The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  “Tactical skip,” Ng said. No sense in taking any chances.

  The fiveskip burred and Ng turned her mind to the rest of the battle, ferociously unabated. The Telvarna could obviously take care of itself.

  The character of the battle was changing as the chaos of music and propaganda on the hyperwave steadily eroded Juvaszt’s control of events. Ng guessed by now his communications were little better than hers. Certainly the tenno indicated a growing lack of coordination between Rifter units, while her control had changed not at all. In fact, it was improving slightly as naval units ejected tacponders every time they skipped.

  “Seems there are advantages to EM, after all,” Captain Krajno said, following her gaze.

  “Right. Take the conn: it’s time we pursue an active role.”

  “AyKay. But that’ll give the Fist a better line on us.”

  “Can’t be helped.” Ng gestured at the tactical screen.

  “Addition of a battlecruiser to any of these actions,” Rom-Sanchez said, highlighting several ship-to-ship actions onscreen, “would likely tip the balance.”

  Ng studied the display, then tapped her console. A bright circle sprang up around one action. “This one first.”

  Krajno nodded. As he issued his orders, Ng studied the tactical screens more carefully. The Fist—with Anaris Eusabian now commanding—seemed to be assembling a new strategy, and it was this that occupied her mind. When she had time to look again, she realized Brandon was no longer at her side.

  A few minutes later a fireball announced the demise of another Rifter destroyer. Krajno ordered a tactical skip, then turned to Ng. “Where next?”

  Ng had no time to answer as Siglnt’s console blipped.

  “Emergence pulse.”

  “Tactical skip, now,” Krajno ordered. The fiveskip burped.

  “ID: Telvarna,” said Wychyrski.

  Comment ricocheted round the bridge, like an electrical charge, then the monitors returned to their tasks. But Ng felt a change in the atmosphere—excitement, anticipation, which had nothing to do with the battle.

  “Hold course,” said Krajno. “We’ll let them find us.”

  So Perthes had figured it out, too.

  It was only minutes later that the forward gamma landing bay reported: “Telvarna is in.”

  “Admiral?” queried Krajno.

  She indicated the next action, and as Krajno took them out, she tabbed her screen to the landing bay. Surprise bloomed through her tired body when she saw the Marine honor guard lined up in full-dress uniforms. She glanced inquiringly at Krajno, who gave her a slight shrug. He had not ordered it—but his expression made it clear that he approved.

  The old, plasma-scarred Columbiad’s ramp lowered, and the first ones out, marching in a neat unit, were the Marine volunteers, dressed in a wild variety of clothing apparently borrowed from Telvarna’s stores. Right behind them were the others, or the remainder of the others, in no order: Ng recognized each one as they emerged, led by the sauntering comtech who had borne for so many years a false charge of murder. Gone was the insouciant little DC-tech, and the youth who had bonded with the Kelly. In their places were three Bori who had earlier been identified last with the Samedi under Emmet Fasthand—an unsavory data-scavenger.

  But there was no time to consider the vagaries of Rifter allegiance. This war has changed everything, Ng thought as Vi’ya trod down the ramp followed by the little Eya’a. Vi’ya had the drivetech’s arm around her shoulders as he stumbled; his shock and pain were visible even at this distance.

  The two noderunners also moved with sagging steps, supported by others, the Bori woman looking confused, the older woman gazing down at the ground. That one is the ex-Navy commander. She knew Thetris’s history, and again considered the changes the war would make. Watching the woman’s sober face, Ng knew what she must be feeling. Some of the changes will be for the better, she thought grimly.

  The Panarch stepped forward to greet them, neat and straight-backed in formal mourning white; he’d managed to stop for a fast shower and a change of clothing on his long journey back to the landing bay. She could not hear what was said, but the Marines gave a great shout and then the tableau broke up as the wounded were carried off one way, the others led elsewhere.

  Behind her, the continuous murmur of battle data flowed by. A sharp whisper, from the otherwise unflappable Mzinga, brought her focus back: “They’re coming up here.”

  Ng caught Krajno’s eye, smiled, and straightened her tunic. A short time later the hatch hissed open and the Panarch and Vi’ya walked in side by side.

