The cadets shifted around in their seats, stretching, rubbing stiff muscles. A murmur of conversation started. Apex Colormock, a fourth-year student, said, “What the hell idiot set up that sim to fix the environmental controls first?”
Soz gritted her teeth. Great.
Another cadet laughed tiredly. “You better hope it wasn’t any instructor watching this session, Apex.”
Soz wished the instructors had done it. Serve Apex right for calling them idiots. Unfortunately she was the idiot.
“We’re running late,” Tapperhaven said. “Go over a download of the session tonight, and tomorrow we’ll do the analysis.”
Relief showed on more than one face that they wouldn’t have to dissect their performance now. Soz felt only frustration. That decision had made sense. It still did. She was convinced of that even if no one else thought so.
As the cadets filed out of the room, Tapperhaven discreetly motioned for her to remain. Soz went through her holobook as if she were searching for something. It was pride; she didn’t want anyone to know Tapperhaven wanted her to stay behind. At least none of the others seemed to realize Soz had made the environment decision.
After everyone else left, Tapperhaven said, “Wait here.” She crossed to a door at the back of the room and touched a panel. The door slid to the side—and Tapperhaven left.
Soz blinked. What was going on?
Kurj came through the doorway.
Ah, hell. Soz wanted to melt into the floor. She saluted instead, clenching her fists and smacking her wrists together as she raised her arms straight out from her body.
He returned her salute. “At ease, Cadet.”
“Thank you, sir.” Soz lowered her arms, but she didn’t feel the least bit at ease.
Kurj went to the head of the table and stood with his muscular arms crossed, studying her, the gold shields over his eyes. It never stopped amazing Soz that he could so resemble their mother, yet look so hard and unyielding. His square-jawed face and regular features reminded her of Althor and Kelric, but with a harsh cast that neither they nor their mother possessed.
“Why the environmental system?” he asked.
Soz met his gaze. “If it went out, it would have affected the performance of every person working in the War Room.”
His voice cooled. “It certainly affected the performance of the crew on the battle cruiser when the Traders blew them up.”
Soz winced. “Yes, sir.” After a pause, she said, “Permission to ask a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Have you run that scenario with anyone else as Imperator?”
“I’ve done it myself.” His shielded eyes gave away nothing. “Althor has also. Three other cadets this year.”
“What did you each do?”
“We all fixed the SCAD, except one person, who didn’t make the decision soon enough to save either system.”
“Did I lose more personnel?”
He spoke evenly. “I lost thirty-three soldiers. You lost three hundred six.”
Gods. She hadn’t expected that. “What about the others?”
For a long moment he didn’t answer. Just when Soz felt certain he wouldn’t respond, he said, “Althor lost three hundred twenty-four. The other cadets all lost more than four hundred. The one who didn’t fix either system lost over a thousand.”
“Did you do it as a cadet?”
Kurj shook his head. “The first time was a few years ago.”
No wonder he had done so well. He came to it with decades more experience. Compared to cadets at her level, she had lost fewer personnel. “I was right to fix the environmental system.”
Kurj frowned. “Or lucky.”
Her good mood faded. It wasn’t luck. He knew that. She couldn’t say that to her CO, though, so she just looked at him.
To her unmitigated surprise, Kurj smiled, his teeth white against his metallic skin. “If looks could incinerate, I would be ashes right now.”
Seeing him drop his guard startled her more than anything else he could have done. “My apologies, sir.”
Kurj pushed his hand across his close-cropped curls. “The problem, Soz, is that to lead well you have to know how to lose. You can’t always win. You can’t always be right. You lost over three hundred people in that sim, and one of our most powerful cruisers. When you go out into real combat, real people will die.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
“No. You don’t. You think you do, but you’ve never really been tried.” He came around the table to her. “You’re flying through DMA faster than any cadet in decades. Later today Tapperhaven will tell you that we’re going to accelerate your biomech surgery. If you’re willing, we’ll start the operations in a few weeks.”
