The Rifter's Covenant (43 page)

It was not just sex
that drew Brandon and Vi’ya together, though the change perhaps had been
imperceptible to them both. Sometimes Brandon asked Jaim to join them, and the
three talked through an entire night, ranging freely through every subject
under the bowl of the universe. Jaim had watched Brandon clown about, exerting
wit and ingenuity to surprise a smile from Vi’ya. The two most important people
in Jaim’s life had somehow found one another, and the charge in the air when they
were together served to dissolve Jaim’s own grief, if for only the short time
they were all together.

Did happiness mean
nothing? Were the Douloi so alien to emotional integrity? He could not answer,
and then it was too late.

“Here we are.”
Montrose emerged from the trees, his huge bulk nearly concealing a short,
square woman whose round face looked blanched in the weak light.

The woman moved
before anyone could speak, dropping to her knees on the gravelly pathway before
Brandon’s glossy boots.

“I am a traitor
forsworn, Your Majesty,” she said in a low voice. “Will you hear me?”

Brandon extended
his hands and drew her to her feet. “Come, Commander,” he said. “There is no
sentence of death over you now.” He glanced aside at Montrose, who gave a curt
nod. “Montrose has told me everything. Eventually you will have to resign your
commission.”

Thetris’s breathing
was harsh, her body rigid. “I deserve to be cashiered. Publicly. Before execution
for treason.”

“Commander Thetris,”
Brandon said, “we have too sharp a need for people with your talents and
loyalty to what you believe is right. Will you work for us now, in hopes of
undoing some of the damage that you never sought to cause? When we win free, there
will be work aplenty for you as a civilian.”

“I never expected
mercy. I shall do anything you ask,” she whispered, tears leaking from her
closed eyes, glimmering in the soft lights reflected from the Douloi domiciles
on the other side of the park.

“So let’s sit here
on these rocks, and why don’t you tell me everything, in your own words, right
from the start . . .” Murmuring encouragements, Brandon withdrew a short space
away.

Jaim did not need
to listen. Montrose had already told him Sedry Thetris’s story. Instead, Jaim
checked with the outer perimeter team, stationed well outside of earshot. When
they all had reported no one in sight, he turned his attention to Montrose.

“What has she
found?” Jaim asked.

“Only a little more
than I told you, for there hasn’t been time,” Montrose said low-voiced. “But
enough. She’s good. Ah. She’s getting to it now.”

“. . . and
I found the wreckage of a huge datapacket,” she was saying, “which I believe to
be the one Martin Cheruld sent to Ares. Someone had phaged it, but I was able
to piece together one message. It was from Cheruld to Barrodagh, acknowledging
messages sent to five key people in your former government. Among then were Tau
Srivashti and Hesthar al-Gessinav.”

Montrose grunted.
“About the Enkainion, right?”

The small woman
turned patiently toward him, her movements indicative of tiredness and even
pain. “Yes. This got me to a chthonic level completely under Srivashti’s
defenses, and I found the message from Srivashti to al-Gessinav.” She shook her
head wearily. “People just don’t understand Infonetics. Data never dies, you
have to wipe it out. Srivashti didn’t. You can see it here.”

She help out a
datachip. “The gist is, he seemed to believe that the Dol’jharians and the
Arthelion forces would negate each other, opening the way for a new government,
and new opportunities.”

“Such as Panarch
Tau Srivashti.” Montrose grunted in disgust.

Sedry Thetris
nodded, her hands clasped tightly together. Brandon said gently, “Have you
discovered Hesthar’s response?”

“No.” Sedry dropped
her head. “She knows data as well as I do. But I think she’s the one who phaged
the Cheruld data before it could reach Ares.”

Though Brandon’s
face hadn’t changed, Jaim sensed anger, much like that he’d expressed when
Montrose told him about the Reef. And Jaim knew why.
That’s what Semion tried to do to me, twisting the data about me,
cutting off my options
, Brandon had once said.

Sedry took a deep
breath. “But someone better than me is diving at her defenses.”

Brandon prompted,
“How did you know that?”

“Because
al-Gessinav strengthened the protections, dated two days ago.”

Stunned silence.

