Suns Eclipsed

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  She wanted to go home.

  Chapter Ten

  DeLuca Family Wilderness Area, Deluca Prime, Delucas System

  Iulia wrapped the furs around her shoulders, arranging them to eliminate the little chill creeping under the edges, then recomposed herself, hiding her impatience. “You are my younger brother, Raine. Of course I want to see you succeed.”

  Raine sat with his legs stretched out, his boots resting on an ottoman and his eyes closed. Like most Delucas, he was a stocky man of average height and long legs. Unlike the rest of the family, his hair had turned prematurely gray when he was in his twenties. Raine did not seem to notice the cold and it was frigid on the verandah, which was exposed to the elements with no fields to mitigate the impact.

  The luxury hunting cabin was at the far end of the great forest that surrounded Menaii. It had belonged to the Deluca family for generations. It appeared rustic. The full services were well disguised. Raine had insisted on visiting the cabin for the day and had gravitated out here to the verandah where the conditions really were primitive.

  Iulia recognized he was brooding about something and had ventured out of the warmth to find him and open him up.

  Raine didn’t look at her as he responded. “If you are so interested in my success then why do you remain on Cardenas with that oaf?”

  “Gaubert?” she clarified. “He has no backbone, little brother. Reynard supplied enough for both of them. I stay, because I lived there for forty years. It is hard to instantly let go. That does not mean my loyalties cannot…evolve.”

  “Or revert?” he asked, proving he understood what she was not saying. Then he added; “Peru Scordini sits at the head of the clan table now. I was voted out. Maybe you should be talking to him.”

  “He is not a Deluca,” Iulia said stiffly. “You are. Gaubert says the vote that won Peru the chair was close. Very close. You could have won that vote, Raine, if you had played it a little more carefully.”

  Raine shook his head. “Gaubert talks too much. And he’s wrong. That younger brother of his—Markjohn—is hugely popular.”

  “That is because Markjohn has not collaborated with the enemy lately,” Iulia said primly.

  Raine blew out his breath. It fogged in front of him and lingered in the still air. “I do not understand why Gaubert was acclaimed head of the family, after what he did. Reynard could not stand the shame. Yet the man sits at the clan table as if he has every right to be there.”

  “He gained the city killer technology for the Republic. That made many generals deeply grateful,” Iulia pointed out. “Military gratitude is a powerful thing.”

  Raine glanced at her. “Powerful enough to keep alive a dog that has gone bad in the head.”

  “His motives were pure,” Iulia added. “That does not excuse what he did. Gaubert is not the one you should be focusing on.”

  “Markjohn, then?” Raine pursed his lips, considering it.

  “No, not Markjohn, either,” Iulia said quickly. “You needn’t worry about him.”

  “If Gaubert makes another mistake, then Markjohn will take his seat and Markjohn is more popular than I. He could take on Peru and win.”

  Iulia wondered whether Raine was aware that he was talking to her like a man. An equal. He had forgotten the family philosophy that women did not like politics.

  “Markjohn is young,” Iulia said. “His time will come and he knows that. He is content for now to build his alliances. You don’t have to worry about Markjohn for a while yet. If you take a few simple steps you may never have to worry about him.”

  Raine raised a brow. “What steps would they be?”

  There was a stringent smell drifting from the stumps of trees that had been felled recently, to keep the sightlines from the house clear. Even here, the family enforcers kept watch. It was reminder to Iulia to monitor her own movements and everything she did here. This cabin was a part of the family and Raine was her little brother, whom she had beaten at games all her life. Both the cabin and Raine were embedded in her personal history. That did not mean she could relax. Raine was not Gaubert. He was not easily led.

  “You have to watch Peru Scordini, to begin,” Iulia said. “And you have to wait. He will make a mistake and when he does, you can move forward with your relationships to support your bid for the chair.”

  “How do you know he will make a mistake?” Raine demanded.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” Iulia assured him. “You just have to watch for them and take advantage of them when they occur.”

