The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Personal. Ng remembered that folksy talk from Nik Cormoran of Ares 25, exploring the Telvarna Rifters’ former quarters at Detention Five, and the equally folksy talk about the recovered treasures. He’d made mention of the Stone of Prometheus.

  At the time, Ng had thought the vid mere filler, an attempt to make news out of nothing. But Cormoran had proved a superlative datadiver. He didn’t need to make news out of nothing.

  Personal. Rifters.

  She tapped at her console. Vast sections of the holo dimmed, leaving only Detention Five and the Panarchic Enclave still glowing. The color-coded veins of the utilities woven throughout the fabric of the station held those two volumes in a brilliant web of light. Then water, power, air, data, and all other utilities save the trans-tubes and lifts faded out.

  Then public transport dimmed and vanished, leaving the secret byways and adits of Ares illuminated, coded by access authority.

  Margot Ng took a deep breath and ran the temporal parameters back, correlated with personnel codes at the highest level. Then only a tenuous web of light remained. But it was enough to entangle a Rifter captain and the ruler of the Thousand Suns with strands far stronger than mono-thread: it meant traffic, not once, but several times, going both ways.

  She whistled, and shut down her console. Oh, yes. This is personal, all right.

  Wandering back up the steps again, she stopped directly before the huge viewport that looked out along the length of the oneill into the glories of space and the fuzz of ships surrounding the overcrowded station. One of the hardest decisions Ng had ever made was not the launching of the feint at Arthelion, but afterward—with her fleet crippled and half of them missing—when she left for Ares with the captured hyperwave. If there had been any way to remain behind and personally direct the search for the missing ships—for Falcomare, for Metellus, her beloved of more than twenty years—she would have done it.

  I know what Brandon wants, she thought, gazing out at the cold beauty of space. Duty will force him to give into the greater need, just as I did at Arthelion, but he will be seeking a way to circumvent the decision to destroy the station.

  By now she knew, and trusted, Brandon hai-Arkad enough to know Vi’ya was another reason—if perhaps the most important—that he was set on accompanying the Fleet to the Suneater. He would not allow personal interest solely to interfere with his oath to the people of the Thousand Suns, but he saw his two goals united, and so was running on a parallel course with Vannis, straining every wit in suggestion, inference, insinuation and implication, to marry his personal and political desires with military necessity.

  Why did he not come right out and state his wishes?

  Inner conviction caused her heartbeat to thunder in her ears.

  He will try to contrive a way to go to the Suneater itself. With the Marines.

  That was it. No words spoken, no sign, but she knew it. And laughed, remembering how her second, Perthes Krajno—now a captain in his own right—had said to her just before their return to Ares from Gehenna: “Any first officer that can’t read his captain’s mind isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

  Just as Perthes had been able to read her, she was learning to read Brandon Arkad. She paced back and forth, time forgotten. How would he do it? For an altruistic ruler of trillions, his options were limited: He would not want to destroy anyone’s career by issuing commands.

  She stopped pacing in front of the viewport, gazing off toward the portion of the Cap where the cruisers were pitted. The running lights of Grozniy glowed, steady and reassuring.

  This was more complicated than just appearing and demanding a seat. He’d have to have armor, which was personally fitted to each Marine, a time-consuming process even without the training that went with the formidable array of weaponry and gear. And if he had all that . . .

  If he had all that! A tremendous order right there. And nearly impossible to achieve without attracting notice, at the least. Unless there was another way.

  Ng bit her lip, her mind sorting over her own personnel. Unless there was someone like Meliarch Lyuba Chaz, wounded at Arthelion and just about to retire—

  Ng thought about Chaz: tall, taciturn, and loyal to the death. Would she consent to be part of this conspiracy? And if so, how to put her together with Brandon—all without calling attention to either of them? And what if I’m wrong?

  Ng shook her head. She had now identified the problem. Having done so, she knew a plan would work its way from subconscious to conscious thought during sleep. She would find a way to put Chaz in Brandon’s path, and if she was right, he’d take it from there.

