Llyn pulled out of his arms, looked down, and studied them. Tiny scabs and dark purple bruises covered them—and his face, and his hands. His queue had been cut off. His hair was black at the ends, but the roots were reddish-brown. Red stubble covered his chin, too. She knew the square jaw and his broad forehead, but she’d never seen them without edge shadings of dark pigment.
He did look Antaran.
“Jahn?” she whispered.
He rested his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
She reached up and touched a scab on his chin. “Is your name really Jahn?”
“Yes. It’s Jahn Emlin. Vananda Hadley is my mother. Filip Salbari—your friend—is my uncle.”
It was a relief to hear it from his lips. “Regent Casimir knows.”
“He knows everything,” Jahn murmured.
“You look different.”
“I had an implant that darkened my skin and hair. They found it.”
But his soothing voice was the same, and hearing still was her dominant sense. This was her friend. She fingered his cheek, shuddering to think about the kind of search that would turn up a cosmetic implant and leave such scabs and bruises. “They hurt you.”
“I’ll heal.”
She stared at his eyes, understanding too well. They wanted him in prime physical condition. At least his eyes were still warm, brown, empathetic. She leaned toward him again, and this time, his arms closed around her. He held her and stroked her hair. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She didn’t want him to let go. Here were comfort and strength enough for the moment.
Eventually, he loosened his grasp. She looked around the tiny cabin. It reminded her of her quarters aboard the Antaran transport, with its metal decks and bulkheads, but instead of hammock rings it had a pair of bunks. Several cases of crates were piled on the top bunk. “I don’t know why they put us together,” he said, “but I’m grateful.”
“Father means to pair us off. And it’s not that I don’t like you. But we’ve got to … to be careful.”
He looked as if he meant to answer, but the deck tilted. She grabbed his shoulders as one bulkhead suddenly became “downhill.”
“Engine burn,” he said. “We’re underway.”
She looked all around. “Can’t we hide—can’t we get out of here—” She knelt beside the hatch.
“Don’t touch it!” He seized her arm.
She turned around. “Why not?”
“Voltage lock. It threw me onto the bunk. That’s why I pulled you away when it first closed you in.”
“Oh.” Defeated, she wrapped her arms around herself. The cabin was warm, but she felt cold. “Our only real chance to escape would be to overpower the whole crew,” she said without much hope. “Can you people do anything like that?”
“No. Only listen.”
That made sense. “We might outnumber them.” She glanced from one metal bulkhead to another. “I came on board with twelve other people.”
“I’ve heard them through the bulkheads. The crew says Sunsis is seventeen days away.” He climbed onto the top bunk, perched on its end, and started tapping. Three quick raps, three slow, three quick. An easy pattern.
She knelt again and imitated his rhythm. When nothing happened, she crawled ten centimeters farther along and tried again. If all the prisoners could signal each other, they might coordinate something—but what?
Eventually, too tired to continue, she straightened. “Have they left us anything to eat?”
He slapped a crate on the top bunk. “It’s all labeled ‘rations.’” Even his palms were dotted with scabs. He looked strange, queueless with two-toned hair and a new beard. She wondered what invisible scars Gen Casimir had inflicted on him. If he’d suffered, it was partly her fault. Yes, he was a spy. So yes, he’d taken that risk. Still, he’d been caught trying to help her and Alun escape.
On the other hand, she and Alun had provided Jahn with information he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. She must let Jahn take responsibility—and the consequences—for his own actions. Wasn’t that a concept Regent Salbari had taught her?
What courage it must have taken, though, to leave Antar for Tdega.
Alun. Poor Alun. “Did you hear?” she asked softly. “Alun died.”
He looked up with furrowed brows and narrow eyes. “I thought so. He took a terrible fall.”
“Fath—” No, she would not call him that. “Regent Casimir told me he lingered. He had said that if Alun died, he would charge you with murder—”
“They told me that, too.”
