The Rifter's Covenant

by Sherwood Smith

  Giffus Snurkel. Morrighon had disposed of him shortly after this scene occurred; this vid was another record his secretary had failed to ferret out. Well, Morrighon was not a noderunner. That new little Bori woman, Tatriman, was already doing better.

  Anaris turned his focus back to the screen. One of the two men, Anaris dismissed from his attention as mere Rifter trash. The other he watched closely as, with humorous flair, he fought sword-to-sword with a guard amid a lake of shattered crockery. Despite the worn, ill-fitting flightsuit and a thin strip of velvet masking his eyes, to anyone who knew him, Brandon Arkad was immediately recognizable. The woman was tall and black-haired. She also wore black; except for the long tail of hair, she could easily be mistaken for a Tarkan guard. Anaris watched as she fought with skill, despite the tight jaw and narrowed eyes of pain.

  “I obtained this from one of the Syndics on Rifthaven. It occurred before the Panarchists captured them,” Eusabian went on. “Note this.”

  He keyed a control and the enhancer showed a squat metal box low beside an elaborate desk in a side office. The audio also enhanced, damping out the voices, and Anaris heard the insectlike whine of a mind-blur.

  The sound teased at the backs of Anaris’s eyes, sending a judder of images across his vision: heraldic banners from the Throne Room in the Mandala. None of the images were of Dol’jhar—had this confrontation polarized them so, that he was here the Panarchist and his father the Dol’jharian? He forced the thought away along with the images. He would subsume both.

  A glance showed his father absorbed in the image; another glance at his chrono and despair lanced through him. Only fifteen seconds now.

  “I had Lysanter correlate, as closely as possible, the intensity level of the mind-blur device there with ours here, and he used that setting in one of his interviews with the present tempath,” Eusabian went on. “Who did not react as strongly as you see this woman reacting.”

  Anaris nodded. “Your assumption being the more sensitive the tempath, the stronger the reaction to the mind-blurs?”

  “Correct,” Eusabian said, and he struck the console with his flat hand, shutting it down.

  Five. Anaris braced himself, knowing it to be futile if the Negus didn’t work.

  “There is more evidence to be gleaned from other sources, but all point to this conclusion: the woman is very strong, exhibits great courage and even greater intelligence. She is also by birth one of us.”

  He means she’s Chorei. What does he . . .

  Zero.

  Morrighon ran toward the Chamber of Kronos, panting from the unusual exertion. Barrodagh had been too quick for him. His last hope had been to warn Norio about what had happened to Li Pung and its effects on the station, in hopes of scaring him into refusing to participate. But Norio was already on his way to the Chamber, perhaps already there. And Barrodagh had cleverly put all the little three-wheeled transports into priority use, forcing him to proceed on foot.

  Unable therefore to use the passages devoted to wheeled traffic, he dodged past bulky Dol’jharian ordinaries and scurrying Bori, none of whom possessed his urgency. The Bori at least tried to get out of the way.

  Morrighon felt the neuro-jac rasping against his thin shirt, under his coat. There was nothing else he could do except disable or kill the tempath, and hope the Tarkans would kill him on the spot. Not for the first time, he wished he had a poison tooth, but the thought of such a thing in his mouth was unbearable. It was a weakness he now bitterly regretted.

  The security around the Chamber slowed him, and when he burst into the Chamber of Kronos, the tempath was already meditating in front of the Throne, as everyone called it, where the Heart of Kronos lay. Morrighon spared barely a glance for the silver sphere that had already killed two of the sallow tempath’s kind, or for the awesome, dizzying dimensions of the Chamber.

  A transparent dyplast barrier blocked his progress. It was intended to protect observers from any dangerous manifestations; now it was protecting the tempath from him. Lysanter and some techs gathered around his console. Nearby stood Barrodagh, and, to Morrighon’s dismay, two huge Tarkans at either end, blocking access to the room beyond. The neuro-jac wouldn’t fire through dyplast that thick. Would disabling the consoles with it be enough?

  Barrodagh sneered at him, his gloating almost palpable. Morrighon’s hand strayed to his chest.

  A sharp cry arrested him and yanked his gaze to the tempath, who abruptly collapsed and lay sobbing in a fetal position. Terror and despair flooded Morrighon. He had failed. But why did Barrodagh look so sick as well?

