by Jo Zebedee
“Emperor Edkar I’s father died on Geneza, didn’t he?” asked Varä.
“He did. During the attack on Lato Palace.”
But that, Ormuz saw, was not the reason for the “pilgrimage”: the Admiral’s smile had stiffened at the mention of her ancestor. Proletarian history texts may have been full of the glory of the heroic admiral who returned from defeating the Baal, was subsequently snubbed by the then-reigning emperor and consequently battled to take the Throne for himself… But Ormuz was learning that the nobility—and even the Imperial Family itself!—viewed history somewhat differently. The Baal were demons, devils; albeit silent and unseen for more than a millennium. Although the only foreign interstellar power the Old Empire had encountered in its three thousand years, the war against them had been, Ormuz was told in school, both just and righteous.
Ormuz glanced across at Varä. The marquess was on best behaviour, prim in his chair, a polite smile on his face. He was also sombrely dressed in jacket and trousers of dark blue, simply adorned but of an excellent cut. To Varä, Geneza was a very real place, a world he had visited; and the history of that world was equally real. He could trace back his lineage to the Old Empire. The Puoskari family had been noble for millennia.
The Ormuz family had no such antecedents: generation after generation of farmers since the year Rasamra was colonised. Not, of course, that Ormuz was truly of that family. His real ancestors, the dukes of Ahasz, the Vonshuans, boasted historical connections superior to Varä’s. The Vonshuan family was from Geneza and had been nobles during that first exodus to the stars 4,400 years ago which had eventually become the Old Empire.
The Admiral turned her console to face Ormuz and Varä. Depicted in the circular glass were the multi-coloured lines of a naval map of the Empire.
“Geneza is here,” she told them, putting a finger to a pale square in an inner circle of the map. “Three weeks’ travel from Shuto. Centrally-located but traffic is sparse through the system. A good choice of rendezvous.”
Ormuz disagreed. Yes, initially Geneza did seem a wise choice but… There were too many disadvantages and better planetary systems the Serpent could have chosen. He leant forward and peered at the display. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s made a mistake.”
The Admira’s scowl deepened: she was clearly annoyed at having her knowledge of strategy questioned.
Ormuz outlined his objections: “Three weeks is too long. Sloops experience less time-lag during topologic travel than warships and so would arrive a week earlier at Shuto from Geneza. Giving the Imperial defenders ample time to prepare. He should have chosen somewhere no more than a week’s travel from the capital.
“Also, Geneza is a mostly deserted system. He would have to take his provisions and supplies there to outfit his forces. An industrialised system that could provide him with everything he needs would have been better.”
“If he blockades Geneza, no sloop will escape to warn of his attack,” said the Admiral dismissively.
“He could as easily blockade another planetary system,” pointed out Ormuz. “Here.” He pointed to a bright triangle one week’s travel from Shuto. The triangle signified an industrialised world, the brightness was an indication of its wealth. The route between the world and the capital was heavily travelled but he disregarded that. “Syrena.”
“Ahasz’s home world,” identified the Admiral.
“Keeping his identity secret at this point is both pointless and unnecessary,” continued Ormuz. “He knows that. He must have chosen Geneza for another reason.”
“Which is?” asked the Admiral.
“He’s expecting us.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I don’t understand,” Varä said at length. “Then why not gather at Syrena? Surely he can defend his home world better?”
Ormuz sat back. “He could, yes. But…” He could understand the Serpent’s desire not to fight in his own planetary system. He would be holding his wealth hostage, its survival dependent upon the fortunes of battle. Fierce fighting about Syrena would likely result in extensive collateral damage—not simply to the world’s infrastructure but also to its inhabitants. Tens of thousands of innocents could die. It was too high a price to pay.
