Then Hreem appeared on the screen, with Norio himself, the two of them locked in passion, heedless of the whimpering Rifter writhing in his restraints close by. The dry arachnid chittering and the dizzying whirl of vertiginous images in the evocation cut off abruptly as Norio cut off the holo.
The psychic pressure of the Suneater muted all affects, especially those of memory. Sometimes, as now, he was glad of it. Hreem’s abandonment of him for that obscene sex toy still rankled. But here he was gaining a real power that he’d never had on the Flower of Lith.
Maybe, now that he had demonstrated his abilities, they would give him someone to play with. He’d never had a Dol’jharian, with their deliciously savage emotions. And their fears! He remembered the big Tarkans accompanying Barrodagh when he’d arrived. He’d queried Lysanter about their anxiety.
“They think of you as one of the Chorei, demonic figures from the past, adepts of great power they wiped out at great cost.”
Numinous fear was the best kind. It made him feel almost godlike. Yes, he would demand a subject after his next attempt.
He pulled his pharmacopoeia out of the bedside drawer where he kept it. Lysanter insisted he reduce the dosage a bit for each experiment, and so far it hadn’t hurt him. In fact, the last time, his efforts had evoked a tenth-percent increase in the station’s output and activity. His mind shied away from the memory of the dizzying strangeness of the Chamber of Kronos and the sphere at its heart. Nor would he recall the shuddering, like a beast in pain, that commenced each time he touched the Heart of Kronos.
But the scientist had said nothing about in-between times. Norio busied himself mixing more capsules from the pure compounds. Oral absorption was smoother than sprayjecting. He noted a slight tremor in one hand and adjusted some quantities slightly; it seemed that the constant exposure to the emanations of the station demanded higher doses over time. No matter, he had more than enough.
ARES
As Ares gradually returned to normal, or as normal as it could be with five times the population prescribed by the relevant Jaspran Unalterable, the Panarch requested the Navy to prepare a summary of the strategic situation, as well as the tactical implications of what was known about the Suneater.
Margot Ng walked with Jeph Koestler into the gallery high above the Situation Room as those officers and civilians invited assembled for the summary’s presentation. The tall captain moved more easily now; his wound was healing well.
The first step was to be a situation report from Gnostor Omilov. He was already at the control rostrum below and in front of the ranks of consoles rising steeply toward where they had entered. Behind him, a thick dyplast window revealed the huge three-dimensional projection of the Thousand Suns hovering over the bustle of activity among the banks of consoles far below. Colored lights and ideograms far more densely annotated its holographic octants and stars than on her first visit after the Battle of Arthelion.
How long ago that seemed! Except when I think of losing you, my love. That pain was yesterday, she thought, suppressing the instinct to rub the outside of her arms. Among all the late arrivals flooding in, all the data flowing in with increasing speed from the DataNet, there was still no word or sign of Metellus Hayashi.
She was going to have to force herself to believe what she had refused to accept—as so very many had been forced. How, she thought desolately, could he be gone and she could not feel it? She had always believed if something happened to him, she would know. Though her rational mind insisted she accept his death, her dream-self still insisted on searching for him. From those dreams she woke with grief ever fresh.
“Naval warfare will never be the same again,” Koestler commented as they seated themselves.
Ng composed herself with a quick breath out. “Regret?”
Koestler gave her a thin, pained smile, almost a grimace. “It’s hard, unlearning a lifetime of lessons.”
Ng nodded. He was referring as much to his change of allegiance as to the real-time communications of their enemy and the new tenno Warrigal had invented to compensate.
Omilov tapped at his console, and the huge projection rotated, bringing the chaos of the Rift foremost in their view.
The hum of conversation ceased as Omilov stood. “His Majesty has directed me to answer your questions about the Suneater, so that you may prepare an effective attack.”
“Not asked. Directed,” Koestler whispered.
