A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Her mind on the impending Karusch’na Rahali, she burst out, “Why? It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Not to us. We’re hive people, Mam told me. Our strength is in our numbers, all working together. Stone-bones, they fight for place. Grow up angry. Strength is single survival. Anger and fighting are close to sex for some, certainly for them.” He looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “Don’t have to risk being turned down. Just take who they want.”

  Tat grimaced. Well, put that way, maybe it made a little sense. She knew she was certainly too timid to make overtures to any outsider she felt attracted to, so she’d always kept her sex play within the family. “Mmm,” she said. “But bunny is fun for us. Can’t be fun when you’re breaking arms and legs.”

  “Oh, I imagine it’s not always a fight to the death,” Lar said, snorting a laugh. “Bet you: ones that want to be taken find their way into the path of the hunter—just like crew up-level. Heh. You want to talk more on that, go find Moob and Hestik.”

  “Urrrgh,” Tat muttered, knuckling the back of his head. “I’m asleep.” She made a face. “But why’d Fasthand have to get greedy? I want this over. Go back to raiding data.”

  Lar sighed, but didn’t answer.

  FOUR

  ABOARD THE GROZNIY

  Vi’ya stepped into the chilly cabin and looked down at the two small balls of white fur. Her breath clouded as the tianqi labored to drive the temperature even lower; the Eya’a were entering hibernation again. Their thoughts were far away now, and she sighed, feeling a sense of release, as if hooks had retracted from her brain.

  But then all the other voices crowded into her head: the weird threefold thought of the Kelly, too complex to comprehend; Ivard’s happy, distinctive sensory bombardment as he concentrated on a difficult vector problem. Markham’s voice, from old memory, flickered from Ivard to Vi’ya across the kilometer of distance between her cabin and the classroom where Ivard sat with the cruiser’s midshipmen. The voice sparked a pang of grief, which was not quite drowned out by one other entity: far away on the other side of the ship, like a star arcing through the void, moved the distinctive psychic signature of Brandon vlith-Arkad.

  He was thinking of her.

  She decided it was time to face him. Danger sang along her nerves, but she dismissed the warning. It was too late. After the encounter at the old nuller’s, there was no going back.

  She opened her eyes, and when her balance had steadied, she shut the Eya’a into their freezing berth and crossed the beautifully tiled space between the rest of their cabins.

  Marim’s door was open. Her voice came, sleepy with protest, “Where you going? Anything fun?”

  Vi’ya’s lips twitched. “Just going to see what Omilov has had done to Telvarna. You can come, if you like.” And, as expected, Marim sank back into the bed, looking disappointed.

  Vi’ya added, “Haven’t you already fleeced every slub on this ship?”

  Marim propped her tousled head on one small hand and grinned unrepentantly. “I think of it as getting some of our own back.”

  Vi’ya said, “Their perspective is different. It was Rifters who destroyed much that was theirs. You might keep that in mind.”

  “Piss-bats!” Marim buried her head under her covers.

  Vi’ya left their quarters and paced down the handsomely paneled corridor past the civilian cabins. Most of these were empty: this mission was a military one, except for her crew and the few civilians involved with Sebastian Omilov’s Jupiter Project.

  And Manderian, the High Phanist’s representative, the only other person outside of Ivard and herself who could communicate with the Eya’a beyond simple signs. She had not spoken to him, except for the merest commonplace, since he and Omilov appeared at Detention Five with the surprising request that she fly the gnostor on his mission to the heart of the Rift.

  Vi’ya stepped into the transtube and tabbed the key, bracing against the acceleration of the module.

  She sensed the busy focus of the thousands of minds aboard the mighty ship. Fighting against a sharp longing to see its bridge, and witness for herself the tremendous capabilities of a battlecruiser, she composed herself for the meeting ahead.

  In the hangar bay housing the Telvarna, Manderian studied the two Marines before him. Both young, both sober and intelligent, both focused, despite physical tiredness that he could sense like a drug in his own system.

