The Children of Anthi: Anthi - Book One

by Deborah Chester

  The Children of Anthi

  Anthi: Book One

  Deborah Chester

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1985 by Deborah Chester

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition February 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-591-9

  More from Deborah Chester

  Time Trap Series

  Time Trap

  Showdown

  Pieces of Eight

  Restoration

  Turncoat

  Termination

  Ruby Throne Series

  Reign of Shadows

  Shadow War

  Realm of Light

  Anthi Series

  The Children of Anthi

  Requiem for Anthi

  The Omcri Matrix

  The Goda War

  Chapter 1

  Blaise Omari sat tensed over his navigational controls, waiting. The needle-thin scoutship Forerunner swung smoothly into high orbit around Lambda Base, taking the controller’s instructions to remain four thousand meters aft from a sleek liner. Beside him at helm Saunders muttered at the distance and glanced over her shoulder at the captain, who shrugged. Blaise did not relax. It seemed, as the low chatter of traffic control continued steadily over his communications line, that luck was with him this time. But Blaise did not believe in luck, never had, preferring instead to trust nothing but his own wits.

  It was all a matter of time. Institute Security did not employ fools. He had been careless, rushing to send out the information over the last available seconds of reduced-rate communications, and Security’s monitors had picked it up. In minutes they would break the code and know that the contents of that message were illegal. In minutes they would trace the sender, find that false, and trace further to one Major Blaise Omari, crewer on the Forerunner. Blaise’s fingers beat out a rapid tattoo on the edge of his console. Demos, what a fool! If he hadn’t been in such a rush to send out the goods for that final payment…With a grimace he cut off the thoughts and looked slowly around the narrow oblong confines of the bridge. His console stood in the front, practically in the nose, with the viewscreen and a row of storage compartments running underneath before him. On the right ranged the bank of highly complex sensors, along with engine monitoring. On the left hummed the ship’s maintenance units, computers in charge of air, heat, light, and gravitational fields.

  Staring ahead at the distant stars that were shimmering faintly through the liner’s emissions, Blaise missed an order and pulled his thoughts together, angry at the lapse. The knot in his stomach tightened, and he flexed his fingers, which itched to send the ship flying. Blind running was not his way. He would wait until his mistake was confirmed. Security might possibly delay long enough to enable the Forerunner to leave orbit. And the farther away he got from Lambda Base, the better his chances of escaping without a trace for his hunters to follow.

  “Relax, Omari,” drawled Saunders as her freckled, beefy hands flipped down the switches that began warming the port and starboard reactors for implosion. “Routine stuff this time.”

  Blaise made no response, keeping his pale eyes locked on his tactical viewer, alert for any approaching patrol shuttles. For seven months he’d been harnessed to this console with her, this loud, hard-eyed woman, spawned in one of the mining belts. She had brawn to go with her bulk, which no amount of exercise would ever trim, and she wore her flaming hair cropped the regulation five centimeters short, making her square-jawed face look even plainer.

  Now she snorted and leaned toward him, reeking of Drybath chemical. “Omari,” she snapped, her eyes narrowed with suspicion, “if you’re too strung for duty, report it to the captain at once!”

  Her voice cut across the narrow bridge, momentarily silencing whatever Hassid was mumbling to the captain. Both looked Blaise’s way, the captain’s thin face narrowing even further in a frown. Blaise met his gaze, mentally cursing Saunders. But none of his anger showed as he answered her.

  “I do not drink saok or lift zine,” he said, his low voice as taut as the muscles across his cheekbones. Was she really stupid enough to think he would show for duty strung after seven months of perfect behavior, or did she suspect what had happened? But how could she know? He glared a warning at her. “You know that. Back off, Saunders.”

  She frowned and turned back to her own work, although he knew she was still keeping her eye on him. He tightened his lips and unleashed some of his mounting impatience by slowly clenching and unclenching one fist at his side. Just a few minutes more, and perhaps he would get away.

  Ahead the liner gathered herself and shifted out of orbit with enviable ease. No g-lurch would upset her passengers.

  The chatter on his line paused. Blaise’s breath caught in his throat, and for the first time that day he allowed himself a flicker of hope.

  “Clearance…SIS Forerunner,” said the controller at last. “Departure course fifty-eight degrees mark four. Go light…in twelve minutes.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied the captain.

  Blaise nodded to the unspoken order and ran the coordinates into the navigational computer, which would transfer them to the helm. Beside him Saunders yawned, her broad jaws cracking. The sound grated, and he grimaced.

  “Omari,” said the captain. “We have ten-point-eight minutes to Go light. Plot course for Riban XII.”

  “Aye, sir.” Blaise eased his tense back muscles a fraction. Time clicked over on the chronometer above his tactical screen.

  “Crew, prepare for implosion drive,” said the captain over the intercom. His voice held the flat tone he reserved for routine. “Implementation…now.”

