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

by Asaro, Catherine

  Then he opened the door.

  No more words came. Roca had nothing left to say. She sat with Jase at the long table while the traitorous suns rose above the mountains. They lied with their promise of a bright new dawn. Jase started to speak, but she shook her head. She couldn’t bear his sympathy.

  Who was next? Foolish, angry Kurj. He had lost one of his heirs. Perhaps subconsciously he did it on purpose, afraid Sauscony and Althor would plot against him and gain his title through his death, as he had done with his grandfather. She didn’t want to believe it, this hard man who had once been such a loving golden-haired boy. But she was no fool. Her golden child had turned into a military dictator, and no matter how great a leader he had become, he had an iron-cast side capable of atrocities. In that, she had lost him too, lost the miracle child, her firstborn. The war took everything.

  “Councilor.” Jase spoke quietly. “Perhaps you should speak with someone on the Ascendant.”

  Roca set her hands on the table. “I will talk to no war queens or warlords.” As Councilor of Foreign Affairs for Skolia—the civilization that took its name from her family—she had to talk with the military officers, confer, plan for defense. But never again would she see them as protectors, not after they had taken so much from her family.

  “They may be able to help,” Jase said.

  She suddenly realized what he meant. “Doctor, I have no wish to see a therapist.”

  “I truly am sorry about your son.”

  “So am I,” she whispered.

  The door scraped open down the long hall. Denric came into the hall, rubbing his eyes, his yellow curls tousled around his head. He wore his sleep trousers and shirt with a robe pulled over them. When he saw Jase and Roca, he headed down the table.

  “A pleasant morn,” he mumbled as he sat next to Jase, his eyes half-closed. Drowsily he added, “But no food.”

  Despite everything, Roca couldn’t help but smile. Denric ate everything in sight. She didn’t know where he put it all; he had a slender build and he wasn’t that tall, but he consumed enough food to feed two men twice his size.

  “It’s early,” she said. “The kitchen staff is probably fixing breakfast now.”

  Roca didn’t know how she sounded, but Denric glanced up abruptly. “Mother, what is wrong?”

  She couldn’t answer. She wiped her palm across her tear-stained cheek.

  Jase spoke. “If you will excuse me—?”

  Roca shot him a grateful look. “Yes, certainly.”

  Denric looked from her to Jase, but said nothing.

  They waited until Jase had left the hall. Then Denric said, “What happened?”

  “It’s Althor.”

  He went very still. “I dreamed about him last night. I was so relieved when I woke up and realized it was only a nightmare.”

  “Did you dream he went into battle?”

  “Yes.” His voice was almost inaudible. “And died.”

  Another tear ran down Roca’s cheek. She rubbed it away angrily, ashamed to show weakness in front of the family that needed her to be strong. But they were empaths. They knew. Putting on a front did no good when those you created it for knew what lay beyond.

  “He’s in a coma,” she said in a low voice. “His brain is dead.”

  Denric watched her as if waiting to hear it was a mistake. She couldn’t say the words he wanted to hear.

  “No,” he finally said.

  No. Such a simple word. As if it could stop reality or run time in reverse and make the present undo itself. But they couldn’t. No matter how many times they said “no,” they couldn’t make it true.

  She said only, “I know.”

  “We should go to him.”

  “Yes.” Roca nodded, so tired. “First I must talk to your father.”

  His face paled even more. “This will kill him.”

  “Don’t please don’t use those words.” She reached toward him. “Promise me, Deni. Promise you will never go to war.”

  His voice gentled. “After I go to university, I want to teach. I want to go places where they have no schools and make a difference.” Light from the dawn trickled in through windows at the far end of the hall and glinted on his eyelashes. “You and Father taught us the importance of our duties to our people. You taught us about honor and integrity. About love and what it means to stand up for those you love. We don’t all have to do it through the military. I want to help people learn.”

  “Thank you.” She gave up trying to stop the tears that streamed down her face. “Thank you, Denric.”

  “If I can—” He suddenly stopped, his gaze shifting to a point behind her.

  Roca turned to look at the stairs that led up to the landing where a person could gaze over the hall. The door up there was opening. The arched glasswood portal slowly swung outward—

  And left Eldrinson framed in its archway.

  He stood there, clutching the frame, staring at them, his face drawn, his blue sleep shirt and trousers rumpled, his hair tangled over his collar. Then he walked onto the landing in careful and uneven steps. Two steps. Three. Four. He reached the railing and grabbed it, hanging on to the red bar of glasswood, all the time watching her.

  Watching her.

  He saw them.

  To Roca, time stopped its beat. She rose from her chair, hope and fear welling within her, together, inextricably linked. She would have run up the stairs and taken him into her arms if she thought he would have let her. But she knew Eldri. His pride would prevent him from accepting anything that looked like an offer to help him down the stairs, those twenty steps that suddenly seemed like a thousand.

  Eldri turned to the stairs, clutching the rail until his knuckles turned so white, she could see it from where she stood down here. The staircase ran down the wall to a second landing; from there, it turned a corner and came out, just four steps the rest of the way down. With painstaking care, he let go of the railing and took a step, another, and another, until he reached the top of the staircase. When he put his foot on the first step, Roca’s pulse leapt. What if he fell? She wanted to call Jase, but she neither moved nor spoke. If she interfered now, he would never forgive her.