  With one last look at the stars and ships beckoning through the viewport, she shut down the console and dropped her weary body into bed.

  I’m right. I’ll bet this star he pinned on me I’m right.

  SIX

  Despite its simplicity, even those accustomed to views of space regarded the Star Chamber a dramatically fitting venue for the strategy conference that would decide the fate of the Suneater.

  Poised on a metal peak at the axis of Ares, the vast, circular room had as its walls and ceiling a dome of dyplast so clear that some found themselves holding their breath. A low railing circled several meters in from the invisible dome. Behind it gaped a ring well from which groups of people emerged regularly, ascending into the chamber. Some hastened away from the edge, others seemed unaffected. Cunning acoustics damped the low hum of voices to a bare murmur, emphasizing the hard-edged reality of the stars and the surface of the Cap.

  The stark drama of space and the stars matched the human drama about to unfold. Here and there vignettes of perception underscored the universal tension within the room: an upraised arm, a burst of voices, the tense lines of a woman’s body as she leaned over a chart table to point at some nexus of military forces.

  Not even the Tetrad Centrum Douloi were immune. It seemed as though the force of destiny had stripped away their masks, leaving all within the chamber united against the overwhelming threat. For now would be decided the details of the attack on the Suneater, the Panarchy’s bid to wrest from Eusabian’s grasp the ancient weapons with which he’d overthrown a thousand years of history.

  “Downsiders and Highdwellers,” Margot Ng said at Osri Omilov’s shoulder. “Even here division persists.”

  He’d met her and Rear Admirals Willsones and Faseult in the ring well. She had invited him to join them, an invitation issued in uniform really being an order.

  “And Rifters,” Willsones said. “One division, perhaps, healing.”

  They paused, catching sight of cruel-faced old Rifthaven triumvir Houmanopoulis, accompanied by the Rifter captain Lochiel and her cousin Captain Cameron ban-MacKenzie of the destroyer Claidheamh Mor.

  The Cameron MacKenzie who’d deliberately ruined his career in shooting the Rifter captain responsible for the atrocity at Minerva. His crew had then turned the record into a wire-dream vid shared covertly all through the Navy, and recently released into the hyperwave to let Eusabian’s forces know what was coming.

  This is the strange thing about human nature, Osri thought. MacKenzie will never be an admiral. Nobody questions that. But he will always be a hero to the entire navy. Nobody questions that, either.

  Floating lamps clustered over the entering groups, following them to widely scattered consoles and casting arcs of light on the rich carpet underfoot. By some trick of optics their illumination did not diminish the glory of the stars and the limb of the red giant that arced above the upper surface of the Cap, casting long shadows across the battlecruisers bulking up from the refit pits that pocked the metal plain in every direction. Overhead, five bright stars slowly resolved into a force of approaching battlecruisers, the last battered remnants of the Aleph-Sud fleet.

  Osri and Ng noted them, one lifting his chin, the other drawing a deep breath into her lungs: those cruisers, battle-scarred as they were, offered visual proof that the Panarchy wasn’t finished yet.

  Slowly mo
re people emerged from the ring well, gradually sorting themselves into two groups. Anton Faseult passed by, greeting Ng, Willsones, and Osri on his way to join the swelling group of naval officers and analysts around a large table console across the chamber. This was the nucleus of the faction determined to destroy the Suneater.

  Damana Willsones quietly withdrew to join the smaller group of Privy Councilors and civilian scientists around a similar console some distance from the first. She was now acting head of Infonetics, after the ejection of Hesthar al-Gessinav from an airlock by her fellow Douloi.

  Ng and Osri watched her go, aware that the admiral had decided that her responsibility to Infonetics demanded she try to save the basis of a technology that could make the interstellar DataNet real time.

  Ng thought: Like the civilians busy talking each other into a stance they already share, her interests coincide with Brandon’s. I wonder if she knows that. Not that it would matter to her.

