Then he found Cirrus. This close, the intensity of her fear wrenched at him. What had Vitrex done to so terrorize her? Althor slipped through shadows, picking his way around bushes. When the intensity of her emotions increased, he kept moving in that direction; when it decreased, he went the other way.
He ended up under a balcony. The wall offered neither an entrance nor any toeholds to climb on. He started toward the nearby corner of the house, then froze when he heard voices. Raising the pulse rifle at his side, he extended his awareness.
“… DNA shipment from Bunker,” a man around the corner said. “The flier dropped off scan, but we don’t know if it crashed.”
“I don’t like it,” another man said. “I want extra guards on Minister Vitrex and the Sphinx delegation, and more people searching the grounds.”
Althor almost snorted. I’m not after Hightons.
That you want his provider works to our advantage, Basalt thought. His police are unlikely to think of guarding a slave.
Althor tried to keep his senses extended, but his mind was tiring. His brain damage made it harder to use his Kyle senses, and the Aristo-like minds of the Razers were sandpaper against his. He turned and headed back the way he had come, searching for a less dangerous entrance.
Then he paused.
With enhanced speed, Althor whirled around to see a Razer standing at the corner of the house, raising a gun. Althor fired and the projectiles from his gun hit the Razer with such force, the man flew back several meters before dropping to the lawn. Althor was already running. Gritting his teeth against the mental backlash from the first Razer’s death, he came around the corner of the house and fired again, focused on the second Razer standing there. His shot threw the guard against the crystal doors behind the patio, and they shattered, shards flying everywhere like an explosion of broken ice.
The shock of the man’s death hammered at Althor as he ran through the broken doors, into the house. His enhanced ears registered sounds and his hydraulics threw him to the side just as the door across the room burst open. He hit the ground and rolled, shooting the Razers as they ran into the room. They had already fired, the projectiles from their guns hissing through the air where he had been an instant earlier. He finished his roll and was back on his feet, coming at the door from an angle now.
Four bodies lay on the floor. Althor ran past them and out into a broad corridor. At the end it widened into a foyer where a staircase swept up to the second story. He took the stairs three at a time. At the top, he found three antique-style doors. The first opened into a library and the second into a sitting room. Although starlight poured through the glass doors of the balcony, he didn’t see Cirrus. Search the room or check the third door? He didn’t have time to do both.
Althor ran to the third door. It opened into a foyer that he crossed in two steps. The next door refused to budge, so he threw his weight into it again and again, until finally it crashed open.
Cirrus’s terror hit him like a tidal wave. The bedroom was dark, but his IR vision showed her bound spread-eagled to a bed. As he ran to her, her voice came out in a ragged sob. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Althor.” He stopped at the bed, gulping in air, and freed her as fast as he could, at the same time blending his mind with hers. Fear swamped her thoughts. She had been lying here for hours with her limbs stretched tight, long enough that she probably couldn’t walk right away.
As Althor helped her stand up, Basalt thought, Take the palmtop. Carefully. Don’t activate any icon on it.
Holding Cirrus around the waist, he grabbed the palmtop and hooked it to his belt. Then he lifted Cirrus, sliding one arm under her knees and the other behind her back. When she put her arms around his neck, he felt better, competent after all, despite his brain damage.
As he strode to the windows, his augmented hearing caught a quiet footfall. Moving with blurred speed, he let Cirrus’s feet drop to the floor, holding her at the waist as he simultaneously spun around, fired at the door, and lunged to the side. His IR vision picked out four Razers. He caught three in his sweep, but then his pulse rifle quit, out of ammunition. His lunge just barely managed to evade the blast from the Razer’s rifle. Althor hurtled his rifle at him with enhanced force as projectiles from the Razer’s rifle stabbed the wall behind him. The narrow snout of Althor’s gun rammed into the guard’s head, and his death scream reverberated in Althor’s mind.
With a groan, Althor lurched backward. He knew ways existed to protect himself from empathic backlash during combat, but he remembered none of them. Fighting his nausea, he hefted Cirrus into his arms and stumbled to the window.
