Quasis jump, Destrier thought.
Althor groaned with the strain on his body. Basalt tried to activate his hydraulics to support him, but they no longer responded. He hung onto consciousness, refusing to give in to the encroaching darkness.
Quasis jump, Destrier thought. Decks 6 and 29 destroyed.
Major Hooklore, Althor thought. No answer came from his first officer. The flotilla was nothing but debris, the jagged pieces moving at near light speed. Only Destrier’s bridge remained intact, leaving little doubt ESComm knew who was onboard.
Althor wet his lips. Destrier, initiate self-destruct macro 1101. He transmitted the secured codes. He would never have wanted to end this way, but it was better than becoming an ESComm prisoner.
After a pause, Destrier thought, ESComm has inserted quasis generators into my hull. Apparently they put the generators in some of their tau missiles, instead of warheads. When the taus hit, they deposited the generators, which then produced rogue quasis fields. Those fields are interfering with my self-destruct by freezing key systems.
What the hell? Althor had never heard of the technique. It seemed impossible. How had ESComm kept the taus from destroying themselves and their targets on impact? Swallowing, he thought, Basalt, engage my internal self-destruct.
Engaged, Basalt answered.
Destrier, Althor thought. Crash any of your remaining web nodes and erase any files that haven’t already been destroyed.
Working. Destrier’s response crackled with static. Its next thought came faint and garbled: I am being boarded.
Slam your hatches on them. Closed with enough force, the hatches could slow an armored warrior and cut an unarmored invader in two. It was like trying to stop a flood with a bucket, but it was better than nothing. Looking over the bridge below, where his people lay dead in their chairs, he gritted his teeth. Open and slam them as fast as you can.
Done … Even dying, Destrier continued to fight, like a drum in his mind, keeping time with the pulse in his body.
Basalt, he thought. Why aren’t I dead?
The self-destruct toggle in your biomech web is inactive.
No! How?
0.0056 seconds before you gave the self-destruct order, you went into quasis. I calculate a 98% probability it was produced by ESComm generators and used to sabotage your self-destruct.
A chill went up his back. Kill me. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. They’re almost here.
The quasis is blocking my systems.
Althor fought the protective cocoon around his body until he pulled free. He grabbed a section of the chair arm and yanked with normal strength, unable to activate his hydraulics. The panel resisted, then buckled and ripped in a jagged edge. He couldn’t get it off, so he jerked his wrist across the edge, over and over, until blood covered his arm and stained the cocoon.
Loss of blood has reached critical stage, Basalt thought.
Althor sagged back in his chair. Good-bye, Basalt.
Regret came to him from the node. Good-bye, Althor. Then: Bridge penetrated.
In a daze, Althor saw ESComm soldiers floating toward him through the stardome, the human fortresses called waroids, their mirrored armor reflecting the bloodred warning lights. “Too late,” he whispered. “I’m dead.”
He was conscious when the first waroid reached him, but then the universe went dark.
13
Snow fell softly through the night, piling drifts against the shuttered windows. A single oil lamp on the wall shed yellow light over the room. Soz sat curled on the bed with Jaibriol, a woven blanket over their knees as they watched their children sleep. Jai and Vitar were in the bedroom, but had left the door open. Jai was lying on his back, one long leg off the bed, one arm over his head. Vitar’s bed was half-hidden by the wall so only his head and shoulders showed. He slept with a six-year-old’s blissful peace, on his side, his hands tucked under his head.
In the main room, Lisi was sleeping in a bed across from where Soz and Jaibriol sat, and del-Kelric lay in his cradle, his face angelic in the dim light.
“They look so peaceful,” Jaibriol said.
“That’s because they’re asleep,” Soz replied.
He laughed. “It’s the only time they’re all quiet at once.”
Soz grinned. “Just wait another few months.” She took his hand and laid it on the swell of her abdomen. “You’d think that at the doddering age of sixty-four I would know better than to keep doing this.”
