The Thrones of Kronos (69 page)

He gestured violently to her, and she wormed through the
remains of the greasy, half-congealed stew, sliding faster than she could have
crawled. “Decoy,” Hreem said.

And as the Ogre’s beam lanced again at two Bori who tried to
make a dive for the doorway, Hreem reached to snare the ankle of the one who
ducked the beam. Using his greater strength, he forced the lighter man over the
top of a console, and when the Ogre stalked up to its prey, he and Marim slid
back through the slush between two consoles.

Marim tried to shut out the sounds. One meter closer to the
door. Think of it that way.
We’re dead,
anyway, if we don’t move.

Someone tried to slither up to their position, and,
terrified the newcomer would draw the Ogre, Marim kicked violently. A glimpse
of terrified brown eyes, the glitter of tears, and once again the horrible
noises—and she and Hreem slid again.

Three consoles from the door. But then, that long, wide two
meters—
We can’t make it. Stop it!
Furious,
she closed off the voice wailing in the back of her mind, the image of tears,
the sounds of death, and looked at the door, not six meters away.

And realized that there were no sounds but her own harsh
breathing. And Hreem’s. And the steady, amplified whine-thump of the Ogre as it
vectored on them.

The door snapped open.

Hreem yelped. “Riolo! Stop that chatzer!”

Marim was too numb to react as a short, goggled Barcan
walked in clutching a compad. Two Ogres followed him. He stared at the tableau,
watching the blood-spattered Ogre advance on Hreem, his expression unreadable.
The Ogre reached for Hreem and he shrieked, his voice as high as any of the
Bori.

Then Riolo shouted, his voice overlaid by a weird electronic
whine. “Hold!”

The Ogre froze.

“Attend.”

The Ogre glided back and took up station behind Riolo.

Riolo pointed at each of them in turn. “Ogres. Identify:
Hreem. Identify: Marim.”

Hreem remained sprawled on the floor for a moment, then
slowly got up, trembling, whether with rage or the aftermath of terror—or
both—Marim couldn’t tell.

“What did you do?” he asked the Barcan, his voice husky.

Riolo held up the compad. “Programmed them to hear this as
the voice of the Avatar. Total override. Lysanter and the Catennach never
suspected that. They were looking for some sort of recognition override on you
or me.”

Hreem got to his feet, his hands flexing slowly. “Good work.
Let’s move. I’ve got some things to—”

The Barcan cut in, his voice emotionless. “We are better off
making straight for the landing bay.”

“First I got to—”

“We have to get one of those corvettes. You can get your
revenge better from the
Lith
,” Riolo
said, still evenly, but his hands tightened on the compad, as if for emphasis.

Hreem gave a short nod. “Right you are, then,” he said.
“Landing bay. Corvette.” Riolo turned away, and Marim felt a spurt of danger
when Hreem nicked his chin at Riolo’s compad and jerked his thumb at her. She
fought desperately against the urge to snicker.

Relief eddied through Marim when the gore-smeared Ogre
dropped behind Riolo, who fell in step behind her and Hreem. The other two
Ogres went first, which barely saved their lives when they reached an
intersection and nearly collided with an armed band of Catennach.

The Bori opened fire. The Ogres burned them down, but not
before one of them nearly got Marim, who ducked behind the nearest Ogre. Hreem
shouted when a jac-beam splashed off the Ogre in front of him and singed his
leg.

Marim turned to Riolo, spreading her hands. “C-can you make
those things p-protect us?” She let her voice go shaky, swayed as if about to
faint, and tottered a couple of steps toward him.

Riolo nodded. “Ogres, attend all.”

Marim let her eyes roll up under her eyelids and sagged,
falling against the Barcan. He stumbled back, trying to hold her up with one
hand and grip the compad with the other. Hreem lunged and snatched it away.

Marim twisted out of Riolo’s grasp, knocking him down. The
Barcan looked up at Hreem, his expression unreadable behind the red-tinted
goggles. “I did not betray you,” said Riolo. “I could have, in that rec room.”

“Yes. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” He glared. “You never
told me you speak Dol’jharian.”

Marim scooped up a jac from the lifeless fingers of one of
the dead Catennach and stepped to Hreem’s side.

Riolo’s breath hissed in, out. “Shoot me.”

