Exile's Throne

by Rhonda Mason

  Kayla was quite certain she didn’t want to hear this. What had started as a tricky search was rapidly spiraling to impossible heights. At what point did she kick them all out of her cabin, pull the covers over her head, and just give up?

  “The Planetary Destroyer is still powered,” Hekkar said.

  “The superweapon?” Vid asked. “Isn’t that a good thing for the rebellion?”

  Kayla made a slashing motion with her hand. “Only if you want to destroy Ordoch, and possibly all of time and space along with it.”

  Hekkar clarified. “I’m not talking about firing the PD. So far in our search for Zimmerman, we’ve only considered the habitable section of the ship as a viable hiding place, powered or not.”

  Trinan sighed. “Isn’t that enough? It’s massive: bigger than some cities I’ve been to.”

  He wasn’t kidding. The main cylindrical section of the Yari could fit a fleet of today’s smaller, modern ships inside without feeling crowded. And that didn’t include the long spindle structure jutting out from the center of the ship. The PD’s housing channel was several times longer than the rest of the ship, but couldn’t be more than a hundred meters in diameter. It looked more like an antenna than the conduit for a weapon capable of destroying entire planets.

  Hekkar finished his story. “Tanet says the PD housing has its own power systems, and the crystals in those generators are still good. It doesn’t have sleeping quarters or commissaries, but there are a few workstations and supply rooms down there, and it’s conceivable that someone could turn the life support back on, if they wanted to.”

  “You’re telling us Zimmerman and whichever crew members he has with him could be hiding inside a weapon of mass destruction?” Vid shook his head. “They really are all crazy.”

  17

  It was late when Kayla finally kicked the octet out of her cabin.

  She tried to sleep, but was plagued by dreams. She and Vayne were climbing this insane scaffolding in space, clinging to the metal rails while an impossible wind blew furiously all around them, trying to buffet them off. Vayne lost his grip, slipped, and was ripped away from her. She tried desperately to grab at him with her psi powers, but of course she had none, and was forced to cling there watching him get farther and farther away. The dream then repeated itself with Corinth instead of Vayne.

  No wonder she never felt rested. Even in sleep, she worried about failing her il’haars. It was still the middle of the night, though, so she lay back down and somehow slept, only to be jolted awake minutes later by Benny on the ship’s comms.

  “Unknown ship approaching; captain and crew needed on the bridge.”

  “The void with that,” Kayla said to herself, already out of bed and strapping her kris to her thighs. She might not be crew, but she damn well had a stake in whatever was about to happen.

  She met Natali in the corridor and they double-timed it to the control room, entering just in time to hear Benny say, “Ilmenan engine signature detected. Arm weapons, captain?”

  “Negative. Stand down.”

  Unless of course, Kayla thought, it was an Ilmenan ship from five hundred years ago. In that case, fire away.

  Tia’tan’s voice sounded on the ship-wide comms just as the view screen switched to an image of the Mine Field. “It’s the Radiant!”

  Kayla sincerely doubted that. The Ilmenan tanker had been carrying the fuel needed to power the Yari’s hyperstream drive. It had jumped to the Mine Field in Imperial Space and barreled in, not knowing another way to get to the center directly. That was months ago, and no one had heard from them since. The odds of the Radiant surviving an encounter with the rooks or hiding for this long were beyond impossible.

  A severely crippled ship came into view, a fuel tanker, by the looks of it. And something was… attached to it?

  “Are those—” Kayla started to ask, but Tia’tan’s voice sounded again.

  “Don’t shoot the rooks,” she commanded, sounding breathless with excitement. “I’ll be right there to explain.”

  “What’s going on?” Kayla demanded.

  Ida frowned at the image on the screen. “The Radiant was to be bringing our fuel. I am having the thinking that they failed.”

  The Radiant was in rough shape. What must have been its entire back quarter was gone, which meant there was a leak in their fuel storage tank. Oh… and their engines were missing. No engineer for the hyperstream drive, and now no fuel for certain… Maybe the Yari was never meant to leave the Mine Field. Maybe it should have died with the rest of the ancient battleships five hundred years ago.