“Well, I don’t think he will now. He’s more likely to hold charges over you as a threat.” She sat down beside him on the lower bunk. “I’m sorry Alun’s gone. I liked him.”
“So did I.” Jahn stared at his feet. “And I assume you heard Regent Salbari resigned.”
“Yes. Why?”
“No one’s saying.” Jahn reached up into a crate and pulled out a soft metallic pouch. “No label.” He tore into it. Thick brown pudding oozed out. He cleared his throat.
“I’ve been eating that for two days already,” she said, “if it’s what I think.” She dipped in a finger and licked it. At first, it tasted oddly sweet. Then oily undertones came through. “That’s the stuff, all right.”
Jahn spoke in a flat, detached voice. “We’re being prepared as hosts for a parasite with massive iron requirements. It encases its spores in metal.”
She shuddered. “At least we won’t starve.”
“They won’t let us. I tried refusing a meal.”
She didn’t ask for details.
“Here.” He handed her the pouch. “I’ll finish what you can’t choke down.”
She squeezed pudding out of the pouch’s ripped corner into her mouth. She swallowed as much as she could, horrible though it tasted. She needed her strength.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered. She glanced up at the top bunk, piled with food crates. Their captors had left only one bunk vacant. She would sleep on the deck rather than tempt fate the way her father seemed to intend.
Was he watching? She didn’t see any surveillance eyes on the bulkhead, but if he’d set someone on watch, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of watching her search the cabin.
Jahn climbed into the top bunk’s vacant corner. “I’ll hand these down to you,” he said. “We’ll pile them on the floor.”
Thank you, she thought at him, wondering whether he’d synched with her previous thoughts, too.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She took the bottom bunk and undressed under the covers. Several minutes after Jahn stopped rustling above her, she hadn’t gone to sleep. The lights hadn’t dimmed, either. She whispered, “Are you awake?”
“Yes.” His clear voice suggested strength and courage.
She hoped she wouldn’t let him down. “Did they hurt you, Jahn?”
“Why are you asking me again?”
She’d been thinking about some of the things Lieutenant Metyline said on the shuttle. And hadn’t she been told that most empaths followed Sphere teachings? “If you have to forgive them, how do you do it?”
She listened to a long silence before he answered. “It isn’t easy.” He didn’t sound condescending or scornful, and plainly, he knew what she referred to. “You start by acknowledging that they owe you a debt—of comfort, or dignity, or whatever they stole.” He was silent for a moment. “You’re thinking about Karine? Or Gamal Casimir?”
“Karine.” She still carried so much anger, even after trying to forgive the woman. And that was to say nothing of her father and what he was doing—
“Well, she owes you plenty. You have to realize that you can never collect. Nor from your father.”
How much of her thoughts could he follow? Or was that simply a logical guess? “I’ll deal with him later,” she said. She thought through that idea of debt, as it applied to Karine. Truly, she felt robbed. Really and truly robbed of her freedom, dignity, and hope of independence. She dredged up a vague, bitter memory. It made her feel hot inside. Clenched. “All right,” she said. “Next?”
“Since you can’t undo what’s been done, your pain harms you more than it hurts Karine. It stresses you, now that you’re letting yourself feel it.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You will need,” he said softly, “to let Karine take the consequences for her own specific actions. Give them back to her. To the Creator, too.”
That sounded familiar. It wouldn’t solve anything—not magically, as she might have wished that it could—but it was something she might work on. And maybe, if the Sphere people were right and an eternal Creator existed, she could ask for his help.
Especially if this was the requirement for life after death. Because she would almost rather die than cooperate.
“I’ll try,” she said. “Thank you. I hope you can sleep.”
“You too.”
“You should probably stop synching now.”
He laughed softly.
She lay still and tried to think of every insult, every restriction, every anguish Karine had heaped on her. Each memory was a debt. Not one could be repaired or repaid.
Nor, come to think of it, could she repay Karine for the good things she’d been given, such as her education and training.
So. If she hoped to find any lasting happiness, it had to come from inside her—or else by way of that Creator.
