The Rifter's Covenant (68 page)

Several angles
showed the flight. Anaris watched with interest, knowing he was now seeing the
visual record of the flight to which he as conditional heir had been denied
access at the time. Inside that Columbiad was Brandon Arkad; soon he would
escape a second or two ahead of Eusabian’s command to destroy the ship.

For a moment the
ship was a Phoenix, racing ahead of the flames that threatened to consume it
before its time. Anaris blinked.

“The pilot has been
identified as Dol’jharian,” Eusabian went on. As the ship reached the Node, the
Avatar tapped at the console again. Abruptly the picture disappeared, and they
watched from high angle a spectacular fight in close quarters. Anaris scanned
past shelves and boxes and cupboards of what looked like antiques to the
struggling figures. A robed man was screaming in one corner as gaudily
uniformed guards fought desperately against three people, two men and a woman.

Giffus Snurkel.
Morrighon had disposed of him shortly after this scene occurred; this vid was
another record his secretary had failed to ferret out. Well, Morrighon was not
a noderunner. That new little Bori woman, Tatriman, was already doing better.

Anaris turned his
focus back to the screen. One of the two men, Anaris dismissed from his
attention as mere Rifter trash. The other he watched closely as, with humorous
flair, he fought sword-to-sword with a guard amid a lake of shattered crockery.
Despite the worn, ill-fitting flightsuit and a thin strip of velvet masking his
eyes, to anyone who knew him, Brandon Arkad was immediately recognizable. The
woman was tall and black-haired. She also wore black; except for the long tail
of hair, she could easily be mistaken for a Tarkan guard. Anaris watched as she
fought with skill, despite the tight jaw and narrowed eyes of pain.

“I obtained this
from one of the Syndics on Rifthaven. It occurred before the Panarchists
captured them,” Eusabian went on. “Note this.”

He keyed a control
and the enhancer showed a squat metal box low beside an elaborate desk in a
side office. The audio also enhanced, damping out the voices, and Anaris heard
the insectlike whine of a mind-blur.

The sound teased at
the backs of Anaris’s eyes, sending a judder of images across his vision:
heraldic banners from the Throne Room in the Mandala. None of the images were
of Dol’jhar—had this confrontation polarized them so, that he was here the
Panarchist and his father the Dol’jharian? He forced the thought away along
with the images. He would subsume both.

A glance showed his
father absorbed in the image; another glance at his chrono and despair lanced
through him. Only fifteen seconds now.

“I had Lysanter
correlate, as closely as possible, the intensity level of the mind-blur device
there with ours here, and he used that setting in one of his interviews with
the present tempath,” Eusabian went on. “Who did not react as strongly as you
see this woman reacting.”

Anaris nodded.
“Your assumption being the more sensitive the tempath, the stronger the
reaction to the mind-blurs?”

“Correct,” Eusabian
said, and he struck the console with his flat hand, shutting it down.

Five. Anaris braced
himself, knowing it to be futile if the Negus didn’t work.

“There is more evidence
to be gleaned from other sources, but all point to this conclusion: the woman
is very strong, exhibits great courage and even greater intelligence. She is
also by birth one of us.”

He means she’s Chorei. What does he . . .

Zero.

Morrighon ran
toward the Chamber of Kronos, panting from the unusual exertion. Barrodagh had
been too quick for him. His last hope had been to warn Norio about what had
happened to Li Pung and its effects on the station, in hopes of scaring him
into refusing to participate. But Norio was already on his way to the Chamber,
perhaps already there. And Barrodagh had cleverly put all the little
three-wheeled transports into priority use, forcing him to proceed on foot.

Unable therefore to
use the passages devoted to wheeled traffic, he dodged past bulky Dol’jharian
ordinaries and scurrying Bori, none of whom possessed his urgency. The Bori at
least tried to get out of the way.

Morrighon felt the
neuro-jac rasping against his thin shirt, under his coat. There was nothing
else he could do except disable or kill the tempath, and hope the Tarkans would
kill him on the spot. Not for the first time, he wished he had a poison tooth,
but the thought of such a thing in his mouth was unbearable. It was a weakness
he now bitterly regretted.

