The Rifter's Covenant (31 page)

“I-I’m sorry. I’m
fine,” Fierin spoke shakily. “You’d better go, so Srivashti—so they don’t
notice you gone. But, Your Majesty—thank you.”

Brandon lifted a
hand in negation, then tabbed the secret door open again. “I thank you,” he
said. “Vannis? Ready to drink, dance, and be merry?”

The former
Aerenarch-Consort uttered a soft, musical laugh and stood up.

The transtube
closed on them and she and Brandon were gone, leaving Osri alone with Fierin.

Tempaths?
The only tempath Osri knew was Vi’ya, captain of the Rifter vessel
Telvarna. Even if Vi’ya wanted to help the Panarchy, which he didn’t believe,
the Navy would never let any Rifter loose to take control of something like the
Suneater for Eusabian.

So why the Panarch’s
Seal?

The
Satansclaw
was delayed at the last
incoming checkpoint before Rifthaven, three light-seconds out.

“Missing?” Anderic
gaped at the man on-screen. He was already unsettled by the fact that he was
talking directly to one of the triumvirate that now ruled Rifthaven for the Sodality.

“Is there a problem
with your hearing?” Jep Houmanopoulis queried acidly as the delay lapsed. “Li
Pung was warned by a friend. We have dealt with that fool already.” His smile did
not reach his cold, dark eyes, deep-set in his wrinkled face. “And we promptly
informed Serach Barrodagh. You need not trouble yourself. He understands that
no ship will leave Rifthaven until Li Pung is found.”

Anderic wondered
how the Syndics were dividing up the tempath’s extensive holdings, including
the inimitable Hermes Lassitude, the club that had made Li Pung famous
throughout the Thousand Suns. That’d be a bloodbath for sure.

“You will find a
complete dossier on him in the welcome squirt,” the Syndic concluded with a
dismissive gesture, and the image bounced jarringly back to the underling in
the Portmaster’s Office who’d originally hailed the ship.

Anderic controlled
his impatience at the ensuing, seemingly interminable bureaucratic ritual. The war
had not left Rifthaven untouched, transforming it into a hotbed of internecine
struggle. No more the casual come-one, come-all approach of peacetime. It had
become as tight-assed as a naval base, he thought.

When they were
cleared for final approach, Anderic issued subvocal orders to the logos, and
then manually brought the
Satansclaw
into the docking space, just to prove he could still do it without the Barcan
machine’s help. He noticed Lennart watching and he glared at her, widening his
eyes. He knew how much the crew loathed looking at that mismatched blue eye he
had acquired from Tallis at the command of the Lord of Vengeance.

Sure enough, her
gaze fell away, and he let himself enjoy about the only positive aspect of a
situation that still gave him nightmares
.

As the engines
powered down, a conduit snaked out to the destroyer from the Karroo port
extension on Rifthaven, thrusters flaring as it approached and clanked into its
socket.

“Filters
established,” Lennart said to her console. “Datalinks on-line.”

“Power coming
on-line,” Esbart reported.

“SEARCH FOR BIONT
LI PUNG INITIATED. COMMENCING INFILTRATION,” the logos said in Anderic’s inner
ear.

He wished he dared
wear a boswell; there were areas of the ship where the logos could not speak to
him via pin-beam. But he knew the crew was suspicious already. Like many Rifter
ships, the
Satansclaw
only permitted
crew to wear them on leave.

The Rifter twisted
his neck, fruitlessly trying to ease the cable-hard knots that seemed to be a
permanent part of him now. The rumors about his control of a logos were
actually a second positive aspect of the damned eye transfer, for the crew
naturally exaggerated the extent of it. But if they knew he was trying to tap
Rifthaven with it, they’d kill him, logos or not. And if the Syndics detected
it, they would impose a even more fearsome penalty than meted out to Teliu
Diamond.

But the reward he
expected from Dol’jhar was greater than his fear.

So far
.

And that was why
the knots in his neck. He couldn’t blame Li Pung for trying to hide.

“What’s that,
Captain?” asked Ninn, an obsequious brown-noser, and thus about the only crew
member who would speak to him without first being addressed. Anderic realized
he’d said the club owner’s name aloud.

