As Shannon pulled up to their group, the Elder glanced toward him. He thought she would send him away, but instead she motioned him forward. It surprised him. He wasn’t someone she normally included in her counsels. His curiosity piqued even more, he nudged Moonglaze toward her, and the riders stepped their lyrine aside to let him approach the Elder. He drew Moonglaze to a stop in front of her and inclined his head with respect.
She spoke in her melodic voice. “You know the ways of the Vales, yes?”
“Fairly well,” Shannon said. “I grew up in Dalvador, but we often visited Rillia.”
“A man approaches. He appears Rillian. I would ask your help.”
“Whatever I can do. As long as it causes no harm.”
She regarded him with her silver gaze. “I would ask that you lead him away so that he may not know we ride through here.”
Guilt washed over Shannon. They had come this far down in the mountains on his behalf. Now he had put them at risk of discovery.
“I will lead him away,” he answered. He wasn’t sure how, but he could come up with some ideas.
“You have our thanks.” She spoke quietly. “When we are safe, we will make camp. Tomorrow we will return to the Blue Dales.”
Disappointment washed through Shannon. He would miss them. But he understood. “The company of your people has been a joy for me.”
A smile played across her beautiful, lined face. “And for us. You are a pleasure, young man. You are welcome in the Vales should you choose to return.”
Shannon hadn’t expected such a testimony from the Elder. “Thank you.” After they bid him farewell, he rode on with the scout, a man about his father’s age, lanky for an Archer, with silver hair pulled into a knot at the back of his head, a beautifully carved bow on his back, and a quiver full of red glasswood arrows.
They soon left the caravan behind. The wind rustled the trees and puffer-flies hummed through the air, the only sounds besides the muted passage of the lyrine. After about ten minutes, they came out on a tall bluff that dropped away into a vale carpeted in silver-blue reeds tipped by purple bubbles. In the distance, a man was riding across the vale.
Shannon watched the man. “I know him.”
The scout glanced at him. “He is from Dalvador?”
Shannon shook his head. “His name is Tarlin. He’s an officer in Lord Rillia’s army.” He wondered why Tarlin was here alone. Perhaps he no longer had employ with Rillia; the end of the wars had greatly decreased the need for soldiers. They still skirmished with outlaws, but nowadays more often than not they served as city guards or in the retinue of a Bard or his honored visitors.
The scout laid his hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “Rillia’s speed with you, son.”
Shannon clapped his hand over the scout’s knuckles. “My thanks.” Then he set off, looking for a way down the cliff.
On the western end of the ridge, a tangled woods had grown up its edge, almost to the top. Within the trees, the cliff sloped down into a hill. As Shannon followed a worn path down through the forest, disks crinkled on the trees around him. The bow on his back brushed one and it inflated into a red-jeweled orb, translucent and light.
He came out of the woods into a field of reeds so tall that they brushed his legs even though he sat high on Moonglaze. The other rider was well down the valley, just a small figure now. Leaning forward, Shannon spurred Moonglaze into a run. It was the first time he had given the lyrine his head in days and it felt wonderful. He relished the wind on his face. Reeds slapped at his boots and legs as he closed on the other rider.
Moonglaze lifted his head and whistled, his voice full of exultation. At that sound, the other rider brought his lyrine around, the animal stepping skittishly to the side.
Shannon reined Moonglaze to a stop a few paces away from the other man. “My greetings, Goodman Tarlin.”
“Gods almighty.” Tarlin stared at him. “Shannon Valdoria?”
Shannon smiled. “It’s been a long time, sir.”
“It certainly has.” Tarlin shook his head. “You’re so much older. I didn’t recognize you.”
“Would you like to ride together?” He could lead Tarlin away from the Archer camp. Shannon indicated the woods that bordered the valley across from the ridge where he had parted ways with the Archer scout. “I’m heading into Rillia.”
He expected Tarlin to start riding again, but the other man didn’t move. For the first time, Shannon realized Tarlin was shaking. It hadn’t been obvious from far away, but he noticed now because the reeds that brushed Tarlin’s knees were vibrating.
