A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Two or three someone elses began to speculate about that as Osri gratefully took the chance to eat some of his congealed lunch.

  “Really? Just to pick off one ship?” Nilotis asked, turning to Osri.

  Osri set down his fork and sighed. “Hard to tell. Up until then, it looked like they’d let us go.”

  Ul-Derak shook his head. “Hard to believe that even Dol’jharians’d blow up the Arthelion Node just to zap one ship.”

  “Then you must make some time for study of your enemies,” Ng remarked. “Vengeance is the key to Dol’jharian thought. This shape of this entire war is a direct result of that action.” She waved a hand at the wall holos. “But none of us saw the inevitability of it until it was too late.”

  Warrigal noted the tightness in Omilov’s lugubrious face, and her L-6 categorized it as important. Then she remembered then that part of the little ship’s actions on Arthelion had been the rescue of his father, the gnostor, who was being tortured by the Dol’jharians.

  But Osri’s thoughts had moved beyond memory. They want to know what happened at the Academy with Markham vlith-L’Ranja—and what happened at that Enkainion. Both questions had obsessed Osri after leaving Charvann.

  He took a last bite, and forced himself to speak once more, hoping that this would end the questions forever.

  He reported the little his father and Brandon had said about the L’Ranja affair, to which they listened so intently that his was now the only voice in the room. He hated that sensation—it reminded him of those horrible dreams, when he first reached the Academy, of finding himself naked among his classmates in their dress uniforms—but duty forced him through it.

  Warrigal listened closely. Throughout Omilov’s halting report, scrupulously amended with “I understood him to say,” or “I did not actually witness the whole, but . . .” the last of her assumptions about the events ten years ago crumbled under the impact of those diffident words.

  It was a process that had begun at the hyperwave briefing when she saw in the now-Aerenarch an unusual depth of understanding, belying her assumption that he had to be worse than any of those privileged Tetrad Centrum youths she had gone through the Academy with: closed ranks, closed minds.

  Immediately thereafter, the Aerenarch had approached her, completely outside normal channels, with a request that she tutor him secretly in what he, like everyone else, unofficially now called the “L-5” Tenno, as though they were the pinnacle of the tactical game Phalanx, in which the Tenno were forbidden below the Level 4 version played only at the Academy.

  She had assented after checking with Captain Ng, and had seen his tactical naiveté steadily diminish as they worked together.

  Watching Omilov carefully, letting the L-6 sort and translate the shifts of voice, the little tells of posture whose perception came so naturally to everyone else, she concluded that he, too, had once felt the same. He seemed to think a little like she did, so she valued his opinion. All his L-6 signals revealed reluctant admiration for a man who’d been portrayed as a dedicated voluptuary without a shred of responsibility. No such person could have piloted a ship with such skill. More than skill—panache.

  Really unsettling was the link to the Lusor affair of ten years past. If what Omilov was saying was true, Aerenarch Semion had cold-bloodedly destroyed the L’Ranja Family just to keep his own brother firmly under control. Which raised the question: if Brandon were truly such a sot and a scapegrace, why had Semion gone to such lengths?

  Osri reached for another glass of water, his throat parched. The last questions from the assembled officers circled around Brandon’s arrival at Charvann, no one quite coming out and asking what had brought him from his own Enkainion. Though Osri still had no idea what had happened—and said so—he was not at all certain anymore that he wanted to know. What could the truth do but cause more chaos?

  The others eventually sensed his reticence, if not his ambivalence, for slowly they broke off into little conversations, gradually returning to their own tables. Ng sat silently sipping her coffee and listening.

  Did she set me up? Osri thought.

  Of course, it was unlikely that Ng had only one purpose in mind; though born a Polloi, she could not have risen as high as she had without subtlety to equal and exceed that of most Douloi. Osri sensed that she was garnering as much information from the reactions and questions of the younger officers as from his story, but there was more. He could see it, he just couldn’t tell what it was.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve some business to attend to,” Ng said finally, gesturing to Osri. “Lieutenant, I need to talk to your father about something. Would you accompany me to the project room and introduce me?”

