The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  The change in quarters had been accomplished neatly by unknown stewards earlier in the day. Not that they’d had much work. What little Ng owned she had ordered left on Grozniy, now her flagship. Here she kept only uniforms.

  She traced her fingers over the inlaid keys of the console, then tabbed it to life. Most of the hours between the brief reception after the ceremony and the much-longer after-party had been spent in meetings—both official and unofficial. One of the first official meetings had been with the Panarch and Nyberg and Willsones, who had witnessed the transfer of databanks coded to the high admiral. She had not yet had the time to peruse these.

  She went to the monneplat and punched up some coffee, and during the wait, looked about the room. Now, in the quiet of the night watch, she could contemplate the reality of her new position. It still did not seem real.

  Why do I move so softly? There was no one to disturb; the ensign and steward assigned to her had been dismissed for the night. She employed no servants, and she had no dependents.

  Pain gripped her heart. No dependents—that was a choice she made when she began officer training on Minerva. How lightly made was that decision, how easy for an ambitious youth with her eyes on command of a battlecruiser. The monneplat delivered her coffee and Ng moved back to the console.

  She smiled mirthlessly as the retinal scan identified her, then displayed a menu.

  No dependents—just one mate. She sipped coffee as grief-heightened memories of Metellus Hayashi gripped her. Lost in the desperate action over Arthelion before the hyperwave was secured, she had to assume he was dead. Better that than kept as a prisoner for the torture-happy Dol’jharians to sport with.

  Like the crew of the Crone of Aravis.

  She shook her head, dispelling the ugly memory of that hyperwave broadcast. She called up a review of the Suneater data, specifically the oppressive number of ships the enemy was posting for defense of the Urian station. Communications from ships transferred there could no longer be analyzed—they used ciphers backed by the computational power of the arrays the Dol’jharians had to be building.

  Ng cleared the data from the console, then noticed the glyph for personal, eyes-only data blinking in a corner of the screen.

  Curious, she opened one of the more recent files, authored by her predecessor Padraic ban-Carr. Its frank language declared it to be from his personal journal; her skin prickled in an atavistic perception of the presence of the dead.

  Ng swiftly inspected the rest of the coded data. Indeed, not only had Carr left his memoirs for his successor, but so had each of his predecessors, a chain of plainly-expressed insight and history reaching back hundreds of years. That was a tradition no one else in the Navy had suspected—no doubt it was part of the balance of power between the Mandala and the Navy.

  She opened the last file. Admiral Carr had obviously been in the middle of composing this journal entry when he was called away to that ill-fated Privy Council meeting on Lao Tse.

  . . . the pattern is clear. It is also, according to both Energetics and Ontological Physics, impossible—requiring superluminal communications. Thus, they argue, it must be the operation of unknown human factors, but the Synchronists just shrug and shake their heads. Foolishness.

  Ng paused, unsure just what the admiral’s last word had referred to, then continued reading.

  But now to Lao Tse. Perhaps there will be answers there. Not, I expect, that I shall like them, but anything is better than this uncertainty. I’ve had enough of that. All of us have.

  Again, ambiguity. She puzzled at the scope of the pronoun, then shrugged. Whatever her predecessor had meant, uncertainty was the reality of life in the military: awareness that their careers, brilliant or otherwise, might end in sudden death. I am Margot O’Reilly Ng, almost fifty years old, and I am High Admiral.

  How strange it seemed! Pride and uncertainty were her foremost emotions as she looked about the room. It had no personality—no atmosphere, as if anyone who had stayed here had been in transit. As I am, she thought grimly. After the attack, she would not be returning. Either I’ll be dead or else on my way back to Arthelion to begin the real work, cleaning up the mess the Dol’jharians have made.

  Who among the Panarchy’s high admirals had stayed in these quarters, under what circumstances, and what had been their thoughts? Let’s take a look. She began tabbing backward through earlier memoirs.

  . . . inconclusive at best, although it will be hailed as a brilliant victory. We still have not discovered the Shiidra home-world or worlds . . .

