The Thrones of Kronos (36 page)

This was more complicated than just appearing and demanding
a seat. He’d have to have armor, which was personally fitted to each Marine, a
time-consuming process even without the training that went with the formidable
array of weaponry and gear. And if he had all that . . .

If he had all that! A tremendous order right there. And
nearly impossible to achieve without attracting notice, at the least. Unless
there was another way.

Ng bit her lip, her mind sorting over her own personnel.
Unless there was someone like Meliarch Lyuba Chaz, wounded at Arthelion and
just about to retire—

Ng thought about Chaz: tall, taciturn, and loyal to the death.
Would she consent to be part of this conspiracy? And if so, how to put her
together with Brandon—all without calling attention to either of them?
And what if I’m wrong?

Ng shook her head. She had now identified the problem.
Having done so, she knew a plan would work its way from subconscious to
conscious thought during sleep. She would find a way to put Chaz in Brandon’s
path, and if she was right, he’d take it from there.

With one last look at the stars and ships beckoning through
the viewport, she shut down the console and dropped her weary body into bed.

I’m right. I’ll bet
this star he pinned on me I’m right.

Despite its simplicity, even those accustomed to views of
space regarded the Star Chamber a dramatically fitting venue for the strategy
conference that would decide the fate of the Suneater.

Poised on a metal peak at the axis of Ares, the vast,
circular room had as its walls and ceiling a dome of dyplast so clear that some
found themselves holding their breath. A low railing circled several meters in
from the invisible dome. Behind it gaped a ring well from which groups of
people emerged regularly, ascending into the chamber. Some hastened away from
the edge, others seemed unaffected. Cunning acoustics damped the low hum of
voices to a bare murmur, emphasizing the hard-edged reality of the stars and
the surface of the Cap.

The stark drama of space and the stars matched the human
drama about to unfold. Here and there vignettes of perception underscored the
universal tension within the room: an upraised arm, a burst of voices, the
tense lines of a woman’s body as she leaned over a chart table to point at some
nexus of military forces.

Not even the Tetrad Centrum Douloi were immune. It seemed as
though the force of destiny had stripped away their masks, leaving all within
the chamber united against the overwhelming threat. For now would be decided
the details of the attack on the Suneater, the Panarchy’s bid to wrest from
Eusabian’s grasp the ancient weapons with which he’d overthrown a thousand
years of history.

“Downsiders and Highdwellers,” Margot Ng said at Osri
Omilov’s shoulder. “Even here division persists.”

He’d met her and Rear Admirals Willsones and Faseult in the
ring well. She had invited him to join them, an invitation issued in uniform
really being an order.

“And Rifters,” Willsones said. “One division, perhaps,
healing.”

They paused, catching sight of cruel-faced old Rifthaven
triumvir Houmanopoulis, accompanied by the Rifter captain Lochiel and her
cousin Captain Cameron ban-MacKenzie of the destroyer
Claidheamh Mor
.

The Cameron MacKenzie who’d deliberately ruined his career
in shooting the Rifter captain responsible for the atrocity at Minerva. His
crew had then turned the record into a wire-dream vid shared covertly all through
the Navy, and recently released into the hyperwave to let Eusabian’s forces
know what was coming.

This is the strange
thing about human nature,
Osri thought.
MacKenzie
will never be an admiral. Nobody questions that. But he will always be a hero
to the entire navy. Nobody questions that, either.

Floating lamps clustered over the entering groups, following
them to widely scattered consoles and casting arcs of light on the rich carpet
underfoot. By some trick of optics their illumination did not diminish the
glory of the stars and the limb of the red giant that arced above the upper
surface of the Cap, casting long shadows across the battlecruisers bulking up
from the refit pits that pocked the metal plain in every direction. Overhead,
five bright stars slowly resolved into a force of approaching battlecruisers,
the last battered remnants of the Aleph-Sud fleet.

Osri and Ng noted them, one lifting his chin, the other
drawing a deep breath into her lungs: those cruisers, battle-scarred as they
were, offered visual proof that the Panarchy wasn’t finished yet.