  He put his weight on the first step, one foot, then two. Then he paused, his hand clutching the banister. After a long moment, he slid his left foot to the second step, followed by his right foot. Again he paused. Again he repeated the procedure. He descended, one step at a time, stopping on each, using his legs as if for the first time.

  He reached the lower landing.

  Roca could hold back no longer. She walked forward, taking it slow so he wouldn’t think she was running to help. She stopped at the bottom of the steps. His gaze never left her face, as if the universe had narrowed to just the two of them. After so many years of marriage, she could no longer separate what she read from his body language and her empath’s sense, but she knew his mood right now: determined but afraid, furious and triumphant, brimming with joy—and drowning in grief.

  He came down those final steps, leaning on the banister, slow but never wavering. At the bottom, he stepped onto the floor in front of her and slowly let go of the rail. He stood there his gaze level with hers. Moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes and slid down his face.

  Then he pulled her into his arms.

  Roca put her arms around his waist and leaned her forehead against his. “Welcome home,” she said, her voice shaking. “Welcome home, my love.”

  26

  False Echo

  Soz ran.

  Her feet pounded the trail through the Red Mountains, hard and steady, faster and faster, until she moved in a blur. With the augmentation to her skeleton and muscle system complete, her speed had more than doubled. The microfusion reactor in her body powered the system. State-of-the-art nanomeds circulated in her body. She was a case-hardened machine.

  An enraged machine.

  She ran until the sun passed its high point in the sky and began its descent. Her lungs ached, h
er natural muscles burned, her breath rasped. Still she ran. She would go on and on, forever, until exhaustion deadened her mind and she couldn’t think, couldn’t remember, couldn’t mourn the man who lay in a living death within the ISC hospital only a few kilometers from where she ran and ran and ran …

  A loud hum startled Soz out of her trance. A red panel had lit up on her left wrist guard. It must have beeped several times; the hum was a warning to gain her attention if beeps didn’t work. Soz slowed to a walk and touched the panel. “Valdoria here.”

  “Soz, where are you?” Jazar’s voice burst out of the comm. He was no longer her roommate; this year the brass had put her in with the seniors. Jazar and Grell were still together and Obsidian had new roommates, but they had all remained friends.

  “What’s up?” Soz asked.

  “The classes are going to start the final runs. If you aren’t here in five minutes, you’re late. You miss all those demerits you finally worked off? You’re about to get more.”

  She swore under her breath. “I’ll be right there.” She was losing her focus. She had to do something, take action, fight the nameless Traders who had shattered Althor and her father. What use was it being the best damn cadet at DMA if she couldn’t stop the Traders from destroying her family? She felt useless and she hated it.

  Soz sped up, but she resisted the urge to run full out again, not wanting to exhaust herself before she started exercising with the other cadets. As she pounded around a curve, the fields of DMA came into view, with the stately academy beyond. She sprinted down the mountain, headed for the lines of cadets forming on the central plaza. When she reached the training fields, she finally let go and raced toward the second-year cadets. Although she trained now with the seniors, who had full augmentation in their bodies, the classes from all four years were gathering on the field. Tradition at DMA gave students who skipped a year or more a perk; they could pick which class they joined in such a formation. Soz always chose the second-year students. She reached her place next to Jazar, breathing hard, just as Secondary Foxer called all four classes to order.

  “Always early,” Jazar said.

  She smirked at him. “Hey, I made it.”

  He grinned. “You’re allowed to thank me now.” His teasing sounded forced, though. He knew what had distracted her. Everyone knew. It was the specter they lived with every day, in every class, every training run, every exam. They were going to war and they could die.

  Foxer glanced at Soz, holding the look a moment longer than normal, but she said nothing. The Secondary called out assignments, sending cadets to the weights, track and field, calisthenics, and obstacle courses. She inflicted Soz with her bane—the Echo. Soz set off jogging toward it with Jazar, whose class was just beginning to work on the obstacle course. She wanted to pulverize the course, but nothing helped, nothing she did, nothing she thought, nothing she studied. She wanted to fight Traders until the stars screamed. Denied that, she was left with running the damn Echo.

  When they reached the course, Soz stood restlessly at its entrance, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Foxer had changed the programming again, altering the scaffolding vibrations, the patterns of ground movement, the maze structure, and the timing of the rebounders. It didn’t matter. Soz was too angry to care about niceties anymore. She had cracked the training mesh and memorized the new configurations.

  When Foxer called her name, she set off hard, her feet pounding on the ground. She sprinted along the edge of the path toward the scaffolding, then vaulted over the pummel horse and flipped up to grab a vibrating bar. She climbed with single-minded focus. Every bar that tried to throw her off became an ESComm warship. Every strut that slipped under her feet became an ESComm soldier. She went up and over, through and down the bars, throwing herself from handhold to handhold, not pausing long enough to feel them shake.

