against the urge to snicker.
Relief eddied through Marim when the gore-smeared Ogre dropped behind Riolo, who fell in step behind her and Hreem. The other two Ogres went first, which barely saved their lives when they reached an intersection and nearly collided with an armed band of Catennach.
The Bori opened fire. The Ogres burned them down, but not before one of them nearly got Marim, who ducked behind the nearest Ogre. Hreem shouted when a jac-beam splashed off the Ogre in front of him and singed his leg.
Marim turned to Riolo, spreading her hands. “C-can you make those things p-protect us?” She let her voice go shaky, swayed as if about to faint, and tottered a couple of steps toward him.
Riolo nodded. “Ogres, attend all.”
Marim let her eyes roll up under her eyelids and sagged, falling against the Barcan. He stumbled back, trying to hold her up with one hand and grip the compad with the other. Hreem lunged and snatched it away.
Marim twisted out of Riolo’s grasp, knocking him down. The Barcan looked up at Hreem, his expression unreadable behind the red-tinted goggles. “I did not betray you,” said Riolo. “I could have, in that rec room.”
“Yes. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” He glared. “You never told me you speak Dol’jharian.”
Marim scooped up a jac from the lifeless fingers of one of the dead Catennach and stepped to Hreem’s side.
Riolo’s breath hissed in, out. “Shoot me.”
Marim offered the jac, but Hreem ignored it. He snorted. “Fair on fair, I win: quick death. But I don’t overlook it when someone thinks I’m stupid. Ask the Archon of Charvann when you get to hell.” He touched the compad. “Attack.”
Nothing happened. Riolo shouted something in his language.
“Cancel the instructions, then attend!” Marim shrieked as the Ogres swiveled around to face Hreem.
“Ogres, cancel instructions subject Riolo!” shouted Hreem. The Ogres stilled. “Cancel attend subject Riolo. Attack.”
Marim turned away, picked up another jac from a fallen Bori, and tried not to hear the noises of the Barcan’s death at the hands of the Ogres—or Hreem’s harsh, sexually charged breathing as he watched.
When the noises ended, Hreem smiled at her, surrounded by the three huge gleaming machines with their mad double faces.
“Now,” he said, “let’s pay a visit to your captain.”
Marim stared at him, her mind working fast. Vi’ya’s got the Eya’a, and they can drop Hreem before we even get to the crew quarters, she thought. But what if Vi’ya wasn’t there? She thought of Jaim and Lokri closing her out and gave a hard shrug. They made their choices, I made mine.
“This way,” she said.
Hreem didn’t follow. “That’s the crew quarters,” he said. “If she was trying to start up the station, she’d be in that Kronos place you told me about, right?” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be having second thoughts?” He hefted the compad.
“Ruction means it’s over. She’d go looking for the rest of . . . the crew.” Marim felt sweat prickle on her forehead as she realized she almost said “us.” But Hreem didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah.” He looked thoughtful, then stooped and picked up one of Riolo’s arms and walked over to the wall, where he used the bloody end to paint a short phrase. Then he dropped his ghastly paintbrush and stood back, admiring his handiwork.
“Yeah. You’re right,” he said finally. “Let’s go.”
o0o
The howling of the station snapped Tat out of her brainsuck trance. Fighting against the sickening miasma of chem-poisoning, she peered through the panic around her to look for Dem. After a few seconds the numbness in her limbs turned to itchy needle-pricks, and she felt something constricting her legs.
Looking down, she saw Dem curled at her feet, arms gripping her ankles tightly, his body racked with sobs. With one hand she stroked Dem’s skinny back, and with the other she tapped into the feed from the Chamber of Kronos. Her console windowed up the Avatar. His orders rang out: “Unleash the Ogres.”
Sudden silence in the crowded lab: Tat had had the volume turned up during the brainsuck session.
“Ogres! Ogres!” Techs fled toward the doors. The Catennach screamed at them to halt, but when the others ignored them, they pulled their jacs and started shooting, which only served to intensify the panic.
Within seconds the lab was empty save for the bodies of two or three Bori who’d either been shot or trampled. Nyzherian and Fasarghan looked at each other, glanced at Tat, and ran toward the back of the lab. She heard the door of the armored disposer clank shut.
“Ogres. Ogres.” Tat thought it was Dem whimpering in her ear, then realized it was her own voice. Though every move increased the agonizing ache through her skull, she windowed up the codes for the Ogres, trying to interpret them despite the distortion in her vision.
She heard an amplified, dual whine-thump from the corridor outside, then terrified screams that seemed to go on forever until they were cut off by loud thumps and horrible squashing, tearing noises.
Forcing her eyes to focus, she worked faster—her screen blipped, and she cried out in relief. There were two levels to the passcodes. She pulled her pass tag off, her hands shaking, and snapped it into the console.
