The Thrones of Kronos Read online

Ferrasin twitched, his flesh shrinking from the imagined pain of Eusabian’s vengeance if they were found out. “What will you say?” he asked.

  They quickly came to agreement on their reports and left the Throne Room. Ferrasin hurried back to his office, mentally rehearsing his coming interview with Barrodagh, who never forgot a lapse, and who nourished grudges until he could destroy their cause.

  At least the worms I promised are finished, he thought as he closed himself in the fresher and splashed water on his face, then gargled to try to wash the vile roasted stench out of his head. Then he carefully opaqued the dyplast window in his office and settled before his console to plan his words carefully.

  It was strange to be struggling with another noderunner hundreds of light-years away. There’d been almost no information in the Spelunkenbuch about this Tatriman Alac-lu-Ombric—she was a Rifter, after all—but she was very good. She’d have to be, to be working directly under the Avatar’s eye, yet under the heir’s command. Barrodagh had no one on the Suneater good enough, given that Lysanter was in charge of computing as well as the Urian research. So he had forced Ferrasin into adversarial position to counter her. Without the Arthelion computer backing him, he wouldn’t have a chance against her.

  He only hoped he’d sufficiently disguised the problems he’d given the computer: the wideband channel he’d used over the hyperwave for noderunning on the Suneater could pass all sorts of mischief, if the intelligence found it.

  He’d run mentally through all possible responses when his console shrilled at him in the special code that announced Barrodagh. He opened a thread to link him to the hyperwave, using the code Barrodagh had given him, bypassing Remaliagh, the Bori in charge of communications on Arthelion.

  Barrodagh’s face appeared on the screen.

  Forcing his stuttering tongue to cooperate, Ferrasin spoke before the Bori could. “I have two of the w-worms you w-wanted ready. The first sh-should give you the information you seek, without possibility of detection. And the second will slowly divert more compute power to your stasis clamps.”

  The Bori paused, then nodded jerkily, his cheek twitching. “You know what I am calling about.”

  “Yes, but first, there’s m-more,” Ferrasin hurried on. “The c-computer yielded partial fleet statistics for Aleph-Null Sud. W-w-we should be able to access the rest within forty-eight hours.”

  Barrodagh’s expression lightened fractionally. “That is well. It may be enough to spare you the Avatar’s wrath. Now, I want your report on what happened.” His face twisted, and he rubbed his cheek without appearing aware of the motion. But he accepted Ferrasin’s explanation of the destruction of the Tarkan squad without further comment.

  After reviewing his next assignments, Ferrasin tabbed his console. The other man’s motion mirrored his, as each of them accepted the specially coded transmissions from the other.

  The node monitoring the critical port flared into activity. With a fraction of its attention, the entity that called itself Jaspar again seized the channel, modulating the transmission with a carefully crafted message of its own, receiving the return DLs of its own worms at the same time. There were not many answering yet, but soon it would know enough of this distant place to act. It already knew one thing: the Enemy himself was there.

  In the meantime, it would talk again to the man who called himself the Masque, for there was much of the world that was incomprehensible unless filtered through a living mind.

  For Jaspar was dead, and he knew it.

  TWO

  FLOWER OF LITH: SUNEATER PLUS ONE LIGHT DAY

  Tap-tap-tap, ratta-tap-tap-thump. Hreem’s fingers drummed the arms of the captain’s pod, the only sound on his bridge.

  The main screen showed the black hole binary of the Suneater; Hreem was more interested in the fuzzy chips of light placed here and there by the computer, indicating ships. The Lith’s kilometer of length gave its sensor array a respectable baseline, even if it fell well short of the resolving power of a battlecruiser.

  “They’re really hoppin’, Cap’n,” said Erbee, the scantech, pointing his thumb at the display. “Jumpin’ all over the place.”

  “Surprise,” said Piliar. Erbee glared at him, stung by the sarcasm in his voice. “Wait till you’re seeing a cruiser in every twitch of your console,” the weapons tech continued.

  “Anything ever turn up, Riolo?” Hreem interrupted.

  “No, Captain,” the Barcan tech replied, hitching up his codpiece in the nervous tic that had once so irritated Hreem.