  Osri’s thoughts ran along a similar path as his recent conversation with Brandon brought back memories of the exquisite Vannis Scefi-Cartano at social functions, moving with smiling grace from Privy Councilor to others of high degree.

  Where is my father? The one most determined to save the Suneater from destruction was not among Willsones’s group. Ah. Osri spotted his father standing separate, from a vantage where he could watch. Only Ysabet, his head technician, Eloatri, the High Phanist, and a few others stood with him.

  Osri wanted to join him, but until High Admiral Ng released him, he could not.

  Osri saw his father’s eyes widen. He shifted his gaze to Brandon emerging alone from the ring well.

  Margot Ng bowed in the correct mode, setting off a quiet rustle of crisp uniforms as the Navy officers followed suit: the Star Chamber was accounted the bridge of Ares; here she was captain, as she had been on the Grozniy. Osri’s own gesture was answered by an inclination Brandon’s head and a humorous lift at the corner of his mouth, as Brandon joined them.

  He’s meeting the destruction party on their ground and relishing the battle. Now Osri knew why he was here, and the high admiral as well. It was the most Brandon could do to indicate his favored course of action. Which hinted at a depth of understanding between Ng and Brandon that he had not perceived.

  He has as many facets as there are people in his life. That was what most distressed Osri about his Douloi heritage. One could easily be fragmented and lost in roles rather than reality.

  But now he knew that Brandon was equal to the challenge that had shaped his ancestors for a thousand years. The formal white of a mourning ruler merely confirmed and intensified the charisma that had been innate even when he was scrubbing out Rifter engine casings, wearing cast-off clothing.

  Slowly the focus of the room began to turn toward them, the babble of voices quieted. Outside, flares of light lanced upward as the first of the arriving battlecruisers settled into its berth.

  As the room quieted, Sebastian Omilov reflected on the two people Brandon had clearly invited: Ng and Osri. This would be Osri’s last official duty as liaison to what remained of the Jupiter project, before he was posted to the Suneater system as navigator on the Rifter destroyer Gloire.

  Brandon waited until the faint seismic shudder of the docking trembled underfoot and died away, then he spoke. “From a time before we were human, an ancient power has been awakened in the service of a merciless enemy. Against it we oppose our understanding of Totality as embodied in our sciences and, more important, our humanity. We do not know if these will be enough.”

  His tone, carried clearly by subtle mechanisms to everyone under the dome, was almost conversational. But behind it and under it, like the tolling of an enormous bell, there struck at long intervals the docking impact of the battlecruisers, investing Brandon’s words with a weight of glory that needed no additional emphasis.

  “But we are the Phoenix. From the deadly conformity of the Solar Collective the people of Lost Earth dared the Vortex to build new worlds among the Thousand Suns. From the fading wreckage of their dream Jaspar Arkad and all our forebears wrested the Thousand-Year Peace. Now that, too, has been consumed in the flames of a conflict we ourselves helped kindle.”

  This was a direction Omilov had not anticipated. Startled, he looked around, seeing dismay in some of the upturned faces.

  “In the legends of Lost Earth, it was said the Phoenix constructed its pyre with great care, using rare and precious materials. We took no such care; allowing instead the divisions engendered by interstellar distances and the conditions of life among the stars to build a fire that would not purify but destroy us. Our enemy, even in possession of the secrets of the Ur, would have been powerless save for those divisions.”

  Jep Houmanopoulis smiled fiercely, knowing he’d won his gamble. Leaving Rifthaven might have been political suicide, giving the other two triumvirs the opportunity to undermine his position, but the insight and political common sense the new Panarch had shown had confirmed the wisdom of his choice. He would return to Rifthaven as the architect of a new concordance between the Panarchy and Rifthaven.

  If we pull off this attack. He was a little startled by his mind’s automatic “we,” a word no Rifter used of the Panarchy. But what choice have we? Dol’jhar will leave no room for us at all.

  Though Houmanopoulis smiled, others looked worried, confused, upset, even abashed.

