Which was not overly peculiar. The customary preacceleration protocols would, if followed, provide a fair estimate of the time at which the ship’s velocity—which was to say, its increase above rest-mass—reached the point at which it could engage its shift drive. But typically, sensor operators did not seek the bloom except to confirm that a ship had shifted when and where it said it would. “Are you saying that Nezdeh pinpointed the shift-bloom even before Ferocious Monolith’s tight-beam shift notification reached us?”
“Yes, Tagmator.”
That was a fairly impressive sensor achievement. But it was also an expenditure of effort without any meaningful gain. “Has Nezdeh put us at risk of discovery by the Aboriginals? Has she been overly bold in shadowing the Aboriginal shift carrier that is refueling above us, the Arbitrage?”
“No, Tagmator. If anything, she has been remarkably circumspect in the performance of that particular task. Indeed, she has shown her greatest skills in trailing the megacorporate craft at considerable distance while remaining beneath various meteorological disturbances. She was able to track it by the slight ionization path that the craft’s passage leaves as it moves through the thin particulate field at the highest level of the gas giant’s exosphere.” Letlas paused. “Given the ease with which she did it, I suspect she has performed that task many times before.”
Hirkun heard the implicit warning in Letlas’ observation. “It may be that she is one of the Evolved, and that she has been displaced by the dissolution of her original House. And I intend to inquire into that matter when Monolith returns for us. But in the meantime, there is no cause for alarm.”
“I hear the dominance and wisdom in your words,” recited Letlas carefully. “I was simply perplexed that her dossier contained no special mention of her origins, as would be customary if she were both Evolved and an Arrogate.”
Hirkun was resolved not to be schooled by an upstart, a mere aspirant to the ranks of the Intendant class, but he could not bring himself to rebuke her for being both prudent and perceptive. The lack of greater detail surrounding Nezdeh’s posting to his command was atypical. “Antendant, your input has been noted. You shall now put this matter from your mind. After all,” he waved his hand at the screen’s depiction of onrushing vaporous drifts, “we are in the high guard position within a gas-giant, unable to exit without risking detection by the Aboriginals, and without any means to leave the system until Monolith returns to covertly extract us.” He leaned back in the wide commander’s seat, affecting more ease than he felt. “Even if the irregularities in Nezdeh’s posting were, somehow, indicative of a threat, just what could she—what could anyone—hope to achieve in circumstances such as ours?”
The iris valve dilated as if in direct response to Hirkun’s rhetorical question, opening without the prefatory activation tone. Which is not possible, unless—
Hirkun was on his feet before his startled blink was completed. He measured—only semi-consciously—the rate of the ship’s forward momentum, and how that would complicate his rise into a spin-and-draw crouch. Without so much as a wobble, his Evolved senses combined to place him in two-thirds cover behind the command couch’s heavy back, his liquid-propellant handgun up, his thumb already adjusting the zero-gee setting to a full gravity regime. He felt a satisfied smile on his face, exulting in the lethal grace with which he now drew a bead on the iris valve—
And felt two impacts in his chest, very near his heart, which staggered him enough to throw off his aim: three percussive blasts from his pistol drilled expanding rounds into the valve’s coaming, less than ten centimeters from where Agra Nezdeh’s cheek was resting, her feet braced, her body mostly behind the bulkhead. Two other recent rotations into his crew—the Evolved Antendant cousins Vranut and Ulpreln Balkether—had rolled into the room under the cover of her fire, were already rising with the speed one would expect from their genelines.
Hirkun willed the circulation in the vicinity of his clustered wounds to decrease, boosted both the arterial and venous peristalsis to compensate for the redirection of that blood flow, triggered a full spectrum endorphin and adrenal cascade, and, in the same moment, expanded his peripheral awareness to take stock of Letlas’ reaction to the mutiny.
She was sheltering behind her seat, her hand conspicuously far away from her sidearm. No real surprise: she is no fool.
