The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  “At least the Ur-fruit tastes are getting better and better, even if you avoid the expensive ones,” she said.

  “The ones that addict you, you mean,” replied Lar. “Those other Rifters think we’re crazy to eat any of it.”

  “Even the tempath?”

  “Can’t tell with her. Maybe.” He hesitated.

  “You think she knows something?” asked Tat.

  He shook his head; she felt the motion next to her. “Too soon to tell,” he murmured. “But listen. I’m not entirely sure, but I think the third-shift crew in the recycler is feeding confiscated foods to the walls. So maybe it’s getting safer.”

  Tat sighed. One more thing to worry about. At times she almost wished she had third shift, though that meant working under the jacs of Tarkans. That was when Barrodagh and Lysanter and the other high echelons were asleep.

  It was probably better to be on first shift, though it meant longer hours; Barrodagh had long since taken an hour from rec shift and sleep shift to add to first. Apparently he always worked through rec shift as well, which would explain why he had all those rules about complaining.

  Tat had also heard rumors of the heir, Anaris, wandering the tunnels during third shift. But then he could sleep when he wanted and as long as he wanted.

  Which reminded her of a new threat. She sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” Lar’s fingers paused.

  “Don’t stop,” Tat whispered. As the gentle fingers traced over her skin, she snuggled closer to her cousin. “You don’t feel it? Tension in the ordinaries?”

  Lar assented with his own sigh. “Heard talk in the kitchens. Almost time for their Karusch-na Rahali again, isn’t it? But on Samedi Morrighon told us we’re safe.”

  “From lords,” Tat said. “Unders—who knows? We’ll watch the other Bori. Do what they do.”

  Lar shook his head, and his soft hair tickled her ear. “Imagine, a life with no bunny.”

  “Well, they bunny enough during this Karusch-na blunge, or we wouldn’t be worrying.”

  Lar slid his arm under Tat, his breathing harshening. “That’s not bunny, that’s war.”

  She snickered.

  o0o

  Ivard found himself napping more and more often. There was little else to do in their quarters, aside from the Ulanshu Kinesics, and the room wasn’t big enough for the full series of kata. At first, the emanations of the station seemed to enhance the directed dreaming that increasingly blended his consciousness with the growing Unity in a wordless communion of perception. Many times he visited, in memories not his own, the warm humidity of the scent-drenched Kelly home world or the frigid wilderness of the planet of the Eya’a, which resonated so strangely with Vi’ya’s memories of grim Dol’jhar.

  He hadn’t dreamed of Anaris and the knife and blood since he’d finally seen Eusabian’s son in the flesh. As brief as that experience had been, before the Tarkans tranked them in the landing bay, it seemed to have discharged the nightmares that had plagued him on Ares.

  But now a new one stalked Ivard’s mind, shouldering aside a memory of the Kelly Archon’s. The vast stone heads carved into the mountain of the Blessed Three gradually faded into a red-shot darkness where Ivard wandered until he found himself within a red-walled chamber, empty except for a pervasive terror. He saw nothing, but sensed a vast, insatiable hunger welling up around him, cutting him off from the rest of the Unity. Little pangs of emotion—lust, regret, embarrassment, and others increasingly painful—probed at the edges of his mind until with a sudden, soundless clang a door behind him was flung open. Yellow glare poured past him. . . .

  The shout yanked Sedry out of her work trance. She checked the others.

  Ivard sat upright on his cot, the shock of another of his nightmares blanching his face. Lucifur resettled across Ivard’s legs with a throaty feline growl of protest.

  “Another dream?” Montrose laid down his book and moved to Ivard’s bedside.

  Marim swiveled away from the game console, then returned to playing.

  Ivard nodded. “Same thing,” he replied. His reluctance to say more was obvious, and Sedry was glad of it. “Something hungry,” he’d said of an earlier, less intense dream.

  Sedry shuddered. That was not a comfortable phrase to hear, inside an alien construct that was itself an archetype of digestion. She wondered how his dreams affected the others of the Unity.

  Vi’ya as usual showed nothing of her thoughts.

  “Got to be the food,” Lokri said wryly, looking up from the other side of the game console. “I’ve been dreaming of all the meals I just picked over at the Galadium. Never again.”

