The Thrones of Kronos (65 page)

Montrose flung his arms wide in a gesture of frustration and
sat down heavily on the nearest bed. Then the door sloonched open again and a
sudden weight bounded onto Ivard’s bed, shedding glops of food in every
direction.

‘‘Luce!” Ivard sat up. “What happened to you?”

He rubbed his fingers behind the big cat’s ears and down
into the jaw muscles; Lucifur butted him in the chest, purring thunderously, and
began kneading his stomach as Ivard looked up at Larghior. “Where’d you find
him? He’s been missing since the Norio ruction.”

“Rec room.” Lar grinned. “He won a fight against a sex toy
belonging to Hreem the Faithless—” Lar went on to tell the story. Ivard laughed
with the others at the vivid image of the food flying and Hreem buried in stew,
but he sniffed the bitter herb of regret that suffused Lokri when Lar mentioned
Marim.

“Morrighon told me to stay here.” Lar seemed uncomfortable.

Sedry smiled. “Where is Tat? She’s not in your chamber.”

“I left her sleeping there before I went to the rec room.”
Lar looked at the door, irresolute in the silence, broken only by the tapping
of Sedry’s fingers on the keys and the heavy sound of running footsteps outside
the chamber as what must have been a squad of Tarkans passed.

The tension in the room mounted with the silence. Only Luce
seemed undisturbed as he began to clean himself.

Lar looked around, then dropped his gaze. “Excuse me.” He
closed himself in the disposer.

Sedry said, “Lar’s crew now. You’ll have to trust him
sometime. He can’t always stay in the disposer when we want to talk.”

Lokri shook his head, obviously too upset to think about
Lar. “Hreem. How could Marim do it? He blew Markham away. Shot up Dis and
everyone on
Sunflame
. I’m afraid this
is my fault.”

“She’s still a part of the crew,” Jaim said slowly. “Until
Vi’ya tells us otherwise—or Marim herself bunks out.”

Everyone nodded, but Ivard could feel the distrust that her
name evoked, and he buried his face in Lucifur’s rumbling neck, fighting
against a terrific sense of impending loss.

o0o

The blaring of the alarm jerked Tat and Dem awake. Dem sat
up, his eyes wide with sudden fear. She spoke soothingly, and the manic distension
faded from his eyes.

He got up and pulled his suit from the cleaner. Tat’s head
and guts protested as she made her way to the console. Every part of her body
ached. Even her hair hurt, and her stomach clenched into a knot of painful
nausea.

The console was locked down. A momentary exploration
convinced her it would take more time than she had to penetrate.
This has to be the lances.
Where was
Lar? She looked at Dem, who methodically pulled on his shoes. If he didn’t
know, she risked frightening him all over again.

She massaged her taut scalp with her fingertips, heading for
the shower. But before she reached the fresher, the outer door belched open and
Morrighon entered, moving with more haste than she had ever seen before. Her
arms crossed before her in an automatic defensive position, but then she forced
herself to straighten, reminding herself that nudity meant nothing to him.

“We are being attacked. Lances are on the way,” he said.
“You are to report to the array lab immediately. The tempath is on her way to
activate the station.”

“Attack?” Dem said, his voice high with fear. “Attack!”

“It’s all right.” Tat moved quickly, putting her arms around
him. “I’m with you, Lar will be with you. ’S all right.” She looked at
Morrighon over Dem’s shoulder, and saw his impatience. “Where’s Lar?” she
asked, forcing herself to sound casual.

“I sent him to the Rifter chambers and told him to stay.” He
frowned as she opened her mouth. “I don’t have time to satisfy your curiosity,
Tatriman Alac-lu-Ombric.” He tossed a necklace onto the bed: a pass tag. “This
will get you to the array lab.”

He paused, looking at Dem, who clung tightly to Tat, even
though the alarm had finally stopped its clamor. Then he pulled another pass
tag out of his pocket and threw it down next to the first. “And your cousin.”
Then he rushed out.

Tat looked after him in astonishment.
Probably just didn’t want to argue with me.
Then she felt ashamed
at the thought.

But she didn’t let it slow her down. She thrashed swiftly
into her clothes, put the pass tags around each of their necks, and pulled Dem
out into the corridor.

