Rising out of a round well in the deck, the engine column dominated the far side of the room. It shone with gold light, making the air glimmer. Cooling conduits spiraled around it, the liquid within sparkling from chemical reactions meant to keep the conduits visible even in the column’s radiance. Consoles lined every bulkhead and formed a circular island in the center of the bay. Lights flickered on them like radiant necklaces.
The inversion engine was quiet, its power banked while the more mundane antimatter engines provided real-space propulsion. Kelric still remembered his first time in an engine room when a starship inverted. The shimmering in the air intensified until he could see nothing except the dazzling column.
Marko was walking toward him. The engineer moved oddly, as if leaning against an unseen hand. The gravity was at 130 percent now, raised when Maccar upped the cylinder’s spin rate. It made Kelric’s limp worse and increased his nausea. He knew why Maccar had changed the spin; if it bothered the Traders enough when they boarded, they might spend less time on the ship. Of course, they could easily order the rotation decreased. But anything that might shorten their stay was worth a try.
He crossed the bay with Marko. As they neared the column, its rumble grew into thunder. He had once listened to the roar of an engine during inversion. For several hours afterward his ears rang. He knew of techs who had repeatedly gone deaf and then had their ears repaired because they refused to block out that roar, determined to experience what they called “the splendor of inversion.”
Right now he had no desire to experience the splendor of anything except escaping the Traders. He took the headset Marko offered and slid it on, bringing the mike to his mouth. Plugs molded into his ears, shaped by the nanobots that saturated their malleable structure. Marko’s voice came over the plugs, too low for Kelric to hear. The nanobots altered the insulation properties of the plugs until Marko came across clear and strong.
“I removed the secondary cooling coil from one cubicle in the bay,” he was saying. He took Kelric to the waist-high rail that circled the well. “The secondary coils serve as backup for the engine and also cool the well.”
Holding the rail, Kelric looked down. The well was three meters deep, large enough to hide even someone his height. About a meter separated its curving wall from the engine column.
Marko pressed a ridge on the railing. Below them, a section of the well slid open, revealing a ladder. Marko climbed down, followed by Kelric. At the bottom, he could hear the magnificent hum of the engine even through his earplugs. The noise receded as the bots altered the structure of his plugs to make them better sound insulators. The plugs also cooled off, probably an effect of the chemical changes within them. He wondered if they heated up when their insulation properties decreased.
The engine column rose up next to them, so bright it made him squint. Light swirled in its depths, then twisted out of real space. It mesmerized him, the shifting, unreal depths of this portal onto another universe.
“You all right?” Marko asked.
“Yes.” Kelric smiled slightly. “It’s been a long time since I was this close to one.”
Marko gave him a nod that acknowledged what Kelric didn’t say, the wonder and terrible beauty of the engine’s contained power.
Next to the ladder, lights glowed on a vertical control strip. Marko entered commands and a floor-to-ceiling panel slid aside in the well, revealing a chamber. Normally a coil would have filled the narrow compartment. Now it stood empty.
Kelric walked into the chamber. It was a hand span taller than him and barely wide enough for his shoulders. When he turned to Marko, his arms rubbed the walls. Even with the door open, he felt claustrophobic.
“I’ve set up a sensor shroud,” Marko said. “It works against X rays, UV, IR, and radio waves. A holofield will disguise this panel and an acoustical shield will hide it from sound probes. Neutrinos are harder to fool, but we can create false ‘shadows’ to make you look like a cooling coil.”
Kelric gave him a wan grin. “I just hope you don’t need the real coil.”
“I’ve plenty more around the well.” Marko tried to smile. “Good luck, Commander.”
Kelric felt the geltab in his fist. “Thanks.”
Then Marko closed the panel. Trapped inside the pitch-black chamber, Kelric fought a surge of claustrophobia. Taking a breath, he closed his eyes and invoked the meditative exercises he had learned as a child, when he was trained to use and protect his Kyle abilities.
Placid. Calm. Serene.
An opaque lake with a still surface.