  On reflex Blaise lifted up one hand overhead and grasped his harness, pulling it down until it clicked into place over his shoulders. Eyeing the computer readout, he punched in an acknowledgment sequence and was busy strapping himself into the webbing when the outside communications line buzzed.

  The captain sighed. “Forerunner to base. If that cruiser crowding our tail wants prior clearance, forget it. We’ve a schedule to meet.”

  “Controller to Forerunner,” replied the mechanical tones of the drone manning traffic. “Switching to Security call. Over.”

  A cold chill froze Blaise for an instant; then he blinked and calmly finished strapping himself into the suspended webbing. His fingers slipped in a special sequence code to the computer as he listened to the faint babble of noise while the base-to-ship message was relayed directly over the captain’s line. It had come at last. Ignoring the twisting knot in his stomach, Blaise finished computing his coordinates, which had been selected as soon as he suspected what was to come. Behind him came the static-charged words of accusation and order.

  “Acknowledged,” snapped the captain. “Have your squad standing by. Forerunner out.” There was a moment of silence on the bridge while Saunders and Hassid stared at Blaise and the captain’s eyes seemed to bore through his back; then: “Helm!” barked the captain. “Lower us to close orbit.”

  “Aye, sir.” Saunders spared one more narrowed glance at Omari and reached for the contro
ls as the captain stepped to Blaise’s side. He came around to the front of the console to face him, scowling, his eyes the color of lead.

  “Omari,” he said coldly, “consider yourself—”

  Adrenaline surged through Blaise. His hands, deft with desperation, came down hard on the controls, and with a squawl of protesting metal the Forerunner heeled over and lunged into implosion drive. It was an insane thing to do, this close to a base with traffic orbiting heavily, but they missed collision in that helpless moment of changeover when everything blurred gray and a vast hand seemed to flatten Blaise until he nearly came through his webbing as pulp. Then his vision cleared and his hard body made the adjustment as the ship’s inner gravitation field compensated for g-lurch. He rubbed his hand across his eyes and reached out to make a minor correction in their heading. At once the numbing vibration in the ship’s hull ceased, and they plunged on fast and deep into interstellar space.

  Only then did he notice the captain lying on the deck in a crumpled heap. Blood glistened in a red spear across that pale narrow face, but whether he lived was not at once apparent. On the opposite side of the small bridge Hassid dangled from his partially secured harness, his dark face twisted with pain. Slowly he tried to free a hanging arm, only to gasp and shut his eyes. Sweat beaded down his temple.

  “Damn you, Omari!” Her broad face scarlet, Saunders began unstrapping herself in a frenzy. “Hijacking an Institute ship and killing the captain will see you ground to—”

  “Shut up!” shouted Blaise, racing to free himself before her.

  But despite her bulk and rage, she was quicker and had slapped open a bulkhead storage compartment and whirled around with a strifer in her hand just as he worked clear of his harness. He read death in her eyes and dropped flat to the deck behind the navigational console.

  She held her fire, however, and he choked on a breath of relief, his fingers clutching at the steel-plated floor.

  “I’m not that stupid, Omari,” she said tensely. “We both know I’m not going to destroy helm and navigation just for the pleasure of scrambling your neurons. But I shoot very accurately at close quarters, and if you don’t want to be stunned and dropped through the jettison hatch to die eating space, then you’ll stand up and re-mark our course back to Lambda Base.”

  Slowly, knowing she was one to back up her threats, Blaise stood up, keeping his hands visible. But he made no other move. His gray eyes were as hard as hers.

  “Is the captain dead?” he asked.

  Her mouth tightened with suspicion, but she let her gaze flicker down to the captain’s body. “I don’t…no,” she said flatly, looking up quickly at Blaise. “He’s still bleeding.” She raised her weapon. “Turn us back.”

  Still Blaise made no move, and she frowned.

  “Don’t be a fool! By now the base has sent a ship in pursuit. And there’ll be more called out. You can’t outrun the Institute. Even Forerunner hasn’t the speed of a patrol ship—”

  “No one will follow where we’re going,” said Blaise. Recklessly he raised his head and dared smile at her. “Aren’t you curious, Saunders? Don’t you want to know what’s up? What I’ve really done?” Holding his breath, he waited for her to take the bait as he silently counted off the remaining minutes at their current blast of speed.

  She blinked at him, frowning. “I’ve never trusted you, Omari. Certain things about you never added up…until now. How you have stayed in the Institute long enough to get your present rank—”

  “Simple.” He shrugged, estimating his chances of getting the weapon away from her and deciding that the odds were not good. “I found an ident card on a skirmish field following one of your precious Institute’s attempts to reason with colonists who didn’t want Institute protection. I took the name and the codex number, changed a few personal facts, and made sure I was transferred to a sector far away from the late Omari’s pals.”

  Her frown deepened as she considered this casual account of what was almost an impossible breach of Institute security clearance procedures. “You have been with us seven months. And on the Priori ship before that. Nearly two years of service and deception.”

  He shrugged.

  “And who are you really?”

