The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  The idea blossomed full grown in his mind, as though the Goddess herself had planted it there. “Hah!” A delighted laugh escaped from him. “Navigation, belay that. New coordinates coming. Tactical, link to me.”

  “What?” Efriq demanded. Nukiel explained swiftly as Rogan listened also. “Iffy. Very iffy,” Efriq said. “But very clever—just what’s needed against that chatzer.”

  “I agree.” Rogan rubbed her eyes. “But look, we’ll end up desperately close to radius, even if everything goes perfectly, and with a huge real velocity inward. That energy sink will shut us down if we cross over, and even if we don’t get gobbled up by the singularity, chances are the companion’ll explode before we come out the other side.”

  “No help for it,” said Nukiel. “It’s our best chance.”

  Efriq shook his head. “So it is. And one for the books.”

  “That depends on who’ll write the books. Let’s make sure it’s the Navy, eh?”

  o0o

  As the logos harried the battlecruiser closer and closer to the edge of the energy sink, Tallis, and his crew were seized by a kind of manic exhilaration. It actually seemed as though they might survive this horror.

  By now the tactics of the logos were clear even to him: it was forcing the battlecruiser closer and closer to the exclusion zone, cutting down its degrees of freedom. Of course, the Panarchist captain was free to decline the engagement, but he wouldn’t. Tallis wished he could, despite the success he saw coming. Juvaszt’ll just order us to another battle.

  He tabbed on the command link, rigidly controlling his throat. (Estimated time to destruction of enemy?) he queried.

  (THREE-POINT-FIVE MINUTES.)

  Tallis cut the connection, hit it again to be sure, then tabbed the link to Kira. (Time for your little trick, I think. The logos says less than four minutes.)

  (You got it. Be ready, it may be rough for a bit.)

  (You call this easy?)

  She didn’t reply.

  Tallis glared at the main screen, flinching as a near miss from the battlecruiser’s ruptors tore at the ship.

  “Ruptor strike, aft port side. Minor damage,” DC reported.

  They were within light-seconds of the exclusion zone now, moving at an uncomfortably high real velocity. The stars slewed across the screen, a targeting cross leaping into existence on a dot of light. A bar to one side lengthened as the skip-missile approached full charge.

  Suddenly Esbart’s console shrilled. “Trash reef on collision course, closing at point-one-five cee!” the tech screamed.

  Tallis cursed, slamming his fist down on the skip tab.

  Nothing happened.

  o0o

  Ruonn approached the Thrones of the Matria, walking proudly, his enormous shestek cradled in his hands. The Mater shifted in the central Throne, waves of warm, excitingly scented water slopping over the edge to lave his feet as he stopped and bowed.

  “We honor Ruonn dynar-Hyarmendil, now Potent.” The Mater’s voice sent thrills of anticipation through him. “Most welcome was your data, the richest trove ever returned to the Under.”

  He was climbing into the Throne with her now. She leaned back to receive him, opening to him her rich vastness. His shestek sent wave after wave of incredible euphoria through him as he entered her. She grunted with pleasure, the deep sound resonating through him. He looked down, his desire sharpening at the sight of his immense shestek buried within her.

  Suddenly the Throne Room shuddered around them. Water spilled out with a gush. Ruonn ignored it, straining to push deeper into the Mother of Barca, but a horrible pain tore at him. He looked down again in horror and disbelief

  Around his shestek her opening gaped, red and ringed with teeth.

  The Satansclaw jolted violently, throwing Tallis out of his command pod, but the fall saved his life as the forward bulkhead erupted with a stunning roar and several streaks of light speared through the bridge. Esbart’s head disappeared in a gout of steam and his body toppled convulsing to the floor. Screams resounded around him as others were felled by white-hot fragments of the bulkhead and secondary shrapnel.

