In the silence that followed, Moira heard a soft growl. She looked down; beside her, Popo stared at the soldier, ears forward, tail up, the fur around his neck and along his back puffed up. She grasped the back of his neck—the shock of the man’s death had driven all the commands her mother had taught her out of her head—and pressed up against his solidity; his trembling alertness matched her trembling fear.
A series of windbursts startled her as several large transports scudded over the hill behind the soldiers and landed in a whirl of sand. As their doors opened, Moira’s vision blurred. A vast thrumming resonated through her, as though the hand of Telos beat against the blue dome of the sky. She looked around, seeking the source, as did many in the crowd, but she saw nothing to account for it.
More black-uniformed soldiers roughly ejected a number of people from the transports, many in livery, some in the elegant attire of the Douloi, all with varying degrees of worry or terror in their faces.
“They’re from the Palace,” whispered her father. “But why have they been brought here?”
Her father’s voice broke the almost-trance of shock. “Who are the soldiers?” Moira asked. “Why are they doing this?”
“They’re from Dol’jhar.”
She tried the unfamiliar name on her tongue. Dole-chyhar—the last syllable beginning with a noise almost like the little cough she often got just as she caught a cold, when she tried to clear the tickle out of the back of her throat.
The throbbing now possessed the air, modulating the panicky murmur of the crowd and the sobbing of the bereaved woman. The ground responded with a tremor of its own; not an earthquake, but a quiver, as though the solid rock deep beneath them was waking from age-long sleep.
One of the Douloi from the transports, a short man in a wine-colored tunic edged with old-gold, was arguing with a soldier with a peaked cap and rings on his sleeves, who kept pushing a piece of paper into his hands. The man shook his head fiercely, ripped the paper across, and trampled it. The soldier pulled a large knife from his belt and slashed him across the throat, stepping back to avoid the spray of blood. He watched the Douloi thrash on the reddened sand for a moment, then motioned to another man nearby to pick up the paper.
The man did so very slowly, his face pale and grim, and after a moment’s discussion, turned to face the crowd.
“Attend all,” he cried, his voice flat with anger. “Attend all and greet the new Lord of the Mandala, descending in glory, Jerrode Eusabian, Avatar of Dol, Lord of Vengeance and the Kingdoms of Dol’jhar.” He motioned jerkily toward the sea. Slowly the crowd of people turned around, confusion evident in the muttering sound of many voices.
Moira looked up at her parents, who stared into the sky, her mother’s face as angry as those distant soldiers, and her father looking afraid.
“They can’t,” her mother whispered fiercely. “They mustn’t. Not a battlecruiser.” Her hands pressed against each other, her left hand twisting at the big naval ring on her right ring finger.
Moira followed her mother’s gaze into the sky. There was a bright, bluish spark high above the sea, nearly overhead. The sound the grownups made, like the moan of wind during a storm, made Moira glad when her mother reached down and took Moira’s hand on one side, and her father’s on the other.
o0o
Jasmein gripped Moira’s fingers tightly until her daughter made a little sound. Jasmein loosened her grip with a word of apology that went unheard in the rising rush of sound as overhead the deadly spark of light grew rapidly in size, resolving swiftly into a silvery egg-shape bristling with spines and thorns of metal, haloed in the deadly shimmer of defensive energies, a blood-red fist clutching a sheaf of lightning bolts emblazoned on its side.
The sky darkened as it fell out of heaven toward Havroy Bay, shouting a god’s anger against the placid sea, growing larger and still larger until the eye refused its scale, and still it grew. Its massive radiants glowed white-hot, caverns of hellish energy, radiating shock waves in rings of sudden cloud condensing from the outraged air. The heat struck down at them like a hammer-blow from Hell itself, and the throbbing became a torment in their bones and blood.
In the center of Havroy Bay the sea began to boil, obscuring the lower half of the battlecruiser in roiling clouds of steam shot through with the glare of venting plasma. The ship was impossibly huge, filling the bay from side to side, its bow still invisible seven kilometers overhead.