“Prince Shannon.” Tarlin took a breath. “Your father has been searching for you.”
Shannon froze. Prince? How would Tarlin know he had such a title? He had used the Iotic word; the language of Dalvador and Rillia didn’t even have a word for prince.
“You’ve spoken to my father?” It took all Shannon’s control to stop himself from kicking Moonglaze’s sides and spurring the giant lyrine to bolt. “Is he nearby?”
“No.” Tarlin clenched the reins so hard, his ragged nails dug visible marks into his skin. “He is at a camp deeper in the wilds. He needs help.”
“What happened?” The pain in Shannon’s legs surged and so did the nausea that had started in his nightmares. Gods, could it be his father? “Is he ill?”
“There is a man, a Bard.” Tarlin’s words tumbled out. “I have never heard of his land. Hollina. But he pays a good wage. I had no one to serve after Lord Rillia disbanded most of his army. This Bard came in peace, looking for men to serve on the city guard for his people. They have too few trained men for a full guard, so he searches other provinces. Your father and I met in a sword competition hosted by this Bard. I took it as a good omen. But your father whispered to me that he needed help. I didn’t know what to do. Although I serve a new Bard, I have known your father for many years. We fought together.”
A chill walked up his spine. “Has this Bard harmed him?”
“By Rillia, I didn’t know. I swear.” Tarlin’s face paled beneath the freckles sprinkled across his crooked nose, which had been broken several times. “I made inquiries. A young woman who serves this Bard, she told me. Your father is a prisoner. His—his legs—he is injured. Terribly, terribly injured.” His voice cracked. “He tried to escape and the Bard crushed his legs.”
“No.” The blood drained from Shannon’s face so fast that dizziness threatened. “Surely my mother, her people, someone must have found him by now.”
“No one has come.”
“But how long has my father been a prisoner?”
“Many days. Sixteen, seventeen?”
“This cannot be!” Where was ISC?
“I’m sorry.” Tarlin wound the reins around his clenched hand. “The girl gave me a message from him. Find help. She gave me the titles to call any of you that I found, to let them know the message was real. Like prince. He said you would understand.”
Prince. Shannon’s mind whirled. It was an Imperialate title. His father wanted him to think of his mother’s people. To warn them? He had to help, but he feared he didn’t have what it took. He had failed at so much, especially where his father was concerned. “Did he tell you anything else?”
“Just another name for the Bard. I didn’t understand.”
“Do you remember?”
Tarlin took a deep breath. And then he said the name that made Shannon want to cry to the winds and die for his father.
Vitarex Raziquon.
16
The Test
Secondary Iral Tapperhaven ran the Military Strategy class at DMA. Tall and lean, with dark hair cut at jaw length, she spent most of the classes listening as students proposed invasion scenarios by ESComm and countermeasures for ISC.
The walls of the room looked metallic right now, gold and ribbed, but their holoscreens could show whatever Tapperhaven wanted. Soz and the other cadets sat in VR chairs around a glossy oval table, some of them reclined with visors over their
eyes, others like Soz with their visors up, operating in “real” space. She was the only novice.
In Dalvador, Soz hadn’t had a referent to judge her suitability as a cadet. Doing well on exams told her nothing about living, learning, and working with other students. These were the top of the crop, those candidates the J-Force believed would make the best Jagernauts out of the thousands who applied to DMA and the few hundred who attended. It hadn’t taken Soz long to see she fit here, and fit well. She no longer felt intimidated.
She was in her element.
Tapperhaven was proposing a new scenario. “The Traders kill both Dyad Keys. The Kyle web fails. ISC loses communications. The Traders launch a simultaneous attack against several major population and military sites in the Imperialate. With crippled communications, how will ISC respond?”