Slowly more people emerged from the ring well, gradually
sorting themselves into two groups. Anton Faseult passed by, greeting Ng,
Willsones, and Osri on his way to join the swelling group of naval officers and
analysts around a large table console across the chamber. This was the nucleus
of the faction determined to destroy the Suneater.

Damana Willsones quietly withdrew to join the smaller group
of Privy Councilors and civilian scientists around a similar console some
distance from the first. She was now acting head of Infonetics, after the
ejection of Hesthar al-Gessinav from an airlock by her fellow Douloi.

Ng and Osri watched her go, aware that the admiral had
decided that her responsibility to Infonetics demanded she try to save the
basis of a technology that could make the interstellar DataNet real time.

Ng thought:
Like the
civilians busy talking each other into a stance they already share, her
interests coincide with Brandon’s. I wonder if she knows that. Not that it
would matter to her.

Osri’s thoughts ran along a similar path as his recent
conversation with Brandon brought back memories of the exquisite Vannis
Scefi-Cartano at social functions, moving with smiling grace from Privy
Councilor to others of high degree.

Where is my father?
The one most determined to save the Suneater from destruction was not among Willsones’s
group. Ah. Osri spotted his father standing separate, from a vantage where he
could watch. Only Ysabet, his head technician, Eloatri, the High Phanist, and a
few others stood with him.

Osri wanted to join him, but until High Admiral Ng released
him, he could not.

Osri saw his father’s eyes widen. He shifted his gaze to Brandon
emerging alone from the ring well.

Margot Ng bowed in the correct mode, setting off a quiet
rustle of crisp uniforms as the Navy officers followed suit: the Star Chamber
was accounted the bridge of Ares; here she was captain, as she had been on the
Grozniy
. Osri’s own gesture was answered
by an inclination Brandon’s head and a humorous lift at the corner of his mouth,
as Brandon joined them.

He’s meeting the
destruction party on their ground and relishing the battle.
Now Osri knew
why he was here, and the high admiral as well. It was the most Brandon could do
to indicate his favored course of action. Which hinted at a depth of
understanding between Ng and Brandon that he had not perceived.

He has as many facets
as there are people in his life.
That was what most distressed Osri about
his Douloi heritage. One could easily be fragmented and lost in roles rather
than reality.

But now he knew that Brandon was equal to the challenge that
had shaped his ancestors for a thousand years. The formal white of a mourning
ruler merely confirmed and intensified the charisma that had been innate even
when he was scrubbing out Rifter engine casings, wearing cast-off clothing.

Slowly the focus of the room began to turn toward them, the
babble of voices quieted. Outside, flares of light lanced upward as the first
of the arriving battlecruisers settled into its berth.

As the room quieted, Sebastian Omilov reflected on the two
people Brandon had clearly invited: Ng and Osri. This would be Osri’s last
official duty as liaison to what remained of the Jupiter project, before he was
posted to the Suneater system as navigator on the Rifter destroyer
Gloire
.

Brandon waited until the faint seismic shudder of the
docking trembled underfoot and died away, then he spoke. “From a time before we
were human, an ancient power has been awakened in the service of a merciless
enemy. Against it we oppose our understanding of Totality as embodied in our
sciences and, more important, our humanity. We do not know if these will be
enough.”

His tone, carried clearly by subtle mechanisms to everyone
under the dome, was almost conversational. But behind it and under it, like the
tolling of an enormous bell, there struck at long intervals the docking impact
of the battlecruisers, investing Brandon’s words with a weight of glory that
needed no additional emphasis.

“But we are the Phoenix. From the deadly conformity of the
Solar Collective the people of Lost Earth dared the Vortex to build new worlds
among the Thousand Suns. From the fading wreckage of their dream Jaspar Arkad
and all our forebears wrested the Thousand-Year Peace. Now that, too, has been
consumed in the flames of a conflict we ourselves helped kindle.”

This was a direction Omilov had not anticipated. Startled,
he looked around, seeing dismay in some of the upturned faces.

