The Rifter's Covenant (19 page)

“That’s the
Astraea
,” Zhedong said from his post
beside the hatchway. His voice was flat, but Vi’ya felt a wash of intense
emotion: pride, fear, envy. “Its captain is Jeph Koestler.”

Ivard surprised
Vi’ya by saying, “I know that name. He was in one of the last big battles with
the Shiidra, wasn’t he? Ended up commanding a frigate when he was middy or
something?”

“Or something,”
Zhedong said, smiling.

Vi’ya turned her
attention back to navigating. The hazards were more numerous now, but she
brought the
Telvarna
on a smooth path
closer and closer to the Cap.

The com issued
another offer, more authoritative this time, of a tractor into the bay gaping
ahead. Vi’ya declined, and after a minute or two, was granted permission for a
manual approach.

This brought them
close enough to distinguish the makes of the ships in the various pits marking
the top of the Cap. Now very few pits were empty, and around every ship the
tiny lights of repair vehicles darted, as shuttles made their ponderous way to
and fro in a bewildering but stately pattern.

Directed by Ares
Control, Vi’ya nosed the
Telvarna
through a lockfield into a bay and settled the ship neatly on the scarred deck,
so quietly the only sound was the engines winding down. Around Vi’ya the
others’ emotions were sharp: excitement, anticipation, relief from the Marine
directly behind her pod. Reluctantly Vi’ya tapped out the commands to permit
access to the engines, then she rose and left the bridge, hearing behind her
the decisive tread of one of the Marines.

Ivard ran ahead and
activated the ramp, then he and the Kelly rushed down to the deck, Lucifur
swarming after them with a soft thudding of feline paws. From the rec room
Sebastian Omilov and the tall Dol’jharian, Manderian, appeared. Omilov made a
formal courtesy to Vi’ya. “Thank you, Captain. With your permission, I will
remain here to oversee the transfer of my data.”

As he spoke, techs
in coveralls formed up just below the ramp, faces upturned expectantly.

Vi’ya knew that his
request was merely a polite formality. In consenting to return to Ares, she had
to agree to surrender her ship. But so strong was his moral authority—the
Praerogate who had saved the Panarchy—that the techs waited for her to say,
“Over to you.”

She was about to
start down the ramp when a couple of the more impatient techs began mounting—and
then rapidly backtracked as, behind Vi’ya, the Eya’a approached, bare, twiggy
feet scratching the deck plates.

The techs faded
back as the Eya’a glided down the ramp. Vi’ya suppressed the urge to laugh as Manderian
approached and raised his hands to semaphore, “We go to your hive.”

The Eya’a flashed
twiggy fingers in the air, “We go to our hive.”

Manderian turned to
Vi’ya. “I will escort them to Detention Five.” Vi’ya saw he had his boswell
on—he’d obviously received orders from somewhere.

Montrose joined
Vi’ya at the top of the ramp. “Surgery is closed up. Time to find out if I
still have my old job.” His right hand brushed against his side, three fingers
down in Markham’s old signal:
Talk later.

He passed her by,
the ramp booming under his heavy step. She watched as each of her people was greeted
by military personnel and taken away for separate debriefing. The Kelly veered
off and went toward another hatch. Their hoots and blats echoed in the bay.

Omilov had vanished
inside the ship. After Vi’ya descended, the techs rushed in a body up the ramp
and also vanished. From inside came the murmur of voices.

“Captain,” the
closest Marine said, “Commander Nyberg requests your presence for a
debriefing.”

There was no
refusing, of course, however it was worded, but she found the politeness
interesting; their first arrival at Ares what felt like years ago had brought
no such niceties. They had merely been herded off to be searched for weapons,
had been informed of their options (few), the rules (many), and had been taken
to their assigned quarters in Detention Five.

With the efficient
smoothness peculiar to the military, the two Marines stationed themselves at
Vi’ya’s either side and led the way across the bay, through a different
hatchway into a waiting transtube, which one of them set into motion. No one
else was on it.

The long journey to
somewhere deep within the Cap passed in silence. Vi’ya was not disposed to
talk, concentrating instead on holding off the bombardment of minds that intensified
steadily. She sensed both Marines’ attention also infocused: they were probably
receiving a steady stream of situation reports and orders via boswell.

