Hreem chaka-Jalashalal lay sated in the aftermath of passion, watching through heavy-lidded eyes as his lover Norio restlessly activated the telltales on the bridge of the Flower of Lith. The big vidscreen in Hreem’s cabin sprang to life with a wide-angle view of the primary crew alert at their consoles, with the top of Hreem’s empty command pod just visible in the foreground.
The bridge was quiet, the subdued whirring of the tianqi the only sound other than an occasional soft bleep from Erbee’s console: bored by the long wait, the scantech was playing solo-Phalanx again. The long-faced Rifter sucked his lower lip as he stabbed at the computer pads. Irritation surged in Hreem, dispelling the pleasant lassitude.
Norio’s slender finger stroked down the inside of Hreem’s arm, evoking an echo of the ecstasy just past. “You know he’s alert, Jala. He needs constant stimulation.” The tempath turned his finger over and whispered his fingernail over a qi point with unerring accuracy. Hreem shivered.
“Yeah. But he’s programmed it to lose. His granny’s pet wattle could beat him, otherwise.”
Norio’s full lips quirked in a smile. “And you do not set up your opponents to lose?”
The Rifter captain snorted, and let his irritation leak away. Hreem knew how good Erbee was at sniffing out the faint energy traces emitted by the ships the Flower of Lith preyed on. The buck-toothed Rifter with his vacant, pimply face definitely paid his way, and he’d saved the Lith not a few times when the powerful predators of the Panarch’s Navy had sought them in a deadly game of hide-or-be-zapped.
At the nav console, Bargun said, “Next drunkwalk leg coming up in 3... 2... 1...”
The game noise from Erbee’s console fell silent as the scantech straightened up. Hreem felt an almost subliminal pulse as the ship’s fiveskip engaged briefly. He found himself holding his breath until Erbee slumped back into his chair. “No traces,” the scantech said, and resumed his game.
“Where’s that blunge-face Tallis Y’Marmor, anyway?” said Alluwan at Damage Control. “We’ve been drunkwalking for six hours now on this damn rendezvous watch. You’d think even a maggot-brain like him would be able to find a beacon half a light day across.”
Hreem hated waiting like this, sitting in the middle of nowhere in particular, no rocks or ice to hide behind, while the signal-sphere of the rendezvous beacon they’d deployed grew ever larger. Even though the ship was skipping a few light seconds every few minutes on a semi-random path, to avoid being an easy target, it still made him nervous.
Norio tapped at the console. Hreem felt the shift in airflow as a new complex of scents slowly pervaded the room.
Hreem let out his breath as his anxiety diminished. “You oughta send that combo to the bridge,” he said. Norio was a master with the tianqi, the environmental conditioners fundamental to spaceflight.
“They’re getting a different mix. More alertness needed up there than here.” Norio smiled and stroked Hreem’s leg. “At least right now.”
On the vidscreen, Garesh turned away from the Engineering console where she was running some diagnostics. “We oughta just move in on Charvann. We got enough ships to take it. Not like Satansclaw is gonna add much. Tallis Y’Marmor thinks he’s got a big one, but he don’t know what to do with it.” A couple of the crew chuckled. Garesh preened, clearly enjoying the attention her youth and the curves displayed by her tight coveralls brought her.
“Tell that to Barrodagh,” said Dyasil, the comtech. “He cut us orders to wait for Tallis. You wanna play with Evodh and his mindripper, like Jomsinn on the Basilisk’s Bride? I can show you the vid again, if you want.”
Nobody answered. Hreem knew they were all remembering the vid Barrodagh had made of that Rifter captain’s fate, looped on the hyperwave for two ship’s days, each time ending with Barrodagh saying, You will attack where you are ordered, when you are ordered. You will not loot any location on the proscribed list, and if you are issued specific instructions or limitations, you will obey them exactly.
Hreem grimaced. In the long career of piracy and mayhem that had made him one of the most wanted men in the Thousand Suns, he had knowingly killed hundreds of people—that was his business and he lost no sleep over it. Sometimes you held on to enemies you really hated and played a little before you killed them. The Dol’jharian taste for endlessly protracted pain was foreign to him.
But Barrodagh holds the inner orbit. Hreem’s thoughts touched on the Urian power-relay the Dol’jharians had installed on the Lith’s power deck, pulling energy out of some unknown dimension and delivering it at a rate that gave the destroyer more striking power than any ship the Panarchy could field.
Unfortunately, that meant letting the spin reactors that normally powered the Lith go cold, since they were unstable when the relay was running. And it took a long time to bring up the reactors again, unless you wanted to take what engineering techs called the Plasma Wager. Too long, as Jomsinn had found out when Barrodagh switched off the Bride’s relay.
“Anyway,” continued Dyasil, “if Korion’s in-system, we’re gonna be happy to have another hopped-up Alpha Class to back up the Lith and Novograth.”
Hreem grimaced at the mention of the battlecruiser whose regular patrol included the Charvann system. That was a fear that haunted every jacker: seven kilometers of near-invulnerable hull, yet so stealthy that too often the first sign of one’s presence was the hideous, ripping squeal of a ruptor beam, the Navy’s most-feared shipkiller, which only a battlecruiser could deliver.
“Cap’n’s counting on us winning the chance to grab that battlecruiser at Malachronte.” Garesh gave a sweet chuckle.
Hreem sat up, his fear driven out by a wash of anger. He’d spent many pleasant moments imagining himself walking onto the bridge of the nearly-refitted Maccabeus in the Malachronte Ways, but he strongly suspected that Barrodagh was going to give the battlecruiser to Charterly if he possibly could. I have to get that assignment.