  . . . do not know what to expect from these strange triplicate creatures, who profess only friendship but may possess secrets as surprising as their conscious control of the chemistry of their ribbon-pelts. Can we understand them well enough to trust them?

  An even older journal note snagged her eye.

  . . . whoever you are, if you do not already know it, Her Majesty’s fits of apparent irrationality and vagueness are an especially dangerous sham, generally staged to distract from the real issue. In reality, there is no more coldly appraising and relentlessly rational creature in the Thousand Suns.

  Ng checked the date on that one, then smiled. The Kyriarch Banicalaan had entered legend as a sim-crazy eccentric; even the works of generations of revisionist historians revealing the strengths of the political structures she had built had failed to dispel that image. Which was no doubt her plan. People won’t fight someone they don’t take seriously.

  And apparently Brandon hai-Arkad had inherited a full measure of that subtlety. Certainly, he had effectively applied her methods against his brother Semion and his minions; Ng grimaced in embarrassment, remembering her early judgments about him. Then she almost laughed. Was she embarrassed at being easier to deceive than a man who’d evidently been a paranoid monster in his single-minded conviction of moral superiority?

  The reality of her position quickly sobered her: as High Admiral Ng, she had been received into the Panarch’s Privy Council. Despite her vigorous avoidance of the maelstrom of civilian governmental politics, with her acceptance of the high admiral’s blason she knew she had been sucked squarely into the center.

  Anticipation of that had haunted her since she realized she was on an inside orbit for the position of high admiral, along with Jeph Koestler. At times she’d almost felt that she’d rather he had it instead.

  Sustaining an inward chill, Ng remembered some of the casualties of the refined strife the Douloi engaged in: Hesthar, her blood boiled away in the vacuum of space; Tau Srivashti, smashed to an unrecognizable jelly by a four-and-a-half-kilometer fall from the spin axis; and Stulafi Y’Talob, the Archon of Torigan, ripped apart by a crazed mob. She’d rather face a ruptor in battle. At least you knew where it was coming from, and there was never any doubt of the enemy’s intent. Or who the enemy is.

  But identifying the enemy was one of the functions of Siglnt. Her innate good humor began to reassert itself, and she indulged in a brief image of Lieutenant Warrigal attempting to invent Tenno discriminators to make sense of that maze of sound and gesture, feint and counterstroke of words and symbols to be found in the Whispering Gallery.

  That’s what you have Security for. She’d send Anton Faseult; that was his world. And that would allow her to concentrate on the proposed Rifter alliance, the negotiations for which had reached their final phase with the covert arrival of the Rifter triumvir Jep Houmanopoulis on Ares. Nyberg had done most of the initial work there, but now that she was officially in charge of the Navy, she must take it over.

  A jaw-cracking yawn interrupted her thoughts. Now that she had mapped the problem of Douloi politics into a more familiar space, sleep might be a possibility. The Rifters could wait. Her unconscious mind could simmer their proposals now, without also dishing up nightmares about politics.

  Or, at least, the nightmares would have a different source.

  o0o

  Jep Houmanopoulis offered his greetings to the others already in the room and stifled a
yawn as he took his seat at the conference table. He breathed deeply of the cool, minty air, overlaid by the burned-spice and plastic scent of the Kelly trinity that had entered just before him. Staring down the length of the table toward the clear dyplast wall overlooking the Situation Room, he wondered if the information he had offered during the negotiations had already been integrated into the immense holo of the Thousand Suns that glittered above its busy floor.

  One of the good things about growing old, Jep reflected, was how little sleep you needed; the bad thing was how you felt when you didn’t get the little that sufficed. He glanced across the table at Damana Willsones, noting with mingled resentment and admiration how clear-eyed she looked after last night’s epic Phalanx bout—and she was older than he. He’d known when he departed from Rifthaven that he would not leave Ares until the war was decided, one way or another, regardless of the outcome of his mission. But it seemed there might be compensations for that. Certainly Ares was as complex a society as Rifthaven, in its own stodgy way.

  Siulys, the clerk who’d accompanied him from Rifthaven, touched his arm. “Syndic, the correlations you asked for.”

