The Rifter's Covenant (28 page)

Fierin shut her
eyes; tears leaked down as she slowly pressed the chip onto Vannis palm. “He’s
searched my things. Once he searched me,” she whispered. “But he did not think
of my hair. I’ve kept it under my diamond clip ever since.”

Vannis, stroking
her cheek, felt a quiver of response in the young woman who had spent too much
time among dangerous enemies. She had to go back—and she had to regain control
.

With deliberate
care, Vannis encircled Fierin’s slender frame with both her arms and buried her
face in her cool, sweet-smelling tumble of hair.

Osri Omilov, active-duty
Lieutenant and Instructor in the School of Navigation, put the finishing
touches on his dress uniform and then inspected himself from all angles.
Satisfied that he would not disgrace himself or the uniform, he reflected on
the events that had placed him here subsequent to the recent reshuffle: the
only lieutenant on the coveted Phoenix level in flag country.

It made him
uncomfortable. He’d turned down promotion to lieutenant commander, offered to
him as rescuer of the heir, an encomium he knew to be untrue and undeserved.
Truth be told, Brandon had rescued
him
.
And in any case, he preferred not to be sidetracked into academic
administration. Teaching was his joy.

But the perquisites
came anyway, offered to him as the Panarch’s confidant, a label that had felt
equally mendacious until his innate honesty forced him to examine it from the
perspective of outsiders—for example, had any been present a few days previous,
when Osri was personally delivering his father’s update on the Suneater
research to Nyberg. Brandon had unexpectedly showed up in Nyberg’s inner
waiting room via a private corridor, and said, “Osri, you here, too? You might
as well witness this.”

And so Osri had
been the only lieutenant present in the small gathering of rankers as Brandon
had promoted Anton Faseult to Rear Admiral, and heard his Oath ahead of the Accession.

Brandon had said,
“There have been enough events without precedent to permit one more. I know Ares
needs you much more as chief of security than Charvann needs you as an absent
Archon. When Eusabian of Dol’jhar is defeated, you may step into civilian
life.”

And Osri had seen a
visible relaxing not only in Faseult, but in Nyberg and Willsones as well.

When Osri had
departed after making his report, he had thought about that incident. It was a
mild shock to recognize in himself the same type of status his father had once,
and now again enjoyed. That world had always seemed so distant.

Osri looked back
into his two-room suite. It was quiet and beautifully designed in the
now-archaic Artisan mode: all clean lines in wood that appeared hand-crafted,
with muted lighting. Either this good fortune had been suggested by some
career-minded Navy person, or the new Panarch himself had intervened. As Osri
closed the door and walked toward the transtube, he tried to remember if he had
ever said anything to Brandon about how much he disliked being domiciled on a
noisy corridor and how much he appreciated space, if not a view. Yes, he
recollected something of the sort, but he hadn’t thought anyone would remember
his words much past the time it took to speak them.

There was no one to
thank
.
Either it was naval politics,
so that talking about his luck would inevitably draw him into those politics,
or else Brandon had interfered, but so indirectly there was no polite way to
respond.

Which would be the
way Brandon wanted it. Osri did not claim to know him well, but one thing he
was certain of: Brandon did not like speeches of gratitude.

There were other
ways to express it, of course. That is, if a mere lieutenant would have much in
the way of opportunities to do anything for someone who was just about to formally
assume the leadership of a government that—theoretically, at the moment—encompassed
countless planets and Highdwellings and trillions of subjects.

Osri saluted a
group of three commanders already waiting at the transtube adit. They
acknowledged his salute and continued their conversation.

Here was a bit of
irony. Their polite but correct attitude marked them as apolitical. Osri wasn’t
fool enough to assume that anyone in this section didn’t know who he was. But
the apolitical officers, who would keep rank distance, were the only ones Osri
felt comfortable talking to. The condescension of superior officers cultivating
him for his connections was wearying.

The transtube
arrived and whisked them all away. Osri checked his boswell; five minutes had
passed since his last check. Why he should be nervous he had no idea—his part
in the formalities about to begin was the simple task of standing in a row.