  He followed as Lysanter and Barrodagh hurried around the barrier. Then relief flooded him as the scientist said, “There were no readings. I think the dosage must have fallen too low on his euphorics. He’s merely having an anxiety attack.”

  Hurriedly Morrighon left the Chamber. He was going to either throw up or pass out from relief, and he wanted to be alone.

  In Eusabian’s chamber, Anaris was counting mentally after Eusabian’s swipe at the Chorei. He braced, though he knew it was useless.

  But a minute turned into two, then five, then ten, and nothing happened. He became aware of an ache in his jaw; a muscle in his back spasmed painfully. But the mutterings of the Negus under his conscious mind did not change, neither increasing nor decreasing. Nothing.

  He relaxed fractionally as Eusabian finished knotting his dirazh’u and sat back. “We have been taught that our ancestors strengthened the bloodlines of our ruling families by expunging any hint of Chorei aberrations, which were regarded as weakness and abomination. Do you see it this way?”

  His distraction ebbing with every second that passed, Anaris could think again. He picked his words carefully. “It can be seen that way,” he said. “Our ancestors were certainly strong, or we would not have held Jhar D’ocha as long as we have.”

  Eusabian jerked his head down in agreement and laced the dirazh’u in a complicated knot. A musty scent assailed Anaris, and he seemed to hear a dry slithering from the edges of the room.

  “It can also be seen as weakness,” his father continued. “They could not control the Chorei, so they annihilated them. Yet the aberrations still crop up, perhaps more so in the general population. I have found out the identity of this tempath Barrodagh is bringing. She was originally bonded as a small child to one of the quarries on mellis-Chyr’vethu, where it appears her tempathy was useful in controlling the digging saurians.”

  One of the planets he lost to Panarchist Quarantine after Acheront, Anaris thought.

  “This pragmatism toward the Chorei aberrations is strictly forbidden,” Eusabian continued. “But it is apparent menials and ordinaries pay lip service to established tradition while using these people to make their tasks the lighter.”

  The image of a priestess from his studies on Arthelion filled Anaris’s vision: bare-breasted but in no wise vulnerable, her dark eyes wise, she held a white serpent in one hand, a black one in the other. Forcing his eyes to track his father’s gaze despite the vivid hallucination, Anaris said, “We are ignoring the established tradition as well when we use tempaths here.”

  “Exactly,” Eusabian said without any rancor.

  Anaris considered. In a limited way, Eusabian’s stay on Arthelion seemed to have set him free of the shackles of Dol’jharian tradition, just as Anaris’s fosterage had for him.

  “If we are to continue to use this station as a power base, it would be foolish to depend on these scourings to control it. The Dol’jharian tempath has been tainted by the years among the Panarchists. If indeed it is she, and I suspect it will be, who brings the station to full potential, she will then have outlived her usefulness. Except in one regard.”

  Tainted. That is aimed at me. The priestess offered Anaris the snakes, black and white, horn and ivory, iron and marble. Which would he choose?

  Anaris heard himself ask, “What is that?”

  Eusabian looped the dirazh’u, then pulled it straight so it hummed, recalling fo
r a brief moment the mind-blur. “We are approaching the next Karusch-na Rahali. It is time to expand our house. You will see to it that she gives us an heir.”

  TEN

  TELVARNA

  “Sanctus Hicura,” Marim breathed. “I think that chatzer is alive!”

  Jaim’s hindbrain yammered at him to flee, but he could not take his eyes away from the weird patchwork of curves and tubes and flaring cones molded in a reddish material that looked like animated vatbeef.

  “See? That cone there? It stretched out!”

  “It’s like Rifthaven seen on Negus,” Montrose muttered. “I have to admit I do not like the look of this at all.”

  “Here comes one of their corvettes—oh!” Marim squawked as the ship shot out of the open end of one of the cones, its radiants flaring as it came about and took up position nearby.

  Vi’ya watched the station with eyes narrowed to lambent pinpoints of reflecting light.

  Ivard, too, was silent, his eyes huge.

  “One more practice,” Vi’ya said. “Now. Fast. As far as you can from me.”