All right, then, she announced silently into the void. Elna says that you’re out there. Regent Salbari says so, too. And Jahn seems to believe. I don’t know enough to buy in, but if your sphere is real, I’d like to join it. I want to stop feeling afraid. I’ll—I’ll forgive them all. Is that really all it takes?
She waited for the dread curling around her heart to loosen its claw-like grip.
It didn’t. Apparently, she’d missed something.
Well, thanks anyway. She turned toward the wall. Jahn’s breathing had become heavy and regular. Evidently, he had respected her thoughts’ privacy.
But would it be too much to ask for some sign that you heard me? Elna had said honest doubt was expected. Whenever you’re ready. Hopefully soon.
She still heard only Jahn.
Eventually, his breathing lulled her into a dream. Karine dangled by her feet from a glimmering grid line, hanging head-down over the craterous yellow surface of a planet that was supposed to be Sunsis A. Hawk-wings folded over her back, she waited there for Llyn, wearing Osun Zavijavah’s wraparound glasses.
Jahn woke before Llyn did. He hadn’t slept well since Casimir’s people worked him over. His bones still felt as if they were buzzing with pain, and imaginary needles still probed and sparked under his skin.
He had no idea how long he’d slept. If they were under surveillance, the cabin lights might not dim. Ever.
He slipped off the top bunk, careful not to jostle Llyn on the bunk below. Her relaxed face looked utterly peaceful, and he envied her. Curled around her pillow, she looked almost like a child with a stuffed animal, her hair thrown behind her head.
Smiling, he stepped across the cabin and eyed the hatch. He lay down next to it. Then he closed his eyes and listened.
Llyn’s dreaming came through clearly. He synched his inner frequency to hers, wondering if he would be able to make sense of any imagery. She seemed to be operating an exercise machine. Exercise …
He opened his eyes. She’d almost pulled him down into sleep. They were uncannily matched, almost as if they naturally thought in a kind of nexus. Again he studied her sleeping face, remembering the determination she had shown during their dash up the long hillside. To have come back so strongly from the mental crippling Casimir inflicted on her, she had to be as brilliant as that Tdegan Security guard had remembered. Llyn had returned from a deeper fall than Alun’s. She would fly higher, once she learned to catch air in her wings.
She had also stirred instincts that he could not indulge here. He shut his eyes, determined not to spring Casimir’s trap. Casimir stood to benefit if they relaxed their guard and loved each other. They also would need all their wits about them if they hoped to escape the Chaethe at Sunsis.
He dismissed regret, exhaled, and centered himself in a mental posture of listening. Then he tried eavesdropping again, tuning out Llyn’s dreaming mind. He heard faint inner frequencies in all directions, like fuzzy stars on a hazy Tdegan night. He focused on one at random and synched.
The frequency fluctuated, anticipating something and relaxing, in a long slow rhythm. Someone was apparently playing a gambling game on watch.
He lay still for most of an hour, sampling presences, until someone awoke in a cabin close by. The instant he achieved synch, he recognized Gamal Casimir. Gamal had been awakened by a communiqué reporting an attack ship’s approach to Tdega Gate. In three days, it would emerge at the Antar system.
Jahn tried to tug Casimir into nexus and urge him to turn that attack ship around. He managed to keep Casimir awake for half an hour, but Casimir did not respond with any decision. Eventually, the other frequency faded as Casimir dozed off.
Jahn glared up at the bulkheads and wiped sweat off his forehead. If he’d been Athis Pallaton, he might have succeeded.
Well, he wasn’t. He climbed back up the boxes onto his bunk, turned over twice to wrap the blanket around him, and tried to sleep. His buzzing bones and thousands of tiny itching scabs made it impossible.
Two days and six nauseating meals later, Llyn had rapped every bulkhead a thousand times. She sat down on the lower bunk next to Jahn. Her knuckles ached as she closed her hand carefully around his forearm. His bruises were fading, and he never complained, but she didn’t want to hurt him. “You’ve done all you could,” she said. “So have I.”