Her excitement leapt. “Sir! Yes, sir! You won’t regret it.”
“I hope not.” Quietly he said, “Because I’m not sure you’re ready.”
Would he never be satisfied? “What more do I have to do to prove myself?”
“Survive when you aren’t right. Lead after you fail. It is a far more dif ficult task.”
Soz had no answer for that. She would do what she could, always, regardless of whether or not she won. And he was wrong if he thought she had never lost. She had already failed her family. To come here and be his heir, she had given up her home and turned her back on the father who had loved her unconditionally all her life. Until now. What else did Kurj want her to lose? The whole damn war, which Skolia supposedly wasn’t fighting anyway, because it had never been declared, but which nevertheless killed thousands of soldiers every year?
Kurj was watching her face. She felt his mind nudge hers, but she kept her mental barriers strong.
“You want to fight the Traders,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Why else would she be here?
“Kill them.”
“If necessary.”
In a low voice he said, “Obliterate them.”
“I just want to defend my people.”
He spoke softly. “The day will come, Soz, when you’ll want to wipe the universe clean of any trace the Aristos ever existed, when you’ll want to see every one of them die a long, painful death.”
Soz stared at him. Never had he revealed so much of what lay behind that formidable metal surface he presented to the public.
“When that day comes,” Kurj said, “I need to know I can trust your judgment. I need to know that the cocksure Jagernaut who obliterated the competition at DMA will act like an officer and not a juggernaut bent on revenge.”
Soz didn’t know where to put this. She had no referent to understand. “I will always act in the best interests of ISC. Personal revenge has no place in my duties.”
“You say that now.” Bitterness edged his voice. “We never stop paying the price. You, me, Althor, all the Rhon. You’ve spent your life in a bucolic paradise. But that is over. You are an Imperial Heir. Skolia will take everything you have, tear you up, spit you out, and leave you crumpled, but you have to drag yourself up and try again. No one else can do it. If we don’t serve as Keys, the Imperialate will fall.” His words ground out. “You hate that I’ve pitted you and Althor against each other. Well, know this: only a handful of Rhon psions stand between trillions of people and enslavement by the Traders. Learn that. Live it. Breathe it. Then come back and tell me that you’re ready to be my heir.”
Her anger quieted. “I can’t know what you’ve endured. I can only guess. But I’ll do my best not to fail.”
He spoke tiredly. “It’s all that any of us can do.”
Soz hoped her best would be enough.
“Please.” Eldrinson whispered in the darkness, lying on the pallet. He felt Vitarex’s presence in the tent. The Aristo spent hours here, like a healer sitting vigil, except no sane healer would crave the agony of his patient.
“You can’t take me when you leave here.” Eldrinson spoke past the pain that had been his companion now for days. He no longer knew how many seizures he had suffere
d or what additional damage they had done to his legs. “Let me die.”
Vitarex answered from deeper in the tent. “I’ve no wish to see you die. I would take you with me if I could. But I cannot.” Frustration darkened his voice. “I can do nothing until the ODS stops all this extra activity of theirs.”
Eldrinson’s pulse leapt. ODS? Vitarex would assume the acronym had no meaning to his captive. But he knew. Orbital Defense System. ISC was searching for him. He said nothing, schooling his face to impassivity, knowing how close he skimmed to the edge of discovery.
A rustle came from across the tent. “Come,” Vitarex said.
The entrance flap scraped open and footsteps entered. Eldrinson picked up dismay from a familiar mind, the young man who served as a valet and cook, the husband of the woman who tended him. From the crinkling of cloth, Eldrinson guessed the man was bowing to Vitarex.
“My honor at your presence, Lord Vitarex,” the man said.
“Indeed,” Vitarex said. “Go fetch the men who helped me capture this man. Have them bring his belongings.”
“Yes, sir.” More footsteps, and the flap rustled again.