A thought insinuated itself into his attempted serenity. What if no one let him out? He had no food, water, or light. He couldn’t even move.
Cut it out, he thought. He turned sideways to give himself more room. With his shoulders along the diagonal, the fit wasn’t as tight.
How long had he been here? Five minutes? Bolt probably knew, if its internal chronometer worked. He still couldn’t talk to the node. It added to his sense of isolation, more here than on Coba, where no one had intelligent machines to enhance their intellect.
With nothing to do, he counted seconds. After ten minutes he gave up in boredom. Shifting position, he tried to ease the stiffness in his legs. He wished he could stretch his arms or sit down. Again he tried to meditate. Placid. Serene. Hell, he felt about as serene as an antimatter missile.
He became aware of a change. The rumbling was growing louder. His earplugs muted the sound, but its level was rising too fast for them to keep up.
The engine was preparing to invert.
With alarm, he realized he was about to serve the same function as a cooling coil. The compartment was heating up. Many coils packed the well, so the loss of one shouldn’t dramatically affect their performance. But it didn’t take much to cook a human being.
The rumble became a roar. It reminded him of being trapped with Soz in the spine-cave, as lightning crashed around them, threatening to split open the mountain.
The wrench of inversion hit hard. He was twisting through a Klein bottle, one that existed in complex space and time. The sensation grew more and more intense until finally he groaned, his voice lost in the engine’s thunder.
The noise faded so fast he thought he had gone deaf. Then his earplugs compensated and a subdued hum came to him. He worked up his hands and touched his face; why, he wasn’t sure, maybe to verify he was still solid. The walls vibrated around him as the engine carried the ship through otherspace.
His thoughts circled. Why did they invert? He wanted to believe they were headed back to Skolian territory, that soon someone would release him. It was far more probable, though, that ESComm was taking them into custody for an inquiry into the Chrysalis incident.
Even a few hours ago, Maccar might have successfully argued that he had responded to a hostile threat. The record showed the menacing approach of the Eubian ships. To avoid a diplomatic incident, the Traders would have probably acted to minimize the fallout: a fast private inquiry, a fine for Maccar, and a public apology from the captain to the Chrysalis. ESComm would then escort the Corona back to Skolian space with a warning never to return.
But a few hours ago, before news of Eldrin’s capture broke, the Chrysalis wouldn’t have sent frigates against Maccar. Now Eube had every reason to seek hostilities. What would happen to Maccar and his people? A very public trial. Breast-beating and accusations. ESComm wouldn’t release the Corona with just a fine now. Kelric knew he had to stay hidden. He had a duty to keep himself from being taken by the Traders. He would die here, if not from suffocation or heat, then from thirst and starvation.
He clenched the geltab. The darkness pressed on him like a weight, smothering—
“No.” He closed his eyes, willing his mind to relax.
The fear receded. He had to face reality, though. If ESComm had taken the ship, the geltab offered his only real choice. He said a silent good-bye to his children, the six-year-old daughter he had known only as an infant and the teenage son he had never m
et. Ixpar was neither child’s mother; she had only gained custody of them the day he escaped Coba.
He thought of Dashiva, his second Coban wife, a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty who had ruled the most conservative city-state. His son’s mother. Although Kelric had come to care for her, the cultural gulf between them had been too wide to bridge. In the end, the game of politics played by the twelve Managers on Coba wrested him from her Calanya. But that separation was only a physical manifestation of the chasm that had always existed between them.
With Savina it had been different. Frazzled, mischievous, and charming, she had carried him off to her mountain fortress, seduced him, and then married him. Gods help him, but he had loved her. She died giving birth to their daughter. Like almost everyone else he had ever loved, she had goddamned died.
He tried to put away his grief. His parents lived. His mother. Roca Skolia. Legends of her beauty flourished among three empires. He had never seen her that way, though. What he recalled most from his childhood was her tenderness as she soothed his nightmares or cleaned his scraped knees. As an adult, he saw her political acumen, her skill as a diplomat, her grace as a dancer. Tall and statuesque, with gold hair, large gold eyes, creamy golden skin, and an angel’s face—he wasn’t blind to what everyone else saw. But for him it all paled compared to the beauty of the woman inside, the mother whose unconditional love had helped mold his character.