“He’s made Geneza a trap for us,” Ormuz said. “He knows of our opposition but his target is the Emperor. He plans to defeat us and then move unopposed onto Shuto. When his fleet appears in orbit about Shuto, the Imperial defence will collapse. The coup will be essentially bloodless. It’s important to him that it is.” Because it was equally important to Ormuz that as little blood as possible be spilt. Ahasz and Ormuz were one and the same—they shared the same DNA.
“You know this?” asked Varä.
“No,” Ormuz admitted. “Not for truth. But it seems to fit. By choosing Geneza as his rendezvous, he’s taken the battle away from the non-combatants. It… simplifies things for him. Fleet against fleet; regiment against regiment.”
“He must have a great deal of faith in whoever he sets in command of his forces,” mused the Admiral.
“He can’t know how large our forces will be. You’ve only ever invited people to ally themselves with you at face-to-face meetings.”
“He will rely on overwhelming strength?” asked the Admiral.
“He has no choice,” Ormuz replied. “He’s stripped the Imperial Army Abroad of combat-ready troops and he knows we will find it harder to recruit regiments to our cause. We can’t match him for numbers on the ground.”
Varä frowned. “And in space?”
“Again, he has the advantage. Some of the Lords of the Admiralty are backing him: they will provide the ships he needs. We have no such allies.” Ormuz snorted. “If anything, the Admiralty would stop us if they could. They’ve no desire to be called on Edkar’s Promise.” Like a muscle that had atrophied through lack of use, the emperor never needing to call on the Imperial Navy for help had weakened their loyalty.
“This is not a welcome picture you are painting, Casimir,” the Admiral remarked. “What advantage do we possess? How can we hope to win?”
One night before Vengeful arrived in the Linna system and Ormuz lay himself down in his cot to sleep. There was a scuttle on the bulkhead at the head of the cot. Rolling onto his stomach and looking up, Ormuz could gaze through it. There was nothing to see. Vengeful was in the toposphere, a universe of unrelieved greyness. According to the Admiral, stars manifested themselves differently in the toposphere, at wavelengths invisible to the human eye.
Ormuz sighed and rolled onto his back. Tonight, he would visit the nomosphere. He had the trick of it now. There was no real need to do so: their plans were set and little could be changed now. He knew the Serpent’s dispositions and had passed them on to the Admiral. No, he would visit the nomosphere because he could. There was always something to learn there.
He closed his eyes and yawned…
He was there but could not remember how he had arrived. His last coherent memory had been of yawning. The nomosphere, that light-filled realm where the information of the Empire was his for the taking. He held his hands up before his face and saw they were black and featureless. No nails, and a skin textured like some slick fabric that shed light. He wondered if his manifestation in the nomosphere reflected some unconscious choice of his own or if it were one of the rules of the dimension. Black, after all, was the colour of order. He concentrated, trying to change his hands to some other hue, red perhaps. Nothing happened.
Ormuz dropped his hands and spun slowly in place. The nomosphere mimicked the real universe in appearance but those globes of roiling blackness were pools of data, not stars. It was the manifestation of information which generated the dark light, not the fierce temperatures of stellar furnaces. He knew all this but it did not identify those spheres of light-stealing ebon. Only by tasting the black light, intercepting the packets of data, could he learn what was what.
A distant point of light ch
anged shape, warping from a sphere to something less regular. It grew, as if drawing nearer. Puzzled, Ormuz watched. It was certainly approaching him. He only realised what it was when its general outline become apparent. It was humanoid and gold.
The Serpent.
Ormuz waited patiently for his nemesis to arrive. There was no real sense of motion. It was as if the shape simply increased in size, resolving into the Serpent’s familiar figure as it did so. It stood before Ormuz, legs together, arms straight at its side. Although there were no features on that smooth oval of a head, Ormuz could feel the Serpent’s gaze on him.
You intend to prevent me, the Serpent remarked conversationally.
Prevent you trying to seize the Throne? Of course I do, Ormuz replied.
You consider it your duty?
It is the duty of all Imperial subjects, no matter their social rank.
