She leaned against the docking-ramp console and watched him stride down the corridor, flanked by the tactical team officers. Yav cheron, she said silently. In a few more hours, I’ll tell you in person, again.
Major Mitkanos was a muscular man in a gray uniform. His short-cropped black hair was sprinkled with silver, his jaw was ruggedly square, and his nose had a slight bend that told of more than a few fistfights. His appearance was gruff, until he smiled, his wide mouth softening the hard, chiseled edges of his face.
He shook Trilby’s hand with a firm grasp. “Be glad to help. I have heard something of your adventures. That he stole that Tark. Takes your ship. Then you find that you have the ’Sko in pursuit again.”
He didn’t quite take my ship, Trilby wanted to say. Was more like a cooperative agreement. But then, she knew how stories changed as they filtered through the ranks.
“It’s been a bit harrowing,” she agreed, and followed him down the corridor. Except for the signs in Zafharish, Degvar looked similar to most other stations she’d seen, though more utilitarian. The constant blinking, flashing, chirping, and trilling adverts that floated through most Conclave stations’ commercial corridors were missing.
Degvar had nondescript gray bulkheads and gray decking. Door frames on the dock level were red; when they exited the lift three levels up, they were yellow. Entry palm pads were larger, with a series of touchpads on the left. And on this level, armed personnel were more conspicuous.
Most were in gray, like Mitkanos. Only a few wore the black that Rhis and Gurdan’s team did.
She was about to ask why when he halted in front of a set of double doors, yellow-ringed. He lay his hand on the pad, then tapped three touchpads with his thumb. The doors cycled open.
Two officers in gray uniforms, one male and one female, sat at the consoles. The woman turned, nodded to Mitkanos, and spoke in Zafharish. He grinned, tapped her playfully on the shoulder.
“Corporal Rimanava will help you,” he told Trilby. He motioned for her to sit next to a young woman whose long dark hair was pulled back into a thick braid. Mitkanos turned to the other officer, leaned on the back of his chair, and dropped into a low conversation.
“Corporal Rimanava.” Trilby offered a handshake before she took the chair. “I’m Trilby Elliot. Captain of the Careless Venture.”
“Farra Rimanava.” She accepted Trilby’s hand with a wide smile. “Sit, please. I understand you need to send message to Gensiira. In Conclave, vad?” She spoke haltingly, as if searching for the proper words in Standard.
Trilby relayed Neadi’s transit code. That Farra Rimanava, or rather the Empire, already had the codes for Gensiira and Port Rumor didn’t surprise her.
Farra showed Trilby how to activate the holocam in the console. It wasn’t so different from other comm systems she’d seen, except that everything was labeled in Zafharish.
“This ends message,” Farra said, pointing to a square touchpad. “If you wish, I will get cup of tea while you record. So you have privacy, vad?”
“That’s okay.” Trilby motioned with her hand. “It’s only a short message.”
“Then I will wait. This is okay? We will get tea with Yavo when you are finished. It is end of shift for me.”
Trilby activated the holocam and started her message. There was good news and bad news, she told Neadi. She’d run into a ’Sko nest. But she was safe, across the border in Yanir. “I’m going to have tea with two Imperial officers in a minute,” she said, with a smile to Farra, “so everything’s fine. Have Leonid’s cousin take my Bagrond run.” She gave the details and contact name.
“I don’t have an exact ETA on my return. They’re real interested in what happened to Carina. They think the nest I found might have something to do with that.” She didn’t want to reveal anything more.
“I’ll be in touch. Don’t worry. Tell Leonid and Chaser I’m okay. Dezi sends his love.”
She was tired, but the tea was excellent, pungent with a spicy aroma. It shook some of the cobwebs out of her head, fed some life back into her veins. There were still a few hours before Rhis would return. If he finished his urgent meeting early, she felt sure someone on station would know where to find her.
She sat with Farra and Yavo Mitkanos at a table in the far corner of the officers’ lounge, a long room that curved along on the outer frame of the station’s ring. The floor-to-ceiling viewport showed the immense blackness of space. The lights of a small maintenance craft winked out of view as she watched.
