Exile's Throne

by Rhonda Mason

  “People are desperate,” Ardin said.

  “We were desperate for years before the occupation was even agreed upon. Now that the Sovereign Planets have finally been infected, we’re ready to become terrorists?”

  “Don’t get fired up at me: I never said I supported those extremists.” He moved closer, but still didn’t sit. “I came here to write a joint statement condemning this sentiment, which we’ll discuss during the press conference I called for eight.”

  The Council of Seven didn’t meet until ten today, which meant she had packed her morning schedule full with meetings. Isonde was due to meet with Raorin in an hour, then with Commander Parrel, Malkor’s former superior officer, directly afterward. She needed intel on Vega, and Parrel would be her source, since he did claim to be collecting evidence of Vega’s activities, with the long-term goal of bringing her down. If she could reschedule with Raorin, then…

  “That’s the scheming look I know so well.” Ardin’s words lacked bite. There might have even been a hint of admiration in his tone.

  “Ardin…”

  He shook his head. The apology she wanted to offer, for betraying Malkor, betraying him, by condemning Malkor as a traitor in order to solidify her own political future, hung unspoken in the air. He shook his head again, rejecting it.

  “I can’t do this right now, Isonde.” But he did pull out the second chair and sit at her table. “Let’s get this statement hammered out.”

  She gave him a smile. Maybe things were beginning to thaw. “I’m also expecting to hear from Malkor. Vega didn’t get herself invited to council proceedings by chance. I need to know every piece of Dolan’s data that they turned over to her in exchange for Malkor’s release.”

  “Agreed. I know they had a plan to sabotage it somehow, but I fear it didn’t go as planned. If Vega can use the Influencer to control members of the council…” He didn’t have to elaborate on how worthless their votes would be in that case.

  4

  THE YARI

  Malkor finished his dinner and then took his plate to the reclamator. The conversation had definitely lost momentum after Vayne and Kayla’s abrupt departure. It wasn’t that he expected Vayne to act like a normal, well-adjusted person who hadn’t been a tortured POW for five years. Any weirdness on his part could be excused, probably for the rest of his life. But Malkor had assumed Kayla would act as she always had, and not fall into Vayne’s mode of behavior.

  Don’t be an asshole, he told himself. She’d been back with her brother for all of one day. Things would even out.

  “It’s time for me to go to bed, according to Yari ship time,” Tia’tan announced.

  “I want to check on Larsa’s progress first.” Noar’s mind had clearly turned back to the problem of the hyperstream drive.

  Malkor looked at Hekkar, who shrugged. A bit early to sleep according to the schedule they had adopted on the Lorius. Might as well check in with Rigger to get the status on their mobile comms network, and then he’d like to do a little reconnoitering.

  He selected a bullpup from the rack by the door, as did Hekkar. Ida might consider these levels secure, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. Tia’tan and Noar took bullpups as well. The engine room sat many levels below the secure levels.

  After familiarizing himself with the controls, Malkor caught up with Tia’tan in the corridor.

  “I’ll walk with you down to your level,” Tia’tan said. “I’m sure you can find it, but I could use a little exercise before bed.” Noar headed off in another direction, and the three of them continued to the maglift farther down the corridor. Malkor reached out and rasped his fingers against the slightly gritty molychromium surface. Everything about the Yari was so alien to him. There were the complink systems, programmed entirely in Ordochian. His translation implant was useless in that case. He couldn’t even access the general comms without help, and had to memorize which buttons on the lift corresponded to which level in order to use the thing. He wore the entire ship like an ill-fitting uniform.

  The lift doors opened on the level that held his octet’s quarters. Malkor led the way left out of the lift. He remembered that much at least, written Ordochian be damned.

  As they started down the corridor, movement at the far end caught his eye.

  Rigger? No, the woman wore a black jumpsuit, not the T-shirt, pants, and boots combo that his agents favored. She had her head down, and shoulder-length teal hair screened her face. Another crew member? Larsa? He hadn’t met the engineer yet.

  The woman glanced up at that moment and, catching sight of them, froze. Beside him, Tia’tan did the same.