  Tallis looked up at one of the screens in time to see a piece of the asteroid they’d destroyed hit the missile tube square on. It crumpled up like a drinking straw and then exploded into shards about halfway down its length, a blob of plasma drooling out of it like an unsuccessful ejaculation as the charging skipmissile dissipated. A terrifying shriek, like a man in extremis, erupted in his ears. He slapped frantically at the comlink from the logos, trying to shut it down, but the scream continued from the bridge speakers.

  “Chatz!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “DC! What’s happening? Shut that chatzing noise down!”

  “Missile tube destroyed, skipmissile—” the DC monitor began. He was unhurt, but his voice was wooden with shock.

  “I can see that, you chatzing nullwit!” Tallis shouted. “Why doesn’t that fiveskip work?”

  The shrieking cut off.

  “Fiveskip operational,” Damage Control said resentfully.

  Tallis gobbled at him for a second or two longer, smacked his hand over his face, then shouted, “Navigation, get us out of here!”

  The stars slewed across the screen, then vanished as the fiveskip engaged. The Dol’jharians would eventually shut them down, but he intended to be far away by then. That might give them enough time to start the spin reactors. No matter who won the battle, the Satansclaw and its crew were heading home for Rifthaven.

  “Lennart, what about the chatzing logos?” Tallis demanded, belatedly realizing he’d spoken out loud. Not that it mattered.

  “Don’t know. Didn’t get the final command, but it’s not active.” She looked up at him. “The ship is yours, Captain.” Then she looked around at the carnage on the bridge, and a hysterical giggle erupted from her. “Such as it is, with its nacker shot off.” She started laughing harder, a high, breathy keen. “That’s what happened to Ruonn. And I think the shock wiped out the logos, too.”

  “You think this is funny?” Tallis shouted so loud he strained his throat, then he choked on the smell of burning blood and flesh. Moans rose around him as a medic moved from console to console, ministering to the wounded.

  She sobered abruptly. “No.” Kira took a long, shuddering breath. “But we’re alive.”

  “Yeah. We’re alive. Great.” He slumped back in his command pod. That was something, wasn’t it?

  Nobody said anything as they slowly picked themselves up, and resumed their stations, with many glances at the screens.

  o0o

  “Radiant efficiency twenty-five-point-five percent and falling. Final engine shutdown in twenty minutes.”

  The litany of disaster from Damage Control ceased, but Nukiel hardly noticed, trying to wrap himself around the tearing internal pain the whiplash of the failing gravitors had dealt him. They’d positioned themselves squarely in the path of the hurtling asteroid cloud, trusting their stronger shields to protect them from instant annihilation, and preventing the destroyer from detecting them until it was too late. The Satansclaw had been unable to skip to safety: since it was oriented dead on the Mbwa Kali to fire the killing blow, any skip would merely have carried it further into the asteroid reef, or into the cruiser itself. That had been the only risk, but the Rifters had refused suicide.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Mandros?” It was Efriq’s voice. He forced himself to straighten up, swallowing against the iron taste in his mouth. He looked up at the tactical screen: there was no hope for the ship. The shields over the radiants, always the weakest point, had failed under the impact of a random concentration of fractional-cee debris.

  “I’ll be AyKay,” he said. “Long enough.” He tabbed his console, and the klaxons started the harsh alternating wail that no spacer ever wanted to hear: Abandon Ship.

  Efriq made to help him from the pod, but Nukiel waved him away, instead motioning a medic over. “Give me something for pain,” he commanded, “but no
t to fog my mind.”

  The corpsman complied silently, spray-jecting something cool into his wrist. Relief was swift, if only partial. When he had control of his voice again, he tabbed the general address. “This is the captain speaking. I need volunteers from the ruptor crews for life-pod acceleration. We’re too close to the edge of the energy sink and moving too fast for their engines.”

  Nukiel swallowed again. The pain had flared up even with so brief a speech and the effort of letting no pain into his voice.

  “Efriq,” he said, “take charge of the evacuation.” It was a relief to speak in a whisper.

  “Mandros—”

  Nukiel could hear the pain in his friend’s voice.