A needle-gun hissed behind him. His shocked systems didn’t respond fast enough and the needle buried itself in his back. A relaxant immediately spread to his muscles. As his grip on Cirrus slipped, she slid into a crumpled heap on the floor. Swaying, Althor sank to his knees next to her.
Engaging hydraulics, Basalt thought. Play dead.
Althor forced himself to hold still. He wanted to recoil from what he felt in the doorway, that mental cavity that sought to consume him, to pull his mind into its depths and suck him dry. Vitrex strode across the room with the surety of IR-enhanced sight. The minister fired again, pumping more drugs into Althor, to make sure he was immobilized. Basalt sent commands to the meds in Althor’s blood and they made him appear unconscious, slumped forward, his head hanging down.
After waiting yet another moment, to make doubly sure Althor was incapacitated, Vitrex knelt next to him. “Gods,” he muttered. “How did you get out of Bunker?”
Althor’s hand shot up and clamped around Vitrex’s neck. For one instant Vitrex froze. Had Althor been in top condition, that hesitation would have finished the minister. But Althor’s hydraulics didn’t kick in fast enough. Vitrex clawed at his hand, and Althor’s grip slipped as Basalt and the relaxant vied for control in his body. With a choked sound, the minister yanked his head free.
In Althor’s IR vision, Vitrex glowed red, like a fire demon. Althor’s sense of time slowed. The minister’s hand went to the pulse gun at his hip and Althor reached for his dagger. In slow motion, Vitrex grasped his gun while Althor’s hand closed around the hilt of his weapon. As Althor drew the short sword, Vitrex drew the gun. Althor gritted his teeth, struggling to speed his hydraulic-driven motion. He had farther to go than Vitrex, having to thrust forward with the dagger where Vitrex needed only to fire. If he couldn’t go faster, he would be dead before his blade found its target.
Despite their enhanced speed, every motion seemed to take ages. Vitrex raised the gun and Althor brought his dagger level with his chest. When Vitrex aimed, Althor could almost feel the projectiles tear through his body. He thrust forward with the dagger, watching its tip cross the chasm that separated him from the Highton.
As Vitrex’s thumb descended on the firing stud, Althor’s blade touched the minister’s chest. Falling forward with the momentum of his thrust, Althor plunged his dagger into Vitrex’s heart. His body plowed into the minister, knocking them to the side while Vitrex fired. With an eerie flare of IR light, projectiles exploded out from the gun and a honed edge sliced Althor’s arm.
The shock of pain snapped Althor’s time sense to normal. He sprawled across Vitrex, his knife embedded to the hilt in the Highton’s chest. Vitrex died, not in trauma or horror—but with an abiding confusion, unable to believe a slave had ended his life.
Althor lurched to his feet. According to Basalt, the fight had taken only seconds and less than two minutes had passed since he had landed the flier. With the smooth motions of hydraulic-driven responses, he gathered Cirrus up into his arms.
Her voice shook. “Who is that?”
“Althor.” He went to the curtains and pushed them aside. The window had no latch, so he smashed it with his fist, running his cuff around the jagged edges to grind them smooth. Wind rushed into the room and threw Cirrus’s hair around their bodies.
The click of a cocked projectile rifle sounded beh
ind them.
“Turn around,” a voice said in Highton.
Althor froze. Then he turned slowly. A few meters away, a man held a rifle trained on Althor. He had the face of a Highton and uniform of a Razer, yet despite his obvious Aristo heritage, his mind had no sense of a cavity. He looked Highton, but he had a normal human mind.
He spoke with a gentleness that stunned Althor, until he realized it wasn’t directed at him. “Cirrus?” the man asked. “Is this really what you want?”
“Ai, Xirson,” Cirrus murmured. “Let me go. Please. I would rather die than keep providing for Hightons.”
Xirson swallowed. Then he jerked his gun at Althor and spoke in a hard voice. “You have sixty seconds. Then I ‘discover’ what happened here.”