  Raine relaxed and recrossed his ankles. “For a moment I thought you knew something was about to happen.”

  “Things always happen,” Iulia said carefully. “Things always change.”

  “Including allegiances, hey?” Raine asked her, with a direct look.

  “Most especially allegiances,” Iulia assured him.

  Raine laughed. “You must truly abhor that daughter of yours, Iulia. All this maneuvering you’re doing to line up the military and the clans against her…”

  Iulia held her breath in shock.

  Raine didn’t notice. He wasn’t looking at her. He never did. He was talking to himself. “No one in the family could ever hold a grudge as well as you,” he added. “I’d hate to be in Bellona’s shoes when you finally catch up with her.”

  Iulia relaxed and managed a small smile. As usual, Raine had failed to recognize the underlying truth and had instead focused on the symptoms. “Delucas pay their debts, remember?” she told him sweetly.

  * * * * *

  Demosthenes, Alkeides System

  Just because there was so much free space on Demosthenes, everyone seemed to gravitate toward each other. When they could have the pick of any spare room to work in, live in, or play in, most people returned to the dining room instead and set up their current work or interest at the long tables, alongside others. The work might be completely unrelated, yet they seemed to find comfort rubbing elbows in that way. Only people like Aideen, who genuinely preferred to be alone and Vang, who had set himself the task of figuring out how everything worked in the medical bay and equipping and supplying it appropriately, stayed in their separate work areas.

  Sang was not immune to the gravitational eddies drawing everyone together. He found himself in the dining hall most days. He would generate a screen just as everyone else did, even though he had been designed by Eriumans to replace screens and input devices. He could do all the work in his head, if he needed to. Working on a screen had become a habit, though.

  Sang knew that Khalil was also drawn to the dining hall and the others. Today he was on the other table, at the far end away from the big doors, staring at coding that even Sang would have trouble reading. His was a dark head among white blond, indifferent brown and Eriuman black.

  Sang sat on the bench next to him, his back to the table.

  Khalil bookmarked his screen carefully, then gave Sang his full attention.

  “Is that bridge forge software?” Sang asked.

  “I’m checking it over.” Khalil shrugged. “All coding can be improved.”

  Sang smiled. “Even mine?”

  “I’ve seen your source code,” Khalil said.

  Sang was genuinely shocked. “When?”

  “The original coding that was given to you when you came out of the tank was developed by the Bureau, remember? It was part of my basic training to deconstruct android coding. Now, though, yours would have complexities far beyond the comprehension of any Bureau member.” Khalil grinned. “That doesn’t mean I’m not curious to see what it looks like.”

  “I don’t think I know you well enough to let you see my code.”

  Khalil laughed loudly enough to draw glances.

  Sang waited until he had himself under control once more. “The human remains we found on Pushyan,” he began.

  “You’ve identified it?”

  “To within a degree of certainty, yes. The DNA had deteriorated, so we had to pattern match. There were t
wo dozen people who matched the chains we could recover, sixty-five percent of them men and automatically eliminated.”

  Khalil frowned. “Age and race?”

  “Reduced it to three possibilities. One of those possibilities, when I looked into her profile, makes her almost a certainty.”

  “Why? Who is she?”

  “Georgina Kumar of Laurasia.” Sang watched Khalil.

  “I know that name,” Khalil said slowly. Then his eyes widened. “Ben’s ship. She was kitchen crew.” He gripped the edge of the table. “Her death is connected to my brother?”

  “I don’t know yet. I thought that you might want to take over. Track her movements via the feeds and databases, the way you do. If we can find out why she was on Pushyan and who else was there, then perhaps we can reconstruct what happened two years ago.”

  “Three years ago, Thecla said.”

  “I re-dated the remains, after adjusting for the radiation fluxes on the surface. They’re two years old.”

  As Sang spoke, he spotted Hero at the door to the dining room. She had paused and was looking around the room, tallying who was there with her dark eyes.

  Khalil closed his fingers into a tight fist, then let them relax. “Two years ago was when Shavistran was destroyed, and my brother and his people, too.”

