The Rifter's Covenant (20 page)

He turned to look
directly at her. “You will need to be careful, too, and the rest of the crew.
The novosti will be after you constantly now.” She felt the edge of his
resolve, steel-bright. “But I refused Torigan’s petition for Local
Justice—Lokri will be tried under Mandalic jurisdiction. And for his defense I
will arrange for the best vocat that can be found.”

“Thank you,” she
said, rising.

Again his emotions
whirled through her. “You do not want to stay awhile?” he asked, smiling and
open.

She closed her
eyes. He was Douloi, perhaps incapable of anything but mercurial interest. His
attraction to her had been sparked by her own anger, and sustained itself with
interest in the man they had both loved. He knew she could read his emotions,
but he welcomed the honesty this implied—so rare in his social world. His
humor—his innate trust in her keeping that knowledge safe—disarmed her
completely.

The only gift she
could give him in return was to hide the price this one-way communication
extracted from her. Eventually he would lose interest, and he would make the
parting graceful, because that was what Douloi did. Until then, it was useless
to deny both their natures—and it was, she acknowledged, beyond her to deny him
anything.

She opened her
eyes. “I’ll stay,” she said.

Tovr Ixvan hefted
his travelcache and stepped off the shuttle into the echoing immensity of the
shuttle bay. His long legs took him to the edge of the crowd of refugees
streaming off the ship, where he slowed to his usual amble.

At first, he
thought it was that contrary motion, and his height, that brought him to the
attention of a very young novosti, who hurried toward him, the silvery ajna in
his forehead gleaming.

Very young? From a
distance the short, slight, round-faced man looked like a youth, but close up
that sharp gaze and the faint lines at mouth and forehead belied that impression.
He wore a red jewel clipped to the bridge of his nose by a delicate filigree, a
glow in its depths indicating a live feed to the Ares local DataNet, and he had
a wide, friendly smile.

Ixvan’s fame had
been mostly in Ivory Sud Octant, so he’d expected to be anonymous. He paused,
half-expecting to have been mistaken for someone else.

“Vocat Ixvan?”

All right, no
mistake, then.

“Nik Cormoran. Ares
25, Arbeit Syndicate out of Reginale Cloud. Can you tell us why you, a gnostor
of the College of Nomic Universals, were processed through the Reef?”

Ixvan hesitated.
Twenty-five.
That low a number on the
feeds meant influence behind Arbeit here on Ares. And even though information
on incoming civilian ships was freely available to help place refugees, a worm
that ate enough memory to tease him out of the manifests for incoming ships
meant resources. Or something.

“You’ve obviously
mistaken me for one of the Douloi.” He was careful to bend over slightly so as
to look into the ajna, to avoid the appearance of condescension. Now perhaps he
could pay his debt to Ramony, and Phelps, and the others who would never leave the
Reef. “As you noted, I study Nomic Universals. There’d be a lot less trouble if
people realized what that phrase means.”

Nik smiled wider,
pleased to get an answer, any answer—though he had not yet put forward his real
question. He obviously wanted to talk. Ixvan decided to let him spew what he
needed to spew, then maybe the novosti would spew for Ixvan.
“Then are you saying that everyone
should be processed through the Reef?”

Had to admit this
one was good
,
Ixvan thought. That
would make his obligation easier to fulfill. “No, quite the contrary. No one
should have to endure the Reef, or anything like it.” Ixvan suppressed the urge
to unload his pent-up rage; the courtroom was the place for flowing eloquence.
You fed a novosti in small bites.

“But Ares can’t
hold them,” Nik said, letting himself be distracted. A story was a story, even
if it wasn’t—yet—the one he’d come to pursue. “Would you send the refugees
back, into the hands of the Rifters?”

Interesting that he
said Rifters and not Dol’jharians. “Do you yourself know what the true capacity
of Ares is?” Ixvan tried to speak through the ajna to the audience. “I doubt
that even the gnostors of Commensics agree on that. Perhaps it can hold more.
Justice demands that we know with certainty.”

Or whatever degree
of that one could expect when dealing with those disciplines that only treated
of the falsifiable. Ixvan respected but didn’t understand the descriptive
mind-set of science. It was too pale for him contrasted to the prescriptive
discipline of nomics, the feeling of shaping the law with one’s own efforts.

