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

by Asaro, Catherine

  Soz nodded, stiff and awkward, but also relieved. At least they weren’t going to kick her out. “Yes, sir.”

  He spoke with a quieter aspect than usual. “How is your brother?”

  “He’s … as well as can be expected.” She couldn’t say the truth, even if they both knew. As long as Althor breathed, regardless of how much help the machines gave him, she hoped.

  “My sympathies,” he said.

  Soz swallowed. “Thank you.”

  He glanced at the holosheets scattered across his desk, then back at her. “That will be all.”

  “Yes, sir.” She stood and saluted.

  As she turned to leave, she heard him shuffling the holosheets. She had only gone a few steps toward the door, though, when he spoke behind her. “Cadet.”

  Soz turned around. “Yes, sir?”

  “It can’t have been easy to come here tonight.”

  “It had to be done.”

  “Yes. It did.” He exhaled. “Carry on, Valdoria.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She left his office and went out into the night. As she walked to the dormitory, she passed cadets on their way to the library, to study or socialize, as so many students did on a balmy night like this. She wouldn’t be joining them any evening soon, balmy or otherwise. Mucking with spamoozala and mechbots would occupy her free time for the rest of the year.

  A few people waved at her, and she waved back, but she felt like an interloper. A cheat. A fake Jagernaut. No, they weren’t perfect. Yes, they made decisions compromised by the conflicting demands of their lives. But the code of honor had to matter. She had lost sight of that. Stupid, cocky cadet. She would have been tempted to throw herself out of the academy, too.

  So she trudged on, headed to her dorm and a year of probation, knowing she could make no more mistakes if she wanted to graduate, to receive her commission, all for the purpose of going out there to live the reality of an oncoming war that had put those dark circles under Blackmoor’s eyes.

  That had killed her brother.

  27

  Visitors

  Awalkway circled to the Blue Tower of the castle in Dalvador under the overhang of its turreted roof. Shannon stood on the walk, shaded by the roof, his hands resting on the sculpted edges of the wall, which resembled stone petals, just as the roof resembled a bell-flower turned upside down. He had studied holos of flowers in school, but he had no desire to see real ones in their natural habitat. He couldn’t imagine going offworld. It would split him in two, leaving his spirit here while his body went elsewhere.

  He had to leave.

  He couldn’t leave.

  His parents were going to Althor. He wanted to go with them. But he couldn’t. The ISC doctors had concerns, something about his neural development, that it was going through a growth surge. They claimed that where he went in the next few years would affect its proper maturation. He didn’t really understand, and he suspected they didn’t, either.

  No one had expected it to take over a year for Father to learn the use of his new legs and eyes. They had yet to unravel the differences between the Rillian brain and human norms. Blue Dale Archers differed even more. Shannon’s doctors genuinely feared that if he left Lyshriol now, his brain wouldn’t develop properly, especially after the shocks of his recent experiences. So he had to stay home.

  He and Althor had never truly said good-bye. Maybe his Blue Dale brain was different, but it didn’t change his love for his family. The thought of leaving Lyshriol frightened him. But the thought of never seeing his brother again frightened him even more.

  In the distance, out at the starport, an ISC shuttle waited on the tarmac, gleaming black and gold in the sunlight. His parents were walking toward it with several other people, their pace slow and careful. Eldrinson took it step by step, leaning on a cane, refusing any aid that hinted at advanced technology. Roca walked beside him, but she didn’t offer her arm. Shannon knew why; pride would stop his father from accepting help.

  Soon the shuttle would rise into orbit, taking his parents to a battle cruiser. He thought of running to the port, insisting they take him. But they had already said no. He would remain here while they bade Althor farewell.

  It hurt more than he could say.

