So. Kurj had set the console to activate. He was watching the wall-screen, his arms crossed, his gaze intent on the emblem of his enemy. He had filed Charissa away in his mind and moved on. I couldn’t put her out of my thoughts that easily. I kept seeing her frightened face, kept feeling her sinking sensation as she heard Kurj’s words: Have her taken to the palace.
Block, I thought. The psicon sputtered in my mind, but the memory stayed strong. My blocker only muted other people’s emotions. Deleting my memories was too dangerous; it could inadvertently wipe out other needed information as well.
In front of the screen, the puma stretched a paw forward, its claws extending in a fan of sharpened points as the Trader anthem swelled in a crescendo.
I spoke in a neutral voice. “Who is broadcasting this?”
Kurj continued to watch the puma. “We picked it up from the Traders.”
“Emperor Qox is speaking?”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Yes.”
We were probably getting the transmission even before many of the Trader worlds. To transmit off planet, Qox had to record the broadcast and send it via starship to wherever he wanted it heard. But once we picked it up, we could shoot it over the Kyle-Mesh instantaneously.
The broadcast had to be about Tams. Qox couldn’t hide this time. Two hundred million witnesses had survived his latest attempt at genocide. Their testimony would show the lie of his.
The puma shimmered—and we were there, in a great circular hall. Far above our heads, the ceiling arched in a white dome. High-backed benches of white stone formed concentric rings, many rings, filling the room. Cushions softened the seats, pillows the color of blood. Aristos sat here. Ranks and ranks of Aristos. Hundreds. Thousands. They sat side by side, subunits in a machine, all in black, with glittering black hair and ruby eyes.
In the center of the hall, a pillar of crystal rose from the floor almost to the ceiling, refracting and splintering light into sparks of color. The puma crouched in the air behind the pillar. The animal twisted and swelled in size. Its back legs pulled out straight, its body came upright, front legs reached out like arms—and a lean man stood there, two meters high, three meters, four. When he finished morphing, he was five meters tall, sixteen feet, his head just below the domed ceiling. His Highton features were unmistakable, though nothing else made his face remarkable. What set him apart was his presence, an air of undisputed authority.
This was Ur Qox, Emperor of Eube.
The music stopped. Qox spoke in Highton with a powerful voice. “My people, I come before you tonight with great pride. Rejoice! We, the children of Eube, have been chosen. We have an honor never before known, the honor of living in the greatest civilization to grace the great, turning wheel of our galaxy. We shine where darkness once blanketed the stars.”
For flaming sake. He went on and on, coming up with ever more grandiose tributes to his empire. He never mentioned Tams. Did he believe he could hide it? I wished he would finish the damn speech. Even seeing him so long after he had recorded it, I felt as if mites burrowed into my skin. Qox, the Hightons, all the Aristos—just their images were enough terrorize us, as if our minds recognized on a subliminal level what they could do to us.
“I come to you tonight with magnificent news,” Qox said. “The constant threat we live with, the threat of enslavement by our malevolent enemies, has been dealt a great blow.” His expression became firm, that of a leader struggling with righteous anger. “The latest victim of the ruthless Imperial forces is Tams Station, one of the Concord’s most vulnerable members. Yesterday the Imperialate attacked the defenseless Tams with no provocation.”
What the hell? In the “seat” next to me, Kurj stiffened. All around us, the Aristos clicked the ornate rings on their fingers, click, click, click, like a huge insect rattling with agitation.
Grief tinged Qox’s voice. “I speak in great sorrow. Tams lost its population. Yes, my people, four hundred million innocent citizens died at the hands of Imperator Skolia.”
I couldn’t believe it. He was blaming us. Kurj watched with his shielded eyes, his face a metal mask. But I was an empath, one of his own blood. No matter how well he blocked his anger, I felt it.
Triumph washed over Qox’s face. “But our gallant forces drove away the war-mongers! We saved two hundred million of our brave citizens.”
I gritted my teeth. This was even worse than I expected.
Pride swelled in Qox’s voice. “My people, I cannot take credit for the rescue at Tams. No, that credit goes to a hero like none other you have known, a man whose greatness has only begun to shine, a star rising in Tams’ darkest hour.” He motioned to someone out of range of the camera. For a dramatic moment he stood alone, waiting, his hand outstretched.
Then Jaibriol appeared at the podium.
Ah, Gods. I clamped a cover over my mind while inside I reeled.
Qox gazed out at the assembled aristocracy of his empire. “This man commanded the mission that saved Tams Station.” He laid his hand on Jaibriol’s arm. “I present to you Lord J’briol U’jjr Qox. My son. The Highton Heir.”
“No,” Kurj said.
A collective gasp rose from the Aristos, like a flock of birds startled from their roosting place, rising into the air with a flurry of motion. Their finger cymbals clicked wildly, click-click-click, click-click-click. Jaibriol hardly looked like the same man I had met on Delos. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. He stood next to his father like a dead statue, grim and silent.