By now everyone had figured out Omilov’s role in the Rifters’ escape. No one knew what the Panarch had said to him about it. It was known only that Omilov had been summoned to the Circle—not the Enclave—indicating an official meeting.
The gnostor launched into a preliminary description of the Urian station for the benefit of those who had fallen behind while dealing with the aftermath of the riots. Ng sensed a certain reticence in his answers to questions, and judged it due to his reluctance to furnish any more ammunition to the faction determined to destroy the Suneater. She resolved to do some additional digging into the data herself, and, having already familiarized herself with this information, watched the audience instead.
Most faces were unsurprisingly grim. Uppermost in many minds, no doubt, was the reflection that the man before them had, in effect, sent a powerful team of psychic adepts—mostly Rifters, to make it worse—to the Suneater, not to destroy it, but to attempt to save it. If the Rifters powered up the station, but failed to wrest it from Dol’jharian control or, worse, joined forces with the enemy, no place in the Thousand Suns would be safe.
“We believe that the Dol’jharians have already made several attempts to activate the station by using tempaths. Recently, decoded transmissions indicated the arrival of a tempath known to be particularly strong, and following that, the power of the station has increased at least twice.”
“How much?” someone asked.
“No more than a tenth percent each time.”
“Why do you think the team of Rifters . . . ahh, dispatched . . . from Ares has more of a chance?”
“As you know, they detected the Suneater from here during the first experiment to test their combined sensorium. And they were instrumental in locating it, using a sense of direction that no single adept of any sort has ever evinced.”
A question came from the back. “How do you know they won’t throw in with Eusabian?”
Ng snapped her head around but couldn’t see the speaker. Koestler frowned and murmurs rose from the audience; such a question was bad form, even if everyone was thinking it.
She saw pain in Omilov’s face. “I don’t,” he said simply.
“More to the point,” Koestler spoke from beside Ng, “could you explain why you think they may be able to wrest control from the Dol’jharians?”
The lift to Omilov’s heavy brows betrayed gratitude. “First, their psychic potential, though that is largely a matter of conjecture. Second, we know that the Dol’jharians have obtained a large number of cims from raided naval depositories, and doubtless from elsewhere as well. It is my opinion that they are building compute arrays with them.”
“What do you base that conclusion on?” someone else asked.
“Our inspection of the disabled hyperrelay brought in by Captain MacKenzie and his Rifter associates.”
Ng smiled. Omilov still had some fight left in him; that was a bit of a zinger, reminding the audience that not all Rifters were with the enemy. Some had decided to throw in with the Panarchy.
The Navy’s largely laissez-faire attitude in past times had no doubt helped. Archetype and Ritual and Moral Sabotage were helping craft new symbology and agitprop to bring more Rifters over; data indicated it was helping to a minor degree. She suspected that secret negotiations with Rifthaven would commence shortly, if they hadn’t already.
“The hyperrelay was connected to the destroyer Shiavona’s power systems via a set of very clever quantum interfaces. We still don’t fully understand them, but we do know one thing: it must have required tremendous compute p
ower to develop them. There is no reason to suppose that research has lagged to any degree. To the contrary, the minor successes the Dol’jharians have had appear to indicate the opposite.”
“What does this have to do with the Rifters’ adepts’ chances?” Mandros Nukiel asked from the other side of the room.
Omilov smiled. “We refer to them as a polymental unity, or just the Unity. One of the non-psychic members of the crew is the former commander Sedry Thetris. Her noderunning talents, and those of Captain Vi’ya, were responsible for the final downfall of the cabal and the revelation of al-Gessinav’s treason. The Telvarna’s databanks have all the information I was able to gather on the nature of Urian systems, the quantum interfaces, and the likely computer configurations used to control them.”
It will be data warfare, then, as well as conventional, Ng thought; she saw thoughtful glances sent at the display indicating she was not the only one.
So she spoke up. “Gostnor Omilov, what are the chances we might interface to those systems via the hyperwave we possess?”