“And if it can’t?” Nik
asked, looking interested.

“Then it is our
responsibility to extend the protection of the law to everyone on the Reef,
just as on Ares.” He looked into the novosti’s eyes and spoke in
restricted-plural mode, pulling back momentarily from the unseen audience.
“They don’t let you out there, do they?”

“No. It’s still
under martial law,” Nik replied.

Ixvan suspected the
Dol’jharians had released the coordinates of Ares, hoping to overwhelm the last
Panarchist redoubt with people, since they couldn’t reach it with any weapon
short of an asteroid—which any cruiser could stop as ensign-level tractor practice.

“That should tell
you something.” He looked back at the ajna, knowing the feed would translate
that into looking straight into the viewer’s eyes. “It’s as close to hell as I
ever want to come.” He paused, feeling helpless to convey the true dimension of
the hopelessness and rage gripping the refugees trapped in the ever-growing
mass of ships bonded together in the distant staging point. They were the
friendless, without connection, clients to no one. The forgotten.

Not by him. Permitting
some of his passion to infuse his voice, he told the novosti, and through him,
the people of Ares about the growing mass of refugees ruled by terror and
extortion. He told them of Ramony and Phelps, who’d taken pity on him and
brought him into their already crowded quarters, no doubt saving his life in
the process.

His eyes misted as
he remembered Ramony at work, her stubby fingers ink-stained as she struggled
with an unfamiliar art. Her zamzdat in Cloud Eborea of Phoenix Nord had been
wildly popular on the local DataNets; on the Reef, she was read-only from
arrival, like everyone else. News from Ares was rigidly filtered.

Cormoran held back
his questions as Ixvan related how the authorities on the Reef thought her
paper vats and printing press were a drugline and distillery. If they’d known
the truth, no bribe would have been big enough. Ixvan could see the novosti’s
natural sympathy altering his expression.

Given the chance he
had not expected, Ixvan transformed the interview into a courtroom; though they
stood outside, and not before the masked judges, the judge he wanted to reach
now was legion, faceless, and changeable.

He knew that
Cormoran’s motivation was to stir people, as well as entertainment. They were
using each other, but willingly and aware.

“. . . eventually
they banned her and took read-only and even voice traffic away from her,” he
said. “She had to rely on personal reports to continue zamzing. That was when
the Harpadi stepped in, the so-called ‘duly constituted civilian government’
that was the front for the true rigors of martial law.”

“What did they do?”

“They sent a squad
of enforcers to gang-rape her.” He bit out each word, gazing straight into the
ajna. “The official record lists her as a victim of multiple assaults, a
typically bloodless phrase for a bloody and degenerate act.”

Cormoran took a
step back, not hiding his disgust. “You say the Harpadi were a front for the
naval authorities on the Reef? So do you think that Commander Licrosse knew it
was going to happen and did nothing? Or do you mean that he actually ordered
the Harpadi to rape Ramony?”

“I do not accuse him
of issuing the order,” said the vocat carefully, “and I can’t speak to what
Licrosse knew or didn’t know. But if he didn’t know, it is suggestive of
incompetence, and if he did, of gross malfeasance, at the least. However, it
was obvious from the first that the authorities had her tabbed as a
troublemaker.” Ixvan bit his lip gently, remembering. “She never spoke again,
after that, so they got what they wanted. And Phelps let himself out an airlock
two days later.”

“Do you think he
was assisted in that?”

Ixvan shook his
head. “That would be sheer speculation on my part.” He smiled grimly. “That’s
your job.”

“So why did you
leave?” the novosti asked.

“I wasn’t given a
choice.” He took a deep breath. “And the air is better. Perhaps I can do more
from here.”

“Thank you, Gnostor
Ixvan.” Sensing the finality in Ixvan’s voice, Cormoran switched to his
original pursuit. “I’d like to ask you another question off-line, if I may.”

“Of course, genz
Cormoran.”

The ajna clouded
over; the light in the red gem died. “Can you tell me, are you here to
represent Jesimar vlith-Kendrian?

“Who?”