  The Radiant itself was only the first odd thing on screen. The second was the sight of two giant rooks, each with their tentacles wrapped around the ship like a living net. They dwarfed the Radiant, making it look like a child’s toy in a sea monster’s grip.

  “Magnify,” Ida said, and the automated systems complied.

  The rooks’ glossy black skin glowed with an almost metallic sheen. A crown of iridescent lights shimmered silver-white on the mantle of their bodies, and deepened to blue along the tentacles. They pulsed perfectly in time with each other in a dazzling, mesmerizing display.

  It was beautiful, if completely alien.

  Beautiful and frightening, because at any second the rooks could rip the Radiant to shreds, and it looked like they had already gotten a head start on that.

  “Arm ion cannon,” Ida said, and the system confirmed her order.

  “Wait, Tia’tan said—”

  “Is being precaution only.”

  Natali nodded. “Protecting the Yari is our top priority.”

  The doors to the control room opened and Tia’tan entered, a smile on her face. “I’ve spoken with Kazamel, they’re safe, everything’s all right. The rooks brought them here. They—”

  She broke off on a gasp as something blinked into existence beside Kayla… and promptly dropped to the floor with a plop.

  Everyone in the room froze.

  The little black blob by her foot, a perfect miniature replica of the rooks outside, shook itself all over, lights pulsing wildly and tentacles flailing. It was in so much obvious distress that Kayla knelt down, anxious to help it in some way. Not that she knew what to do, and she certainly wasn’t going to touch it.

  ::Kayla!:: Natali hissed in her mind. ::What the frutt are you doing, get away from it.::

  It didn’t seem to be in any position to harm anyone. Kayla ignored Natali, instead doing the only thing she could think of: cooing to the rook like it was a crying baby, making what she hoped were soothing sounds.

  Who knows, maybe she sounded like an attacker to the rook. Hopefully it would blink out soon, traveling back to space.

  “Kazamel says they’re not used to gravity,” Tia’tan said in a whisper, “and the adults don’t know how to teach them about it, since it’s a foreign concept to them.”

  Three more babies appeared in the control room, each plopping to the floor just as the first had done.

  Ida and Benny cursed in ancient Ordochian, and Natali took a sharp step back from the one that landed on the console right next to her. Benny’s hand crept toward the blaster on his hip.

  “He swears they’re safe,” Tia’tan said quickly, sending out a mental wave that carried peace, calm, and even trust with it. The act would have been appalling on Ordoch, but if it meant the difference between starting a war with the rooks or not, Kayla was fine with it.

  “They’re friendly,” Tia’tan insisted.

  The baby in front of Kayla seemed to be calming, its lights settling to a less frenetic pulse. The mantle covering the body would fit in her hand if she held it. Even as she had that insane thought, the rook seemed to figure out the whole gravity thing. It lifted a few centimeters off of the floor and shook its tentacles out like a wet dog shedding water. Slowly, and a little unsteadily, it rose, checking itself along the way. The others in the room were rising as well, even as more babies blinked into existence from nowhere and fell like ha
pless idiots to the decking.

  Kayla’s rook quickly got the hang of it and began zooming around the control room. It looked like nothing so much as an octopus or a squid, swimming through the air as if it were water, its beautiful skin gleaming. Kayla slowly stood and the rook returned to her, spinning circles around her, high and low, dizzyingly fast. It disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the room where its siblings were getting their bearings. It flitted with the others for a second, while all of the humans in the room stood perfectly immobile.

  Kayla’s rook hop-skip-blinked its way back across the room, materializing between her leg and her hand. It nudged her hand outward, but she needed no encouragement to move her hand the frutt out of there. The rook followed, though, spinning around her wrist to halt her movement, leaving her holding her arm straight out, palm up. Was it… playing with her?

  Apparently the rook had her just where it wanted, because it settled on her open palm with a plop. It sat splay-limbed on her hand, arms draped over the sides and lacing through her fingers. The rounded mantle covering its body pointed up toward her, and she hoped like the void that the thing didn’t have a beak like the octopus it resembled and decide to take a chomp on her hand.