Omilov’s brows lifted again. “That is indeed a possibility, if the team is able to implement some of my suggestions. I have already given the monitors the patterns to look for in transmissions. Though the Telvarna is probably not at the Suneater yet.”
Another murmur from the audience.
“Suggestions?” Koestler shot a glance at Ng. “How much help did he give them?” He shook his head. “I’d give almost anything to know what His Majesty said to him.”
Ng was well enough acquainted with Omilov to suspect that no one would ever hear that from him. Nor from Brandon Arkad. “Just as well we don’t know, Admiral,” she replied. “We’ve got enough to worry about without mixing in politics.”
He laughed softly. “Touché, Admiral, ” He touched his bad arm. “Perhaps when this is healed, I can return the favor in Phoenix-Gamma-Three.”
She returned his smile. The bay given over for general exercise was the appropriate place for their rivalry, whatever the Panarch decided. They were still contending for command of the Suneater attack, but after the riots and his subsequent reactions, whatever was decided, she knew that she could trust him to the death in battle.
EIGHT
TELVARNA
Before emergence, Vi’ya called a strategy meeting in the rec room. Lokri, with nothing to do, went early. He found Sedry Thetris already there, seated at the console, her face intent.
While not so long ago her Highdweller accent and navy-trained habits would have irritated Lokri, he discovered that he liked the square, unflappable woman, although she didn’t talk much. Maybe because she didn’t talk much.
Like Lokri, she had spent nearly all of the first week of skip sleeping. She acknowledged orders with a quiet nod, and tended to listen to the banter from the rest of the crew with no change of expression. The only crew member she seemed relaxed around was Montrose.
She hadn’t even reacted when the Eya’a walked into the rec room while she was eating, or when Lucifur occasionally decided to sample her as a bunk partner. He felt a twinge of—something—when he realized she reminded him of Greywing, Ivard’s sister, who had died on the Mandala run. They didn’t look anything alike, but Sedry was quiet like Greywing had been. And observed in the same way. He knew she was one hell of a noderunner; during the long flight in skip he had found a chance to talk to her alone and to thank her for what must have been long, hard hours of work.
She had studied him with those kindly blue-gray eyes, her best feature. “It was important to find the truth,” she’d said finally.
“How are you coming with those parasites Vi’ya requested?” he asked as he crossed the room to get a cup of caf.
“I’ve been able to set up an entire ecology.” Her eyes widened with enthusiasm, although her speech did not alter from its usual flattened cadence. “The Telvarna’s compute array is no toy. We’ve got the equivalent of a modern destroyer’s capacity here, even if it isn’t as well integrated into the ship.” She ran one hand lightly over the tabs. Lokri was irresistibly reminded of Montrose making music on his synth: it was the same evocative, almost possessive caress. “And I have everything the technical banks on Ares had.”
She smiled, which did not entirely relax the tension in her brow and around her mouth. Lokri sensed she had difficulty squaring her data theft while still commissioned with her oath. All he knew was that Eloatri was behind it, somehow.
Well, that’s what you got when you synched up with the Magisterium, he thought. He remembered Desrien, and the gambling hell he thought he’d found under New Glastonbury, where human souls were the gaming tokens. Lokri found himself grateful that the High Phanist hadn’t taken an interest in his murder case; she dealt in a currency he couldn’t enumerate.
Sedry turned back to the console, sipping at aromatic Alygrian tea. “Even if my assumptions about the topology of their arrays are only close,” she continued, tapping at the keys, “I’ll own that system eventually.”
“If you can get into it.”
She flashed a grin over her shoulder at him. “Where there’s the will, there’s a port.”
She returned to her work; again the rapid, neat movement of her fingers reminded Lokri of a musician. Until he had seen her at a console, sculpting dataspace with artistic fervor, he’d not been quite able to believe the duets of laughter and music heard from Montrose’s quarters once or twice since their departure from Ares.
A nudge at his shoulder. Marim glanced at the rapid flow of data across Sedry’s screen, and grimaced. “What’re you narking at?” she said. “You can’t follow that bilge any better than I can.”