  No longer. If he got too annoyed, a session with the shestek washed it away. But it wasn’t reassuring that Riolo had been unable to decipher any of the Suneater traffic they’d picked up.

  That, too, was not surprising, after the example Barrodagh had made of the Crone of Aravis. He’d powered them down after catching their noderunner compromising Barrodagh’s coded messages to Rifthaven. First the Fist of Dol’jhar had removed their Urian tech, then had then tractored them into an orbit that intersected the black hole. Hreem could still hear their screams as the tidal effects tore them and their ship apart. Nobody else, it seemed, was now willing to pit their crypto against the compute arrays on the Suneater.

  Nobody’s going to shut down the Lith, he resolved. He’d had the techs start bringing the spin reactors back up to standby before they left Barcan space—they could accomplish the switchover in minutes now.

  Hreem forced a little irritation into his voice. “How much longer is that chatzing array going to take?”

  “Couple of hours, I think,” Erbee replied. “Satansclaw’s signature is an easy one.”

  A nervous motion from Riolo caught Hreem’s eye, and this time anger stirred. “What’s narking at you, trog?”

  “The Ogres, Captain. I am not finished with them.”

  “Well, then, what are you doing here?” Hreem shouted, ignoring the fact that he had neglected to change the Barcan’s watch. “Get off the chatzing bridge and back to work.”

  Hreem told himself that his moodiness was Norio’s fault. He shouldn’t have left me. The tempath had always known what Hreem needed to relieve his stress, employing a host of subtle techniques, and many not so subtle. The shestek merely drowned him in a cataract of raw pleasure. It left him utterly relaxed, but that was all.

  The truth was, despite the pleasure beyond anything he’d ever experienced, he missed the chatzing little mindsnake—not that he’d ever tell Norio, who had left him without even asking, after years of serving his every wish.

  But Barrodagh had deflected all his questions about Norio. “I cannot reveal anything touching on the control of the Suneater,” he’d said.

  And so I’ll use the Ogres as my lever, he thought, smiling as he resumed the rhythmic tapping on his pod arm. And then . . . well, this might deliver the compensation he craved for the battlecruiser he’d lost at Malachronte.

  But first he needed to get to the Suneater, and Norio, where he’d get them back to their old relationship. And then, if Norio’s power sufficed to control the station . . .

  I will control Norio.

  SATANSCLAW: SUNEATER SYSTEM

  Tallis Y’Marmor fought the urge to touch his eyepatch and stretched his hands out along the arms of his command pod. His glance fell on his console, reminding him of the code that would summon the logos, and he winced. No need for that anymore. He could disable those codes—he could blow his console up—and the logos would still talk to him in the usual ghost flickers that no one else could see.

  Or maybe en clair, in front of all the crew, if it decided to.

  Tallis wouldn’t let it get that far. If it wanted to communicate, he listened. He glanced at Kira Lennart, now his first officer since she had liberated Tallis from his confinement in the bilge bay. She insisted that there was a way around the damned logos. “If we can wake up the eidolon, we might have a chance,” she’d whispered into his ear in the aftermath of passion, while Luri snored on the other side of her.

  Ma
ybe. In the meantime, he cooperated with the logos. Though nearly everyone in his crew was convinced that he had opened the lock on Anderic, the former captain, Tallis knew who had really done it—and the nightmares he’d had of Anderic’s body tumbling out into the infinity of space had functioned as a warning ever since. Fortunately the logos made few demands, and most of those were involved in carrying out the duties assigned by Juvaszt, anyway.

  The scantech, Oolger, sat upright. “Transponder pulse!”

  Tallis’s heart banged in his chest. Again!

  “What are they doing?” someone else on the bridge spoke Tallis’s thought aloud.

  Oolger shrugged. “Dunno. But this here is the fourth time.”

  Four transponders in their patrol sector triggered. At least they’d found nothing each time.

  “I wonder if the others ships are getting the same pattern,” sho-Imbris at navigation said.

  Tallis scowled, not knowing how to answer. He maintained a prudent silence, as if he had any control over the situation.

