The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  It is time to try—or to pay my own coin, he decided, and the blue fire glowed within him.

  He touched Lucifur’s flat head, then walked into the center of the chamber and stood before the beam of light, his eyes following it down until it was lost among the stars. A communications interface?

  He opened himself to the alien song of the station around him, assembling it in a synesthetic gestalt as he had been taught by the Kelly. He still did not understand, but he sensed the rhythms underlying it.

  Still holding his talismans, Ivard stepped into the beam.

  o0o

  Mandros Nukiel was fighting for his life, tied to a stone in heaven whose worth outweighed his ship, and if needful, all the lives within it—for each of them was proxy for trillions of lives held hostage by the alien construct they sought to destroy.

  So he sparred with the Rifter destroyer, cursing the preternatural skill of its captain and watching helplessly as telemetry from the asteroid he warded indicated the slow degradation of the engines that would launch it at the Suneater when the word came.

  He ignored the smaller ships supporting the destroyer, scarcely noticing when two fell victims to ruptor fire when the fog of war delivered them within range. The rest could do nothing to him, and his supporting frigates and corvettes could deal with them. It was only the destroyer that threatened both the Mbwa Kali and the asteroid it shepherded.

  “Navigation, new coordinates: 32.5 mark 44, skip 10 light-seconds, random tactical skip after discharge. Weapons, aft ruptor turrets alpha and gamma, full power, wide dispersion on emergence . . .”

  He continued his orders as the fiveskip burred harshly, noting that the skips needed to save the asteroid from destruction by the destroyer’s skipmissiles was giving it too large a real velocity on the wrong vector. He’d have to start unwinding that, and soon.

  The communications console bleeped. “Tacponder pulse incoming, general address, flagship to Fleet: launch asteroids!” The officer’s voice scaled up as the import of the message reached her.

  There was a cheer from the bridge crew, cut short by a sharp jolt and a spattering of damage lights from the consoles.

  “Skipmissile impact, glancing, extreme range, forward alpha ruptor turret destabilized.”

  “Now we can fight that destroyer properly,” Efriq declared.

  “Asteroid Control, solution?” Nukiel said, wondering if the real vector of the asteroid, which it would resume after it emerged from skip, was now too large.

  “Solution calculated, twelve seconds to acquisition.”

  Relief washed through him. “Lock and commit.”

  The secondary console assigned to remote control of the asteroid tug, which had been the Pax Britannia before it was battered into near scrap in the Ujima system, twittered as the commands uploaded.

  “Locked and committed.”

  “Emergence pulse!” Siglnt’s voice was hoarse. “Bearing 44 mark 16, range 7 light-seconds. Coming about to fire on asteroid. Skip-missile charging.”

  Nukiel cursed quietly. That was squarely in the field of fire of the damaged ruptor turret, severely impairing the power he could deliver at that range. The only good thing was that the Rifter skipmissiles were taking longer to charge as they got more powerful. It would be close.

  “Weapons—” He snapped out his orders. The ship shuddered slightly as the other two turrets fired.

  A tense silence gripped the bridge. Even the consoles seemed to fall quiet. On the main screen the asteroid bulked, a misshapen lump of rock mushrooming like an oversized tumor from the hulk of the converted battlecruiser.

  “. . . two, one . . .” came the voice of Asteroid Control.

  Light bloomed where the asteroid had been.

  “Skipmissile impact,” said Siglnt, while simultaneously Asteroid Control shouted, “Asteroid away!”

  A chain-of-pearls wake speared off from the gout of light.

  “Wake analysis indicates damage to engines, harmonic instability.”

  “Navigation, take us along the wake, ten light-seconds.”

  When the screens cleared, a targeting cross lit up on the screen, which flickered and cleared to an enhanced image of a cluster of rocks tumbling and slowly spreading.

  “Engines failed at fifteen percent cee, breakup pattern analyzed—a miss.”

  Nukiel slammed his fist down on the arm of his command pod. All that for nothing. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go after that chatzing Rifter and make him pay.”

  o0o

  Tallis no longer bothered to pretend he was directing the battle, for after the death of Anderic everyone on board the Satansclaw knew about the logos. So he slumped in his command pod, watching with a curious detachment as the machine ran the ship and its weapons.

