Schism: Part One of Triad (Saga of the Skolian Empire)

by Asaro, Catherine

  Kurj came forward, a behemoth in motion. He fit this huge office. Blackmoor did, too. If Kurj unconsciously chose his top officers to resemble himself, that didn’t bode well for her chances as his heir. At the moment, she was angry enough to wonder if she cared.

  When Kurj reached Blackmoor’s desk, the commandant rose to his feet. Soz followed suit immediately, wanting to kick herself for her slight delay. She was letting her concerns distract her. If Kurj noticed, however, he didn’t let on.

  He spoke to Blackmoor. “I will see you tomorrow, in the briefing.”

  The commandant saluted. “Tomorrow, sir.”

  Kurj turned to Soz. “Walk out with me.”

  Apparently they weren’t done yet. “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded to the commandant, one giant to another.

  Then Kurj and Soz left.

  The sun had just set over the Red Mountains in a blaze intensified by red dust until the entire sky seemed on fire. Soz walked through the twilight with Kurj across an inner sanctum of the academy, a private garden put aside for the commandant’s use. Moss designed for low moisture environments carpeted the ground, and beds of well-tended flowers nodded in the dry, hot breezes of the oncoming night.

  “You’re quiet this evening,” Kurj said.

  Soz shrugged. “Disillusionment does that to a person.”

  “Real life doesn’t put itself in a pretty box tied up with ribbons, Soz.”

  She spun around to him, stopping on the white gravel path. “I never said it did. But letting him off this way is wrong. It’s a tacit acceptance of what he did. You’re saying it’s all right.”

  His gaze never wavered. “Vibarr was among the top students in his class and little more than one semester away from receiving his commission. He would have graduated with honors. Now he has nothing. He left this afternoon. Yes, what he did to you was inexcusable. But he’s paying for it. Why is it so important to you that he also suffer the public disgrace of expulsion?”

  “He should have thought of that before he violated the code.” She set down her anger and spoke evenly. “He tried to intimidate me with his title so I wouldn’t speak up. Now he’s receiving special treatment because of that title. That’s wrong. You know it.”

  “Yes, it’s wrong.” He met her gaze. “Suppose Blackmoor did expel him. And suppose that because of it, the House of Vibarr acted against DMA interests in the Assembly.”

  “I hate politics.” That wasn’t actually true; at times they intrigued her. But right now she despised them.

  “That’s not an answer,” Kurj said.

  Soz gave him an implacable look of her own. “Yes, we have to make compromises to govern effectively.” She took a deep breath. “But every time we compromise our integrity for the sake of politics, we lose something. Ultimately, it weakens the structure of anything we build. Including the military.”

  He considered her for a long moment. “You’re a lot different from Althor.”

  “Althor?”

  “Are you recording this on your spinal node?” Kurj asked.

  “Well … no. I recorded the session with the commandant. I stopped when you and I started walking through here.”

  Curiosity leaked past his barriers. “Why stop?”

  It was hard to articulate; she had made the decision instinctively. “You’re my brother. I guess I put that above you being my CO. One doesn’t record their family.” She supposed she would if it was in some official capacity, but it hadn’t even occurred to her now. She had given him an implicit expression of trust that she hadn’t consciously realized she felt until this moment. That knowledge startled her, given all the times she wanted to rage at him when he was driving her twice as hard as the other cadets.

  “I’d like to talk to you about something,” Kurj said. “But I don’t want it recorded.”

  “I won’t. You have my word.”

  “Good.” His gaze darkened. “When I saw that holo of Vibarr harassing you, I wanted to take him apart with my own hands. And if you ever repeat that, I’ll deny every word.”

  Soz would never have expected such a reaction from Kurj. She wasn’t the only one offering trust; for him to make such an admission said volumes about his faith in her. He had only her word it would stop here.

  “Thank you,” she said, as much for his trust as for the sentiment.

  Kurj started walking again, his face shadowed in the dusk. “Althor had a situation come up his first year that in some ways parallels yours.”

