Universe Vol1Num2

by Jim Baen's Universe

  With a shattering crash, the scout rammed through the wall. Kelric groaned as the impact threw him against his exoskeleton. The ship came to a stop balanced on a cliff that sheered down beyond the windbreak. His lamps revealed a spectacular view; the Teotec Mountains rolled out in fold after magnificent fold of land, a primal landscape of dark mists and snow-fir trees.

  The Dalstern began to tip over the edge.

  Swearing loudly, Kelric tore off the exoskeleton and jumped to his feet.

  "We don't have much time," Mace said. "I can take off now, but if I tip too far, I'm going down that cliff."

  "Coltman will come," Kelric said. Jeremiah was smart. If a way existed to reach the ship, he would find it. At least, Kelric hoped so. He cycled through the airlock and jumped to the ground, into the night. The notorious winds of the Teotecs blasted him. Two people were running across the parks toward him, a tall woman and a husky man.

  He knew the man.

  Kelric froze. His hope of managing this without anyone recognizing him had just vanished.

  Pounding came from the other side of the ship. Kelric ran around the fuselage to find a youth banging on the hull as he shouted in Spanish, "You have to get out!"

  Kelric reached him in three ground-devouring strides. He grabbed the youth's arm and swung him around. The fellow looked up at him with a startled gaze, like a wild hazelle caught in a hunter's trap.

  "I come for man called Jeremiah Coltman," Kelric said in halting Spanish.

  The youth inhaled sharply. "I'm Coltman."

  Kelric took his chin and turned his face into the starlight. His features matched the mesh images. He lifted one of the man's arms and easily read the Teotecan glyphs on the armband: Jeremiah Coltman Viasa.

  Relief washed over Kelric. "So. You are. We must hurry."

  The Dalstern creaked as it tipped further. Alarmed, Kelric took off, pulling Jeremiah with him as he ran for the airlock.

  A woman's voice called in Teotecan. "Jeremiah, wait!"

  Kelric spun around. The woman and man had stopped a short distance away. The woman's attention was on Jeremiah, but the man stared at Kelric as if he were a specter from the graveyard.

  Kelric's hand fell to his gun—and Jeremiah caught his arm. The youth had courage to touch a man with a Jumbler. He had to know it meant Kelric was a Jagernaut, one of ISC's cybernetic warriors. Had Kelric had less control of his augmented reflexes, Jeremiah's impulsive action could have just ended his young life.

  "Please," Jeremiah said in Spanish. "Don't shoot them."

  Kelric lowered his arm as the woman came closer. She was tall and elegant, with a regal beauty. A thick braid dusted with gray fell over her shoulder to her waist. The man was about forty, and he wore three Calanya bands on each arm. Third Level. He had been a Second Level when Kelric knew him.

  "Don't go, Jeremiah," the woman said.

  The youth's voice caught. "I have to."

  "Viasa has come to care—" She took a deep breath. "I have come to care. For you."

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm truly sorry. But I can't be what I'm not." His gaze shifted to the Third Level, then back to the woman. "And I could never share you. It would kill me." He sounded as if he were breaking inside. "Oh God, Khal, don't let pride keep you apart from the man you really love. Whatever you and Kev said to each other all those years ago . . . let it mend."

  "Jeremiah." Moisture gleamed on her face in the starlight.

  The ship scraped and shifted position. Kelric spoke to Jeremiah in Spanish. "We have to go."

  The youth nodded, still intent on the woman.

  "Good-bye, beautiful scholar," she said. Her voice caught on the words.

  Jeremiah wiped a tear off his face. "Good-bye."

  As the youth climbed into the ship, Kelric stared at the Coban man. The Third Level met his look with stunned eyes, but his gaze never wavered.

  Kelric spoke to him in Teotecan. "Don't tell anyone. You know why."

  The man inclined his head in agreement, silent as he kept his Calanya Oath.

  Then Kelric boarded the scout.

  IV

  Scholars' Dice

  Jeremiah sat in the co-pilot's seat while Kelric piloted the Dalstern. The youth said nothing, but he didn't barrier his emotions well. His pain scraped Kelric's mind. Kelric pretended to be absorbed in his controls, giving the fellow as much privacy as they could manage in the cramped cabin.