  Rising as one, the entire bridge crew faced them and pounded right fists against their chests, the highest military accolade, usually reserved for one of their own. Brandon had stepped a little away from Captain Vi’ya, making it clear that the accolade was for her alone; for the first time Ng saw a reaction in the woman’s face, a flush of dusky rose under the smooth dark brown skin.

  It was for Margot to say something, but just as she opened her mouth she saw Vi’ya’s black eyes narrow, and Brandon’s gaze jerked to the screens monitoring the chaos of the hyperwave transmissions.

  Ng ignored the flurry of activity at the communications consoles as she followed the Panarch’s gaze. The screen flickered, and one section expanded to reveal the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette of a man, his back turned, outlined against the blue-white savagery of the singularity’s accretion disk. At his feet a bony lump crouched. The flaring light of annihilated matter revealed it to be a thin, pale-skinned man, his gaunt face buried in trembling, skeletal fingers.

  “Communications,” Ng snapped. “Cease jamming.”

  The screen cleared and the image lost some of its fractalization.

  “Jerrode Eusabian,” Brandon said.

  Slowly the figure turned around, and now, one by one, the other transmissions on the hyperwave ceased, leaving the image sharp and distinct.

  Commander Hurli at Communications tapped at her console, transferring subsidiary channels to other consoles so that Jerrode Eusabian’s face and shoulders filled the screen. His dark hair was outlined by a halo of light refracted from behind. Light reflected dully upward from the gray tunic of the man at his feet, throwing the lines graven in his face into relief. In his ceaselessly moving fingers writhed a silken cord as Eusabian’s eyes scanned the bridge.

  “Hekaath.” His voice was a low, hoarse rumble, like distant thunder. “Emmer te gowen.”

  Ng heard rapid tapping from one of the communications consoles. A line of print scrolled under the image.

  The unbreakable bond, it read. You are gathered.

  There was no human sound on the bridge, no voices from the hyperwave save Eusabian’s. But over it all the music mounted, triumphant, trans-human, fusing the moment into an emotional gestalt the like of which Ng knew none of them would ever again experience.

  A strange basso squeal hummed through the bridge. The image went negative; Eusabian’s eyes briefly became wells of white flame while the accretion disk became a lightless void. Ng’s memory flashed an image of the secret temple of the Ultschen, revealed after al-Gessinav’s death, and its icon of Nothing above the bloody altar.

  When the strange distortion passed, Eusabian’s eyes refocused, as though he was seeing them from a great distance. He began speaking again, almost chanting.

  “Darakh-il emmer entasz eg pendeschi palia-mi ni-tsuren kurrhan. Pali-mi kurrhar bi omha emreth-te, dira-mi bi omha mizpeshi, hach-ka mi bi tyram-te, dasz te emmer prochar mi-retann epas Morat-jhar.”

  Forever I visit upon you and your lineage my ever-following vengeance. So will my vengeance haunt all your destinies, my curses all your blessings, my spirit all your dreams, that you may ever anticipate with fear my return from the kingdom of death.

  He lifted his hands, thrusting the complexly-knotted cord at them, and some trick of the distorted space around him transformed the movement into the striking of a snake.

  “Eglarrr
rrrrrr . . . rr . . . r . . .” Midway through his final word the image began to fractalize and his voice slowed, droning down through a subsonic rumble, like a mistuned tianqi, that briefly reached into Ng’s viscera with invisible fingers of panic that swiftly passed as silence fell and his image froze, broken and gray as a ruined statue.

  Omilov spoke from the back of the bridge. “Listen now for a million years, and you will never hear his last word.”

  Ng shuddered. For Eusabian, it was over in moments, but in a very real sense his final curse was true, for his descent into the black hole would take forever to outside observers.

  The music soared, filling the bridge; so triumphant was it now that she knew its beatitude had nothing to do with the destruction of the darkness that had been the Avatar. Her spirit soared beyond the confines of her mortal flesh, as if she could encompass her ship and the stars without in a flash of understanding far too big for her to hold. Joy, sourceless and insupportable, sang in her heart, opening a door opened to something she could never reach, and yet the yearning was more sweet than any consummation of desire could be. She found herself weeping and heard a woman’s voice behind her. “Free, free.”

