The Rifter's Covenant (56 page)

She said in an
urgent undervoice, “Srivashti and the others are in custody. The government has
petitioned for a Writ of Nescience against him and Gessinav.”

“Then let’s move,”
Vi’ya said. “We are done here.”

Montrose said,
“I’ll go along with you now, but I am going to hear that Writ proclaimed before
I leave this station.”

Vi’ya wasted no
time arguing. They ran until they reached an open concourse, but on their
entrance they met a huge mob that seemed to materialize from nowhere.

From contorted
faces and open mouths came the shout “Rifters! Rifters! Rifters!” The crowd
spread out in a half-circle.
Telvarna
’s
crew also spread, enough to give one another fighting room. The Eya’a stayed
behind Vi’ya, who winced as if from a monumental headache.

“They slagged
Minerva!”

“They torched
Merryn!”

Shouts rose, “They
killed my family—” “They tortured . . .” “They blew up . . .”
The accusations came, faster and faster, until the names and atrocities were
indistinguishable from noise.

Until one huge roar
drowned the others: “Let’s get them!”

The mob rushed
forward.

o0o

The only sounds
in the Phoenix-level wardroom were the clink of chinois cups, the muted tap of
silver on plates, and at the corner table, where Jeph Koestler held court with
two of his captains, a low buzz of conversation.

In the opposite
corner a newsfeed flickered, the sound damped. Margot Ng had chosen a seat at
an angle so she wouldn’t have to see it. She had participated little in the speculations
concerning the only trial the enigmatic new Panarch had permitted. She had no
idea if the young man from Torigan was guilty of the crimes of which he had
been accused. She detested with unstinting passion those who were using this
otherwise unimportant young man from a minor family on a backward world to fuel
purely political ambitions.

Utterly opaque was
Brandon’s reason for permitting it to happen. She’d
misjudged him before, and he’d surprised her. She hoped this was
not weakness but some kind of political necessity that she couldn’t perceive
.

Ng sipped at her
coffee, then returned to the pile of reports beside her plate, making notes on
her compad. She would rather have been working elsewhere, but she took care to
be seen in Koestler’s proximity each day, even if they did not speak beyond
greetings.

Where the politics
of the civ side were impenetrable to her, those of the Navy were not. To Ng,
factions and cliques were not just an embarrassment, they were a danger. Very
soon they would all be in battle together, and it might be one of these
captains busy toadying to Koestler whom she would have to depend on in a combat
situation. They simply had to learn to get along—or at least to trust one
another. Or Eusabian had won this one before anyone fired a shot.

She did not know if
Koestler came here for the same reason. She was glad that he did, even if it
made for slightly uncomfortable social settings—like now, where he sat three
meters away, discussing refit progress with several captains, and she was left
alone with her work. She stared down at the quartermaster’s report, her eyes
scanning columns as her mind considered the problems.

The door zipped
open and a tall man in captain’s uniform dashed in: Igac Vapet, another of the
Semion cadre. “Riot. At the Kamera,” he said, his voice hoarse.

Sho-Bostian leapt
to the console and tapped the controls, transferring the images to the huge
wall console. A surging mass of humanity shoved and shouted unintelligibly
behind a red-faced, disheveled novosti, whose voice was high and tight. Like we
sound on the battle logs, after it’s all over, in spite of our bridge cadence,
Ng thought.

“. . . just
reported that the Archon of Torigan is dead. We’ll switch you to that area as
soon as we have confirmation. But outside the Kamera we have the largest crowd
of all, poised on the brink of violence. Some are demanding that the Rifters be
handed over to them, and others are demanding Hesthar al-Gessinav, who
allegedly is the one responsible for selling the Dol’jharian monster the secret
of the Suneater . . .”

The novosti glanced
back over his shoulder, then went on to describe how an anonymous sender had
given him the proof of al-Gessinav’s perfidy. But then he interrupted himself,
and in a voice squealing right up the scale, he said:

“. . . and
right behind me now the Panarch has appeared—alone! He’s coming out to face the
crowd!”

The view switched
to high above the Kamera. A sea of faces filled most of the screen, lurching
and shoving violently, like a storm-tossed ocean.

Toward them walked a
single figure: tall, slim, dark-haired, and instantly recognizable. He carried
no weapon, and no guard walked at his side.

