The Crucible of Empire (20 page)

"You are still quite short," the Eldest said, his tone condescending, as though she had just emerged from the Children's Court. "Greater height will eventually grant you better perspective."

If she lived to achieve greater height. The Ekhat and the Jao were coming back! Jihan stared at the oh-so-proper draping of the Eldest's robes, his carefully raised aureole, the heavy lines of
vahl
around his eyes and accenting the bridge of his magnificent nose. He was static, going nowhere. The whole colony was going—nowhere! They would send off a few ships with a mere fraction of their population, then just sit here and wait for the Ekhat to incinerate the rest of them! Frustration flooded through her and she had to force herself to be civil.

"I require your records about battles with the Jao," she said, her gaze turned to the floor. "They will be quite old, at least a thousand years old, and many older."

"Access will be provided," Branko said. "Will you take refreshments with me?"

And because it was polite, because that was what two Eldests did, even when one was half the size of the other and had nothing in the way of wisdom or experience to offer, Jihan agreed. She settled back onto a painted bench while servants offered platters of spiced mealnut cakes and newly squeezed halla pulp. The two Eldests discussed the weather, the lacking quality of cloth produced these days and the latest crop of children accepted into various
elian
, anything but the certain destruction waiting to pounce upon the colony out there in the black cauldron of space.

And the whole time, Jihan seethed.

When Jihan returned to the Jaolore
elian
-house that night, the building smelled quite fresh with boughs of pungent purpleleaf tacked up in strategic locations and the wooden floors polished. They still creaked when she stepped inside, but she imagined that in another day, at the present level of industriousness, even that would be remedied.

Pyr waited for her in the Jaolore Application Chamber, his aureole newly fluffed, draped in a length of undecorated cloth. He looked quite the proper little adult, she thought, despite his inherent homeliness.

She handed him a stack of recording-flats, then passed a weary hand back over her limp aureole, trying to think what must be done next.

"You must rest, Eldest!" Pyr handed the flats off to one of the servants, who was now clad in a clean shift, she noticed with approval.

"No." Jihan stalked through the hallways into the long communal kitchen in the back. Spices filled the air. The lights were mellow. Two of the servants looked up from a low table where they were eating, but there was no one else. "I do not have time for such." She glanced around the dimly lit room. "Where is Kajin?"

Pyr followed her into the room, but his gaze was downcast, his demeanor subdued.

She stopped. "Where is he?"

"Gone, Eldest."

Pyr's voice was so soft, she thought she hadn't heard him correctly. "Gone? Where?"

"He did not tell me, Eldest." He inhaled deeply, still averting his face.

She tried to think. "Did he train you on the equipment as I requested?"

"Yes, Eldest." Pyr's round eyes looked up and glinted momentarily with pride. "I have been practicing and can operate the viewers quite well."

Then where would Kajin have gone after that? She'd given him no further instructions. "He must have thought of another
elian
likely to have records of the Jao," she said finally. "No doubt he will return shortly."

"No doubt," Pyr echoed dutifully, although his tone belied his words.

There was more here than the youth was saying. "You will be honest with me," she said sternly. "We cannot waste time on smoothing over ruffled feelings."

Pyr went very stiff. "Kajin said that it does not matter how much information you collect on these savages, we will never be able to fight them off."

There had to be more, she thought. "And?"

"He refuses to be part of such—foolishness." Pyr's voice was barely more than a whisper. "You violated
sensho
, so he says that he owes you no respect. He would not say where he was going, but he threw off his robes and left the house in a great temper. I followed him across the city, keeping to the shadows. Kajin has removed himself—to the
dochaya
."

Obviously Kajin would rather be without an
elian
than under her control, she thought numbly, but he did not have the right. She had not released him, so now
he
was the one breaking
sensho
. "File these new recording-flats with the rest," she said. Her fingers tugged at her robe, improving its drape. She must look her best.

"I will be back soon," she told Pyr and the servants.

"Shall I go with you, Eldest?" Pyr asked, still hunched in misery.

She started to say no, but young Pyr knew the
dochaya
as she did not. "Yes."

And the two of them set off through the night.

The
dochaya
was crowded, filled with building after low graceless building where the unassigned kept themselves when not needed for gainful employment. Each structure they passed emanated unpleasant smells and was marred with filth. Jihan stopped at the edge, surveying the mess visible through an open door. Bowls and eating utensils were scattered about the floor, along with ripped shifts, bits of broken stools and benches. "Why do they not clean their quarters on the days they do not find work?" she asked Pyr.

He stared at the ground, shivering with remembered distress. "They are sad, Eldest. They think only of leaving."

The night wind gusted, howling around the buildings. Unassigned gazed at her hungrily as the two of them passed. Why, she wondered, were they milling outside when they should have been within, sleeping, making their bodies ready for the next day's work?

The
dochaya
was large, stretching around the eastern edge of the colony, bordering the landing fields themselves. She hadn't realized its true extent. Servants came from here and returned when they were no longer needed. Those without employment applied at the
elian
each morning for occupation. It was rarely necessary for anyone of her rank to enter this place.

And Kajin was here? She would never find him among so many.

"Wait, Eldest," Pyr said when they had reached the center. "I will make inquiries."