  “Stepa!” Tia’tan’s shout spurred him to action. He raised his weapon, but before he could brace the bullpup against his shoulder the stepa at es flung out her arm, and a force hit him like a hovercar to the chest, knocking the breath from him. Boot heels squealed across the decking as she forced all three of them backward. Malkor gritted his teeth and strained against the telekinetic hold without success. The bullpup lay trapped against his chest.

  Tia’tan growled. Her fingers formed talons and she clawed free of the invisible force. She stopped dead—just as Malkor slammed into a support brace at a bend in the corridor. Pain exploded, white hot, in his back.

  Frutting psionics.

  Tia’tan slashed her hand downward in a knife strike and the pressure vanished. He fell to his knees, gasping out a cough.

  “You guys okay?” Tia’tan called. The stepa woman was already out of sight, having sprinted back the way she’d come. Tia’tan was up on her toes and about to follow.

  He choked out a “yes,” as did Hekkar, and Tia’tan took off after the woman. Malkor felt like the greenest recruit, being caught unprepared on a ship with known hostiles. Secure, my ass. He staggered to his feet, wincing at the pain in his spine and shoulders. Hekkar, still upright, had fared better than he had.

  “Grab Trinan and Vid and go secure the engine room. And tell Rigger to get our damn mobile comms network up.”

  “On it.”

  Malkor readied his bullpup and ran after Tia’tan. He’d be damned if he was going to be taken by surprise again. Tia’tan must have alerted someone telepathically because the ship’s klaxon blared to life and Ida barked orders over the comms system.

  He caught up with Tia’tan after a series of turns in the corridor, but only because she had stopped in the center of an intersection. The corridors branched off in three directions.

  ::I’m heading left.:: Tia’tan’s voice sounded in his mind. Malkor motioned silently to the right, and they took off in opposite directions.

  His corridor quickly dead-ended at a lift, which wasn’t in operation—he’d chosen wrong. He doubled back at a sprint and took the third choice, but after a few hundred meters it became clear that if she had gone this way, he’d lost her. No footfalls sounded ahead of him when he slowed, nothing to indicate her presence.

  ::Anything?::

  “Nothing down either way,” he called as he headed back to the intersection. What the frutt? How had she disappeared so quickly? He met up with Tia’tan, both breathing hard. She looked as frustrated as he felt.

  Malkor scanned the ceiling. “Tell me we have security cams on this deck.”

  “On these levels, yes, because they’re officers’ quarters, but not on all of them. The cams hadn’t been installed on lower-priority decks before launch, and the units were lost when that cargo hold got ripped out of the ship.” She uttered a curse in Ordochian. “Let’s get to the control room, I’ll find the vid footage myself if I have to.”

  Tia’tan started toward the closest lift at a jogging pace, clearly unwilling to waste time by walking.

  I like this woman. He caught up, adrenaline still pumping through him. He wanted an update from his team, and he needed confirmation that Kayla was okay. Damn ship and its damn Ordochian comms system. He must have muttered some of his thoughts out loud because Tia’tan shot him a glance.

  “Kayla’s sa
fe, no stepa were spotted on our level. She’s guarding Corinth’s cabin.”

  His mobile comm chirped. Finally.

  “We’re up, boss,” was Rigger’s message.

  “Good. I’m swinging by your room, then we’re going to the control room.”

  He opened a group channel to the octet. “No one travels solo. Plasma weapons activated at all times—new protocol going forward.”

  * * *

  The control room was massive. Considering the size and complexity of the ship, Malkor supposed it was to scale. It seemed like every surface was covered in complinks, consoles, and indicator lights. An immense vidscreen covered the entire front wall. Several persons tall and wider than back-to-back hovercars, it made for an amazing view of the Mine Field. Ida sat in what had to be the captain’s chair, Ariel at one console and Tanet—the ship’s remaining physicist—at another.

  Malkor was way too keyed up to sit, and judging by Tia’tan’s ready stance, she felt the same.

  The vidscreen image segmented and the Mine Field disappeared, replaced by multiple security feeds. Ariel queued up the lift they’d entered Malkor’s cabin level at and reversed the time until they came into view, walking backward toward it.