  Jep took the sheaf of flimsies she handed to him, nodding absent thanks. Another trade-off—she was Pormagat’s niece.

  He bent his attention to the first. This was one of the other compensations for their de facto imprisonment: free access to the Ares newsfeeds. Siulys had highlighted the abstracts from 25 and 99—they were the poles of opinion on the overcrowded station. 99 was running with their popular Whispering Gallery series; he frowned and put the paper down. The only people who could judge that coverage were those who frequented the Gallery, and 99 served their agenda.

  Jep sent an assessing glance down the table at Admiral Nyberg, engrossed in conversation with his chief of Security, Rear Admiral Anton Faseult. Jep’s relations with the commander of Ares were careful and imbued with mutual respect, although he had no doubt Nyberg found his Rifter attitudes as distasteful as Jep did the admiral’s Douloi hauteur.

  He returned to his reading. Feed 25, now—they seemed a splinter in the government’s seal. He wondered what they were aiming at, besides milking the Telvarna Rifters for all their story was worth. And what a story! Jep felt grudging admiration for the tempath and her crew, despite the chaos they’d sown on Rifthaven. He grunted amusement. Some reward she’d received from these stiff-rumped nicks, being forced into isolation out beyond the reef. It was his job to see that the Panarchists didn’t inflict the same summary marginalization on him—and Rifthaven.

  Chestin’s staccato baritone broke in on his thoughts, and the Syndic looked back at the window, where the Draco stood with two naval officers, gesticulating at the holo. One of the officers pointed a wand-like device at the vast display, and fervent lines of light blinked into existence, linking star systems in two octants with Rifthaven. The Draco’s tones moderated somewhat: just as Jep had, he knew the significance of the forces controlled by Barrodagh converging on Rifthaven on their way to the Suneater. It very much looked like Eusabian’s twisty lieutenant might make another attempt to take Rifthaven.

  Then Chestin caught his gaze and visibly collected himself. He was obviously trying to project his usual irritating confidence. Jep noticed several glances from the people at the table flicker away from the red file-toothed Draco smile.

  Smile away, my friend. No more than Siulys nor I can you do anything before we come to an agreement with the Panarchists. In the meantime, yes, smile. It keeps them off balance.

  And, indeed, since O’Reilly Ng’s appointment as High Admiral the negotiations had moved quickly; if the Draco smile bothered her, she had shown not a flicker of response. Jep smiled back at Chestin, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes slide aside.

  It takes more than pointed teeth to make a carnivore. Houmanopoulis leaned back in his chair, filled with pleasant anticipation, but his mood abruptly dissipated as a female entered. This one was older, wearing the plain black of a religious sect—Eloatri, the High Phanist. Twice now they’d met, and twice Jep had thrown his loathing of the foolishness of religion at her impervious smile. It was like jousting with a steel mirror. Foolish her beliefs might be, but she was no fool, he’d reluctantly concluded. Covertly he watched the High Phanist greet each individual. She was at least his own age, though she moved with more facility. When her attention came to Jep, her smile seemed to deepen, her gaze very aware.

  Jep tried to beat back his anger, which he knew would only cloud his judgment. Her presence here had to mean only one thing: enmity to Rifthaven, probably represented as coming from some high moral stance. If Ng and the others listened to such stuff—and they must, or why would the woman be present at all?—Jep would have to be able to counter it intelligently.

  Then conversation ceased and the naval officers in the room rose to attention as the High Admiral entered. She gestured them to informality; Jep watched appreciatively as the diminutive woman crossed the room with a dancer’s poise. The young man with her, Osri Omilov, quietly took his seat farther down the table. Jep knew his presence was unofficial proxy for the Panarch, though Omilov rarely spoke.

  When everyone was seated, Ng leaned forward. “Time is pressing on us all. We need to come to an agreement.” Her gesture took in Jep, Siulys and Chestin. “I sense that we are reasonably close,” she added. “Let us summarize where we stand and what we need to discuss.”