Norio slithered behind Hreem on his knees and began kneading his shoulders, but Hreem shrugged him off irritably. Garesh was good in the sack, but she tended to forget whose ship the Lith was.
“Shut your blungehole, you stupid blit,” said Benjamin Piliar at Fire Control, his coarse speech at odds with traces of an underlying precision. When he’d first come aboard with his fine speech and fine clothes, he’d made the mistake of insisting that the rest of the crew use his full name. Hreem had waited a couple of weeks, then renamed him Pili, leaving Norio to reinforce the lesson in how things worked. Pili jerked his sleek head meaningfully at the overhead. “You keep yapping about that battlecruiser and you’ll find yourself putting on a show for the rest of us.”
Garesh sneered, the ornaments in her white hair clacking as she cursed Pili, but Hreem didn’t miss how she glanced nervously around, as though she could spot the telltales the crew knew Norio had on the bridge.
“At least Charvann’s not on that chatzing no-loot list. For us.” Dyasil laughed as he stretched his hands over his head and cracked his knuckles.
Pili sneered, and Erbee gave his weird hooting laugh. Garesh mooed with false sympathy, “Except for the Satansclaw. Poor Tallis!”
Everybody laughed at that.
Dyasil hooked a thumb at his console. “Anyway, a show is just what the Cap’n needs, and just what I got for him. There’s some really hot stuff coming in over the hyperwave—nicks everywhere getting what they dished out, only worse. Some of it’s better than any wiredream you ever seen and I’ve been editing up a chip for him.”
For some reason, the Urian communicator could only broadcast; everyone who had one heard everyone else. Dol’jhar’s codes kept each Rifter fleet from knowing any orders but their own, but now the fleets were sending out uncoded visuals of their attacks from throughout the Thousand Suns—the biggest bragging session ever held.
“I call it Revenge of the Rifters,” Dyasil said with a grand gesture. He tabbed his console, and a burst of loud, upbeat music filled the bridge for a moment before the tech cut it off.
Hreem snorted. Dyasil should have been a third-rate wiredream producer somewhere, instead of manning a console on a Rifter destroyer that was on the bonus chips of every naval detachment in the Thousand Suns.
“Time for me to get back to the bridge,” Hreem said. “Crew’s getting sloppy.”
“I need to clean up before I join you,” said Norio. “Do not let Dyasil run his vid before I get there.”
The tempath was as fastidious as a cat, which sometimes annoyed Hreem, but now his mood was too good. The wait for Tallis had stretched from an annoyance into extreme irritation, and below it, the fear that never quite went away, but Norio had done a very good job of dispelling both.
“Another one for your collection?” Hreem asked.
“Being with you while you watch the men who have sought your death meeting death themselves?” Norio shivered. “Yes, I think this will be a treasure.”
Hreem got to his feet, as always ambivalent about Norio’s “treasures.” He found it deeply disturbing yet at the same time exciting the way that Norio not only perceived others’ emotions, but could relive them by watching a vid or holo, as long as he’d been there when the recording was made or viewed. Many of his treasures involved one of Hreem’s “shows.”
Norio’s brows contracted; he was obviously picking up on Hreem’s mood. “You know I can’t get enough of you, Jala. So bright, so fierce! The crew’s emotions...” Norio shrugged. “Just a garnish to the main course.”
Hreem didn’t try to disguise the glow of pleasure Norio’s words elicited. That wouldn’t work with the tempath, and it was freeing to know that he didn’t need to. He ignored his comfortable work clothes lying on the deck, and reached for the tunic with the heavy gold braid encrusting the V-collar. The braid caught itself in his chest hair, and it made him itch, but the effect on that chatzer Tallis—on all Hreem’s enemies—was worth it.
Norio paused at the door, looking back, his dark eyes wide. It was he who had designed the tunic, a wiredream parody of the naval uniform. “It gives you authority,” Norio whispered, then vanished.
Hreem pulled on his boots, checked the smooth extension and retraction of the heel-claws, then rummaged in his chest for the collection of jeweled family rings he had cut off the fingers of the luckless Douloi he’d jacked. Tallis would hate the sight of those successes, too.
A lot of his good mood evaporated on the way to the bridge. The rings clattered along the gold braid at the neck of his tunic as he scratched. What if someone else had already been assigned to Malachronte? Of course, Barrodagh wouldn’t tell him, but at least there’d been no mention of Malachronte in the uncoded communications on the hyperwave.
Hreem paused in the open hatch leading onto the bridge, and glanced uneasily at the Urian communicator, a weird, melted-looking lump webbed to the bulkhead near the communications console and festooned with sucker-like connectors, its substance glowing ruddily from within as it relayed messages across light-years without delay. The Ur must have been really bizarre, if that was their idea of machinery. It looks more like part of someone’s guts ...
Hreem entered, his boots ringing on the deck plates. He smiled grimly as his crew hastily tabbed away whatever distractions they’d windowed up on their consoles and busied themselves with their watch assignments, as they should have been doing all along.
He dropped into the captain’s pod and glared at the main viewscreen. The stars stared back at him mockingly, set in a velvet emptiness broken only by the faint circles indicating some of the other ships in the force Barrodagh had assigned him.
Where the hell is Tallis?