  “Go, Leontois. The High Phanist said over Desrien that the Goddess had no message for me. Then. Now I’ve heard Her voice.”

  “Fifteen minutes to energy sink,” Navigation reported.

  “Go,” said Nukiel. “I can handle communications, and there isn’t anything else left. That’s an order.”

  Efriq nodded and straightened up. Silently he saluted, then turned away, rasping out orders. No words were necessary; they’d served together over ten years.

  The bridge emptied swiftly, leaving Nukiel surrounded by a silence broken only by the whisper of the tianqi. It seemed to be forming words just below perception. He watched the screens as the life-pods shot away; finally the corvettes erupted from the landing bays, their engines strong enough to carry away those in the ruptor crews who’d volunteered as requested. He was glad they’d made it.

  A minute later the ship’s power failed as it crossed into the strange energy field surrounding the Suneater, which soaked up all power over a distance of one hundred meters—the main reactors were three kilometers from the bridge. The emergency lights sprang on, but the screens went dead, for the bridge was too far inside the ship for any signal now to reach it from the sensors.

  It didn’t matter. Nukiel’s memory of the face of the Goddess as Destroyer was so vivid it still seemed the screens were live.

  Mandros Nukiel let himself slump back in the command pod, on the bridge of a ship now manned only by the dead, and waited for the Goddess to claim him.

  FOUR

  “Supernova? What about the Suneater?” Juvaszt asked.

  “We do not know, Kyvernat,” the science officer replied in a flat voice, his gaze diffuse. “However, since this is its function, it will probably survive.”

  But no one will be able to escape after the wavefront reaches the station.

  The officer was unable to estimate how long this would take when Juvaszt inquired, so the kyvernat merely commanded continued monitoring.

  “Communications,” he began, then cursed as the asteroid they were fighting toward vanished in a burst of reddish light. The Panarchists would have seen the neutrino burst as well, and this was the only logical response. Through the haze of depravity jiggling on the comm-screen, the Rifter ships reported, one by one, the launch of the other asteroids. Now there was a far more immediate threat to the Suneater, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  However, he could now concentrate his forces on wiping out the Panarchists, battle group by battle group rather than having to disperse them against many targets. Of course, they’d try the same, but with only one hyperwave, they’d be virtually helpless against his superior communications. At least, it seemed, the Rifters were not responding to the amnesty offers: no surprise, given their actions in the Thousand Suns during the paliach.

  He began issuing his orders, gathering his fleet for a series of killing blows, while a tactical screen slowly displayed the computer analysis of the asteroids’ trajectories. The Avatar’s forces had done better than he expected. Only three were guaranteed to hit the station, the earliest little more than two hours from now.

  “Communications, notify Chur-Mellikath on the Suneater of the supernova and the asteroids, and update him every five minutes on ETA.”

  But it took almost five minutes to get through the hash the Panarchist jamming was making of the hyperwave, for every time Communications managed to find an algorithm to clean it up, the Panarchists changed their signal. And it was getting worse.

  At that rate, the last update he sent would be useless: it would arrive at the Suneater after the first asteroid strike. Well, there was nothing further he could do. It was up to Chur-Mellikath to use the time wisely. Out here, he had ships to kill.

  o0o

  Vi’ya could not shield herself from awareness of the Presence. The walls of her mind, hitherto so fiercely guarded, seemed to be dissolving, taking with them her sense of physical position—both place and time. At least there was no communication from it. The awareness manifested itself in a sense of tremendous harmonics, a chordal progression that evoked the slow turning of the galaxy around the tumultuous energies at its center. She was not afraid of it, but of herself. If she turned that way, she might sink forever in the inexorable rhythm that encompassed all Totality.

  Her own sense of self had blurred, but Brandon’s presence by her side shone sharp and bright, tying her to the physical world. She had only to keep her eyes open and to listen to his armored step, and she retained her hold on her human identity.

  At first the squad made good time, and soon they were back in communications range of the Marines attacking the landing bay. Meliarch Rhapulo was now in command. Casualties had been high. Brandon put the squad channel through the voice relay on his armor so Vi’ya could hear, too.