Ah, the Subjects’ Charter. A fine document. But honoured more in violation than in observance. Weapons of law need a strong hand to hold them, just as weapons of war do.
Strong? The Serpent’s arrogance angered Ormuz. The Emperor is not weak. We have peace and stability. We’ve had it for twelve centuries.
The Serpent laughed. Young man, you are a prole. What do you know of the strength or weakness of rulers? High nobles are so far above you the Imperial Throne must appear almost godlike. What can you know of what occurs at those rarified heights?
You keep us—them!—in ignorance, Ormuz replied.
Perhaps that is why we have had twelve centuries of stability. No matter. My intentions do not concern proles and will not affect proles.
Rubbish! Ormuz snapped. People will die. And most of those will be proles.
Soldiers. It is their duty to die.
And it is my duty to prevent you.
Then I wish you the best, young man.
The Serpent turned away and made to leave. He began to shrink, becoming smaller… until his figure blurred and he was just a bright golden spot. He disappeared.
You should not let him irk you, said a voice behind him.
Ormuz spun round. Confronting him was the blue figure he had met before, his erstwhile ally in the nomosphere.
He fears you but he would not have you know it, the figure continued. So he belittles you and undermines your confidence. Do not let him. You must remain strong.
Why? And why don’t you help me against him?
Oh, but I am helping you.
The blue figure adopted the crucified pose of before and looked down at Ormuz. You would not have come as far as you have in so short a time without my help, Casimir.
What help? You speak in riddles.
Can’t you see that you’ve changed? You are a recent visitor to the nomosphere, you do not know its every property. I have made use of some of those properties. Even before you were aware of your visits here.
Ormuz turned from the blue figure. He had learnt nothing he did not already know. It was time he returned to his cot aboard Vengeful. If you’ve helped me here, he said, not looking at his ally. Can’t you help me back there?
In the real universe? No. I cannot reveal myself. Not yet.
I know who you are. Ormuz spoke flatly, certain of his guess.
It does not matter. It is my allegiances I cannot reveal. When the time is right, I will.
Will I meet you? He looked back at the blue figure. Afterwards? On Shuto?
I am travelling there now. So yes, you most likely will. I will arrive tomorrow. This will be our last meeting here. I will not see you again until Shuto. Look for me.
The figure drew in its arms and began to whirl. As it rotated faster and faster, its outline blurred until it was no more than a shining blue column. It twisted, seemed to thread through itself…
And was gone.
There was no physical sensation which signalled the arrival of Vengeful back into real space. One moment, she was travelling through the toposphere, and then—
The Admiral uttered a quiet wordless grunt and Ormuz turned to her. The insertion had been smooth but he knew the Admiral well enough to know she would not be satisfied until the space about them was mapped and secure.
They stood on the Captain’s Bridge, facing the communications-console. All its glasses contained faces, her heads of department.
“Two vessels at thirty green and sixty blue,” said Voyna, lieutenant of battle order. “Database searching…”
He looked away from his communications-console. Abruptly, he turned back and said, “Crown class destroyers, ma’am. Three.”
“All hands to general quarters,” the Admiral snapped. “Mr Falconet, prepare the main gun. Mr Voyna, pipe the data to the battle-consultant.”
The Admiral turned about to face the battle-consultant. Ormuz did the same. The data from Registrations/Acquisitions was quickly pumped in and the great circular table-top glass of the battle-consultant lit. So many battles took place in emergence zones it was an unusual battle-space which did not feature the bloated sphere of a gas giant in their centre. The icon representing Vengeful shone a virulent green against the blackness of space. Ever-changing pale orange ellipses depicted the shifting radiation zones of the gas giant, Kasukierto. The white circles of moons and captured asteroids circled sedately about the display. At thirty degrees from zero (the direction of travel of the battlecruiser), three bright red arrowheads inched ever nearer.