“You’re upset.” He probably was synching. He looked more and more tired, napping often but never for long.
“Well,” she said, “yes. But …”
He bumped her with his shoulder. “But what?”
“I want to be brave for your sake. I’m sure you’ve felt my fear for two days.”
“I don’t listen all the time. And touching your feelings always comforts me.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s so easy to synch with you.”
She smiled.
His voice softened. “I’d like to try to hear all that you are. Would you let me?”
How many times had he already synched with her? It had never harmed her. Not that she could tell, anyway. “It would be good—while I’m still myself—to know that someone had known me completely. Do you think you would still like me?”
“I know I would,” he murmured. “You honor me by showing that much confidence.”
“Would I feel anything?”
“Tell me if you do. So far, you haven’t.”
“Try it, then.”
She closed her eyes and waited. Nothing happened for a long time. She counted tiny ridges on the pad of her thumb.
Jahn sighed softly. She felt cheated.
“I like you very much,” he whispered. “Do something for me, would you? Think of that melody.”
“From your recording?”
“Yes.”
She recalled it to mind, wishing only that they might escape together.
The featureless bulkhead shifted, although no grid lines appeared. She sensed someone beside her—but not in human shape. The amorphous presence glimmered blue-gold. She sang herself toward it. It grew to surround her. She burst its wall and plunged through. It laughed, shrank through her, and doubled back.
She had played games like this with the gentle geometries of her inner world. She saw no reason to try and escape now. She dove into the blue-gold presence again and clung, singing a wall into existence. It surrounded them both.
When her control song’s echo returned, she cringed. The seventeen-tone scale had turned bitter. She still responded automatically, controlled by it exactly as she used it to control other shapes. She had grown accustomed to living as a free agent instead of wafting along, steered by external music as often as not.
Years ago, she had invented a silencing sequence of tones that rose through three octaves. She sang it now.
The echoes silenced. Triumph and joy flooded out of her spirit’s center. She hadn’t even known she had joy inside her. She’d thought she was full of pain. Jahn’s presence seemed to amplify her joy.
Wanting to tease him the way she had teased programmed presences, she tried dashing away. He clung. She couldn’t break free. She struggled, singing discord into the gridless vacuum. That seemed not to affect the other unmistakably human presence. “No,” Jahn murmured. His echo filled her mind. “Please don’t fight me. Don’t drop me.”
She relaxed into the blue-gold embrace and listened. She listened keenly and closely. She seemed to hear herself singing out of his heart.
His voice sounded again. “That’s love, Llyn. That’s what truly caring sounds like. That’s how I feel about what I saw in you.”
Flushed, she hung in place and listened. Abruptly she sensed something both deeper and vaster than Jahn’s presence, and she realized it was both inside and vastly outside of her. Turning herself inside out—the gesture made her feel a little like a Klein bottle, with no inside or outside—she sang herself toward it.
It spun, a pure, blinding light. The closer she drew, the less frightened she felt. Simply approaching it seemed to muzzle her ability to fear. She couldn’t tell its true shape. Rotating at a speed approaching infinite, it looked spherical. It spun off garnet-red droplets in all directions.
One droplet whizzed toward her. She plunged into its path, and in an instant of pain, it pierced her through. Either this liquid was more solid than she was, or it was no droplet but the brilliant shard of a jewel. A gift. The pain that its passing left morphed into a shivery new joy.
“What are you?” she sang at the spinning sphere.
“I am.” It expanded explosively, as things sometimes did in the inner world. But it also remained outside her, so completely beyond that it seemed to enclose the universe.
Awed but puzzled, she made the inside-out gesture again and found herself next to the blue-gold presence, the one that soothed like Jahn’s voice. “Did you see that?” she sang. “The … the bright center?” And what made her so sure it was the center?
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s happening?” Llyn asked, confused but entirely at peace. She’d begged for a sign. Was this it? “Why are you here?”