Soz stiffened, and her hand jerked on the table. Tapperhaven had just proposed that the Traders murdered two members of her family: Kurj, the Military Key to the Dyad; and her Aunt Dyhianna, the Assembly Key. Together, the Dyad powered the Kyle web, Kurj coordinating with ISC and Dyhianna with the government.
“Simulation on channel two,” Tapperhaven said. “Activate.”
Breathing deeply, Soz lowered the visor over her eyes and started the protocol. She didn’t yet have the biomech web in her body that would connect her brain to exterior networks, so the simulation appeared only as a three-dimensional holovid on the inside of her visor. It was extraordinarily realistic, but she remained “outside” rather than experiencing it as reality.
If and when Soz progressed to her third year, the J-Force would begin the complex process of augmentation that would turn her into a cybernetic warrior, enhancing her strength, speed, and reflexes. It took several years for a cadet to receive full augmentation and learn to use it properly. Not everyone managed; some washed out of the academy at that stage, when their bodies rejected the augmentations. Soz’s physical exams said she would have no problem, but such tests were never perfect.
For now, she had to be content with a holovid. The simulation placed her in a control chair at the end of a robot arm in the War Room onboard the Orbiter space station that served as one of several ISC command centers. The military spread its centers throughout the Imperialate so that no single strike could cripple the ISC command structure. As an additional safeguard, the Orbiter traveled, never staying in any particular volume of space.
The robot arm could carry Soz anywhere within the War Room. Muted clanks came from other robot arms as they ferried operators through the amphitheater. Below her, hundreds of consoles hummed and flashed with the work of telops, the telepathic operators who linked directly into the Kyle web. Pages hurried from station to station, running errands. It all served as an ISC nerve center, a central node in the vast web that extended through distances measured in light-years.
Kurj sat in a command chair far overhead. It hung like a blocky throne in the Star Dome, which showed a holographic view of space. The gold mesh that encased Kurj’s body linked to sockets in his ankles, wrists, spine, and neck. Filaments threaded into his head as well. Add to that his metallic skin, hair, and eyes, and he looked more machine than man, huge and foreboding above the War Room. According to the specs rolling across Soz’s display, he was coordinating a flood of data from all over the Imperialate, millions of worlds, habitats, outposts, and ships.
Kurj suddenly vanished from the chair. Alarms blared, aides ran, and consoles blazed with warnings throughout the amphitheater. According to the glyphs at the bottom of Soz’s display, the Imperator had just died.
A new message appeared: Page from Secondary Tapperhaven.
Puzzled, Soz blinked twice, responding to the summons.
Tapperhaven’s voice came over the audio prong in Soz’s ear. “Cadet Valdoria, we’re altering your feed for the simulation.”
Odd. Soz had thought all cadets were supposed to receive the same program. Intrigued, she said, “Understood.”
The sim went dark. Then it lightened again. After an instant of disorientation, she realized her view had changed; now she was looking down on the War Room from a higher vantage point. Robot arms still swung through the amphitheater below, but starlight bathed her up here.
Starlight?
Soz looked up. The Star Dome arched only a few meters above her. Incredibly, she was in the command Chair for the War Room. If the Traders had destroyed the Dyad, two other members of the Ruby Dynasty would have to form a new one. It sobered Soz; she and Althor were the only ones with direct military knowledge, and neither of them had anywhere near the experience to command ISC. Nevertheless, if Kurj died, one of them would become the Military Key. The Imperator.
If she was the Imperator in this sim, who was the Ruby Pharaoh? Her mother stood next in line. Roca had prepared her entire life for that position; should the current Dyad fall, Roca could immediately assume her duties as the Key to the Assembly. The same wasn’t true for Soz or Althor. If the military title came to Soz now, she would defer command of ISC to the admirals, generals, and primaries who knew the job. It was the only rational choice. But she would remain Imperator: no one but a Rhon psion could act as the Key in the star-spanning mesh that held together the Imperialate. If anyone with less mental strength than a Rhon psion entered the Dyad, it would kill them.
