And in that instant, as Kelric stared at the guard who had protected him for years, a projectile burst out from the trees—
And hit Axer.
The Jagernaut's body flew apart in gruesome slow motion.
"No!" The shout burst out of Kelric. He tried to jump up, but Najo shoved him down even as he fired. The trees around them truly were in flames now, from the Razer's carbine shots.
"It's you they're after," Jaibriol shouted at him. "They're trying to kill you. Are they insane? They could rid the universe of a Qox and they go for the good man instead?"
Kelric wondered what sort of nightmare Jaibriol lived, that he expected murder attempts to target him as the greatest evil. An explosion flared in the night, and a ball of fire ballooned above the trees barely fifty meters away. Another blast shattered the cabin, billowing debris, smoke, and flame.
Najo dragged Kelric to his feet. "Run," he yelled.
Hidaka heaved Jaibriol up so fast and so hard, he lifted the emperor off the ground. A third explosion rent the air, this one barely ten meters away.
"Go!" Hidaka shouted at Jaibriol, shoving him away from the blasts. "GO!"
Kelric grabbed Jaibriol's arm and took off with enhanced speed, literally dragging the Eubian emperor—
The ground exploded under them.
XXX
A Brace Of Kinsmen
Jaibriol floated in a sea of flames. He had no sense of time or place, just dislocation.
Then he hit the ground and gasped as rocks stabbed his body. Debris rained around him. He tumbled down a slope, rolling, rolling, hitting rocks and underbrush, out of control. He smashed into a cluster of boulders and pain shot through him. With a groan, he scrambled to his feet, driven by adrenaline. Far up the slope, flames roared in the cabin. He couldn't see anyone; if Kelric or any guards still lived, they were no longer standing.
Jaibriol started up the slope—and tripped over a body. Lurching and dazed, he fell to his lower knees. A huge man lay sprawled in front of him, his leg twisted at a bizarre angle.
"Kelric?" His voice cracked. "God, no." Terrified to find the Imperator dead, he grabbed Kelric's wrist—and gasped with relief when he found a pulse. But Kelric wasn't breathing. Jaibriol pumped on his chest, using emergency techniques his parents had taught him on Prism, where they had no medical care but what they could do for themselves.
Kelric suddenly jerked and choked in a breath. He coughed harshly, gulping for air.
"It's all right," Jaibriol said. "You'll be all right." He hoped it was true.
"Najo—" Kelric's voice rasped.
"Your guards are up there." Jaibriol stretched out his arm, pointing to where the fire blazed. "So are mine."
Orange light limned Kelric's face. "We must help them."
"Can you walk?"
Kelric paused, then said, "Bolt says my leg is broken."
Jaibriol scooted down to check Kelric's right leg. It had twisted back on itself in a way impossible even for a biomech joint. "This looks bad." He lifted his head. "Who is Bolt?"
Kelric pushed up on his elbows. "My spinal node."
"Can your meds administer pain medicine?"
"The hell with that. I don't want my focus dulled."
"We have to get out of here," Jaibriol said. "I don't think you can walk on this."
Kelric grimaced as he sat up. "I'll manage."
Jaibriol looked up the hill. With foreboding, he said, "No one has come down."
"They can't be dead." Kelric spoke as if his words could ensure their lives. "They can't."
"Hidaka—he—" Jaibriol couldn't go on. He couldn't lose the captain. Angry at himself, he grabbed the outer seam on Kelric's slacks and ripped it hard, two-thirds of the way up Kelric's leg.
"What the hell are you doing?" Kelric shoved him away. "Finishing the job your people started?"
"They didn't start anything," Jaibriol said. "No one knows I'm here."
"You knew someone was trying to kill me."
Even realizing Kelric had sensed the truth about him, Jaibriol couldn't admit he had picked it up from the minds of their attackers. He had hidden too long. He couldn't reveal himself even to someone who already knew.
Jaibriol cast about on the ground. "They shot at you first."
"They could have been going after both of us. Maybe they just missed you. How could you know otherwise?"
Jaibriol found a long, straight branch and broke off its smaller twigs. "They didn't even know who I was." He gave a ragged laugh. "They could have killed the tyrant of Glory, and instead they went after you. What idiots."
Kelric's voice quieted. "You got it from their minds."
"Don't be absurd." He picked up several more branches and leaned over Kelric's leg. "I'm going to set this. So we can get out of here."
"Where did you learn how to splint a broken leg?"
Intent on examining the injury, Jaibriol spoke absently. "My mother taught me." He looked up at Kelric. "It's going to hurt. I'm sorry."
The Imperator had a strange look. The firelight from above glinted on his metallic skin. "It's all right."
Jaibriol carefully pulled away the shreds of cloth from Kelric's leg. He remembered when his mother had splinted his arm, after ESComm had pulled out his father and "cleansed" Prism. It was one reason everyone believed Soz Valdoria had been nowhere near the emperor. No one could have survived the mountain-slagging sterilization ESComm had inflicted on Prism.