  The rest of the bridge crew was idle as well, except Kira Lennart, and Mavisu on the engineering console. Mavisu was bringing up the spin reactors, now that they didn’t need to worry about inspections anymore, but it was Kira’s work that concerned him most. He opened the secure channel she’d established, to enable them to communicate without the logos listening in.

  (Anything?) he subvocalized into the pin-mike, rigidly controlling his unfortunate tendency to mix up thoughts and speech in that mode. It hadn’t mattered with the logos, not at first. For that reason, if no other, it was a relief not to have to pretend anymore—he no longer had to worry about inadvertently revealing his plans to the machine while giving orders.

  (I’m ready, I think,) she replied. (I found what I needed in a book on Barcan culture. If I give the eidolon what he’s fixated on, I think I can pry him loose once and for all.)

  (What’s that?)

  (You don’t want to know.) Despite the distorting effect of subvocal communications, Tallis could hear her disgust.

  (Then how long?)

  (It’ll take only a few minutes, once you give the word.)

  He cut the connection. That wouldn’t be until the logos disposed of the battlecruiser. Then he checked Mavisu’s progress. The spin reactors were twenty hours from being on-line.

  The squeal-rumble of a near miss from the battlecruiser’s ruptors jerked his head up in time to see the skipmissile discharge, followed a few seconds later by a gout of garish light from the main screen.

  (SKIPMISSILE IMPACT ON ASTEROID,) came the dispassionate voice of the logos in his ear. He’d left its communications covert, knowing the crew would be upset by its dead-sounding voice. There was a brief pause. (ASTEROID WILL MISS STATION.)

  “Communications,” Tallis said, “signal to Juvaszt: asteroid deflected.”

  He wondered what his next orders would be. The logos’s orders, you mean. He shook off the thought. Likely all the asteroids had been launched, so Juvaszt’s only goal now would be to destroy the Panarchist Fleet, and so he’d undoubtedly order Tallis to continue the engagement.

  That was just as well, he reflected as the fiveskip burred again in high tactical mode. Doubtless any other order would be disobeyed by the logos, anyway.

  o0o

  “Which way now, Yehudi?”

  Brandon briefly closed his eyes, listening inside his head. He could not describe the sensation, so faint it was; no overt communication, but the awareness of Vi’ya’s presence was something like being aware of a loved one sleeping in the next room. “That way, I think.”

  They headed down the corridor he’d indicated, Brandon in the middle of the squad. Although they still addressed him by the l’iconnu “Yehudi,” there was no way they were going to ignore who he really was. None of them wants to be the one to return and report my death.

  As though summoned by the thought, the ceiling opened ahead and behind, and two squads of Tarkans dropped down, turning the corridor into a hell of flame and buzzing antipersonnel weapons.

  There was the telltale pucker of a door on their right, although the frame for its controls had crumpled. Kellem cursed as he triggered his jac into the adit fistula. The pucker snapped open. They ducked inside
, Nail’s suit dragging one leg. The door snapped shut. Outside they could hear the whine of the Tarkans’ armor as they deployed for the finishing attack.

  “What the chatzing hell is this place?” Nail said, looking up from the access plate to his leg as he snapped it shut.

  Brandon looked around at the chamber, whose walls were nearly square. Smoke-darkened tapestries hung everywhere, and at one end was an altar with a skull on one level, and below, a battered bowl. The other Marines looked around in amazement.

  “It’s the Chamber of the Mysteries, the cultic center of the Eusabian family.” Brandon pointed at the skull. “That must be Eusabian’s father.”

  “Is that why they’re taking so long out there?” Gwyn asked.

  “Probably. It’s a death sentence for anyone to enter this room without permission. They’ll want to make sure.”

  Then Brandon heard a sound that he never thought would be so welcome: a high chittering, dulled by intervening quantum-plast.

  “What the Shiidran Hell is that?” Gwyn demanded. “Another chatzing surprise from this chatzing digestive nightmare?”

  Brandon gave a breathless laugh as he triggered his sonic sensors. He stepped to the wall they indicated. “A surprise, yes, but for the Tarkans. Help me open up.”