Qox described why he had hidden his son’s birth; Imperial assassins had been poised to murder the Highton Heir, but now the assassins were dead, killed in a fierce battle with brave Eubian soldiers who defended Jaibriol at great peril to their lives. He finished with another one of his grating tributes to the greatness of himself, his dynasty, the Hightons, and his empire. The entire time Jaibriol stood there, unsmiling, tall and broad-shouldered, the image of his revered ancestors, every bit the perfect hero, the extraordinarily handsome heir to the Qox dynasty. The Traders would worship him.
Mercifully, the broadcast ended and the hall dissolved into the reality of my hospital room. I sat in bed, too demoralized to speak.
“That was surreal,” Kurj said. “He blames us for Tams.”
“He can’t get away with it,” I said. “Two hundred million witnesses will say otherwise.”
Maybe this son of his will die a miserable death in battle, Kurj thought.
Maybe. Such a loss would devastate Qox more than Kurj knew, destroying the meticulous plans of two generations of Emperors who sacrificed their godforsaken bloodlines so they could produce a Rhon heir. Qox wouldn’t take that risk. Jaibriol would never see combat.
I wondered what the emperor would do if he knew the witnesses to his crimes at Tams existed because his son, the “star rising in Tams’s darkest hour,” had betrayed his father to an Imperial Heir.
#
Rex lay on his back with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in a deep, even rhythm. His face looked so thin. So pale. A gold sheet covered most of his body, up to his shoulders and head. The collar of his blue shirt was open at the neck, somehow giving him a vulnerable look, probably because I was used to seeing him in the intimidating leathers of a Jagernaut.
The floater bed stretched around a cushion of air, with a mesh of superconducting rings woven into the fabric to let the mattress respond to every move Rex made, easing his legs here, tightening under his back there. The floater also rocked slightly, as if it were a boat with waves lapping against its sides. Most empaths preferred a floater to nervoplex because its behavior felt inanimate rather than living.
I hesitated, unsure whether to stay or come back when he awoke. As I started to leave, though, a voice spoke behind me. “Soz?”
I turned around, glad to hear his voice, more than I knew how to say. “You’re awake.”
He watched me with a neutral expression. “Apparently.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
Rex, I thought. I’m sorry.
“For what?” he asked. “Saving my life?”
“For getting you—like—” I looked at the outline of his legs under the blankets. “Like this.”
“Paralyzed,” Rex said. “The word is paralyzed.”
I flushed. “I’m sorry.”
“Soz, don’t.” He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and the bed readjusted, trying to ease his tension. “Stop laying this guilt you think you have at my feet. I can’t deal with it.”
I started to speak, then realized what I was going to do and smiled instead.
“You think that’s funny?” Rex asked.
“I was going to apologize for apologizing.”
His face relaxed into a smile. “Please don’t.”
I sat on the bed, settling as the floater accommodated my weight. Then I took his hand. “You’ll be all right. You just need time to readjust.”
He curled his fingers around mine. “Soz—”
His look made me uneasy. “Yes?”
“I think we should cancel the marriage.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Don’t tell me I don’t mean it.”
“I don’t care if your legs don’t move.”
“I do.”
We can deal with this, I thought.
He kept his mental doors closed. “Whenever I see you—I can’t, Soz.”
Don’t shut me out.
His grip on my hand tightened. Don’t you understand?
No! I caught my lower lip with my teeth. You swore you wouldn’t walk out on me.
“Walk out?” he demanded. “I can’t even walk across the room.”
“That doesn’t make me love you any less.”
He gritted his teeth. “Soz, I can’t do the husband thing.”
“That could change.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I don’t care.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “You have the body and drives of a young woman. You will when I’m a doddering old man.” A muscle in his face twitched. “I refuse to watch you take lovers.”
I stared at him. “You know me better than that!”
“You’re a human being. Not a saint.”
That certainly wouldn’t get an argument from me. But he was wrong about the lovers. “I would never turn from you.”
“Damn it, Soz. Will you listen?” He pushed up on his elbow. “I won’t be the Imperator’s crippled husband.”
“I’m not the Imperator.”
“It’s you who will be Imperator. You need a consort worthy of that position.”
“Don’t tell me that.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. “Even if I do become Imperator someday, it won’t make a whit of difference. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“It matters to me.”
Rex. We can work through it.
He lay down and stared at the ceiling. Then, finally, he opened his mind, opened it wide. I felt what it was like for him to lie there helpless, to remember what we had been, to imagine our life now. I felt his anger, his frustration, his pain at the sight of me. I was like a laser cutting him into pieces. I couldn’t wish that on any human being, most of all not the man I loved.
“Good-bye, Sauscony,” he said.
My voice caught. “Good-bye.”
I left his room blindly, unable to see because of the blurring in my eyes.
#
Open space filled the Imperator’s huge office. The room had no rugs, no ornaments, almost no furniture. Three of its walls were neither glass nor metal, but a surface intermediate between the two. They glowed with gold silhouettes of desert scenes from our grandfather’s home world. Fifty-five years ago, this had been our grandfather’s office. That was before Kurj—accidentally or not—killed him.
