The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Anaris forced the extrusion of a ledge, backed by an opening into a corridor beneath the Chamber of Kronos, sensed Vi’ya pluck the knowledge from his mind and leap from the Throne to dive into the well.

  Barrodagh watched as the Ogres swiveled their heads and ports snapped open among the sensory bulbs and clusters of their awful faces.

  Anaris gestured, and the deck convulsed under the machines, unbalancing them as beams of plasma speared out of the ports, searing past Vi’ya and the Eya’a.

  Eusabian stared at his son, who smiled back at him.

  If I had a moment more, I could take your skull now. But the Ogres would leave him no time, so he grinned at his father, sending a mental promise of vengeance—knowing that though the Avatar could not hear it, he would see it in his eyes.

  Barrodagh hoped he would never see such a smile aimed at him.

  “Ogres!” Eusabian shouted, arresting their motion up the mound of the Throne. He pointed at Anaris. “Kill him!”

  Again the beams shot out, but the floor telescoped up under Anaris’s feet, vaulting him into an opening hole in the ceiling, which cinched shut behind him.

  Two Tarkans pounded into the chamber, jacs ready.

  “Lord,” the senior of them addressed the Avatar. “Lances have penetrated the station in two places. Altasz Chur-Mellikath is directing the fight against the Marines advancing on the landing bay; he has diverted many Ogres as backup, and rioting has broken out among the confined service personnel—”

  The litany of disaster continued. Barrodagh stared, sickened, at the shattered compad. He was cut off from his sources now.

  The Tarkan shuttered to a halt, and the Bori looked up. Fear tingled along his spine as he saw the prachan, the fear-face, distorting the Avatar’s face. He had never seen Eusabian use it before, for his absolute power had made it unnecessary.

  Eusabian pulled the dirazh’u taut, as if strangling someone. The knots vanished, the silken cord hummed with tension. “Kill them.” His voice was harsh. “Unleash the Ogres.”

  The Tarkan hesitated. “The grays also, Lord? True Men as well as Bori?”

  Eusabian looked over at the Throne, now glowing brightly under the weird, unsettling shapes of light above it. A distant explosion rocked the deck underfoot.

  “Kill them all. Dol will know his own.”

  TEN

  Dyarch Ehyana Bengiat pointed at the imager and triggered her gauntlet jac. A thread of fire lanced out and shattered the device as a wave of triskels scuttled past her and her squad. She shuddered. The little three-legged Ogre-killers were operating in autonomous mode; the Kelly didn’t share humanity’s abhorrence of even semi-intelligent machines.

  The deck jolted underfoot, and a weird booming howl resounded from the red-glowing walls.

  Meliarch Anheles’s voice came over the general channel. “We lost Stiletto. Their interface was destroyed right before impact.”

  Bengiat cursed quietly, not only for her friends dead in a fiery instant but for the loss of a third of their effectiveness. If they couldn’t secure the landing bay, there’d be no means of retreat. And if the high admiral ordered the asteroids in, no one would get off the station alive.

  Anheles gave no time for mourning, and in response to his orders she deployed her squads. “Sniller, take the vermin forward on point. Jheng-Li and Amasuri, you take foggers and wasps . . .”

  The Marines moved out as she continued her dispositions. For a minute or so they encountered nothing; then, without warning, a pucker in the wall dilated and the thick beam of a heavy, self-mobile jac ripped out, spinning Sniller around and scoring a white-hot groove across her armor. The pucker snapped shut.

  “Tov, il-Dasc! Grab that door and pull it open on my mark. Fog it now. Wasps fire on my mark,” Bengiat shouted, checking Sniller’s diagnostics as the Marines deployed.

  “I’m AyKay.” Sniller’s voice was husky. “Bit of a burn.”

  More than just a burn, but the med’ll keep her going. She slapped Sniller’s armor as the corridor filled with absorptive smoke. “AyKay, but join squad three for mop-up. You’re in no shape for point.” She switched back to the squad channel. “Three, two, one, mark!”