The security around
the Chamber slowed him, and when he burst into the Chamber of Kronos, the
tempath was already meditating in front of the Throne, as everyone called it,
where the Heart of Kronos lay. Morrighon spared barely a glance for the silver
sphere that had already killed two of the sallow tempath’s kind, or for the
awesome, dizzying dimensions of the Chamber.

A transparent
dyplast barrier blocked his progress. It was intended to protect observers from
any dangerous manifestations; now it was protecting the tempath from him. Lysanter
and some techs gathered around his console. Nearby stood Barrodagh, and, to
Morrighon’s dismay, two huge Tarkans at either end, blocking access to the room
beyond. The neuro-jac wouldn’t fire through dyplast that thick. Would disabling
the consoles with it be enough?

Barrodagh sneered
at him, his gloating almost palpable. Morrighon’s hand strayed to his chest.

A sharp cry
arrested him and yanked his gaze to the tempath, who abruptly collapsed and lay
sobbing in a fetal position. Terror and despair flooded Morrighon. He had
failed. But why did Barrodagh look so sick as well?

He followed as
Lysanter and Barrodagh hurried around the barrier. Then relief flooded him as
the scientist said, “There were no readings. I think the dosage must have
fallen too low on his euphorics. He’s merely having an anxiety attack.”

Hurriedly Morrighon
left the Chamber. He was going to either throw up or pass out from relief, and
he wanted to be alone.

In Eusabian’s
chamber, Anaris was counting mentally after Eusabian’s swipe at the Chorei. He
braced, though he knew it was useless.

But a minute turned
into two, then five, then ten, and nothing happened. He became aware of an ache
in his jaw; a muscle in his back spasmed painfully. But the mutterings of the
Negus under his conscious mind did not change, neither increasing nor
decreasing. Nothing.

He relaxed fractionally
as Eusabian finished knotting his dirazh’u and sat back. “We have been taught
that our ancestors strengthened the bloodlines of our ruling families by
expunging any hint of Chorei aberrations, which were regarded as weakness and
abomination. Do you see it this way?”

His distraction
ebbing with every second that passed, Anaris could think again. He picked his
words carefully. “It can be seen that way,” he said. “Our ancestors were
certainly strong, or we would not have held Jhar D’ocha as long as we have.”

Eusabian jerked his
head down in agreement and laced the dirazh’u in a complicated knot. A musty
scent assailed Anaris, and he seemed to hear a dry slithering from the edges of
the room.

“It can also be
seen as weakness,” his father continued. “They could not control the Chorei, so
they annihilated them. Yet the aberrations still crop up, perhaps more so in
the general population. I have found out the identity of this tempath Barrodagh
is bringing. She was originally bonded as a small child to one of the quarries
on mellis-Chyr’vethu, where it appears her tempathy was useful in controlling
the digging saurians.”

One of the planets
he lost to Panarchist Quarantine after Acheront, Anaris thought
.

“This pragmatism
toward the Chorei aberrations is strictly forbidden,” Eusabian continued. “But
it is apparent menials and ordinaries pay lip service to established tradition
while using these people to make their tasks the lighter.”

The image of a
priestess from his studies on Arthelion filled Anaris’s vision: bare-breasted
but in no wise vulnerable, her dark eyes wise, she held a white serpent in one
hand, a black one in the other. Forcing his eyes to track his father’s gaze despite
the vivid hallucination, Anaris said, “We are ignoring the established
tradition as well when we use tempaths here.”

“Exactly,” Eusabian
said without any rancor.

Anaris considered. In
a limited way, Eusabian’s stay on Arthelion seemed to have set him free of the
shackles of Dol’jharian tradition, just as Anaris’s fosterage had for him
.

“If we are to
continue to use this station as a power base, it would be foolish to depend on
these scourings to control it. The Dol’jharian tempath has been tainted by the
years among the Panarchists. If indeed it is she, and I suspect it will be, who
brings the station to full potential, she will then have outlived her
usefulness. Except in one regard.”

Tainted. That is aimed at me.
The priestess offered Anaris the snakes,
black and white, horn and ivory, iron and marble. Which would he choose?

Anaris heard
himself ask, “What is that?”

Eusabian looped the
dirazh’u, then pulled it straight so it hummed, recalling for a brief moment
the mind-blur. “We are approaching the next Karusch-na Rahali. It is time to
expand our house. You will see to it that she gives us an heir.”