She expected more
guards and retinal scans, but there were none, only a quick journey up a lift
to a corridor whose carpet and muted but well-designed lines indicated flag
country. At the end of the corridor the Marines stopped before a door, which
slid open with soundless speed. One Marine motioned for Vi’ya to go inside,
after which the door closed at her back.

Vi’ya walked down
the short hallway past archways to a large room dominated by a wall-sized port affording
a breathtaking view down the length of Ares’s cylinder.

The guards had
faded, leaving her alone. Vi’ya’s boots sank into thick white carpeting. A
random air current brought to her a trace of a rare, tangy herb. Markham’s
scent—memory impacted her with all the force of the unexpected—

And then another,
fiercer impact, when she passed room dividers and saw not Markham’s shade, or
even Commander Nyberg, but Brandon Arkad, framed at the extreme right of the
port, his blue eyes wide.

Did he get that
scent from Markham, or was it yet another of those things that Markham took
from the Krysarch Brandon whom he had mimicked so faithfully? She would never
know, for she could not ask. It was difficult enough to control her response.

Brandon smiled.
“Well? Are you surprised? Did I manage to keep you from hearing me?” He tapped
the side of his head and then held out his hands in welcome.

“I did not hear
you,” Vi’ya said, moving not to his open arms, but to the huge port. It was
real, a mute testimony to the power now held by the man with whom she was now
alone. Very few people could command a room with a real port for just an
interview.

“Any trouble on the
mission?”

“None,” she said.
“No traces, which probably means there was no one out there to pick up ours.”

Though that was not
what he was asking. But until she had regained her equilibrium, she would stick
to superficials.

He had his own
sensitivity, to a remarkable degree. “You’ll find changes here,” he said. “For
the worse. Despite our best efforts it was inevitable the coordinates for Ares
would get out to the Dol’jharians, but since they can’t attack, they’ve done
the next best thing.”

“Released the
coordinates into the Net,” Vi’ya said, considering the strategic situation: Ares located within the
gravity well of the red giant it orbited, beyond the range of any weapon short
of throwing an asteroid. Eusabian of Dol’jhar would not waste the time on that.
His intent now was to power the Suneater; with it he could easily detonate any
sun whose gravity well Ares relocated to. “Where are you going to put them all? And how do you process them for
saboteurs?”

“There’s a staging
point, already nicknamed the Reef. Processing goes through a Navy team. It’s
slow, but it’s as thorough as can be managed. Once they come here . . .”
He shook his head. “We’re building more temporary domiciles. Want something to
drink?” He moved to a console.

She kept her gaze
on the silver-gleaming curve of the cylinder. “No,” she said.

Unfortunately,
though she kept her gaze on the view, she could feel his proximity and sense
the dizzying alterations in his complex emotional spectrum. Markham had been
her mate, and losing him had been the most painful event in a life wherein pain
had set an exacting standard—or had been until she met Brandon Arkad and
discovered that Markham’s sense of humor and compassion and taste in music,
even the tricks of gesture that somehow combined grace with humor, even the
cadences of his speech, all had been artificial reflections of Brandon Arkad’s
sun.

The only defense
she had had was escape. Denied it, she had withdrawn behind a shield of anger.
With laughing challenge he had broken that, leaving her to face the truth.

He stayed on the
other side of the room. She breathed; the scent was still there.

“Are you angry with
me again?” He spoke softly. “It was not my choice that we did not meet after my
father was killed.”

Vi’ya closed her
eyes against the glorious infinity of space. “I know,” she said, remembering
how—with the Eya’a amplifying her psi abilities despite her will—she could feel
the depth of his grief across the kilometer-wide gulf separating his quarters
from hers aboard Captain Ng’s
Grozniy
.
Afterward, everything he had been denied access to while his position was
anomalous had been opened to him. “We left for our mission before your first
briefing had ended. Omilov was almost as impatient as the Eya’a.”

He said, “I’ve
received the briefest preliminary report on the success of your mission, but
I’d like to hear your perspective on it.”