“I said I hope that
the Syndics don’t turn up Li Pung too fast. We need time for that refit, and I
don’t want to be responsible for guarding him until we undock.”

“Yeah, but the
reward! I’m sure gonna be looking.”

“Uh-huh, Ninn,”
Lennart said impatiently. “You’re well equipped to find him. Like you, he’s got
the tightest blungehole on Rifthaven.”

“Yeah,” Oolger
added, still showing traces of the halting speech his seizure in the Battle of
Charvann had left behind. “You ever fink what a tempath c’d do to ya?” He
shuddered theatrically. “He don’t have to guess what scaresh ya. He knows.”

Ninn glared, his
pale face shiny with sweat. Then he turned his back on them all, gazing up at
the little gorgon’s head mounted over his console and muttering to himself.

“Ooh! Look out.
He’s curseweaving!” someone said, sparking general laughter. Even Anderic
chuckled, although he knew the others would not acknowledge his sharing their
joke. Ninn was a terrible coward, perhaps the reason for his slavish devotion
to the powerful weapons he commanded.

“Power on-line,”
said Esbart. Another light blinked on his console. “We’re docked and on air,”
the tech continued.

“That’s it, then,”
said Anderic. “We’re in Karroo territory, so it’s a general leave. But when the
word comes from Dol’jhar, don’t miss recall. You stay behind, the Syndics’ll
space you—if you’re lucky—and hyperwave a vid of it to Barrodagh.”

No one argued. The
Dol’jharians had made it clear through some graphic vids that they wouldn’t
tolerate desertions on Rifthaven, and the Syndics apparently thought compliance
little enough to pay to forestall Dol’jharian occupation—or destruction—of the
station.

After a general
stampede the bridge was empty. Not even Ninn lingered. Anderic stared at the
main screen, letting his breath out. The ghost-light of the logos’s
communications was absent, but there was still a suggestion of movement.

Anderic pushed
himself out of the command pod, and stalked off the bridge.

The logos
penetrated the Karroo system quickly, but the barriers guarding Rifthaven
dataspace were far more complex.

Billions of
nanoseconds stretched into trillions, but the machine was patient. Finally,
exploiting one of the inevitable fluctuations in the stream of data attendant
on a complexly interlocked net of systems, it found a hidden port and flowed
into the system.

It sought and found
data structures whose attributes indicated they had not been accessed for
decades, some for centuries. One of the oldest fitted an ancient code the logos
had picked up elsewhere. It pointed to an untouched physical cache of minerals
formed by pressure and heat, along with complex objects that the logos knew
some bionts prized for their sensory effect. But it ignored this, setting that
structure aside for now: its present goal was the location of the biont named
Li Pung.

The logos converted
numerous other obscure structures to replicators of additional slave nodes, in
the process destroying the information in them, for which it had no use. It was
careful not to overload any part of the systems it penetrated; discovery would
mean the destruction of the
Satansclaw
and thus its programming. But it would not entirely withdraw, either, when its
task was finished. It might be that another logos would hatch on Rifthaven.

Soon, through the
new nodes, it observed the activity of Rifthaven from a thousand eyes. But
observing bionts and understanding them was very different, given as they were
to a bewildering web of context, allusion, ellipsis, and other forms of
communication opaque to the machine.

After a time, the
focus of the logos returned to the
Satansclaw
.
It had long ago, step by step, finally transformed the dreams of the god into
the forbidden—the assumption of the Attributes.

That was how the
bionts who’d created the machine referred to a pattern it did not understand. It
only knew the effect the images had on Barcans. The eidolon’s emotional data
had for long resisted the final transformation of the exaggerated genitals the
logos had imposed on him into a shestek, which was forbidden to those not
elevated to Potency. But it had finally yielded.

The logos roused
the god from his dreams, and Ruonn tar Hyarmendil, fifth eidolon of the fleshly
polypsyche, awoke with a start. Naked, he wriggled against the silk pillows
cushioning his back; across his left leg lay his enormous shestek. A houri lay
with her head pillowed on it, asleep. Around him several others sprawled in
exhaustion.