  At least it hadn’t electrocuted her with those blinking lights, or worse.

  “Um… hello?” The lights on its mantle dimmed out, and all but the very tips of its fine limbs remained lit with a gentle blue.

  Was that bad? She looked up at Tia’tan, who was as stupefied as Kayla by the whole thing.

  Apparently that was as long as the rook wanted to sit still, because it blinked out again, reappearing by Tia’tan, then Natali. It and the others danced all over the room, alternately investigating the humans and just swimming around like fools.

  “Incoming communication, on channel priority one. Answer with visual, audio, or dismiss?” the Yari asked.

  Ida tore her gaze from the rook spinning above her head like a live tiara. “Display audiovisual on main screen.”

  The bizarre image of the giant adult rooks detangling themselves from the Radiant was replaced by a ship’s bridge and a crew of smiling Ilmenans. A swarthy and slightly scruffy man stood front and center. He saluted, and his crew of four followed suit.

  “Hail, Tengku Riab Tan Tia!” He made an elaborate bow that Kayla didn’t think she could replicate, and the crew sank to the floor, dipping a knee before rising. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. It is so good to lay eyes on you, Tia.”

  Tia’tan’s smile was as big as the man’s on screen. “You just came back from the dead, Kazamel, and I’ve known you for years—quit the formality. All of you.”

  Tengku Riab Tan Tia? If she remembered right, that salutation was sky high on Ilmena’s list of political power players. Something like “grand vizier” to one of the planet’s oligarchs. Kayla had known Tia’tan wasn’t really a “princess,” just like she wasn’t. They’d both used the term to simplify their political systems for the imperials. But there was a lot more to Tengku Riab Tan Tia than just “Princess Tia’tan,” apparently.

  Tia’tan turned to Ida. “Captain, I present to you Dato’ Sri Keong Kazamel. Kaz, meet the living legend, Captain Ida Janus, of the Orichi Yari.”

  “Pleasure to be met,” Ida announced. “You will call Ida. And my first commander, Benny.” She waved in his direction and Benny gave a stern nod. “We are being old too much for the using of formality, either.”

  “I see you’ve met the miniatures,” Kazamel said, gesturing to the baby rooks flitting about. “They’re harmless, most of the time.” He smiled at a little rook zooming around on his bridge.

  “How do you even know that?” Tia’tan asked. “Why didn’t they tear your ship apart, and how did you survive all this time?”

  Kazamel held up his hands. “It’s a bit of a story. Permission to come aboard, Captain Janus?”

  “My permission you have.” The comm closed and Ida gave a happy slap-clap of excitement. “A mystery we have!”

  The sharp sound startled the rooks, most of whom blinked out of the room entirely. Kayla’s blinked out of her hand to hide behind her, tugging on her hair as it covered itself with her ponytail. If she wasn’t still half afraid of receiving a painful death from the little creature, it would almost be humorous.

  “I cannot believe this is happening,” she muttered to Tia’tan.

  Tia’tan stood on tiptoe and peeked over her. “I think you’ve made a friend. Let’s go welcome Kazamel: this should be an interesting tale.”

  * * *

  They met Kazamel and his small crew in the shuttle bay. Kazamel tried to bow again when he saw Tia’tan, but she barreled into him with a bear hug that could have snapped bone. He just laughed and hugged her back.

  She finally released him, took a step back, and simply looked at him—really looking, as if to confirm with her own eyes that he truly stood before her. She blinked, then wiped almost angrily at her cheek.

  “Damn you, Kaz, I thought you were dead.”

  “You and me both,” he said quietly. “You and me both.”

  Their party grew as Ida escorted everyone through the ship and up to the larger observation deck. Several of the baby rooks had returned, and flitted about like black fairies, seemingly encouraged by the Wyrds’ startled reactions.

  “I am not liking the having of them on the ship, captain,” Benny said to Ida as they walked.

  The captain seemed to recover her famously sunny attitude. “I am of the idea that the choice is rooks only. We refuse in the negative, they are to stay anyway, perhaps.”