Hreem drummed his fingers, aware of Dyasil glancing at him with increasing frequency, until his comm gave a quiet chirp. He tapped a pad, and a face windowed up on the viewscreen: Riolo, the Barcan computer tech. The troglodyte’s face looked naked without the red-tinted goggles he habitually wore outside his cabin, where he was calling from.
“Captain, I found some more information on Gnostor Omilov in the Riftnet mirror from Novograth, which was fresher than ours.”
“Yeah?” Hreem saw Dyasil’s frustrated look from the corner of his eye. The comtech had been working himself up to offer his chip, and now Riolo had stolen Hreem’s attention.
“Did you know that he tutored two of the Panarch’s sons? They used to visit him here on Charvann.”
Hreem sat up in his pod. Barrodagh never said anything about that.
Dyasil cleared his throat. “Cap’n?”
“What?” Hreem snapped.
“That probably doesn’t matter anymore.” At the expression on Hreem’s face, Dyasil hurried on. “One of the vids coming in on the hyperwave was a recording from the last meeting of the Privy Council. Seems like Eusabian had all three sons killed.”
On-screen, Riolo laughed. “He’ll probably have them stuffed, or their heads mounted on plaques—they call it paliachee.” He gestured. “I think Dyasil has something he wants you to see. I’ll upload my information to your console—there’s a little more, but not much.” The window dwindled and vanished.
“What’s he talking about, Dyasil? You holding out information on me?”
“No, Cap’n! But I put together a bunch of the uncoded stuff coming in on the hyperwave, like a serial chip. I thought you’d enjoy watching it with...” He gulped and fell silent.
“A serial chip.” Hreem kept his voice flat. “You got too much free time on your hands?” The crew watched intently, their attention divided between the comtech and Hreem.
Hreem enjoyed the fear on Dyasil’s face. It was good for the rest of the crew to see it, and remember who was captain. Especially Garesh.
Dyasil’s gaze flicked away from Hreem, and the rest of the crew turned back to their consoles. Hreem swiveled around. Norio stood at the entrance to the bridge in his heavy Oblate’s robe, then came forward with characteristic sliding grace. The bridge lighting sparked highlights from his slicked-back dark hair and accentuated the planes of his sallow, thin face.
Hreem’s impatience vanished when he saw the silver bowl in Norio’s hands: pozzi fruit, drenched in aromatic liquor. Perfect for watching a chip. Norio always thought of everything. Hreem laughed to himself, and a thrill of enjoyment spiked down deep inside him, expanding his pleasure when he took in the furtive looks Norio’s way from the bridge crew as the tempath took his usual position, standing behind Hreem.
His mood now expansive, Hreem waved a hand at Dyasil. “We’ve been waiting out here too long, and that blit Tallis is taking his time. Might as well have some fun. Let’s see that chip.”
Those of the crew who could see the main screen turned in their seats to watch; those too far under the screen along the U-shaped bank of stations around Hreem’s pod looked down at their consoles for a slaved view.
The starfield dwindled to a window in the corner as a florid title scrolled up the main viewscreen—The Revenge of the Rifters—and the loud theme Hreem had heard earlier. Hreem heard a murmur from the crew at the image behind the title: the glowing remains of a Panarchist battlecruiser with a Rifter destroyer in the foreground. Norio sucked in his breath as a thrill shot through Hreem. He’d already seen the image—Barrodagh had sent it out right after the attach began—but with Dyasil’s music as background it acquired new power.
The title dwindled into the distance and a stock shot of Arthelion seen from space swung up into view, with the island of the Palace Major clearly visible. Hreem felt the hairs on his neck stir with a superstitious thrill at the sight of the Mandala, the heart of the Thousand Suns whence the Arkads had ruled for nearly a thousand years.
But not any longer, he thought, and shook off the mood as the POV seemed to dive toward the planet, ending at another stock shot of the Palace Minor on Arthelion, the residence of the Panarch.
Hreem wedged a handful of fruit into his mouth, and wiped the juice off his hand onto the front of his tunic as he settled back for the show.
The room was long and windowless, with a high ceiling, and walls paneled in a richly grained wood with faded battle flags and heraldic blazons hanging on them. The imager that had recorded the scene was evidently at one end of the room. Hreem could look down the length of the table at the high-backed chair that stood empty at the other end. Seated on either side of the table were eight men and women, dressed in a variety of styles whose only shared element was elegance, conversing amongst themselves in low tones. In front of each sat a stack of papers, a compad, a glass, and a carafe.
Pili’s lips twisted sourly. “That’s the old Concordium on Lao Tse. I toured it as a schoolboy.”
Dyasil glared at him.
So they’re not on Arthelion, thought Hreem. Trust Dyasil to chatz it up.
Hreem singled out two of the Privy Councilors: one a very tall, gaunt woman dressed in severe black, the other a shorter, bulky man in a Naval uniform. They were leaning over a document, their heads almost touching, the woman tapping the paper forcefully with one long finger.
Hreem frowned, and Norio placed his hands on the Rifter captain’s shoulders. There on the screen were the two of the most dangerous people in the Thousand Suns, as far as he was concerned: Nahomi il-Ngari, head of the Invisible Services Bureau, and Padraic Carr, High Admiral of the Fleet. Nicknamed “The Spider,” il-Ngari’s webs of information were everywhere, and if you touched them, death often followed, frequently delivered by one of Carr’s deadly predators.
Almost as one, everyone at the table stood and turned as the door at the other end of the room opened. A white-haired man entered, moving with the neat, graceful control of the high Douloi. Hreem’s hatred surged as the man walked toward the imager, a large brown and black dog trotting alongside.