  Webs of blue light flickered out from Jheng-Li’s and Amasuri’s gauntlets and the pucker dilated. The wasps shot through the opening, their vicious shrieking hum echoing strangely from the Urian material of the walls. Detonations slapped at them and a tongue of flame erupted through the opening and was cut off as the two Marines let go and jumped back.

  A blank section of the wall opened and a large canister flew out, exploding into a swarm of wasps, their hum harsher than the Panarchist antipersonnel weapons, but just as deadly. Amasuri and Jheng-Li dropped. Amasuri’s diagnostics went flat-line instantly, while Jheng-Li’s suit went dead except for the arms, which was almost as bad. They left him with a jac and a full bandolier of wasps and went on.

  From there it just got worse. The Tarkans fought like demons, apparently without fear of death. The corridors became a hell of flame and smoke punctuated by jac-beams and the hungry scream of wasps and other antipersonnel devices loosed by both sides.

  o0o

  Above the Chamber of Kronos, the floor slapped at Anaris’s feet, and even though he was prepared, the acceleration wrenched his knees and hips as he was propelled into an opening in the ceiling. He concentrated, accelerating toward the landing bay, reveling in the effortless sense of power that pervaded him, the substance of the station answering him like his own flesh.

  As he neared the bay, he could sense the firefight by its effect on the quantum-plast, especially when the Tarkans and their opponents used their gauntlet interfaces to wrench the Urian material apart. But he could also sense a strange resistance, or reluctance, in the quantum-plast, whenever he neared a surface. He knew Norio was gone, so it must be that other presence, never identified, that Tat’s worm had tracked.

  He descried a bitter struggle ahead, the antagonists easy enough to identify by the directions in which they thrust.

  It was time to bring the Tarkans to his side.

  He dropped out of the ceiling behind an armored squad, the noise of a firefight loud beyond them through the thick smoke. They swiveled with murderous intent, stopped, amazed and, he saw, afraid.

  So Barrodagh did tell them I am Chorei. All the better.

  “I command the karra in this place,” he said. “And they will deal with the Panarchists.”

  He pushed past them, toward the flare of jacs, and heard the squad leader shout an order. The jacs fell silent. Armored figures stood still as he strode past.

  Anaris stepped around a corner, his kinesthetic awareness of the station giving him the position of the enemy clearly. With little effort he cleared the smoke away, revealing himself.

  The Marines pressed forward in the smoke until it roiled and whipped away with startling swiftness, revealing the silhouette of a tall, powerfully built man, one hand uplifted in a casual gesture.

  The man wore no armor, nor was he armed. Bengiat stared across the intervening meters into a face she recognized as the regicide from Gehenna: Anaris achreash-Eusabian.

  Bring me his head. Same with his son.

  As she raised her hand, Bengiat activated her vid relay, tying it into one of the general address channels—the Panarch will want to see this.

  She pointed her gauntlet jac.

  Anaris gestured, and the walls cannoned together with irresistible force. Bengiat flew forward, thrown by the closing edges of the deathtrap Anaris had created. Behind the armored figure he heard the grinding crunch of armor yielding and several short, panicky screams. Then silence.

  He walked forward, trying not to show the effort his TK had cost him. Through a pounding headache he heard the whine of the Tarkan armor behind him as they followed, and their awed whispers on general address: “Anaris rahal-Chorahin, ti-karra empuen.” Anaris heir of the Chorei, master of the karra.

  He looked down at the fallen Marine, ripped
open the faceplate with his mind, and stopped, arrested by unexpected beauty. Blood leaked from between her perfect lips as she opened her eyes; he felt the impact of her hate.

  Anaris raised his hand—he would exert his TK to pull her heart out through her mouth, a final act that would indelibly convince the Tarkans of his power. But the floor twitched under him, knocking him off balance, and before he could recover himself, a hole opened and swallowed the Marine. As the hole closed, for the briefest moment it pursed into what looked like a pair of lips, and he heard a whisper.

  This one is mine, foster child.

  He stared, appalled, then collected himself. Perhaps this was better, despite what it implied. He was not sure he could have remained conscious after the effort his demonstration would have cost him.

  In any case, the Tarkans could not have heard; they would not know it had not been his act that swallowed up the Marine.