  “No,” he said in answer to a question, “we have not established any semblance of tense in the gestural semiotics. I don’t know yet whether the Eya’a perceive time as we do. Perhaps the captain will discuss this more fully with you.”

  He sensed presence. He knew it was not a physical presence, and the proximity was relative: Vi’ya was on her way.

  A silhouette appeared in the open hatch in the ship; Sebastian Omilov descended the ramp, his step booming softly.

  “Well, that’s one more thing complete,” he said, rubbing his hands. He paused, fists on hips, to survey the ordered litter of equipment on the deck plates of the hangar bay, waiting to be carried into the Columbiad for installation and stowing. Then he nodded pleasantly to the two Marines who had been chosen to accompany his mission. “That’s enough for this shift, don’t you think? I know I’m ready for some rest.”

  The Marines sketched salutes, then moved out.

  When they were gone, Omilov said, “How are they doing?”

  “Well enough,” Manderian said. “Solarch sho’Rethven has a degree in xenosemiotics; I think, if Vi’ya is willing, he might substantially add to our sign-pool.”

  “Which is somewhat superficial,” Omilov added. “Or so the High Phanist was lamenting just before our departure.”

  Omilov looked back at the Telvarna, permitting himself a long, satisfied breath.

  Without his being aware, Manderian observed him, thinking that it was inevitable that the gnostor’s status would be forever altered. Everywhere he went, respect, deference, and even fear marked people’s reactions to him. Omilov did not seem to notice—his focus was entirely on the project at hand. Yet he seemed decades younger than he had, and although almost seventy-two hours of unremitting effort had tired the crew and passengers of Grozniy, Omilov’s eyes remained clear and his step firm. His emergence as Praerogate Overt has restored his sense of purpose.

  “Shall we wrap up for now? I’m for some caf—or even coffee, if we can cadge it,” Omilov suggested.

  Manderian assented, then said, “Vi’ya is on her way.”

  The transtube lights signaled an arrival and hissed open. The tall woman stepped out, her black eyes surveying the hangar.

  “Captain Vi’ya,” Omilov said in welcome, too polite to express surprise at the late hour. “I thought you might want to order the disposition of these supplies here. You’ll find a compilation on the compad. I can have them stowed tomorrow—or what serves for tomorrow on this floating city.”

  She nodded, her manner cool and slightly wary as she passed by and ascended the ramp into her ship.

  With a spurt of amusement that he kept strictly hidden, Manderian remembered the date in Dol’jharian terms: the Karusch’na Rahali, the Star-Tides of Progeny. Though Dol’jhar and its system were far distant, the symbolic pull of its four moons was difficult for expatriates to shut out of their lives. It had taken some twenty years before his subconscious had given over calculating the next alignment. She knows, he thought, putting energy into shielding his thoughts as best he could, and she hates the knowing.

  He still could not guess the range of her psi abilities, except that they were great. He wondered if she had withdrawn to her ship to pass the night, since it was distant from the sleeping quarters.

  “Let’s go find that caf, shall we, Gnostor?” he suggested.

  Omilov straightened up from examining the contents of a crate and sighed. “Yes, yes, let’s.”

  As they waited for the transtube, once again Manderian sensed presence. It took some thought to recognize the aura,
but when he did, his amusement heightened. He said nothing as he followed Omilov into the module and tabbed their destination.

  That module hissed away; a seldom-used mechanics’ adit on the other side of the empty bay opened, and Brandon emerged.

  Vi’ya waited at the top of the ramp. They had not spoken since their encounter at Tate Kaga’s. It was the Prophetae who, after telling her what had transpired in Nyberg’s office, saw to it that she was conveyed unwitnessed back to Detention Five. In the shock wave propagating through the station after the failed coup and Omilov’s revelation as a Praerogate, she had arrived entirely unnoticed.

  Brandon arrived at the ramp and grinned up at her. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

  Humor in the quarry pits had been confined to the humiliation of one’s enemies. It was Markham who had taught her how to joke—with Brandon’s sense of the ridiculous.