Nik repeated the
name, adding, “He’s
praecidens
,
accused of murdering his parents and five others on Torigan fourteen years ago.
The Archon of Torigan is pressing for trial and LJO, despite the fact that the
government has suspended prosecution for crimes committed before the Rifter
attack. Kendrian, or Lokri, as he called himself, was one of the Rifters on the
Telvarna
, the ship that eventually
carried the new Panarch to safety.”

Ixvan raised his
eyebrows, tempted to ask if the mysterious Montrose who had contacted him had
been associated with these Rifters. But long habit kept him from revealing the
name of his contact. Likewise he suspected that Cormoran would not reveal the
source of the information that connected him with Kendrian. There were far too
many questions here—and there might not be any connection.

So all he said was,
“I know nothing of this. Remember how narrow the datafeed from Ares was. That’s
what made it so hard for Ramony to smuggle news.”

Cormoran accepted
that. “Thank you again, Gnostor.”

“Thank you. Perhaps
you will give me your mail drop, if you wish more detail on what I witnessed in
the Reef. On that subject, I can furnish plenty of detail.”

A brief subliminal
flicker of light linked their boswells, then Ixvan moved on in search of a
public datalink to find this Montrose, the man who had summoned him from the
Reef. The man had a lot to answer for, it seemed.

Nik Cormoran took
off for nearest transit station, reviewing the interview through his boswell as
he squashed into the crammed transtube.

A short time later he
stood next to his friend and longtime rival on the newsnets, Derith Y’Madoc,
watching the downloads mount on the Ixvan interview. Despite the tianqi going
full power, the air smelt of electric mustiness, possibly from too many
consoles in one small area but more likely from the constant adrenal-boosted
breathing of the workers there.

“Seems to be
peaking,” Nik said. “If we can’t get out to the Reef, that’s pretty much a dead
end, unless my guess about Kendrian proves out.”

“Good interview,
though,” Derith said, tossing her dark hair out of her face. “Not your fault
99’s cornered the market on the Rifter atrocities everybody’s DL’ing.” She
lifted her chin toward the nearest bank of consoles. “New newspackets every
day, best noderunners we could hire, and look at us. Stuck in a me-too orbit
while Chomsky and her gang count their points.”

She threw a file of
flimsies on her desk, then watched, sour-faced, as they dislodged one of the
many piles there, causing all to cascade to the floor.

“Chatz,” she said
unheatedly when the avalanche had subsided. She swooped them all up and crammed
them into the disposer.

Nik did not need to
see the screens of the various consoles. He could tell from the disappointed
expressions of his peers that nothing new was coming through.

He sighed. He did
not need to remind her that they would eventually be rich; that once the
DataNet was up again for outgoing commercial traffic, trillions would be
clamoring for edited versions of their reports from Ares. Novosti received a
royalty for every viewer download. Minuscule, but over billions of DLs it added
up, and one day there would be more than enough points for every novosti on the
station.

The problem was in
the immediate, where novosti lived and breathed and had their being. Tomorrow
was a thousand years away, and yesterday had fallen off the scale of time into
oblivion. He and Derith had joined forces soon after their arrival, and had
begun doing well the moment martial law was lifted.

But despite their
constant effort, somehow the Chomsky team on Ares 99 had grabbed the inside
orbit on the Rifter atrocities occurring throughout the Thousand Suns. Feed 25
was losing ground. Even the preparations for the Panarch’s accession and the
upcoming trial of Jesimar vlith-Kendrian weren’t enough to overcome the
public’s appetite for bad news.

“I still think
somebody’s slipping them that data ahead of general release,” Nik said
bitterly. “And if we’re not careful, Kendrian’s Rifter background’ll take the
trial away from us, too. Chomsky’s already setting that up and we don’t have
enough data to stop her. There isn’t anything about the Kendrian murders
replicated in the Ares Net, and our research worms back into the DataNet are
way down the courier priority list. Whoever that source is, it ran me into a
dead end with Ixvan on that score. He only talked to me to get the hellish
situation on the Reef revealed.”

Derith wrinkled her
short nose in disgust, then her expression brightened slightly. She rummaged on
her desk. “Damn! Look, Nik, someone—anonymous of course—thinks we ought to go
after the blit’s Rifter friends when the
Telvarna
gets back. Thinks Torigan is pushing this trial to make trouble for the
Panarch. Naturally he’d back Chomsky. She makes a specialty of sucking up to
Douloi.”