Using countervailing hormones to steady the incipient tremor from the adrenal flood, Hirkun tracked over toward Nezdeh. She ducked behind the starboard bulkhead—
—Just as Idrem, the Red Lurker’s senior lictor, leaned around the port side rim of the iris valve with a needler. The coil rifle emitted two of its characteristic high frequency snaps. Hirkun felt two hammers rip through his body, one shattering his left hip, the other blasting through his right lung.
As he fell, struggling against the loss of control, he appreciated the conservative tactics that had been used to kill him. The mutineers had known that they would not have sufficient aiming time to be sure of scoring immediately lethal hits upon him. So they had concentrated on inflicting wounds that cost him initiative and reflexes to counteract. That, in turn, had allowed Nezdeh—the apparent ringleader—to stay exposed just long enough to draw his attention away from where Idrem emerged with the far more lethal, but less handy, needler. The traitor had aimed, wisely, at the center of mass: the shatered hip eliminated even an Evolved’s ability to stand, and the punctured lung forced Hirkun to choose between conscious control of blood loss, or making a counterattack. In such a rapid exchange as this, there was no time to sequence them: it was one or the other.
Hirkun resolved to shoot as he fell to the deck. He missed, but came close enough to keep the mutineers’ heads down.
But only for a moment. As the Red Lurker’s master converted his fall into a roll that put him behind his command couch, Vranut Balkether popped around the far edge of Letlas’s couch and fired his own liquid propellant handgun into the prostrate, struggling Hirkun. The Tagmator tried to concentrate on how many of that quick flurry of rounds had hit him, where, and how to respond. I have lost, but as long as I live, I can bargain. And lie. Vengeance can come later.
But he felt control of his body slipping away along with his strength and the fixity of purpose that had allowed him to track and respond to his numerous injuries. He saw Nezdeh’s face loom over him and he knew, with dull certainty, that there would be no bargaining.
As her pistol came up level with his forehead, Hirkun reflected that here was the proof of yet another Progenitor Axiom, the one that explained why women should not be sent on field missions:
They are simply too dangerous.
* * *
Nezdeh, late of House Perekmeres, stepped over Hirkun Morsessar’s corpse, fired two rounds into the cowering pilot, and then leveled the weapon at Letlas. “You. Antendant.”
Letlas made the appropriate prostration with reassuring swiftness and enthusiasm. “I hear your words, Agat—no, Berema Nezdeh Kresessek-vah.”
She laughed. “What an inanity. That you style me a Lady of a House for which I am still ostensibly a ’vah, an Aspirant? Your eagerness to flatter leads you to foolishness.”
“I mean to respect, not flatter. But I know not what to call you, Berema.”
Nezdeh considered. “There is merit in that point. Scant merit, but merit still. Look up, Antendant, and tell me: do you wish to live?”
Letlas looked up. Before her mouth opened with the answer, her eyes had made it clear. “I wish to live, Berema Nezdeh.”
As if there had been an iota of doubt. “And will you take service with House Perekmeres, as a probationary Antendant?”
Letlas stammered. “With—with House Perekmeres?”
“Is your hearing impaired?”
“But House Perekmeres was Extirpated, Fearsome Berema.”
Ah, she is catching on: she does not know my former rank, but has deduced that I was high enough in the genelines of Perekmeres to warrant the honorific “Fearsome.” She
thinks quickly. “Extirpation was inflicted upon us,” Nezdeh said crisply as more of her mutineers entered the bridge. “That does not mean I accept it, any more than I accepted the vile touch of the Kresessek abomutations who hoped to add my geneline to theirs in the old manner. Now, I shall ask it one more time, since your wits seem addled: will you take service with House Perekmeres?”
“I…I will, Fearsome Berema.”
“Excellent. Rise. Now, enter the commander’s access code for the engineering and helm controls.”
“I am but an Antendant, Fearsome Berema.”
As Idrem came to stand beside Nezdeh and the deck jounced through another patch of extended turbulence, she brought her pistol to bear on the Antendant once again. “I have observed the bridge routines and who was present, or not, when various systems were accessed or terminated. The XO naturally has a separate but equal set of command codes, but he was the first I slew. There is one crewmember, often of lower rank, who also has access to the commander’s codes.” She smiled. “I am familiar with these protocols, having captained ships before. You were present at the correct times, and are the correct rank with the correct role. You are the keeper of the codes. I have eliminated all other possibilities. Do not try my patience, Antendant. Enter the overrides.”
