Betrayer of Worlds (22 page)

And on his main console, the hyperwave transceiver blinked a
COSMIC
alert.

“Who is the message from?” Nessus asked.

“The Hindmost, sir,” Voice intoned.

An I-miss-you-already message? Or some fresh disaster? Tasting bitter cud, Nessus feared the latter. “Play the message.”

Aegis
was close enough to Hearth for video; the message opened to a hologram of Baedeker looking grim. “Achilles has escaped,” he began, the harmonics heavy with tragedy. “The investigation is ongoing. Nessus, call me as soon as you get this.”

“Voice, place the call.”

The display morphed into a new image of Baedeker. “Nessus!” the Hindmost said. “I am relieved you are safe.”

There had been no delay. Baedeker had taken to a ship, was outside Hearth’s singularity. For instant communications or some more ominous reason?

“I am fine, Baedeker, just this moment out of hyperspace. How did Achilles escape?”

“Rogue elements within Clandestine Directorate.” Baedeker’s mouths drooped with distaste. “They surprised the guards on duty. They got Vesta, too, when he tried to summon help. I wait off-world until security forces complete their work.”

“Is everyone all right?”

“Yes. The attackers only used stunners. At least their madness has limits. Other supporters overpowered the crew of a grain ship cleared to depart for New Terra. Achilles and at least twenty allies are gone.”

A grain ship. Because grain ships flitted in unending streams to and from Hearth. And a New Terra-bound ship because vessels flying among worlds of the Fleet lacked hyperdrives.

When a grain ship transmitted the proper authentication codes, no one—and certainly not the automated planetary defenses—looked any further. Once beyond the defenses, the ship could travel . . . anywhere.

“The security codes!” Nessus blurted.

“Have been updated,” Baedeker sang. “You will need the new codes to return home.”

The assurance did nothing to ease Nessus’ fears.

“Leave us,” Bm’o ordered. By an understated curl of a tubacle tip he signaled Rt’o, his most trusted counselor, to linger.

With a formal glide, the ambassador of Gk’ho Nation retreated from Bm’o’s ceremonial audience chamber. Courtiers and sycophants scuttled after. As soon as the last had disappeared, Bm’o jetted to the smaller but more comfortable office from which he truly ruled.

Through its floor of clearest ice, regularly scraped smooth, he admired the glory that was his domain. Lm’ba, the world’s mightiest city, stretched from the top of this seamount into the depths far beneath, from what traditionalists still called the roof of the world into the abyssal depths from whose searing vents boiled the stuff of life. Here at the summit, as across the ice, the buildings were all grand edifices of metal and glass. As his eyes swept downward more and more stone structures appeared until, stretching across the floor of the world, in the province of ranchers and herders, only rude stone structures could be seen.

The marvel of the age was that so much
could
be seen, for even the simplest rancher’s hut, in the poorest tributary nation, had been electrified. Fusion technology had been known for generations; it was the building of power plants and deployment of wires that had taken time.

But Tn’ho Nation drew its might from sources high and low. Coasting through the pungent, salty water, Bm’o curled two tubacles upward to peer through the clear dome.

Mighty Tl’ho dominated the sky. It was a wondrous place, radiant in far red, its apparent surface roiled by storms. (His scientists assured him Tl’ho had no surface, only denser and denser gases for as deep as instruments could peer.) No one lived on the gas giant itself, but colonies had taken root on all its moons. Other worlds existed at distances far greater still, but
the brilliance that was Tl’ho, and the ice-glare of its reflection, washed the stars from view.

Rt’o had followed at a discreet distance. She was gaunt with age, mottled with chromatophoric cells gone inert, her carapace of spines become dull. One tubacle dragged behind her, from an ancient injury; the others had grown stiff.

But her mind remained as sharp as ever. Bm’o wondered if she ever thought, as the end of life approached, about the immortality of a Gw’otesht. She had never given him a reason to suspect such depravity, but the accursed ensembles preyed on his thoughts, more than ever since Ol’t’ro’s betrayal. He straightened a tubacle to peer across the ice at the Gw’otesht pens.