  In the greater scheme of star travel, the trip wasn’t long, only a few days. They traveled on a Firestorm battle cruiser. The kilometers-long cylinder rotated to create an apparent gravity close to human standard. The ship was a star-faring metropolis. Bronze corridors and gold paths led through a city of coppery buildings and balconies. A sky needle soared in the distance, one of the great spokes that radiated from the center of the cylinder to its rim. Eldrinson doubted he would even have known he was on a ship, except that instead of a sky, it had a curving hull far overhead.

  This wasn’t his first trip offworld. He went as rarely as possible, but he did travel with Roca every year or so. As such trips went, this was routine. It could have even been pleasant.

  It was the hardest journey he had ever taken.

  He spoke to almost no one. He spent time with Roca, but no one else. Although he wished they could have brought the children, it relieved him to know they were safe. Except even Lyshriol wasn’t safe; his aching legs and blurred sight spoke brutally of that truth.

  He rarely tried to walk. Either he had to go painfully slow or else he lurched and fell. But he couldn’t lean on people. Alone, with Roca, he could bear the shame of needing help, but every time he looked into her gold eyes, so different from the violet or silver of his people, he remembered his wife came from this fast, cold universe. He knew she loved him. How could he not know? They were psions. But it never changed the truth. Her willingness to settle for less didn’t make his deficiencies any less bleak.

  The power spiked.

  Normally the tech wouldn’t have noticed such a slight power surge in the grid he monitored, one dedicated to the desert east of the Red Mountains on the world Diesha. Tonight he had forgotten to bring the entertainment disk he was enjoying with its in-depth exposes on the lives of nobles from the great Skolian Houses, especially Majda and Rajindia. It left him staring morosely and with great boredom at the graphs floating in the air above the console. He had nothing else to do, so he noticed the spike.

  With so much free time, he spent half an hour checking various systems, first the defense installations he monitored and then the systems he used to do the monitoring. When he found no problems, he made a note in the record, adding his opinion that the surge was a bit too far out of the usual parameters. He forwarded a copy to the main office. It gave him something to do.

  Then he resumed staring wearily at the holomaps and graphs. He had another six hours to fill.

  Perhaps more spikes would appear.

  Two doctors escorted Eldrinson and Roca into a room with glowing white walls, equipment embedded in every surface and chrome robot arms folded against the bed. It resembled any other bed, despite its glistening white sheets, which no doubt were threaded with technological marvels. But the man who lay there, his gold skin gone sallow, his chest barely moving—no, that couldn’t be.

  It couldn’t be.

  Eldrinson was dimly aware of the doctors speaking, but he couldn’t hear. It was all he could do to limp forward using his blue glasswood cane for each step, his hand gripped on the carved lyrine head at the top.

  He stopped at the bed and leaned his weight on the cane. Althor. His son. Althor’s eyes were closed and his body wasted compared to the muscular giant who had visited home more than a year ago. Eldrinson died inside again, as he had so often this past year, remembering how he had sent his son away. If only he could take back those words. But nothing would change the past.

  He almost wished he had remained blind, so he wouldn’t see Althor’s motionless, wasted form. His gold-rimmed spectacles made his vision almost as sharp as before his injuries. An ISC doctor had constructed them after Eldrinson refused to have any more operations on his eyes. Spectacles he understood.
He could touch them, hold them, see why they worked. And he could remove them, unlike the changes within his body. He had dreaded the biomech, considered it alien and inhuman, but he would have given anything now, including his own life, if only that technology could have helped his son.

  Roca stood at his side. She put her hand over his on the head of his cane. He laid his other hand over hers and they remained at the bedside of their son. Such heroism, everyone told them. The doomed Blackstar Squadron had saved Onyx Platform and billions of people, places and populations Eldrinson could barely imagine. He tried to feel pride in his son’s sacrifice, but all he could think was that he would have rather have had Althor alive than a hero.

  He had felt proud of his two oldest sons when each insisted on riding into battle with him—and he had hated it as well, fearing they wouldn’t come home. What could he say: stay protected while your father goes to war? They were bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, and younger than he. Now, seeing Althor, he wished he had never trained them in swordplay or archery. As primitive as such warriors were compared to Jagernauts, they had still taught Althor the mindset of war. Perhaps if his sons had never learned to fight, they would have become farmers, like Vyrl, or teachers, like Denric.