No one else was in the lounge. She counted eleven tables and six stools at a bar. A bank of food replicators was adjacent to it.
The tea tasted freshly brewed. She sipped it appreciatively as Mitkanos answered her question about the gray uniforms.
“Ground forces. Like your marines,” he said, plucking at the insignia of crossed swords on his chest, “but we call ourselves Stegzarda. Stegzarda means perhaps strength command in your language. We assist the Imperial Fleet when it comes to border outposts.”
Farra nodded. “Especially with recent jhavedzga—”
“Aggression.” Mitkanos corrected her.
“Vad. Aggression by the Ycsko. That is why Gurdan’s team is here. And now the Razalka comes.”
Mitkanos snorted.
“Uncle!” Farra slapped his arm playfully.
“Niece!” he replied, grinning. And Trilby saw the same wide mouth, the same lines in the jaw of Farra Rimanava and Yavo Mitkanos.
“He’s your uncle?” Trilby asked.
“Vad. Yes. And the reason I am here.” She blew him a kiss.
“What, you think I let my sister’s child join the Fleet? What the Fleet teach my Farra-chenka, eh? To think? No. To follow orders, from Tivahr the Terrible. Or maybe she spends her time running away from the admiral’s son, who cannot keep his hands from women.”
“There are hundreds more ships. The Fleet is large.” Farra was trying to sound serious, but a few chuckles slipped out. “My beloved Uncle Yavo. He has no love for the Fleet.”
“Arrogant rimstrutters!” Mitkanos made a dismissive wave with his hand, then pointed at Trilby. “Ask her. She knows. Probably complained about her ship from the moment he walked on board.”
“He didn’t walk. He was carried,” Trilby said, not without some mirth. Perhaps Rhis’s Imperial Arrogance did come from something the Fleet put in the drinking water, as she suspected. But she didn’t discount that Mitkanos had his share of arrogance as well. More likely she was listening to the usual rivalry between military branches. She’d known many a Norvind crew to trade verbal insults with crew from GGA.
“Carried?” Mitkanos’s eyes widened. “He permitted this?”
“He was out cold. Flat on his face in a jungle swamp. But, yeah, when he woke up, he made it pretty clear my ship was a lot less than what he was used to.” She grinned. All Rhis’s blustering, which had so infuriated her, now seemed almost endearing.
“It is easy to get spoiled on a ship like the Razalka,” Farra said in a conciliatory tone.
Mitkanos snorted again. “The Razalka is not a ship. It is a kingdom. Tivahr’s kingdom. He is emperor and, yes, sometimes executioner.”
Trilby heard the anger in his voice. What did he call the Razalka’s captain, “Tivahr the Terrible”? No wonder it had taken Rhis so long to loosen up, to smile. “But he’s just the captain,” she said.
“Senior captain,” Mitkanos interjected. “Most of the admirals fear him. For good reason.”
“Why do they tolerate it? If he’s such a tyrant—”
“They created him.” Mitkanos folded his hands on the table, leaned toward Trilby. Farra shook her head but said nothing.
“You know it is true,” he said to his niece. He looked at Trilby. “They created him. Forty … what, forty-two years ago? I know you have rumors of this in the Conclave. He is, what you call it, a crècheling? An experiment. Bred in a genetics lab like a recipe for boulashka.”
Trilby nodded. She vaguely r
emembered some whispers during the war. Tivahr was rumored to be some kind of superhuman. Stronger. Smarter. But genetic manipulation had long been illegal on both sides of the Zone. And, Leonid had pointed out, immoral in the Empire. Clan history and lineage were sacred. A crècheling, a test-tube-formed human of unknown genetics, had no definite lineage.
She’d forgotten that conversation until now.
“Some say Vanushavor blood runs in his veins. Some say even Vanurin,” Mitkanos said quietly. “But the list is much longer than that. So they don’t know what he is. Or who he is. But he came out smarter and stronger than they wanted him to. And now they can’t stop him.”
“Nor can the Ycsko,” Farra pointed out.
“I have fought the ’Sko many times and won.” Mitkanos thumped his hand on his chest. “The victory record of my platoon is glorious. All the Stegzarda are known for bravery.”
