The Rifter's Covenant Read online

  “Yeah,” said Trono, one of the minor shareholders. “And I hear those Barcan nacker-waggers’re stinking rich, bein’ a protectorate and all.” She smirked to either side, looking for support from her cronies.

  Lochiel grunted in disgust. “You saw what Hreem did to that Panarchist sync. Do you think a man proud of the tag ‘The Faithless’ is going to figure he owes us anything once he gets what he wants? Or Dol’jhar, for that matter?”

  Vidocq sneered. “Hreem is generous, I hear, if you’re loyal. Have to be, to keep a fleet. ‘Faithless’ only means religion is blunge, everyone knows that.” She glanced around with confidence. “You wanna go hide somewhere on the Fringes? Lord of Vengeance has a long reach and a longer memory, I hear.” She grinned. “Or are ya gonna go to the nicks?”

  “Don’t count the nicks out yet.” Ambrose poked his long nose forward in emphasis, the chimes on his chest-long Serapisti braids tinkling. “You saw what happened at Dolorosa. Even against our skipmissiles they nearly blew us all to hell. And what we didn’t see in the hyperwave reports that Charterly and Hreem relayed to us tells me that a lot more Sodality ships have discovered the same thing, only worse.”

  “Right,” said Messina. “There’s more than a few ships in-system that were never part of Hreem’s gang. Leftovers, probably, from fleets the nicks smashed. And if Eusabian’s so sure of himself, why is that little slug Barrodagh pulling more and more of us into the worst part of the Rift to guard that Suneater thing nobody’ll even talk about?”

  During the protracted pause following her question, some of the minor shareholders shifted uncomfortably. Many were watching Vidocq.

  On the silenced viewscreen, the death of Sync Ozman had begun to play again.

  Lochiel finally identified what had been bothering her. The Kelly trinity was no longer together; in fact, threy had spread as far from one another as she had ever seen them. Shtoink, the Intermittor, still stood where she had been when the meeting began, but Nyuck2 and Wu4 had drifted several paces away to either side along the bulkheads.

  A thrill of fear burned through Lochiel’s nerves, and she saw it mirrored in Messina’s wide gray eyes.

  “You know we’ve had a good run,” Lochiel said finally. Again she stated the obvious, in order to gauge the reactions around her. She had to be sure because there would not be a second chance. “We stayed within the Sodality Code, and when we did take on nicks, it was fair dealing. Nothing like that.” She tipped her head toward the screen. “Result, though the Navy probably knows who we are, they didn’t try too hard to plasma us.”

  She pointed again at the recorded agony on-screen, being reshown from another angle. “What I’m saying—asking—is if we really want to be a part of that.”

  Luz-Cremont spoke again. “Seems to me there’s another reason to maybe think the nicks’d be a better deal.”

  Vidocq snapped around, arms crossing in challenge.

  Lochiel caught a glance from Bayrut; he’d seen it, too.

  Luz-Cremont was rubbing his lower eyelids as he talked. “I mean, business when the nicks were running things was pretty good, and like you said, they didn’t try too hard to scrag us as long as we ran the line.” He dropped his hand and looked up, blinking rapidly again. “Business now . . .” He shrugged. “When the looting stops in the places the Dol’jharians don’t slag, where do the sunbursts come from then?”

  Lochiel saw a lot of thoughtful expressions, even among some she’d judged solidly with Vidocq. The Rifthaven Syndics had kept a balance between the fleet syndicates, allotting them zones of operation so everyone had a shot at a good living. But word was, they had drawn in tight to keep Rifthaven from being sucked into the war. That left ruthless operators like Hreem and Neyvla-khan free to bludgeon the smaller syndicates.

  “You’re saying we don’t have any choice, Luz?” Dai Gan spoke up, his gravelly voice even rougher than usual.

  It’s time. Lochiel caught Bayrut’s eye.

  “Luz is right,” Bayrut interjected, shifting his stocky body to readiness. “We might have had a chance if Charterly and half the fleet hadn’t been blown away, but now Hreem will swallow us without a hiccup, and Barrodagh won’t raise a finger.”

  “What I say,” Lochiel began, pointing at the atrocity on the viewscreen, “is that we may end up involved in something even worse if we join Hreem. You saw what Neyvla-khan did to Minerva. So yes, I propose we go to the nicks. My cousin Cameron’s destroyer detachment operates out of Ixpotl, which isn’t too far off course for Barca.”