The journey to the array lab worsened her aches and nausea.
The Ogre near the intersection of their dorm corridor was active, the sensory
bulbs in its insane double face glowing like red eyes. Dem took one look and
tried to climb into her arms, whimpering like a small animal. Holding him
tightly, Tat made Dem walk with her past the Ogre. It did not move. The effort
made her head pound with jagged pain.

Then a squad of Tarkans thundered past, filling the corridor,
a juggernaut of powered armor, each of the soldiers in the bulky suits almost
as big as an Ogre. They were heedless of the two Bori except as an obstacle to
be trampled if they didn’t move fast enough. She barely managed to hold onto
Dem, who panicked, a wet stain spreading across his crotch. As soon as the
Tarkans were gone Dem looked down and began to weep.

“It’s all right, Dem,” Tat said. “No problem. We can put
your clothes through the cleaner soon’s we get back, to our room. Let’s look
for Lar, shall we? Hmm?”

“I peed,” Dem whimpered. “Lar won’t like it. I peed.”

Murmuring endearments and calming words, Tat moved him
inexorably down the long, empty corridors. What would she do with him in the
array lab?
But I can’t send him back to
the room—not if this place is about to become a battle zone
.

They passed locked-down doors, and behind them, faint
through the Urian quantum-plast, came the sounds of terror: sobs and cries,
shouts of anger, the hum and whisper of panicky arguments and recriminations.
She shuddered and pulled Dem along, wishing she had more arms so she could
cover his ears, and hers.

At last they reached the array lab, and again the Ogres
outside were activated—but again, they did not respond to either Tat or Dem.
Still, it was a relief to slip past them inside. The lab was bedlam, filled
with technicians, all the shifts, more than were necessary. As she watched,
another knot of them spilled through the door, shoved unceremoniously in by the
Tarkans who had escorted them. She wasn’t surprised: it was what she would have
expected of Lysanter, to let them all come to where they could distract
themselves with work, however useless.

The two Catennach goons prowled about, pass tags swinging on
their chains, their movements nervous though they seemed to be trying hard to
look and sound authoritative, an effort helped considerably by the jacs
holstered at their waists. That, more than anything, told her how serious
things were. She’d never seen Catennach carry weapons before.

Lysanter’s pale face lifted, and he beckoned. “Tat! I need
you on the coordinating console now. The tempath is due to make her attempt at
any moment, and I have to get to the chamber.” He glanced at Dem with a puzzled
frown, then ignored him.

“Lennoragh’d be a better choice,” she replied. “The
Norio-remnant is still active, and if Vi’ya brings the station up, it will grow
in power with it, perhaps enough to break the cordon we threw round it.” She
took a deep breath, trusting Lysanter’s monomania to save her. “Need to link
with Sedry Thetris’s console. Took both of us to restrain Norio last time.”

Lysanter’s eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t hesitate. “You’re
right. We can’t afford any interference. Do what you need to do.” He pointed
with his thumb at Dem, who was tugging at Tat’s arm. “But what about him?”

“He stays,” she said desperately. “Give him a job, easy one,
and he’ll be fine. But he stays, or I can’t work.”

“I’ll have someone get him a broom, then,” Lysanter replied.
“I don’t want you thinking about anything but your job.”

Moments later a young man from the tech crew appeared with a
floor cleaner and handed it to Dem, leading him away. Dem looked up at Tat. She
forced herself to smile and nod, and he began to sweep.

Tat flung herself into her pod as Lysanter hurried out of the
array lab. When she lit up her console, the first thing she saw was Sedry’s
interrogative. Sedry quickly reassured her about Lar. The relief diminished
Tat’s headache to a jangling murmur behind her eyes as they linked up.

She groped beneath her console as Sedry’s worm insinuated
itself into the arrays, exploiting the trapdoors she’d installed. There was no
sign of the Mandalic entity. Sedry would need its help against Norio, for her
efforts would be focused on getting the codes for the Ogres.

Her fingers closed on the last ampule of brainsuck. It
probably wouldn’t kill her.
If it does,
I’ll never know—and anyway once the Marines arrive, who knows what will happen?

All she could do was fight to make it that far.

As she was turning it over in her hand, Morrighon hurried
away from the array lab, his mind racing ahead.