  An image of Jeremiah showed in a corner of Kelric's forward screen. The fellow hardly looked more than a boy. He wasn't tall, and his lean physique lacked the heavy musculature valued in Earth's culture. His rich brown hair gleamed and was longer than most Allied men wore it. He had a wholesome, farm boy quality, and also a shyness Kelric associated with scholars. Those traits might not have made him a male sex symbol on Earth, but Coba's women had probably adored him. Quiet, brilliant, scholarly, fit but slender, neither too large nor too strong: he matched their most popular ideal of masculinity. Kelric had unfortunately fit another ideal, albeit one far less common, the towering, aggressive male they wanted to tame.

  It didn't surprise him that Jeremiah's armbands differed from those worn by most Calani. Kelric recognized them because his were the same. Jeremiah was Akasi, the Manager's husband. Making him a Calani without his consent was coercion, which meant the union could be annulled if Jeremiah wanted. Whatever the youth decided, Kelric suspected it wouldn't be easy for him.

  Jeremiah sat with his eyes downcast, and Kelric busied himself with checks that didn't need doing. They were high enough now that the winds and abysmal port map didn't endanger the ship.

  Eventually, when Jeremiah began to look around, Kelric spoke in halting Spanish. "Are you all right?"

  The youth answered in the same voice Kelric had heard over the Viasa comm. "Yes. Thank you for your trouble."

  "It is not so much trouble."

  "You could have been killed."

  Kelric suspected the biggest risk had been to the Calanya park. He would find a discreet means to recompense Manager Viasa for repairs.

  "I have seen worse," Kelric said. "I expect to have the beacon, though. It help that you know the transform." Without Jeremiah's quick thinking, he would have had to land blind. The Dalstern would have survived, but not whatever part of Viasa it hit.

  Mortification came from the boy's mind. He apparently had no idea how to guard his moods. "I was guessing. Playing dice with your life."

  Kelric wondered if the young man realized what he had accomplished. "Such a problem take more than guesses."

  "I was lucky."

  Kelric smiled slightly. "You are not what I expect."

  Jeremiah watched him with large brown eyes that had probably turned the women of Coba into putty. "I'm not?"

  "The genius who make history when he win this famous prize at twenty-four?" With apology, Kelric added, "I expect you to have a large opinion of yourself. But it seems not that way."

  "I didn't deserve the Goldstone." Jeremiah hesitated. "Besides, that's hardly reason for your military to rescue me."

  "They know nothing about this." Kelric wasn't certain how much to tell him. "I take you to a civilian port. From there, we find you passage to Earth."

  Jeremiah was watching him with puzzlement. "At Viasa you spoke in Teotecan. You even knew how to read my name from the Calanya bands. How?"

  Kelric thought of Ixpar, his wife, at least for one hundred and nine more days. He answered in Teotecan. "It doesn't seem to bother you to speak."

  Jeremiah seemed startled, but he switched easily into the Coban language. "Well, no. Should it?"

  Kelric spoke quietly. "It was years before I could carry on a normal conversation with an Outsider." He used an emphasis on "Outsider" that only another Coban would recognize. Calani were Inside. The rest of the universe was Outside.

  Jeremiah froze. Then he looked at Kelric's gauntlets—including the wrist guards—and Kelric felt the youth's jolt of recognition as if it were mental electricity.

&
nbsp; "You were a Calani?" Jeremiah asked.

  Kelric took a gold armband out of his pocket and handed it to him. "I thought this might answer your questions."

  Jeremiah turned the ring over in his hands, and his shock filled the cabin. "You're him." He raised his gaze to Kelric. "You're Sevtar. The one they went to war over."

  Sevtar. Kelric hadn't heard the name in a decade. Sevtar was the dawn god of Coban mythology, a giant with gold skin created from sunlight. He strode across the sky, pushing back the night so the goddess Savina could sail out on her giant hawk pulling the sun.

  "Actually, my name is Kelric," he said. "They called me Sevtar."

  "But you're dead."

  Kelric smiled wryly. "I guess no one told me."

  "They think you burned to death."

  "I escaped during the battle."

  "Why let them think you died? Did you hate Coba so much?"