  Need to discuss. Jep watched the others’ reactions to this euphemism. How much of Ng’s cooperative language was nick superiority, and how much indicated real intentions? How much do they need us? That was what none of the triumvirs had been able to judge, and the negotiations had made him little wiser. But Jep had always trusted his instincts when he made real-life gambles. This time instinct had been strong enough to move him from his position of power on Rifthaven, leaving behind a carefully faked report on his death by poison that would fool the Dol’jharians, to bring him here to his oldest enemies.

  “We have reviewed the data on the attack against Rifthaven by Aroga Blackheart,” Ng went on with a nod to Chestin. “The able defense indicates a high level of competence.”

  Jep watched Chestin’s brows twitch upward, mirroring his own unease. The generosity implied an accounting to come.

  Ng transferred her attention to Siulys. The High Admiral was cutting across the official negotiating hierarchy, speaking to them as representatives of the three dominant factions on Rifthaven. “Furthermore, the government on Rifthaven has established firm control, not only of Rifthaven but its communications with the Dol’jharians and the Rifters allied to them.”

  First Defense, now Public Order. My turn next. Jep nodded warily, sensing in the cadence of Ng’s words her awareness of his position. As he had feared, she was negotiating on two levels, exploiting both Rifthaven’s and their personal liabilities. And the openness with which she did it was discomforting.

  Ng spoke directly to Jep, heightening his wariness. “His Majesty therefore agrees that it is appropriate to integrate naval and Rifter forces throughout the Thousand Suns, excepting, for reasons of security, hyperwave-equipped ships.”

  Integrate, not ally. She knew that without a favorable agreement, he was finished, even if the Sodality and Rifthaven survived. But with one, I sweep away Banth and Pormagat. He felt Siulys’ gaze on him, but it didn’t matter what she thought. None of the negotiation team would speak again to Rifthaven until agreement was reached. And then it will be too late.

  “We propose that the concentration of such forces against the Suneater to augment the harassing raids should remain occult until such time as is determined by military exigencies.”

  She stopped at a motion from the Draco. “To be decided and authorized by both the Panarch’s Navy and the military arm of the Rift Sodality,” Chestin said.

  Which means you and your pointy-toothed clan.

  Admiral Nyberg lifted his head. Ng conferred briefly with him. “His Majesty will grant the right of consultat
ion.”

  The Draco showed his teeth; Siulys stiffened, her gaze wary.

  Before Chestin could respond, Jep spoke up. “Rifthaven will exercise our right of consultation.”

  There was the faintest trace of amusement—and acknowledgment—in Ng’s demeanor. “That language is acceptable to His Majesty.”

  Jep returned her smile, not bothering to hide it.

  Chestin turned an ugly glare Jep’s way.

  Fool! You make it easier for the Panarchists. Jep was beginning to fear that he might not be able to balance between Chestin and the nicks. The next move was up to Siulys.

  “A naval force will be dispatched to stand by for the defense of Rifthaven should it be necessary,” Ng went on.

  “Outside Rifthaven radius,” Chestin replied, his voice deeper than usual.

  Ng gestured, palm up. “Stationed outside Rifthaven radius.”

  So Defense gets control of inner space. Frustration boiled in Jep’s gut as the Draco settled back in his chair. But it had to be: the concentration of forces devised by Barrodagh and Juvaszt was too dangerous to remain unopposed, and Rifthaven had forces insufficient for adequate defense.

  Then the High Admiral delivered the coup inopine that the triumvir had been suspecting all along. “Furthermore,” she said, “naval liaisons will be placed aboard all integrated vessels to aid in the coordination efforts.”

  She means Marines. He had no illusions about Rifters opposing the military prowess of the Arkadic Marines even aboard their own ships. The Marines were too dangerous.

  “Excluding local Rifthaven defense,” Chestin put in. He, too, knew what she meant, but apparently figured as long as Defense controlled inner space, he could live with that.

  Naturally, since Trade has more influence with the detached units. It was Jep’s faction that controlled the purchase of looted treasures, on Rifthaven and elsewhere, and tipped off cooperative ships to profitable areas for action. He knew he couldn’t maintain control if he allowed Marines on Rifter vessels: he’d lose all support.