Althor nodded. He turned to the window and spoke to Cirrus in a low voice, praying the love-struck Razer didn’t hear. “I have to drop you out the window. I’m sorry. The bushes below will break your fall.” Then he hefted her over the sill.
She made almost no sound, only a choked gasp, before her body hit the bushes. He hauled himself up on the sill and jumped after her. He landed in spiky foliage that tore the unprotected skin of his upper body. Cirrus wasn’t moving, so he picked her up and ran for the forest. Shouts came from the house and someone gave an order to fire. His back itched as he anticipated death by laser fire, pulse projectile, who knew what. Instead another voice cursed, damning the failed web.
Then he was among the trees, then at the flier. As he climbed inside, Basalt thought, You can’t take Cirrus.
What? Why not? Althor fastened her into the copilot’s seat, then slid into the pilot’s seat.
The IR leashes are up and she’s tied to this estate. Right now every single grain of dust on her body has threads extended into her skin. Take her out of range and it will set off a massive neural shock throughout her entire body that I can’t stop.
Flaming bloody hell. Protect her! Althor started the engine. Do for her what you’re doing for me.
I’m trying. But I have less connection to her systems.
If we don’t leave now, they’ll catch us.
Give me twenty seconds.
We don’t HAVE twenty seconds. Althor’s mind raced. Any moment the flier would explode—
Done! Basalt thought. GO.
As the flier leapt into the air, two laser beams crossed below it. Leaves on the ground ignited and trees around the clearing caught fire. When Althor kicked the thrust even higher, acceleration slammed him into his seat. The instant they cleared the woods, he dropped the flier low to the ground and programmed a new destination into the autopilot. Within seconds they were skimming through the mountains, dark and hidden, a stealth hawk running in silence.
Finally he turned to Cirrus. For the first time this night he got a good look at her. She gleamed, her skin a gold sheen dusted with tiny gems, her thigh-length hair spread everywhere in a luminous sparkling cloud, her spectacular body glittering with jewels and little else. He swallowed, absorbing the golden vision. Beautiful hardly began to describe her. How in any ten hells of the Vanished Seas could Vitrex have wanted to hurt her?
Your pulse and blood pressure are too high, Basalt thought.
Never mind. How is Cirrus?
I deactivated the neural threads.
Cirrus stirred. She opened her eyes and looked at him. No recognition showed either on her face or in her mind. No reaction. Nothing.
Basalt! What’s wrong with her!
Calm down, Basalt thought.
I am calm. Answer the damn question.
She’s stunned. It is a logical reaction given she has just been hauled around by people she can’t see, shot at, and tossed out a window. I suggest you comfort her.
Oh. Yes. Of course. Althor flushed. It had been decades since he had felt this self-conscious around a lover.
“Cirrus?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
Her emotions stirred, fear bubbling to the surface. “He cut your arm.”
Startled, Althor looked down. The projectile from Vitrex’s rifle had sliced his biceps. He couldn’t even feel the wound. Yet. He had taken worse, though. “I can patch it up with the flier’s med supplies. It’ll be fine.”
“He was there.”
“He?”
“Minister Vitrex. I heard him.” She sounded calm, but terror simmered in her thoughts. “The dragon.”
When Althor picked up from her mind what she meant by dragon, he nearly gagged. Every time he thought he had the measure of the Hightons, they astonished him anew with their capacity for brutality.
“Vitrex can’t hurt you now,” he said. “He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Positive.”
Grim satisfaction flickered on her face. Then she hesitated. “Who do I belong to now? You?”
That caught him off guard. “Cirrus, listen. No one owns you. You own you.” She smelled so good it was fuzzing up his brain. All he could think was how much he wanted to hold her. “But I, uh, I would like—will you stay with me? If you want.”
“Stay with you?”
“Yes.” He knew they had little chance of escape, but faced with this spectacular woman, the mother of his child, he didn’t want to admit it. “We can take care of our son together.”