  He hadn’t. There was no way of knowing; Juvaszt would say nothing, and after the Crone business there wasn’t any comm traffic from other Rifter ships at the Suneater, except for bursts of EM when Juvaszt’s orders let them get close enough to each other, which was less and less often.

  Tallis said to sho-Imbris, “Plot a course. Communications, relay the pulse to the Fist via hyperwave, with our course.”

  The crew straightened up, their tension obvious. Under Tallis’ tailored uniform, his armpits seemed to have sprung leaks. He surreptitiously tabbed up the tianqi, and calming scents wafted gently into the air currents.

  Not that it will help, Tallis thought miserably. We all know the nicks are coming. And Barrodagh’s got us out here between them and him.

  Was it the start of the attack this time? Once—it seemed five lifetimes ago—Tallis would have enjoyed the prestige that being harbinger of the attack would have brought to the Satansclaw and to him. But too much had happened to show him how little control over his own fate—and now his own chatzing ship—he really had. Maybe Juvaszt would order several ships to check out the pulse. Then the Satansclaw wouldn’t be the only target.

  The acknowledgment came back from the Dol’jharian flagship, where Juvaszt coordinated the patrols around the Suneater. “Standing orders,” the Dol’jharian communications officer said in a bored voice, and blanked the comm without waiting for a reply: investigate, no backup.

  Tallis swallowed, and when he knew he had control over his voice, he gave orders to Oolger at the scan console, and they skipped within a light-second of the transponder.

  And Oolger found nothing. Nothing except the cluster of rocks the transponder had been placed to protect, lest the nicks accelerate them toward the station.

  There was no sense in trying to see what had skipped in; the wavefront was already well beyond the resolving power of the Satansclaw’s array for a single event. But anyone watching from outside has all the time they need to resolve us.

  He issued orders to return to their assigned patrol, trying to slow the racing of his heart by steady breathing.

  No sooner had they accomplished the skip than Oolger’s console beeped. The scantech sat up straight. “There’s a ship out there! . . . One light-minute.”

  It was waiting for us! Tallis reflexively hit the skip pad, triggering the preset tactical skip. “Ninn! Shields, and get a skip-missile ready.” Tallis bit at his thumbnail, then forced his hand down. “Oolger?”

  “Reacquired,” Oolger said a few seconds later. “Resolving.” After a pause that seemed interminable the scantech said with disbelief, “Signature is Flower of Lith.”

  Tallis sighed. While in no way would he ever rejoice at the sight of Hreem, at least he knew Hreem wouldn’t shoot at him. Or so he hoped.

  As if in answer, Lennart said flatly, “EM incoming. Sodality code.”

  At a nod from Tallis, she put the communication up on the screen, and there was Hreem, lounging back in his pod with a nasty smile on his lips. As he spoke, he scratched at the thick pelt of curling hair in the unfastened front of his gold-trimmed scarlet tunic, and Tallis shuddered. “You nacker-brain, Y’Marmor, come in to one light-second. We need to talk, but staring at you for two minutes between words won’t help my appetite any.”

  Tallis glared at his crew. If anyone laughed . . . but no one did. He nodded to sho-Imbris; the fiveskip burped.

  When the screen cleared, Hreem was leaning forward in his pod. “It took me half a day to resolve your coordinates, and when I skip in, you’re not there. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Tallis said, striving to sound bored. “Something popped the transponders in a rock reef, and our orders are to check. If it’s the nicks, and they were going to snatch an asteroid for the attack, apparently their nackers withered.”

  Ninn sniggered, but the rest of the crew stayed silent.

  Hreem scratched at his chest hair again, then waved a ringed hand. “Happen before?”

  “Four times since we got assigned to this patrol.”

  Hreem’s grin stretched, and he guffawed. “You maggot, Y’Marmor, that’s no attack. That’s harassment, just so you’ll pee your breeches. Like I bet you’ve done four times.”

  Hreem’s crew roared with laughter.

  Tallis clenched his jaw, ready to cut the connection. Then he remembered one bit of news that he was almost certain Hreem did not yet have. It had taken the logos days to crack Barrodagh’s coded conversation with the Telvarna, slowing repair efforts, but now it might just pay off.