  “Piss!” Marim muttered. “I hate this. Feels like you’re sticking a finger into my brain.” Her voice disappeared as she ran out the hatch.

  Jaim retreated back to the engine room, where he activated his own console so he could watch the station. Vi’ya had damped the big screen on the bridge to block out the light of the accretion disc around the singularity.

  Jaim left it all as it really was, squinting against the painful spectrum of light. There is purpose to this, he told himself. I am here to a purpose.

  He felt an inward tug, as if someone had plucked lightly at a nerve in his brain. The sensation came with the feeling that Vi’ya stood behind his shoulder.

  He shut his eyes and concentrated on an image of her.

  A voice whispered somewhere behind his ear, “I heard you.”

  He shut down his console and returned to the bridge, walking slowly along the familiar corridor. On the Suneater they would not be permitted boswells, Vi’ya had said. Dol’jharians did not use them, and of course they would not allow their servants to use them, either. Vi’ya, the Eya’a, and the Kelly had practiced contacting everyone at different points over the ship.

  The Eya’a were on the bridge now, necks craned back as they gazed unwinkingly at the station against the flare of light beyond.

  “Something wrong?” Jaim asked Vi’ya.

  “It’s as if one of those hyperwaves has been installed in my mind,” she said. “At high volume.”

  Montrose stood nearby, his brows furrowed. “Is there pain?”

  “Some,” she admitted.

  “I can give you some drugs to experiment with later, when it seems safe to do so.”

  Vi’ya’s eyes crescented with sardonic humor. Safety, they all knew, was now a relative term. “First I need to see if I can block it as I do their voices when I don’t want to hear them.”

  “So they hear everything on the station, is that it?” Sedry asked, pointing to the Eya’a.

  “I believe so.” Vi’ya faced Ivard. “Will you be able to control it?”

  Ivard breathed out, and ducked his head in an anxious nod. “I think so. They help me.”

  Montrose said, “Maybe I should give you some drugs.”

  Ivard shook his head. “The Kelly will help me—”

  “Not if threy’re sequestered on the ship. Threir ribbons won’t be anywhere near you.”

  Ivard shook his head. “I will be all right. No drugs. My body just fights them anyway.”

  Montrose pursed his lips. “There is that.”

  Ivard tipped his head back. “This place seems to amplify the connection. Threy are in our cabin, but I can hear threm just as if threy were with us.”

  Montrose said, “Then we are as ready as we ever will be.”

  “Just as well,” Lokri said, looking up from the com. “Communication coming in—”

  Lokri’s console came to life. “Stand by for bay control.”

  “No tractor,” replied Vi’ya sharply.

  “Stand by,” said the voice impatiently. The hum of a tractor pervaded the ship; Vi’ya’s mouth compressed as she powered down.

  Marim shrieked. “It’s trying to eat us!” Another section of the station had opened an orifice and was stretching toward them. A sudden lance of brightness from the corvette nearby dissuaded it. Vi’ya winced, and Ivard’s eyes opened wider.

  They all stared at the waving palp-like protrusions around the bay that seemed to usher them inward as the Telvarna slipped through the e-lock.

  “Hoooo,” Marim sighed. “Why can’t I wake up and find myself hung-over at Flaury’s on Rifthaven?”

  “Cheer up,” Lokri drawled. “Think of all those Rifters loaded with sunbursts and nowhere to spend them.”

  “A brand-new set of victims who don’t know you,” Montrose added.

  “Nullskulls,” Marim snorted, crossing her arms.

  The Eya’a chittered softly.

  Jaim watched Vi’ya’s hands, so strong and sure, clenched on the arms of her pod as the Dol’jharian tractor guided the ship into the bay. As the Telvarna settled down with a gentle thump, Jaim saw her knuckles whiten for a moment, but then she let go.

  “We’re in,” she said.

  Deep in the Suneater, Norio’s console chimed and lit up, revealing Barrodagh’s face. Norio felt a glow of satisfaction through the drug-induced muzziness; even Barrodagh was afraid of him. And he was getting stronger. Soon he would be able to reach through the screen and grab Barrodagh’s emotions, or those of any other person on the station.

  “Vi’ya is arriving now. Prepare yourself as we discussed.” Barrodagh’s image winked out abruptly.