Letlas averted her eyes, moved to the blood-and-bone-spattered commander’s console, and entered the codes. She looked up. “How may I serve House Perekmeres now, Fearsome Berema?”
“This way,” Nezdeh replied. She raised the pistol and fired two rounds into the Antendant’s chest.
Letlas gasped as awkwardly as she fell, blood pumping out of two craters that bracketed her sternum.
Nezdeh stepped closer to watch the light leave the Antendant’s eyes. “You hesitated. Had you meant to serve Perekmeres, you would have rejoiced in the opportunity to comply immediately, and thereby prove your loyalty.” Letlas was either wheezing for breath or trying to speak, but it did not matter: moments after Nezdeh had pronounced the epitaph of her insufficiency, the Antendant was dead.
Nezdeh looked about the bridge. One cannot dominate from behind a wall of silence, went the axiom of the First Progenitors. She kept faith with their wisdom: “Ulpreln: your hand to the helm. When the bow is steady, don the pilot’s helmet so that you may listen in on the briefing.” She unreeled and spoke into her beltcom as she waved for two of the mutineers to clear the three bodies. “Brenlor Srin Perekmeres?”
Her earbud crackled with the reply. “Here. Do you have dominion, Nezdeh Srina Perekmeres?”
She smiled. “I do. The rest of the crew?”
“Sworn to service or dead.”
“Were any of the uncertain members swayed to our side?”
Brenlor’s pause was pregnant. “Not reliably so.”
Nezdeh closed her eyes: Brenlor was marginally her superior and had a full measure of what she considered House Perekmeres’ most characteristic negative trait: male impulsivity. Which was often expressed through bloodthirsty aggression. “This was necessary, Srin?”
His response had a discernible edge. “It was. Besides, the poison meant to incapacitate the off-duty crew was fatal in three cases.”
Nezdeh glanced at Idrem, who shrugged: “As I warned from the outset, dosing and individual susceptibility were variables beyond our control. The outcome was uncertain, at best.”
She nodded. “Brenlor, we should hold our briefing promptly. The orbital path of the human shift carrier will soon be optimal.”
“Understood. I shall meet you in the ready room.”
Nezdeh glanced behind her at the entry to the small compartment which served as commander’s office and briefing chamber. “We shall be there.” She moved in that direction, turned to the rest of the team that had stormed the bridge. “Follow me.”
* * *
Nezdeh did not move her eyes to observe the faces of the Evolved and the Intendants wedged in tightly around the briefing table: she merely expanded her peripheral awareness so that the edges of her vision were nearly as acute as the focal core. As Brenlor’s assertions of House Perekmeres’ imminent resurgence veered increasingly toward stentorian bombast, she surveyed her assets:
Idrem: indispensable and crafty. Unlike Brenlor, who had fled House Perekmeres’ precincts prior to its Extirpation, Idrem had managed to stage his own apparent death, using vat-grown tissue and blood to leave a forensically convincing residue. He had then taken refuge in the one place that subsequent investigation was unlikely to find him: among the ranks of the Autarchs’ Aegis forces. He had made his supplication in the guise of a huscarl left masterless by the liquidation of a lesser Family from an entirely different House. By the time the Extirpation occurred, he had been wearing the Aegis grey for nearly a month.
Nezdeh did not like admitting it, but Idrem was probably her intellectual equal, possibly her superior. That thought rankled, but also, oddly, titillated. He was not the most athletic or vigorous of the Evolved, but he was also immune to the unremitting need for making dominance displays. The more impetuous of the Evolved males presumed this indicated passivity, and so were ready to dismiss Idrem. But Nezdeh realized the true source of Idrem’s quiet: utter self-assurance in himself and his competence. That made him far more dangerous than most of the boisterous males around him, for he could not be manipulated by his temperament.