  And so it was, he saw as he looked back at them.

  They bowed, fear showing through every faceplate, and awaited his orders.

  o0o

  It took Morrighon several tries to get to the landing bay. He drove as rapidly as he dared, looking continually from the schematic on his compad to the corridors ahead until vertigo threatened to overwhelm him. Smoke drifted down the corridors; the tang of burning meat made him gag. Twice he came close to driving directly into firefights. The strange acoustics of the quantum-plast damped the crack of jac-fire, the horrific buzzing of antipersonnel devices, and the thump! and crump! of the plasma cannons until he was almost upon them.

  But at last he found his way there by following a trotting squad of Tarkans doing cleanup after an assault team farther ahead. The landing bay itself was almost empty, save for Tarkans stationed at all the adits. He was passed through without comment. As his slamming heart slowed its racketing pace, he wondered if this was a good sign—or no sign.

  On the long drive to the bay, he’d considered his best move, which was to ignore the corvettes until Anaris arrived. Their guards probably had orders to report access to Barrodagh—the Telvarna was under the heir’s command.

  Drawing the runabout directly to the ramp, Morrighon motioned to one of the guards. Both were faceless in servo-armor, bulking huge and menacing. Morrighon’s heart raced again.

  “The heir wishes this taken aboard the ship and released into the air system,” Morrighon said, holding up the canister. “I have the ship schematic in my compad.”

  The Tarkan carefully took the compad and held it up to one of his suit’s data ports. There was a brief flicker of light, then he handed the compad back, took the canister, and disappeared up the ramp.

  This course had been chosen after some inner debate. He could not let the Tarkans know about the presence of the Kelly unless it was unavoidable. To be absolutely certain the canister did what it was supposed to, he ought to have released it into the ship himself, but he remembered the weirdness of his initial visit to the Columbiad, and though he could not find any definitive data on the Kelly indicating whether they had psi abilities along the lines of the Eya’a, he was afraid they would know his intentions and sabotage him.

  After a time the Tarkan returned, bowed, and took up his position. The other had not moved.

  Morrighon watched the last few seconds tick off his chrono and tried not to run up the ramp. His back crawled, but relief did not attend his stepping into the ship. The chemical was supposed to have broken down and dissipated in two minutes. He smelled a slight astringency in the air.

  Gripping his jac, he advanced slowly into the crew areas of the silent ship, activating each door. Room after room revealed emptiness, until he found them at last.

  He would not have known the huge, miscolored lump of what looked like the bowels of some hideous beast as Kelly, so intertwined were they. A horrific smell boiled out, clawed at the back of his throat, and he held his breath. He glanced once at the creatures, still moving slightly, their famed green streaked with orange and brown and yellow, their ribbons crinkled and dull, then he shut the door again and sealed it.

  Beasts, the Avatar had named them, but the Panarchists had welcomed them into their polity as sophonts. Morrighon felt a wave of . . . not regret, but uneasiness, which he thrust away as he retreated to the bridge, and there he stood, looking around.

  How strange was life, and how quick death. He was about to take command of the very vessel that had escaped the Avatar’s vengeance above the Mandala—unless he, too, met a sudden death. Which is surer the longer I stand here, he thought.

  The stink of dying Kelly still reeked in his nostrils. As he brought the captain’s console to life, he activated the tianqi to filter the bad air. Then, looking again from compad to console, he set about mastering the controls that would command this ship: first to activate the external imagers, and then the weapons console.

  And last, to wait.

  o0o

  Time seemed endless in the rec room. Before long began the inevitable rocking and weird noises. At first Marim felt that strange warm feeling, the tickle inside her head, but when Hreem started cursing with a free-form and artistic command of invective, she was diverted and the sensation went away again.

  So she perched on a console, wrapping her arms around her legs and waiting for Hreem to get bored enough to do something about breaking them out. For a time Hreem was diverted by watching the grays force some of the Bori to clean the food mess on the floor. Three Bori who had obviously tasted too much psychoactive Ur-fruit had fouled themselves, and Hreem guffawed as two grays kicked them into a corner, where they huddled, keening. But they didn’t resist, or even move, so the grays withdrew to the far side of the room.

