Rebel Ice (8 page)

He paused the recorder. Coming to Akkabarr all those years ago had been Reever's first contact with free humanoids since being enslaved by the Faction himself. Yet while the Toskald were warm-blooded humanoids, their emotions seemed limited to self-absorption, ranging in intensity from greed to paranoia. Among the Toskald, appearances were everything, and Reever had no difficulty blending in. They had prejudiced him, though, and for years afterward he thought all humanoids were equally as trite and shallow.

Until he had met Cherijo.

Reever switched on the recorder. "I gathered evidence that showed Akkabarr's violent atmospheric conditions rendered it impervious to scanning and impregnable to any attack force. Then I learned the secret of the shifting dead-air zones, and how the Toskald pilots located and used them to get from space to their floating cities, and from the air cities to the surface of the planet and back again. Those facts I did not relate to the Faction, as part of the balance for what had been done to me."

As a spy, Reever had betrayed the Hsktskt countless times. It was payment for the three revolutions they had forced him to fight in slaver arenas. Saving lives seemed the most adequate expiation for the many he had taken.

Hate!

Reever thought of his former owner, a centuron with a heavy fist who liked to beat her slaves as much as she enjoyed starving them. She had been the one to give him that name after he began killing on the sands. Her cronies had taken to chanting it every time he had entered the arena, when his reputation for efficiency had begun drawing larger crowds.

Hala
in Hsktskt meant "death," and death was what he had given them, until the day he had saved TssVar from an assassination attempt, and had been elevated from slave to the Hsktskt OverLord's equal.

"Being made TssVar's blood brother took me into the ranks of the most powerful raider division within the Faction," he told the recorder. "His protection and trust gave me the opportunity to sabotage the Faction from within, which I continued to do until he sent me to evaluate Kevarzangia Two. That was when I met you,
Waenara
. When you saved me."

He was talking to her, not the recorder now.

Reever shut off the unit. He knew he now had to erase the voice file; he couldn't risk the Toskald's confiscating the unit and learning when and how he had spied on them. He couldn't find Cherijo if he was imprisoned or dead.

There was much about his past that Reever had concealed from his wife. In the beginning, it had been caution that kept him from confiding in her—he felt vulnerable enough, forming such a rapid and intimate connection with a female who was a total stranger to him—and then a curious dragging, weighty sensation that his psychological database indicated could be guilt or shame. Because Reever's childhood had been spent on a succession of alien worlds, and his Terran xenobiologist parents had left him entirely in the care of drones or the nearest sentient species, he had never learned how to feel human emotions. Meeting Cherijo had changed that, but Reever was still something of a novice at recognizing them.

Akkabarr's white and blue colors filled the launch's viewer panel. Reever's hand clenched, and then he pressed the key that erased the voice recorder's storage chips.

When I find her, I can tell her everything.

"Disengage autoflight stabilizers," he told the helm computer as he left orbit at a near-parallel course with the surface of the ice world. Once the launch was under his manual control, he bypassed the safeties and angled the nose down four degrees.

The launch shuddered as it began the long slide into the lethal upper atmosphere.

The ride was still as much of a bastard as it had been ten years ago; Reever had to fight to keep the launch from rolling as he located, and then maneuvered the ship in the exact center of, a narrow conduit of dead air between two of the widest, most powerful upper wind currents. The secret of penetrating Akkabarr's atmosphere was not to enter the kim-wide wind streams, but to slide along their periphery through the dead-air zones and use their enormous energy at precisely the right place and moment to jump through an interior vortex to another, lower pocket of calm.

Starry darkness blackening the port and starboard viewports lightened to deepest violet, streaked with white and silver striae: streams of icy dust that had been trapped forever between the endless winds.

"Recommend reverse course," the helm computer advised him. "Increase engine output to achieve escape velocity."