  Everyone laughed, venting stress and regret rather than real humor.

  Sedry returned to her console in her attempt to clean up what little dataspace she was permitted. She smiled sadly: the game chips Morrighon had gotten her had been heavily used, full of what might have been interesting strategies. She’d never know. She wanted games for the amount of local dataspace they consumed, for which she had other uses, and for the interactive space on the chip.

  Sedry pulled a chip out of its slot, wondering whose creative efforts she’d sacrificed for storage space. But the system was too dirty to leave anything static in local storage, even if she didn’t have to worry about the crypto capabilities of the huge distributed array they were sure the Dol’jharians were running.

  She looked up, and as she had expected, met Vi’ya’s gaze. Are you a full telepath now, my captain?

  She remembered Vi’ya’s first attempt: the way the station shivered like a great creature wakening from hibernation. The moans she’d heard, like a chorus of desolation, had made her feel sick. But only during such a ruction could she hope to datadive any deeper without detection.

  Vi’ya nodded. Telepathy or not, she’d received the message Sedry intended: I’ll fix the narks during your next attempt.

  Montrose picked up his book again, tabbed it to recover his page, then smiled across it at her, his gaze dropping to the console. He meant to reassure her, and she felt it, not in his message, but in his nearness and concern.

  The door opened, and Lar hustled in.

  Marim laughed, an automatic rather than an infectious sound. They’d all laughed the first few times they watched Lar’s unique way of entering chambers, even after he explained to Sedry about having heard that the station walls had absorbed at least two people—one dead and one alive.

  Marim still found it funny after Vi’ya told them that this rumor was true. Marim laughed to be defiant, Sedry thought—and she laughed at Lar, because he was the servant of the enemy.

  “Noholate, Malath Ombric,” Sedry said in Bori, and smiled when Lar’s pleasant round face brightened with a pleased grin.

  “You are a fast learner,” he said, clearly gratified. “Though the Servants of Dol don’t speak Bori except in private.”

  “It’s a beautiful language,” Sedry said. “And a break from Dol’jharian, which is interesting, but makes my throat hurt.”

  Lar laughed soundlessly, his gaze shifting to the console, as if assessing how the unseen listener would interpret his response. He said in a now-wooden voice, “Serach Barrodagh has summoned you.”

  “Now?” Sedry said, closing down the console with one hand.

  Lar nodded.

  “Very well,” she said, hiding how her heartbeat had begun accelerating.

  Montrose frowned, his bushy brows meeting over his misshapen nose. Vi’ya looked tense, but not as tired as she had the day after her first attempt to start up the station. She gave Sedry a tiny nod—as if to remind her that, whatever happened with Barrodagh, she was not without allies.

  Would they force Vi’ya to try again today? I guess I’ll know if the Tarkans come to lock us up again, Sedry thought. Unless Barrodagh has something else in mind.

  Lar hit the control with a fist and hopped through the door. Sedry followed, Marim’s snickers floating behind.

  As they walked, Sedry watched the int
eractions of Eusabian’s servants. Despite the fact that nearly everyone was dressed in featureless gray tech overalls, there appeared to be a precise hierarchy in place. Lar often raised a hand to halt her as other gray-clad people—many of them short in stature, with the round skulls and curly brown hair characteristic of most Bori—passed, or Tarkans, or the soldiery in gray uniforms. Twice Lar had the precedence; the first time, she happened to be watching one of the Bori they passed, and saw a hand twitch on her coveralls, fingers flickering in a subtle hand signal.

  Instantly intrigued, without moving her head she shifted her gaze to Lar—and caught the end of a hand signal from him, then they passed on. Neither of the Bori looked at the other.

  A semaphore code? More intrigued than ever, Sedry resolved to spend more time in her language studies.

  Then they reached Barrodagh’s office. A gaunt-faced Bori aide waved them directly into the inner chamber, where, Sedry noted, all the furnishings and equipment were located well away from the walls.

  “Senz-lo Barrodagh,” Lar said in Dol’jharian, “here is Sedry Thetris.”

