The Rifter's Covenant (60 page)

“The Suneater!”
Osri exclaimed.

“I don’t know her
reasons. It’s enough to know that they fall in with mine. I do not think Ng and
Koestler are going to make any effort to preserve that station. If Vi’ya, with
the help of the others she is mentally linked with, can start it up and seize
control, then there might not be a need to destroy it.”

“What a risk! Under
the Dol’jharians’ noses—or more correctly, under their jacs? What did you
promise her to get her to do that?’

“Nothing. There
have been no words between us. Between her and Eloatri, either, I should add.”

“Then how do you
know she’ll go there and not to Rifthaven? Or to her other base? Telos, Father,
only a fool would go straight into danger like that! The Dol’jharians have got
to be prepared against just what you suggest. Either a fool or some kind of
crazy visionary.”

“These are
questions Brandon will want to put to us when he finds out. He will be angry,
and I suspect he will see what Eloatri has done, what I have done, as betrayal.
I feel it is right to be there to face it.”

Osri shook his
head. “I’ll come, but I must take leave to tell you that this has been very
badly managed. You ought to have made certain in some way that those Rifters
would have to go. Why, there’s nothing stopping them from joining the other
side and coming back to lead the attack!”

Sebastian said on
an exhaled breath, “Nothing but faith.”

o0o

Vannis waited at
the Kamera for hours, until the security teams had come through letting
everyone know that things were quiet again.

Then she rose,
stopped once along the way to make certain hair and gown were in order, and
went to seek Brandon.

He had arrived
ahead of her at the Enclave. Novosti hung about in the background, questioning
everyone who neared the place. Vannis gave her name to the Marine guard and
waited, heart pounding, until the woman passed her in.

She got no farther
than the study. A group of high rankers, half military, half civilian, waited to
be heard. Vahn was busy running security, and of course the silent Rifter Jaim
was gone, so Vannis employed herself at the monneplat, ordering up a large
quantity of coffee and a variety of fresh food. Once she heard sharp
exclamations and glanced at the console screen.

Against the dark of
space a woman’s body hunched in the fetal position of micro-gee, thin,
elegantly dressed, turning end-over-end amidst a swirl of what looked like
flowers. Vannis glimpsed the face and averted her gaze, shuddering.

Some watched in
fascinated revulsion, a few with the compressed mouths and lifted chins of schadenfreude.
Everyone else turned back to their talk.

There was no sign
of regret, much less grief, at Hesthar’s death
,
Vannis noticed as she laid plates on the big silver serving tray
in a pleasing arrangement. What a terrible judgment: to die, and have no one at
all regret it. Then she gritted her teeth and forced herself to look again. She
had to remember that, as she gained power. And remember Ilara, who was mourned
by worlds.

Brandon was busy
dispatching people one by one, most of them with orders. When at last enough
space cleared around him, Vannis brought the heavy silver tray and set it down
on the table.

Brandon thanked her
in a distracted voice. He poured out coffee for himself, but kept talking while
she watched his hands, and his tired eyes, and the cup growing slowly cold.

And she watched as
more and more frequently his gaze went abstract. Then he would blink, or frown
and shake his head.

He’s putting it
together
,
she thought, sending a
silent message to Captain Vi’ya. If you are going, it had better be now
.

At last there was
only Sebastian Omilov, his son, and Fierin Kendrian. Omilov claimed his
attention, saying something about the riots.

“What I cannot
figure out is how the chatzing data got into the newsfeeds in the first place,”
Brandon said at last, leaning back on the couch with the cup of cold coffee
cradled in his fingers.

“The novosti didn’t
dig it up themselves?” Osri asked.

“Or the vocat turn
it over?” Fierin put in. “He did say we could only use it to get Jes freed, but
not to convict the others.”

“I asked him that a
couple of hours ago. He said only an idiot would do that and not foresee the
riots.”

“Which means an
idiot did do it,” Omilov said, shaking his head.

“Or someone who was
willing to risk touching off a riot to gain some other end,” Brandon finished.
“Well, I will find out what—and who. And then—”

“And then what?”
Vannis spoke at last.