“Show the
perimeter,” Koestler muttered.

Ng had been
thinking the same thing: had the Marines quietly taken up positions to defend
the Panarch if need be? Where was Artorus Vahn?

She realized
belatedly that she had spoken out loud when Koestler said, “He’d better be
there.”

“Had to split his
people,” Vapet said. “Took Torigan, Srivashti, and al-Gessinav into custody
right after the trial—”

He was tabbing keys
as he spoke. “Oh, hell.”

On the small
screen, another channel had reached the corridor where two Marines lay dead,
their blackened faces indicative of death by poison. “. . . escaped
from this room and fled in this direction,” another novosti said.

The screen
flickered again, this time to a blood-splashed hallway. Something lay on the
floor of it, barely recognizable as human. It looked like it had been hit
square with a ruptor bolt. Ng’s stomach clenched and she transferred her
attention to the big screen, where Brandon Arkad had begun to talk to the
crowd.

The novosti there
was trying his best to get closer, but as yet all that could be heard was the
rise and fall of the familiar light voice, his hands moving in controlled
gestures.

From somewhere in
Ng’s subconscious a quotation floated to the top of her mind.

“Look at his
hands,” Koestler said.

“‘In his right hand
there is power, and in the left there is peace . . .’” Ng spoke
without thinking.

She felt Koestler’s
fast glance on the periphery of her vision, but she kept her attention on the
way Brandon moved. Was that an innate talent?

“Telos! Those
Kelly,” sho-Bostian exclaimed. “I’ve never seen so many of ’em.”

“No one there seems
to see ’em,” Vapet said. “That’s strange.”

Koestler leaned
forward, intent on the screen as the green sophonts moved in and out of the
crowd, which was noticeably more quiet. The front ranks had stopped moving,
standing in a solid line facing the Panarch, some leaning slightly forward with
the intensity of the passionate listener.

Those in back
slowly stopped shoving forward and shouting. Ng watched as a riot turned into a
crowd and then became an audience.

“Damn!” Vapet said.
“I wish I could hear what he’s saying!”

“Don’t need to—”
Koestler started, then he paused, his eyes going unfocused.

Privacy, Ng
thought, as he looked up sharply. “Some Shiidra-loving deviant has triggered a
baiting crowd aimed at the Rifters.”

Fighting the urge
to run to the rescue, Ng kept her seat and addressed sho-Bostian. “Gessinav?”

“Probably,” sho-Bostian
said.

Logic prompted Ng
to act, but instinct held her back. She glanced at Koestler, who had never
betrayed any interest whatever in the new Panarch. Now he stared at the big
screen as if mesmerized. “They’ll make a run for Srivashti’s yacht,” he said.
“His captain is probably unsealing those chatzing weapons now. Faseult can’t
handle all this—Telos! Look at that.”

Ng bit her lip,
fighting to keep from activating her boswell. Just a little longer . . .

Koestler stood up,
his eyes on the big screen. The Panarch had stopped talking, and was listening
to someone in the crowd, who spoke earnestly, with violent gestures.

Brandon’s hands
were behind his back, his right hand loose, but if one looked closely, the left
hand touched the edge of his boswell.

“He’s giving
orders,” Koestler said with an unbelieving laugh. Though his face had not
changed, Ng sensed a radical alteration in his perceptions. She could almost
feel the last of Semion’s poison leaching away; Semion’s drunken, cowardly,
cheating brother could never have faced a baiting crowd alone—and at the same
time managed to monitor the entire situation and dispatch orders all at the
same time.

Koestler turned,
looking across the room at Ng as if they’d been talking all this time. “Ng?”

Instinct had been
right. Now we act together, she thought as she rose to her feet and cast aside
her papers. “I can whistle up my Marines. Where to?”

“Spin axis and the
civ ports have no Marines,” Vapet reported.

“AyKay,” she said,
“I’ll take the spin axis.” She waited for Koestler’s nod and moved out, bozzing
poor Krajno, who was probably sound asleep.

o0o

It felt good to
be fighting again,
Lokri thought,
suspended between panic and sheer hilarity. He was desperately tired, and
light-headed from not having eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, but he was
free again. Free and with his crewmates, who had not let him down.