Gradually Reever made his descent, the launch bouncing and rocking as he used the Toskald technique of sliding from one elongated dead-air pocket to the next.
The same manner in which throwing flat rocks permits them to skim the surface of a body of water
, he thought as he skirted a current strong enough to disintegrate the launch around him. Another solitary practice he had taken up as a youth during the four years his parents had forced him to spend on Terra in an educational facility.

Something tightened inside him. "I never told you that I know how to skip stones, either, did I?"

"Unable to process," the helm panel replied. "Please restate request."

Give me back my wife
. "Cancel request."

The launch lurched wildly as Reever forced it through a vortex almost too small to be useful. At the other end lay a fury of blasting hail that buffeted the hull with the force of pulse fire. Although this airspace was as dangerous as those above it, Reever relaxed. Reaching the hail stream meant he had descended through the last of the upper atmospheric currents. Beneath the hail lay the region that the Toskald occupied with their habitat vessels, and from there it was only a short and violent flight through the far more dangerous lower atmospheric currents to reach the surface.

He had yet to transmit his final relay to the
Sunlace
.

"File transmitted."

Hail dust occluded the view panel for a few more minutes before the launch leveled out in the clear, temperate zone. Beneath the calm air, the lower winds permitted only the briefest glimpses of planet Akkabarr's glacial features.

Reever could not feel her from this distance, and still he reached out with his mind to her.
Beloved, I am here
.

There was no answer. There never was.

After a long moment of staring at the vacant ice fields, Reever engaged the sensors and scanned until he obtained the position of Skjonn and altered his course to intercept.

The immense suborbital cluster of vessels, satellites, and artificial domed biospheres, commonly known as a skim city, ballooned on the horizon. Reever knew that the Toskald were no more indigenous to Akkabarr than the Iisleg's ancestors were, but they had evidently come here far better equipped.

He knew from the cultural database that five thousand years ago, the swelling of the Toskald homeworld's sun into a red giant had forced their exodus. They had selected Akkabarr for its isolation, unique atmospheric conditions, and biospheric compatibility with their species. On this new world, they knew they would have no neighboring inhabited worlds to trouble them, their cities would be guarded by planetwide walls of winds, and they faced no risk being eradicated by some exotic alien microorganism hostile to their physiology. They had brought with them the technology that had allowed them to survive on their homeworld for centuries after that planet's surface had become too seismically unstable to support life. In the process of adapting their city-sized vessels to better match the challenges of Akkabarr's frozen climate and vicious atmosphere, the Toskald had evolved into one of the most advanced species in the quadrant.

Reever admired the instinct for survival in any species, but successful adaptation and technological development were simply not enough to satisfy the Toskald. Once they had restabilized their civilization, they turned their efforts to eliminating any possibility of a second exodus. This resulted in Akkabarran slavery and arms dealing.

Such paranoia could be dangerous. Yet as Reever had discovered, with a little preparation, it could also be readily manipulated.

Reever opened his relay channels and transmitted a stanTerran approach signal, requesting permission to dock. He cycled the relay to repeat in Toskald and several other quadrant languages, the same way a diplomat would. He watched his panel as his sensors tracked a highly focused scan beam passing over the launch. The Toskald would read the standard array of defensive weaponry along with Reever's vessel identification.

The dock supervisor still transmitted a terse inquiry. "What business have you in Skjonn, Terran?"

"Official business," he replied. "The matter is confidential."

"That should cost you," the supervisor informed him. "Standard visitor regulations are being transmitted to your database. You are not permitted to carry weapons, enslaved beings, biologies, or materials classified as hazardous under InterPlan Schedule one through two thousand four hundred sixty-eight. You will not be permitted to leave your ship until you have acknowledged understanding and voluntary adherence to these regulations, violation of which will result in your immediate detainment, prosecution, and punishment under Toskald law. Confirm or deny."

"Confirmed." Reever noted that the turret cannon mounted above and below the docks tracked his approach, and the focused scan remained continuous until he disengaged the launch's engines. He unfastened and removed his flight suit, straightening the uniform it had concealed, before sending the required agreement to the visitor regulations. Only after two biodecon sweeps was he given permission to disembark.