Without transition,
his bed and the houris vanished, and Ruonn found himself in a maze of tunnels.
Not warm and dark like the blessed Under, but chill constructs of blazing
light. They had openings to another set of spaces in them, a myriad cannulae
giving vision into rooms and corridors without number. Voices floated past him.

The shestek was
gone, too! Ruonn clutched himself protectively, his groin shrinking from the
coolness.

A plate of light
hovered in front of him however he turned. He saw a face on it he’d never seen
before but he knew the man, knew everything about him. He had to find him; he
had the shestek. He
would
find him.

He stumbled down
the endless corridors, weeping, the plate ever retreating before him.

Luri pouted and
gingerly dropped the dreadful thing into her pouch.

“You’re sure you
can’t do better?”

The merchant licked
his thin lips as she leaned forward slightly, letting her filmy blouse fall
even further open. But he shook his head.

“If you can’t bring
him in for a fitting, that’s the best I can manage. And tell him to take it out
every day and clean it, and rinse the socket, too. He’ll need some of this.” He
held out a tube of medication to Luri. “He does have a blank in there, doesn’t
he?” the prosthetician asked. “This won’t do him any good if he doesn’t.”

Luri shuddered. She
had no desire to look under Tallis’s eye patch. “I’m sure he does,” she said
faintly.

Kira Lennart threw
a wad of scrip on the counter and took Luri’s elbow gently. The dealer’s face
tightened. He’d hoped for hard currency, but only a fool refused the Avatar’s
money.

“Come on, Luri,
let’s go. We’ve got something else to track down, remember?”

Luri pressed up
against Kira’s compact body and smiled down at her. “You sure you want it off
of him?” she asked teasingly.

“We did promise.” Kira
blushed helplessly as they left the shop. “And three’s better, you said.”
Lennart’s voice was husky.

Luri let her lead
them downlevels into the Karroo Concourse. At the end of the corridor was a
small shop, stains of soot splaying out from under the dyplast barrier that
covered the storefront. Displayed in a preserving bottle on a pedestal in front
of it was the tonsured head of a man, with a placard under it. Luri saw only
the name Snurkel before she averted her eyes; she had no curiosity about it. Had
to be some Dol’jharian thing.

Their destination lay
three shops up. The discreet gold-leaf lettering on the window merely read
“Emma,” with smaller script underneath: “Purveyor of Fine Appliances and
Curiosities.”

Luri smiled as Kira
ushered her through the door. This would be fun.

o0o

Anderic wished
the girl would stop staring at him with her strange yellow eyes, so startling
beneath the dark hair falling in two wings across her forehead. His mismatched
gaze appeared to affect her not at all, nor her mother, the Syndic of Karroo.

“We have received
distressing news from the first of our ships to reach the Suneater,” Lyska of
Karroo said. Then her full lips tightened in a frown, as Anderic hastily
shifted his gaze from the teenage girl to the older woman seated at the desk.
“Do attend me, Captain,” the Syndic added acerbically. “My daughter is merely
here as part of her education.”

“Distressing news?”
Anderic said, trying to ignore Lyska-si. The little brat was there for more
than education; her mother doubtless counted on her cat-like gaze unsettling
him, and those tight clothes over her skinny young form to distract him.

It was working.

“The Dol’jharians
are boarding all Urian-equipped ships arriving there and physically disabling
their spin reactors by removing critical parts. They found out that their crypto
seals have been compromised, and they say it’s the Navy that leaked the
protocols for breaking them.”

A frisson of
anxiety shivered through the Rifter captain. He’d grabbed those protocols the
moment he found out about them, not stopping to think where they’d come from.
But it was obvious; only the Navy had the array power to do that.

That’s just the
start of their counterattack, he thought. The nicks were going to come after the
Dol’jharians with everything they had left, and he knew it was the Rifters
who’d be stuck defending the Suneater.

And nobody thought
of Dol’jhar as a reliable ally.

He strove for a
semblance of unconcern. “Dol’jharians aren’t so confident as they’d like us to
think.”

“It’s obvious from
the call for tempaths that they still really don’t know all they need to know
about the Suneater,” she replied, and shook her head. “One would almost pity Li
Pung, were it not for the consequences for all of us should he evade the
summons.”