Then his crew got restless, for none of the Dol’jharians came out of their section. The slow realization that they seemed to prefer their own kind for their savage fun and games had made the twistier members of his crew indignant. Fasthand had feared a general riot until Hestik apparently conceived the bright idea of foraying into Dol’jharian territory.
To Fasthand’s surprise, although the imagers within remained locked down, for the first time he knew of, the hatches were not. He had shivered at the implications of this new revelation, then smiled at the looks on the crew’s faces as their confidence suddenly faltered for the same reason. Mockery from Moob pushed them through. Despite having announced her intention to seek out Anaris, Sundiver was nowhere to be seen.
So far, only one of the hunters had come back out.
Moob and the gray fought their way down a corridor, each cursing and snarling as they feinted and grappled. Long smears of blood marked the walls. Fasthand shuddered, checking his door again, as he had throughout the evening, to make certain that the small plasma cannon he’d rigged up was still in place.
If worse came to worst, he knew where the three Bori were hiding, and he could sic any attacking Dol’jharian on them, but he really preferred them alive. Tat, at least. She was the only one in the crew who might be able to break into Morrighon’s codes.
He watched the Dol’jharian trip Moob and land on top of her, his huge hand mashing one of her bare, tattooed breasts. Fasthand shifted uncomfortably on his chair, watching in fascination as she writhed from beneath him, then kneed him in the crotch.
Or tried to. He grasped her ankle and sent her sprawling, then again was on top of her, fighting for dominance. A little groan escaped Fasthand, and he sneaked a slightly guilty look around him, as if he’d be able to see any narks.
He was pretty sure he’d found them all, but he couldn’t know. The captain who’d had the Samedi before him had not only been extraordinarily suspicious even for a Rifter, he’d also had his own cabin wired for multiple imagers to record his depravities with wooly, cloven-hooved mammals, apparently to be reviewed when he suffered a dearth of the preferred ruminant.
Fasthand grimaced. After he’d seen those images, he’d bundled up all the blankets and knitted wall hangings in the cabin and spaced them. He was pretty broad-minded, but even Dol’jharians didn’t make a practice of killing and eating their sex partners.
It was Tat, shortly after being hired on, who uncovered those coded vids, which Fasthand had neglected to secure under his own codes, and promptly turned them over to the crew. It had made her instantly popular with them, or at least popular enough that they refrained, until the novelty of bestiality wore off, from tormenting her and her Bori relatives in their usual “initiation” games. That had been somewhat of a relief to Fasthand; he’d gotten tired of having to hire several new secondary crew at almost every stop.
But her very competence always made him a little uncomfortable. He was afraid she might crack his own codes.
Well, at least she couldn’t possibly be watching him now, even if she had found imagers he’d missed, for she and the two brothers or cousins or whatever they called themselves—since they all slept together, he found the notion of familial relation repellent—were hiding out somewhere along the kilometer-long catwalk in the missile tube.
He licked his lips, forgetting his fears as the Dol’jharian managed to flip Moob over onto her stomach. Fasthand thoroughly enjoyed seeing Moob’s increasingly frantic struggles to avoid a humiliation unthinkable to a Draco. But then she slithered out of her opponent’s grip, and the fight resumed.
Presently he flicked over the other corridors: nothing. He tabbed a search. There was Sundiver outside the Dol’jharian section. She sagged as the gee-pad in front of the hatch brought local acceleration up to 1.2 gees, then she braced up and stepped through.
He settled back, hoping to see her come running back out, pursued by a Tarkan or two, like Moob. Too bad couldn’t spy into the Dol’jharian area because Morrighon had locked out all the imagers—but he’d wait.
Beyond his view, Sundiver hesitated as Dol’jharian gravs pulled at her insides, damping her enthusiasm. Being chased in this acceleration would not be fun, but maybe she could lure her target into her own cabin.
She knew where Anaris’s cabin was, and she also knew from something Morrighon had said that two Tarkans stood before it at all times. Except now, she was hoping.