“And so is the Fleet. We work with them here, on Degvar, Uncle.”
Trilby began to suspect that Farra might have a tender spot for someone in a black uniform. Well, she knew the feeling. She didn’t think many of her friends back in Rumor would be any happier about her involvement with a Zafharin Fleet officer than Mitkanos would.
He said something to Farra in Zafharish. Trilby recognized a few words, but her brain was too tired to try to translate them.
Mitkanos turned to her with an embarrassed grin. “I apologize. I forget, you do not understand. I tell my niece, we are brave because we are a … what is the word? A unit. A family. We are bound by mutual trust. Loyalty. But the Razalka, she operates on fear. It is different, no?”
Trilby thought of Grantforth Galactic Amalgamated. Jagan’s opinion of his family’s employees as “underlings” became apparent to her as she’d come to know him. It was one of the things that had unsettled her about him, one of the things that had made it easy to walk away from his flattering words and his lavish gifts. She’d given them all back. It hadn’t been a pretty scene.
She nodded. “We have our share of tyrants too, Major. I try to avoid them as best I can.”
Mitkanos patted her hand. “Well, you had only to deal with him a short time, yes? Now you can go home and tell your friends you survived what, four, five days with Tivahr the Terrible on your ship. They will be impressed.”
But Tivahr wasn’t—Trilby started to say, and stopped. Something ominous, something cold and fearful suddenly wrapped around her like an icy blanket. Something about Mitkanos’s surprise that Rhis had been carried on board the Venture. And before that. He took your ship, Mitkanos had said. It was the way he said he. With a capital H. Underscored. In lights. As if the resided before his name.
The Senior Captain Tivahr.
She closed her eyes for a moment, her head spinning. She felt Mitkanos’s large hand on her arm. “Niece, we have tired her. This has been much stress. She has had Captain Tivahr on her ship and now me, frightening her.”
Tivahr. On my ship. Tivahr.
She opened her eyes. “He told me his name was Vanur.” Her voice sounded thin. “Not … Tivahr. Rhis Vanur.”
Farra and her uncle exchanged quick glances. A low, guttural curse passed Mitkanos’s lips.
Trilby leaned back in her chair. Mitkanos’s hand fell away. A few choice curse words of her own tumbled through her mind, but she didn’t have the energy to voice them.
“Khyrhis Tivahr,” Mitkanos said quietly. “I saw him come down your rampway on my security screen.”
Farra shot a question at him in Zafharish.
“I do not know,” he answered in Standard. “Captain Elliot. It appears now perhaps we have been too forward in our talk. But there was no indication from him,” and he looked back at Farra, “that you did not know who he was. He identified himself properly many times when your ship made contact with the station. I was in ops. I heard him myself.”
All the conversation she’d listened to on her bridge came back to her. She understood little of it. Only basic words like dock and schedule. And the names: Razalka. Vanushavor. Tivahr.
She shook her head. “You heard him in Zafharish.” She gave him a weak smile. “Other than vad, nav, and dharjas taf, viek, I don’t understand very much of it.” Except for yav cheron, a small voice reminded her. She pushed it away.
Farra asked something else.
“No,” Mitkanos said. “He did not put her under any security restrictions.”
Trilby frowned, not comprehending his answer.
“My niece said that perhaps he felt he had to protect his identity from you, because you are Conclave. But you would have been confined to your ship then. Not permitted access to this station. You would have a Level Three, or more, status. He said to me Level One. And yes,” he nodded to Farra, apparently anticipating her question, “I clarified. I have not been Stegzarda Chief of Security for three years and not know this.”
He sat back, folded his arms across his broad chest. “Tivahr was very clear when he spoke to me on the comm. ‘Level One,’ he said, for Dasja Captain Elliot.”
“Then is not a problem, Uncle.” Farra lifted her cup, drained the last of her tea. “Is nothing more than oversight. Or perhaps Captain Tivahr did not want Captain Elliot to be afraid of him.”
“He would not be so considerate of her feelings, no,” Mitkanos disagreed. “He lives for fear. More likely he knew that was the easiest way to get her to cooperate with his plans. He is a master at that, manipulating people.