  Norio’s hands shook. He dropped one of the capsules and had to fumble for it. He had very carefully calculated this dose. It would take him to the edge of safety.

  Barrodagh would say he had meant “Medicate yourself to dampen the effect of meeting another tempath.” There would be no record of his promise to disable the mind-blurs between here and the Chamber, nor any way to trace that to Barrodagh.

  But Norio didn’t care: he had no intention of meeting another tempath on the Suneater, especially not Vi’ya. He only wanted to see her if she was delivered to him as a prisoner.

  There was virtually no one about as he hurried toward the Chamber. For some reason the Dol’jharians had decided to make a big deal of Vi’ya’s arrival, probably because she was both a Dol’jharian and a tempath coming to activate the Suneater.

  The moth-beats of the station’s aura sounded like distant drums in his ears, growing as he approached the Chamber, but they couldn’t reach him. He felt simultaneously open and armored.

  The Tarkans on guard outside the Chamber stiffened as he approached. He’d learned a lot from the Dol’jharian woman he’d killed; even though he couldn’t speak Dol’jharian, just pitching his voice in a peculiar singsong pattern was usually sufficient. Maybe that was what they thought the Chorei had spoken like.

  He heard Lysanter’s voice inside the Chamber, no doubt preparing for the next experiment. There would be no guards at either end of the dyplast shield, of course, for he had no escort this time.

  Norio smiled at the Tarkans, his lips drawn back from his teeth. “I am of the Chorei, here to commune with the Suneater. Lysanter awaits me.” He sniggered silently; it sounded so funny in Uni, like a bad serial chip. But they heard only “Chorei,” and grasping gratefully at Lysanter’s name—no doubt the only other recognizable word—they motioned him through.

  Borne on a wave of euphoria, he rushed down the last corridor toward the Chamber, where Morrighon stood with Lysanter.

  Morrighon had decided the only way he could stay alive would be to know Norio’s whereabouts at all times. Tatriman had given him the links he needed; it was actually fairly simple. Since no one willingly visited Norio, most of the activity of his door was likely to be him, coming or going. That cut down on the surveillan
ce time, and Tatriman’s tap on the imager across from Norio’s quarters was all he needed. She’d also rigged tinglers for Anaris and him to use, with a simple pulse code from Lost Earth. “That low a bandwidth, they’ll never see it in the general noise,” she’d said.

  But that wouldn’t be good enough if Barrodagh managed to schedule another attempt during the ritual attending the new tempath’s arrival. So Morrighon had come to the Chamber of Kronos with Lysanter just in case.

  “Do you think it’s entirely safe to have two tempaths on the station at the same time?” he asked the Urian specialist.

  “That’s a calculated risk,” he replied. “The Tarkans in the bay have special instructions to deal with her and the two psi-sophonts if anything happens. And Norio has already medicated himself—”

  As if summoned by his name, Norio himself appeared, eyes drug-hazed. the whites showing all around, high-pitched sniggers escaping him.

  Where were the guards? Morrighon spun out, shouting for the Tarkans, knowing it was too late.

  Horrified, he tapped his hip in the agreed-upon code: one long, one short. Norio.

  In the Telvarna, Vi’ya stood at the lock control, waiting until the entire crew was assembled—everyone but the Kelly. Even Lucifur was coming with them. He pressed against her side, his tail twitching.

  “Look at ’em,” Marim muttered, pointing at the little viewscreen above the console. The outside imager showed one edge of a rank of tall black-clad and armed Tarkan guards standing rigidly at attention. “Why are those blits out there?” she squawked. “I thought it was just going to be that slimecrawler Barrodagh.”

  “Either a royal welcome or a quick execution,” Lokri drawled as Marim poked at the exterior imager control. “I see the slug—hey!” she exclaimed as Montrose slapped her hand away.

  “We’re supposed to be their allies,” the big man growled. “They’re probably all watching you goggle that spy-eye around.”

  “But I want to get a blink at that Eusabian,” Marim protested.

  “You won’t,” Jaim said, the only one who sounded calm. “He’s got no interest in a scruffy gang like us. Luckily.” As Marim moved reluctantly away from the imager he added, “The ship’s been discharged. Time to go.”