  As the two left, Warrigal turned to Nilotis, whose L-6 patterns indicated the most openness to a question. “What do you think that’s about? Can’t be Navy; don’t need an introduction for that.”

  He shrugged. “No telling.” He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “But I hear that some of the cruiser-weight Douloi civilians are hot on her radiants for something.”

  “Battle of Arthelion,” Lieutenant Tang spoke up, black eyes wide, reflecting the lurid lights from the holos. “They may be civilians, but they aren’t stupid. They’ll want to know what we fought for.”

  “Officially it was to save the Panarch,” Nilotis said. “Most of them know little enough of strategy to swallow that.”

  “Or seem to,” Ul-Derak said.

  They all knew that several highly placed Douloi had tried to exercise their influence to attend Nyberg’s briefing. They’d been excluded, but from hints Ng had dropped, one or two of them had since been exerting every effort to find out what the Navy was hiding.

  Ul-Derak turned to Tang. “Some of them were allies of the late Aerenarch, weren’t they?”

  Nilotis tapped his fingers lightly on the table in a soft, rhythmic pattern. “Spheres of influence, I think. And all Downsiders.” He lifted his fingers to gesture apologetically. “Deference to present company.”

  No one followed up on that: the tension between Downsiders and Highdwellers was a constant of Panarchic politics, but the L-6 showed Warrigal that everyone at their table, even the Downsiders, agreed that Semion had exploited it beyond the bounds of propriety. But no one had dared say anything until this war broke Semion’s tightening grip on the Navy.

  “Lusor raised his son as a Highdweller,” Tang commented, fingers flicking toward space.

  “High Politics, in more ways than one,” Nilotis agreed. The others groaned at the pun. “However, that—thank Telos—is probably behind us. I shouldn’t say this, but with Semion gone, the politics won’t be as bad, and promotions will probably be more fairly distributed.”

  The others made little murmurs or motions of agreement, except Warrigal, who, impelled by the urgency of the L-6, shook her head in negation. “No.”

  The rest of the officers at the table looked at her, arrested by her tone of voice. She took her time to look at them, assembling the L-6 tells. Yes, the signs were there: they were all Douloi, but her Family was oldest, and even if she’d stepped out of the succession, that carried weight, even in the Navy, especially in a non-command situation such as this.

  “No,” she repeated, struggling to express herself precisely. “Quite the contrary. I don’t mean about promotions,” she added hurriedly as the L-6 flared again. “That’s undoubtedly true. At least I hope so. But as for politics, it’s only going to get worse.”

  Remembering the cadences and movements of a novosti she’d watched not long before, she waved her hand around, encompassing Ares with the motion. “This station is all that’s left of the Panarchy’s government, all that’s left for the play of cunning and calculation that has sufficed to rule the Thousand Suns for a thousand years. All squeezed into a few hundred cubic kilometers.”

  Again she remembered the blue-eyed Aerenarch at his console in the briefing. “All focused on the last Arkad.”

  “But his father’s still aliv
e,” Tang protested.

  “Right.” Nilotis tapped the table again—this time in the rhythm of the Arkadic fanfare. “Alive, but a captive. While his son is equally a captive—and we Douloi are even less merciful than Dol’jharians when it comes to High Politics. Just ask the L’Ranjas.”

  He pushed himself away from the table, rising with a wince. “And with that thought, genz, I bid you farewell.”

  EIGHT

  ABOARD THE FIST OF DOL’JHAR

  “When I told you your son raided Arthelion, I neglected to mention that he rescued a prisoner from the Palace,” Anaris said. “A Praerogate.”

  Gelasaar raised his eyebrows.

  “My father’s pesz mas’hadni extracted the codes from a woman in your council.”

  Pain narrowed the Panarch’s eyelids.

  “That institution does not make sense to me,” Anaris continued, toying with his dirazh’u. “Do you truly impose no limits on their power?”

  “None but those enjoined by their oath and their moral sense.”

  “I cannot believe that.”