  Vidocq shook her head. “If we bring the Navy down on Hreem and Neyvla-khan, you can kiss Rifthaven goodbye.”

  “Rifthaven’s not in charge of the Sodality anymore,” Lochiel replied. “Eusabian is.” She could feel the mood in the room shifting.

  Vidocq looked around, evidently sensing the same change; she gave Lochiel an ugly look and clawed her fingers through the front spike of her hair. Too quick. Too controlled. It was a signal. For . . .?

  “Cameron never wrote me off,” Lochiel continued. “He told me when I left that the door to the Riftskip opens both ways, as far as he’s concerned.” She motioned at the screen again. “A lot of you are Highdwellers. What do you think a man deserves who would do that?”

  Luz-Cremont rubbed a hand over his bald head, which gleamed with sweat. “You sure your nick cousin will trade? A shot at Hreem and Neyvla-khan for amnesty?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Lochiel answered. “And I think I know Cameron well enough to guess what he’ll say.”

  “But will the Navy back him?”

  “They might shoot him, if they don’t like the deal he makes with us,” Bayrut put in, “but they’ll follow through. A naval officer’s word is law.”

  “So we set up both Hreem and Neyvla-khan?” Trono’s voice was doubtful. She was young, eager, and a follower. Who would she choose to follow? Lochiel didn’t want to lose her . . .

  “That’s up to my cousin Cameron,” Lochiel said. “Are we agreed?”

  During the silence, Y’Lassian got up and ambled over the drink dispenser. At a glance from Lochiel, Messina pushed away from the table to free her hands, and Bayrut moved casually to join Y’Lassian at the dispenser, light shimmering over his elegant cobalt-blue paneled coat.

  Lochiel suppressed the urge to smile at her lifemates. After nearly two decades, words were seldom necessary anymore.

  The pudgy damage-control tech moved aside awkwardly as Bayrut approached him; he was holding the drink in his right hand. He was left-handed.

  Vidocq’s eyes darted from side to side.

  “I call for a vote.” Lochiel said finally, forcing the matter.

  What happened next took her totally by surprise: a soft putt under the table, followed by a sting in her leg. Her fingers fumbled for her jac when she saw Vidocq’s triumphant sneer, but her muscles locked. She’d thought the violence would come from Vidocq’s two toadies—until now Vidocq had been very careful never to initiate trouble on her own.

  She watched helplessly as Y’Lassian threw his steaming drink into Bayrut’s face and drew his jac. Messina was luckier. She got her jac out, then paused helplessly as Vidocq stood: “It’s quartan. The ship is mine.” She brandished the gasgun in her hand. “I’ve got more for anyone who doesn’t want to join me.”

  Dai Gan leaned down to pluck the weapon out of Messina’s slack hand.

  The rest of Vidocq’s allies stepped forward, menacing the others with their weapons. Some of the officers had their jacs out but hesitated.

  Tension gripped everyone while Lochiel struggled against mounting horror. The quarter-hour poison was painless—until the last three minutes, when its effect reversed from paralysis to convulsions that tore the victim apart.

  “You mean to follow Hreem?” Ambrose asked quietly, ignoring the weapons trained on him.

  “I mean to follow the winners, and Hreem has the lower orbit with Dol’jhar,” Vidocq said.

  Lochiel looked helplessly at Ambr
ose, who’d retained his jac, carefully pointing it at no one in particular.

  Just kill me!

  But her vocal cords were locked in the grip of the poison.

  Vidocq sauntered up and bent to gloat directly into Lochiel’s face. “My first order is, we sit here and watch the show. Another ten minutes, it oughta be a good one. For everyone except your former captain, that is.”

  The snickers of her closest friends subsided as a strange droning sound filled the rec room.

  Shtoink’s head-stalk pointed at Vidocq. The Intermittor’s eyes had retracted into the flesh around her lily-like mouth, which had stretched wide open, its reddish-yellow interior pulsing visibly. With her peripheral vision, Lochiel could see only one of the other Kelly, but it, too, was focused on Vidocq.

  “What’s this? You greenies don’t understand what’s happening here?” Vidocq said as the drone rose to a painful crescendo that blurred Lochiel’s vision with its intensity; her cranial cavities resonated with the noise. “Hey! Stop that chatzing squawk!” Vidocq’s voice sounded thin and blurred.