  Sang nodded. “That is why I brought this to you.”

  Hero’s gaze reached Sang and lingered.

  “If her death is connected, then it might explain how it happened,” Khalil said.

  “How Shavistran happened?” Sang said, puzzled.

  Khalil lifted his legs over the bench and turned to sit the same way Sang was. He leaned forward, his arms on his knees. “It has always bothered me, Sang. How did the Eriumans know where Ben was? How did they know with enough certainty they could use their stolen city killer and be sure they weren’t destroying an innocent city?”

  “Shavistran was innocent whether Benjamin Arany was there or not,” Sang replied. “His presence did not justify what the Eriumans did to that world.”

  Khalil met his gaze. “You speak as if you are not one of them.”

  “I am still tabled as a corporate asset if you look at the Cardenas family portfolio,” Sang said. “Though, I have not considered myself to be Eriuman since Maximilian Cardenas died.” In his mind, he heard the hiss of heavy rain. The muffled thuds of a small fist on a door.

  Khalil must have seen something in Sang’s face, for he nodded. “Then it’s worth getting to the bottom of it,” he decided. “I’ll need a good AI. What’s the best on Demosthenes? Have you catalogued them yet, Sang?”

  “They’re all ex-Karassian. Their quality is less than stellar,” Sang told him. Over Khalil’s shoulder he saw Hero making her way through the aisles between the long tables. She was waylaid every few steps and forced to chat, although her direction was unmistakable.

  “Listen to you disparage the Homogeny,” Khalil said. “You are no longer Eriuman, are you not?”

  Sang gave him a sour smile. “I still know an abused AI when I see one.”

  “The Karassian military buy their minds from the Bureau just like the rest of the known worlds,” Khalil said. “I can apply remedials as needed. Which is the most powerful?”

  “The med bay AI. Vang is using it, though” Sang said. “After that, the navigation AI or the null-space AI.”

  “The navigation AI will have the broadest geographical references. I’ll use that one.” Khalil got to his feet.

  “Now?” Sang said, surprised. “It’s late.”

  Khalil grimaced. “I won’t be missed. Not tonight.”

  Sang recalled Bellona’s agenda for the day. Fontana and Aideen had been requested to provide an update on their part in the building of the bridge forge prototype. Sang had finished his own update two hours ago. Bellona was determined to see the forge work and the updates would inflame her ambitions and keep her occupied for days.

  “You still think the bridge forge is a bad idea, then?” Sang asked Khalil.

  “More than ever,” Khalil said, his voice low. “Technology is not the answer. People are. Relationships.”

  “Says the Bureau weed,” Sang replied.

  Khalil’s mouth opened. Then he shut it with a snap. “Ex-Bureau, my robot friend, and it is ‘ex’ for a reason.” He nodded and strode away, as Hero approached. Sang heard Khalil murmur a greeting to her as they passed.

  Hero ignored Khalil. Her gaze was on Sang. She moved up to where he was sitting and stood very close. “Did he just call you a robot?” she said, sounding stunned.

  “I called him a Bureau weed. It cancels out.” Sang got to his feet. “I left my screen running…”

  Hero lifted her hand, as if she might stop him with it. She didn’t touch him. “You can turn it off from here, can’t you?”

  It would involve displaying the robot skills that had just shocked her so much. It would call attention to him. It wasn’t why she had suggested he remotely control the computer, though. “What do you want, Hero?” he asked her, already knowing the answer.

  She dropped her hand. Her smile was heated. “You saw me watching you, from the door.”

  “It was a look, nothing more,” he assured her.

  She swayed a little closer, enough for Sang to sample her scent and the hormonal imbalances that generated it. The pheromones spoke volumes. A normal human, especially a male, would respond without realizing why he was doing it. An ignorant male might even think it was all his idea in the first place.

  Sang shook his head. “I am impervious to your designs, Hero. You need to find someone else to keep you company tonight.”

  Hero frowned. It was a pretty expression, barely marring her forehead and making her eyes look sorrowful. “You can have sex, can’t you?”