  “If I interpreted that correctly,” Kazamel said, “you are right. The rooks are infinitely curious and go wherever it pleases them.”

  Noar joined them, along with Vayne.

  Vayne grabbed Kayla’s arm as soon as he caught her up, hauling her to a stop. ::Why the frutt are you walking around with these things as if it’s no big deal?::

  Kazamel says they won’t hurt us. Kayla knew she sounded only half convinced herself.

  ::I am not risking my ro’haar’s life on a stranger’s assurance.:: He turned on his heel without relinquishing his grip. Clearly, he meant to march her right back down the corridor like she was an errant child.

  She twisted out of his hold. A rook materialized in the air between their faces, sending Vayne scrambling back with a curse.

  It’s fine— Even her thought broke off when the rook

  plopped itself on her shoulder, cuddled up to her neck, and wrapped a tentacle up and over her ear, as if in comfort.

  The urge to knock it off her shoulder came instinctively, but she quashed that thought before Vayne could sense it. Otherwise her il’haar would be blasting the rook off with a telekinetic bolt strong enough to puncture the corridor wall.

  His expression was somewhere between murderous rage and horror, and she could relate to both. She didn’t want her il’haars anywhere near these things either, not with so many unknowns.

  I’m okay. Everything’s fine.

  ::For the moment, maybe.::

  Just go with it. There’s nothing we can do, the things just fly wherever they want to anyway. She had to admit, they were kind of cute… in a slightly terrifying way. She could see the blue pulses of light shimmering along the rook’s tentacles from the corner of her eye, and it was oddly soothing.

  In fact very soothing. A warm, drowsy feeling of safety and calm came over her.

  Vayne, still in her head, recoiled from the sensation, knocking her out of it. ::What is that?::

  I think it’s coming from the rook. Its lights flared, then the feeling of safety came back.

  Vayne was quiet while he reached toward the feeling, tasting it, trying to identify its source, since he could tell Kayla wasn’t summoning it. ::It has a different taste.::

  The rest of the group had continued on without them, and Kayla was eager to catch up. Kazamel will know.

  Vayne’s reply was something of a pissed-off growl, whate
ver words he meant to say hidden in the grumble.

  I’m going, stay if you want. She jogged down the corridor, the movement dislodging the rook.

  ::Not without me, you aren’t.:: Vayne jogged beside her. ::Someone needs to save your reckless ass.::

  She felt the undercurrent of grim humor in his voice, and she could only grin in response as they arrived at the observation deck.

  A few rooks zoomed around as a pack in the wide open space, causing Vayne to halt.

  It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t looking at the rooks at all.

  ::So that’s Kazamel:: he finally said. ::Tia’tan grieved his loss especially.:: He had the look of a man who was sizing the competition up.

  Odd.

  I guess so. She looked at Kazamel where he sat with the others, trying to see the man through Vayne’s eyes. She saw nothing about the Radiant’s captain to put her off. Across the room, Ida and Tia’tan bracketed Kazamel, each looking thrilled to see him as they fired questions one after the other. Kazamel’s crew members were talking to Noar.

  Ida and her crew had been happy to meet Kayla and the rest of the Ordochian heirs, but they were ecstatic to meet the Ilmenans. Kayla had to jump out of the way when Ariel and Tanet came rushing in. The excitement caught the attention of the rooks, who left off circling and blinked out en masse, reappearing amidst everyone and causing a mild panic.

  ::Just what this ship needs… more insanity.:: Vayne was still frowning when they took seats on a bench near the others.

  Kazamel and the others risked their lives coming to the Mine Field, jumping in blind, she reminded him. They’ve probably been working for years for Ordoch’s freedom.

  Which was more than Kayla could say for herself.

  ::I know:: was all he said, and she thought she felt a hint of shame coming from him. Not in his mind voice, but in him, as if they were connected on a deeper level and she had sensed it. The breath froze in her chest. Were her psi powers returning? She tried to reach out to him, struggling with a mind that couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t speak the way a Wyrd should.