  He laughed harshly, then stopped as her grip tightened on the strifer. “Demos, Saunders, but you’re naive under all that grit and meat. Do you think I’ll tell you anything besides a list of identities that mean nothing? Why bother?”

  For a moment she said nothing, simply standing there with her strifer aimed steadily at his gut. Then almost reluctantly, she said, “What have you done?”

  They were nearly close enough. The clock still hummed in his brain as the strain on the ship built up, hammering through bulkhead and deck into the bones of his cushioned feet. Involuntarily Blaise put out a hand to the console to steady himself, and as he did so he heard a sharp click. His blood froze. He knew that click. It was the sound of a straining safety. She had fired on him, but the strifer had not worked. Giving her no chance to recover from her split-second chagrin, Blaise threw himself at her in a long leap, his straining muscles giving him enough impetus to tip her off-balance despite her braced stance. She fell heavily to the deck, grunting, and kicked at him with a force that would have caved in bone had it landed. But with cat-quick reflexes he rolled and dived again, gaining hold of her wrist and applying pressure until the strifer fell from her fingers. It clattered on the deck, and she snarled an oath, getting in a blow with her free hand that numbed his shoulder.

  Angrily he pushed clear and leveled the strifer at her as she rolled to her feet. He made sure she saw him disengage the safety, and her hard eyes might have been chips of the ore mined on her native world as she stood there, red-faced and panting.

  “So you can make a mistake, Saunders,” he said, watching her jaw muscles tighten. Equally deliberately he switched the setting from stun to kill and saw the answering flicker in her eyes. He drew in a breath. “Move over to Hassid and help get the pressure off that arm.”

  She glared at him but obeyed. Cautiously Blaise stepped around the captain’s motionless body, but there was no trick waiting for him. The captain’s breathing fluttered shallow and rapid; his ashen face glistened wet with blood and a faint film of sweat. Blaise frowned, then turned his attention to the weapons compartment. He aimed the strifer and fired, squinting against the answering spit and showering of frying circuits. The compartment would not open now for anyone.

  A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he spun, aiming the strifer with a quickness that froze Saunders.

  “Take your hand away from that communications panel,” he said, making no effort to soften his voice.

  She moved away, back to Hassid, who now sat huddled on the deck with his arm cradled in his lap. He looked at Blaise, then shut his eyes, his swarthy face pinching with agony. Blaise watched them both for a moment before going to the door that opened into the aft part of the ship. There had been no sign of life from the two crewers back there, but he was taking no chances. A careful burst from the strifer, and the door circuits fried with satisfying fury.

  “Whoever you are,” said Saunders angrily, “hijacking even a scoutship is a death offense—”

  “Call me Omari,” said Blaise absently as he returned to the helm. “I never go back to old identities.” He eyed the controls and tightened his lips with satisfaction. With a flip of a fingertip he switched on the bridge viewscreen and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he considered the star systems ahead.

  “My God,” she said suddenly, and the fear in her voice made it sound wooden. Surprised, he glanced up at her, and as he did so her eyes widened. “You…you’re a drone. An escaped…No one else could clear Security to assume a crewer’s identity. But that’s impossible.”

  “Is it?” he said flatly, seeing the revulsion in her eyes and feeling furious at the old, never-to-be-banished shame that swept over him. “A large sum of money removed the identity number off my jaw.” He forced a smil
e, although it was merely a showing of teeth. “We don’t always come out of the vats as morons. Some of us have brains and ambitions.”

  Fear flashed over her, shrinking the bulk and the loudness. She stared at him, her breathing audible. “We’re going too fast to get anywhere,” she said, as though reassuring herself. “In an hour we’ll be stranded without fuel.”

  He met her eyes, his own gaze like steel. “In an hour fuel will not matter. There is only one place left for me to go, Saunders. One place where the Institute will not hunt me down.”

  “The Uncharted Zone,” she whispered, glancing at the viewscreen and back again. Then, with a visible effort, she regathered her self-confidence. “You’re insane. There’s nothing out there.”

  For the second time that day his laugh barked out, as bleak and harsh as space itself. “You forget we’re both Institute, Saunders. I know what the zone contains and why S.I. ships won’t enter it.” He smiled at her, reading her thoughts. “Two years ago I had no choice left but to take on the most despicable identity in the world, that of an Institute crewer.” She stiffened, and he tightened his grip on the strifer. “I knew,” he continued, “what would happen to me once I was discovered. Now I have no choice but to do this. I always have an escape route.”

  An alert flashed across the viewscreen with insistent red blips. The ship shuddered and slowed. Swiftly Blaise overrode programmed course abortion and shot them past the demarcation buoy. Standing at the console with the strifer still trained on Saunders, Blaise called up a scantily plotted star chart on the astrogation screen, considered the remaining fuel in the reactors, and made his choice. Minutes later, with the course computed and laid in, he slowed the reckless speed that was gradually tearing the guts from the little scoutship.

  Saunders watched him in silence, and when he had finished, she said in a low voice, “Where did you get that chart? It’s not an Institute graph.”