“I’m still synched with you,” Jahn’s presence answered, “and I think you pulled me into one of your flashbacks—”
“No, no! This isn’t a flashback. Nothing like this ever happened before. And I won’t apologize.”
“I’m not sorry, either. This is something empaths can’t do. I don’t want it to end. We might never do it again.”
“Maybe we have no choice. Maybe we can’t stop. Maybe it’s … permanent?” She cracked her eyes open.
She sat beside Jahn, not the blue-gold presence but a man with a short red beard, holding him so tightly that her shoulder hurt. His eyes opened, too. She let him go and leaned away.
The sense of communion flowed on. He loved her. On the inside, where he could not deceive.
“Something’s different,” he whispered. “Something just happened.”
Llyn blinked. Then she, too, noticed that only her visual imagery had changed. The inner-yet-outer world sense of melody, space, and time flowed on. So did the electric awareness of Jahn Korsakov. Jahn Emlin.
Jahn.
Relaxing against him, she shut her eyes. “Whistle something,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked, and she felt his confusion. Had he changed her into an empath?
He laughed at the thought. His merriment infected her, and she laughed back. It felt wonderful to laugh. It meant cherishing the unexpected. Comprehending it. Delighting in it.
“Whistle something,” she repeated. “Random notes. Try to hit one of the seventeen-tone intervals. I have a hunch.”
He puckered and blew an unlikely series of tones. Llyn envisioned inner-world responses to the intervals, but the bulkhead remained solid in front of her.
“I don’t know what has happened,” she said solemnly, “but I’m free. I’m in control.”
“This time, I think you truly are.”
Should she be afraid? They had done something to and with each other that she could not understand—but the sensation enchanted her. She relaxed into it again. “What color am I?” She wondered if he would understand.
He answered without hesitating. “Blue. You shimmer.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise her. “You’re the same. You’re one of us. Whatever we are.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“No. You are.”
She was losing track of which identity was speaking.
“I think,” Jahn said softly, “this must be something the trainers called interactive enmeshment. It was supposed to be terrible.”
“I think it would be, with the wrong person.”
He nodded. “Not just terrible. Unbearable.”
If this killed her, she would die happy—and uninfested. She pulled closer to Jahn and deeper, farther from the world of bunks and bulkheads.
Something amazing had begun.
Jahn felt helpless in Llyn’s universe, but her sense of belonging made him hope he could adjust.
This state truly would be intolerable with a person who used other inner frequencies. It would drive one or both mad within minutes. He couldn’t believe he and Llyn had stumbled into it together. They must have been led to it.
Yes, echoed Llyn-inside-him. It feels that way. Led.
If Gamal Casimir enslaved their bodies to aliens, might they escape together into this other plane of existence? Alone, he would have refused to return to it. This weird, extra-dimensional existence had to be part of creation—but surely they were not meant to linger here. It would never be his home.
Still, Llyn might be happier here than living controlled by an uncaring “Rider.”
Her alarm accelerated the nexus frequency. Don’t deny yourself everything just to make me happy. That’s what Karine tried to do, only in reverse. It’s just as wrong. And I don’t think the outside world is unimportant. It’s created, too, isn’t it?
He tried to think himself smaller, as a gesture of apology. Nothing happened. In this strange inner world, he could only cling to her. “Actually,” he said, “if Osun Zavijavah is any indicator, I might be happier here, too.”
Still, it felt like temptation.
Favia Hadley eyed the estate nerve center’s overhead monitor. A standby message had been repeating for twenty hours. Delegates, planetary representatives, and family members, remaining at the Salbari estate for word from Ilzar or Sunsis, had squeezed close together on the floor under this monitor.
She stood beside Boaden Salbari, knowing he wouldn’t stay much longer. He had taken to pacing the nerve center’s circle of multinet terminals. His frown deepened the jowls beneath his chin. As Head Regent, Boaden had deployed the few reinforcements that had arrived from Miatrix. One Miatrixan gunship remained close to Antar Gate, where it could respond if an invader emerged. The other two stood in high orbit, ready to defend this continent. But what good could two midsize gunships do against the war wagon her nephew Jahn had described in his transmission?