The man paused behind the empty chair. His face was familiar—of the lineage Hreem saw almost every time another looted sunburst passed through his hands, minted in bold relief on gold, silver, and platinum or staring from the surface of a dyplast note: Gelasaar hai-Arkad, Panarch of the Thousand Suns, forty-seventh in succession to the Emerald Throne of Jaspar I.
Norio squeezed his shoulders and whispered, “Woof.”
Hreem chuckled, remembering Rathbone, the former captain of the Lith, who’d called Norio Hreem’s “Arkad dog” just before he died in one of Hreem’s early entertainments. Norio had merely smiled and replied, “Yes, but my teeth are sharper.” He was right, for it wasn’t the body but the soul they flayed as the tempath teased out and exposed his victim’s deepest fears for Hreem to play with.
The Panarch surveyed his assembled council as they sat back down. The silence was heavy enough to be felt on the bridge of the Lith. His was a hard, commanding face, with the saving grace of a smile in the wrinkles around his blue eyes.
He was not smiling now.
When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly light, almost melodious, but shadowed by fatigue.
“I apologize for the new and rather drafty venue on the last day of our meeting, but we have a consultant coming in to help us with one of the two bits of business we deferred until now.” He smiled wearily and gestured to one of the men at the table. “It’s a connection of your cousin, Teodric, and I fear the informality of our usual arrangements would shock his Gessinav traditionalism.”
A fine-featured, slender man smiled back at him, easing the tension.
Hreem felt Norio’s breath on his ear as the tempath whispered, “I suspect that whatever has been arranged is going to shock somebody else a lot more.”
Hreem chuckled with anticipatory joy.
“But before we get to that,” the Panarch continued, “perhaps Nahomi and Padraic will speak on the first topic for today.” He seated himself as the woman in black rose to her feet. Hreem could no longer see the dog, but the Panarch dropped one of his hands to the side of his chair, and his shoulder moved slightly, rhythmically, as he listened. Norio began kneading Hreem’s shoulders.
“We have no conclusions to report, only questions,” she began. “Two in particular. First, over the past two years or so, we’ve lost track, one by one, of most of the armed Rifter ships or squadrons that are entirely outside the law, like Neyvla-Khan and the Resurrection Traders, and many of those whose Phoenix Writ is in litigation, like Charterly and Eichelly.”
Hreem grinned. He’d torn up Rathbone’s Writ, which had given the old man the legal basis for the Flower of Lith as an agent of the Panarchy, right after taking the ship away from him. Lots more profit in jacking glitterships and other prizes inside the Thousand Suns than in picking off Shiidra and other raiders, escorting merchants, and similar operations out-octant where human settlements grew thin.
“If it were just one or two ships or squadrons,” il-Ngari was saying,” that might be normal attrition, but even then we’d expect news. It’s as if they just vanished. And many of them—Hreem the Faithless and Arvann Templar are good examples—are running too lean an operation to stay covert as long as they have.”
Norio’s hands paused briefly in their ministrations. Hreem grunted unhappily, noting quick glances from some of the crew. The sequestration after the Lith was fitted with the Urian tech had been too long to begin with. Thanks to Barrodagh, they’d been forced to wait even longer in the Charvann system’s Oort Cloud—on the watch constantly for one of Hreem’s deadliest enemies, whose main base was rumored to be somewhere in this system—while others who had joined Dol’jhar’s war were growing rich, and the crew had become increasingly restive.
“. . . and there are far too many missing now—you have my summary in hardcopy.” The Spider touched her compad. “There’s more in your DataNet pools. Padraic and I have had our best people working on it, and all we have is rumors.”
“Rumors?” a man with a dark, seamed face interjected. He pulled his compad toward himself and began tapping at it.
“Rumors.” Carr’s voice rumbled with disgust. “The usual idiocy. The coming Rifter Domination that we hear about every generation. The return of the Ur.”
“And strong hints of Dol’jharian involvement,” said il-Ngari.
Hreem laughed. “Hints. I’ll give you a hint, right up your buju.” He slapped the now-inactive fire-control tab on his pod and thrust his groin at the screen.
The crew whooped and cackled; the mood on the bridge lightened.
On screen the Privy Council had broken up into puzzled discussions, while the Panarch watched, his face impassive. Only fragments of the animated conversations came across: Shiidra... Gehenna...madness... executed after the Trucial Murders...
Hreem laughed again. These were the people behind the ships that sought the destruction of the Flower of Lith and the death or exile of everyone on board. A glow of delight and confidence pervaded him as confusion confounded his enemies. The delight was shared by the crew, who laughed and made comments.
Their delight surely mirrored that felt on every Rifter ship with a hyperwave, sparking a sobering thought: Eusabian had to know they were watching.
Norio leaned in and whispered, “Dol’jhar is stroking us, just as the Panarch is stroking that dog.”
Hreem’s mood soured, then he shrugged. So what? He turned back to the screen as the man with the dark face hefted his compad. “Nahomi, there’s something odd about these reports. Unless I’m misreading the source data you’ve linked, some of the correlations are outside each other’s light cones.”
The Spider frowned. “That’s the second question. It’s obvious that someone’s been tampering with the DataNet.”
“Either that,” replied the man with a wry grin, “or they’ve discovered a means of FTL transmissions.”
The tiny woman across the table from il-Ngari laughed. “That’s right up there with the Rifter Domination and the return of the Ur.”
There was a murmur of laughing agreement from the rest of the Privy Council, which caused a chorus of gloats and insults from Hreem’s crew.