The youth disappeared into the dark maze of ramshackle buildings. She walked up and down as a few late unassigned trickled back from the city in their ragged shifts, obviously having worked late. Jihan shuddered. This could have been her fate as well. She'd received only one offer during Festival while better favored children sometimes had twenty and thirty. She'd always been grateful to the Starsifters for accepting her, but now, seeing this desolation, she knew she had not been grateful enough.

Wind caught a fragment of a shattered crate and sent it skittering against a building. Unassigned stared at her, but did not speak. The night was clear. She gazed up at the nebula's crimson haze, trying to imagine the Jao and the Ekhat lurking out there, persistent down through the long years, waiting ever so patiently for the opportunity to murder them all.

Finally, Pyr emerged from the shadows between the two closest buildings, Kajin in tow.

"You acknowledged me as Eldest," she said. The former Ekhatlore looked utterly dejected, naked and weary. "You have no right to be here. I have not released you."

Unassigned murmured as he passed, their eyes reflecting the scant diffused starlight that filtered down through the nebula's haze. "Forgive me!" Kajin said and cast himself at her feet, making his body small.

Then she understood. The
dochaya
was far more dreadful than he had expected, too. She held herself stiff and proper as she thought Sayr would have, under similar circumstances. "We will have no more of this foolishness! Jaolore has far too much work and not enough hands as it is."

"All my life," Kajin said, his voice muffled against the dirt, "I wished only to be Eldest of Ekhatlore. I received forty-seven other offers during Festival, but chose them above all others. I was—distraught that they released me."

She could well imagine him a favored choice, the many
elian
courting him because of his comeliness and grace. "You have a chance now to make a difference in the colony's future," she said, twitching at her robe to improve a fold. "To ensure that we even have a future. We must understand these Jao in order to defeat them. I cannot waste more time chasing after you."

"Eldest, you will not have to," Kajin said.

They returned to the
elian
-house to spend the rest of that night, and many days and nights thereafter, analyzing and studying their implacable and terrible enemy, the Jao. The more Jihan learned, the more she was alarmed. In many ways, these Jao were worse than the Ekhat. Their minds were less impenetrable. They'd had the opportunity to be different and yet they chose to obey their vicious masters and exterminate sapient species all across space.

They must have a weakness, she told herself over and over again. There must be a way to destroy them utterly. She would spend her life, or what was left of it, seeking it out.

And so, under her direction, the Lleix prepared.

The
Lexington
thrummed and hummed and even quivered from time to time, a persistent reminder to Caitlin that, no matter their ultimate mission, this was also a shakedown cruise. Something could very easily go wrong. Every time she ventured out of her cabin, crew were rushing about to regulate
this
better and adjust
that
, or check on
those
. Even on the third day into the mission, her awareness of their lack of experience added a frisson that kept her nerves unsettled.

She was also highly aware of the vast variety of life contained within the great ship, everyone intent upon his or her own task, all striving together to make the odd-ball gestalt work. She, of course, had no ship duties and Terra-Captain Dannet had made it clear through disapproving postures that such extraneous crew as herself were not welcome upon the command deck without a compelling reason. So Caitlin kept to her quarters, when she wasn't tutoring Rob Wiley, and dug through the data from the misadventures of the Krant ships in the Sangrel Deeps nebula, trying to perceive what Ronz suspected.

The readings and statistics obviously concealed something important, which had sent the usually careful Jao scrambling in what was, for them, a headlong, almost reckless, return to the scene. Damn Ronz, she thought fretfully, going through the files on her personal computer for the umpteenth time. Why couldn't he have just told her what—or who—he thought they might find there? He'd let Wrot in on the secret.

On the shelf above her desk, her husband smiled down at her from in front of a temple, an image she'd taken when they had traveled to Amritsar, India, representing Aille. It had been hot as blazes that afternoon and perspiration sheened his forehead. Then the scene shifted to their wedding day. They looked both ecstatic, though her arm was still in a cast, and overwhelmed. Missing him with a fierce ache that took her breath away, she switched off the digital display in order to concentrate.

Think!
she told herself. All the clues were there. She just had to assemble them correctly. The engagement had involved two Ekhat vessels, two Krant ships, and the mysterious third party. Readings inside the nebula, reflected by the dust and gas, were misleading and fluctuated from second to second. It had been difficult to pinpoint the location of one's own ship, never mind the enemy's.

But, as Preceptor Ronz had indicated, impacts on the Ekhat ships had been recorded during the battle which could not have originated from either Krant vessel. She computed the trajectories over and over, but the results always came out the same.

That third ship out there in the haze had fired upon the Ekhat.
The enemy of my enemy is my ally?
She squinted at the replay. It was like standing outside in a storm at night, she thought, and watching the rain sheer around something invisible. The shape was suggested as much by what
wasn't
there, as by what was.

Who else would have participated in such a battle and then left without contacting the surviving Krant ship? Not another Jao vessel. No matter how estranged a
kochan
might be from mainstream Jao culture, they were too practical to leave a damaged vessel that might be repaired and returned to use.

A rival Ekhat faction wouldn't have fled either. Even though the Harmony—which was itself divided into factions—the Melody, and the Interdict had fought viciously with one another for millennia over how best to achieve the Ekhat's on-going extermination of all other sapient species, they would never abandon another Ekhat faction's vessel to be destroyed by inferiors. Most likely, if it was no longer flight-worthy, the crazy bastards would want to blast it themselves even if it cost their lives.