They faced a crowd
more than ten times their number, yet he couldn’t believe they would fail.
Gasping with exhaustion, he fell back and Jaim glided in front of him, his
movements a deadly dance as he disabled attackers with cold precision.

Four meters away
Vi’ya was another whirl of deadly intent, her eyes narrow with concentration as
she broke bones, efficiently knocking the wind out of flailing shouters, but
she, too, was trying not to kill.

Ivard tried his
best—though few got past the Kelly, who stood around him in a triangle. Telos! That
boy had really changed. The Kelly pressed protectively about him, and people
who touched their ribbons fell to the ground, snoring.

Montrose used his
tremendous strength, and even Lucifur helped, slashing viciously with his
razor-sharp claws.

Then another crowd
erupted from a side tunnel, screaming, “Kill Kendrian! Kill Kendrian!”

Vi’ya’s head
snapped up, then she flung out her arm in the “fall back” signal. A high,
painful shearing noise resolved into the Eya’a chittering, and people screamed
in terror.

Among the rioters a
mad, wrenching fight to retreat cleared some space, and here and there
bloody-faced people lay on the ground. As Lokri and the horror-stricken crowd
watched, Vi’ya pointed at a woman in the front of the new crowd. “That’s who
started it.”

The woman clawed
her hands down her face, and as she shrieked mindlessly, blood and neural
tissue erupting from her eye sockets. She fell, spasming like a hooked fish.

Vi’ya leveled her
finger at the rest of the mob, who flowed back like fronds moved by the passage
of an undersea predator. The shouting fell to a stunned susurrus of whispers
and comments. Vi’ya said clearly, “All those I have killed were hirelings of
Hesthar al-Gessinav. They are here to cover her escape from justice.”

“Al-Gessinav,
al-Gessinav!” Loud, angry mutters rose.

A sudden wind made
everyone look up at the nuller bubble containing Tate Kaga.

“Srivashti and
al-Gessinav are at the spin axis, trying to escape,” he said, his voice
amplified by some mechanism.

The mob screamed as
one loud, monstrous voice, and stampeded toward the lifts.

“Let us go,” Vi’ya
said hoarsely.

Montrose shook his
head. “Leave me if you have to,” he said through shut teeth, his eyes wide and
fingers splayed in rage. “I will not let Srivashti walk away from his crimes
again. I swore it on my wife’s grave.”

Vi’ya slid her hand
over her eyes and stood, motionless.

Lokri started
toward her, then jumped when Jaim caught his arm in an ungentle grip.

“What?” Lokri
gasped.

Jaim mouthed the
word “Brandon.” And tapped his skull.

A melange of
emotions flooded Lokri. Not so long ago he and Vi’ya had fought a silent duel
over the Arkad. What had happened since? No one had said. Not even Marim.

Then Vi’ya looked
up, squinting as if in pain. But all she said was, “The spin axis is on our
way.”

“And that mob will
be usin’ the lifts from now until next year,” Marim said, her one good eye wide
with excitement. “I know where the maintenance tube is, and I have the code.”

o0o

Hesthar shuffled
along after Srivashti and Felton, hating the ease with which they moved in micro-gee,
and the uncomfortable, shoving gait that moving in micro-gee required that she
couldn’t master.

“There’s a grav
ledge here,” Srivashti said, pointing downward. “There must be service lift
accesses there.”

They arrived at the
ledge as a half dozen people came flying around a corner, slapping cables and
extrusions.

“There they are!” a
woman shrieked. “We found them!”

Srivashti swung
himself down onto the ledge and hit the gees on. Hesthar’s stomach lurched
again, then settled as gravity pulled bones and muscles. She stiffened her
body, regaining coordination.

The crowd slammed
onto the ledge, some tumbling painfully over others.

Srivashti took up a
Ulanshu fighting stance. “Touch me and you die,” he said calmly.

Felton edged back,
waiting.

Two men ignored his
warning. Srivashti met their attack, his teeth bared in a fleering grin: one
crumpled with a broken neck; blood foamed from the other, spiraling away in
vibrating globules as Srivashti threw him out of gee-range.

The small crowd
gathered backed away from the sight of blood splattered across Srivashti’s
elegant clothes and down his hands.