Keep your wits, she told herself. Use your time.
So she sat, and let the minutes pass.
She was being attacked on two fronts, at least. The comms failure was the battlefront of one, the illness that had afflicted Trophimus the other. For both events to be random and unconnected would be evidence of an insane universe, and Antonia couldn't allow herself to believe in that.
Fleet admirals did not simply become ill. The bodies of all Iconoclasts were modified to some degree, from the gross physical changes of the shocktroopers to the complete cellular restructuring of the special agents. Her own body was biochemically modified to resist injury and disease, allowing her to continue functioning under conditions that would leave an unaltered woman comatose. As for Trophimus, a fleet admiral and veteran of untold military campaigns - what would it take to lay him low?
He had never shown signs of physical illness before, to her knowledge. In truth, their respective positions made them more like distant acquaintances than father and daughter: since Lavannos she had spoken to him more in six months than in the previous six years. They had never been close.
An Iconoclast admiral is seldom close to anyone. Her own liaison with Gaius, the special agent, had almost been the end of her.
For a moment, she found herself missing him terribly. His touch would have helped her, she knew.
Antonia tore her thoughts away. She closed her eyes, forming a mental picture in the black, cool space behind her eyes. In darkness, a bar of solid metal, ice-cold steel, burnished and unbreakable. She set the bar at her own core, in place of her spine, imagined herself built around it, bone and muscle and skin wrapped about the frozen metal...
When she opened her eyes again, the calm place had taken over.
She tapped up the comms panel again and waited until Omri appeared on the holo. "Tech-prime. How are my communications coming along? Can I speak to my ships yet?"
"Very shortly, Het Admiral. We've been setting up radio links and feeding them through the internal network. They won't be secure, and I'd not like to try using them in a firefight, but they are best we have until we are reconnected to the sector web."
"Good work, Omri." She paused, wondering how much she should tell the tech-prime. How much she knew, instead of merely surmised.
No, she thought. The time for hesitation, for care, had long been over. "Tech-prime, I believe that Shalem might be in imminent danger. We may need battle-ready communications, and in a very short time. Please divert all your efforts to this - take helot-workers away from any other duties you see fit."
"As you wish, Het. Is there anything else you need me to know?"
"No. Yes. Omri, this temple-station will go on battle-alert in one hour exactly. The situation here may become..." She hunted for the best phrase. "Untenable. Perhaps you could keep a helot or two back from communications duties, and have them transfer your wargear onto the flagship."
"Outside agencies," said Omri. "Thank you, Het Admiral. May the blessings of his holiness the Patriarch carry us through this difficult time."
He broke the connection. Antonia sat back. Something told her that, at that precise moment, the Patriarch's goodwill was being directed anywhere but Shalem.
Gamaliel was early. With no quantum-inseparability communications in play, the first Antonia knew of it was when Shalem's sense-engines picked up the jump-point opening. Radio couldn't penetrate jumpspace.
She had hoped to be down in the Cloister Ring when the corvette arrived. A landing deck had been readied there for Trophimus and his physicians, the outer lock doors already open. It would be the fastest way to get the fleet admiral aboard and up to the infirmary, far quicker than taking the whole corvette into the angel vault. The bay had been cleared for a shuttle and had med-teams standing by.
Gamaliel's captain must have pushed every gram of thrust from his drives on the way in. Silvanus had told Antonia six hours, but the ship made it in five and a half. Antonia was still in the command dome when it decelerated from superlight.
The dome was a huge, circular hall; a multiple-armoured blister two hundred metres across, set atop the angel vault. In normal times it would have been thronged with staff and helots, stationed at the hundreds of workstations arranged in rings around the vast central holoprojectors. Battle-chants would fill the air, sweet incense calm the mind and concentrate the thoughts, massive holographic globes drift overhead to show every track and trajectory within a dozen light-years.