“And, with the
security codes you gave through Montrose, I located the other terminal: it is
in your Detention Five building.”

Vi’ya, Jaim
thought, a lazplaz boring through the cold space where his heart used to be. She
hadn’t told anyone. Brandon said nothing. But now Jaim could see his anger.

“Not another
one,” Admiral Nyberg was saying as a young, harassed-looking ensign waved Osri
Omilov into the admiral’s office.

Lieutenant
Commander Jalal-Alfad, one of Faseult’s most trusted aides, peered out of the
screen. Osri had never heard of her a month ago; now he glimpsed her often,
moving around the Cap and talking to people or observing. She was in charge of
naval public relations—a job Osri wouldn’t take if the alternative were
scrubbing out the recyclers.

Her square,
fine-boned face looked tired, her dark eyes, the color of Osri’s own, narrowed
with annoyance. “Almost,” she said. “Almost. If I hadn’t been there, I expect
we would have had another duel on our hands. They might still find a way.”

“And they will be
cashiered if we find out about it,” Nyberg’s voice grated.

“If we find out.” The
corners of Jalal-Alfad’s mouth deepened. “You knew, of course, that
sho-Bostian’s crew joined
Astraea’s
this morning?”

Nyberg sighed. “Is
that all, Commander?”

“For now,” she
said, saluting. “I see you’ve someone waiting. Good afternoon, Lieutenant
Omilov.”

Osri saluted and
waited as his superior signed off. Nyberg turned to Osri, his back as straight
as ever, but his face seemed to have aged ten years in a week. “Have any of
these logos-lovers given you any trouble at all?” he asked.

The epithet shocked
Osri. “You mean the crews of
Astraea
,
Norsendar
, and
Treloar
?” he asked carefully, though he suspected Nyberg was thinking
of them the same way as he: Semion’s captains. “No. They scrupulously observe
regs to the precise degree required when dealing with any of us. And with
themselves as well, as far as I can see,” he amended, thinking it over.

Nyberg sat back, a
wintry smile thinning his lips. “As honest as you are nonpolitical, Omilov. The
first is refreshingly welcome and the latter . . . a blindness I’d also welcome
myself at times. What is Gnostor Omilov’s latest report?”

“My father needs
more time. They’ve tried to dissect Captain Lochiel’s hyperrelay, but can’t
find a way to open it without destroying it. What data he’s come up with
matches nothing at all except that it correlates with some of the scans from
the
Telvarna
mission.”

Nyberg raised his
eyebrows. “So it’s made of the same material? All right. Tell him he’s got, let
us say,
some
time. I’ve told the
Panarch we need more time as well: we’ll need all the ships we can muster in.
But eventually we will require the gnostor to demonstrate the vulnerabilities
of the Urian metal, or whatever it is.”

“He has most of
that information already by extrapolation.”

Nyberg cocked his
head. “You want to save it, too?” He waved a hand, cutting off Osri’s reply. “Don’t
answer. It doesn’t matter. I’d support that, if I thought there was a way. But
as it is, we will require a live test. Even if he has to destroy it in the
process.”

Osri saluted and
withdrew. Of course the Navy could not commit ships to an attack on the
Suneater without being sure they had the right weapons to destroy it. Sebastian
Omilov would fight that outcome bitterly, but if the Panarch commanded it, he
would obey. Therefore, Osri knew, his father would exert every nerve to find a
way to avoid having that command made.

Outside the door,
Osri nearly collided with the person waiting to go in next. Dodging, Osri found
himself face-to-face with a round-faced novosti, the disconcerting ajna-eye
open on his forehead and recording.

“Lieutenant
Omilov,” the man said, “is it true the Panarch saved you, and you didn’t save
him, in the flight over Warlock?”

Rage boiled up
inside Osri, but he resolutely kept his mouth shut and pushed on past.

The man asked more
questions as Osri walked away rapidly down the hall. Osri tried to shut them
out, and when he reached the nearest adit, he said to the Marine guards there,
“Some blunge-eater of a novosti got in. Outside Nyberg’s office.”

“He has an
appointment,” the guard on the left said woodenly, but her expression indicated
her distaste.