  “No,” she said, watching him in expectation. “You’ll have to blast your way in.”

  And there it was, the laughter curving his eyelids and turning up the corners of his mouth, making dimples in his cheeks as his emotional spectrum impacted her like dropping into a volcanic pool at the peak of a summer’s day.

  “Duel to the death.” He mounted the ramp with leisurely steps, anticipation heightening his senses to an unnerving degree. “High-velocity custard flingers at forty paces.”

  She smiled at the reminder of his inspired defense against Eusabian’s forces in the underground kitchens of his Palace Minor. “I wonder,” she said, “how the Tarkans explained that to Eusabian.”

  “Barrodagh will have lied, of course.” Brandon met her at the hatch, and stood within reach, neither touching: he contemplated the glimmer of humor in her space black eyes, and she braced herself anew against his proximity, anticipation wakening in every cell of her body. “Explained them as some kind of arcane Panarchist secret weapon. And he probably has teams of experts busy replicating them for defense against us when we do go back to retake the planet.”

  “Then you will have to develop anti-custard shields.” She touched the stylus to the compad Omilov had left waiting.

  They walked into the Telvarna’s rec room, and Brandon moved to the comestibles console, bringing it to life. “Hmmm.” He scanned the list of offerings. “Must be Sebastian’s new status. Look! They’ve put real coffee in the stores.”

  “It’s probably yours,” she said.

  “Then I believe I’ll help myself. And add a liberal dose of Montrose’s brandy. Want some?”

  “No.” She wrote rapidly with the stylus as the aromatic scent of coffee filled the still air.

  When she looked up again, he had relaxed into one of the deep chairs, both hands wrapped around the steaming mug. “This is the first break I’ve had,” he said.

  “Briefings?”

  “Not briefings.” He smiled wryly. “Inspections, tours, luncheons, more inspections. Keeping me so busy I won’t notice the lack of briefings.”

  She said, “I thought this Captain Ng was your partisan.”

  “Very much so,” he replied. “Which is why I’m cooperatively not noticing the lack.” He grinned, inviting her to share the joke.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My status is a legal nightmare,” he said. “Ng, Nyberg, Ares, even Eusabian all know who I am, but as far as the DataNet is concerned, I am still Krysarch Brandon nyr-Arkad until someone with a higher level releases certain codes into the system. Until then, there is information I cannot access, and despite their most ardent wish, they cannot access it for me. One of those areas is Gehenna.

  “Suppose,” he said, gesturing with his mug, “I force my way into one of those briefings where they’ve brought up files that require retinal scans. As soon as I enter the room, the system freezes.” He shrugged.

  Vi’ya stilled her growing anticipation; she had three questions. Two, it appeared, might be answered. “Why did you not stay on Ares, then? Was it not a risk, to establish your position and then disappear so quickly?”

  Brandon frowned down into his coffee. “Aside from my own inclinations, my absence seemed the best gift I could give Nyberg. He now has clear orders to act on, the same that I believe my father would issue were he there: recall the Fleet and prepare for a full-scale attack on the Suneater. My presence—my anomalous legal status—would be exponentially more a hindrance there than here. Ares now has a single goal, hopefully one to unite it. Those orders will not be sullied by any further ones, if I am not there to make them, that might run counter to what my father would wish when he returns to Ares.”

  “So here, there is only one question, this approach to Gehenna, which will be resolved when we reach it.”

  “Correct. You know that much, do you?”

  Vi’ya turned in her captain’s pod. “I know that Captain Ng has expressly ordered her bridge crew and senior officers to stay away from me. I have tried to make it easier for them to do that by staying clear of them.”

  “But you hear things anyway,” he said.

  She lifted a shoulder. “When the Eya’a are awake, I do, for they are curious, and afraid. But your captain and her staff will take no harm of me.”

  “Therefore what they don’t know can’t hurt ’em? Well, I won’t tell,” he said.

  And so we approach my second question. The first has been answered: he will stay with the Panarchists. His days of the Riftskip are over.

  “If we are too late?” she asked.