Marim offered the jac, but Hreem ignored it. He snorted.
“Fair on fair, I win: quick death. But I don’t overlook it when someone thinks
I’m stupid. Ask the Archon of Charvann when you get to hell.” He touched the
compad. “Attack.”

Nothing happened. Riolo shouted something in his language.

“Cancel the instructions, then attend!” Marim shrieked as
the Ogres swiveled around to face Hreem.

“Ogres, cancel instructions subject Riolo!” shouted Hreem.
The Ogres stilled. “Cancel attend subject Riolo. Attack.”

Marim turned away, picked up another jac from a fallen Bori,
and tried not to hear the noises of the Barcan’s death at the hands of the
Ogres—or Hreem’s harsh, sexually charged breathing as he watched.

When the noises ended, Hreem smiled at her, surrounded by
the three huge gleaming machines with their mad double faces.

“Now,” he said, “let’s pay a visit to your captain.”

Marim stared at him, her mind working fast.
Vi’ya’s got the Eya’a, and they can drop
Hreem before we even get to the crew quarters,
she thought. But what if
Vi’ya wasn’t there? She thought of Jaim and Lokri closing her out and gave a
hard shrug.
They made their choices, I
made mine.

“This way,” she said.

Hreem didn’t follow. “That’s the crew quarters,” he said.
“If she was trying to start up the station, she’d be in that Kronos place you
told me about, right?” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be having second thoughts?”
He hefted the compad.

“Ruction means it’s over. She’d go looking for the rest of . . .
the crew.” Marim felt sweat prickle on her forehead as she realized she almost
said “us.” But Hreem didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah.” He looked thoughtful, then stooped and picked up one
of Riolo’s arms and walked over to the wall, where he used the bloody end to
paint a short phrase. Then he dropped his ghastly paintbrush and stood back,
admiring his handiwork.

“Yeah. You’re right,” he said finally. “Let’s go.”

o0o

The howling of the station snapped Tat out of her
brainsuck trance. Fighting against the sickening miasma of chem-poisoning, she
peered through the panic around her to look for Dem. After a few seconds the
numbness in her limbs turned to itchy needle-pricks, and she felt something
constricting her legs.

Looking down, she saw Dem curled at her feet, arms gripping
her ankles tightly, his body racked with sobs. With one hand she stroked Dem’s
skinny back, and with the other she tapped into the feed from the Chamber of
Kronos. Her console windowed up the Avatar. His orders rang out: “Unleash the
Ogres.”

Sudden silence in the crowded lab: Tat had had the volume
turned up during the brainsuck session.

“Ogres! Ogres!” Techs fled toward the doors. The Catennach screamed
at them to halt, but when the others ignored them, they pulled their jacs and
started shooting, which only served to intensify the panic.

Within seconds the lab was empty save for the bodies of two
or three Bori who’d either been shot or trampled. Nyzherian and Fasarghan
looked at each other, glanced at Tat, and ran toward the back of the lab. She
heard the door of the armored disposer clank shut.

“Ogres. Ogres.” Tat thought it was Dem whimpering in her
ear, then realized it was her own voice. Though every move increased the
agonizing ache through her skull, she windowed up the codes for the Ogres,
trying to interpret them despite the distortion in her vision.

She heard an amplified, dual whine-thump from the corridor
outside, then terrified screams that seemed to go on forever until they were
cut off by loud thumps and horrible squashing, tearing noises.

Forcing her eyes to focus, she worked faster—her screen
blipped, and she cried out in relief. There were two levels to the passcodes.
She pulled her pass tag off, her hands shaking, and snapped it into the
console.

It displayed its status: LEVEL ONE. PROTECT BEARER. The
screams outside stopped. Quickly she UL’d Level Two:

PROTECT BEARER AND ACCOMPANYING PERSONNEL. That was what the
Tarkans had.

She yanked her tag free and gripped it as the sounds outside
ceased. Nothing happened. She heard the whine-thump of the Ogres diminish as
they departed.

Then guilt crashed in on her with agonizing weight as she
realized that everyone in the array lab would have been safe: the Avatar would
not want its operation interrupted. It was all her fault. If she hadn’t had the
volume on her console up, there would have been no panic.

Weeping, she changed Dem’s tag, and was just settling it
around his neck when Nyzherian appeared, breathing harshly.

“Go back to your quarters.”