Dyasil gestured at the Urian communicator. “Nicks got it wrong three ways! Ur came back, sort of, we got FTL comms, and there’s Rifter domination goin’ on like they never dreamed.”
The crew gave that the whoop it deserved, but Hreem leaned forward. There was more information in this vid than needed for Eusabian’s propaganda. Could this be a rogue vid? That had interesting implications for Barrodagh’s control of the situation. Maybe he could find a way to use it for leverage in the Malachronte situation.
On the screen, the Panarch made one of those Douloi hand gestures at the dark-faced man. “Trust a Centripetal Gnostor to spot that, Mortan. This DataNet tampering ties in to our second topic for today, and our consultant, who was kindly seconded to us by the Praecentor of the Alannat Anachronics Hub when the tampering came to light in a different context.”
He flexed his wrist and Hreem caught the glint of a boswell. A few moments later a man walked into view: short, pudgy, and balding. He was dressed in what Hreem guessed were his best clothes, but they looked shabby compared to the subdued elegance of the Douloi around him.
“One of their tame Polloi,” said Pili at Fire Control, his voice harsh. Like many Rifters who’d started out as citizens of the Panarchy, he scorned what he’d once been.
“Welcome, genz Oldrich,” said the Panarch as the man approached the head of the table.
Oldrich bowed deeply, his face flushed as if with embarrassment. Hreem heard a faint rhythmic thumping; the Panarch glanced down next to his chair, smiling faintly. The dog?
“Teodric,” said the Panarch. “Perhaps you would honor us with a summation of what Infonetics has been working on as a preface to genz Oldrich’s presentation?”
“Something odd is going on with the PanStellar Bourse,” the slender Douloi began. “What has come to light, prompted by Nahomi’s inquiries on her own line of investigation, appears to be part of a series of small transactions going back many years that, like the communications Nahomi speaks of, seem to correlate events outside each other’s light cones. Since this is impossible, it’s apparent that someone has tampered with the records, but we have not yet discovered who or why.”
“I thought you were happy at Infonetics,” said the dark man, looking up from his compad. “You angling to join the Centripetals? Good job of putting all that together.”
Teodric bowed in his seat, smiling.
Norio leaned over to whisper into Hreem’s ear. “There are only thirteen Centripetal Gnostors in the whole Panarchy. It’s the smallest of the Colleges, and the most dangerous. They see connections even the Spider misses.”
Hreem shrugged. He still couldn’t figure out where this was going. “Dyasil, why’d you leave all this blunge in?” he said. “If someone sold me a wiredream like this I’d cut his balls off.”
Dyasil turned around, obviously flustered. “The good stuff’s comin’, Cap’n—there’s a cut coming up. But nobody’s ever seen a real Privy Council meeting before, not ever. And me’n Erbee’ve been tryin’ to figure out how to use our hyperwave to play the Bourse, so I thought you’d like to know where Barrodagh got all the money he’s been throwin’ around.”
Understanding crashed in on Hreem. Dol’jhar had been dirt poor since the Panarchy smashed their little empire twenty years back. They still had a few planets, but the Rifters who raided them didn’t get much, and he’d heard reliably that Dol’jhar itself was a hellhole. He’d never thought about where the money for Eusabian’s revenge was coming from.
Then anger surged in him. Was Dyasil trying to show him up in front of the crew? He glared around the bridge, noticing that there were several off-duty crew come to be in on the viewing.
Norio whispered in his ear again. “He’s honestly puzzled. I’m sure he thought you’d see it right away. But nobody else here did except Erbee.”
“I got it, I got it.” Hreem flicked his hand at the rest of the crew. “But there’s no use letting it go on for the rest of these chatzers, who just want to see some action.”
Hoots of agreement rose, and Metije, Alluwan’s second, smacked the bulkhead with her fist. “Get to the blood!”
Norio sighed happily. Hreem knew he was enjoying the play of emotions on the bridge.
Feeling generous, Hreem said, “Good job, Dyasil, but bump it forward.”
Dyasil shrugged and tapped his console. The viewscreen blurred, then cleared. The little balding man was answering questions from the Privy Council. The Douloi weren’t pressing the man, but his face was redder than ever, and he was sweating; a drop of liquid dropped off his face onto one of his hands.
At that moment the Panarch pulled his compad toward himself. Oldrich fell silent, and the Douloi around the table looked at the Panarch, except for Nahomi and Carr, also studying their compads.
The two got to their feet, the Spider flushed with anger. They spoke simultaneously.
“Jerrode Eusabian!” Nahomi said viciously.
“Let me take a fleet back there and finish the job!” shouted Carr.
The Panarch looked up, his anguish clear. “Nahomi,” he said, his voice rough. “Please.” He gestured at the rest of the Douloi, whose confusion was apparent. “Share this with them.” He settled back in his chair, staring at the compad, both his hands now on the table. Hreem heard a faint whine; the dog again, he guessed.
The Spider tapped her compad and then spoke slowly. “The Aegios of the Qoholeth Anachronics Hub—a self-confessed traitor come to his senses—has informed us that Eusabian arranged the assassination of all three of His Majesty’s sons: Brandon at his Enkainion, the other two at the same time.”
Her voice slowed even more. “The turncoat dispatched warnings to Arthelion, Narbon, and Talgarth as well as to here, but...” Her voice dwindled away.
One of the Douloi looked up from her compad. “The spacetime graph doesn’t look good,” she said. “The Enkainion was today. If the plot proceeded as planned...” She too did not go on.