  He looked up, his blue eyes intense. “Jaim asked me that,” he said finally. “No one else has quite dared. And I can’t answer it, except to say that we must get my father back. He has never been more needed than he is now.” His gaze wandered past her, past the dyplast bulkheads and the landing bay—past time and space.

  Vi’ya sat quietly, trying without success to block the vertiginous divarication of his emotional spectrum. Foremost in her own mind was the memory of his having cornered her at the splat-ball tourney; at the time she thought it accidental that he managed it when Jaim was not near, but she had since then suspected that he had always known of the telltale in Jaim, even though Jaim himself didn’t seem to know.

  Will you take me to rescue my father? he had asked.

  Which meant he knew, somehow, about her secret escape plans. So what about those plans? To ask directly might force him to take official notice. It was too early, anyway, and in any case she had to return to Ares for Lokri.

  And then . . . and then . . .

  And then I find out the answer to my third question.

  He said, “No one knows this, either, but during one of those interminable nights after I took the nav tests, I released a worm into the Ares DataNet. If it gets past the scavengers and phages, and the safeguards my trusting brother undoubtedly built around those already extant protecting the Aerenarch’s prerogatives, it might clear up some of the anomalies. And incidentally afford me some freedom of action.”

  She already knew that he was adept at questioning, and answering, obliquely. So if he’s saying he will contrive my freedom, then he is asking if I will leave.

  She stood up and turned away, her hands finding employment in laying aside Omilov’s compad and stylus.

  That depends on how you answer me at the last.

  But the time was not yet right for speech; it was at once too early and too late.

  He set aside his drink, rose, and walked to the lock. With her back turned she could feel his gaze and his question.

  For a suspended time neither spoke. Then she heard him tab the lock console to life. The hatches closed; she heard the brief tapping of a code.

  She led the way to her cabin.

  They faced one another once again, standing eye-to-eye, their gazes locked and blended. She felt the force of his desire and braced against it, iron fighting an increasingly potent magnetic charge.

  Finally he smiled, no more than a deepening of the corners of his lips, and she could breathe again. “You wouldn’t make the first mo
ve, would you.”

  It wasn’t even a question. With Markham, her mate, the first move had ceased to carry responsibility: the future, they’d thought, belonged to them both.

  “No,” she said.

  And then sensed, in the dizzying alteration of his emotional spectrum, that he somehow knew it.

  “A request,” he said, his voice so soft she could just hear him. “That holo you made, of the garden on the Mandala.”

  She dropped her hand to her console without removing her eyes from his steady blue gaze; her fingers touched the keys, familiar through years of work, and tabbed the accept.

  The cabin disappeared, replaced by the astounding view of sky-brushing sequoias. Birds trilled, darting from the greenery to the branches overhead. The tianqi changed, sending a loam- and pine-scented breeze to ruffle over her heated skin.

  He drew in one long, unsteady breath, looking around with eyes that seemed blinded, then took a step, and another.

  He reached. She moved past his hands, sheathed her fingers in his curling dark hair, and surrendered to his devouring kiss.

  A kilometer away, Manderian, once rahal’Khesteli, now simply a follower of the Sanctus Lleddyn, fought back the disturbance in his dreams and woke up.

  When he identified the source of the disturbance, he slid out of bed and knelt on the cold deck plates of his cabin, still in the darkness, and slid his hands over his face in silence.

  ABOARD THE SAMEDI

  Emmet Fasthand hunched over his console, watching with increasing fascination the fight between half-naked Moob, blood-streaked, teeth bared, knife at the ready, and a ferocious gray-clad Dol’jharian male.

  The night had started out disappointing; after taking great care to lock the crew out of the Panarchist telltales, Fasthand reluctantly realized that the Dol’jharians had no interest in the prisoners as sex partners, unwilling or otherwise. The old and weak, it appeared, held little appeal, so all his care went for nothing. Fasthand would not have let Sundiver broadcast the rape of the Panarch over the hyperwave to entertain the Sodality for free, not when exclusivity could have afforded riches on Rifthaven.