“In the legends of Lost Earth, it was said the Phoenix
constructed its pyre with great care, using rare and precious materials. We
took no such care; allowing instead the divisions engendered by interstellar
distances and the conditions of life among the stars to build a fire that would
not purify but destroy us. Our enemy, even in possession of the secrets of the
Ur, would have been powerless save for those divisions.”

Jep Houmanopoulis smiled fiercely, knowing he’d won his
gamble. Leaving Rifthaven might have been political suicide, giving the other
two triumvirs the opportunity to undermine his position, but the insight and
political common sense the new Panarch had shown had confirmed the wisdom of
his choice. He would return to Rifthaven as the architect of a new concordance
between the Panarchy and Rifthaven.

If we pull off this
attack.
He was a little startled by his mind’s automatic “we,” a word no
Rifter used of the Panarchy.
But what
choice have we? Dol’jhar will leave no room for us at all.

Though Houmanopoulis smiled, others looked worried,
confused, upset, even abashed.

The dichotomy of Brandon’s easy tone and the weight of his
words was unbalancing the group, exploiting the fractures across the
Downsider-Highdweller-Rifter axes to crumble the edges of the preserve-destroy
chasm that divided the strategists.

“These divisions will cease to exist, or we will.” Brandon
used The Panarch’s rarely invoked future-unconditional modality, investing his
statement with the force of a command.

The impact resonated with a force equal to the trembling
underfoot as another battlecruiser docked, the light from its radiants
enhaloing the last of the Arkads.

Watching from across the room, Omilov felt a prickle of awe.
Never had he seen such an effortless exploitation of symbolism; Ng, standing
next to Brandon, smiled faintly.

Brandon gestured, taking in the whole of their surrounding.
“Here, then, let us rebuild our pyre, using all of our resources, so that, like
the Phoenix, we may renew the immortality of humankind in the flames of this
conflict.”

Next to Omilov, Eloatri spoke softly. “We shall this day
light such a candle . . . .”

Then Omilov heard his name.

“Gnostor Omilov, please begin this meeting with your
presentation.”

As he stepped forward to his control console, Omilov swiftly
assessed Brandon’s words and the symbolic weight behind them. His call for
unity evoked the Rifters on the Suneater without referring to them, the high
admiral’s connivance in the arrival of the Aleph-Sud contingent of
battlecruisers at this moment ranked her firmly on the Panarch’s side, and the
meaning of Osri’s presence was clear.

There was no need for him to slant his data, and indeed, his
whole being rebelled against the idea, despite his fear that even now the
Suneater would be condemned. He would go with the most dramatic of the
presentations he’d prepared—
in truth,
given what we face, I cannot dramatize it enough
—and trust the resultant
heightened emotions to further break down the strategic disagreement.

The irony of the situation made him smile. It was so rich
with the perversity of life! He was now dependent on Brandon in almost the same
way Brandon had been on him, in that confrontation in Nyberg’s office that had
confirmed his onetime student’s political inheritance.

Firmly Sebastian Omilov tabbed the console and told the
story of the Ur as he now understood it.

Despite his familiarity with holotech and a lifetime on the
Riftskip, Houmanopoulis caught his breath as the pellucid dome clouded over,
reducing the slashing glare of the last battlecruiser’s radiants to a pulsing
glow that soon yielded to the glory of a spiral galaxy seen from far above.

“What you see here no human has ever seen,” Omilov said. “We
may never see it; this is a simulacrum of what evidence suggests the truth must
be, seen from a vantage that would take our fastest ships a thousand years to
reach.”

The perspective of the image shifted, and a rent in the
glittering perfection of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy became
apparent, a narrow lance of darkness threaded through with twisting sun-stuff
and shattered stars, thrusting out from the center of the galactic lens almost
to its edge.

“We speak with easy familiarity of the Rift,” Omilov
continued, “as though it were a mere part of the Thousand Suns.” A small red
circle, barely more than a dot, began to blink near the head of the lance of
darkness. “In reality, as you can see here, the Rift is enormously larger than
our tiny portion of stars—”