“You aren’t sixty-four. I’d say early thirties. Younger than me.”
“Really? How did I manage this remarkable feat of halving my age?”
“You know what I mean.” Drowsily Jaibriol added, “All those little nanobugs we have in our bodies that make us age slower.”
She tilted her head. “I’m glad they really delay aging instead of just making me look young.”
“There’s a difference?”
“If it was only cosmetic, I couldn’t have children at this age.”
Jaibriol rubbed her stomach. She’s definitely in there.
That she is. With the ease of long familiarity, they melded minds and reached out to their child, suffusing her with affection. Her brain hadn’t developed enough to comprehend love on a conscious level, but she responded with an innate sense of comfort more primal than thought.
Jaibriol lifted Soz’s chin and bent his head to kiss her. As their lips met, a giggle came from the bedroom.
“Saints almighty,” Soz grumbled. They looked to see Vitar smirking at them. He laughed and yanked the covers over his head.
“One wonders,” Jaibriol said dryly, “how we ever found the privacy to make a second, let alone a fifth.”
Soz smiled. “I seem to remember a patch of crystal grass.” Penned and contained, the singing crystals created an effective trap for tomjolts. If people didn’t get too close to the grass, they could enjoy the singing without going into a trance. The effect was rather like that of drinking a fine wine, and inspired certain sensual activities that went with the mixture of good spirits and good companionship.
“Ah, yes,” Jaibriol murmured. “I remember.”
Soz sighed, content. “This is a good life. I don’t think I would want to go back even if we could.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Nor I.”
* * *
Dawn suffused the Skyhammer ruins, slanting in the doorway of the tower. Bathed in that light, Kurj sat on his bedroll and broke his fast. While he ate, his palmtop read him his mail, sent down by telops on Anvil, the ISC dreadnought that had brought him to SunsReach.
A footstep rustled outside. Looking up, he saw a woman in the doorway with gold hair drifting around her body, the hip-length curls haloed by the dawn’s radiance.
Startled, Kurj stood up. “Mother.”
“My greetings.” Roca smiled. “You look rested.”
“It’s quiet here.” He motioned toward the plaza behind her. “Just me, sky, and grass. Nothing else on the entire planet.”
“Come outside with me,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
“All right.” Kurj picked up his palmtop. A red light glowed on it, notifying him of mail marked urgent. He brought the message up on the screen. “That’s odd.”
“What is it?” Roca asked.
“Dehya is shouting at me.”
“Dehya?” She laughed. “I’ve never heard her raise her voice in her life.”
“Look at this.” He showed her the message:
KURJ, DON’T LEAVE SKYHAMMER. STAY THERE.
“Are you sure she wrote it?” Roca asked. “That’s hardly her style.”
“It’s probably a shell.” When working on the web, Dehya often started up shell processes that ran off her mind and performed routine functions while she concentrated on more intricate tasks. Kurj suspected she had imparted urgency to this one, and shouting at him was its unsubtle rendering of her undoubtedly more nuanced intent.
He moved his finger through the response holic
on, a bird floating above the screen. When the palmtop prompted for his message, he wrote: Why? and sent it to the Anvil, marked for transmission to Dehya. Then he clipped the palmtop to his belt.
He and Roca walked together into the dawn. Crisp air surrounded them. No hint of insects, birds, or trees touched the landscape on this aging biosculpted world where nothing survived now but fields of bronzed grass that stretched to the horizon. Three towers stood across the plaza. In unspoken agreement, they went to the leftmost tower. Its door had long ago disintegrated, but the tower remained intact, built from a stone hardened by ancient molecular bonders. The building had deliberate crooks, leaning right, then left, then right. The staircase inside climbed in an asymmetric spiral that had grown more uneven over the ages.