Both his parents had been that way. His father was one of the finest men he had ever known. There was so much he wished he had said. Father, did I tell you how much I looked up to you? Or how much it meant to know your joy in your children? He regretted all the words he had never spoken. It was too late to tell his father he loved him. He feared he would die alone, unable to tell anyone.
Kelric slept awhile, leaning against the wall. He awoke with his left leg and arm numb. He massaged them in the cramped space until his circulation returned. Always, he kept the geltab in his fist.
He lost all sense of time. Sliding to one knee, he found a bottle of water Marko had left him. He drank in huge gulps. If they didn’t dock soon, he would become dehydrated. Could he risk coming out after the Traders evacuated the ship? They would probably be at an ESComm base. If he left his hiding place, he would set off alarms.
Kelric stood up and slid his arm up to his face. He pressed the geltab against his cheek. It felt cool on his skin. He needed only to swallow it for the poison to work.
No. He lowered his hand. Hope wasn’t gone yet.
Time passed.
To ease his boredom, he worked out Quis strategies in his mind. The patterns evolved, as they always evolved for him, complex and symbolic. He interpreted the results, reading what his subconscious put into the dice, then manipulating those structures to see what he could derive from them.
An odd pattern formed. It took a while to decipher because it referred to someone he barely knew. Jay Rockworth. The Dawn Corps youth on Edgewhirl. Each time he made patterns of Eube and Skolia, he came up with Jay Rockworth. Why? What did a high-school boy from Earth have to do with anything?
Rockworth. He knew the name. From where?
William Seth Rockworth III.
That was it. Seth. Dehya’s ex-husband. Seth had become the Pharaoh’s consort as part of the Iceland Treaty between the Allied Worlds and Skolia. Although such arranged marriages were rare now on Earth, Skolians still used them to establish treaties. Modern customs and the extended life spans of present-day humans intervened, though: after several decades, Seth and Dehya had divorced. Neither the Allied nor Skolian government acknowledged the divorce, since technically that would dissolve the treaty. So ties between the Rockworth and Skolia families remained.
Kelric had met Seth during several diplomatic missions to Earth, when ISC or the Assembly had wanted a member of the Ruby Dynasty along for show. Kelric had earned the dubious honor of being picked most often for that role. As the youngest in his family, he ranked low in their “get out of official functions” hierarchy. That wasn’t why ISC had chosen him so often, though. It seemed the Public Affairs office had considered him usefully photogenic and less likely than his siblings to say anything controversial.
Seth was a retired naval admiral. Eighteen years ago he had been the oldest living human, just making it into the era of life-extending biotech. If he still lived, he would be well over a century and a half old now.
Kelric had no idea how common the Rockworth name was on Earth. He knew only Seth’s line. The admiral had many descendants, though. Jay Rockworth, maybe? Although the boy didn’t resemble Seth, that wouldn’t mean much if he were more than a generation removed. For that matter, if Jay had blood ties to such a wealthy family, he could probably afford to make himself look however he wanted. His physique and features were so classically perfect it wouldn’t surprise Kelric if he had been bodysculpted.
So why did Jay look familiar? It made no sense.
A change in the engine’s rumble interrupted his thoughts. He tensed, listening. It wasn’t so much a difference in the engine as—what? The scrape of ceramoplex—
The panel of his compartment slid open.
9
Warlord
The engine’s radiance blinded him. Kelric snapped the geltab to his lips in the same instant someone grabbed his arms. A jumbled rush of thoughts hit him: they didn’t want to shoot, for fear of damaging him. They dragged him out of the chamber, pushing down his hand that held the geltab. In the brilliant light, he barely made out four people. He felt what he didn’t see. Like a void, the mind of an Aristo warlord opened before him.