  Or maybe it would have made no difference. Soz had never trained with a sword, at least not with his permission. She had spent hours with a bow and arrows, but he had never taken it seriously. He should have; she shot like a Blue Dale Archer. But no matter what he tried, encouraging his sons or discouraging his daughter, in the end they went down their own path, one he would never have wished for them. He had to let them go, and when he did, he lost them.

  Althor looked as if he were only sleeping, that any moment he might awake. His metallic lashes lay on his pallid skin. With the weight he had lost, his face had become gaunt, bringing his features into sharp relief. Equipment hummed around him. Although the doctors weren’t ready to make a final diagnosis, their emotions about this were too intense, and Eldrinson picked up their moods even through their many mental defenses. They had no hope his son would recover.

  Eldrinson gritted his teeth. Machines piloted by nameless soldiers had done this. Althor had never even seen their faces. It seemed so wrong on such a fundamental level, so dehumanizing, that it made him wonder if offworlders could be fully human. Perhaps they were all like him now, full of biomech. Walking machines.

  Someone touched his arm. Startled, he looked up. A doctor was standing there, a woman in a white jumpsuit. She nodded kindly and indicated a chair by the head of the bed. “Would you like to sit, Your Majesty?”

  He very much wanted to sit; his legs felt ready to liquefy. He almost said no anyway, but weariness crept over him. He had been walking only a few days. When he nodded, the doctor stepped back to give him room. He limped to the chair, leaning on his cane, and settled into its faintly shimmering cushions.

  Another woman brought a chair for Roca and she sat next to him. He found it difficult to reach out to her, but he felt how much she needed him, and if he was honest with himself, how much he needed her. He put out his hand and she took it, curling her five fingers around his four.

  The doctors spoke, phrases of comfort, futile words that meant they had no hope so they offered kindness instead. Then they began, ever so gently, to talk about the decision he and Roca would have to make: How long would they leave Althor on the machines that were keeping his body alive after his brain had died.

  Eldrinson stopped listening then, unable to bear any more. He stayed with his wife, the two of them sitting a vigil that would never end.

  “She needs training.” Lyra Meson, First Councilor of the Assembly, paced across Commandant Blackmoor’s office.

  Kurj stood by the wall with his arms folded, studying the councilor as she strode past him, then past Blackmoor, who was half sitting on his large desk. Colonel Starjack Tahota, the admissions officer who had brought Soz to DMA, stood on the other side of Blackmoor.

  As the newly elected leader of the Skolian Imperialate, Meson had served less than two years. Long and lanky, almost as tall as Blackmoor, she wore crisp blue slacks and a white shirt. Blue tattoos bordered the left side of her face from her temple to the line of her jaw in a curve of interlocked circles, the sign of a powerful family among the mercantile class. With her sharp motions, intense eyes, and shock of dark hair, she exuded energy.

  Although Kurj considered Meson a good choice for First Councilor, he had no intention of revealing that opinion. He had never agreed with the separation of power that made the First Councilor—a civilian—leader over even the Imperator. Meson had served in the Pharaoh’s Army for twelve years and retired as a lieutenant colonel. Even so, she had far less familiarity with ISC than Kurj,. ISC should be the final voice of the government during either war or peacetime. It made no difference to him that most of the civilian government disagreed; he knew what Skolia needed and it wasn’t a dithering Assembly.

  It disquieted him more, however, that Meson was only forty-three, five years his junior. She had savvy, intelligence, and foresight, but she lacked the kind of experience that could only come with many years in office. A civilization facing the prospect of interstellar war needed a veteran at the helm, not someone who had only recently assumed power. The Traders knew that. It was probably why ESComm had made their move now.