  Sang sighed. “I’m sure the Eriumans on board have already told you that. I am a human body grown around an evolved, self-aware android mind and skeleton. Sex is part of being human.”

  She laid her hand on his chest. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. When I am with a friend, it is perfectly safe.”

  “I know that,” Sang said impatiently. “Thecla and Amilcare and everyone you have shared yourself with would not have survived if it were otherwise. I’m not afraid of you, Hero. I’m just not interested.”

  There were softer ways he could have used to say it. He had learned the phrasing, the delicate maneuvers and learned how to preserve egos in the process. Hero was a different matter. It had to be laid out bluntly.

  She didn’t seem to be offended by his directness. “Not interested, or otherwise interested?” she asked, her voice soft and coaxing. “I don’t care what’s in your heart.” Her hand slid downward.

  Sang caught her wrist and twisted it, bringing her around in a hard spin. He pushed her onto the bench. She landed heavily, for she had not been expecting it. Sang kept his hand on her shoulder, holding her down as she tried to bounce to her feet once more.

  Heads were turning. People were listening.

  “Stop it,” Sang hissed. “Control yourself, Hero. You’re embarrassing yourself as a woman and an Eriuman.”

  She laughed up at him. “We’re all free-staters, now. Haven’t you heard? We’re free to do anything we want.”

  “When you figure out that freedom comes with even greater responsibilities, we’ll talk,” Sang told her. “Before that unlikely day arrives, I advise you to stay away from me.”

  He left the dining hall. On the way, he remotely switched off the screen he had been using. It irritated him that everyone watched him leave. It wasn’t part of his function to draw focus.

  Ex-Bureau. Ex-robot. Ex-Eriuman. They were all something else and every day that something changed. It was the dark side of freedom. No wonder Hero embraced it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Demosthenes, Alkeides System

  The bridge on Demosthenes was three times larger than the stark white ovoid on the Alyard and just as sterile, hard and functional. As no one used the
bridge, no one had bothered to change anything there. Generally, the big room was empty.

  Sang also knew there were no printers or assemblers in there, which seemed to be an odd oversight in a race who liked their creature comforts, their food and drink as much as Karassians did.

  For that reason and because he had not seen Khalil anywhere on Demos for more than two days, Sang selected a favorite meal from Khalil’s request logs, printed it and took it to the bridge, along with a carafe of coffee, a cushion and a blanket in a bag.

  Khalil was still there. Sang was relieved when he spotted the dark-haired man behind the navigation console and was startled by the relief.

  Khalil looked as tired as Sang had expected him to be. There were dark marks under his eyes, his hair was ruffled, his tunic rumpled and his movements slow with exhaustion.

  There was only one chair behind the console, which Khalil was slumped in. Sang stood on the other side and put the food on the console, over the top of the screen, hiding the data. He dropped the carafe next to it, then pulled the coffee mug out of the bag that held the blanket and cushion.

  Khalil smiled. It was a weak expression. “I’m that pathetic, am I?”

  “Driven,” Sang corrected. He nudged the bowl of steaming stew closer. “Eat. Tell me how far you’ve got.”

  “How is she?” Khalil asked.

  “As driven as you.”

  “Is the prototype made, yet?”

  “They’re designing the physical dimensions now. The internals are all finalized.” Sang tapped the bowl.

  Khalil picked it up and winced as the heat burned his fingers. He let it drop again, picked up the spoon instead and bent over it to eat a mouthful. The taste triggered him into scooping another three mouthfuls in quick succession. He chewed and swallowed, then sat back with a sigh.

  “Don’t stop,” Sang told him, pouring the coffee.

  “I have to breath, sometime,” Khalil pointed out. He picked up the mug. “I hadn’t realized how…” He drank, not finishing the sentence.

  Sang waited, feeling no impatience. He glanced at the screen, reading it upside down. Then, when the little he could see under the bowl and plate caught his attention, he plugged directly into the AI’s interface and read the screen in his mind.