  She fired her gasgun at Shtoink, but there was no effect. The drone intensified. Vidocq looked back at Lochiel, her eyes wild. She raised the gasgun again.

  The human members of the crew on both sides grimaced in pain, some shutting their eyes or holding hands over their ears, so not all of them saw the thin stream of steaming fluid the Intermittor spat directly at Vidocq, who inhaled sharply.

  Lochiel heard a brittle, snapping sound as the skin over Vidocq’s sinuses bulged, making her look briefly like one of the ancient pre-human anthropoids of Lost Earth. Then the front of Vidocq’s head blew off.

  Helpless to fight it, Lochiel felt gorge rise as the custardy remains of the tech’s brains dripped down her face; she tasted the salt-copper tang of blood. The dead woman crumpled to the deck, the back of her skull a mere empty shell, as all around her the room erupted in a crisscross of plasma bolts, screams, and a haze of hot blood.

  Then silence fell, broken only by the groans of the wounded.

  “Are you all right, Lochiel?”

  She saw Bayrut leaning over her. She had fallen over without knowing it. The lack of sensation meant she had very little time.

  No! I’m not all right, you big nackerbrain! she wanted to shout. She wanted to shout that she loved him, and his talent for stupid questions. She wanted to tell Messina never to leave him, or she’d haunt her forever.

  Then they moved out of her field of vision as the Kelly Intermittor pushed them aside.

  Her ribbons had fluffed out, and a small patch near the base of her head-stalk was changing color from the normal green to a sort of stripy mauve. Lochiel smelled a sharp chemical tang.

  “Wethree wondered why Vidocq wanted the quartan,” Shtoink said. Her head-stalk looped over and plucked a segment of ribbon from the colored patch. “She never thought to wonder where wethree got it from.”

  Shtoink’s head-stalk darted down like a striking snake and slapped Lochiel hard on the side of the neck, causing warmth to spread upward into her head, and down into her chest. Sensation flowed back into her jaw. Her tongue twitched.

  “Wh . . . wh . . . whaugh?” she managed to gasp. The pain of returning life needled every cell. She welcomed the pain with equal ferocity, blinking blurrily up at Shtoink.

  The Kelly Intermittor had made the quartan, and its antidote, in the strange chemical furnaces of its metabolism.

  “We will join the Navy,” said Shtoink. “For wethree have been called to Ares.”

  o0o

  Many hours later, Lochiel sighed as she sank down onto her bunk.

  The door to her cabin hissed shut behind Bayrut and Messina. Dark eyes and light gray eyes studied her with twin expressions of concern. Although it would be hard to find three human beings who resembled one another as little as Lochiel and her two lifemates, over the decades they had assumed many of one another’s habitual expressions and gestures. Ordinarily it amused them when they noticed. No one was smiling now.

  “Shiavona is safely on its way to Ixpotl,” Messina reported. “I locked in the coordinates myself, as you requested, and Phu is holding down the nav console.” She hesitated. “I hated to leave some of the others, Al-Riham especially. We may need all the ships we can get. And we may end up looking down the missile tube at them at Barca. But it’ll be half a year before they reach anywhere they can communicate with Hreem.”

  Bayrut twitched the embroidered cuff of his sleeve. “They have stores for a year, but nothing they can use to repair the fiveskip. I hope they get along well. It will be a very long journey.”

  “Can’t be helped,” Lochiel said. “It’d only take one mouth to kill us all. And they’ve seen what we’ve seen. Which ship did you give them?”

  Messina grinned. “The Serpent’s Tooth. It’ll be a tight fit aboard that old corvette, but I figured it was the one we’d miss least.”

  Messina nodded toward Lochiel, and Bayrut obligingly began to rub Lochiel’s tense neck and shoulders as he said, “Got a tightbeam back from Hreem just before we left. He bought our story. We’ve been given five days to replenish our stores from Charterly’s cache before we’re to proceed to Barca. I promised to load up with sneak-missiles and gee-mines. And I’ve got Thusama warming up the reactors. Unless we’re very lucky at Barca, we’ll lose the hyperrelay when Barrodagh finds out.”