  Gwyn joined him; light webbed out of their gauntlets. Even in his armor, Brandon could see the dyarch flinch as the Eya’a jumped through with one of their impossibly swift movements.

  The squad fell back a step as the little white-furred beings turned their jewel-faceted eyes to Brandon. Their twiggy fingers semaphored in eerily exact synchrony: We-see-you.

  Brandon raised his gauntlets and tried to return the gesture, knowing they were reading his mind. Vi’ya? he thought. Vi’ya?

  One-who-gives-firestone hears Vi’ya. The voices inside his skull seared high and sharp and painful. Brandon closed his eyes, fighting the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him as his mind endeavored to locate the voices outside his head.

  Brandon. I am trapped right below the Throne Room.

  It was her voice. He tried to shape the words for an answer, but the effort hurt his head and his thoughts splintered; he realized he could no longer hear her.

  He pointed at the Eya’a. “You know what they can do,” he said, “but they have to see the enemy.”

  “We’ll buy ’em the sight,” Gwyn said, his voice grim. The squad deployed at his command.

  “Wait,” Brandon said. He crossed swiftly to the altar and picked up the skull. “This may slow them down.”

  He rejoined the squad. “AyKay,” he said, hefting the skull.

  Gwyn triggered his jac against the door’s control, and as it snapped open, Brandon bowled the skull out of the opening along the deck. The Marines stormed out after it, yelling fiercely behind a wave of foggers and multiple blasts of wasps. Behind came the pair of aliens, chittering loudly.

  The Tarkans’ battle cries that greeted them abruptly changed to screams of agony. An armored figure staggered out of the smoke, tearing open his faceplate. Moments later a gout of bloody pudding-like gore erupted out of his helmet and he tipped forward. Then it was all over.

  “Telos!” Iresc breathed. “Little chatzers don’t need armor.”

  The Eya’a walked past, unconcerned by the carnage all around. Looking at Brandon, they still chattered on that high note, their fingers semaphoring rapidly.

  “We’d better follow them,” he said. As they walked away, he looked back. The skull sat unharmed amidst the gore, its empty eyes gazing back at him.

  A few minutes later they turned a corner, and the point Marine’s faceplate was washed by a glare of light. They moved forward slowly, jacs ready, only a little reassured by the apparent nonchalance of the Eya’a walking ahead of them. Who knows what they can tolerate? Brandon thought.

  Iresc, on point, peered through the opening, froze in position, then backed away. “Nobody in there,” she said, her voice strained. “Nobody’d want to be, for long.”

  Brandon pushed past her. Every surface in the chamber was a violent sea of moiré patterns that made his stomach lurch. Directly ahead of him, beyond a bank of consoles and some sort of transparent dyplast screen, a huge mound soared up about ten meters, its top a glare of light too bright to look at.

  Brandon checked his suit sensors. Despite the hellish appearance of the chamber, there were no dangerous radiations—even the temperature was only about twenty-five degrees. He walked in, half-aware of Gwyn’s quick commands deploying the others in a defensive perimeter, and paced carefully around the mound, stopping when he saw the gulf beyond. Then he stepped to the edge and looked down.

  Rings of light raced down the walls of the shaft, drawing his eyes into infinity; he felt something pull at his mind, and he stepped back again.

  A motion above him caught his attention. Something was coming down the well.

  He retreated further, sensing the Marines flanking him. The Eya’a stood silently to either side, still and expressionless.

  The object was a sphere of some transparent material. It reminded Brandon of Tate Kaga’s gee-bubble, with a small opaque platform inside. A tall, heavy-shouldered man stood in the center of this platform, with another, smaller man crouching at his feet, his face in his hands. As the bubble came level with the edge of the floor, the standing one turned his head. It was Jerrode Eusabian of Dol’jhar.

  “There’s the logos-loving chatzer himself!” someone shouted, and a streak of plasma lanced past Brandon from one of the Marines behind him, splashing harmlessly off the barely-seen transparency of the ship.

  The glare of the plasma beam underlit the Avatar’s face, throwing his strong features into relief, but he did not flinch or change expression. Only his hands moved, ceaselessly twisting a black silken cord between his fingers.