  Soz reached the far side and was barely halfway down when she let go. She dropped through the air and landed with a force that would have broken her knees in their unaugmented days. Now they bent at exactly the amount her node calculated she needed to cushion her landing, and her enhanced legs absorbed the force. She barely felt the impact.

  She lunged into a run and danced in a rapid-fire pattern on the perplex turf beneath her feet as it rippled and bucked. The hell with the Echo. The hell with DMA. She knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault, certainly not inanimate objects, but as long as she kept raging, she could outrun the grief, that relentless, unbearable grief.

  She didn’t bother running around the edge of the pool. It never worked. She always slipped into the oil and ended up coated with the slimy stuff. Instead she jumped. The pool was too large to clear even with her enhanced muscles, so she leapt to the edge, touched down, and rebounded into another jump. Her node calculated the trajectory. She had no time to analyze. She jumped a third time and cleared the pool.

  Again she ran the perplex gauntlet. Then she plunged into the maze. Last night she had cracked the Echo mesh and memorized the new configuration. Tapperhaven would give her endless demerits if she discovered what Soz had done, but Soz had checked academy history; they didn’t throw cadets out for hacking the field-training webs. They were disciplined, yes, but not expelled. She was too angry to care. She had one goal: become a Jagernaut. Kill Traders. Nothing else mattered, even if she earned more demerits than any cadet in DMA history. Graduating with honors made no difference. What had it brought Althor? She would do whatever was necessary to survive against the Traders—hack their ship, hack their weapons systems, hack their damn brains.

  Soz broke out of the maze and raced to the rebounders. They didn’t faze her today; she had also memorized their new sequences. She darted through the smashing gateways, using her augmented reflexes to move faster than she had ever done before. As the last door slammed behind her, she sprinted into the sand pit at the end of the course and came to an abrupt stop, her chest heaving. Several cadets who had already run the course were standing around the trap. A spattering of applause greeted her.

  Soz just stood, breathing too hard to speak. Lieutenant Colonel Dayamar Stone was a few paces away, intent on the timer of his gauntlet. The cadets jogged over to Soz, including Jazar, who was grinning.

  “Soz!” Jazar clapped her on the shoulder, making her stumble.

  “Hey,” she said, catching her breath and her balance.

  “You broke the record!” He motioned at her gauntlet. “Look. You shattered it.”

  “What?” Soz peered at her timer. She had run the Echo in seven minutes and eleven seconds, pulverizing the previous record of nine minutes forty-three.

  “Whoa.” Soz blinked at her timer. Then she blinked at Jazar.

  “That was articulate.” Laughing, he turned as the other cadets gathered around. Soz tried to reorient on them, but she couldn’t unwind.

  Stone came over and spoke without smiling. “Quite a feat, Valdoria.”

  Soz saluted him. “Thank you, sir.”

  He glanced at the other cadets. “Take four laps around the track, then off to the showers.”

  They saluted and jogged off, but as Soz turned to follow, Stone said, “Not you.”

  She turned back. “Sir?”

  He spoke quietly. “How did you run the maze so fast?”

  “Practice.”

  “What practice?” His voice tightened. “It’s a new setup.”

  “I learn fast.”

  “No doubt.” He met her gaze. “If I find you’ve been cracking DMA networks, Cadet, I’ll have you up before Commandant Blackmoor faster than you can say ‘You’re expelled.’”

  Hell and damnation. “Sir! Yes, sir!”

  He jerked his head toward the track. “Go run. Eight laps.”

  Eight. Soz saluted and took off before he could ask more questions. She caught up with Jazar on his second lap.

  He jogged next to her. “What did Stone want?”

  “He thinks I cheated on the Echo.”

  “Did you?”

  She
slanted a look at him. “If you’re going to fight Traders, you damn well better do anything you can to stay alive.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You can’t cheat death.” She focused inward, drawing on her resources, and had pulled ahead of him before she realized she was using her enhanced speed.

  “Soz, cut it out.” He sprinted up next to her and drew her to a halt. She could have easily pulled free; as a cadet only a few months into his second year, he had no biomech yet, neither a node nor any enhancement to his body. But she stopped, breathing deeply, ready to take off if he pushed.

  “Listen to me.” He stood with sweat running down his face and soaking his mesh shirt. “If you crack the Echo, the only person you’re cheating is yourself.”

  “Jaz, don’t.”

  “Let yourself hurt.” His voice gentled. “Let go. Be human.”

  “I don’t know how.” She choked on the words. “I’m dying inside.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Give it time.”

  “Time. Right.” She shifted her feet. “Let’s run.”

  They started off again, and she tried to exhaust herself with the exercise. But nothing could fix her broken edges. She couldn’t drop her anger and let herself grieve—for if it started, she feared it would never stop.

  Kurj sat in a high-backed academy chair at a round table with the Jag insignia enameled into its surface. He looked away, out the arched windows of Commandant Blackmoor’s office, into the night. That darkness reflected his mood more than any glossy symbol.

  A clink came from behind him, and he turned back as Blackmoor set steaming mugs of kava on the table. The commandant lowered himself into his own chair across from Kurj and folded his hands around the massive gray mug.

  “Stone thinks she cheated,” Blackmoor said.

  Kurj took a swallow of bitter kava. “How?”