A searing blast of wind and scalding spray flung itself out of the bay and bowled over several people. It reeked of burned plastic and fish soup. Jasmein tightened her grip on her family, though she could not protect them. Popo howled, and though she was not given to fancies, she knew in that howl a similar conviction.
Around them, people in the crowd screamed, and some broke and ran. The soldiers in black calmly burned them down. The people closest to the shoreline had disappeared in the awful boiling wave. Between drifts of steam arms and legs were visible, surging nightmarishly in the bubbling water.
Jasmein stared helplessly down at her daughter, agonized that she must witness this inferno. The wonder that had widened Moira’s eyes and parted her lips was gone, replaced by shock as she gazed with the same intensity up at the vast ship now hanging unmoving, blotting out the sky, the throbbing of its drive fields pounding their bones and making Jasmein’s stomach clench.
All around them people were vomiting and convulsing helplessly. Then Jasmein’s hand was tugged downward before Chan freed her fingers and knelt, his face pressed into the sand, his hands over his ears.
Moira’s mouth had opened. Jasmein could see her sobbing, but she could not hear her daughter as she crumpled beside Chan.
Jasmein flung herself over them both in a last, and she knew futile, effort to protect them. Her neck arched back painfully because she had to see what was coming, even if she could do nothing to fight it. Popo was howling continuously now, a weird high-pitched moan she’d never heard from him before.
A golden light blazed amid the blue-white clouds billowing up from the rapidly evaporating bay. A ring of light opened in the wall of steam, revealing the minute figure of a man clad all in black, seated in a golden throne at the end of a beam of dim red light. Lightning played around him, outlining the spherical shimmer of the defensive shield englobing him, and whirlwinds of sand and steam spun off ahead. The sand glowed red-hot underneath his throne as it glided inexorably toward the terrified crowd. It was just like Haruban the Demon King in the Tale of Years, she thought, and he was headed straight for the Havroy.
Next to Jasmein, Moira struggled to her feet and screamed at the man in the throne, but her voice was lost in the tumult of a world gone mad. The ground rocked underneath mother and daughter. The figure of the Havroy was briefly silhouetted against the sinister energies radiating from the throne of the Demon King. Then the bronze figure glowed red, then white, and slumped shapeless into a hissing tide of blazing foam as the throne passed over it and settled to the sand in a crackling blast of red-hot sand.
The tall man in the throne stood up and looked around at the carnage he had created, his face even blanker than the faces of the soldiers. As he stepped to the ground of his new demesne, a buzzing blackness overwhelmed Jasmein: her last thought before unconsciousness was, I will fight you to the death for what you have done.
SIX
CHARVANN ORBIT
The bridge of the Lith stank of sweat and smoke and blood, with a sour overlay from the vomit and filth expelled in violent death by the victims of the ruptor pulse. A couple of slubs were washing down the deck and swabbing the vaporized remains of Alluwan off the bulkheads, while techs labored at the shattered remains of the unlucky Rifter’s console. On the weapons console a yellow light blinked as another skipmissile was charged: deep within the Lith a small, complex knot of plasma churned violently in its magnetic constraints, awaiting the impulse that would send it skipping in and out of spacetime toward its target, gaining velocity and mass with every emergen
ce from the strange conditions of fivespace.
But Hreem noticed none of this—the viewscreen dominated his attention. He watched hungrily as the skipmissile discharged and smashed into Charvann’s Shield near the southern pole, where the angle between the planet’s magnetic and rotational axes weakened the complex spacetime resonance excited by the teslas. Vast rings of iridescent light marched outward from the point of impact, rippling through the auroral blaze that now covered the planet most of the way to the equator.
Pili straightened up from his hunched-over intensity and grinned at Hreem as he sleeked his fine black hair back from his high forehead
“What have you got, Pili?”
“I found the critical period! We’re on automatic now—the Shield won’t last much more than eight hours now, and in just a couple Charvann’s gonna be shaking like a joy-bed in a cheap chatz-house.”
“Put a sunburst in the slot, Faseult!” Hreem guffawed at the screen. “I hope you get a volcano right up your blungehole.” The bridge rang with raucous comments, with Pili’s high chattering tenor laugh as counterpoint. “Good work, Pili! That’s another tenth-point for you.”