“The fool,” the Panarch murmured. They would not have heard him if the room hadn’t gone completely silent, everyone intent on their compads. “Is he truly that blind?” He lifted his face. “We will not know for some time.”
The Panarch then rose to his feet. Hreem could see him collecting himself, and despite his hatred for the man and everything he represented, he could not help being impressed by the Panarch’s control.
“Obviously,” said the Panarch, “this is not our last day.”
Oldrich stepped forward, and the Panarch turned his way, his brows lifted in question.
“But it is,” said the little man. He inhaled deeply, then hissed like a snake, turning his head from side to side, his face purple with effort.
The Panarch fell forward onto the table as though boneless, followed moments later by his councilors.
“A numathanat!” Hreem exclaimed. He shot a glance at Metije standing beside Alluwan at the Damage Control console. The deathsnake tattoo on her neck, symbol of the outlawed Ultschen cult whose priests could project poison with their breath, stood out starkly against the sudden pallor of her flesh as she stared back at him, wide-eyed.
Norio inhaled sharply, and Hreem felt his hands on his shoulders shiver. “Oh, Jala,” he whispered. “She is so frightened.”
Hreem tore his gaze away as snarling erupted from the screen. Metije was no numathanat. Norio would have found that out.
In the vid, the numathanat was screaming now, desperately backing away from the table and beating at the dog hanging from his arm with his other fist. The animal ignored his blows and refixed its jaws on his arm with a lightning movement, jerking its head from side to side. Hreem could hear the bones snap, see blood spurting. Then the little man mastered his panic and breathed out violently, leaning toward the dog. It stopped moving abruptly, but did not release its grip.
The numathanat knelt and pried the dog’s jaws open with his other hand, gasping with pain. Blood ran freely down his ruined arm onto the floor as he fumbled out a pocketcomm with his other hand and spoke urgently into it, his voice thready with shock. The scene faded out...
The white-mottled blue-green curve of a planet loomed vast on the screen. A caption rolled up over it—Abilard—as the dragonfly shape of a destroyer slowly passed under the camera’s vantage point, its radiants flaring as it accelerated away. The angle of view accentuated the long missile tube projecting forward from the angular main hull. Emblazoned on its superstructure was the figure of a cross on a grave, with a strange-looking hat—narrow-brimmed with a rounded top—smashed down on the cross, so that the upright broke through the crown of the hat. This symbol was surrounded by an inverted five-pointed star.
“The Samedi,” said someone. “That’s Emmet Fasthand’s ship.”
Around the destroyer could be seen smaller, more aerodynamic vessels, falling away toward the planet’s surface at tremendous speed. Then the lights of a vast city at night were framed in the viewscreen, seen from a great height, the rumble of a ship’s engines and the screech of high-velocity atmospheric flight forming a loud accompaniment.
The lights twinkled peacefully below. Without warning, from just below the edge of the picture, the garishly green lances of a cluster strike of laser-boosted missiles arrowed out. Their screaming roar could be clearly heard. As the green beams winked out, a series of actinic blue-white domes bloomed in a crooked path across the center of the city, lighting up vast sections of it—and the city lights went out.
“Bad luck for Abilard.” Pili leaned back in his console, grinning at the screen in front of him which repeated the image above his head. “Emmet hated them after they caught him with his pants down in that raid in ’58—made him the laughingstock of the Rift Sodality.”
More crew had crowded in behind Hreem’s command pod to watch the larger image on the main screen. At the scan console, Erbee gazed upward, his mouth slackly open, lips glistening. He’d better not start drooling again, or I’ll rip his lips off, thought Hreem. Then another caption caught his eye.
Torigan: The Archonic Enclave.
A subdued murmur rose from the crew. The scene had been recorded from ground level—the Rifters assigned to Torigan had evidently not had too much trouble landing. But now the Archon’s forces were resisting strenuously. Across the expanse of a wide public square, its gleaming white surface now littered with burning vehicles and the anonymous huddled lumps of fallen combatants, a group of magnificent buildings was the focus of a vicious firefight. The brilliant threads of lazjacs and the thicker, somewhat blurry bolts from firejacs converged across the square and were answered in kind. An occasional blue-white vortex of energy, slow-moving but deadly, marked the replies of plasmoid cannons. The noise was shatteringly intense. There were no people visible—the square was no place for fragile human flesh.
In the midst of the buildings loomed a vast geodesic dome, glittering gold in the hot sunlight, its form shimmering in the heat rising from the burning wrecks in the square.
“That’s the Mycorium,” commented Dyasil. “I visited it once. Weird place.”
Hreem waved him to silence as a small shape in the green-blue sky bulleted past, streaks of missile fire raining down from it on the defending positions. The last missile hit the dome: the golden shape crumpled inward in almost slow motion, a strange fog or mist billowing skyward from its dark interior.
“Stupid blits!” said Hreem in disgust.
Erbee looked confused. “Why’s that?”
The defending fire was falling off rapidly now. Across the square, men could be seen running toward the attacking Rifters, weaponless, leaping and twisting bizarrely, their forms strangely blurred.
“That was the fungus collection of the Archonei of Torigan,” said Dyasil. “Toadstools and all sorts of slimy blunge from all over the Thousand Suns. Stupid thing to keep in the middle of a city. The Panarch tried to get her to move it into space.”
“Now they’ll have to use full armor and decon chambers if they want to get any loot,” Hreem said, guffawing. “The whole city’ll be armpit-deep in crawling slimes and man-eating mushrooms, or whatever it was the crazy old bitch kept in there.”