  “Wait outside.” Barrodagh dropped his compad onto a desk littered with data chips, flimsies, at least one map, and the remains of a scant meal, judging from the single small plate.

  As Lar’s steps diminished behind them, Sedry watched Barrodagh move to a screen. His skin was tightly drawn over his bones, its pallor the unhealthy hue of someone whose liver was full of toxins. Did he live on drugs, then? His lips were dry and thinned, as if he held his face in rigid control, even in sleep; one eye squinted slightly. Anticipated pain? Paralysis? His gaze was intelligent, angry, and distrustful.

  “I thought I recognized your name,” he said without preamble, speaking in accentless Uni. “Arthelion. You have some fame as a talented noderunner—Commander.” He said this last in a nasty tone.

  “Ex-commander,” Sedry said calmly. “Is the DataNet so fragmented, then?”

  Barrodagh stared at her, then his lips creased in a kind of sneering smile. “So the Navy found you out?”

  “Just as I found out you were backing our revolution,” she said. “It was inevitable; why should we work so hard just to exchange one autocratic rule for another?”

  “You worked very hard to undo everything we had in place,” Barrodagh said. “A remarkable effort. Worthy of a patriot.” He spat the last word out.

  “I wish my former commanders had seen expedience as patriotism,” she said. “Else I’d probably be somewhere out there right now, laboring on a much better plan.”

  Barrodagh sat back, his fingers working like spiders at his compad. “I wondered why a navy commander showed up with an escaped Dol’jharian slave, a murderer, a bond-breaker, and a troublemaker from the cesspit the Panarchists call Timberwell. And what was the DC-tech before she signed on, a thief?”

  Sedry lifted her hands. “I don’t know. Etiquette among Rifters is, you don’t ask about someone’s past unless offered data. Marim hasn’t, at least not since I joined them.”

  “You met them in prison on Ares?”

  “They call it detention,” Sedry said. Even though she and Vi’ya had worked hard on this story—for Sedry had known that it was not a matter of whether but when Barrodagh would equate her with her actions on Arthelion—she hated lying.

  “And how did you manage to escape? Ares is supposed to be the Panarchy’s most formidable stronghold.”

  “That was before it was flooded with refugees,” Sedry said. “Food riots, if you have enough people, can overcome even military discipline. One of the riots was a cover to break out compatriots in detention, and we used the opportunity.”

  “They hadn’t sealed off your fiveskip?” Barrodagh asked.

  “Of course they had,” Sedry said. “But we just hid out in the Reef with the refugees not permitted to land, and repaired the fiveskip. Reef’s worse than Rifthaven. No order at all.”

  Barrodagh laughed, a painful, rasping sound. “So it’s been a successful strike against them, just revealing the coordinates for Ares, eh?”

  She shrugged. “What we saw, it’s bad.”

  “Ah yes, you were incarcerated, so you know little of military developments, am I correct?”

  “Don’t know any,” Sedry said. “When we left, we saw four battle-scarred cruisers on the Cap.”

  “Four?” Barrodagh rubbed at his cheek, then yanked his hand down. “Larghior says you wish employment.” The distrust was back in his voice.

  Sedry said, “It’s boring, sitting in that room with nothing to do. I don’t care what kind of work. I’ll wire compute arrays, or fix consoles, or whatever you want. You don’t have to let me anywhere near your command center.”

  “I am glad,” he said, sneering again, “not to have to disappoint you.” He tabbed a summons. “Send Larghior in here.” Turning back to Sedry, he said, “Well. We could use extra labor. Except when your captain is working. Then you and your crewmates must be together, under our watch. Security requirement.”

  Sedry shrugged. “Don’t like what happens to the station. Just as soon hide in my bed.”

  Barrodagh’s expression was so strange she winced; what must his emotional aura be like? Vi’ya would probably get sick.

  SEVEN

  MBWA KALI: SUNEATER PLUS TEN LIGHT DAYS

  Commander Leontois Efriq looked down the aisle between the assembled ranks of officers and crew gathered in the forward beta landing bay, through the open bay door at the waspish shape of the Rifter destroyer Gloire, its lines distorted to a shimmer by the energies of the lock field. It hung unmoving, so close the blazon on its hull was clear to his eyes: a stylized nova—concentric circle and ring of flame—transfixed by a rapier.