I wondered how our mother dealt with it, knowing her firstborn son had killed her father. The Assembly had ruled it an accident. In reading the transcripts of their deliberations, I was never sure whether they came to that conclusion because they believed it or because they feared Kurj’s power. This much was clear: the passions ripping apart my family—my grandfather’s death, my mother’s terrified flight from Kurj, her secret marriage to my father—threatened the survival of the Imperialate. If the Rhon destroyed itself, the Kyle-Mesh would collapse, and without it, Skolia would fall to the Trader’s superior military like eggs dropping on the ground. The Assembly did what they felt necessary to ensure the survival of the tempestuous family that kept the mesh alive.
My mother never spoke about her father’s death. Had Kurj murdered him? Perhaps only he knew the truth. However my mother felt about it, she loved Kurj. Gods only knew why, but she did.
Kurj sat watching me from his chair. His desk stretched the length of the room, a thick sheet of glass with controls imbedded in its surface and in the columns that supported it. The wall behind him was a window as thick as a fist, its glass polarized to mute the biting glare of the Dieshan sun. The office took up the top floor of a reflective tower in the metropolis of Headquarters City. Beyond the window, a landscape of rectangles stretched out, all towers and soaring buildings, glass and steel and Luminex. A flyer appeared from behind a nearby tower, banking in a smooth arc. Sunlight reflected off its glossy black body. A silver insignia glittered on its nose with the letters ISC inscribed inside a triangle, which was inscribed inside an exploding sun.
The window had no drapes. Kurj used it as a tool. He set its polarization to mute the glare, but only enough so it wasn’t blinding. I stood at attention in front of his desk trying not to squint. Even with my enhanced optic nerves, my eyes refused to focus on both the brilliant cityscape outside and Kurj’s shadowed face. He was a dark silhouette, his face unreadable.
“You’ll stay on the world Forshires Hold,” Kurj was saying. “I want you to train JMI cadets.”
I didn’t want these new orders. I had no desire to train cadets at Jacob’s Military Institute. “Permission to speak, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’d like to take Blackstar Squadron out again.”
Kurj continued to watch me. His mind pressed on mine like a weight. I didn’t care. I just wanted to go out and fight and fight until every Trader had suffered, the way Tams had suffered, the way every provider suffered. The way Rex suffered. I wanted to go out and pulverize the bastards.
“So you want another combat assignment,” Kurj said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to fight Traders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kill them.”
“Yes, sir.”
He regarded me steadily. “I once had this same conversation with Rex Blackstone.”
That threw me off balance. “Why?”
Kurj got up and went to the window. He stood with his back to me, his hands clasped behind him as he stared over the city. His city. His planet. His empire.
“It was when you two came back from Tams Station,” he said. “After you had been Kryx Tarque’s provider.”
I stiffened. Kurj knew what had happened from my reports, but I had never spoken about it to him. I didn’t intend to start now.
“You think I want revenge for what happened to Rex,” I said.
“Don’t you?”
“Well, why not?”
“Revenge lust clouds the mind.”
“My mind is fine.”
“Blackstone said the same thing.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“No, it isn’t.” Kurj turned to me. “I need you functioning. In sound body. In sound mind.”
“You’re looking for problems that don’t exist.”
Kurj didn’t answer. He didn’t even move. He just watched me with his metal face.
Warning, my node thought. External probe conducting search.
Let him look. It was true no other telepath had Kurj’s raw power. But it was like his physical strength; blunt. He had none of the finesse needed to uncover what I had h
idden from him.
He stood for a long time, unmoving. Finally he said, “I’ll leave the combat option open. But right now I need you at JMI. I need a good trainer there.”
“Yes, sir.” I knew better than to push. But behind my barriers, hidden within the fortress of ice that surrounded my emotions, I thought, I’m coming back. Too much is unfinished.
Part Two
-
FORESHIRES HOLD
VIII
A Time To Search
Returning to the Foreshires Hold was like coming home. Almost. I had been stationed here a few years after receiving my commission. The barracks where I stayed then were part of a cramped building out in the countryside near Jacob’s Military Institute, or JMI, about twenty kilometers from the city of Eos. Now my “rooms” were in the affluent section of Eos, in a venerable old building with luxury apartments. I would rather have stayed in the barracks. The spare living arrangements might have taken my mind off matters I didn’t want to think about.
My assignment was to design a program to get JMI cadets into better physical shape. Two out of every eight days I worked with them, and the rest of the time their instructors carried out a schedule I had arranged. It was a good program. It would whip any cadet into top shape. But after I finished developing it, I didn’t have a flaming thing to do. So for six of every eight days I sat in my penthouse and brooded. I knew what Kurj was up to. He wanted me to recover from whatever stress he imagined had interfered with my ability to function. I was a vital cog in his war machine, a cog he had decided needed refitting. So he gave me preposterous orders, stuck me in a beautiful city on a beautiful planet, and assumed nature would take care of the rest.
He was wrong. Nature did nothing. I sat in my apartment and stared at the walls until I was ready to explode. I had been a fool to consider leaving combat. I couldn’t retire. It left a person too much time to think.
Kurj was right about one thing, though. The JMI program needed an overhaul. I reworked the cadets’ schedule, everything from what they ate for breakfast to how many kilometers they ran to what scaffoldings they climbed. Only 14 percent of them could meet the physical requirements of the program when I first tested them.