When the officers
debarked, Osri walked in the opposite direction, toward the wardroom that had
been taken over by low-rankers, but when he entered he found himself confronted
by an impressive display of white uniforms and gold braid.

“Omilov!” A
handsome black face emerged from the throng, reminding Osri of Faseult, who
would be running security from the background. “You’re barely in time. Only
thirty minutes till the cruisers match orbits,” Lieutenant Mzinga said.

Others laughed,
though it wasn’t particularly funny. Osri saw in the bright-eyed glances and
surreptitious tugs and smoothings of crisply pressed white sleeves and tunics
around him that everyone else was nervous, too.

“What’s going on
here?” Osri said.

“Prophylactic
medication,” Lieutenant Commander Rom-Sanchez said from behind, his lean,
hound-dog face steeple-browed in rare irony.

Osri looked around
and found expressions ranging from hilarity to a sour disbelief. The hilarity
belonged to the friends he had made since his arrival on Ares.

“Ah, Omilov,”
Rom-Sanchez exclaimed, “you are reestablishing my faith in my fellow humans.
You really are apolitical, aren’t you?”

Osri shook his
head. “Politics is too much like a mud fight. I’d rather sit it out. Fewer
laundry problems.”

Laughter greeted
this, and someone pressed a drink into his hands. He raised the cup, saw other
cups raised, and sipped. A mellow brandy fired its way down his throat.

As congenial
comments rained around him, Osri did not make the mistake of supposing himself
suddenly become a wit. Nerves indeed. But it couldn’t just be the reception.

“We’d better go,”
Lieutenant Mzinga said, his quiet voice sharpening.

An exit on the
other side of the wardroom debouched into a concourse, where a short walk
brought them to the appropriate entrance to the reception hall.

Someone had
decorated the hall with ancient banners, and the walls displayed holos of
famous battles, interspersed with niches holding the busts of famous naval
officers. Osri recognized the nearest one: Porgruth Minor, the destroyer
captain of 450 years past whose slashing tactics were still the subject of
monographs and dissertations.

They got new
drinks. Wanting to keep his head completely clear, Osri ordered Falstaf
Mineralus in the traditional miniature pot ringed with fire-bright gilding. The
crowd of officers scattered around the room clumped into groups. Osri noted
several orthogonal categories of status, station vs. space and formal rank
being the most obvious.

Next to him,
Lieutenant Warrigal looked around, her bony profile pensive.

Fired by the
brandy, Osri essayed an attempt at wit. “You could write a tenno for social
gatherings.”

Warrigal gave him
her habitual flat stare, and said, “I have.”

Humor spiked
through him. Osri knew he was socially awkward, but compared to Warrigal he was
Douloi grace personified. “Of course you have,” he responded.

She accepted that,
as she accepted everything, at face value. “I find it very useful,” she said.
“But of late I have had to rework it. It’s much harder in a situation like this
than among Naval officers in their well-defined roles under discipline.”

Osri blinked. Come
to think of it, she had been more socially adept at the luncheon with Captain
Ng, before the attempted coup and then the rescue attempt. Perhaps she really
did have a social tenno. He suppressed a sour tang of self-mockery; it seemed
he hadn’t lost his talent for underestimating people.

They both looked
outward, at the pull of conflicting crowd nuclei that made for an unstable
gathering with a great deal of circulation. Osri, at least, had no doubt
Admiral Nyberg had intended it this way.

Attempting to make
amends, even though he was unsure she’d heard his condescension, he said, “You might
be interested in talking to Dyarch Hamun. They pulled him out of Enclave duty
because he has an advanced degree in ochlosemiotics.” Anyone with any knowledge
of crowd behavior had been pressed into service under the gnostors of
ochlology.

“Perhaps,” Warrigal
stated. “I doubt he’d have time for me, with Ares so crowded.”

Osri caught sight
of Margot Ng, captain of the
Grozniy
,
standing in a circle of other captains gleaming with gold braid. Typically, Ng
appeared cool and composed. It was hard to believe that this short, neat woman
with her athlete’s body and pleasant face had cold-bloodedly taken on
Eusabian’s commander in a horrific action in order to wrest from the enemy one
of their superluminal communicators. And not long after that, she had raced
against time and a deadly anomaly in space in a heroic but eventually futile attempt
to rescue the former Panarch from the death Eusabian had intended for him on
Gehenna.