  Was this some kind of command module, then? A sense of sharp alarm zinged through Brandon, chased by an almost overwhelming impulse to vault over the intervening space, so he could get his hands around his enemy’s neck.

  But then, clearer than speech and more intimate, came Vi’ya’s thought: No one controls the station. It has awakened, and is autonomous. Eusabian has put himself beyond anyone’s control, including his own.

  Triumph seared through Gelasaar’s last living son, and Brandon stepped forward. With a deliberate gesture he opened his faceplate and triggered his interior helmet light to illuminate his features plainly. Then he started his helmet imager to record the defeat of the Panarchy’s would-be destroyer.

  Eusabian’s hands stopped moving. His eyes widened.

  Brandon smiled, lifted his hand, and sketched a Douloi gesture of dismissal, master to servant.

  The cord snapped thin between the Avatar’s hands. As Eusabian slid inexorably below, Brandon watched the futile rage in his enemy’s face, and he laughed, and reveled in how his hilarity measured its intensity in Eusabian’s increased fury.

  Then the bubble sank farther into the well, taking the Avatar out of sight, down to whatever destiny he had chosen by yielding himself up to the devices of the Ur.

  When Eusabian was out of sight, Brandon heard the ghostly echo of laughter in his mind, and every nerve attuned itself to Vi’ya’s proximity. She was here—mere meters below him.

  “The deck!” he shouted. “Help me!”

  Under his direction the Marines’ gauntlets puckered open the floor, and Vi’ya looked up at him. Brandon extruded a cable from one gauntlet. Vi’ya hooked it into her belt and walked up the wall as he reeled it in.

  There she was, tall and strong and black-eyed. He saw the impact of her Dol’jharian presence on his Marine squad, who so shortly before had gazed on the hereditary figurehead of her race. They stepped a pace back, and she stood alone before him, weaponless, her rumpled flightsuit scorched by jac-fire, her aspect cool and composed as always, except her gaze was neither cool nor composed.

  “Nice timing,” she said, and smiled.

  He smiled back, wishing strongly that
the watching Marines, and the Eya’a, and the Suneater, and the damned servo-armor, would all conveniently vanish.

  Of course she read his thought, and the one after. She said softly, “One to go.”

  Brandon turned to Gwyn, who cleared his throat. “Landing bay,” he said. “Iresc on point, Kellem cleanup. Let’s move!”

  o0o

  With the asteroid away, Nukiel could concentrate on the battle with the Satansclaw. The same obtained for the Rifter captain, and the battle was going badly for the Mbwa Kali. Her crew was performing flawlessly, but the skipmissiles of the destroyer had grown so powerful that even near misses were devastating to the battlecruiser’s systems.

  The bridge jolted as the screens cleared. “Aft gamma ruptor turret destroyed,” reported Damage Control after a moment.

  “Tactical skip, now!” The fiveskip reengaged, sounding even rougher. The engines were heating up as Nukiel threw the Mbwa Kali around as though it were a destroyer.

  “We can’t take much more of this,” Efriq said.

  “The longer we engage him, the longer someone else doesn’t have to deal with him,” Nukiel replied.

  Efriq shrugged. There was no answer to that, of course. “I wonder who that Rifter is,” he mused. “Can’t be Y’Marmor. He never had that kind of talent.”

  Nukiel considered the tactical screen. Then he snapped out a new set of orders.

  “Doesn’t much matter. He’s brilliant no matter who he is.”

  Then a new glyph on the tactical display caught his eye. For a moment he couldn’t interpret it—a fleet of small ships? No, the asteroid. Asteroids now. Shattered and dispersed, both by design and by some odd effect of the skipmissile impact at the moment of skip, the long, narrow reef now stretched over several light-seconds. Meanwhile, the battle with the destroyer had carried the Mbwa Kali ahead and to one side of the reef’s trajectory toward the skip-radius of the Suneater system, still several light-minutes away. The glyph indicated dead-reckoning, then changed to the green of a live sensor reading: even to the powerful sensors of a battlecruiser the rocks were nearly invisible. The destroyer probably couldn’t see them at all.