“But regardless,” he said, standing, “what he has given you is an interesting tale to tell, no?” He took her empty cup, and Farra’s. “Come. My niece and I will walk you back to your ship, and we will talk of more pleasant things. For Tivahr is our problem now. Not yours. Your trouble now is over.”
But it wasn’t more pleasant things that ran through Trilby’s mind as she wrapped herself in her purple quilt and propped herself up against the headboard of her bed.
It was everything she’d learned about Tivahr the Terrible. Emperor and sometimes executioner on his own ship. And a master manipulator of people.
She glanced at the chair in the corner, secured to the floor with the decklock. It would feel real good to unclip it and throw it at something right now. Like the bulkhead.
Or the Captain Tivahr. If he dared walk through her cabin door again.
It was with that pleasant thought that she fell into an exhausted sleep, purple quilt wrapped tightly around her, catching her tears of anger as they fell.
10
The words on the screen in front of him blurred. Rhis reached for his tea and, as his fingers closed around the mug, realized it was cold. He’d been sifting through the data Gurdan supplied him for, what, two hours now?
He sought the time stamp on his screen. Two and a half.
Bloody hell.
Since all the changes he’d quietly made to the Venture’s systems, he’d had little or no sleep. He felt it now, as his side began to ache again. Even he had his limits. Forty-eight hours with only two hours’ sleep was one of them.
“Run a comparative on my analysis. I need about four hours downtime. Have it ready for me by then.”
Gurdan looked up from his own screen and tabbed at the touchpads on his right. He was quiet for a moment, his gaze moving rapidly over the data now streaming down his screen. “We may need more than four hours, Captain.”
Rhis stood, leaned his fists on the edge of the briefing-room table, and glared at the thin man. Gods, he was tired. And he needed to sink against something Trilby-soft and Trilby-scented.
“Four hours,” he repeated. “Do I make myself clear?”
Gurdan’s mouth tightened but he nodded. “We will do what we can in four hours.”
“No. You will supply me with a thorough and complete analysis in four hours. Or I will find someone to replace you who can.”
His boots echoed sharply as he strode down the corridor. The situation with the ’Sko had worsened considerably, factions merging with factions, even in the few days he’d
been absent. No, it was more than a few days. He’d spent five on the Venture. Two in ’Sko captivity. And two and a half weeks before that, slowly infiltrating the Ycsko system with his team. He’d been away from the Razalka for almost a month.
He’d been away from Trilby Elliot for a little less than three hours. He wasn’t sure which discomforted him more.
Trilby, he decided as he hit the call button for the lift. But Gurdan’s lackadaisical response to his analysis request ranked right up there on the discomfort list as well.
Hell and damnation! Was he the only one able to elicit results in the Fleet?
Gurdan’s team was good, but his team on the Razalka was better. Had to be. Or they wouldn’t be there.
He sagged tiredly against the metal wall of the lift, thankful no one else occupied it. His thoughts drifted back to the ’Sko. The information he’d stolen from Szed. The movement in the Niyil parties and the Beffa cartels. The tie-ins with Rinnaker, and now, with the attack on the Venture, with GGA. He had an uneasy suspicion Garold Grantforth might be involved. The man was power-hungry. But his political success and well-known image made it difficult to see how he’d worked it, if he had. Or how Rhis could prove it.
Jagan Grantforth, or someone in his office, as Trilby suggested, could well be the key. He’d have to look further into that, follow the same kind of trail in Rinnaker as well. The Empire wasn’t in the position to openly criticize the Conclave. Not yet.
That was something else he had to attend to.
That and …
His mind fogged. He had the disturbing sensation he’d forgotten something. Something important. But that was ridiculous. He never forgot anything important. He tolerated lapses in himself even less than he tolerated them in his crew.
The lift slowed smoothly, easing to a stop at the dock level. It was good to be back with Imperial technology again. He remembered some of the public lifts in Syar and Bagrond. Shuddering things, swaying and jerking. Outdated. Antiquated. Quite useless. Typical Conclave technology.
He stopped just short of the Venture’s rampway. The aging freighter’s rounded bow was visible through the viewport. In the dim light on her bridge, he saw a small movement, recognized Dezi’s tarnished form.
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