  Gelasaar smiled faintly. “Do you suppose the Bori in your service always tell the truth?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “No more do the infinitely deeper layers of bureaucracy that run the Thousand Suns. I could not be everywhere, nor could I rely on those below me to transmit the truth. Thus, the Praerogates, my surrogates.”

  “But without limits?”

  “I did not say there were no limits, only that I imposed none. A Praerogate cannot act in a vacuum. There must be an egregious wrong to set right, a fulcrum for the lever of their power. And they only get one chance.”

  Anaris shook his head. “One has power, one acts.”

  “True power lies in choosing when, and where, to act. Lacking a proper target, the greatest blow yields only wind.”

  ARES

  The pod slowed to a halt. When the transtube hatch hissed open, Eloatri found herself in another world.

  As expected, her boswell’s connection to the net blanked, and she turned to one of the waiting wall consoles to find directions. There’d been no occasion for her to come to the Cap before; she was startled at its size and complexity. She tapped in her destination and thumbed the console where indicated, then walked on, directed by a will o’ the wisp dancing ahead, visible only to her.

  As she made her way down the metal and dyplast corridors with their cool, faintly scented air, she thought that her father, a career Navy man, would have felt right at home among these touches of elegance that were the hallmark of Douloi design, even in such a utilitarian setting, especially the smooth, almost organic transition from the pragmatic form of conduits and cables to flowing ornament. In its own way, it was almost soothing, a reminder that, after all, this was but another expression of the human mind, as valid in its way as the beauty of the cloister gardens of New Glastonbury, on Desrien.

  The corridors grew more crowded as she approached the laboratories housing the Jupiter Project. Several times she passed through security cordons; each time the brief flicker of a retinal scan and the bone-deep tingle of a security sweep underlined the importance of the captured hyperwave.

  The people she passed, mostly Naval personnel in uniform, eyed her curiously. She looked down at her black soutane with its archaic neck-to-hem row of buttons. They’re probably wondering how long it takes to get it on and off. She smiled at the memory of her first experience with the garment, after her sudden elevation to the cathedra of New Glastonbury. Tuan had hooted with laughter when he realized she actually undid all the buttons. It had never occurred to her just to undo the top few and pull it over her head.

  The wisp flickered out as the sight of two Marines in battle armor jerked her back to the present. They stood to either side of the hatch that gave access to the project facilities. After yet another scan, one tabbed the hatch open while the other handed her the follow-me that indicated a high-security destination, and motioned her through.

  The green wisp dancing under the dyplast cover of the little device led her quickly to another, anonymous hatch. She keyed the annunciator; the gnostor Omilov’s voice came back, betraying impatience. “Just a moment.”

  But the hatch slid open immediately, and she stepped through. Her stomach dropped and her breath froze in her throat: no floor, no walls, the stars slowly wheeling around her, and standing astride a wisp of nebula, the figure of a man.

  The man reached up, and a flourish of stars dripped new-minted from his fingers, dancing outward to take their place among the panoply of glory he was constructing.

  “Let there be lights in the firmaments of the heavens. . . .” Eloatri shivered with awe. Then the man reached out and grasped a red star, which flared up brightly for a moment, then guttered out.

  “Aaargh!” he exclaimed in disgust. Tilting his head back, he spoke to the darkness looming above. “It still isn’t working right. Give me some light.”

  Eloatri choked on a laugh and the man spun around. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Gnostor,” she said unsteadily as the lights came up and the stars faded. And though the floor had always been there under her feet, her body sank as if she had leaped down from several stairs. She shook herself, a whistling laugh escaping her throat. “You make a singularly inept Creator.”

  He blinked in confusion, then smiled. “Ah. Yes, I think I know what you mean. The seven days of Creation are part of your tradition.” Actually six, she thought as he looked around and then chuckled. “Give me some light, indeed.”

  A woman’s head poked out of a rift in the stars above them. “It’ll be a few minutes, Gnostor. A whole bank of projectors just crashed. We’re reprogramming.”