“Pretty close, Cap’n.” Dyasil’s shudder was audible in his voice. “She used ’em for the Local Justice Option. There’re vids of the executions.”
On the screen the battle was over. From the fallen bodies of the defenders blobby columns of multihued slime wavered toward the smoky sky, like pillars of rotten cheese. The bridge was silent as the scene faded out, someone leaving hurriedly.
The viewscreen showed space again. Below appeared a planet, its surface blurred by the energies of an activated Shield. The caption scrolled up—Minerva—causing a buzz of excited comment. This was the planet reserved exclusively for the Panarchic Academy and its support population, training center for the Panarch’s military forces.
“This will be good!” said someone.
Erbee’s console bleeped. The lanky Rifter slapped a pad and looked down at his console. “Cap’n! Emergence pulse... five light-seconds.”
The other Rifters on the bridge scrambled to their positions.
Hreem slapped the jump pad beside him, feeling the faint subsonic pulse as the fiveskip blipped briefly. The main screen blanked to a view of space. The screen shimmered as the computer located the intruder—in the center, a translucent blue-white sphere of light dissipated against the stars.
Hreem kept his hand poised over the jump pad. “Pili! Give me shields and lock on targeting. Ready a skipmissile. Erbee. ID?”
A tense moment later: “Incoming, Cap’n. Rift Sodality code: it’s the Satansclaw.”
“About time! Cancel that, Pili. Dyasil, general broadcast...” Hreem caught himself, remembering that the damn hyperwave broadcast to everybody. Only one-time ciphers would be sure protection against Barrodagh listening in—The less that slug knows, the better—and he hadn’t bothered setting them up. “... EM-cast: all ships jump to second rendezvous point and close to within a light-second for EM conference.” Despite practice during the Lith’s long sequestration, he still wasn’t used to the new communications terminology the hyperwave made necessary, especially in a fleet where not all the ships had one.
It took a few minutes to get to the second rendezvous, and further delay while the ships closed in, but his relief at being well away from the beacon signal eased Hreem’s impatience, until it became obvious that Tallis was late again.
At the nav console, Bargun and another tech were bent over the little screen, still watching Dyasil’s recording, eager anticipation on their faces.
‘Bargun!” snapped Hreem. “You got that first jump in-system plotted?”
“Yeah. If we’re more’ n half a light-second off I’ll eat my console. But Dward and me want to see some of those spit-and-polish nackers at the Academy get flamed.”
“If we’re off more than that, you’ll wish I gave you the choice of eating your console, so cut that chatzing recording off and set up the jump. Anyway, Neyvla-Khan and his clan don’t take chances—once the Shield’s down they’ll just stand off in orbit and slag the surface. Only a fool would land on a planet full of Academy-trained fighters.”
The viewscreen slowly segmented itself into a number of windows as the captains of the rest of the Rifter ships joined the conference.
Finally, Tallis Y’Marmor’s pop-eyed face appeared, but it took a few seconds for his eyes to focus on Hreem. Tallis grinned, his larynx bobbing as he swallowed nervously. Hreem snorted with exasperation—The stupid blit’s still five light-seconds out.
“Sorry I’m late, Hreem,” Tallis began, “but my fiveskip’s all chatzed up and we’re having trouble finding the problem.”
“Y’Marmor, you blunge-brain,” Hreem yelled, “get yourself in closer so we can talk without waiting for you to hear us!”
Y’Marmor’s blundering explanation continued for another ten seconds, while Hreem fumed and the other faces on the screen grinned. “... so we took...” He stopped and glared at Hreem. “I just told you, I can’t control it that fine! We’re coming in under geeplane—it’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Forget it, Y’Marmor. Just listen and keep your mouth shut. If you have any questions, ask ’em at the end.”
Hreem shifted his attention to the rest. “All right, you’ve got some of the details so far. Here’s how we’re gonna handle the attack now that Tallis is here.” The captains gazed back at him with anticipation.
“First jump is to twenty light-minutes out and over. Then the Lith’ll jump in just short of the skip barrier and take out one of the resonators. That’ll leave the way clear for the rest of you to skip in close to Charvann after the field collapses back to normal radius—wait for my signal. When you skip in, take out whatever ships you see. Don’t take prizes—blast ’em all. We don’t want to overlook any naval ships. Remember, Novograth and Satansclaw: your skipmissiles are hotter than anything the Navy’s got, but your shields and everything else are the same as ever. The rest of you don’t have any advantage except surprise, so shoot first! Any questions so far?”
As soon as he asked the question, Hreem knew what was coming. Everyone knew the weakness of the fiveskip: get too close to a planetary-sized gravity well—inside radius—in fivespace, and you ended up inverted in three dimensions. It was a spectacularly messy fate that was the subject of many a late-night bilge-banging session. On Charvann, the resonance field extended radius to second lunar orbit, if Hreem’s attack failed...
Sure enough, one of the captains had to ask. “What if they get the field back up?”
“Then you’ll end up staring at the inside of your own head!” snarled Hreem. “They can’t. RiftNet says Charvann doesn’t have a backup. Costs a lot of money and the stupid blits preferred to spend it on teacup appreciation or some such blunge for the university instead. Anyway, after we mop up, the Novograth will take on the Shield while Lith and Satansclaw keep a lookout in case any other Navy ships show up.”
“This might be a good time to remind everyone about long-ranging, just in case Korion is in-system,” interrupted Esteel’s captain, Kherrimun, a younger man who Hreem had once encountered on Rifthaven, to their mutual dissatisfaction.