She rounded a corner, pausing when she heard a series of smashing thumps, then a long, gurgling scream. Blood smeared the wall across from her. A hank of hair stuck to it. Her heart hammered, but she forced a grin. The hunt was on!
She was sure that Anaris slept in this section’s biggest cabin. She hoped he wasn’t busy with any of those blunge-brained Tarkans. Hestik had promised to sidetrack Dhestaer, the Tarkan second-in-command, and Kedr Five had smugly announced that he’d corner all the rest of them.
She slid past the last corner, straightening her shoulders. The damn grav made smooth walking hard; if she wasn’t careful, her teeth tended to click together. But when she saw the door unguarded, fresh energy zipped through her and she grinned with fierce pleasure.
We’ll have to introduce Karusch’na Rahali as a new fashion at Flauri’s on Rifthaven. Amazing no one had thought of it before—chatzing the way the conquerors like it.
Bunny with no consent—and no consequences. The idea was so seductive, she was amazed it was not more widespread. But then, it took someone strong to scorn consequences, to not give in to the attempts of the weak to bind by sentiment.
Her lip curled in scorn as she approached Anaris’s door. He would never demean himself with talk of love and mates and trust.
As she’d hoped, there were no guards. She had come armed with several override codes for forcing doors, but first she tried it—and when it slid open, the astounding arrogance of an unlocked door unsettled her.
A quick glance about showed a neat room, no signs of revelry, and Anaris seated at the console, his height and breadth of back dwarfing a workstation built for someone much smaller.
His head turned sharply. A tingle ran through her nerves as the dark eyes appraised her. His eyelashes are longer than mine!
“What’s the matter?” she taunted, lounging in the doorway. “Why aren’t you out having fun? No balls?”
“My father has them mounted on the bridge of his flagship,” Anaris said, standing up.
His sheer height was somewhat intimidating; the grav and her racing pulse made blood sing in her head.
The door gouged into her hip, so she shifted her stance, and the door slid shut behind her. She tensed, readying—but he only leaned against the back of his pod and regarded her with pronounced amusement. “Any other questions?”
So she would not be able to provoke him with the usual insults that got men going. It only made him more of a challenge. “Why aren’t you out there with the rest of them?” She waved behind, misjudged, and the back of her hand struck the door, sharply painful. Damn the acceleration—this was no fun!
“Not every Dol’jharian heeds the old superstitions,” he said.
“Superstitions?” she repeated, massaging the back of her hand. It was already bruising.
He lifted one shoulder. “What else would you call a belief that you make stronger children by fighting, or that waiting for lunar alignment will prolong your performance, or that your war skills will improve by remaining celibate between times? Superstition.” A sardonic smile briefly revealed the edges of strong white teeth. It was a smile that did not promise a sharing of humor. “I prefer to choose the time, the place. And the partner.”
It was a not-quite-veiled insult—the first she’d ever received. She flushed with anger, and to hide it, glanced past him with a show of carelessness. The screen displayed a star map, with glowing lights and lines lancing in one direction.
She recognized it immediately: Fasthand had one much like it in his ready room, where he was laboriously plo
tting what little they’d gleaned of Eusabian’s fleet movements. From the looks of it, Anaris had access to far more codes.
He shifted position, faint interest briefly lifting his brows. He knew she’d recognized it.
But instead of explaining, he reached effortlessly and shut down his system. Then he took a step toward her.
His cool expression assessed her without a hint of ardor. Threat? Her hand throbbed; this was no place for a fight. “I won’t say anything to anyone,” she burst out.
“No, you won’t,” he agreed.
She gazed up into the strong-boned face, seeing no vestige of warmth, of appeal. Her own ardor had vanished, but she said with a fair attempt at bravado, “I thought you said you liked to pick the time, the place, and the person?”
The cold amusement narrowing those black eyes hit her like a blow, and she quailed at last and whirled around, scrabbling for the door pad.
Or tried. The unfamiliar acceleration unbalanced her, making her slow. He was right behind her. His hand reached past her shoulder and flicked the lock.