“Don’t need to. We’ve got Sedry and Vi’ya.” He studied her. “You come in quieter than I’ve ever heard,” Lokri said. “Are you worried or something?”
“Well, who wouldn’t be? I still say we should be halfway to the Fringes right now.” She flounced into a seat and drummed her fingers restlessly.
Lokri’s lips parted, but whatever his reply would have been was cut off by the arrival of the rest of the crew. Marim wrinkled her nose at the burned spice and plastic stink of the Kelly. They were supposed to be so good at controlling scents—why couldn’t they smell like flowers or something?
She watched as Ivard settled in among the Kelly at a table they’d modified for themselves. She still couldn’t figure how he’d gone and changed himself so much. With his browned skin, the changes in his face, and the muscle tone in the rest of his body, he was actually pretty nacky now. Even his hair had changed—it was a deep, pure red instead of ugly orange.
Ivard signed and honked something at the Kelly, who blatted a mellow greeting at Jaim and Montrose. Sedry shut down her console with a swipe of her hand and sat down next to Montrose.
Vi’ya entered last. Marim was relieved that she was alone, no little brainburners.
“You’ve all had time to review the data on the Suneater that Sedry DL’d,” Vi’ya said. “But it’s nearly all just conjecture. We have only three solid facts. First, the data shows that the Suneater system is surrounded by an energy sink, the source of its power, coterminous with its skip-radius. No ship larger than a hundred meters in any dimension can enter that field.”
Marim rolled her eyes. That much Omilov had probably given them, which made her wonder what he was getting out of this crazy idea of Vi’ya’s.
“Second, the skip-radius of the system is two light-hours. And third, the Suneater itself is in orbit around the blackhole binary at plus seventeen light-minutes.”
Anyone could do that math. All this had been laid out in the summary Sedry had prepared. “So the Navy can’t touch it,” Marim said. “We already know that, but so what?”
“The Navy can’t touch it with any capital ship,” Sedry said. “But the cims on a battlecruiser can turn out long-range lances practically overnight.”
Marim shook her head. “Why are you bringing the nicks into this? Even if lances can reach it—” She laughed. “
And what if they bounced? We don’t know what that chatzer is made from.” She kicked Lokri’s leg as he tried to interrupt. “No. We don’t need them, do we?” She looked at Vi’ya, her guts dropping to her toes. The was something Vi’ya wasn’t telling them! “This Unity thing you’ve got. That’s what you’re counting on. Right?”
“Right, Marim,” Lokri said sarcastically. “And the nicks will be only too pleased to leave us in command of a weapon that half-wrecked a galaxy.”
“Only by calling in the Panarchists once we have wrested control can we hope to survive,” Vi’ya said calmly. “Otherwise they will throw asteroids at the Suneater until it is destroyed.”
“And we may need their help,” said Jaim, exchanging glances with Vi’ya.
“That’s crazy!” Marim couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “And how would they know when to come? That damn system’s a hell of radiation from the accretion disc. How are you going to punch a signal through that?”
Vi’ya’s black gaze was ice-cold and direct. “The Panarchists have a hyperwave. We will use the station’s to alert them when the time comes.”
Marim caught her breath, anger flaring when she saw that no one else seemed surprised. “Was I the only one who didn’t know?” she demanded, glaring at Vi’ya.
“I didn’t,” Lokri said wryly.
“You didn’t need to know,” said Vi’ya. “Would you have cared to bear that burden, watching your words at every moment during your recreations?”
You could have asked, Marim wanted to say, but she knew she’d sound like a rat Ivard’s age—or worse. The fact that Ivard had known, while wandering all over the station, infuriated her. “You didn’t think I could keep my mouth shut,” she said slowly.
Vi’ya retorted in that deadpan Dol’jharian way of hers, “I did not want you to have to think about it. The knowledge would not have helped in your part of our plans.”
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