  “There,” Tia’tan said. “Start it.”

  On screen, they walked out of sight again.

  “Coverage being minimal.” Ariel switched views. “ Yari being not completed, leaving little time for these things.” There was no footage of the actual encounter. Least secure “secured” level ever. Ariel hunted until she came up with a view of the four-way intersection. The stepa at es woman flew through at a sprint, hooking a left before disappearing. Ariel switched feeds again.

  At last she found an angle that showed Tia’tan running down the same corridor, but the stepa woman was nowhere to be found.

  “Reverse it,” Malkor said. “Two minutes prior to Tia’tan’s appearance.”

  Still nothing. How in the void had the woman vanished? “Play it again.”

  A second play-thru produced the same results. A third, though… “Wait,” he said, pointing to the uppermost edge of the screen. “There. Is that a boot?”

  Ariel reversed and retimed the sequence. Sure enough, a boot and part of a lower leg, bent at the knee and kneeling on the floor, appeared on screen for a few seconds. Ariel slowed it down, and the leg seemed to crawl into the wall of the corridor. “What’s there?” he asked, but Ariel was ahead of him, calling up various ship schematics. Floor plans, elevations, assembly drawings, component drawings. Fire suppression systems, heating, cooling and ventilation systems…

  Ariel called out the ventilation schematic and dismissed the others, overlaying its diagrams on the structural drawings. Sure enough, a ventilation shaft ended in a grate at the stepa at es’s egress point.

  Ida frowned. “That is most wrong. That level being secure.”

  “Obviously not,” he answered. Great, at least one insane person knew her way around the ship better than the captain did. This just got better and better. They scanned previous footage to see her enter from the same location.

  “They to grow bolder,”Benny said, standing beside the captain’s chair. He was stiff with controlled agitation. “Encroaching onto our levels.” His hands were clasped behind his back, one hand grabbing one wrist, while the other hand balled tightly.

  Ariel froze the feed when the stepa at es stood and began to stride down the hall.

  Benny sucked in a gasp. “It is not to be.”

  The look he exchanged with Ida sent Malkor’s instincts to even higher alert. “Who is it?”

  The captain called on Ariel to zoom in. On the vidscreen, the woman’s face came into focus. Her teal hair hung loose to her shoulders. A bit ragged, but not completely unkempt, like the others they’d come across. Her fingernails were neither ripped off nor bitten to the quick, and her expression held wary intelligence, not the glaze of madness. She looked nothing like the pitiful creature he’d seen on the footage of the stepa who had blown up Tia’tan’s ship a few weeks ago. What did that make her: less or more dangerous?

  Ida muttered something too low for his translator to catch. “Captain…” Benny seemed to be waiting for her to confirm something.

  It took a minute—two—but she finally nodded. “That is Science Officer Fengrathen.”

  Malkor caught the unease in her tone. “Is that significant? More so than knowing another stepa is still alive?”

  “She isn’t stepa. Not officially.” Ida’s hand flashed over the console beside her command chair. Another window opened on the vidscreen and the personnel file for one Major Cicara Fengrathen loaded. Tia’tan translated the pertinent details to him silently. Her military ID showed a face full of determination, and several commendations were listed in her service record. Beneath her name, her status was listed as Cryogenic Hibernation.

  After her status, stamped in bold red letters, were the words REANIMATION NOT ADVISED. MOST PROBABLE RESULT: DEATH. SEQUENCE LOCKED BY CAPTAIN JANUS.

  Apparently Major Fengrathen should be sealed in cryopod F-621, in cryochamber 13-2.

  The image of Fengrathen skulking around put lie to that. “Let me guess,” Malkor said. “All of the stasis chambers are ‘secured.’”

  Ariel called up an image of what he assumed was the interior of chamber 13-2. All was as still as a graveyard. Row after row of luminous silver pods filled the screen. Now that he knew these ancient cryopods were never meant for long-term use, the chamber looked more like a morgue than a sanctuary from time.

  Everyone stared at the screen, breathless, waiting for something—anything—to happen.