Except.
As a Jagernaut Primary, his mother had had access to technology available to almost no one else. She had brought a quasis generator into exile. Just seconds before ESComm attacked, she enclosed her children in a bubble of the generator's field. Quasis froze the quantum state of anything within its field. Particles couldn't change state, which meant the bubble couldn't collapse, not even when a battle cruiser in orbit destroyed the mountain range. Jaibriol's arm had broken as the sterilization slammed around their bubble of safety, and his mother had splinted it while their family hunkered in the dark, bruised and terrified.
"Gods almighty," Kelric whispered. "What happened to you?"
Jaibriol jerked up his head. "I don't know what you're talking about." He struggled to fortify his mental barriers and hide his memory.
Kelric spoke in an unexpectedly gentle voice. "My mind is powerful, but blunt. I didn't pick up anything from the minds of our attackers up there. But other of my siblings have more mental finesse. They might catch what I missed." Quietly he added, "As might their children."
Sweat trickled down Jaibriol's neck. He could never answer Kelric's unspoken question about his parentage. He had hidden the truth for too long; he couldn't let go and speak of it. The secrecy was too ingrained within him.
"I'm going to set this now," Jaibriol said. "Are you ready?"
Kelric nodded, his face strained. "Go ahead."
Jaibriol went to work, gritting his teeth. He hated how it agonized Kelric; pain blazed in his uncle's mind. But the Imperator never cried out once. Jaibriol pulled off his black-diamond tunic, leaving only his undershirt, and ripped the tunic into cords so he could tie Kelric's leg to the splint. When he finished, he sat back, sweat streaming down his face. Kelric had one fist clenched on his thigh and he had dug the fingers of his other hand into the ground. He looked as if he had aged ten years.
"Yes, I'm an old man," Kelric said, his voice uneven.
"Don't say that." Jaibriol climbed to his feet and offered his hand. "You're going to live decades more. Centuries."
With help, Kelric struggled to his feet and stood with one hand on Jaibriol's shoulder, staring up the slope. The flames had died down rather than starting the forest fire Jaibriol had feared. He saw no one, neither his nor Kelric's guards.
"Do you sense anyone?" Kelric asked.
Jaibriol wanted to deny he could sense anything. But he wanted even more to survive. "No," he said dully. "No one. Not assassins and not bodyguards."
"I don't, either," Kelric said. "But it's har
d to focus." Although he spoke calmly, he couldn't disguise the pain flaring in his mind.
"Can you walk?" Jaibriol asked.
"I doubt I can make it up that slope."
"I'll go look—no, I can't leave you here." Jaibriol stopped, torn with indecision.
"Go look," Kelric said.
Jaibriol took off, running up the hill. He slipped and slid on the steep slope, but compared to the peaks where he jogged in the Jaizires, this was nothing. He slowed as he neared the top and bent down to crawl the last few meters.
A blast crater spread out before him, and beyond it lay the scorched remains of what had been a beautiful tangled forest. The devastation bore no resemblance to the woods where he and Kelric had so recently walked. It looked like a battlefield.
Jaibriol sensed no one's mind except Kelric. Whoever had attacked them was either gone or dead. He searched the crater first, and then the smoldering remains of the forest beyond. He forced himself to account for everyone, identifying them by what little remained of their blasted, charred bodies: his Razers, Kelric's Jagernauts, and six commandos, which matched the number of minds he had felt in the attack. None had survived.
When Jaibriol found Hidaka's remains, he fell to his knees in the ashes next to the body. His shoulders shook as he cried, and he couldn't stop them. Working doggedly, he scraped a tiny chip out of the dirt, a broken hull, all that remained of Hidaka's node. He had some grief-stricken idea he would bring it back to Claret.
Clammy from shock, Jaibriol went back to the hill and half slid, half ran down the slope. Kelric was sitting on one of the boulders that had stopped Jaibriol's roll earlier. The starlight of the bizarrely moonless night glinted on his gold eyes. He seemed more metal than human, but Jaibriol could tell a man of compassion inhabited that metallic body.
"All of them are gone?" Kelric asked, his voice low.
"Yes. Our guards. The attackers." His voice cracked. "All dead." He sat on the ground, braced his elbow on his bent leg, and put his forehead in his hand, too drained to move anymore.
"We can't stay here," Kelric said unevenly. He stood up and tried to take a step, but he immediately lurched and came down hard on his good knee.
"Ah!" The Imperator's sharp inhale ended in a groan.
Jaibriol raised his head. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," Kelric muttered. He grasped his splinted leg and maneuvered it around so it stretched in front of him. Then he just sat, silent. He obviously wasn't fine.
"I don't think you can go anywhere on that leg," Jaibriol said. "Not until you rest and your meds can start healing it."