Boaden had also made evacuation arrangements. Fifty kilometers from Nuris, Rift, and two other industrial cities, and upwind from the estate, crews were digging deep bunkers. As soon as Boaden ordered general evacuation, Antarans would flee the obvious targets.
Favia did not expect to hear from Filip until he announced the mission’s success, and that might not happen for weeks. She could only pray for him. Maintaining her hugely expanded household, including the other systems’ delegates, kept her scurrying. Alcotte had stayed close to Boaden, assisting when Boaden let him, particularly with Antaran domestic affairs.
But Boaden itched to assemble a strike force and send it to Sunsis behind the empath delegation. So far, although Vatsya and Kocab had promised five warships each toward the effort, none had arrived.
Yesterday, they all had been shaken loose from their routines by the standby messages appearing over c-net terminals. The Tdegan star-and-ring emblem had flashed, as before, but no further communication appeared. As Jahn predicted, a Tdegan warship had emerged through the Gate and launched a dozen defense fighters. One destroyed the Miatrixan defender.
Now only two gunships stood between the world of Antar and a new round of Tdegan missiles. They could arrive in six days. Digging crews had gone on triple overtime.
This morning, her daughter Stasia lingered next to one of the six multinet transceivers. Favia stared, loving the girl. Stasia had inherited Favia’s thick, curly hair and Filip’s passionate eyes. Some people had claimed her parents gave her too much freedom, because she refused to do anything that didn’t hold her interest. In the past, Stasia had kept to her rooms during a crisis.
But Filip had spent several hours with her before leaving for Sunsis, and the next morning, Stasia had volunteered to help wherever needed.
A tremor rattled the floor. Two techs who’d been standing under the main projector backed away. Favia guessed the tremor had been strong enough to unsettle even the people who hadn’t been nervous.
She missed Vananda. Vananda had always been as close as the c-net during a crisis. Gladwyn was also absent from the nerve center. Two nights ago, she finally brought one more Tourelle into the world. Gladwyn and little Feith were resting together.
Boaden bowed his head and muttered, “I wish they’d get on with it.”
“You’re ready?”
“With two warships.” He sounded disgusted. “Where are the reinforcements the other systems promised? Only Miatrix—”
The ringed star vanished. A man’s head and shoulders appeared. Favia recognized Bellik Casimir. “Antar and the Concord,” he said brusquely, “we find it difficult to believe that you could not take our promise at face value. By striking the Ilzar system, you have opened war against the Tdegan Hegemony. That is a war you will not win, and we are about to end it.”
A flurry alongside one of the multinet terminals momentarily distracted Favia. Boaden strode toward it. She turned back to the pigtailed image near the ceiling.
“We warned you that the weapons we used against Ilzar would be brought against you if you challenged any world of the Hegemony. We will arrive in Antaran orbit within six days of your receiving this transmission. At that time, we will launch missiles. You probably expect us to strike your cities.” He paused, smirking.
Favia glanced at Boaden. He lowered his eyebrows. Where else might they strike?
The smirk faded. “We will target your sea, Mare Novus. That will send up enough steam and debris to set back your terraforming effort a hundred years or more. You will be too busy evacuating the planet to attack us again. If you are wise, you’ll start evacuating now.”
The image winked off.
Creator! Favia drooped against a tabletop. That hadn’t even been an if-then ultimatum. It had been a pronouncement. A declaration. All around her, people stood openmouthed. No Antaran had predicted this planetary savagery.
She pressed toward the terminal that had caught Boaden’s attention. Over its transmitter hovered a warship’s image.
Stasia edged through the crowd toward her mother. “It’s huge,” Stasia exclaimed. “That must be one of their new ones. What can we do?”