It displayed its status: LEVEL ONE. PROTECT BEARER. The screams outside stopped. Quickly she UL’d Level Two:
PROTECT BEARER AND ACCOMPANYING PERSONNEL. That was w
hat the Tarkans had.
She yanked her tag free and gripped it as the sounds outside ceased. Nothing happened. She heard the whine-thump of the Ogres diminish as they departed.
Then guilt crashed in on her with agonizing weight as she realized that everyone in the array lab would have been safe: the Avatar would not want its operation interrupted. It was all her fault. If she hadn’t had the volume on her console up, there would have been no panic.
Weeping, she changed Dem’s tag, and was just settling it around his neck when Nyzherian appeared, breathing harshly.
“Go back to your quarters.”
Tat’s first impulse was to argue, but she looked at those stark eyes, the white-knuckled grip on the jac, and nodded. Nyzherian swung away as Fasarghan stabbed desperately on his compad for a cleanup crew that would never come.
Tat pulled her cousin to his feet and led him out. Outside she stopped in brain-numbing horror as she stared at the crimson-stained remains of people she knew, people she didn’t know. Most were unrecognizable; she was glad for the blurring in her vision. Dem walked without resistance, no longer clinging. When she looked into his face, his eyes stared beyond her with a horrible blankness.
She saw Lennoragh stretched out dead, and a spurt of pain and grief made her eyes and nose sting. Then an Ogre glided with inhuman grace out of a side passage, its hands dripping blood and clotted gore. It paused, its sensory bulbs seeming to drill through her. She felt her pass tag vibrate. The Ogre moved. Tat could feel heat radiating from its armor as it stomped past, its heavy feet trampling uncaring on Lennoragh’s body.
It took several long, horrible seconds before she had control of her muscles again. What now? I will not go and obediently wait until they come to kill me. She forced herself to look down at Lennoragh, in penance for her carelessness. I didn’t save her. But I can try to save others. She tugged Dem into motion, walking carefully. First she had to find Lar.
o0o
A threnody of loss hummed, like a sinuous snake made of gold chain, into the darkness. Broken, broken, broken . . .
Sedry tried to bury herself in the darkness, but the bright chain pulled her back into the hell of light, and noise, and painful motion. Broken . . . broken . . .
“. . . broken.” That was Ivard’s voice.
The pull of duty snapped free, leaving Sedry staring through dry, aching eyes across the crew chamber at Lokri, who was holding Ivard, who had covered his face with his hands, and as Sedry tried to gather what little strength remained in her body, she heard the words again: “Broken, broken.”
She shifted her gaze, feeling the pull of strained eye muscles. Montrose loomed above her, his expression anxious. “What?” No sound came out, but he was watching her dry lips. The station trembled beneath them; in the background she heard a weird howling and the commotion of random violence.
“I don’t know,” Montrose said softly. “He’s been that way for a little while. He was fine, tired but fine, then he screamed something about the Kelly.” Montrose shook his head. “Never heard a sound like that out of him, not even when he took fire on the Mandala, or when his sister died, or afterward when the ribbon on his wrist started killing him.”
Ivard gave a shuddering sigh. Sedry could feel the effort he made to get control again. “The Unity is broken. But I think Vi’ya is alive.”
“Then we have to get out of here and bunk straight for Telvarna,” Montrose said briskly. Sedry felt his relief, and she wondered if a little residual tempathy clung to her, a weak reflection of the infinite compassion and patience and wisdom of the creature she privately termed the Archangel.
Just then a voice screamed outside the door, “Open up! Please! Lar?”
“That’s Tat!” Lar bounded to the door, his hands scrabbling over the jury-rigged controls.
“Door’s locked down,” Jaim said.
“We have to open it—” Lar fought more desperately.
Sedry felt a twinge of pain in her fingernails, as if she had raked them down a wall, and she fought a deep shudder as she turned to her console. One of her ready worms responded to her command, and the override sucked the door open.
Tat nearly fell through, her eyes distended with terror, the lower portion of her clothing splashed and smeared with thick, drying blood. With her was Dem, equally gore-smeared, moving like a badly-maintained doll.
“Ogres,” Tat gasped. “Killing everyone without a tag. Riots. Workers.” Her face crumpled, and she wept soundlessly for a few seconds, then she took a deep, tearing breath and straightened up. Lar wordlessly moved forward and put his arms around her.
“Then we can’t leave,” Lokri said, flat-voiced. “The Ogres would go after us first thing.”
Tat shook her head violently, and Sedry’s teeth ached with the effort the Bori woman made to speak steadily: “No. My pass tag, and Dem’s, will protect us if we stay together.”