  The dichotomy of Brandon’s easy tone and the weight of his words was unbalancing the group, exploiting the fractures across the Downsider-Highdweller-Rifter axes to crumble the edges of the preserve-destroy chasm that divided the strategists.

  “These divisions will cease to exist, or we will.” Brandon used The Panarch’s rarely invoked future-unconditional modality, investing his statement with the force of a command.

  The impact resonated with a force equal to the trembling underfoot as another battlecruiser docked, the light from its radiants enhaloing the last of the Arkads.

  Watching from across the room, Omilov felt a prickle of awe. Never had he seen such an effortless exploitation of symbolism; Ng, standing next to Brandon, smiled faintly.

  Brandon gestured, taking in the whole of their surrounding. “Here, then, let us rebuild our pyre, using all of our resources, so that, like the Phoenix, we may renew the immortality of humankind in the flames of this conflict.”

  Next to Omilov, Eloatri spoke softly. “We shall this day light such a candle . . . .”

  Then Omilov heard his name.

  “Gnostor Omilov, please begin this meeting with your presentation.”

  As he stepped forward to his control console, Omilov swiftly assessed Brandon’s words and the symbolic weight behind them. His call for unity evoked the Rifters on the Suneater without referring to them, the high admiral’s connivance in the arrival of the Aleph-Sud contingent of battlecruisers at this moment ranked her firmly on the Panarch’s side, and the meaning of Osri’s presence was clear.

  There was no need for him to slant his data, and indeed, his whole being rebelled against the idea, despite his fear that even now the Suneater would be condemned. He would go with the most dramatic of the presentations he’d prepared—in truth, given what we face, I cannot dramatize it enough—and trust the resultant heightened emotions to further break down the strategic disagreement.

  The irony of the situation made him smile. It was so rich with the perversity of life! He was now dependent on Brandon in almost the same way Brandon had been on him, in that confrontation in Nyberg’s office that had confirmed his onetime student’s political inheritance.

  Firmly Sebastian Omilov tabbed the console and told the story of the Ur as he now understood it.

  Despite his familiarity with holotech and a lifetime on the Riftskip, Houmanopoulis caught his breath as the pellucid dome clouded over, reducing the slashing glare of the last battlecruiser’s radiants to a pulsing glow that soon yielded to the glory of a spiral galaxy seen from far above.

  “What you see here no human
has ever seen,” Omilov said. “We may never see it; this is a simulacrum of what evidence suggests the truth must be, seen from a vantage that would take our fastest ships a thousand years to reach.”

  The perspective of the image shifted, and a rent in the glittering perfection of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy became apparent, a narrow lance of darkness threaded through with twisting sun-stuff and shattered stars, thrusting out from the center of the galactic lens almost to its edge.

  “We speak with easy familiarity of the Rift,” Omilov continued, “as though it were a mere part of the Thousand Suns.” A small red circle, barely more than a dot, began to blink near the head of the lance of darkness. “In reality, as you can see here, the Rift is enormously larger than our tiny portion of stars—”

  Omilov paused. “And it is not a natural phenomenon.”

  The image shifted, the perspective moving in on the center of the galaxy. Outlying star clusters fleeted past like embers on the wind; ahead, a devouring well of flame opened as if to swallow the viewers.

  “Ages before our rise to sentience, the Thousand Suns was a fraction of that part of the galaxy dominated by a race we call the Ur. How extensive their domain we do not know. Even the farthest explorations beyond the Fringes have found Doomed Worlds, the terrible works of art that are the legacy of the Ur. But we can be certain that even they, for all their power, held no sway over the center of our galaxy, a region of violent energies and twisted space where the fires of creation still burn.”

  The Star Chamber and all within it fell into the heart of a maelstrom of fire, a hellish brew of plasma and disintegrating matter trapped in the eternal descent to destruction in the immense black hole at the center of the galaxy. Space twisted about them; and they seemed to feel the tides of that vast singularity wrapping intangible, resistless fingers of warped space about their bodies.