Boaden had already hustled to another terminal, where he stood talking to a small uniformed image over its projector, the head of Antar’s Miatrixan reinforcements. Boaden sounded angry. Justifiably, in her opinion—
“Mother!” Stasia exclaimed.
Favia turned around. Stasia pointed at the warship’s image. The projectech had shrunk it in order to display outer-system space behind it, all the way back to Antar Gate.
Five more ships had emerged. Favia didn’t recognize their configuration.
Boaden sped back across the room. Favia and the others scurried aside to let him pass. “Kocab,” he exclaimed. “Kocab came though! They’re Kocaban cruisers.”
“What can they do against that?” Stasia pointed at the big Tdegan ship.
Boaden shook his head. “According to Emlin’s specs, the new Tdegans can cover their aft quadrant but only against one or two attackers. It’ll have to turn and defend itself. It’ll be depending on its fighters till then.”
Favia gazed at the big ship’s image as Boaden sent the Kocabans a message. Coded, she assumed. Several minutes later, the projectech punched in a series of calculations and announced, “Yes. It’s turning. It’s going to try wiping them out before it comes for us.”
“But it hasn’t changed course.” Stasia scowled. “It’s still headed our way.”
Could that be? Favia turned to Boaden.
“That’s right,” the tech said. “It’s not decelerating. Only rotating. As it comes.”
Her heart seemed to fall toward her stomach.
Minutes turned to hours. The projectech line-fed that terminal’s image into the overhead projector. Favia ordered more chairs. Planetary delegates, family members, and estate staff sat down again, craning their necks to watch overhead images. Maybe people ate and drank in other rooms, but no one in the nerve center moved. Their doom or their deliverance would be determined within hours. If Tdega targeted Mare Novus, any Antarans who survived must scatter to other planets. That would overburden food production systems. Or else they must crawl to Tdega as refugees.
That had probably been Gamal Casimir’s plan all along. The empaths could not run to Tdega, though. The paranoid Casimirs would surely try to wipe them out.
Far into the night, the image changed. “Tdega now firing on the Kocabans,” an Outwatch officer announced. Silence fell again.
Favia sat beside her daughter, who winced periodically. Finally, Favia asked, “What’s wrong?”
Stasia shook her head. “People are afraid,” she whispered. “Every now and then I synch with someone. Then I wish I hadn’t.”
Stasia must have learned to synch simply by observing other empaths, although she’d steadfastly refused to be trained. “Your Uncle Alcotte could help you with that.” Favia glanced aside. Alcotte stood next to Boaden.
“If we live through this,” Stasia said, “I think it’s time I let him.”
Deeply touched, Favia reached for her daughter’s hand.
Someone close to the overhead terminal gave a shout. “What’s that?”
Three more ships appeared through Antar Gate. Another pair trailed the three.
Boaden peered at them for a moment and cried, “Vatsya! And the Tdegan is broadside to them. It’s helpless and it knows it. It’s going to accelerate out of this approach vector. I guarantee.”
Joyful shouts echoed off the walls.
The battle for Antar took two days, as military ships hundreds of klicks apart decelerated and maneuvered into firing positions. Favia watched Boaden’s prediction come true: the big Tdegan newcomer reabsorbed six of its eight surviving fighters and then poured on speed that impressed even Boaden. One Kocaban defender, caught between the Tdegan ship and the Gate, was destroyed as the big war wagon sped away. The other defenders scattered and let it go.
The next evening at dinner, after everyone slept a few hours, Boaden summed up the action. “Gamal Casimir probably ordered that captain to protect his ship at all costs. It’s their newest and best.”
“But what now?” Favia asked softly. “It’ll be back, won’t it?”
“I think so,” he muttered. His face had gone gray. “But we’ve won a respite. We’ll regroup and prepare a new defense—and send off a Gate message to your husband.”
“Thank you,” she said. Maybe carrying the Head Regent’s load had finally shown Boaden just how well Filip had served.
Bring him back safely, she prayed, and soon!