Osri shook his
head, annoyance mixing with relief. If the blit had somehow managed to sneak in,
that would be far worse. Osri winced. They plagued him whenever they could, and
though he had refused to say one word to them, he lived in fear they would find
out where his rooms were, and corner him there.

The Marines passed
him through. He glanced at his chrono, then took the lift back down to one of
the service corridors. When he was alone, he moved slowly along the wall;
though he’d used this secret adit twice now, he still had trouble finding the
access tab.

Finally a segment
of the bulkhead folded back silently, closing immediately behind him. The pod was
not there, which meant someone had used it. Osri waited on the narrow ledge in
the semi-darkness as a cold breeze ruffled over his face. He wondered who else
Brandon had given access to.

With a humming hiss
and a whoosh of air the pod drew up. Osri sniffed; was there the faint scent of
dog? Sure enough, a telltale puff of fur stirred on the floor as the door shut.

Osri brushed off
the bench seat, wondering if those dogs used the secret tubes more often than
he did. Then he dropped heavily onto the bench with a deep sigh. One more
meeting—his stomach dropped—and back to his rooms.

Back to Fierin.

The night of
Brandon’s accession still seemed more like a dream than reality. Osri looked at
the other bench on the pod, vividly remembering the young woman lying across it,
sobbing noiselessly, her glossy dark hair spilling across thin arms, the jewels
she’d worn to pin it up lying on the dyplast decking of the pod. Without the
Douloi posture and invincible mask, she seemed so very young. Young and
rail-thin, though the gown masked that, too; she seemed so fragile, as if her
flesh had burned down to barely cover nerve-endings. There was no longer any
trace of freezing social command, no air of precedence or high degree; when the
pod stopped, she did not speak, and Osri had to touch her to get her attention.

She’d recoiled as
if struck, then made so visible an effort to regain control that the last of
Osri’s automatic resentment of her kind melted to nothing.

Of course when she
recovered a bit, she’d probably order him around like a servant
,
he’d reflected grimly as he helped her
out of the pod. If she was too obnoxious he’d throw her back on Brandon and let
him worry about her.

Naval
corridors—clean, orderly, pleasing to the eye—had always been his safe haven
from the chaos of the Douloi world. But that night they’d been fraught with
danger as he smuggled an unknown Douloi female—consort to a notorious
Archon—across what seemed most of the Cap.

Luckily most of the
Phoenix-level officers had been either dancing back at the Pavilion, or at
their duty stations. The halls had been completely empty.

Osri used Brandon’s
imager block, and, his heart pounding, got Fierin inside his rooms well within
a minute.

As soon as he shut
his door, relief poured through him, and he saw the same in her wide eyes, but
then she swayed, vomited down the front of her costly gown, and crumpled
bonelessly to the floor.

If the trip had
been unreal, the next half hour was surreal. It seemed that some other man took
over his hands and head as he clumsily undressed her, bathed her, bundled her
into his robe, and tucked her into his narrow regulation-size bed. She sighed
deeply once, then curled up like a small child with one hand under her cheek.

Then he mopped up
the mess, put her gown through the cleaner (wondering too late if it was
programmed to deal with jewels), and retired to the couch in the front room,
which was comfortable in itself, but he stayed fully dressed and alert to the
sounds of her breathing.

So he was awake when,
just before dawn, she cried out in her sleep. When he got to the bedroom, she
was sitting up, her eyes stark with terror. Helpless, he just stood there, but
she seemed to see him after a time, murmured something that might have been an
apology, and lay back down, closing her eyes. He waited until her breathing
deepened.

She was still
sleeping when his chrono brought him out of the fitful doze into which he’d
fallen. He pulled her gown out of the cleaner, laid it at the foot of the bed
for her to find, and put his dress uniform in, got himself cleaned up and into
his duty uniform, and composed a note which he left glowing on the screen where
she was sure to see it. The composition of the note took longer than the other
chores—he tried to make it polite, yet impress upon her how important it was
that she not open the door, no matter what.

There was no time
for breakfast, or even a mug of caf. He set the sound dampers on high, slipped
out the door, and hurried to class.

When he returned
that evening, she was still lying in the bed, but she was awake, her face
composed, her long silver eyes unreadable. Osri felt all his old dislike
return.