Kelric fought. It made no difference that he couldn’t see his antagonists. His body toggled into combat mode and Bolt calculated the responses it expected from his captors. He was well below optimum, stiff from his hours in the compartment, but he needed only pull his arm free long enough to take the geltab.
They changed their minds about shooting him. He never saw the guns, but he felt the shots. Neural blocks spread in his upper body, stealing his ability to move. He started to fall, but someone caught him. Someone else pried the geltab out of his fist.
No. Why hadn’t he taken it before? He had gambled on life—and lost.
They locked his wrists behind his back. Straining to see, he made out four officers in black, each wearing a visor to protect his eyes. They took his upper arms and dragged him to the ladder. He couldn’t see the Aristo, but he felt his presence.
Someone lowered a sling into the well. Fast and efficient, the team pushed Kelric into the sling and tied him into its mesh. Then someone hoisted him out of the well. At the top, four blurred figures freed him with the same quick, impersonal motions. Light blazed around them. They pulled him to his feet, one on each side holding his arm, and took off with long steps, forcing him to stride between them or be dragged. He managed to walk only because the blockers had affected his legs less than his upper body.
They took him out into a corridor. When they shut the hatch to the engine bay, the sudden loss of light made the area almost black to Kelric. The guards started down the corridor, pulling him with them, their guns drawn and ready.
As his eyes adapted, he was able to see his captors, eight officers and the Aristo. Did they believe they needed eight guards to subdue one man? If he had been at full capacity, they would have been right. They must have known, or suspected, they were dealing with a Jagernaut.
The Aristo walked a pace in front of him, to the left. He was as tall as Kelric, but leaner. His black hair shimmered. He had a narrow face, with a hooked nose and classic lines. His skin looked as smooth, and as cold, as snowmarble.
He glanced at Kelric. Red eyes. Ruby-hard. Kelric stared back, mesmerized by that gaze. He was falling, falling …
No. He shored up his mental barriers. The sense of falling retreated but didn’t disappear.
The Aristo held up his hand and the guards stopped, bringing Kelric to a halt. The warlord came to stand in front of him. He studied his prisoner, his face un
expectedly kind. Then he spoke in a mild voice. “What is your Kyle rating?”
Kelric stared at him. The Aristo’s apparent gentleness did nothing to mute the sense of an abyss his mind produced.
“Answer me, gold man,” the Aristo murmured.
“Six,” Kelric lied.
“Six. Just barely a telepath.” The warlord gave him another of his incongruously kind smiles. Then he hit Kelric open-handed across the face.
The blow slammed Kelric into the grip of his guards. If they hadn’t held him, he would have fallen, unable to keep his balance with his body partially paralyzed and his arms locked behind his back. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself upright and stood straight, meeting the Aristo’s gaze.
The warlord tilted his head. His thoughts washed over Kelric: he hadn’t expected his prisoner to show such strength of will. In his oddly gentle voice, he said, “Again. What Kyle rating?”
Kelric almost repeated six. But to what point? He needed a lie they would believe. Speaking with difficulty, as if forcing out information he didn’t want to reveal, he said, “Ten.”
“Ten. I’ve never known a provider with such a high rating.” The Aristo grinned. “I’m pleased, Jagernaut. You’re going to make me a very wealthy man. Or wealthier, I should say.”
Jagernaut. So they knew. Unless his ability to read people had suddenly plummeted, though, they didn’t know he was also titled.
“How did you find me?” Kelric asked.
His captor smiled again. “I asked your engineering officer. Charming fellow, Commander Jaes.”
After working with Marko Jaes, Kelric knew the engineer. Marko wouldn’t have willingly given him away. Had ESComm done the interrogation? Or officers like these? He didn’t recognize their uniforms. They looked more like a private security force than any branch of Eubian Space Command.
He hoped Marko was all right. The Traders did have humane forms of interrogation. They didn’t need torture, which violated the Halstaad Code of War. Given that Maccar and his crew weren’t psions, a good chance existed the Traders wouldn’t trample the Code, particularly if they intended to hold a public trial.