  Soz walked with him. “What happened?”

  “He found out a senior was dealing phorine to other cadets.”

  Gods almighty. “Phorine is addictive.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “You’ve always been a master of understatement.” “Did he tell you?”

  “He should have.”

  “But?”

  “He hesitated because he knew the boy selling the drugs.” Kurj shook his head. “So he talked to the dealer himself. He had some idealistic view the kid would stop. Instead, the senior threatened his life.”

  Soz knew her brother wasn’t one to give in to threats. “Then he went to you about it?”

  “Not to me. To Blackmoor.” His inner eyelids were up now. “It isn’t coincidence that many cadets here come from well-placed families or the nobility. That makes for better educations, better preparation, and better connections.”

  “The dealer came from a noble House?”

  “Not a House.” He sounded tired. “He was the son of a powerful banking consortium. Any scandal could have had serious financial repercussions for DMA.”

  Soz grimaced. “Hell.”

  “That about sums up my reaction.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got sick.”

  “And had to leave DMA as a result.”

  “Yes.”

  This sounded even worse than her situation with Vibarr. Cadets lived under intense pressure. A phorine dealer could cut an ugly swath through their ranks. “Althor must have been furious that the senior wasn’t expelled.”

  Kurj gave her an odd look. “He was relieved. He wanted it kept quiet.”

  Her idealistic view of the honor code was taking a beating today. “That doesn’t sound like Althor.”

  “He claimed it was because he knew the senior. But this kid threatened to kill him. And he meant it.” Kurj glanced toward the dorms. “I think Althor knew some cadets who used phorine.”

  “He should have given you the names.” Althor had always had an intense loyalty to his friends, but surely he realized that any psion taking phorine needed help. The euphoric drug affected empaths and telepaths; the stronger the psion, the greater the addiction. Every cadet here was at risk. Far more harm would come to his friends through his silence.

  A thought shook her. “He didn’t try it, did he?”

  “No. The doctors found no trace of the drug in his system.”

  Soz breathed out in relief. As a Rhon psion, Althor would be brutally susceptible to even a tiny dose. Given the minuscule size of the population phorine affected, very little research existed on the drug outside of the J-Force and a few neurological institutes. She knew about it because she had researched high-level psions while preparing for her DMA prelims. A Rhon psion probably couldn’t survive the withdrawal without medical intervention. It would take a strength of will beyond even Althor, who was a remarkably powerful man in both mind and body.

  “He wasn’t helping anyone by keeping quiet,” Soz said.

  “I agree.” Kurj turned onto another gravel path. “To this day, he insists he didn’t know any cadet who used the drug. He passed a lie detector test. If he wasn’t an empath, I would believe him.”

  “He couldn’t pass a lie test unless he was telling the truth.” Experts considered the tests better than ninety-eight percent accurate.

  “Some psions can learn to modulate their brain waves. It affects the test.” Kurj slanted a wary look at her. “And if you repeat that, I’ll put you on
droid duty for the rest of your life.”

  “My mouth is sealed.” She was learning a lot tonight they never taught in DMA courses. “Who do you think he’s protecting?”

  “I’m not sure.” Kurj paced through the twilight, and his atypically relaxed barriers let his frustration leak through to her. “We checked the entire student population. We found two cadets addicted to phorine and one who had tried it a few times. If Althor knew any of them, we have no evidence of that. But it isn’t impossible.”

  “He could be telling the truth.”

  “Perhaps.” Kurj considered her. “What would you have done, if it had been a friend of yours?”

  Soz didn’t hesitate. “Given you the name.” She couldn’t imagine doing otherwise, especially for a friend. “I would have asked you to get them in treatment as soon as possible.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  She scowled at him. “And I would expel Vibarr’s sorry butt.”

  His smile glinted. “You know, Soz, his name came up last year when the Assembly was discussing possible marriages between the Ruby Dynasty and noble Houses.”

  Soz considered regurgitating her lunch. “Pity for my poor sister Chaniece.”

  “They weren’t talking about Chaniece.”