  “Thank you, Ensign. I can use a short break.” He turned back to Eloatri. “There’s so much information to winnow through, trying to find the Suneater, or even some clues to its whereabouts. This kind of direct perception and manipulation of the stellar topography is necessary.”

  “I’m sure it’s better than a pile of printouts, or flicking through countless display screens,” said Eloatri. “And a lot more fun,” she couldn’t resist adding.

  “Yes, well, there’s that,” Omilov admitted. Eloatri sensed embarrassment. “But I’m surprised to see you here. Are the briefings not keeping you sufficiently up to date?”

  “No, they’re fine. But I haven’t seen much of you lately. Not everything of importance is happening here, you know.”

  The Douloi mask smoothed his features into unreadability. Eloatri almost smiled. Are you that much a fool, Sebastian Omilov? Have you forgotten what Desrien is like? He must have, to think that she couldn’t read past the shielded politeness of an aristocrat.

  “The project is taking a great deal of my time,” he replied neutrally, though his hands and shoulders betrayed his impatience. “And I retired from politics ten years ago.”

  “The same time our present Aerenarch was pulled from his own path and forced on another’s?”

  The impatience dissolved into a somber gaze. “Ten years of seclusion has vouchsafed me little knowledge of anything outside of xenoarchaeology,” Omilov murmured, making an apologetic gesture.

  The guilty man flees when no one pursues. He understood very well her thrust and, for whatever reason, felt it necessary to deflect.

  “Then I can see why you spend so much time here,” she said in a pacific tone. “It is perhaps the only place on Ares that is apolitical.” She continued before he could speak; she’d learned what she needed to know, for now. There was no sense in antagonizing him further. “I don’t want to keep you from your researches—I do understand how critical they are. But I have a bit of information that may be useful. I’ve just learned that Vi’ya and the Eya’a know about the hyperwave.”

  Omilov snorted impatiently. “Of course they do. Didn’t the briefings make that clear? They undoubtedly learned about it on Rifthaven.”

  Eloatri gestured at the walls, now visible through a faint holograp
hic fog of stars. “The Eya’a can feel the captured hyperwave here on Ares. They are trying to get to it. There is even the possibility that through it, they are still linked to the Heart of Kronos.”

  Omilov let out his breath, and he said hoarsely, “Now that, I did not know.” Then a flood of questions spilled out of him. How did she know this? Did the Eya’a have a sense of direction about the Heart of Kronos? Why didn’t she know? Who did?

  She was explaining about Manderian, the Dol’jharian gnostor, when the annunciator chimed again and the hatch hissed open.

  Eloatri recognized Omilov’s son, Osri; she was struck by the lack of anger—once a constant—in his demeanor. The woman with him, in the uniform of a Naval captain, took a moment longer: Margot Ng, the hero of Arthelion.

  “I know you didn’t summon me, Father. Is this a bad time?”

  Eloatri forestalled Omilov’s reply. “There’s nothing more I can tell you,” she said to the gnostor. “You must speak to Manderian. I will arrange a meeting at the Cloister.”

  He nodded. “Very well, but please stay. I have a few more questions you may be able to answer.” He turned back to his son and the captain. “No, Osri, it’s no problem. The simulation is down. You really couldn’t have picked a better time.”

  “Father,” Osri said, “this is Captain Margot Ng. You’ll remember I told you about the Tenno seminars she organized. I’m attending them to help you with the hyperwave data.”

  Captain Ng stepped forward. Eloatri was intrigued by her grace.

  “Gnostor Omilov, Yevgeny ban-Zhigel requested that I bring you his greeting if the opportunity ever presented itself, so I prevailed upon your son to make the introduction.”

  Eloatri watched as the intricate ritual of introduction proceeded, establishing, through mutual requests for information about related third parties not present, the web of obligation that existed between Ng and Omilov. She is Polloi, but unlike me she plays the game like a Douloi.

  Then the gnostor drew her smoothly into the ritual, with an introduction, and Eloatri found herself the focus of a pair of warm brown eyes in an intelligent face.