  Lochiel saw her own bleakness in her lifemates’ gazes. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the euphoria of the neck rub. If they were lucky, they’d be back to an ordinary Alpha, in a war zone full of enemies armed with the power of the Ur. Unlucky, they’d be dead—or captured to be used as entertainment by Hreem’s twisted tempath Norio.

  “We have to show up with Cameron before Hreem starts wondering where we are,” Lochiel said, and let out her breath. “My report: I had Y’Lassian spaced. Dai Gan swears he was blackmailed by Vidocq, which might be true. She tried that on a couple others, it turns out. Anyway, Dai Gan is on probation. One false word and he takes the long walk. Everything else seems to be settled, and the Kelly wish to consult with us when we’re ready.” She let out an unsteady breath in what was meant to be a laugh. “All things considered, we should do that now, don’t you think?”

  As Bayrut lifted his hands, she levered herself up. Whether from a residual effect of the poison or mere stress, she felt as if the gravs had doubled. But there was no time to rest until she’d faced the last, and most important, chore.

  Messina smiled, holding out her arms. Lochiel walked into her embrace, and Bayrut closed his strong grip round both of them. They leaned their heads together; the three of them breathed together, their pulses in counterpoint. Then they released, all at once.

  “Do threy want all three of us?” Bayrut asked.

  “I think it has to be,” Messina replied. “Three is so important to them.”

  They left Lochiel’s cabin and took the lift down a level. The few crew members they passed were sober of countenance, busy on their tasks.

  The three found the door to the dispensary open. A clean scent blew across their faces from the tianqi. Beneath it, Lochiel smelled a faint tang, like burned mint.

  The Kelly came out of the infirmary, threir constant movement both clumsy and graceful. Lochiel would never again see threm as comical; she wondered how she could have.

  The Intermittor danced forward, her head-stalk gyrating. “Captain,” she said in her incongruously sweet voice, “wethree greet you. Are you well?”

  Lochiel reflected on how she’d always seen threm as naive, rather silly beings—lethally shortsighted, considering just how sophisticated threir biotech really was. The question now was, how to admit that she and her fellow humans had been ignorant—and now being enlightened, no longer trusted threm? “I am fine, thanks to youthree,” she said carefully.

  And as Lochiel hesitated, searching for the right words, Messina spoke with typical navigator’s directness. “We don’t question yourthree summary justice on
Vidocq.” Her fingers laced tightly into Lochiel’s and Bayrut’s on either side. “It’s the method.”

  Nyuk2 and Wu4 honked and tooted, and Shtoink said, “You now see our skills as a weapon, but wethree cannot make the rest of our journey secreted in the weapons locker.”

  It was a joke, which Lochiel found oddly steadying, as if the Kelly really were simply jolly creatures with absurd names who had a passion for cheap, gaudy human trinkets. Well, maybe threy were, but she’d discovered threy had another side. Which was more human than not.

  She didn’t know whether to find that steadying or more unsettling.

  “Wethree only use our skills for the good of the vessel,” Shtoink said. “It is a vow wethree keep.”

  And that, Lochiel reflected, was as good a promise as she was going to get that threy wouldn’t do whatever it was threy did in order to take over her ship.

  But did threy need to? This was the worry she’d been debating inside her head as she faced the grim task of Y’Lassian’s judgment and execution, then overseeing the cleanup of the rec room.

  “You said that youthree were summoned.” Lochiel’s voice came out hoarse. She paused to clear her throat. “By whom? How?”

  The question prompted a cacophony of discordant blats, tweets, and weird drones. Shtoink whirled back to her partners, her ribbons fluffing out. A complicated scent tickled the back of Lochiel’s nose—like overcooked gripple mixed with dusty tombs. Bayrut rubbed watery eyes, then the tianqi shifted into max, bathing their faces with cool air smelling of fresh-cut grass.

  The Intermittor whirled again, her head-stalk inclining directly toward Lochiel. “Be at peace. Wethree have no desire to take control of this ship. And we have no wish to cleave to Eusabian. You saw on the hyperwave what he did to the Eldest. It is to Ares that wethree must go.”

  Lochiel nodded. “And if we had voted against throwing in with the nicks?”

  “Then wethree would have regretfully resigned as physician to Shiavona’s crew. Another way would have be found to reach Ares.”

  Lochiel sighed, some of her tension leaching from her. “A last question, then. How were you summoned?”