“They’re not ideal.” He caught her bruised wrist in an unbreakable grip that promised no tenderness and no escape, and those white teeth bared. “But they are convenient,” he said.
FIVE
ABOARD THE GROZNIY
As they awaited Commander Totokili, Lieutenant Commander Rom-Sanchez observed suppressed amusement in Captain Ng, as though there were a joke she longed to share but couldn’t. He glanced around, unsure if others in the Plot Room saw it as well.
Commander Krajno surely did. Although habit enabled him to keep his face blank, he’d served under Ng too long not to be able to read her moods. Only the armorer, Navaz, seemed oblivious to the subtle emotional currents in the room; her life revolved around the cims, the machinery that made the Grozniy largely independent of supply centers.
The presence of a mind-blur on the table before Ng indicated the seriousness of her summons. She wants to make sure that Dol’jharian doesn’t pick up any secrets, thought Rom-Sanchez. There was no doubt in his mind that this meeting concerned their imminent approach to Gehenna, now less than two days away.
Gehenna. The name possessed a doomful resonance for them all.
No doubt everyone had looked up the origin of the word, if they didn’t know it. Rom-Sanchez wished he hadn’t. The illustration, animated with indecent clarity by some artist who should have known better, had haunted Rom-Sanchez’s dreams for days: a garbage dump outside the towering walls of some ancient city on Lost Earth, wreathed in stinking smoke and the flames of decomposing trash jetting from cracks in the ground, where the bodies of criminals were dumped, with starveling dogs . . . He shook off the memory. Were there really places like that in the Thousand Suns?
At the outset of their mission they’d been given the coordinates of the planet, nothing more. What made it worse was that there was no other information at all about Gehenna in the Naval databanks, no matter what your rank or skill at data-diving. None.
The hatch hissed open and Commander Totokili strode in, his tall, stiff brush of yellow hair from ear to ear jerking in time to his steps. As soon as the chief engineer had seated himself, Captain Ng reached out deliberately to tab the mind-blur on. It began to emit a whine at the edge of hearing.
“This briefing falls under the protocols of secrecy as outlined in the Articles of War,” she began. Her voice was measured, laden with a formality contradicted by the faint trace of a smile deepening the corners of her mouth. “Pursuant to my instructions from Admiral Nyberg, the Grozniy now being forty-eight hours from Gehenna, I have brought you here to witness the opening of my sealed orders.”
With an automatic gesture, Commander Krajno pushed the secure data console on its swivel to the captain. But, instead of entering her personal ID, Ng pushed the console away and reached into her jacket, bringing forth a stiff, buff-colored envelope.
She let her smile free at last. “I have always wanted to do this.”
The others watched in astonished silence as she worked a finger under the flap. Rom-Sanchez found the crackling of the parchment envelope mesmerizing, and his back tingled. It’s like something out of a historical serial chip. He had never seen hard-copy orders before. From the way the others stared, he guessed none of them had, either.
Finally Ng extracted a single sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it. She looked at it and her eyes widened. For a long beat she didn’t move. Then, laying the sheet down on the table in front of her, she began to laugh.
Rom-Sanchez craned his neck to look, but could discern nothing of the message’s content, except that there was only a single line—in fact, only four words—indited on the page in a strong, looping hand. Not only hard copy, but handwritten.
“Brilliant!” she gasped finally. “Absolutely chatzing brilliant!”
Rom-Sanchez sucked in his breath. He had never heard Ng use an emphatic vulgarity before. When her eyes encountered his, she laughed even harder, and his face burned.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You look like you’ve just seen your mother do a strip dance.”
Krajno chortled. “All right, Captain. Give.” He held out his hand, but Ng snatched the paper back and folded it up. Totokili looked perplexed; Navaz’s attention had finally found something of interest outside of her sphere, and her gaze ferreted back and forth between Ng and Krajno.
“No, Perthes. I’m enjoying this too much—and so will you. You must have wondered what the secret of Gehenna is, how it’s guarded, and, most of all, how the government has kept that information secret all these years.” She looked around the table at all of them. They nodded.