  Hreem was soon bored with watching the laboring Bori, then a powerful shock rocked the chamber, followed by a softer, duller crump! Marim couldn’t imagine what it was, but the color drained from Hreem’s face.

  “Lances,” he whispered. “Got to . . .” He stalked to the warmer, dialed up some caf, sipped at it twice, then hurled the hot liquid onto one of the mewling Bori in the corner.

  “Shut yer yap, you chatzing nullwit.” All but one fell silent. Hreem stared menacingly at the moaning Bori, who rocked back and forth in pain.

  The alarm died. Hreem spat in disgust and walked over to the door, which remained closed. “You know how to open this chatzer?”

  Marim eyes the fistula above the door; she’d seen how it worked. “Yeah. But so what? There’s an Ogre outside.”

  “Maybe. You want to just sit here, wait for the Marines to break in and kill us all?”

  She shrugged, went over to the warmers, and grabbed a serving spoon. At her direction, Hreem dragged a table over next to the door. Marim was aware of the Bori and grays watching. She was surprised when the latter said nothing to stop them. Then Hreem lifted her up onto the table, and she enjoyed the strength of his hands on her waist.

  She jabbed the spoon into the fistula and wrenched around.

  The door snapped open, revealing the insane face of an Ogre.

  She yanked the spoon out and the door snapped shut. “See, I told you so.”

  “Open it again,” Hreem commanded. She sighed and once more jabbed the spoon in. The door exploded open. This time she held the spoon in the fistula. It quivered in her hands, as though the quantum-plast was trying to spit it out.

  The Ogre didn’t move, but she noticed Hreem was careful not to set even so much as one foot outside the chamber. He looked at the machine for a long moment, then went over to the wall where the mind-rizzed Bori crouched. He yanked the moaning one to his feet and dragged him toward the door. The moaning crescendoed to a shriek and the man struggled furiously, helpless against the Rifter’s greater size and strength.

  “What’re you doing?” Marim gasped.

  Hreem didn’t reply. Approaching the door, he thrust the Bori out. As soon as the man’s foot touched the deck outside the door, the Ogre moved with shocking suddenness. It lunged forward, its arms outstretched as though beginni
ng a swan dive, and then brought them together with blurring speed. With a horrible crunch the Bori’s skull exploded in a spray of scarlet custard; the headless body jerked and slumped to the deck.

  Hreem jumped back, cursing, blood and brains now mixing with the stew crusting his clothing. Marim jerked the spoon out and the door snapped shut. She stared fearfully at the pucker, but nothing happened. The room was now completely silent.

  “You knew that would happen,” she said to Hreem.

  “Had to be sure. But he’s meat, anyway. We all are if we don’t get out of—”

  The door snapped open again, and the Ogre glided in, the whine-thump of its progress a dreadful counterpoint to the screams of panic. Marim fell backward off the table, rolling on one shoulder to absorb the impact. Hreem sprang backward and threw the nearest Bori at the machine, which smashed her head as the pucker crashed shut again.

  Open the door. Marim began to crawl toward it. The Ogre did not pause in its brutal, murderous progress: even as it crushed two grays together in a dreadful, crackling explosion of bones and viscera, its head swiveled and a needle of plasma lanced out of a dilated port, splattering off the quantum-plast overhead. She pulled back, forcing herself to think. No panic. Think. Think or die. Sanctus Hicura! Logos-kissing Dol’jharians set the machines to scare us to death—all this ripping and smashing, not the clean kill of a jac. She peeked at Hreem. His face was pale, ridged with terror. Marim’s perceptions seemed revved up, like the time she’d played Suraki in the habitat and almost fell to her death.

  He gestured violently to her, and she wormed through the remains of the greasy, half-congealed stew, sliding faster than she could have crawled. “Decoy,” Hreem said.

  And as the Ogre’s beam lanced again at two Bori who tried to make a dive for the doorway, Hreem reached to snare the ankle of the one who ducked the beam. Using his greater strength, he forced the lighter man over the top of a console, and when the Ogre stalked up to its prey, he and Marim slid back through the slush between two consoles.