Where was Anaris? He had been with his father. His guts
clenched: that meant was probably now in the Chamber of Kronos—with the Avatar.
And Barrodagh.

Supposedly the Ogres had been programmed to ignore Morrighon
and Anaris along with Barrodagh and of course the Avatar, who controlled the
command code.

The Avatar can also
change his mind,
Morrighon thought. If something untoward happened in the
Throne Room, Anaris had his own means of escape, but Morrighon did not.
And if Anaris does escape, he will want his
line of retreat secured.

Morrighon nodded, relief flooding him at his clear duty. The
Tarkans would probably not permit him alone on board the corvette—if he could
even get to the landing bay—but there was the
Telvarna
.

He hurried to his quarters, his pace quickening whenever he
passed one of the now-activated Ogres with their red-lit sensory clusters. He
entered, going directly to his safe and tabbing in his ID. He removed the
little cylinder within and weighed it in one hand. The subtle gas it contained
was a legacy of the suspicion of the tripedal aliens that had nearly led to
genocidal war during Third Contact centuries before. Not easily synthesized
even by the powerful cims on the Suneater, it would have been one of humanity’s
main weapons.

Morrighon slipped the cylinder into a pocket, retrieved the
jac he’d also kept hidden, then looked around. He would probably never return
to this room—but there was nothing else he needed.

He hurried out without a vestige of regret, pausing only to
tap a locate into his compad, which led him to a transport abandoned in a
nearby corridor nexus, its motors still humming. He climbed in and sped toward
the landing bay.

o0o

Riolo was working at his compad, fine-tuning the code he’d
devised for the Ogres, when the link failed. The harsh hooting of an alarm
dinned through the puckered door of his chamber. Curious, he tabbed the
console—it, too, was dead.

He shrugged. No matter. It was obvious what the alarm
portended, even if he didn’t already know, from his furtive excavations in the
station’s arrays, what the Dol’jharians were expecting. The Panarchists were
making their move. He envisioned the lances plunging toward the Suneater. He’d
seen vids of the havoc they’d wreaked in Avasta Station, the subterranean
redoubt on one of Barca’s moons.

The Marines had dealt successfully with the Ogres there, but
that had been a hit-and-run raid. He had more Ogres than Avasta had possessed,
and there were the Tarkans as well.

Riolo stood up and looked thoughtfully at the door. He could
do nothing in here, but outside he would be helpless against the Dol’jharian
prejudice against Barcans, all the stronger for their odd notions of sexuality
and its proper place in life.

He grimaced. There was only one person on the station who
would help him, and that was Hreem. He tabbed the compad, checking the monitor
he’d placed on Hreem’s quarters. When the link had broken, Hreem had not been
there. There was only one other place he could be.

He hefted the compad.
How
odd, and how typical of life outside the Under, that I must place my faith in
one who calls himself Faithless
.

Faith was all well and good, but code was better.

Decisively Riolo tabbed the compad, breaking the override on
the door, and slipped out into the corridor.

o0o

To Sedry’s delight, a few minutes after she had activated
her console, it lit up with a message from Tat and a wide channel to the
station’s arrays. Quickly reassuring Tat about her cousin, and passing similar
reassurances to Lar, she released her worm. Tat outlined what she needed to do:
Sedry did not look forward to facing Norio alone. And where was the Phoenix?

She opened the drawer next to the console and pulled out her
last dose of brainsuck. She sensed Montrose’s disapproval. But she had no
choice. Still, she would put it off as long as possible.

The others watched in total silence. Presently she felt a
warmth and a subtle tension. Ivard lay back on his bed. Lucifur had his front
paws around Ivard’s neck and was licking his ear; the big cat lifted its head,
ears perked, and uttered a querulous
mrrrow?

o0o

The feeling of muzziness stayed with Vi’ya as Barrodagh
hurried her to a transport, intensifying as they approached the Chamber of
Kronos. The mind-blurs along their path, even set low as they were, distorted
the feeling, as did the constant bite of Barrodagh’s fear and anger. She fought
to clear her head; she would need every bit of alertness she could muster to
survive full contact with whatever awaited her at the heart of the Suneater,
for only that would suffice to activate the station.