Pushy chatzer. He didn’t want to emphasize that, and didn’t like being reminded of it himself, but now he had no choice. He wasn’t about to let Kherrimun take control of the briefing. I’ll deal with you later.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to forget how good a cruiser is at long-ranging.” But some of ’em will, he thought disgustedly. Too many of the ships that Barrodagh had assigned to him were crewed by Rifters too careful or timid to merit the attention of the Navy’s largest ships, whose seven-kilometer baseline lent their sensors terrifying precision and range.
“Any of you get lazy after we mop up the locals, and decide to stop drunkwalking, cruiser’ll target you from way out, then jump in on top of you... no warning.” From ten light-minutes out, a cruiser could take its time targeting a distant fleet, then jump in close, correct and fire long before the emergence pulse from its targeting position arrived to warn its victims. Only random changes in velocity offered any protection for a targeted ship—the more often, the better.
Warned by the expressions on some of their faces, Hreem went on quickly, directing their attention back to more pleasant anticipations.
“But Korion’s probably not even in-system. They got a lot of planets on their patrol. And if it is—” Hreem smiled broadly. “—well, are they ever gonna be surprised, finding out what an Alpha Class can do with an Urian relay in its powerdeck!”
The other captains laughed—all except Tallis, who hadn’t heard the remark yet. His lack of reaction made him look even stupider than usual.
“After the Shield collapses, we land—you’ve already got your assignments.”
“What kind of defenses are we going to encounter on the way down?” interrupted the captain of the Novograth, a woman with a plump, rosy face who looked like someone’s grandmother until you noticed the deadness of her eyes. Hreem knew nothing about her aside from her entry in the RiftNet Pandoxicon—he hadn’t bothered to read the rest of the dossier Riolo had put together. Her speech was precise, almost prissy, which had irritated Hreem the first time he talked to her, and even more now.
“None, if they’re smart. They know there’s no defense against dirty nukes in atmosphere.” The rules of war involving planetary defense were ancient and rarely violated: civilian populations were too effective as hostages to make resistance to a landing practical once the Shield fell.
“But listen close...” Hreem leaned forward for emphasis. “You’ve all seen the vid from that chatzer Barrodagh. There’s gonna be no looting until after we find this Omilov blungebag—and everything in his house is gonna be under guard. That’s Tallis’s assignment, and anybody who crosses me up on this gets an all-expenses-paid vacation under the personal guidance of Dol’jhar’s torturer... after Norio finishes with you. You got that?” By the expressions on their faces, Hreem judged the threat sufficient. Just to make sure, he stretched ostentatiously in his pod, extending the heel-claws of his boots with a minatory click and then relaxing.
“Right. Afterward, Charvann’s ours. Have fun. But don’t any of you get trigger-happy and shoot up the Node or any of the Syncs, either—all the Highdwellings are mine. Any more questions?”
There were none and he dismissed them—”Except you, Y’Marmor. We’ve got some talking to do.”
The last of the other faces had just winked out when the pop-eyed Rifter captain reacted, and the light-speed delay irritated Hreem afresh.
“It’s not my fault,” whined Tallis. “It’s that blit O’Pappan and his refit crew on Rifthaven, selling me substandard parts.”
“Blow it out your blungehole, Y’Marmor—he sells you what you pay him for. If you’d put more money into the guts of the Satansclaw and less into all those chatzy decorations—like that screaming horror you call a cabin. With all those paintings of fat bitches and that curlicue furniture that makes you feel like you’re sitting on somebody’s face... it’s like a cross between a chatz-house and a corpse-painter’s waiting room...” Hreem’s disgust left him wordless for a moment. The rest of the crew on the bridge were silent, but Hreem could feel their grins.
“Forget all that, Y’Marmor. I don’t know why Eusabian picked you to handle this Omilov blit, and if I had any say in the matter you wouldn’t be part of my command, but you’re here, and if you chatz up this attack I’ll let Norio play with you for a while, and then send you off to that Evodh chatzer for a guided tour of his mindripper. Now, how much longer are you gonna need to get your fiveskip working right?”
Hreem’s threats and obvious anger cut Tallis’s usually interminable self-serving explanations to a barely tolerable minimum, and got results. An hour after the Satansclaw signed off, Dyasil reported that Y’Marmor had messaged his readiness.
“He sounded kind of unhappy, Cap’n,” the tech said with a wry smile, “though I can’t imagine why.”
Hreem laughed and dismissed the matter, excitement rising in him now that the attack was about to begin. Though he was enormously successful by Rifter standards, Hreem had always been on the run. Few Rifters in the jacking trade ever lived long enough to relax and enjoy their loot, and the more successful they were, the more likely was a fatal encounter with the Navy—not to mention the deadly envy of fellow Rifters.
But now it was his turn to call the shots. Fate and the Lord of Vengeance had placed the ultimate weapon in his hands, and like his fellows in the Rift Sodality whose work he had just watched with delight, Hreem was eager to unleash it on his persecutors. He knitted his fingers together and stretched his arms overhead, feeling the last of his anxiety depart. For a moment the quiet hum of the ship around him was as much a part of him as the sound of the breath through his nostrils or the subdued murmur of his pulse. He was the instrument of his own vengeance.
“Dyasil,” he said, “battle stations. Signal the fleet. Bargun... take us in.” Moments later the bridge shuddered gently as the fiveskip engaged and the viewscreen blanked as the Flower of Lith leapt out of spacetime toward Charvann.