Pili grinned broadly—with the loot this job would yield, an additional tenth percent of the take probably represented more money than he’d made in his entire career on either side of Panarchic law.
Memory disturbed Hreem’s happy contemplation of the coming fall of Charvann. Hadn’t there been some Panarch a long time ago who’d hit a planet with a skipmissile after it dropped its Shield? He seemed to remember they’d done something awful to him for that. And Eusabian would do something awful to him if he blew up whatever it was the Lord of Vengeance wanted from this Omilov blit.
“Just make sure you don’t fire one too many when they give up,” he warned the tech. “I want a continent full of loot and slaves, not flaming rubble and corpses.”
Eight hours! Hreem recalled the glittership they’d intercepted once, full of snooty high-living nicks who’d thought they were headed for a six-month pleasure cruise through the Heart Stars. What a surprise for them, when the Flower of Lith showed up and put a lazplaz through their drive! He laughed at the memory of the captain’s face, just before he burned him down.
“Cap’n?” asked Dyasil.
“Remember that glittership out of Svoboda?”
“Yeah.” Dyasil grinned lopsidedly. “We had some prime fun with those tilt-nosed nacker-teases!”
“I’m just trying to imagine that multiplied by thousands.”
The bridge crew hooted with delight. A whole planet! It had been centuries since anyone had sacked a major planet—now it was happening all over the Thousand Suns.
The tide of comments died away as Norio glided through the entrance to the bridge.
“Don’t let me distract you, Captain,” he said softly. “I merely wished to share your joyful revenge on those who have sought your death so long.”
Hreem turned his attention to the screen as Norio moved up to his accustomed place just behind his right shoulder and began to gently trace a path from the back of his neck to his earlobe and back again. Hreem relaxed into the motion, leaning into it like a cat under a loving hand.
The bridge shuddered as another missile discharged, and simultaneously Norio flicked his earlobe. A jolt of pleasure radiated out from Hreem’s groin and a faint sigh escaped his lips.
“Oh yes,” said the tempath as Hreem turned around. “That was merely to complete the equation.” His eyes glistened, and his lips trembled slightly. “And share your joy more completely.”
“Cap’n?” Erbee’s voice was tentative.
Hreem glared at him, then relented at his puzzled expression.
“I got a couple of traces. One’s somebody hangin’ around way out. Not one of us.”
“Navy?” Hreem’s anticipation of the next missile discharge drained away and he sat up. The cruiser might have had time to get off some boarding lances. The Lith would be a prime target for one of those almost undetectable, stiletto-like craft, with their deadly cargo of Arkadic Marines.
“Don’t think so.” Erbee looked at his console, then tapped a few pads. His screen flickered with a complex pattern. “It’s got a real old-fashioned geeplane, judging from its output.”
Hreem shrugged. If it wasn’t Navy... well, most of the Rift Sodality was still on the outside. Dol’jhar had been picky. “If it’s that small, we’ve got nothing to worry about. Keep an eye on it. Let me know if it makes any moves. What else?”
“From Merryn—they’re bouncing quickcode off the Node from downside, spraying it all over. Can’t read it.”
Damn! There must be lances out there, or some chatzing thing... maybe sneak-missiles. That Barrodagh slug said Charvann was nearly defenseless. Hreem seethed with frustration. Just a cruiser! The attack was getting more and more complicated, and he was feeling more and more exposed.
“Alluwan...” Blunge! He’s meat. “Metije, double the watch, and break out the heavy firejacs. Set ’em up in engineering, the missile room, and outside here.” He jerked his thumb toward the entrance to the bridge.
The tall woman who had replaced Alluwan turned back to her console and began speaking urgently into it, the deathsnake tattooed on her neck writhing as her jaw worked.
Hreem looked up at Norio. “You’d better get below.”
The tempath inclined his head. The fine hairs on the back of his neck glinted in the light, and Hreem felt a hollow sensation in his chest as the image of Norio lying dead, seared by jac-fire, flitted through his mind. The tempath paused and looked over his shoulder at Hreem, and a corner of his mouth quirked upward. Then he left the bridge, his robe swirling out and whispering against the edge of the lock.