  At the back of the bay a trans-tube pod arrived with a muffled whirr, and a few seconds later, Commodore Mandros Nukiel, commander of the Suneater Staging Cloud, joined Efriq. The tangy personal scent he preferred overlay the oil and ozone atmosphere of the bay.

  A flare of light curved up over the hull of the Gloire, dimming into the angular form of a shuttle as it came about to begin its approach to the Mbwa Kali.

  The commodore’s face was somber, as usual. Efriq had been Nukiel’s first officer ten years now, but early on in that relationship he’d learned that Nukiel’s formal command persona was largely an accommodation to others’ inevitable reaction to his stern features. Still, he sensed some tension in his captain.

  “There’s a new sign on the bulkhead in the junior officers’ mess,” Efriq said as he watched the shuttle approach, and when Nukiel glanced his way, eyebrows lifted interrogatively, “Says ‘Rifthaven: 480 light-years.’”

  Nukiel snorted, and Efriq murmured, “I wonder what we shall find this time?”

  The commodore’s lips twitched. “Not a Krysarch, certainly. Whoever these are, they are getting a better reception than His Majesty did.” He recollected the shock of finding the young man, now Panarch of the Thousand Suns, aboard an old Columbiad, and he wondered how much the young Panarch’s experience aboard a Rifter had affected his present mandate: the integration of Rifter units into the Panarchic Suneater fleet.

  The Gloire would be the first Rifter vessel so integrated, the record of this meeting couriered to Ares. The message from the Panarch had been clear. He was depending on Commodore Nukiel to make this first encounter a model for the many to come.

  The deep hum of the landing tractor resonated through their bones as the Rifter shuttle eased through the lock field, rings of light fleeing outward from its hull. It settled to the deck with the characteristic spray of coronal discharge.

  Commodore Nukiel and Efriq advanced as a warrant officer discharged the shuttle. Its ramp swung smoothly down and clanged onto the deck.

  Four Rifters descended in single file; the two tallest drew the eye, one a handsome man of maybe forty years, his lean body set off splendidly in an embroidered tunic of black and red and gold, his long red hair braided and gemmed. Behind him walked a tall, sturdily built woman, dark
of face and gray of hair. She also wore a resplendent tunic and trousers, though the colors and style were different; there was no attempt at a uniform here.

  But they were last. Both Efriq and Nukiel realized that the captain had to be in front, and they’d overlooked him. But from what little scuttlebutt they’d been able to garner, it would be a very grave mistake to dismiss Lucan Miph—or indeed, any of this crew.

  Short and plump, in color indeterminate, Miph dressed in plain brown, so that at a distance you couldn’t tell where skin ended and covering began. He looked like a cross between a potato and a minor functionary in some backwater bureaucracy. His walk was easy, and he looked around with an air of interest—but his face belied that easy walk. His face was grooved with deep lines, as if he’d suffered recent pain.

  The fourth member of his crew was an elderly woman, spare of form and quick of glance. She wore the dark green of a Serapisti, chimes tinkling sweetly in her long, braided white hair.

  Nukiel stepped forward.

  The Marine detachment presented arms, the shouted orders of Meliarch Rumstig echoing in the vast bay. Nukiel and Efriq saluted; it was returned with one salute, one ritual gesture, a bow, and a grin—hastily followed by an awkward attempt at a salute.

  Just as the high admiral noted in her orders, he thought. There’d been an extensive appendix on proposed etiquette and potential clashes, no doubt worked out in conjunction with Archetype and Ritual.

  “Welcome aboard His Majesty’s battlecruiser Mbwa Kali,” Commodore Nukiel said. “I will not welcome you to the war against Dol’jhar, for in that you have already seen action.”

  The Gloire had taken heavy damage and many casualties in the defense of Rifthaven against Aroga Blackheart. Including, Efriq remembered, this Rifter captain’s mate. That’s the pain.

  “Thank you, Commodore,” Lucan Miph replied. His voice was surprisingly deep and cultured, belying his forgettable face. “We’re looking forward to this cooperative endeavor, paying the Avatar back in the only coin he understands.”