The Thrones of Kronos (5 page)

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.

“I have told them I will devalue the work counters of anyone
who repeats that rumor,” Delmantias finished.

“Wonderful,” Barrodagh said acidly. Delmantias was behind
schedule with the cims, so Barrodagh could afford to indulge himself at his
expense. “Without money for gaming, they’ll sit around in their quarters
waiting for one of the walls to swallow them. Half of them are already jumping
through the doors, despite the fact the recycling room is under guard.”

“What would you have me do?” Delmantias hid his fury
imperfectly, which was one of the reasons Barrodagh didn’t fear him very much.

“Take away their food bonuses. Tell them if they can’t trust
the station walls, then they obviously can’t trust what grows on them. The
Ur-fruit will go to those who watch their tongues.”

Delmantias grimaced, and in that Barrodagh was in full
agreement. None of the Catennach Bori trusted the Ur-fruit, despite the rumor
of an addictive taste. But there was no denying that productivity had been
rising since many of the under-Bori and all of the Dol’jharian ordinaries now
competed to earn them.

“Very well,
serach
Barrodagh,” Delmantias replied. The minimal honorific there, but Barrodagh
didn’t expect more. “Then I will need to assign more workers to harvesting
them, since they grow ever more freely.”

“You know the priorities,” Barrodagh said coldly.
Yes, he knows them all too well.
With
the personal directive of the Avatar backing him, Delmantias was inflexible on
the subject of the additional stasis clamps that Barrodagh so desperately
wanted for his quarters. Well, Ferrasin’s other worm would help take care of
that.

After Delmantias left, Barrodagh dealt with the rest of the
interviews in summary fashion and then told his new secretary, Gilerrant, that
he was not to be disturbed unless one of the lords summoned him. Seating
himself behind a desk whose clutter was becoming hard to bear, he brought up
the records the computers had delivered on the crew of the
Telvarna
, winnowed from the DataNet and Rifthaven.

He scanned the summary again. His lips curled. Lower than
mediocre, even for Rifters. A rakehell gambler, a cheat, a refugee from the
Panarchist hellhole Timberwell, a crazed boy infected by aliens.

Barrodagh grunted in disgust. The lot of them were barely
worth recycling, except for the tempath, and she, being tempathic and
Dol’jharian, was a rarity that could only mean deadly danger as far as he was
concerned. Even without her alien pets; Barrodagh was thankful the Eya’a had
not awakened yet, either. It would be his pleasure to dump the lot into space
if Vi’ya didn’t wake up.

Right now, on the assumption she would, it was the newest
member of the
Telvarna’s
crew he was
concerned with: Sedry Thetris, traitor to the Panarchy for a time, now a
Rifter. She had apparently been implicated in the disruption of the control of
Arthelion’s DataNet before the attack.

That demanded a closer look. It would be interesting to see
how forthcoming she was about developments on Ares and how closely her account
corresponded to what the noderunners on the DataNet and Arthelion, and VLDA
surveillance of the station itself, had revealed. Being a Rifter, she would be
no friend to her former commanders; it might be that her noderunning talents
could be turned to his advantage, perhaps even enabling him to dispose of
Ferrasin’s assistance.

He checked the latest recordings from the Rifters’ quarters,
then picked up the boy’s flimsy. Bonded to one of the Kelly beasts in some
fashion—according to the same Rifthaven source the very Kelly the Avatar’s
Tarkans had butchered before the Emerald Throne. Perhaps that’s why he
chattered of this Blessed Three, some religious nonsense picked up from the
snaky tripeds. He would be the next to interrogate, after the Thetris woman.

But that would have to wait until the tempath awoke or died.
Until then, let boredom, inactivity, and fear weigh on them all.

His compad beeped. “What is it?”

“Hreem on the
Flower
of Lith
has arrived in-system.”

Barrodagh opened his mouth to blast his secretary for
ignoring his instructions, then paused. In this case, Gilerrant’s judgment had
been correct: Hreem was a very important piece of unfinished business.

He composed a brief message to Juvaszt on the
Fist of Dol’jhar
and sent it off, first
priority. “Put him through,” he said finally, and tabbed the comm signal to
silent mode.

In the brief interval before the connection was established
from the hyperwave chamber to his console, Barrodagh reflected on the
situation. He had no illusions about what had really happened at Malachronte,
where Hreem had very nearly captured a completed battlecruiser in the Ways. And
he had no illusions, either, about what Hreem intended with the Ogres, if he
once saw an opportunity on the Suneater. But he would be a useful
counterbalance to Vi’ya, if she awoke. And if she didn’t. . . .

Hreem’s face resolved on the console.

First to soften him up
with uncertainty and find out if the
Fist
can see whom he has talked to
. For Barrodagh was sure that Hreem
would not have approached the Suneater without checking out the situation
first—he even had a fairly good idea with whom. The battlecruiser’s array might
reveal the truth.

“Captain chaka-Jalashalal.” Barrodagh smiled. “I’ve good
news.”

The Rifter scowled, not hiding his distrust.

“The Avatar is pleased with your actions at Barca and with
your gift of Ogres. You’re to be honored with a personal interview.”

Hreem stared. Then he smiled slowly. “So the Ogres really
tickled his . . . fancy, eh?”

“Indeed.” Barrodagh expanded on the theme, feeding the
Rifter’s ego by appearing to confide in him the uses to which the Avatar
intended to put the Ogres.

Midway through his mendacious litany, the comm vibrated
under his palm. The Bori acknowledged with a subtle twitch of one finger, and
when he paused to let Hreem speak, he read Juvaszt’s reply on the screen,
superimposed under Hreem’s image.

Transponders along
Satansclaw
course reveal rendezvous with Flower of
Lith at 26:38, duration nine minutes.