The Admiral pointed to the gas giant’s radiation zone on the display. “What is the period of this?” she demanded. The answer, couched in the symbols of battle-language, immediately scrolled across the glass. Ormuz could not read it, although the numbers were clear enough. Nor had he ever managed to picture the three-dimensional space the glass depicted quite so effortlessly as the Admiral seemed to do. The battle-consultant showed slices of the surrounding volume in superimposed two-dimensional layers and he found it hard to distinguish between them.
He saw the radiation zone expand and contract and realised that the Admiral intended to use it to escape the destroyers. The battlecruiser’s hull was shielded from the radiation but she would be mostly blind and deaf within the zone. Nor would the destroyers be able to use their active sensors to find Vengeful. Only passive would still work. And battlecruisers were particularly effective at fighting battles in which only passive sensors could be used…
The Admiral bent forward to peer at the battle-consultant’s glass. Ormuz watched her. Colours played across her face and shaven skull, pale orange washing across her and giving her a jaundiced look, the white circle of Kasukierto’s representation throwing her features into relief and making dark pits of her eyes. She reached up and stroked a hand back over her crown.
A signals runner ran along the gallery. He held out a piece of paper. “This just came in, ma’am,” he said.
The Admiral looked down at the proffered paper, glanced back at the battle-consultant’s display. She saw Ormuz watching and frowned at him. He smiled. He could guess what the signal said: that approaching destroyers were from Livasto’s squadron. The Admiral would not go to battle today and she was clearly disappointed. It was only then, as he thought back on the rapt concentration she had given the battle-consultant, that he realised the Admiral was barely tamed. If she was the farmboy from Ogoshu’s story in the Book of the Sun, then it had been the farmboy’s fierceness that had led to his victories. It was a fierceness born of righteousness and the Admiral possessed it too. Coupled with no small skill in tactical matters, it made the Admiral an opponent to be feared.
Until the assembly on Linna, that fierceness and skill had been held in check. The Admiral had no real enemies in the Empire, only those faceless conspirators led by the Serpent, the Duke of Ahasz. A man she despised for his attempt to profit from her affections, for his betrayal of her own emotional attachment to him. Now, Ormuz realised sadly, there was no reason for the Admiral to restrain herself. Now she had a war to fight.
And he had started it.
>
He had named the enemy, he had identified the rendezvous. His various forays into the nomosphere during their trip to Urkia and back had been successful. He had parsed the communications between the Serpent and his suborned regiments. He knew where they would be gathering.
He had gifted the battle-to-end-all-battles to the Admiral.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Finesz had to scramble to maintain the proprieties when a knock sounded at the door to Mubariz’s suite. When she accepted the signal from Marine-Corporal Witan, she was relieved to see she had successfully protected her reputation. But Assaun was not fooled. Something in his phlegmatic features read disapproval and Finesz flashed him an embarrassed grin. She closed the door and looked down at the paper in her hand. Mubariz stepped out of the bathroom, shrugging on his blue coat as he approached her.
“From Captain Rinharte?” he asked.
Finesz nodded. “The Admiral is back. Three of Livasto’s destroyers escorted Vengeful to Linna orbit.” She looked up and grimaced. “I’m wanted aboard.”
“Their mission was a success?”
“Apparently.” Screwing up the signal, she shoved it deep into a pocket of her skirt.
“Now it starts.”
“Oh, Abad,” sighed Finesz. “It started long ago. We know our history too well and are doomed to forever repeat it.”
“A very cynical view, Sliva.”
“A realistic view. Isn’t cynicism just a form of pragmatism that refuses to allow history its surprises?” Moments after the comment left her mouth, Finesz wondered at herself. Her relationship with Mubariz was proving fulfilling in so many ways. She would never have said something so seemingly profound before meeting him.
The baron smiled faintly and stepped closer. He put his arms about her and enfolded her in a bear hug. He was not parsimonious with showing his affection, although his integrity had taken a beating before he had succumbed to her wiles. The gaoler sleeping with the prisoner?