This she could do.
Describing the Suneater as precisely as she was able to steadied her—took the
focus of her mind away from the Arkad’s mesmerizing emotional tones to the
complexities of military, political, and xenological interests in Omilov’s find.

When she finished,
she believed herself steady enough to face him at last. “Omilov doesn’t want
you to destroy that station,” she said. “He’s going to exert whatever influence
he has to preserve it.”

Brandon inclined
his head. He had seated himself across the room, his chin leaning on laced
fingers as he listened. With his attention otherwhere she could observe him;
the recent weeks had changed him, made him seem older. “Nyberg, Ng, and the
rest are going to want to destroy it—much easier than mounting an invasion.” He
looked up, his expression concerned, questioning. But he asked nothing
personal. “Did you get much more about the Suneater?”

“Nothing,” she
said. “Orders were to stand out at least a light-day—”

“Transponders,” the
Arkad said with another nod. “Of course Eusabian has raided whatever naval
stores he’s captured, and the entire area is probably well seeded.”

“Which means they
will know about an attack the moment your nicks emerge from skip.”

He drummed his
fingers lightly on the arm of his chair. “But we’ll have one of their
hyperwaves with us. So we’ll know everything they know—including their orders.”

“You’ve deciphered
Barrodagh’s headers?”

“Close,” he
replied. “I’d say that makes us about even.”

“Except for the
skipmissiles. And whatever else he’s found on that station.”

“Sifting
Barrodagh’s broadcasts for truth has been absorbing the attention of a
good-sized team,” Brandon said with a quick smile. “But this much is clear:
they haven’t been able to establish control of the station yet.”

“But Eusabian still
has the silver sphere, yes?”

“As far as we know
they had the Heart of Kronos with them when they arrived at the Suneater.” He
looked up, his eyes narrowed with sudden mirth. “Be a priceless joke if after
all that chasing around, the damn thing doesn’t work.”

Vi’ya thought about
the terrible effort—and the lives—that had been expended to obtain the sphere
for Eusabian.

And she’d had it in
her hands.

And lost it
.

“It’s probably
nothing so simple,” she said.

He rose to his
feet. “Cheer up.” He opened his hands. “You lost it. I lost it. If we had it
now we still wouldn’t know what to do with it. And there is that possibility it
no longer functions. It had been housed on the Shrine Planet for millions of
years.”

“The station has
lasted for millions of years,” she reminded him.

“But they do not
have full control.” He made one of those airy dismissive gestures. “Well, we’ll
let the experts thrash it out. In repayment for your service on Omilov’s
mission I have tried to make your living situation easier, and you, at least,
now have permission to go about freely, without a locator device. Is there
anything else I can do for you?”

She would not ask
for herself, but she could for her crew. “Lokri is being called to trial by
your Archon Torigan,” she said. “Did you know that?”

His mouth
tightened, and the spectrum altered dizzyingly. “I cannot interfere with
justice,” he said.

“It is not justice
when one is accused of a crime one did not commit, and cannot produce proof,”
she countered.

The Arkad rose and
took a step nearer to her, his gaze on the slowly spinning cylinder stretching
out kilometers beyond them. His proximity flayed her composure. “Justice is a
process, not a result. I can’t interfere directly,” he said. “I cannot even
delay the trial, which would enable the transfer of jurisdiction to Arthelion,
where his chance at real justice would be greater and Torigan’s influence
minimal.”

His conflicting
feelings were strong enough to bring her to the edge of physical pain—as would
music played at too intense a volume. “In the eyes of the authorities, Lokri ran
from justice and became a Rifter, and with the novosti playing up the Rifter
role in the war, any overt interference on my part would severely damage
people’s trust in me.”

She worked to keep her
voice even. “I thought under martial law the newsfeeds were severely
restricted.”

“I revoked martial
law as my first act. We need the novosti to set the stage for my accession and
to establish symbolic structures of stability. Torigan knows this and is using
the growing anti-Rifter bias against me to force the trial. It also enables him
to raise again the old questions about my fitness to rule, using the fact that
I was on the same Rifter ship as Lokri when I returned to Panarchic
governance.”