Kurj followed Roca up the narrow stairs, four levels in all, to a drafty chamber at the top. In its entrance they could stand up straight, but a few paces away the floor rose in a shelf, to within a meter of the ceiling. The doors to their right and left had been made by an ISC officer stationed here a while back who had nothing much to do. No trees grew on SunsReach, so Kurj had allowed him to import the wood. Kurj leaned past Roca and pushed open the right-hand door, revealing a stone bridge that crossed from this tower to another one only meters away.
Roca eyed the bridge. “Do you think it’s safe? It’s been a century since we last used it.”
“I think so. But I’ll go first.” Kurj went out onto the bridge. Its sides came up to his elbows and were a good two hand spans thick, but its width was so narrow he had to turn sideways. The last time he had been here, as a small boy, he had run across the bridge without a thought for its dimensions.
He eased his way along the span until he reached the landing on its far end, a narrow terrace that circled the tower. The crown of the structure curved up and over his head in the shape of a huge angular flower. This second tower had no entrance; its “stem” was solid stone, sculpted to resemble a plant, though time had erased details of the artistry.
Turning to face the first tower, Kurj beckoned to Roca. She came across the bridge, watching him as she walked, as if his presence alone could prevent the bridge from crumbling. When she reached the landing, her relief filtered past her mental barriers and touched his mind.
So they stood together, gazing out at the rippling ocean of yellow-gold grass that lapped at the bases of the towers and stretched to the horizon, undulating in the breezes, its surface unbroken by other plants, structures, or hills. Silence surrounded them, embodying the unspoken words that shadowed their lives.
Kurj’s palmtop chimed. Pulling his attention in from the horizon, he unhooked the palmtop and brought up the new message:
I don’t know why.
“Is that from Dehya?” Roca asked.
“More likely one of her shells.” He sent a response: Can you find out? Then he put away the palmtop and extended his left arm, inviting Roca to proceed along the terrace that circled the tower. The stone ledge was just barely wide enough for them to walk side by side, but no rail protected its edges, so Roca went first and Kurj followed.
As they rounded the other side, the third tower came into view. With a sturdy fluted stem and bulbous head, it resembled an ash-gray water tank, except for its flattened top, which had a diameter of about fifty meters. Three meters of open space separated it from the terrace where Kurj stood with Roca.
“The bridge is gone,” Roca said.
Standing at the edge of the terrace, Kurj stared down at the ground far below. The remains of a bridge lay half-buried in the grass. Scanning the terrace, he saw only one possible replacement, a plank of wood leaning against the central column of the tower, probably left by the carpenter who had built the doors.
As Kurj went to the plank, Roca said, “That won’t support you.”
Node C, attend, he thought. Will the plank hold my weight?
Estimated probability of support is 64 percent, C answered.
“It should be fine,” he said. With his nodes calculating trajectories and his hydraulics guiding his motion, he hefted the plank into the air. Its far end landed with a smack on the other tower.
His palmtop chimed. Curious, Kurj brought up the message:
Please stand by.
Roca peered over his arm. “What does that mean?”
“She must be running one hell of a calculation.” He sent back: I’m almost ready to come home. I have a war to win, an Assembly to pacify, and a bride waiting. If you want me to stay, you have to give me a reason.
Roca smiled. “Which do you think is easier, pacifying the Assembly or winning the war?”
He laughed and put away his palmtop. “Good question.”
Her face gentled. “You hardly ever laugh that way anymore.”
“What way?”
“As if you genuinely feel like it.”
That caught Kurj off guard. At a loss for a response, he started across the plank. It was only wide enough for one of his feet, which made balance difficult, but his biomech web determined the forces needed to keep him steady, down to every gesture and weight shift. Soon he was stepping onto the rounded edge of the third tower.
He turned to Roca. “Come on.”
“I’ll fall,” she called. “I don’t know how you did that.”
“You’re a dancer. Far more graceful than me.”
“You have biomech.”
That gave him pause. He took his biomech for granted, but she had far less than he. Kurj was about to start back when she stepped onto the plank.