  The moment passed, the door slammed shut, the music ceased. Ng thought she had gone deaf and blind. But no, she was merely human again.

  For a long time no one said anything. Then Hurli at Communications spoke, her voice husky with emotion. “Hyperwave transmissions have ceased. Total shutdown of communications.”

  Ng looked up at the main screen displaying the black hole and the stellar companion that fed its insatiable fury. The war was over, and everyone who had a hyperwave knew it. There was no way of knowing until the first scout reported, but she was sure the hyper-relays had ceased delivering power as well, transforming their mission here from destruction to salvage, for only the Fist of Dol’jhar and perhaps a few canny Rifters who’d escaped the Dol’jharian inspections would have maintained or restored their spin reactors. The rest were powerless, helpless to flee the wave of destruction sweeping out from the detonating sun. But it’s Anaris and those smart ones who will determine the future of my career. The rest is just mopping up.

  “Admiral,” Brandon said, “I leave the rest to you.”

  Ng looked into the tired blue eyes, seeing no triumph there, no sorrow—nothing but plain human exhaustion. She rose to her feet, fighting her own tiredness, and bowed deeply, followed by the rest of the bridge officers. No one spoke as the two walked out, again side by side.

  “Captain, maintain position, drunkwalk skips,” she ordered as the hatch hissed shut behind them. The first of the scouts to catch up to the Grozniy reported in, confirming her supposition. “Tactical, put together a plan for salvage and evacuation of damaged ships. Put priority on the ships closest in-system, coordinate with Astronomy for the timing.”

  Rom-Sanchez sprang into action, and the Tenno slowly began to evolve, away from killing and toward the saving of lives, friend and enemy alike.

  A bit of a waste, I suppose, since many of the Rifters will end up shot for their crimes, anyway. She shook her head; now she was thinking like Koestler. But we will attempt to give them justice, and that’s the difference between us and Dol’jhar.

  Sebastian Omilov came forward, hesitant. “Admiral, in about two hours we’ll be able to see what happened at the moment of . . . transition. Would it be possible to position the Grozniy for observation?”

  Perthes ban-Krajno laughed. “Gnostor, I do believe you’d follow Eusabian down the hole if you could for your precious data.”

  A wave of amusement swept through the bridge, breaking the tension and bringing present reality into sharp focus, as had doubtless been Krajno’s intent.

  The laughter was a secondary release as Omilov smiled around the bridge, “If I do, I know where to find a crew to take me there and back.”

  But he means the Telvarna. Ng’s fatigue intensified as she contemplated one consequence of their victory: her return to the subtlety, multiple meanings, and indirection of Douloi Politics and discourse.

  “Emergence pulse! Battlecruiser!”

  “Tactical skip, now!” Krajno’s response was instantaneous. “Locate on emergence and fire skipmissile on acquisition.”

  Ng forced herself to do nothing. Perthes had the conn; it would do no good to take it from him.

  “ID: Fist of Dol’jhar,” Wychyrski’s tight voice sang out even before the fiveskip ceased its hum.

  “Targeting,” Weapons said. “Acquisition in five seconds—”

  “Skipped,” said Siglnt.

  For a few minutes they played a deadly game of tag with the enemy battlecruiser, until Communications reported: “EM incoming from enemy tacponder. Trucial code.”

  Following the established protocol, the Grozniy was soon positioned less than a light-second from the Fist of Dol’jhar on a parallel course so neither ship’s skipmissiles could be brought to bear.

  The sensitive detectors of a battlecruiser would anticipate ruptor fire in time to skip, but nonetheless tension was high on the bridge. From the comm there was only silence, and Ng wondered if this was some subtle psychological ploy.

  o0o

  By the time Brandon and Vi’ya reached the tube, he fought against an overwhelming impulse to lean against the wall and shut his eyes. But he straightened, afraid if he permitted himself to relax even slightly, he would pitch right onto his face.