“Sanctus Hicura,”
Marim breathed. “I think that chatzer is alive!”

Jaim’s hindbrain yammered
at him to flee, but he could not take his eyes away from the weird patchwork of
curves and tubes and flaring cones molded in a reddish material that looked like
animated vatbeef.

“See? That cone
there? It stretched out!”

“It’s like
Rifthaven seen on Negus,” Montrose muttered. “I have to admit I do not like the
look of this at all.”

“Here comes one of
their corvettes—oh!” Marim squawked as the ship shot out of the open end of one
of the cones, its radiants flaring as it came about and took up position
nearby.

Vi’ya watched the
station with eyes narrowed to lambent pinpoints of reflecting light.

Ivard, too, was
silent, his eyes huge.

“One more
practice,” Vi’ya said. “Now. Fast. As far as you can from me.”

“Piss!” Marim
muttered. “I hate this. Feels like you’re sticking a finger into my brain.” Her
voice disappeared as she ran out the hatch.

Jaim retreated back
to the engine room, where he activated his own console so he could watch the
station. Vi’ya had damped the big screen on the bridge to block out the light
of the accretion disc around the singularity.

Jaim left it all as
it really was, squinting against the painful spectrum of light. There is
purpose to this, he told himself. I am here to a purpose.

He felt an inward
tug, as if someone had plucked lightly at a nerve in his brain. The sensation
came with the feeling that Vi’ya stood behind his shoulder.

He shut his eyes
and concentrated on an image of her.

A voice whispered
somewhere behind his ear, “I heard you.”

He shut down his
console and returned to the bridge, walking slowly along the familiar corridor.
On the Suneater they would not be permitted boswells, Vi’ya had said.
Dol’jharians did not use them, and of course they would not allow their
servants to use them, either. Vi’ya, the Eya’a, and the Kelly had practiced
contacting everyone at different points over the ship.

The Eya’a were on
the bridge now, necks craned back as they gazed unwinkingly at the station
against the flare of light beyond.

“Something wrong?”
Jaim asked Vi’ya.

“It’s as if one of
those hyperwaves has been installed in my mind,” she said. “At high volume.”

Montrose stood
nearby, his brows furrowed. “Is there pain?”

“Some,” she admitted.

“I can give you
some drugs to experiment with later, when it seems safe to do so.”

Vi’ya’s eyes
crescented with sardonic humor. Safety, they all knew, was now a relative term.
“First I need to see if I can block it as I do their voices when I don’t want
to hear them.”

“So they hear
everything on the station, is that it?” Sedry asked, pointing to the Eya’a.

“I believe so.”
Vi’ya faced Ivard. “Will you be able to control it?”

Ivard breathed out,
and ducked his head in an anxious nod. “I think so. They help me.”

Montrose said,
“Maybe I should give you some drugs.”

Ivard shook his
head. “The Kelly will help me—”

“Not if threy’re
sequestered on the ship. Threir ribbons won’t be anywhere near you.”

Ivard shook his
head. “I will be all right. No drugs. My body just fights them anyway.”

Montrose pursed his
lips. “There is that.”

Ivard tipped his
head back. “This place seems to amplify the connection. Threy are in our cabin,
but I can hear threm just as if threy were with us.”

Montrose said,
“Then we are as ready as we ever will be.”

“Just as well,”
Lokri said, looking up from the com. “Communication coming in—”

Lokri’s console
came to life. “Stand by for bay control.”

“No tractor,”
replied Vi’ya sharply.

“Stand by,” said
the voice impatiently. The hum of a tractor pervaded the ship; Vi’ya’s mouth
compressed as she powered down.

Marim shrieked.
“It’s trying to eat us!” Another section of the station had opened an orifice
and was stretching toward them. A sudden lance of brightness from the corvette
nearby dissuaded it. Vi’ya winced, and Ivard’s eyes opened wider.

They all stared at
the waving palp-like protrusions around the bay that seemed to usher them
inward as the
Telvarna
slipped
through the e-lock.

“Hoooo,” Marim
sighed. “Why can’t I wake up and find myself hung-over at Flaury’s on
Rifthaven?”