Montrose smacked his huge hands together and rubbed them. “Then let’s go get our captain.”
Jaim raised a hand. “Our orders were to retreat to the Telvarna. We don’t know where she is. We could end up running these halls fruitlessly until those pass tags are deactivated.”
The three Bori had moved together, Dem held between Lar and Tat as the two whispered over his drooping head. Lar looked up, his pupils dilated black, and he said, “I think we should save as many people as we can. No one else is going to.”
“Dol’jharians?” Montrose growled. “They’d as soon kill us as follow us.”
“Not them,” Lar said, his chin rising. “Bori. Don’t want to be here any more than I do. Most, anyway. Maybe even some of the grays and ordinaries.”
‘They should have a choice,” Sedry whispered. “Lar is right. The Avatar will not honor them with even that much.”
Jaim nodded slowly. Lokri gave a short sigh. “Until the end of my life—if it doesn’t end today—I will probably dream of being imprisoned. I’m for it.”
Ivard looked up from contemplating his hands and said, “Markham would have done it. And Vi’ya will understand.”
Jaim stepped forward, one hand gesturing preparatory to making a remark, but Montrose didn’t see. His whole aspect brightened, and he seemed to expand with sudden energy. “Well, let’s get ourselves organized, then, and move . . .”
He started handing out commands. Sedry could feel the deep upwelling of joy in him, fierce and true, now that he could take action at last, and she understood how terribly the long imprisonment in this room had diminished him. And she saw recognition of this in Jaim’s eyes as he deferred command to Montrose.
Tears threatened, but she would not shame either man by letting them be seen, lest she have to explain. The glory clings to us all. Montrose, who is alive again now that he can take right action. Jaim, who follows instead of leading, out of compassion. Lokri, who now sees freedom as a gift and wishes to give it freely. And Ivard . . .She looked into the beautiful face, so like the carving of an angel over the East door at New Glastonbury. But he did not speak.
Montrose said, “We can’t rush out without thinking. The worst fighting is surely around the landing bay. Perhaps by the time we check the places Lar and Tat know of, it will diminish some.”
Sedry licked her dry lips and forced her tired body to speak. “Before we leave, I might have one last strike to make against our enemy, if you’ll grant me the time.”
Montrose moved behind her. “Take the time, my love.”
She leaned back against Montrose’s comforting bulk for a single deep breath, then windowed up a workspace, establishing communications with the worm she had constructed on the Telvarna—it seemed years ago now. Linking it swiftly to the lesser worm she’d crafted here on the Suneater, she added two tropisms: one for the Mandalic signature of the Phoenix and one for the Marines. Then she released it, shut down her console, and slumped, her residual energy spent.
‘That’s it,” she murmured from between the cradle of her forearms. “The worm will eat up every bit of
capacity it can find, starting with crypto. It may give the Navy the edge it needs, now that the station is powering up.”
“And us?” asked Jaim quietly.
She shrugged without looking up, distractedly noting the feel of the cool dyplast screen against her nose. “Don’t know. May mess up internal communications, and the Phoenix—the thing that calls itself Jaspar—may be able to help, if it can shake its fixation on Anaris. Worm may help there, too. It also will try to contact the Marines.”
Montrose looked around at them, then indicated the door.
“Let’s move.”
PART FOUR
ONE
GROZNIY: SUNEATER PLUS ONE LIGHT DAY
The bridge was too hot, but Margot Ng did not fault the tianqi. It was her own keyed-up perceptions that were awry. That, and lack of sleep, made her mouth cottony and her eyes gritty. She could have gone back to her quarters after the howl from the Suneater confirmed the impact of the lances, for nothing could be expected for an unknown time—no one knew how long it would take the Marines to fight their way to their objectives. But she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Better to fret on the bridge; half of her primary crew had volunteered to remain.
Instead she’d made Krajno take a Z-watch. Surprisingly he’d gone without even a jocular protest. Is my stress that obvious? She glanced over at Commander Gramalcyn, transferred from the Prestopans. Her reputation as a stellar first officer was probably another reason why Krajno hadn’t objected.
Courier report incoming,” said Ammant at Communications; even when tired and stressed nothing diminished his angelic beauty. Ng found that oddly reassuring. “On-screen.”
The fleshy-tulip visage of a Kelly Intermittor windowed up as the communications console twittered, announcing the compressed data that the scout would summarize.
“Asteroid rouge-nord seven,” the Kelly said, identifying its origin. Ng heard a harsh edge to the mellow blat of its voice, and wondered if that was how fatigue sounded in a Kelly. “Sprezzatura lost, Musashi damaged and withdrawing. Pax Romana damaged but functional. Asteroid engine still functional.”
The Thrones of Kronos Page 52