Satisfaction washed through Barrodagh. He had been right.
And so Hreem undoubtedly knew of the presence of Vi’ya on the station: Tallis
would have been unable to keep that news to himself.

“And,” he finished, “as you no doubt have familiarized
yourself with the devices, there could well be an important role for you in
those efforts.” He saw in Hreem’s face that the other had heard the subtle
warning. Now to exploit the slight imbalance that had created. “As well, there
may be a role here for you. A further reward, as it were.”

“What’s that?”

“A certain acquaintance of yours is here.”

Hreem’s pupils widened slightly, his only reaction.

“Her name is Vi’ya, of the
Telvarna
. You have had dealings with her, I understand.”

Hreem stared—then guffawed. Barrodagh heard the falseness of
the sound.
He is surprised that I told
him.
“Burned her mate down right in front of her for jackin’ me,” Hreem
replied harshly. “You could call that dealings.”

Barrodagh nodded. “As you know, like all tempaths she has
been promised a large reward if she starts up the station. The reward the
Avatar intends, however, is somewhat different.”

He watched a cruel smile curve Hreem’s mouth as he continued.
“And it might be that you will deliver it to her.” Barrodagh also smiled. “Or
her to it, as the case may be.”

But when Hreem demanded approach instructions, Barrodagh
stopped smiling. “Ah, Captain, under the circumstances, it would not be safe
for you here, nor would it do to engage Captain Vi’ya’s suspicions, as your
presence would surely do. For now, the Avatar would have you join the pickets
around the system, until a more propitious moment. In the meantime, I will
detail a cutter to pick up two of the Ogres, to prepare them for the ceremony.”

And give the Avatar
something to play with
, he thought.

“What about the rest of them?”

“Those you will deliver.”

Hreem didn’t argue much, a fact that convinced Barrodagh
that the Rifter had believed his little fable. “But none of this spin reactor piss
you’ve been pulling with the others. The
Lith’s
reactors stay on standby.”

Barrodagh argued for the sake of authenticity, then yielded
with a show of anger that wasn’t hard to counterfeit. Once Hreem was off his ship,
the matter could be dealt with easily. He turned Hreem over to Juvaszt for
instructions, and started sorting through the pile of reports on his desk.

A fresh surge of rage gnawed at his guts.

It was merely the official report from the Syndics of Rifthaven
on their successful defense against Aroga Blackheart and his fleet of
renegades. And on its face, it was unfailingly proper. But between the lines
lay the accusation that Barrodagh had ordered the attack, and the stupidity which
that implied on his part made him furious.

In reality Juvaszt had turned their hyper-relays off as soon
as the incursion was reported but of course the attackers were by then already
within the resonance field of Rifthaven, where they had known they’d be limited
to energy weapons and missiles. Aroga had very nearly succeeded.

What really gnawed at him was that, of course, he would have
gladly recognized Aroga’s authority. He couldn’t have been more trouble than
the Syndics already were. Barrodagh tried to relax the gritting of his teeth
against a renewed tremor of pain in his cheek, fearful it would explode into
raving agony again. He scrabbled in his desk for another pill and swallowed it
dry, just as the shrilling of an expiring timer announced his regular meeting
with Lysanter.

Barrodagh braced himself for the awful sucking sound,
triggered the door control, and left his office. He summoned one of the little
transports and curtly told the low-caste Bori driving it to take him to the
computer room. It galled him to have to go to the Urian specialist, rather than
summoning him, but the scientist was currently riding high in the Avatar’s
favor.

It was more than the partially successful tempath
experiments. Eusabian had directed Lysanter to rig a high-level interface for
him to the computer systems, which had been a mixed blessing in the Bori’s
opinion. It had assuaged the Avatar’s boredom to some extent, but it had eroded
Barrodagh’s control, and worse, he had been unable to track what his lord was
accessing.

At least
that
was
now changed, or would be in a few hours if Ferrasin had done his job right. Barrodagh
cursed again the accident of fate that had placed Tatriman, who had actually
created Eusabian’s new module, in Morrighon’s control. She was too good.

The computer lab hummed with activity. Lysanter’s desk was
wedged into a small alcove, crowded off the main area by rank upon rank of tall
compute arrays. Bori techs bustled back and forth, some with tools, some with
chips and readers and compads. The warm room smelled of sweat, overlaid by a
not-quite-subliminal metallic taint. Barrodagh gazed hungrily at the stasis
clamps thickly clustered on every surface of the chamber; no movement at all
could be tolerated there.

Lysanter looked tired. From the appearance of his desk and
console, he was as heavily overworked as Barrodagh himself. Amused, Barrodagh
settled firmly into the chair and resolved to ask many questions. One of the
few pleasures of this nightmarish existence on the Suneater was making the
Urian specialist squirm.

Lysanter sighed at the sight of Barrodagh leaning back in
the chair. Another interminable interrogation.
At least he comes here, which saves me transport time.
“Serach
Barrodagh.”

“Serach Lysanter.” Barrodagh’s cheek twitched. “Your
compute-array allocation report is not entirely clear to me.”

Lysanter tabbed his console, and a pattern comprising solid
bars of light sprang out of his desk. “Exploration and mapping, quantum
interface control, standard sensoria.” He pointed in turn at the most
significant ones. “Oh, and stasis control.” He looked through the display at Barrodagh;
the colored light accentuated the tension and exhaustion marking the man’s
face, and for the first time Lysanter wondered how old Barrodagh was. He
appeared to have aged a couple of decades in the last year alone, while
Morrighon seemed no more affected than any other Catennach by life on the
Suneater. Less, perhaps.

Barrodagh’s cheek jumped again, and his right hand twitched
as if to touch it. He controlled the impulse by gripping his hand in a fist.
“Why so much on the interfaces?”