  He watched Meson through the gold shimmer of his inner lids. “You won’t find any better training for pilots than here at DMA.”

  Meson stalked over to him. “I have no doubt about that. I mean your sister needs training as your heir.”

  He regarded her implacably. “If I recall the order that your vaunted Assembly gave me two years ago, I was to choose heirs and have them attend academies for their training.” His voice cooled. “Fine. I did it. Now my brother is dead.”

  She spoke quietly. “Imperator Skolia, I deeply regret the loss you have suffered. I am sorry to bring this up. But it only underscores the unstable nature of our situation.”

  Kurj knew where she was going with this. As long as his heirs could work as Rhon telops, in theory they could join the Dyad if he died. But Skolia needed a true Imperator, one capable of holding the title in more than name. If they couldn’t succeed as military officers, they had no business being his heirs. However, even the best officers could become casualties; that truth had become an all too brutal reality. He had lost Althor. Soz remained.

  “She isn’t ready.” Kurj said. “If you send her out in a squad, I could lose my second heir.” His voice took on an edge. “I don’t have any more spares, Councilor.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of a squad,” she said.

  “Then what?” Blackmoor asked, leaning against his desk. He was at ease with Meson in a way Kurj had never felt with the First Councilor. But then, Blackmoor and Meson belonged to the same political party, the Progressives, which had misguided views about holding elections instead of passing power through hereditary lines. They probably disliked the hereditary nature of his position as much as he disliked answering to a civilian. He had appointed Blackmoor as the DMA commandant because he had been better qualified than the other candidates, but his politics annoyed Kurj.

  “Your sister needs hands-on experience,” Meson told Kurj. “Procedures, ships, resources, strengths, weaknesses—she needs to learn it for all branches of ISC, not just the J-Force.”

  A good suggestion. Kurj had served aboard army, fleet, and ASC ships during his training. But he hadn’t been so raw. “She’s only eighteen.”

  “She is young,” Meson acknowledged. “But these aren’t normal times.”

  “If you’re saying we need to speed up her training,” Kurj said, “then yes, I agree.”

  Meson blinked. Kurj supposed it wasn’t often he openly agreed with her. She had a tendency to make sense, unfortunately. If she continued to do her job so well, it wouldn’t help the Royalist Party, which asserted that Progressive ideas weakened the Imperialate and power should pass through hereditary lines. A
lthough Kurj belonged to the Technology Party, he sympathized with the Royalists.

  Tahota spoke for the first time. “Cadet Valdoria doesn’t have to stop her DMA training. She can alternate her work here with tours on ships in other branches of ISC. She has time, with her advanced standing.” Satisfaction showed on her weathered face. “When I first met her on Lyshriol, I could tell she was going to be one of our best. What a fire in that one! I’m not surprised she’s over two years ahead of her class.”

  Blackmoor snorted. “Yes, well, she’s busy now. She spends all her time cleaning mechbots.”

  Meson cocked an eyebrow at him. “The Imperial Heir?”

  Kurj answered dryly. “Especially the Imperial Heir.”

  “Ah, well.” Meson’s lips quirked in a smile. “We’ve all been young and brash.”

  “Some more than others,” Blackmoor said. “However, I concur that she would benefit from the tours.”

  “I suggest we start with the Fleet,” Tahota said. “It’s the largest branch of ISC.”

  “Put her on a battle cruiser for a few months,” Meson said. “She can do her classes as a VR student, through the webs.”

  “Roca’s Pride is the best in the Fleet,” Kurj said. “It also has a Dyad Chair she can study.”

  Meson cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate the name.”

  “Perhaps,” Kurj said, neutral. ISC selected names for its vessels from three categories: historical battles, well-known figures, and the royal family. By assigning Soz to Roca’s Pride, he achieved two goals: putting her on a ship named after her own mother might give her some measure of additional confidence in what was bound to be a difficult tour, and it offered an implicit reminder to the Progressives that ISC had strong ties with the Ruby Dynasty.