  “Well, Aniece is too young, and besides, she wants Lord Rillia.” She gave Kurj her most sour look. “And I know they weren’t talking about me.”

  His laugh rumbled through the dusk. “If the subject comes up again, I will describe to them your expression as you delivered those words.”

  “You do that.”

  His smile faded into something harder to read. It almost looked like affection. “It can be refreshing, you know.”

  She stared at him, aghast. “What could possibly refresh you about the Assembly interfering in our lives?”

  “I meant someone who speaks her mind to me.”

  Soz suddenly realized she had been glaring at her CO. “I mean no disrespect, sir.”

  “Right now, Soz, we are just brother and sister.”

  A confusing emotion washed over her, at least where Kurj was concerned. Affection? Was it possible? It felt odd; they rarely interacted as siblings unencumbered by other responsibilities.

  “Family,” she said.

  “Yes. Family.” He spoke in a low voice. “Fodder for the Dyad.”

  The Dyad. Everything they did came back to that powerlink.

  The last traces of the sunset were fading and the stars of Diesha glinted in the sky. They walked on, caught in an isolated bubble of kinship, with the weight of the Trader Empire poised outside that tenuous safety.

  Soz was beginning to understand the weight Kurj and Dehya lived with as the Dyad. They were responsible for a mesh that served thousands of settlements and hundreds of billions of people. Any telop could use the Kyle web, but only Dehya and Kurj could control it. Dehya created the web and ensured it survived. Kurj used it to build ISC into a deadly machine that even the Traders, with their greater resources, couldn’t defeat. He was blunt power: she was subtlety and nuance. He was the Military Key; she was the Assembly Key. They called Dehya the mind of the web and Kurj its fist.

  It wasn’t enough.

  They were exhausted. Two people, no matter how strong or driven, couldn’t keep up with the growing, ever-changing demands of a voracious mesh that added new networks at billions per hour. And always now Kurj and Dehya were searching to discover how Vitarex Raziquon had infiltrated Lyshriol. The same thought hung like a specter over them all; if the Traders could violate the Imperialate stronghold of Lyshriol, no place was safe. Soz knew the truth no one admitted, that the Assembly kept quiet, that ISC buried in secured systems. No one spoke it aloud, but it terrified them all. The Kyle web was out of control. If they didn’t find a solution, it would collapse under the sheer weight of its success.

  And kill the Dyad.

  21

  Aftermath

  The Dalvador winds ruffled Roca’s clothes and cooled her skin. Iridescent glitter dusted her body and swirled in the wind, curling up into the lavender sky. Streamers of blue clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, with wisps trailing down from the sky to the ground.

  Corey Majda walked with Roca to the starport. The Majda queen gazed around at the countryside. “I’ll never get used to how beautiful—and how strange—it is here.”

  Roca felt too dispirited for talk about the landscape. She spoke in a low voice. “How is he?”

  “Prince Shannon?”

  “Yes.” She rubbed a muscle kink in the back of her neck. “He hardly says a word to me when we talk through the web link.”

  “He’s been through a lot.”

  “Too much.” If Roca could have taken into herself the memories that haunted her son, she would have done it in a moment. But only Shannon could free himself from the prison of his nightmares.

  As they neared the port, the reeds petered out into an open stretch of velvety piper-moss. A circular, whitewashed house stood beyond, its turreted roof reminding Roca of an upturned bluebell. ISC had agreed to let Shannon stay in Brad Tompkins’s house for his custody. The boy was under military guard, but at least he was living with a family friend.

  The door of the house opened as they drew near. Brad stood there in jeans and a gray sweater, his belt slung with a staser. “Roca! It’s good to see you.” He raised his hand in a wave to Corey. “My greetings, Colonel Majda.”

  “Dr. Tompkins.” Corey nodded with the wariness she always maintained toward anyone from Earth.