The blue eyes
looked up at her without seeing her. She watched Brandon recognize her, and
then wonder why she was there, and then recollect himself.

“And then what?”
she prompted.

Everyone fell
silent, staring at her.

“And then it would
depend on the reason,” Brandon said gently. His gaze had gone wary and
watchful.

“If someone were
asked for a distraction, any kind of distraction, by someone else who wanted
justice at any price?”

“Justice?”

“Or freedom,” she
said.

He was too tired to
mask. She had seated herself directly across from him, so she saw the
progression of emotions he did not, or could not, hide as he pieced it
together. And she saw him realize the truth at last, and saw anger and a heart-stopping
loss.

He sat up, putting
the cup down so fast in slopped over. “Your experiment,” he rapped out to
Omilov. Vannis had never heard him speak so sharply before—ever. She saw in the
gnostor’s face that he’d never been the target of such from Brandon, but was
somehow prepared for it.

“The polymental
unity is bombarded with psychic static on the habitat,” Omilov said, his voice
heavy. “They are going out beyond radius to test the true strength of their
link to the Heart of Kronos, and thus the Suneater.”

“Beyond radius. You
mean they are there? On the
Telvarna
?”

The gnostor looked
at his boswell. “They are about eight minutes from the test point,” he replied,
slowly. “Yes.”

Brandon flexed his
wrist to activate his boswell, but he spoke out loud. “Send an order to the
escort ship: I want the
Telvarna
to
return immediately. No, I’ll wait until you have your acknowledgment.”

He sat back, his
eyes staring sightless at no one in the room. “Eight minutes,” he muttered.
“That’s radius.” His command would reach the escort very near the time the
Telvarna
left the region where its
fiveskip didn’t work. They would know the outcome in sixteen minutes.

Then he turned
those terrible, grief-stricken eyes Vannis’s way. This was not a man who had been
dallying in the easy fashion of most Douloi. The way he had dallied with Vannis
herself. She held her breath, beginning to comprehend how very grave a mistake
she’d made.

o0o

Aboard the escort
frigate
Emris
, the navigation officer
said, “Ares plus eight light-minutes, sir,” reported Navigation. “Approaching
test point.”

It was time to back
off, then, thought Captain Sheila Tassinuen. Gnostor Omilov had been most
specific.
They are very sensitive to the
emanations of human minds, which is why I want to perform this experiment. You
are to stand off at least 500,000 kilometers.

Strange escort
duty, tracking a bunch of Rifters, a pair of brain-burning aliens, a Kelly trinity,
and even a cat. But a light-second and a half or so wasn’t a problem for the
sensors. Where would they go? They had no fiveskip.

Tassinuen laid her
hand to her console to tab the com for her order when Communications signaled
an urgent message from Ares. “Captain, you better see this.”

The screen windowed
up the worried face of Rear-Admiral Anton Faseult. Sheila blinked. Something
was very wrong.

“His Majesty has
directed the return of the
Telvarna
immediately. Terminate the experiment, and do not let them pass radius. We
believe they may have a functioning fiveskip.”

“Navigation!” she
snapped.

‘We’re already past
radius, sir,” the ensign replied. “
Telvarna,
too.”

‘Skip to one
thousand klicks, now!” The fiveskip blipped as she continued. “Communications,
hail the ship.”

The screen windowed
up the handsome face of the Rifter comtech, just today acquitted of murder.

“Captain
Tassinuen,” he drawled, smiling rakishly. “What a pleasure.” She heard
suppressed excitement in his voice.

She tried a
finesse. “There are some problems with the experimental setup. Gnostor Omilov
wants you back on Ares for recalibration of the instruments.”

Kendrian’s smile
broadened into a soft laugh. “I’m sure we’ll do just fine,” he said, and
blanked the screen.

And a rose of
reddish light bloomed against the stars where the
Telvarna
had been.

o0o

The next several
hours felt like eternity, but at last Brandon got rid of them. By this time it
took concentration to force muscles to cooperate: smile, nod, speak, bow.