For a time Eldrinson lay, turning his concentration inward to help him deal with the pain. His world had narrowed to the surges of agony. After a while he became aware that Vitarex was speaking with someone else.
“ … anything else in his bags?” Vitarex asked.
“Just his pipe,” a man said.
“Ah, well. It is probably wishful thinking on my part.” Vitarex sounded as if he were talking to himself. “The severity of his injuries probably makes him seem like a more powerful psion than he actually is.”
“Sir?” the other man asked.
“It is nothing,” Vitarex said. “You may go.”
“Do you want to look at his pipe?”
“No. That won’t be necessary.”
More footsteps. As the flap crinkled, Vitarex said, “Ah, why not? Bring me his pipe. I might as well take a look.”
“Very well, sir.” The other man sounded as if he had almost made it out of the tent.
Foreboding grew in Eldrinson. Pipe? He didn’t smoke. The man could mean an arrow, but a native wouldn’t call it a pipe. Besides, he hadn’t brought a bow and arrows.
Then, suddenly, he knew what they meant. Not pipe.
His air syringe.
Gods almighty! He had to distract Vitarex before the Aristo saw the syringe. Eldrinson groaned, which took no acting.
Footsteps padded across the carpet and disk mail clinked. A hand brushed the tangled hair back from Eldrinson’s face. “Would you like something to eat?” Vitarex asked. “Drink? Anything?”
“No.” What would turn Vitarex’s attention from the “pipe”? The Aristo was fastidious to the point of obsession. He had his servants bathe Eldrinson far more than any dying man would need.
“I feel ill,” Eldrinson said. “I think—my last meal—I can’t hold it.”
“Wait.” Vitarex sounded alarmed. “I will have someone bring a pot and washcloth. No, I’ll go myself.” His mail clinked and his footsteps receded. Eldrinson breathed out in relief; he hadn’t thought the Aristo would want to see him vomit. Vitarex would be gone when the warrior returned with the syringe. Eldrinson could drag himself over, take the syringe, call Roca, and then hide the evidence.
Someone tapped at the tent. Vitarex’s footsteps paused and he said, “Come.”
The man from before spoke. “Here are his bags, milord.”
NO! Just a few more moments and Vitarex would have been gone.
“Very well,” Vitarex said. “Show me the pipe.”
Eldrinson groaned loudly and began to choke.
Vitarex swore in Highton, the Aristo language. The oaths weren’t part of the Highton that Eldrinson had learned from his tutors, but he recognized them anyway. Roca, in one of her more playful moods, had taught him how to cuss in ten offworld tongues.
Vitarex spoke fast. “I will look at the tube later. Right now I need a wash—” The sudden cessation of his words left a gaping silence.
“Lord Vitarex?” the warrior asked.
“Well, well,” the Aristo murmured. “It’s an ISC-issue medical air syringe. Top of the line.”
Eldrinson closed his eyes, a useless habit since he couldn’t see anyway. It didn’t matter. The game was over.
“An interesting development.” Vitarex’s footsteps came back to the pallet. “You still planning to be sick?”
Eldrinson said nothing. What was the use? The less he spoke, the less he could reveal.
Vitarex’s mail creaked as he knelt. “And why, my dear rustic farmer, would you have a nanomed-enhanced syringe issued by the Imperial Space Command of Skolia? Hmmm?”
“The healers at the port gave it to me.”
“Did they now?”
“Yes.”
“I could twist your legs to make you tell me the truth.” Vitarex spoke in a deceptively soft voice. “But then, if pain drove you to reveal your secrets, you would have done that already, Shannar. Or should I say Prince Whatever? Perhaps you are even the Dalvador Bard, the man who married Roca Skolia. Tell me, how is she in bed? Do you like her—”
“Silence!” The shout tore out of Eldrinson.
“So,” Vitarex murmured. “You don’t like that. I wonder why that might be?”
Sweat trickled down Eldrinson’s neck. He answered in the dialect of an uneducated Lyshrioli farmer. “It is wrong to speak of the daughter of the gods that way.”