Following his gaze,
Rom-Sanchez spoke at Osri’s shoulder. “Koestler’s out of the dispensary now.”
Draining his glass, he added, “First meeting with Ng.”

Osri let out a long
breath. Now he knew the reason for much of the nervousness around him. Apolitical
as he was, even he knew that of all Semion’s cadre of handpicked captains, it
was Jeph Koestler who had been on the low orbit to the High Admiralship once
Carr had stepped down to a well-deserved retirement.

But Carr was dead
now, along with everyone in the former Panarch’s Privy Council.

As if continuing
his thought, Warrigal murmured, “No space admirals. We’re on a ship without a
con.”

Osri nodded. The
long years of peace, broken only by the first war with Dol’jhar and occasional
skirmishes with the Shiidra, had inevitably produced a Navy top-heavy with desk
admirals. The Navy was spread so thin that it couldn’t afford fleet-strength
displays of power, and a battlecruiser was a ship so formidable in its own
right, needing escorts only for reconnaissance, that it obviated the need for
space officers ranking above captain.

But few of the
staff admirals had survived the Dol’jharian attack, and fewer still could be
spared from wherever they patrolled or protected now in order to come to Ares,
where they would merely swell an already bloated bureaucracy.

There was,
subsequently, no one to assume leadership of the Navy, for in time of war, only
a space officer, with battle-derived rank points, would be considered for that
promotion. Brandon had issued an order to recall the Fleet, but who was to
command it?

“Rank points are
even,” Rom-Sanchez said low-voiced murmured from Osri’s other side. “Koestler
demanded a review, someone told me.”

“Here he comes
now,” someone cautioned.

The doors whisked
open, framing a tall, well-built man with iron-gray hair and a face that
reminded one of a highly bred predator. “Wasn’t he in the bay for Brandon’s
arrival ceremony?” Osri asked.

“Insisted on it,”
Mzinga replied. “Supposedly drugged to the hairline with painkillers.”

“Gravitational eddy
from a skipmissiled ruptor turret,” Rom-Sanchez answered the unasked question
that everyone was thinking, as they watched the man walk in, his pace slow, his
back uncompromisingly straight. Pain showed in his posture but did not reach
his face. “Nearly took one of his arms off. Plus burns from an exploded
console. Killed half his bridge.”

“They stayed in the
battle six hours after that,” Warrigal added soberly. “I saw the vid before I
went to instruct them in the new tenno sems.”

Someone whistled,
and another said softly, “Bad, brave, and bloody—but he lost both battles.”

No one attributed
that to poor command. All of them had had far too much experience recently of
the fog of battle, the when-you-see-is-where-you-are tactics imposed by
fourspace, compounded by the weird geometry of ships skipping in and out of
fivespace, some armed with weapons thought physically impossible until
recently.

Captain Ng did not
make the mistake of speaking first.

Koestler was senior
in age and had received his commission when Ng was a brand-new middy fresh out
of the Academy. Events had placed him far away on maneuvers during the battle
at Acheront, and afterward he had spent twenty years at Narbon running the
drills that Semion had never tired of. Capable and brave, he had only seen
action very early in his career—and very recently.

Now he and Margot
Ng had exactly the same number of rank points, and they were both about to be
promoted as one of the new Panarch’s first acts.

“Genz,” Koestler
said, his voice a low rumble.

The others returned
his greeting. Then, as Osri and the others watched in silence, Koestler turned
to Ng and held out his one good hand. “Captain,” he said, “I’m going to fight
you to my last breath over command of the Suneater mission, but that doesn’t
mean we can’t go into this thing together.”

Ng’s small hand
disappeared in his big one, but there was no weakness in her stance or face as
she returned his grip. “Fair enough,” she said with a smile of real humor. Then
she turned to the others, her voice pitched for the entire room. “Well Genz?
Shall we present a united front?”