Now it was dark, denuded of staff. Without broadscan comms, none of the long-range sense-engines could operate. A single hologlobe hung in the centre of the dome, showing the area of space directly around Shalem and the pathetic ring of starships that circled it. Four killships, Antonia counted, going over the list again as though she could increase the numbers by will alone. Seven frigates, two corvettes. And, against all hope, the Voice of Pain. Once the crew transfers were complete, that vessel could double her firepower.
Antonia was up on the gallery, level with the hologlobe. Below her, a few dozen helots were physically running from station to station just to keep Shalem operational. She had chosen them for their fitness as well as their technical ability. One looked up at her as an alert chime started gonging out into the dome.
"Het Admiral! Jump-point opening, bearing three-oh-eight high."
Antonia stared through the viewport. Out in the blackness, a moving spot of fiery orange light had appeared from nowhere. In seconds it swelled, became a hole in the fabric of space, vomiting light.
When it closed up, it left behind a silvery mote, a splinter of metal. Antonia looked back at the globe, saw Gamaliel's ident-signature come up. "Comms officer."
One of the helots snapped to attention. He'd received what must have been the fastest promotion in Iconoclast history, due to his knowledge of ancient communication systems. He'd studied radio as a hobby before he'd been inducted into service. Now he was in charge of the temple-station's entire comms network. "Het Admiral."
"Signal the captain of the Gamaliel. Tell him to stand off, and send the fleet admiral and his physicians over in a launch. Bay Epsilon. Tell them I'll be there. Oh, and congratulate him on his choice of drive officer - I'd never expected them here so fast."
"Yes ma'am. I mean, er, thy will be done, Het..."
Antonia waved the slip away, already clattering down the steps from the gallery. The helot had done her proud so far, and she wasn't going to let a minor breach of verbal protocol bother her overly. If they survived the day, the helot would walk off the dome a free man with a commission.
She ran through empty corridors. The command dome wasn't the only part of Shalem that had been stripped of personnel: most of the temple-station's staff had been reassigned to temporary starship duties within the past four hours. A few thousand remained, volunteers mainly, keeping Shalem's vital systems operational, making sure the hunger-guns were fed and tended. There was no one at all, she knew, in any of the fabrication modules, and the landing decks were shutting down one by one as the last troopers left in shuttles for their assigned ships.
There were mag-car rails running down from the command dome to the habitation discs and the Cloister Ring, through the buttresses that kept the station's massive structures together. She reached the car rank at a flat run and flung herself into the nearest, used her command override to send it hurtling down the tube at four times its safe speed. It got her down to the Cloister Ring in under five minutes: the car must have topped two hundred and fifty kilometres an hour through the buttress. She hadn't known they could do that.
It was smoking when the doors opened and she jumped out. On the way back, she decided, it might be prudent to choose another car.
The dangerous speed had been worth it, though. She made it to the landing deck just as the shuttle was setting down.
Hot smoke was still pouring from its thrusters as Antonia ran across the deck towards it. She ignored the fumes, standing close by the hatch as the ramp started to come down. Her
medical team, the best physicians on the station, were already running up behind her, a support-stretcher humming between them on grav-lifters.
The shuttle's hatch swung apart in a gout of light and steam. Physician First-Class Lorca Silvanus stood at the top of the ramp.
Antonia only needed to look at her face to know what had happened.
She had the body of Fleet Admiral Trophimus taken to the infirmary anyway. There were tests she needed done. "Carefully, physicians," she had told the medical team. "Mark him and I'll have you flayed."
After that, it was all she could do to clamber up the shuttle ramp and find somewhere to sit down.
The vessel's crew, thankfully, found something else to busy themselves with on the landing deck, leaving the cabin free. Antonia kept Silvanus behind. "There was no sign before?"
"None." The physician stood stiffly at attention, hands locked behind her back. "He complained of feeling unwell an hour out of Noamon, and deteriorated-"
"Unwell?" snapped Antonia. "What does that mean exactly, Silvanus? I'm feeling rather unwell myself, to be quite honest - does that mean I'm going to keel over and die too?"