“Never mind,” he said. “I’m coming back.”
Roca ignored him, placing her feet with care. Kurj tensed, suddenly aware of how fragile she looked, suspended high above the sea of grasses, breezes ruffling her glorious cloak of hair. As he watched, antiqued memories came to his mind. Decades ago, for the short span of time when he and his grandfather Jarac had both been in the Triad, before Jarac died, their minds had overlapped. Kurj knew Jarac’s memories. Seeing Roca now, he recalled her as a child, balanced on a log above a stream. Daughter. Sister. Mother.
She reached the end of the bridge with no mishaps. As she stepped onto the tower, Kurj’s palmtop chimed. Roca looked up with a start—and lost her balance.
Kurj lunged for her and clamped his arm around her waist, moving with enhanced reflexes and speed. Normally a man his size moving so fast would have gone over the edge. But his hydraulics took over, helping him control his momentum, and he stumbled back on the tower. The plank rattled, jumped, and skittered off the edge, and slowly fell to the ground far below.
They sat down hard, Kurj holding Roca in both arms now. She stared up at him like a captured bird, and they froze, watching each other, only a meter from where the tower curved down under itself.
Embedded in that instant of time, like gold flies in amber, they stared at each other. Then the moment cracked open and Kurj let her go. They stood up, the wind blowing her hair around them.
“It didn’t seem this precarious last time,” she said.
“No. It didn’t.”
They went to a sunken area in the center of the tower that had been the bottom of a room. Kurj jumped into the cavity, surprised by how much smaller it looked. The walls that had loomed over him when he was five only came to his shoulders now. The room was about six by ten paces, its near side longer than the far. Its only roof had consisted of two arches, one that spanned the longer sides and one that spanned the shorter. The arches had met overhead in the room’s center, but all that remained of them now were their bases.
As Roca climbed over the edge, he realized she had no comm or palmtop. “What ship brought you here?” he asked.
She jumped down next to him. “The Bayshore.”
“Edyth Klo is the commander, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Why did she let you down here without a comm?”
“I didn’t want one.”
“She should have made you take it.”
Roca shrugged. “If
I need one, I can use yours. Besides, you know they’re monitoring everything we do.”
“I have a shadowmaker in my cyberlock.” The technology was classified, but his staff all knew he carried it. The shadowmaker hid him in a sphere of shadow space about four meters in diameter. “When it’s activated, like now, no one can monitor me. Or you, if you’re within two meters of me.”
“If I’m within two meters of you, I can use your palmtop.”
He spoke softly. “Suppose I won’t allow it?”
She took a moment to absorb that. Then she said, “You gave me a promise on the Orbiter. I trust it.” Watching him, she asked, “Must I spend my life fearing my own son?”
Startled by the blunt question, Kurj turned away and walked to the opposite wall. He sat on a stone ledge there, facing her again. In the quiet air of SunsReach he could hear her breathing.
“You love your children too much,” he said.
“I’ve always thought it wasn’t enough.” She leaned against the wall, her palms flat on the stone. “Maybe if I had I done a better job, you would be happier.”
“What makes you think I’m not happy?”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you think I love you too much?”
“I didn’t specify myself.”
“It’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
“You see your children through a filter,” he said. “It distorts the truth.”
“And what is the truth you think I refuse to see?”
“What I am.”
“What is that?”
Bitterness edged his voice. “A tyrant. A military dictator. A murderer. A rapist.”
She stared at him. “Saints almighty, what have you been doing out here, locked away with your thoughts?”
Dryly he said, “Introspection. It is profoundly unpleasant.” He leaned forward, his booted feet planted wide, his elbows on his knees. “Darr was right.”
She stiffened. “Darr Hammerjackson is our past.”
“The past never goes away.” He tilted his head. “Have you ever compared an organic memory with one you’ve stored in a node file? It is amazing the distortions time creates. Give a man long enough and he can convince himself of his innocence in anything.”