  Inside, the house charmed Roca as much as it had twenty-four years ago when she had first come to Lyshriol. Although it served as the port office, it was also the home where Brad lived with his Lyshrioli wife Shallia and their four children. Green glasswood paneled the living room, with a rustic bar along one wall and blue doors leading to inner rooms. Throw rugs lay about on the stone floor, which was tiled in pale blue and green squares. Paintings graced the walls, landscapes of spindled mountains cloaked in blue snow, actual pictures rather than holoscapes.

  Shallia and the children had gone to live with her mother in Dalvador, about a fifteen-minute walk from the port. Roca knew why they had gone, even if neither Shallia nor Brad would admit it, and she felt a debt of gratitude to them. They didn’t want Shannon taken up to the battle cruiser in orbit any more than Roca did. It would traumatize him to be yanked away from Lyshriol, especially now, when his emotions were already so injured. The port was ISC property, so they could hold Shannon here, but Corey Majda would never have let him stay with Brad’s family. Roca didn’t believe for one moment Shannon was a danger to anyone, and Corey knew it, too. But the colonel always followed procedure. No laughing children filled the living room today, no toys lay scattered over the rugs and tables, and no plump Shallia beamed at them, urging them to have more syrup-filled bubbles. Instead, two guards in dull green-gray uniforms of the Pharaoh’s Army stood posted by the walls.

  Shannon was sitting in an armchair at a table with a chess set made from green and gold glasswood. He looked up as they entered and then rose to his feet. His silver eyes had a hunted look, with dark circles marring his pale skin. His white-gold hair shimmered in the light from the overhead lamps.

  Roca wished she could reassure her son. But he had grown more distant these past years as he navigated the boundary between youth and manhood. He wasn’t the first of her sons to withdraw from her during adolescence, becoming taciturn and noncommittal with his mother. The other boys had come out of it after a few years and relaxed with her again. Shannon was in the middle of that time now, struggling to define himself, and she didn’t know how to reach him.

  He looked so much like a Blue Dale Archer. He wore the clothes they had given him, a moss-green tunic that reached to midthigh, thick leggings that would keep him warm in the northern mountains, and dark green boots. He lacked only his magnificent bow, the quiver of arrows on his back, and his sword with its jeweled pommel. His ethereal beauty, upward tilted eyes,
and silver gaze made him seem a creature of myth more than a human boy.

  He watched her like a wild lyrine ready to bolt. “Mother.”

  “My greetings, Shannon.” She almost called him Shani, but it felt wrong here. Shani was a boy. She faced a man, the killer of a Highton Aristo.

  Her son averted his gaze, his lashes hiding his eyes in a white-gold fringe that glinted.

  Hai! He had picked up her thought. She spoke softly, painfully aware of everyone in the room. “I am glad to see you.”

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  “Shannon,” she murmured. Gods, she wished these people would leave. Even under normal circumstances, talking to Shannon wasn’t easy. With an audience, she felt too constrained to speak at all.

  Brad came over to the chess board and gave Shannon a rueful smile. “I guess I can finish losing this game another time.”

  “You played well,” Shannon said.

  “You played better.” Brad glanced quizzically at Roca.

  “Perhaps you could come back later with Colonel Majda to finish the game,” Roca said, hoping he would take the hint. They couldn’t “come back” unless they left. Majda wouldn’t dismiss the guards, but she might at least take them outside.

  “Perhaps we could.” Brad turned to the colonel. “Did you still want to check on the landing field?”

  “The field?” Corey glanced from Brad to Roca. “Oh. Yes. Let’s do that.”

  Thank you, Roca thought, though Corey wasn’t a psion. Now if she could just convince Corey to take the guards, too. When the colonel met her gaze, Roca tilted her head slightly toward the guards. Corey just looked puzzled.

  “We could use some help checking the field,” Brad said.

  Roca could have hugged him. Corey considered him, started to speak, then seemed to change her mind. Instead she turned to the guards. “You two will aid Dr. Tompkins.”

  The taller of the two scratched his chin, seeming perplexed, which didn’t surprise Roca; even if Corey and Brad really were going to check the field in some way, they hardly needed the two lieutenants. But he just said, “Yes, ma’am.”