  Kelric felt as if a lump lodged in his throat. It was a moment before he could answer. "At times. But it became a home I valued. Eventually one I loved." He extended his hand, and Jeremiah gave him back the armband. Kelric ran his finger over the gold. His memories were too personal to share. He put the ring back into his pocket.

  "Some of my Oaths were like yours," Kelric said. "Forced. But I gave the Oath freely to Ixpar Karn. When I swore my loyalty, I meant it." He regarded Jeremiah steadily. "I will protect Ixpar, her people, and her world for as long as it is within my power to do so."

  Sweat beaded on Jeremiah's forehead. "Why come for me?"

  "It was obvious no one else was going to." Dryly Kelric added, "Your people and mine have been playing this dance of politics for years. You got chewed up in it." He touched his wrist guard. "I spent eighteen years as a Calani. Everything in me went into the Quis. I was a Jagernaut. A fighter pilot. It so affected the dice that the Cobans went to war. I had no intention of leaving you in the Calanya, another cultural time bomb ready to go off."

  Jeremiah didn't seem surprised. "You knew Kevtar."

  Kelric thought of the man with the Viasa Manager. "He lived at Varz when I was there. Kevtar Jev Ahkah Varz. He called himself Jev back then, because people mixed up our names." As a Third Level, Kevtar would have an additional name, now. Viasa.

  "Why did you tell him not to say anything?"

  Kelric wondered if he could ever fully answer that question, even for himself. "I don't want my family seeking vengeance against Coba for what happened to me. They think I was a POW all those years. I intend for it to stay that way."

  Jeremiah's posture tensed. "Who is your family?"

  Kelric suspected Jeremiah would recognize the Skolia name. It was, after all, also the name of an empire. For most of his life, Kelric had used his father's second name because so few people could identify it.

  "Valdoria," Kelric said.

  A surge of surprise from Jeremiah; he knew the Valdorias were an important family. But nothing more.

  "Maybe someday I can return," Kelric said. "But not now. I don't want Ixpar dragged into Skolian politics unless I'm secure enough in my own position to make sure neither she nor Coba comes to harm." Wryly he added, "And believe me, if Ixpar knew I was alive, she would become involved."

  "Coban women are—" Jeremiah reddened. "Well, they certainly aren't tentative."

  Indeed. It was an apt description of Coba's passionate warrior queens. "No, they aren't." He couldn't bring himself to ask more about Ixpar; he didn't want to hear if she had remarried.

  "I thought I would never see my home again," Jeremiah said.

  "Your rescue has a price." Kelric thought of his children, those miracles he had never revealed to anyone outside Coba's protected sphere. "If you renege, you'll face the anger of my family. And myself."

  Jeremiah regarded him steadily. "I'll never reveal you were on Coba."

  "Good." No matter who might claim it was impossible over such distances, Kelric could sense his children through Kyle space like a distant song. They were content. And safe.

  "But how do I explain my escape?" Jeremiah asked.

  "It's remarkable," Kelric said. "You managed to fly a rider to the port on your own." He motioned at the controls. "I've entered the necessary records and had the port send a message to Manager Viasa, supposedly from you."

  "So she will tell the same story?"

  "Yes."

  Jeremiah spoke softly. "I'll miss her."

  Kelric thought of Ixpar. "Coban women do have that effect." He squinted at Jeremiah. "Gods only know why. They are surely exasperating."

  Jeremiah laughed softly. "Yes."

  Kelric hesitated. "There is a favor I would ask of you."

  "A favor?"

  "I should like to play Calanya Quis again."

  The youth sat up straighter, as if Kelric had offered him a gift instead of dice with someone who hadn't done the game properly for ten years. "I would like that."

  Kelric pulled a table-panel between their seats as Jeremiah untied his pouch from his belt. The youth rolled out a jeweled set similar to Kelric's, though with fewer dice. Soon they were deep in a session, their structures glittering. Kelric saw right away why Manager Viasa had wanted the youth's contract even though Jeremiah had never formally trained for a Calanya. His Quis had clarity and purity. He made creative moves. Kelric had no problem anticipating them; for all Jeremiah's talent, he had a long way to go before he mastered his gifts. Kelric could have turned his game around, upside down, and inside out. But he didn't. He didn't want to discourage the youth.