Moments later there was a clatter of activity just outside the bridge as crew members began setting up the tripod-mounted jacs in the corridor. Should be in their suits, too. Hreem hesitated, then decided that the crew was hair-trigger enough as it was. There’d be time for that if anything happened. They’d get crazy-bad wrapped up all the time.
The decision didn’t ease his mind, and he let the anger grow in him, relaxing as it washed out the anxiety, as it always did. He’d have that Faseult blit talking out of the other side of his mouth... Mumbling, after I finish smashing his teeth down his gullet.
Hreem turned back to the screen as another ripple of light spread out across Charvann. The Archon was probably pretty worried by now, despite his fancy talk. Hreem wondered if he should have flamed off about the Krysarch. Now that Faseult knew he knew, would he try to hide the nyr-Arkad or shoot him off to safety? Better make sure.
“Dyasil, get me Y’Marmor and Kherrimun, conference.” While he waited for acknowledgment, Hreem wondered if there was any way to intercept the Krysarch’s ship, if he did try to flee, without likely blowing it and him to gas. Probably not, he decided as the captains of Satansclaw and Esteel appeared on the screen. Eusabian would just have to settle for dead. At least there was no problem deciding where the Krysarch would lift off from: according to the Handbook, Charvann had only one boost field, and only a booster would be fast enough to get him away, especially with the Shield under attack.
He gave intercept instructions to the two captains, then:
“If you can put a lazplaz through the drive and nab him in one piece, fine—but if one of you lets him get away, I’ll nail your balls up as a wall decoration and give the rest of you to Norio to play with.” Hreem brought one foot up onto his knee, flexed out the heel claw, and began cleaning his fingernails on it, enjoying the way the other men’s eyes fixed on the gleaming steel tines. “If there’s anything left for him after I get finished.”
Hreem aimed an especially nasty glare at Tallis, who tried unsuccessfully to look simultaneously nonchalant and innocent—the net effect being merely that his eyes bulged as his head hunched down on his shoulders. He reminded Hreem of a tube-snake one of the crew had kept for a while: it used to snap at the man and then withdraw into its cemented-p
ebble armor. Until it made the mistake of snapping at me. He flexed his leg, the claw sliding smoothly in and out.
He was about to continue when a thought halted him. If I warn them, I’ll lose half my forces. Y’Marmor sure won’t hang around once he thinks there’s lances out there. Besides, I can use some decoys.
Hreem laughed, knowing it would be misinterpreted to his advantage, and disconnected. Relaxing back into the command pod, he savored the deadly doppler-moan of another missile launch, feeling the shudder of the ship when the accelerator discharged its deadly load as a warm thrill deep within him. He reveled in the odd, not-to-be-analyzed meld of revenge, lust, and the joy of destruction that bathed his mind in a hot, red haze as he watched the doomed planet below. Eight hours...
o0o
Watching closely, Deralze followed Brandon, Osri, and the guard through the corridors. Osri had the look of a man in shock, and he walked as though someone else were moving his limbs. Brandon’s gaze stayed on his hand, his fingers spread slightly from the Archon’s ring as if it felt hot. His thoughts were impossible to guess from his face, though tension and tiredness had pulled the skin taut, making him seem older than his years.
Outside in the courtyard, the auroral glare painted the waiting ship in flickering blood tones. The air bulged with an oppressive sense of weight. Though they had left the storm behind in their flight from The Hollows, Deralze sensed the jaw-aching taste of thunder under every sound.
The splendor of the sky made real what he had seen on the viewscreen—a shimmering archipelago of colors, colossal banners fluttering in frenzy. A vast sweeping bow of light sped overhead from the southern horizon, followed by fainter, concentric arcs behind it. The light, though not bright, made the lamps of the Enclave seem small and useless.
The power beating down from space transformed Charvann into a small and fragile bubble of life, and Deralze felt even more helplessly entrapped. He almost wished that those Rifters above would land. An enemy facing him he understood, and was equipped to fight, but this kind of battle—
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