However, Soz couldn’t act as a Key just by sitting in a command chair. She had to join the Dyad powerlink that powered the web. To do so, she would have to enter one of the Locks, mechanisms that had survived for five millennia, since the Ruby Empire. No one in these modern times could say how the Locks operated; that knowledge had been lost in the Dark Ages after the fall of the empire, and modern science had yet to unravel the secrets of the ancient technology. This much they knew: the Locks let them access Kyle space, a universe outside of their own.
Tapperhaven spoke in her ear. “The simulation is based on interviews with Imperator Skolia about his work in the War Room. The assumption is that you have assumed command but are not yet a Dyad Key.”
“Understood,” Soz said. It limited her options. A simulation couldn’t injure her, but the J-Force techs who created this scenario would mimic reality to their best ability, even using wireless links to access her brain, recreating the experience as accurately as they could manage given that none of them had ever been a Rhon psion installed in the War Room. According to the sim, she had linked to the Chair using an internal biomech web that in real life she lacked. That completed the sum total of her information about this scenario; she was otherwise going into this cold.
Time to get down to business.
Primary Node, respond, she thought—and then jumped as her own amplified thought reverberated in her mind.
The throne’s answer rumbled. ATTENDING.
Whoa. The sensation of power felt so authentic, she vibrated.
What is the situation in the War Room? she asked.
OBSERVE. Statistics flooded her mind too fast to absorb.
Sort, she thought. Prioritize. List the worst failures first. The flood eased, but it still came too fast for her to grasp anything concrete. A river of glyphs poured across her display, taking up all the room. A better way had to exist to process this. Do you have sorting routines created by Imperator Skolia?
NO.
That didn’t fit the Kurj she knew. He was obsessive about putting the universe into precise order. Did he use any?
DEFINE ′HE′ IN THIS CONTEXT.
Imperator Skolia.
YOU ARE IMPERATOR SKOLIA.
Ah. The late Kurj Skolia.
SORTING ROUTINES IMPLEMENTED.
The deluge suddenly transformed into a grid extending in every direction. Each bar contained data about the War Room. Many glowed red, warning of system failures.
Soz scanned the bars, able to read them much more easily than the previous flood. She quickly located the most urgent problems; both the War Room environmental system and a SCAD defense node for a distant battalion were failing due to disruptions
in power caused by the loss of links in the Kyle web.
She had too little time to fix both problems; she would have to let one fail. If the SCAD system collapsed, it would affect several battle cruisers. Communications were limping along well enough that the War Room could send vital information to the cruisers, in this case, intelligence about a Trader unit approaching them. But without their SCAD defenses, the cruisers would lose a tactical advantage, putting them at risk. If the environmental system here failed, the temperature in the War Room would become uncomfortable, the air stale, the working conditions difficult.
The decision seemed obvious: fix the SCAD. But she hesitated. The bars turned a deeper red, warning that the failures had begun. She had to act now; otherwise both systems would collapse.
Fix environment, she said.
COMMAND TOO UNSPECIFIC.
Soz blinked the holicon of an arrow over to a lurid red bar in the grid. Make this green.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLS FOR WAR ROOM REPAIRED. The bar turned green at the same time that the red bar representing the SCAD system vanished, leaving a ragged gap in the grid.
“Damn,” Soz muttered.
She spent the next hour working with the War Room telops to repair systems and contain the chaos. Eventually they brought the SCAD system back up and contacted the cruisers. Two had survived the attack, but the Traders had destroyed the third. Soz gritted her teeth; if this had been real, she would have just killed off hundreds of personnel and destroyed a major ISC command ship.
The display faded into a wash of gold. Tapperhaven’s voice came over the main channel that all the cadets received. “Sim completed. Surface.”
Surface. Like submerged vehicles coming up out of the water. Soz smiled wryly. That was apt. She pushed back her visor and blinked in the lights of the VR room. The other cadets were doing the same, lifting visors, rubbing their eyes. Although she didn’t know who had played what role in the sim, she could guess based on the personalities and behavior of the sim personnel.