  With subtle pressure from Kelric's Quis, Jeremiah built patterns of his first years on Coba. During the day he worked in Dahl, a city lower in the mountains, and at night he wrote his doctoral thesis. He considered it an idyllic life. He never had a clue Manager Viasa noticed him during her visits to Dahl. Except, of course, when it was too late.

  After a while, Kelric realized Jeremiah was trying to draw him out, too. So he let his life evolve into the dice. Twenty-eight years ago, his fighter had crashed in the Teotecs. The previous Dahl manager rescued him. Ixpar had been visiting Dahl then, a fiery-haired child of fourteen. Kelric later learned it was Ixpar who had argued that they save his life, though it would violate the Restriction.

  However, they never intended to let him go. He had tried to escape, but his internal biomech was injured, and it had damaged his brain. He lost control of his neurological links while fighting his guards and killed one of them even as he tried to stop it from happening. He had crippled his own mind to save the others.

  The Cobans were terrified that if he did escape, ISC would exact retribution against their world that would make the guard's death look like nothing. They were right. They should have executed him. Instead they sent him to the prison at Haka Estate. What swayed the Minister to let him live? The arguments of her fourteen-year-old successor. Ixpar.

  "Good Lord," Jeremiah murmured. "I never learned any of this in Dahl."

  Kelric lifted his head. "I doubt they wanted it in your doctoral thesis."

  The youth regarded him with a look Kelric had seen too often here, an awed gaze that embarrassed him. "The way you play Quis is extraordinary. And you were holding back. A lot."

  Kelric shifted in his seat. "It's nothing."

  Jeremiah made an incredulous noise. "That's like saying a supernova is nothing compared to a candle."

  His face gentled. "Your Quis is far more than a candle."

  "Do you miss Calanya Quis?"

  "Every day of my life."

  "Perhaps you and I—?"

  Kelric wondered what Jeremiah would do when he realized he had just asked the Imperator to play dice with him. No matter. It was a good suggestion. But unrealistic.

  "Perhaps," Kelric said, though he knew it wouldn't happen.

  "You know," Jeremiah said thoughtfully. "It could work in reverse."

  Reverse? "What?" Kelric asked.

  "Quis. We worry about Outside influence on Coba, but think how Coba might affect the rest of us." He gathered his
dice and poured them into his pouch. "They're so peaceful here. Imagine if they let their best dice players loose on all those barbaric Imperialate warmongers." He froze, his hand full of jewels. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said—I didn't mean to offend."

  "You didn't," Kelric said. In theory, he preferred peace to hostilities, too. In reality, he fully intended to build up ISC; they needed more defenses against the Traders, not less. But he wasn't blind. Jeremiah had reason for his views. Only a thin film covered the Imperialate's conquering soul. That film gleamed, bright and modern, but it could rip all too easily and uncover the darkness under their civilized exteriors.

  Could Quis affect that darkness?

  V

  A Court of Rubies

  The world Metropoli boasted the largest starport in settled space. The place was a city, teeming with people and vehicles. Kelric's scout ship went unnoticed in all the tumult, especially with his stratospheric clearances, which invoked veils of security most people had no idea existed.

  He used a nano-paste to dull the metallic sheen of his skin and hair, and he donned clothes that made him look overweight. Jeremiah watched with puzzlement, but he didn't push the matter. He would figure out the truth soon enough. Kelric avoided public appearances and news broadcasts when he could, but his likeness was out there on the meshes. If Jeremiah searched on "Kelric Valdoria" and worked hard enough, he would identify his rescuer.

  They walked to the gate where Jeremiah would board a transport to Earth. The youth was wearing a blue pullover and "jeans" interwoven with mesh threads. He had purchased them at a store that sold Allied imports. Several women gave him appreciative glances, but no one otherwise paid attention to them. Kelric hid in plain sight.

  At the gate, Jeremiah offered his hand. "Thank you for everything."

  When Kelric hesitated, Bolt thought, Remember? Put your hand in his and move it up and down.

  Oh. That's right. He clasped Jeremiah's hand and shook until Jeremiah winced. Embarrassed, Kelric let go. He sometimes forgot to moderate his strength.