To be blinded and deafened by
choice,
by tubacles hungrily, pervertedly swallowing each other. To submerge one’s mind into some—abomination. How could they do it? How did they bear it? It was unnatural, disgusting, obscene.

The images in his mind sickened him.

Rt’o had intuited his need for silent reflection. Now she showed the ability to divine his thoughts—and to change the subject. “Space is vast, Sire.”

“Yet our problems are always with us.” He flashed a moiré pattern, ironic, over his dorsal surface. “Vast and yet not vast enough.”

“The Tn’Tn’ho speaks the truth.”

Bm’o flashed patches of impatience, with touches of green to temper the rebuke. “We are alone. You may speak plainly. What do you read into the report of the ambassador?”

Rt’o considered. “Impatience. The Gk’Gk’ho sacrificed a starship for the Tn’Tn’ho’s favor. That was no small expense.”

“We are impatient, too,” Bm’o admitted. “We should have heard by now from Ol’t’ro.”

“The rebels should be hungry enough by now,” Rt’o agreed.
Should.

For a long time, Bm’o gazed at the unnatural universe above. How simple life must have been before
progress.
“I share your skepticism. That we have not heard from Ol’t’ro suggests failure.”

Rt’o flexed deferentially. “Only a setback, Sire. We did learn where they hide.”

There was that. A hyperwave beacon hidden aboard the Gk’ho cargo ship had reported at each emergence from hyperspace.

With a wriggle of tubacles, Bm’o crossed the room to a writhing buffet of worms and creepers. A quick tug pulled loose a morsel. He chewed thoughtfully. “Review the possibilities,” he directed.

“The rebels discovered the trap, Sire, or they did not. If yes, their food supply remains precarious. They will have learned that they can trust no one on Jm’ho, and that the Tn’Tn’ho will keep them from replenishing their stocks. If no, their food supply has been fatally tainted. Either way, they must seek your forgiveness or die.”

“What of direct action they might take?” Bm’o meant revenge, but retribution was a monarch’s prerogative. He would not so dignify any rebel move.

Rt’o paused thoughtfully. “They dare not endanger Jm’ho’s ecology, whether by a kinetic-weapon strike or a biological attack. They need our food chain to replenish their own. And they are too few to undertake any conventional attack.”

“
Could
they make a biological attack?”

“No, Sire. Not without help. Not without the . . . friends . . . that we have made.”

Rt’o doubtless spoke to reassure him, and yet his suspicions raged. Perhaps Ol’t’ro
would
die rather than submit. If so, who was to say that they would not choose to take many more with them?
He
might. Monarchs knew all about pride. But if he were prospectively immortal, would he not accept any humiliation in the hope of surviving to triumph later?

Bm’o flared far red in anger. “So you would have me believe the rebels will do nothing? That they would quietly starve?”

“Sire, forgive my shortcomings. I cannot foresee their response. Perhaps the others . . .” Rt’o flattened submissively, but with one tubacle aimed across the ice toward the Gw’otesht pens.

Perhaps one Gw’otesht could foresee what another would do. But to pose the question would also instruct how another rebellion might succeed.

“No, my friend.” Bm’o extended a tubacle to raise his trusted advisor. “In this situation, we must be guided by our own insights.” He paused to pluck at another bit of creeper—

The seamount was dark, from midslope down.

Bm’o watched helplessly as the blackout raced up the city toward him.

.   .   .

One moment, the fusion plants operated at peak efficiency. The next, fusion—stopped. Hydrothermal and tidal generators, unaffected, scarcely sufficed to keep water circulating around the suddenly inert—but still extremely hot—reactors.

Just as mysteriously, half a day later, the fusion plants resumed normal operations.

No known science explained the blackout. The slave Gw’otesht in their pens did not admit to as much as a theory.

Bm’o had a theory: Ol’t’ro. Their perverted kind did nothing
but
invent new technology.