"Forgive me, Het. I know the fleet admiral's loss will be a blow to all Iconoclasts. He was an exceptional officer."
"He was my father, you-" Antonia squeezed her eyes shut for a second. The metal bar at her centre had shattered when she had first seen Silvanus at the top of the ramp. Now freezing pieces of it were grinding through her body like grave-worms in a corpse. She took a deep, shaking breath. "Now tell me exactly what was wrong with him."
Silvanus sighed softly. "He developed chest pains, radiating. Then he began to lose feeling in his right side. Slow paralysis took him. For a time he remained conscious, but then he became delirious, altered. Soon after that he slipped into a coma."
"You said he was stable."
"I said I'd managed to stabilise him. That means all his body functions were placed under device-driver control."
"God," whispered Antonia. "He died connected to machines that breathed for him..." That, above all else, threatened to overwhelm her. If Trophimus had met his end in battle, it would have been easier. There would have been an image of him she could have taken with her, something to draw strength from. But for him to die on his back, so weak that he couldn't breathe, couldn't keep the blood pumping around his veins without some machine in place of a heart...
There was no strength to that, no honour. She could no longer remember her father with anything but despair. He'd not only been taken from her, but the memory of him was tainted too.
"I am sorry, Het." Silvanus dipped her head. "I can only accept complete responsibility for this tragedy. If I had done more-"
"You did all you could." Antonia leaned forwards, put her face in her hands. All the calm had left her, the metal bar she'd dreamed shivered to pieces and gone. "We all do what we can, don't we? But is it ever any use?"
"Admiral?"
She didn't answer. It wasn't until she felt the physician's hand on her shoulder that she could rouse herself. "Hm?"
"Admiral, your comm-linker..."
Antonia hadn't even realised it was chiming. She unclipped the little device and flipped it on, noticed the incoming cipher. "Gordia? What's wrong?"
"Het Admiral, there are jump-points opening at bearing one-nine-three."
Antonia leapt up. "How many?"
"We're still counting." She must have been in the command dome. "Twenty, Het. Each one a killship."
"Twenty killships..." A small force, then. There was hope. "Has there been any transmission?"
"Incoming, Het Admiral. Please stand by."
Silvanus was peering at her, eyes wide beneath the rim of her skullcap. "What's happening?"
"It appears, physician, that I have visitors. No doubt come to wish me well in my hour of need." She raised the linker. "Gordia," she hissed. "Take any calls but do not patch them through. Report to me. Clear?"
"Already done, Het. Fleet Captain Seleucus wishes an audience with you, on a matter of the highest urgency."
"Does he indeed?" Antonia raised an eyebrow. "Well, let him know that I'll receive him in my quarters on the flagship Voice of Pain. In thirty standard minutes."
"He brings orders from the holy Patriarch himself."
"No doubt. And I'll read them on the flagship in half an hour." She cut the link, turned back to the physician.
"Het Silvanus, you served my father as well as anyone could wish. If my word was worth anything at all anymore, I'd have you commended for the highest honour." She put her hand to the doctor's shoulder. "However, all I can do is offer you the small gift of survival. Get back to Gamaliel. Tell the captain to risk his drives on the way to Noamon, just as he did to get here. Trouble's coming to Shalem, Silvanus, and you don't deserve to be a part of it."
11. THE BATTLE OF SHALEM
Antonia's quarters on the Voice of Pain were larger than they had been on Othniel, but followed the same basic layout. It was no great stretch of the imagination to picture herself back on her old ship, in happier times.
Gordia had already overseen the transfer of Antonia's things onto the ship. Her uniforms were there, her armour, her weapons. The bodyguard's organisation of the items had been impeccable, and for that Antonia was more than thankful. By the time she got to Voice of Pain and up the long elevator to her chambers, she only had ten minutes before the scheduled arrival of Fleet Captain Seleucus and his retinue. Locating and putting on an appropriate outfit would have been impossible had her clothes not been arranged exactly as they were before.