Her smile dawned like a sun. “I would like that.”
“Good.”
“But where are we going?”
“To the palace.” He took a breath. “To find the emperor.”
32
The image of Admiral Barzun on the holoscreen was the only light in the shuttle. Soz was aware of the d-team around and behind her, silent in their berths.
“That you came on Asteroid—this made sense to me,” Barzun said. “Your presence on Roca’s Pride carried more risk, but it still made sense. You have unique capabilities. Without you there, holding the net when it collapsed, I doubt we would have made it this far. But a drop-down?” He shook his head. “To risk the Imperator in such a manner is neither acceptable nor necessary.”
She spoke in a low voice. “Chad, why do you think the web collapsed?”
“ESComm got the Lock and tried to use it.”
“They couldn’t crash the web with that.”
“Then what did?”
“It’s me,” Soz said. “We talk as if the web is a mesh in a sea, but in some ways it’s more like a room. The Triad holds up the walls, and the Assembly Key and I are trying to stand in the same place. We can’t do it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what drove the final collapse, but if we bring it up again, it’s going to kill either Dehya or myself.”
He watched her uneasily. “It was my understanding that no way exists to extract a Key from the Triad.”
“When the web is up, no. It has too many links into our brains. Ripping them out would kill us.”
“We can find a solution,” he said. “It isn’t enough reason for you to risk your life this way.”
“I have other reasons.”
“What?”
“I can’t say.”
Barzun leaned forward. “Then I will say for you. You think you have the best chance of locating your brother. You consider it worth risking your death, particularly since you think you’re going to die anyway. It’s either that or cause the Pharaoh’s death, right? You don’t want to repeat Kurj Skolia’s history. But you want revenge for his death. You want Jaibriol Qox dead. Well, I have news for you. Those aren’t good enough reasons.” He made a frustrated noise, as if he were trying to reach her and kept hitting a wall. “We can solve this thing with the Triad.”
Although she couldn’t deny his summation had validity, the truth was far more complex. But she would let all Skolia believe as he believed, that she went to rescue one brother and avenge the other. It fit with the legends of the Ruby Dynasty, tales of atavistic warrior queens who marauded across the stars. It made no difference that she led a modern, egalitarian military rather than an ancient army of female warriors who ow
ned their men and subjugated worlds. Reality would have little effect on the legends that grew around her final acts as Imperator. Those who knew her better, like Naaj Majda and Dayamar Stone, would question that “truth,” comparing it to the pragmatic officer of their experience. But their questions would go unanswered.
“Chad.” She watched him from the dark. “Don’t fight me.”
“I have to. Skolia needs you alive.”
She snorted. “Skolia doesn’t need more warriors. We need diplomats. People to stand up and say, ‘Let’s make peace.’”
“We tried that. Didn’t work.”
“I have to go now.” Softly she said, “Give my regards to my family. Tell them I thought of them.”
“Soz, come back.”
“I can’t. Out.” Then she closed the link.
She felt the d-team around her, felt their questions. But no one spoke. They knew better than to ask questions. As long as the risk of capture existed, she had no intention of going into more detail than what they needed to complete this mission.
They landed at night, a few kilometers from the palace. Sections of the ethereal residence were in flames, from surgical strikes by the ships in orbit or the Jags that had come down to harry the ground forces. ISC wasn’t trying to destroy the palace, only cripple its defenses. The palace was returning fire, but without web control neither side was having much success fighting off the other.
After landing on a hill behind a bank of tall bushes, they disembarked and moved into the woods at their right. Each Jagernaut called up a tactical map produced by Roca’s Pride. Had the web still been up, the map would have been continually updating. But even without that, it was still only a few minutes old.
Soz’s biomech web superimposed the map over the terrain like a ghost. Her IR vision showed the area in fiery hues, letting her match landmarks with psicons on the map. A compass psicon in one corner of her mindscape verified their direction, and she also carried a compass in her gauntlet, should the mindscape fail.