Tat’s first impulse was to argue, but she looked at those
stark eyes, the white-knuckled grip on the jac, and nodded. Nyzherian swung
away as Fasarghan stabbed desperately on his compad for a cleanup crew that
would never come.

Tat pulled her cousin to his feet and led him out. Outside
she stopped in brain-numbing horror as she stared at the crimson-stained
remains of people she knew, people she didn’t know. Most were unrecognizable;
she was glad for the blurring in her vision. Dem walked without resistance, no
longer clinging. When she looked into his face, his eyes stared beyond her with
a horrible blankness.

She saw Lennoragh stretched out dead, and a spurt of pain
and grief made her eyes and nose sting. Then an Ogre glided with inhuman grace
out of a side passage, its hands dripping blood and clotted gore. It paused,
its sensory bulbs seeming to drill through her. She felt her pass tag vibrate.
The Ogre moved. Tat could feel heat radiating from its armor as it stomped
past, its heavy feet trampling uncaring on Lennoragh’s body.

It took several long, horrible seconds before she had
control of her muscles again.
What now? I
will not go and obediently wait until they come to kill me.
She forced
herself to look down at Lennoragh, in penance for her carelessness.
I didn’t save her. But I can try to save
others.
She tugged Dem into motion, walking carefully. First she had to
find Lar.

o0o

A threnody of loss hummed, like a sinuous snake made of
gold chain, into the darkness.
Broken,
broken, broken . . .

Sedry tried to bury herself in the darkness, but the bright
chain pulled her back into the hell of light, and noise, and painful motion.
Broken . . . broken . . .

“. . . broken.” That was Ivard’s voice.

The pull of duty snapped free, leaving Sedry staring through
dry, aching eyes across the crew chamber at Lokri, who was holding Ivard, who had
covered his face with his hands, and as Sedry tried to gather what little
strength remained in her body, she heard the words again: “Broken, broken.”

She shifted her gaze, feeling the pull of strained eye
muscles. Montrose loomed above her, his expression anxious. “What?” No sound
came out, but he was watching her dry lips. The station trembled beneath them;
in the background she heard a weird howling and the commotion of random
violence.

“I don’t know,” Montrose said softly. “He’s been that way
for a little while. He was fine, tired but fine, then he screamed something
about the Kelly.” Montrose shook his head. “Never heard a sound like that out
of him, not even when he took fire on the Mandala, or when his sister died, or
afterward when the ribbon on his wrist started killing him.”

Ivard gave a shuddering sigh. Sedry could feel the effort he
made to get control again. “The Unity is broken. But I think Vi’ya is alive.”

“Then we have to get out of here and bunk straight for
Telvarna
,” Montrose said briskly. Sedry
felt his relief, and she wondered if a little residual tempathy clung to her, a
weak reflection of the infinite compassion and patience and wisdom of the
creature she privately termed the Archangel.

Just then a voice screamed outside the door, “Open up!
Please! Lar?”

“That’s Tat!” Lar bounded to the door, his hands scrabbling
over the jury-rigged controls.

“Door’s locked down,” Jaim said.

“We have to open it—” Lar fought more desperately.

Sedry felt a twinge of pain in her fingernails, as if she
had raked them down a wall, and she fought a deep shudder as she turned to her
console. One of her ready worms responded to her command, and the override
sucked the door open.

Tat nearly fell through, her eyes distended with terror, the
lower portion of her clothing splashed and smeared with thick, drying blood.
With her was Dem, equally gore-smeared, moving like a badly-maintained doll.

“Ogres,” Tat gasped. “Killing everyone without a tag. Riots.
Workers.” Her face crumpled, and she wept soundlessly for a few seconds, then
she took a deep, tearing breath and straightened up. Lar wordlessly moved
forward and put his arms around her.

“Then we can’t leave,” Lokri said, flat-voiced. “The Ogres
would go after us first thing.”

Tat shook her head violently, and Sedry’s teeth ached with
the effort the Bori woman made to speak steadily: “No. My pass tag, and Dem’s,
will protect us if we stay together.”

Montrose smacked his huge hands together and rubbed them.
“Then let’s go get our captain.”

Jaim raised a hand. “Our orders were to retreat to the
Telvarna
. We don’t know where she is. We
could end up running these halls fruitlessly until those pass tags are
deactivated.”