Of the other four Evolved, three were young and from Families that were comparatively distant from the progenitorial root of the true House of Perekmeres: first cousins Vranut and Ulpreln Balkether, and an aunt that was their chronological junior, Zurur Deosketer. In a few more generations, their genelines would have become so dilute that their offspring would have had to seek other fortunes. But now, with the blood of the House of Perekmeres wiped from the marble halls of both its greatest and least Hegemons, their fortunes were ascendant: scarcity of a geneline, like any other resource, greatly enhanced its value.
The fourth Evolved, and the third woman on the mission, Tegrese Hreteyarkus, had also been an Arrogate—a war prize—of Perekmeres’ Extirpation, and passed to a minor Family of House Vasarkas. Unlike the rape-minded Srinu that Nezdeh had repulsed in House Kresessek, House Vasarkas had allowed Tegrese to exist like a bird in a shabbily gilded cage. Blending her geneline with theirs was left as a matter of her will.
But her will was focused upon escaping her hybrid existence as part-prisoner and part-chattel. She had volunteered for wet-work and received it by convincing her overseers that she meant to learn whether she wished to serve House Vasarkas as a Breedmistress or adventurer. Her actual intent had been to acquire the freedom and mobility to seek out other survivors of her House and to plot its restoration.
Two others, Sehtrek and Pehthrum, were former Intendants of the House. Since their genelines had not been Elevated prior to the Extirpation, they had been deemed reliable by the Autarchal Aegis and were Arrogated to it. Their assignment as lictors to Ferocious Monolith had been arranged with little effort almost four months ago.
Nezdeh leaned back. Nine persons, and two of them Low Bred, with another six to be added after the first phase of their mission was complete. So, altogether, fifteen renegades of the purged House Perekmeres against the might of the Hegemons of the Great Houses, and the juridical authority of the Autarchs, whose ostensible neutrality was a farce. Autarchal decisions almost invariably aligned with the interests of the Hegemons. If Nezdeh’s small band could contend with those daunting odds, it would be a story worth telling—if any of them lived to tell it.
When Brenlor finished his oration, Nezdeh stood slowly. “We all know the odds, and we all know what must be done. We have excellent intelligence on our first target, and it is utterly unsuspecting.” She glared around the table. “But do not underestimate this foe. The Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh did and they are now paying for it.
“We cannot afford such payments. We have no place to which we may retreat, for there is only one outcome that does not end in our death: absolute victory. So: no bravado. We can
not afford it. No unnecessary destruction: again, we cannot afford it. No wasted time: yet again, we cannot afford it. When those who shall carry our restored genelines into the future speak of this battle, they shall recall it not as an arrogant gamble, but as a precise, clinical operation. And that our glory lay in the cold-eyed achievement of our objective.”
The eyes around the table had kindled to her words, whereas Brenlor’s had left them merely smoldering. She was speaking the truth, and they knew it.
Nezdeh pushed back from the conference table. “Report to your stations.” She checked her wrist-comp. “We are in position. It is time.”
Chapter Nine
In close orbit, and in the exosphere; V 1581 Four
Jorge Velho, acting captain of the SS Arbitrage, cursed as the navplot stylus slipped out of his hand and—surprisingly, in his experience—fell to the deck. Granted, the speed of its fall was nothing like Earth norm. It was more like a stone sinking to the bottom of a pond, but still, it tricked his space-trained senses. He associated bridge duty with either free-fall or micro-gee, unless the engines were engaged. However, the Arbitrage’s proximity to the gas giant that bore the chart label V1581 Four allowed it to exert almost a quarter gee on them.
Velho’s XO, Ayana Tagawa, lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. However, his helmsman, Piet Brackman, emitted a sardonic snort. “Need a lanyard for that, sir?”
Jorge tried to turn a stern gaze on Piet, but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Just steer this barge, you réprobo. You have little room to talk. You bounced off two walls in the galley before you found your footing, yesterday.”
“That is not a fair comparison,” Piet complained. “The toruses were still rotating then. I had gee forces in two directions.”
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