Without the fusion plants, modern civilization would fall—and it would collapse without harm to the food chain from which Ol’t’ro and his rebels must replenish.

Bm’o had his answer. He knew what Ol’t’ro would do—if they were allowed. That would not happen. He had no corresponding need to protect
their
world. Now that he knew where the rebels had settled, it was time to launch his fleet. The rebels could surrender or die.

The choice would be entirely Ol’t’ro’s.

Grain Ship 247
was a name unbefitting the future Hindmost, and Achilles renamed his new ship
Remembrance.
Let that designation serve, upon his coming triumphant return, to instruct his enemies: he remembered their many offenses.

If only the ship’s odor could be changed as easily as its label.

Grain ships did not leave Hearth empty: they carried bodily waste. Without that return cargo, fields on the Nature Preserves would long ago have turned unproductive.

And so Achilles had ordered a detour to the nearest water world. As the ship gently sloshed in the ocean depths, its cargo hatches agape, its cargo dumped and the residues rinsed away again and again, he told himself the holds were purged. The environmental controls would scrub the final lingering traces of odor from the corridors and cabins. Then bulkheads would come down. Suitable quarters, offices, and audience chambers would be built. The ship, reconfigured,
would
suit the future Hindmost.

And none would dare to remember the humble origins of his command ship.

From a pocket of the sash hanging from the back of the cabin hatch: a soft chime. Achilles climbed from his nest of pillows to retrieve his comm unit. His mane was sleep-disheveled and he answered audio only. “Yes?”

“Pardon, Excellency,” Clotho said. “You have an urgent message from Jm’ho.”

“Transfer it to my comm.”

“Yes, Excellency.” There was a brief pause. “It is done.”

Only one being on Jm’ho would know the codes and chain of
hyperwave relays with which to reach Achilles. That was the General Products representative to the Gw’oth: Thalia, a longtime scout trusted by Nike.

Foolishly trusted. Thalia was among Achilles’ most devoted acolytes.

“Begin message,” Achilles ordered, and a hologram opened.

Thalia had always been thin, but the figure in the video was emaciated. His hide was all but without luster; his mane, although combed, hung limp. To be the only Citizen within light-years, surrounded by aliens . . . Achilles had been in that situation. It was never easy.

But Thalia’s eyes
glowed
.

“Excellency,” Thalia began, his voices ringing with pride, “warships have set out from Tn’ho and its client states.” In a corner of the image an inset video opened: an accelerated time-lapse view of ships rushing from Jm’ho toward interstellar space. “The fleet was still accelerating when they left the range of my neutrino sensors.”

Beyond sensor range put the Gw’oth ships far outside their home system’s singularity. That they continued to accelerate meant they intended to enter hyperspace—and hence, to exit from it—with kinetic-kill speed. Their hindmost had lost patience with the rebellious colonists.

And all according to plan.

As for Jm’ho itself, Thalia concluded, “I await Your Excellency’s command to release the retrovirus.”

Achilles watched the message twice more. This accomplishment had been a long time coming, but ultimate success was not
quite
within his jaws. First he had to deliver the speech of his life.

The storeroom-become-recording-studio felt claustrophobic. But no one watching would see these stark, confining walls, Achilles reminded himself. He had personally approved the virtual background against which he would appear: a large room, richly furnished, its floor lushly carpeted in meadowplant, its lighting subtle and recessed. It was the kind of office a Hindmost used.

And
he
—his mane braided and bejeweled, his hide brushed until it gleamed, his hooves buffed until they shone—
looked
like a Hindmost.

“We are ready, Excellency,” the supporter behind the camera said.

Achilles took a deep breath, and with heads held high, he began.

“Fellow Citizens, the Concordance is in unprecedented peril. That is an extraordinary claim, for recent years have brought many dangers our way.
The chain reaction at the galactic core and our flight into the unknown. The rebellion of Nature Preserve Four. The Pak incursion. But one danger is undeniably of our own making, and it is imminent. It is of this situation that I speak to you today.