  So Tallis only smiled, and he was delighted to note a few seconds later that Hreem’s laughter now sounded forced. “What other news?” Hreem said abruptly.

  “They don’t tell us much,” Tallis said, spinning the words out. He was really going to enjoy this. “We’re to prepare for the attack. Prevent the nicks from grabbing asteroids to throw at the station. Barrodagh’s still trying to power it up. According to our readings on our hyper-relay, we’ve gotten a point-oh-three increase in power . . .” Again he paused, keeping his face straight.

  Interesting. Aside from the insults, Hreem seemed subtly different. What had really happened with Norio? They’d been partners for years, but not mates—Hreem was notoriously predatory and wouldn’t stay loyal to any one person.

  When Hreem did not respond immediately, Tallis continued. “Ah. The Dol’jharians are extending their very large distributed array around the Suneater with all the cutters and small ships from incoming vessels.”

  Hreem shrugged. “You really love the sound of your voice, don’t you, Y’Marmor? Anybody else’d say VLDA and be done with it. Spit it out—you’ve obviously got something you really want to tell me, or else you’re sittin’ on a four-meter joystick.”

  Ignoring the laughter from the Lith again, Tallis said, “Another tempath came here, after Norio.”

  Hreem’s eyes narrowed, and he made a sharp movement to cut the noise on his bridge. “So?”

  “I figured you ought to know.” Tallis paused, savoring the slow burn flushing Hreem’s face. Just before he judged the other captain would lose control, he continued. “The new one is Vi’ya of the Telvarna, and rumor has it that her reward, if she starts up the Suneater, is to be your heart, on the point of her knife.”

  SUNEATER

  As soon as he’d cleared his queue, Barrodagh smiled in anticipation of activating Ferrasin’s new worms. Now I will see what the Avatar is accessing from the computer, he thought with satisfaction. And Jesserian’s report already had the right gloss on it: the accidental triggering of a forgotten defense system by a disobedient Tarkan squad.

  The satisfaction faded as he followed the noderunner’s directions on activating the worms. Ferrasin was becoming too independent, and there was no doubt Jesserian was conspiring with him. But there was little Barrodagh could do about it until the Suneater was powered up and the Panarchists destroyed.

  Barrodagh hoped Vi’ya would never
wake up from the coma she’d fallen into after that unexplained power surge in the landing bay, according to Lysanter most likely induced by the combination of Norio’s death and the drugs the Tarkans had shot her with.

  They could find other tempaths.

  His anger flared at the thought of drugs. That was the first of his grievances against Captain Vi’ya. While he’d been dealing with the disaster in the landing bay, Morrighon must have gone to Norio’s quarters; when Barrodagh was able to get there, the drugs were gone. How had Morrighon found out he was using those drugs? It didn’t matter. He could say and do nothing.

  He’d even checked the dispensary on the Rifter ship, but found nothing. He shivered slightly. Something about the ship had been uncanny; he’d been glad to leave after also confirming that the computers were inaccessible without a major cryptographic effort. Perhaps he should put Ferrasin on that next.

  In the meantime, he had to ration the remainder of the drugs he’d stolen from Norio before his death, reducing the dosage of the more effective ones and relying more on the standard pharmacopoeia for now, despite side effects. So the anger remained, eating at his stomach and pulling at the muscles of his face.

  But rage’s energy carried him through the petty annoyances of his daily administrative review, where he vented the last of it on a number of hapless underlings, ending with Delmantias, the Catennach Bori in charge of personnel and assignments.

  Barrodagh hated dealing with Delmantias, not because the Bori was inefficient or disobedient. He would have been spaced long ago if he were either. But part of his duty, as Delmantias saw it, was to relay the constant—and increasing—flow of complaints from the underlings about the station. Before, it was the weird . . . growths, no, extrusions, erupting from the walls, though many of them ate those growths, now called Ur-fruit.

  But the latest rumor was worse: that the walls could suck in the unwary, and digest them.

  Every fear the underlings expressed seemed to take root in Barrodagh’s own psyche, kindling his own horrors, which erupted in his sleep, exactly like those karra-cursed walls.