  “Doubt they know about Eusabian,” Rhapulo said over the comlink. “Soon’s Anaris knows he’s in command, he’s gone.”

  “‘May not be that simple,” Brandon said. “The Dol’jharians don’t think like we do about the succession. It’s got to be a face-to-face transfer of power—one winning and one dying.”

  “Maybe so,” Rhapulo replied, “but not, I’d bet, when there’s several billion tons of near-cee rock heading for them. When we finally tapped into the hyperwave, we found that the asteroids are already on their way, ETA one hundred nine minutes. They’re really taking a beating out there.”

  He paused, as if giving Brandon and the Marines time to absorb the news.

  Or perhaps, Vi’ya thought, it was a measure of Brandon’s increasing dominion, despite his deference to the meliarch. Even through her fatigue, she could feel the allegiance of the Marines around them. He would have to formally assume control at some point, or their fighting efficiency would suffer.

  Rhapulo continued, “There’s worse, though longer term. Supernova.”

  Even through the haze Vi’ya could feel the shock of that bald statement.

  “But we won’t have to worry about that for a while, and the asteroids’ll get here first, anyway. In the meantime, seeing that nobody’s got control of this hellhole now, it’s time to get out. I’ve got two squads in position to slap bulkhead punches on the corvettes to cripple them. We’ve got a nark into the landing bay, but I’m holding off until we’re sure the Kelly can hold the Telvarna against the Tarkans.”

  Brandon looked at Vi’ya, who shook her head. “I can’t reach the Kelly or Ivard.”

  “Is this something to worry about?” Brandon asked her.

  She said, “I don’t know. I assume not. The station’s . . . presence . . . interferes with our connection, I suspect. But Jaim had orders to make for Telvarna if we lost contact.”

  Rhapulo said, “Unless they’ve found armor and weapons, they won’t be able to get into the bay. Securing that is our next objective. Gwyn, take the squad and link up with Daschya’s squad. That’ll give us a three-pronged assault.” A twittering burst of data followed his voice.

  “Can you locate your crew if we don’t see them?” Brandon asked. “Area around the bay is huge, with countless adits.”

  “I will ask the Eya’a to sort for their patterns,” Vi’ya said. “But I need to be stationary to do it.”

  Rhapulo overheard. “We can’t let it slow us down. If we don’t take the landing bay,
none of us will get off this station.”

  o0o

  Anaris dropped out of the ceiling behind Chur-Mellikath, who was conferring with two subordinates. In the distance, a hollow boom resounded; moments later the deck thumped.

  The Tarkan commander turned, his armor whining. “Lord, we thought you lost, and we have lost contact with the Avatar. Juvaszt has reported the launch of several asteroids against the station, as well as the impending explosion of the companion star sometime afterward. The ETA of the earliest asteroid is less than one hundred minutes now and the enemy is pressing hard toward the landing bay.”

  Anaris’s mind raced through the implications of Chur-Mellikath’s words. The supernova he dismissed, since the asteroids would strike first—time enough to deal with it when they had escaped this place. The most pressing concern was the tone of Chur-Mellikath’s report, which was almost one of reproach. My command of the karra, as they see it, is far from traditional. He wonders if my resolution of the succession struggle might be as far from the norms.

  He did not respond to the implied question. Let them wonder about the Avatar while I regain control of the situation.

  “Have the arrays been destroyed?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  So I don’t have to worry about Brandon’s haunt anymore. The failsafe nature of the station’s DataNet would keep communication going, but the stasis clamps would have only local control.

  “It is good. Show me your dispositions.”

  Chur-Mellikath bowed and obeyed, but Anaris knew he would have to handle him carefully.

  When the commander was finished, Anaris let his mind expand outward, reestablishing his kinesthetic sense of the station. He noted a small group of armored personnel approaching from the direction of the Chamber of Kronos. Might they have Vi’ya with them?