She had deliberated in the elevator, and decided on a dress-uniform of battlemesh. It would protect her slightly less than carapace, but it was more figure-hugging, more informal. It might, if the occasion warranted, serve to throw the Fleet Captain off-guard.
While she was dressing, Gordia had assembled a squad of shocktroopers outside the chambers. Seleucus was being escorted through the flagship by an honour guard, but no commissioned officers. He might take that as a slight, but Antonia didn't have any to spare.
At least he'd not have a chance to see how empty Shalem had become.
Antonia was just pulling on her gloves when the door chimed. She finished up, checked a nearby mirror to make sure she looked as she wanted, then strode to the outer office. "Enter."
The door slid open. Antonia caught a glimpse of Gordia standing rigidly at one side of it, at the head of a row of shocktroopers in full armour. Another row mirrored their stance on the other side. Antonia gave Gordia a slight nod.
Fleet Captain Seleucus, at the head of ten troopers, was striding between the rows towards her.
He was younger than she'd been expecting, smaller. He had wiry red hair around a thin, hollow face devoid of warpaint. His uniform was the baggy shipboard suit used only for long voyages of little importance. Instantly, Antonia knew the man was a fool.
He'd worn the suit to signal disrespect. In doing so, he'd told her everything about him that she needed to know. "Fleet captain, how good of you to arrive so promptly."
Seleucus halted in front of her and bowed stiffly. "Admiral."
Behind him, nine of his guards spread out along the far wall of the office. The tenth keyed the door control. Just before the hatch slid closed, Antonia caught Gordia's eye and shook her head, just a fraction.
"May I offer you refreshment, fleet captain?"
"Het Admiral, I'm not here to take tea with you. I have orders direct from the holy Patriarch himself."
His eyes flickered away, then he collected himself and raised a hand. One of the guards stepped forward to give him a dataslate.
"Had the communications network been active, this would have been transmitted to you ahead of my arrival." He sounded mildly disgusted by that. "However..." He handed the slate to her.
So it wasn't just Shalem. Well, thought Antonia, that certainly puts a new light on things. She waved the dataslate at Seleucus. "Perhaps, in that case, you'd like to tell me
what this is?"
"As I said, direct orders." He stiffened slightly, raised his chin. "Admiral Huldah Antonia, you are hereby ordered by his holiness the Patriarch to hand over control of the temple-station Shalem to me. You are further ordered to place yourself in my custody."
Antonia blinked. She suddenly felt hollow, airy, a sense of horrified elation. Finally, she realised, things couldn't possibly get any worse.
"On what charges, fleet captain?"
"Consorting with the enemy of humankind, the blasphemous Saint Scarlet of Durham. As of oh-six-hundred hours today you are excommunicated, declared mutatis hereticus." He leaned slightly towards her. "It was only a matter of time, Huldah Antonia," he sneered. "They've been watching you ever since Lavannos."
Antonia smiled sweetly at him. "And how you've longed for this day, child. All at once they've given you a whole temple-station to play with, and you've not even had to grow up first!"
He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so the desk behind Antonia began chiming softly.
"Excuse me, fleet captain." She turned away from him, and moved around the desk. The comms light was blinking steadily at the corner. She tapped it. "Yes?"
"Het Admiral, this is the infirmary." Scratchy sound only, over Omri's radio system.
"What do you have for me, physician?"
"Het Admiral, we have the test results you asked for. The fleet admiral's symptoms were not the result of disease, but of poison."
She heard Seleucus take a sharp breath, half saw his expression change from the corner of her eye. Foolishly, she ignored it. "Administered when?"
"It was slow-acting, Het. It could only have been administered while he was still on Noamon-"
A flash of metal, bright in her peripheral vision. Antonia snapped out a hand, caught Seleucus's wrist and turned it as his arm drove forwards. The blade missed her by a centimetre.
She'd left herself exposed. He backhanded her across the throat, slamming her away from the desk, and whipped the blade up again. She saw it clearly now, a tiny dagger, gleaming wetly in the chamber lights.
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