“What gods?” Vitarex sounded amused.
“The sun gods. Valdor and Aldan.”
“How about the Assembly Heir, hmmm? Or the Foreign Affairs Councilor of the Assembly? Or a Ruby queen, eh? How would her consort have me speak of her?”
Eldrinson felt as if he were sinking in quicksand.
He expected the Aristo to gloat more, but Vitarex moved instead, standing, it sounded like, from the clinks of his mail. He spoke briskly, apparently to the other man. “I have what I came for. I will be leaving as soon as I verify his identity. It is too dangerous to risk further operations here.”
“You are returning to Hollina?” the Tyroll man asked. “Shall we prepare to ride?”
Eldrinson wondered how this warrior could serve a monster who kept a dying, shattered man in his tent.
“Prepare as you need,” Vitarex muttered. “I will leave as soon as the next window opens in the ODS.”
Eldrinson knew what he had to do, then. He could never let Vitarex take him. He had to finish what the Aristo had started when he shot the bluff.
Somehow, he had to die.
“I’ll go alone if I must.” Shannon’s voice shook with his intensity. “But I can’t storm an entire camp alone.” He willed the Elder to hear his need. “They will do worse than kill my father. They will torture him for the rest of his life. They will enslave my people. Your people. All of us. I swear that what I say is true. I must go for my father. I can’t do it alone.”
He sat astride Moonglaze facing the Elder, with other Archers gathered around him. They listened without comment, their ethereally beautiful faces cool and unmoved, or so it seemed to him.
“Please,” Shannon said. “Help me.”
They watched him with their ancient gazes.
Shannon was dying inside. He would go for his father. Today. Tarlin had sped on to Dalvador, riding hard for help. Something had to be wrong with the ISC detection methods. He had turned off the jammer, but no one had found either him or his father. It might be that no one was looking for him, but they would never let his father suffer this way. Whatever hid the Aristo also hid his father.
Tarlin had told him the ugly truth. His father’s chances of survival were small, probably impossible. He didn’t understand how an Aristo could have violated their home, their haven, but it had happened. What if Vitarex took his father offworld? Shannon couldn’t wait for help, not even a few hours. But if he went in alone to the Aristo’s camp, they would surely capture h
im. He desperately needed help.
The Archers wouldn’t break their centuries of seclusion for him. Why should they? This was his fight. They had no way to comprehend what it would mean if the Aristos captured members of the Ruby Dynasty, that the Traders would conquer Skolia, including Lyshriol. The lovely Blue Dale Archers would become slaves.
Motion came from behind the rows of the mounted Archers facing him. The lines parted and a rider rode her lyrine forward.
Varielle.
She stopped in front of Shannon. “I will ride with you.”
His voice caught. “Thank you.”
“And I.” Another rider came forward. Elarion.
“And I.” Tharon joined them.
The Elder considered them. “You would go with this man who is not of our tribe.”
Varielle’s gaze never wavered. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Elarion said.
“Yes,” Tharon answered.
For a long moment the Elder studied them. Then she turned back to Shannon. “Three of my most trusted riders choose your quest.”
“They honor me.” He waited, his heart beating hard.
Finally she said, “I give my answer now as well.”
Shannon knew if she refused him, none of the others would ride. With only four of them, he didn’t think they could succeed. But he had to try. Gods forgive him if he ended up causing the deaths of these three who had become his friends.
The Elder said no more, she just sat on her lyrine, until finally his heart sank. She had refused him.
Then she spurred her mount forward. “I will ride with you, Shannon of Dalvador.”
His voice caught. “Thank you.”
She spoke quietly. “You have dealt well with us. You are one of us, but not. Now you speak of menaces beyond the music of our ken. I will trust the sight of your heart.”
Other riders moved forward, joining him, their voices flowing as they discussed these changes in their plans. They soon moved out, half of their fighters with Shannon, the other half remaining behind to protect the caravan.