“Simple. They never put it into the DataNet. The secret of Gehenna exists only on paper, and in the memory of a few people in the highest levels of government.”
“So we’re going in blind,” said Totokili, looking grim. “I don’t think that’s very funny.” He motioned at the paper. “There can’t be much information in that.”
“All that’s needed,” Ng replied. She reached out and pulled the console to her, then tapped rapidly at the keys.
A hologram condensed over the table, its form vaguely familiar: a shallow hyperbola, with a blue-white sun at its center. The conic sections were angry red nearest the asymptotes and faded to invisibility as the distance from the sun increased. Small spheres, and even smaller dots, indicated planets and asteroids. The latter were thickly scattered throughout the system.
“System FF,” said Navaz suddenly. “The Knot.”
Every officer there straightened up, thrown back to their cadet years: the infamous System FF simulation. It was based on a theoretical construct involving the possible intersection of a fivespace fracture, left over from a more energetic period in the universe’s history, and a sun with a mass greater than 1.4 Standard. The result postulated was a system that could only be entered in the plane of the ecliptic, and even there, the fiveskip could be used only in very short skips. It made for a very interesting tactical situation.
The hologram evolved, zooming in on the fourth planet; Rom-Sanchez remembered being pinned against that planet in the simulation, unable to skip out before his opponent blew him to plasma. He wondered what the others’ experience of the FF simulation had been.
Krajno’s craggy jaw dropped as the import of what he was seeing finally registered on him. As he opened his mouth to speak, Ng unfolded the order and held it up for all of them to see. There, inscribed in Admiral Nyberg’s handwriting, was a single sentence:
“Gehenna is System FF.”
The Plot Room rang with mirth in the sudden release of tension. Not only were they not going in blind; every officer on the ship was a veteran of at least one simulated battle in the Gehenna system.
Totokili shook his head in wonder. “So the secret is just that link—everything else about Gehenna is in the DataNet.”
“Just about,” Ng said. “Admiral Nyberg told me when he gave me the or
ders that we would be the first Naval ship to enter the Gehenna system since its discovery over seven hundred years ago.”
“How do they get the criminals there?” Krajno asked.
“Evidently there’s a single Family charged with the responsibility,” Ng replied, tapping at the keys. “They’ve held it since the reign of Nicolai I.”
In the hologram, the planet rotated, and the point of view dipped toward the surface. A crater became visible, scale markers indicating its size: nearly sixteen kilometers across. “If we assume that everything about the FF simulation is accurate, and Admiral Nyberg’s message certainly implies that, then that crater is the center of the habitable zone.”
“I always wondered why that information was specified,” said Navaz. “I assumed it was merely a touch of verisimilitude.”
“So did we all,” Commander Krajno added.
‘The point is,” said Ng, all the humor suddenly gone from her voice, “that we can expect His Majesty to be landed somewhere within five hundred kilometers of it.” She paused. “If the Rifter ship makes it through the Knot.”
There was abrupt silence.
“But the Dol’jharians don’t know about the system. . . .” Krajno’s voice trailed off.
“Would His Majesty tell them?” Rom-Sanchez asked.
Ng shrugged fractionally. “I don’t know. The only one who might have a clue is one I can’t confide in, since he still visits the Rifters from time to time, including the tempath.”
The Aerenarch. Rom-Sanchez remembered the briefing they’d received from the exiled Dol’jharian gnostor about the Rifter tempath. “In combination with the Eya’a, she has transcended tempathy and can read conceptual thought—true telepathy. We do not know her limits.”
Navaz spoke. “Is that really a consideration anymore?”
“What?” Totokili burst out as Ng regarded the armorer in silence, brows raised.
Navaz pointed at the hologram. “The strength of that secret—its simplicity—is also its weakness. Once we enter the Gehenna system, especially if we fight a ship-to-ship action with a Rifter destroyer, everyone on the ship will know that Gehenna is System FF.”
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