  Nothing. They could as easily be watching a still image as a moving vid.

  “This is where Fengrathen should be?” It was hard to believe she’d be anywhere else.

  Ariel brought up what seemed to be logs. “All three hundred pods in the chamber are sealed and active, captain.”

  “Wait,” Kayla said, pointing to the lower right of the image. “Is that—are those children in the pods?”

  Three of them, it looked like. Damn, they weren’t too much older than Corinth.

  “Is wartime,” Ida said with a shrug. “Anyone can serve.”

  “Is this feed current?” Tia’tan asked.

  When Ariel checked the data and scowled, Malkor knew the answer before she spoke.

  “It’s from”—her gaze cut to Ida for a nanosecond—“months ago.”

  What the frutt is going on here?

  * * *

  An hour after Fengrathen’s appearance, Kayla and Vayne remained where they had been since the klaxon first went off: in the corridor on the officers’ quarters level, guarding Corinth’s cabin.

  Thank the stars he’s been sleeping, Kayla thought. She’d rushed to find Corinth when the alarm sounded, Vayne at her side. Corinth had taken a rare break from the engine rebuild to sleep, for which she was grateful. The HVAC vents in each of the cabins were too small for a person to travel through.

  That didn’t mean the level was secure, though. Not by a long shot. One of the ventilation grates not far from Corinth’s cabin was a definite problem. Kayla would have judged it as too small, also, and it looked to be in perfect condition. A close inspection showed that some of the bolts had been removed. If she gripped the grate and manipulated it just so, the cover would rotate upward to allow access.

  Not for long.

  The lift doors opened at the far end and Rigger stepped out, carrying two laser welding torches. Kayla and Vayne went to meet her.

  “We’re welding the ventilation grates in place, even the ones that haven’t been breached yet,” Rigger said, handing a torch to each of them. Vayne took his silently, unable to understand the Imperial Common and unwilling to ask for a translation.

  “Noar, Larsa, and Trinan are securing the hyperstream engine room,” Rigger continued. “Tia’tan and Vid are securing the commissary level while Malkor, Hekkar, Benny, and the captain clear the levels above and below command
level.”

  “Who is watching the control room?” Kayla asked. That was a top priority, obviously, but a dozen other crucial locations came to mind, including the ship’s non-drive engines, which powered daily functions such as life support and gravity; the shuttle bays, which provided the only means to reach the Lorius; not to mention the ordinance storage.

  “Ariel and Tanet guard the control room, Toble is standing by for medical emergencies, and Corinth and your uncle are locked in their cabins on this level.” Rigger grimaced. “We’re spread too thin as it is.”

  Kayla nodded. “Agreed. And there’s only so much we can do tonight.” She translated the plan to Vayne.

  “I’m on board with your imperials’ plan,” he said, speaking directly to her even though Rigger’s translator made it easy for her to understand him. “Let’s get this done.”

  “Thanks for the torches, Rigger. Once this level is secure, have the octet move their belongings to this level. I’ll handle the captain; we’ll get crew cabins unlocked for you.”

  Rigger nodded. “Got your mobile comm?”

  “Always. Keep us informed.”

  “Will do.” Rigger gave her a two-finger salute and headed back to the lift.

  It only took Kayla a minute to figure out how to operate the laser torch. There was safety gear too: glasses with clear lenses and specialist gloves. She handed Vayne a pair of each.

  “Apparently, gas emissions aren’t a worry,” she said, switching to Ordochian.

  “I’m certainly not a welding expert, but I have some concerns over using equipment with safety precautions that are five hundred years out of date.”

  Kayla chuckled, pulling on her own gloves. “I’ll take a little radiation over a homicidal psionic any day.”

  The joke didn’t get a response from Vayne. In fact, he looked just as darkly intense as he had all day, the one exception being his smile when she first arrived on the Yari. An edgy energy hung about him, never allowing him peace, never allowing her peace. What should she do? She and Vayne had always shared the same sense of sarcastic humor. Even in the worst situations they made each other laugh. Now, though, it was as if the action had been wiped from his memory.