The Omilovs and Fierin
Kendrian were the first to take their leave.

Somewhere,
sometime, Brandon would remember this and find it humorous, how obviously
uncomfortable Osri was, almost shifting from foot to foot. He sent a
revealingly reproachful glance at his father, then was the first out the
door—making it plain how little he approved of what had been done, and how glad
he was to go.

Sebastian Omilov
was more difficult. “I will be available to talk,” he said, bowing, his hands
spread in plangent remorse. “Anytime, when you wish. But you must remember:
they were not forced to leave. Whatever they do, it is their choice. Their
mission.”

Brandon made random
polite noises, no longer considering his words; Omilov saw that the young
Panarch only wanted him gone, and left, head bowed.

Vannis waited to
the last. “Would you like me to stay?” she offered finally, when they reached
the door.

“No,” he said.
“Thank you for the offer.”

She pressed her
lips into a thin line, then said unsteadily, “It seems ironic how we profess to
understand all the ranges of human experience, and how we have refined them to
such a degree that everything we do, from sex to eating, is an art. But it’s
not really true, is it? There is no etiquette, no learned wisdom for real love,
is there?”

“I don’t know.” His
voice was so low she barely heard him.

“We’re children
again,” she said, hiding her crumpled mouth and tear-smeared face with her
hands. “And the lessons are in another language, and the pains are all new.”

“Tomorrow.” He shut
his eyes, opened them, and sighed. “Later—tomorrow.”

She accepted his
dismissal and walked out, her head bowed to hide her own grief. Brandon asked
Roget to detail a Marine to see her across the lake to her villa, then he turned
away, gaze raking the empty room.

He was alone.

Exhaustion pressed
against his skull, making vision blurry and thought nearly impossible. Only
emotion, sprung free of the last of his control, ran untrammeled.

“Jaim,” he said as
he paced down the hall to his room. “Why did you do it?”

He could not
believe that there was not some kind of communication, however arcane. Or was
it, after all, so simple: that Jaim, torn between two allegiances, chose the
first?

He shook his head.
There was emotion—and there was sentiment. Jaim had made it clear by word and
by deed that his allegiance was to both, and that both together made a whole
greater than the sum of the two parts.

It was Vi’ya who
couldn’t see it
,
he thought as he
entered his quiet, orderly room. No sign of the passion of the night before; that
all seemed far distant—from another lifetime. Jaim had straightened it up with
his own hands, in the tense hours before the trial.
She wants me, but not the Panarch. She doesn’t see that they are the
same man.

He keyed up his
console, and searched fruitlessly among the ever-present morass of mail drops for
Jaim’s ID.

He did see a report
from the escort ship. He punched it up and watched the frigate’s captain
contact the
Telvarna
. He heard
Lokri’s familiar drawl acknowledging; he recognized excitement in his voice.
Freedom.
Wasn’t that what Vannis said?

The
Telvarna
was visible one moment and then
there was only the red skip rose.

He shut down the
console with a swipe of his hand and turned away—and it was then that he saw
what he had been seeking.

No electronic
communication, no arcane hints or codes. Just a folded sheet of paper, lying on
the bedside table. He sat down, picked it up, and unfolded it.

The Suneater is her gift to you. Mine will be to bring her back.

—Jaim

Norio was
terrified. The swelling form of the Suneater in his viewscreen relay on the
Dol’jharian corvette revealed it to be the same material as the Urian engines,
with their sinister aura of constrained emotions. And same material as It, too.
He could not bear to think of the monstrosity that had leeched Hreem away from
him.

The tempath’s hands
scrambled through his travelcache while he muttered thanks to a deity abandoned
long ago that he had brought his full pharmacopoeia with him. Shakily he
swallowed the Negus extract, compounded with several other powerful drugs to
banish the dreams it would cause.

By the time they
reached the station, the cottoning of his tempathy by the extract reduced its expected
emanations to a moth-like beat. It fluttered against his mind as the artifact’s
strange motile ship bay engulfed the little ship.