Kelric started to speak, and Jaibriol thought he was going to object. Then his uncle just shook his head and fell silent.
Jaibriol felt something on his face. He touched his skin and his fingers came away wet with tears. Why did Hidaka have to die, one of the best men he had ever known? He was grateful beyond words that he hadn't told Robert or Tarquine he was coming. They would have insisted on coming with him. And they would be dead now; the first priority for his guards had been to save him, not his aides or even his spouse.
After a while, Kelric said, "Are their bodies destroyed?"
"That's a horrible question." Jaibriol's voice broke on the last word, and he decided to say no more.
"No, listen," Kelric said. "If their internal systems are even partially intact, it may be possible to revive them in new bodies."
Jaibriol stared at him dully until the words sank in. Then he said, "Not enough survived. It was bad."
"Oh." Kelric sounded subdued.
Jaibriol wondered if somewhere, some demon was laughing at them. He had so little, and now even that was gone. "Hidaka saw." He knew he should stop, but the words wrenched out of him. "He saw the whole thing. Yet still he supported me. He never wavered, never once."
"What did he see?" Kelric asked. The fires had died down, and his face was lost in shadows.
"Colonel Vatrix Muze caught me crawling out of the Lock," Jaibriol said. "So Hidaka shot him."
Kelric's voice went very quiet. "Why were you in the Lock?"
"The implosions." He took a ragged breath. "They were headed for the SSRB. I thought it might connect to the Lock. So I went to check."
"Did you find anything?"
"Nothing. It didn't work." He couldn't believe how calm he sounded. Inside he felt as if he were screaming.
"It was dead for ten years," Kelric said. "When I turned it back on, it was active for one minute. How could you know to be there for that one minute?"
"I don't know." Jaibriol wasn't even certain what Kelric meant. "I just sat there and the singularity appeared."
Kelric stared at him. "When the Lock reactivated, you were sitting in it?"
"Yes." He didn't know what else to say. "I will regret that moment for the rest of my godforsaken life."
"And you survived."
"If you call this survival."
"You had no preparation? No training? Nothing?"
"How would I?"
"Saints above," Kelric said softly. "What happened to you would have killed almost anyone else."
Jaibriol just shook his head. Although he was shielding his mind, Kelric's power was too great. It soaked into him, a great golden glow of warmth. These few minutes with his uncle had done more to ease the agony in his mind than anything else since he had become a Key.
"You need a medical facility with neurological experts," Kelric told him.
Jaibriol knew he would never get such treatment. Dully he said, "We both need help."
"Tell me that you betrayed our agreement," Kelric said. "Tell me that you let someone know you were coming here."
Jaibriol would have laughed if their situation hadn't been so bad. "No. I kept my word. Perhaps you told someone?"
"Not a soul. I secured the entire area."
"Enough to hide four explosions and a fire?"
Kelric exhaled. "I'm afraid so."
"The commandos were thorough. The cabin is gone. So are our vehicles."
"I picked this place because it was so remote."
"This is absurd," Jaibriol said, incredulous. "We're two of the most powerful people alive. We can't be without recourse."
Kelric didn't answer. His pain swamped out everything. After a while, though, Jaibriol felt it ease, and he suspected Kelric had let his meds dispense painkillers after all.
Eventually Kelric said, "We both have biomech enhancements."
Jaibriol nodded. "Even with your broken leg, we could probably walk out of here in a day or two."
"And then what?"
Jaibriol considered the question. "The moment we find help, we lose our secrecy. It will look strange for us to be together."
Kelric's laugh had a frayed edge. "You've a gift for understatement. Can the Emperor of Eube be executed for treason?"
Jaibriol jerked, startled. "I haven't committed treason."
Kelric spoke tiredly. "I have."
Good Lord. No wonder he seemed so subdued. "They can't execute the Imperator. ISC will stand behind you." The loyalty of his military to their commander was legendary.
"How do they know you and I aren't plotting here in secret? Why would they support me for committing the worst violation of ISC security in the history of the Imperialate?"
Jaibriol sat for a time absorbing the ramifications. He had come with such hopes, for a dream that never died no matter how much he lost. He took a breath and plunged ahead. "Then bring them a peace treaty."
"We don't have a treaty." Even in the dark, the lines on Kelric's face showed his strain. "Our generals and admirals and ministers and assemblies couldn't agree on one."
"Then let us agree, you and I." He tapped his temple. "I have the one we worked out years ago stored in my node. If you're willing to take a download into yours, we'll both have a copy. We can sign it with our neural and DNA imprints."
"Have you forgotten?" Kelric asked. "We never finished it. We couldn't come to terms on the most basic aspec
t of all."
It seemed to Jaibriol as if his whole life had narrowed to this moment. He knew the magnitude of what he suggested. But if they never tried, they would surely fail. He had nothing to lose by asking for the impossible.