Two heavily armed security drones were waiting at the bottom of the ramp for him. "Identify," one of them said.

Reever held out his identification. The drone took the chip and inserted it into its memory panel to read it. It seemed a long time before it said, "Confirmed." It removed and returned the chip to Reever. "Destination?"

He produced a second, encrypted chip. "I seek an audience with the Kangal Orjakis on a matter of interplanetary security."

This time the drone took only three seconds to verify the data from the chip before its programmed demeanor switched from interrogative to deferential. "This way, sir."

"I see Janzil Ches Orjakis, Kangal of Skjonn. Presentation of prospect seven-nine-seven."

Janzil Ches Orjakis, Kangal of Skjonn, reclined as the newest candidate for his personal use and amusement walked to the oval of polished stone before his chaise and halted there.

Above his head, a panel reflected the image that pleased him most: his own. Many long hours had he devoted to achieving his physical excellence; maintaining it required continual vigilance. His father, Orjak Ches Stagon, the Kangal Before, had impressed this on him as nothing else.

You are to be the Next
, Stagon had told him when he had taken Orjakis for his first treatment.
You must show care in this, for the people have expectations to be met
.

Having his young bones stretched and his small muscles stimulated by the offworlder machines had been painful, something Orjakis had never known, but he did not weep. Not in front of his father, who endured ten times as much treatment without a murmur. Orjakis's caregivers had made him understand the dangers of his position, too. There were others his father had sired who could easily be named Next, others who would not whine or complain about the rigors of physical duty.

Now he was Kangal, and a man grown, he felt he had surpassed even Stagon as the embodiment of the ruler perfect.

Orjakis turned his head to admire how golden threads of light chased each other through his dark hair. The angular countenance of boyhood had vanished, replaced by features that were a harmony of all things sensual and commanding. Countless Toskald had fallen in love with their Kangal merely after one glimpse of his face.

His face could not compare with his body, naturally.

Envy and desire should never be fatal.

Orjakis lifted a hand mirror and through it regarded the slave. She was watching him, of course, and had remained silent. Someone in Acquisitions was putting more effort into pretraining these prospects. The slave slowly raised four graceful arms while she undulated beneath the sultry column of air streaming down from one of the ceiling portals. Her rather sedate garment actually consisted of long strands of sparkling tube gems, the flared joints of which caught the heated stream and caused the strands to fan out in pleasing patterns. As the strands moved, oiled brown-and-purple-striped flesh appeared.

"What is she?" Orjakis asked his chamber drone, which had announced the prospect.

The drone consulted its database. "Hybrid of as yet undetermined species, slave-born Garnotan, Kangal. Purchased from the Common Trade Platform by Acquisitions."

Orjakis tilted the mirror. She had no hair or nose, and her double-lidded eyes had a black reptilian gleam to them that he found mildly repulsive. No breast mounds or nipples, either, unless they were on the back of her, but her ample hips were supple enough.
She can keep her eyes shut
. Orjakis found the extra limbs rather novel, and wondered if she sported any additional orifices. "Screen and clean her."

Unfortunately, the female chose to drop into a complicated crouch that involved balancing on one palm while continuing the elegant movements of two arms. The fourth arm snaked down and worked her remaining hand in and out of her body.

Although it was evidently meant to entice, the show of manual dexterity immediately killed Orjakis's interest. "Wait." Professionals always left him cold; he preferred to do his own training. "Cancel the prep work and send her to the garrison. Send in our notch."

The slave made no sound, but her black eyes shimmered with realistic tears as the drone hauled her out of the chamber.

Orjakis's notch, a retired trader who had sold himself to the Kangal to satisfy the last of an inherited debt, entered with recorder in hand. He had been so adept at his work that no one could remember his name anymore; he was simply the notch. "I see Janzil Ches Orjakis, Kangal of Skjonn. Your desire, Kangal?"