  The lift stopped, the ensign tabbed the door open; outside, two full-dress Marines presented arms. Brandon forced himself to acknowledge, to walk. A quiet step behind reminded him that Vi’ya was still with him, and a brief flicker of elation carried him the rest of the way to his quarters.

  But the moment they stepped inside the comm blinked an insistent pattern. Wearily Brandon stopped before the console, debating whether to ignore it.

  Vi’ya spoke. “Would not your admiral have issued orders concerning trivial communications?”

  “Yes.” Brandon glanced up, a spurt of painful humor making him smile. “This won’t be trivial. That’s why I’m afraid to answer.”

  But he had to know, and she knew he had to know.

  He dropped into his chair and touched the accept pad, regret tightening all through his body. He also knew he would hate what was coming.

  Ng herself appeared on-screen. “I apologize. Your Majesty, but Anaris Eusabian is requesting communication with you. Shall I send it through?”

  “Yes. And leave it open, if you want to watch. You can be sure his allies will be.” Brandon looked up at Vi’ya. She, too, was obviously tired, still wearing her fire-scored black jumpsuit from the battle on the Suneater, but her black eyes were alert and unfathomable as ever. “Want to stay?” he asked her.

  “I will,” she said, and took up a stance behind his chair.

  The comm-screen lit, and there was Anaris, standing next to Juvaszt, who sat in the command pod. In the background Dol’jharian officers were visible at their posts, and behind them two Tarkan guards at a hatchway. Morrighon was nowhere in sight.

  Anaris’s black eyes lifted once, to register Vi’ya’s silent form standing behind Brandon, and then his gaze dropped, and seemed to bore through the screen as his mouth curved in a slight, challenging smile. “Nothing to say? No gloats? Threats, maybe?”

  Brandon said, “I was just contemplating the, ah, physics involved in your father’s keeping of that last promise. Aside from that, there’s the question of etiquette: ought I to offer you congratulations or commiserations?”

  “I will accept both,” Anaris said, “in the spirit in which they are offered.”

  Brandon expected him to end the interview then, but instead he tapped one long finger lightly on the back of the command pod.

  What was he after? A duel, of course; in a way, this duel had been unresolved ever since Brandon was a weedy teenager, fighting for his life against Anaris back in the garden on Arthelion. Now they were grown, with battlecruisers armoring them, and fleets at their command
. But Brandon was sick of fighting.

  Brandon made a profound effort to marshal his fading energy. “What do you want, Anaris? Gloats and threats? I can try, but does not that kind of ritual lie customarily within your own provenance?”

  Anaris looked amused. “Your father’s predictions concerning the future of my sire’s rule were dismayingly correct. His foresight makes me less inclined to attribute his actions on the way to Gehenna to cowardice than to . . . caprice.”

  Actions on the way to Gehenna? The Knot. Gelasaar did not take the Rifter ship and Anaris along with the secret into oblivion. Why? His father had begun telling him why, using the laborious sign language they’d keyed on an ancient saying, when Anaris had Gelasaar’s shuttle blasted.

  Brandon had contemplated those reasons since then, and as he studied the intelligent, remorselessly sardonic black eyes on the screen before him now, he suspected he’d be contemplating those reasons during the night watches for many years to come—they both would be.

  If either of them lived that long.

  Meanwhile, the pause was stretching into a silence.

  Is it possible he thinks I know?

  Brandon did not want a duel. He hadn’t wanted one that day in the garden. Whatever he said now could start a personal vendetta that would involve countless innocent lives, or he could try to deflect it.

  “You’d know better than I,” he said. “You spoke with him. I did not. It’s for you, not I, to determine whether his action was a gift, or a mistake.”

  It was not a declaration of war; it could be an offer of truce.

  Anaris looked bored. “The mistake Gelasaar made was his assumption that my interest in his views on government betrayed an interest in enlightened rule. He was wrong. I am interested in the gain and maintenance of power. Where you are weakest, look for me, for I will be there.”

  You always were a bully. I’m glad Galen made you puke on your own shoes.

  The old memory brought a smile. “I look forward, then, to our own leisurely discourses on the exigencies of power,” Brandon said in as bland and tone-devoid a voice as possible.