The Thrones of Kronos (67 page)

“Over here!” Romarnan heard Charnian call, light strobing on
his suit. A Tarkan loomed. Romarnan heard Charnian’s voice, suddenly panicky,
“No, wait, I can’t get away—” and then a shriek of pain and disbelief as the
Dol’jharian triggered his jac and burned away the interface and Charnian’s leg
with it.

Charnian’s screams died away with merciful swiftness as the
air fled his suit; Romarnan saw the faceplate of the Tarkan swing its blank
gaze in his direction and he moved on hastily, watching for interfaces.

That was stupid,
he thought angrily.
Do they expect us to
report interfaces more swiftly for that example?

He bent further, in case the Tarkans could see inside his
face-mask. Tired, angry, aching, he couldn’t hide his disgust—in fact, he
didn’t want to. All his life he’d seen such savagery without reaction, except
for pity or scorn for friends or enemies ground up in the eternal drive for power
of their Dol’jharian masters.

Now everything they did seemed either pointlessly cruel or
downright stupid, and rage boiled inside of him.
Why do they do it? Why do we obey?

He remembered the expression in Tatriman’s eyes, and in
Larghior’s—a mixture of shock, derision, compassion all at once.
They are Bori but they never seemed like
Bori,
he thought as another deadly flare of light zapped out on his right.
They don’t see us as Bori, either—but they
are right. We are nothing.

He knew, as strongly as he’d ever known anything, that the
lords were not going to let him live—that the Bori servants would be expended
in the impending battle, just like these quantum interfaces the Panarchists
sent out. Romarnan moved along, but his eyes did not see the weird surface of
the Suneater. His mind drifted into a comforting fantasy: the Riftskip, and
freedom, with Tatriman at his side.

o0o

“Eleven minutes to abort point. No quantum interfaces
reporting. Thirteen minutes to impact.”

Brandon shifted restlessly in his armor, trying not to think
about what that meant. If they did not receive a signal from one of the quantum
interfaces now raining thickly on the hull of the Suneater, they would have to
abort the mission and trust their suits and induced hibernation to bring them
out of the exclusion zone again weeks later—only this time the Dol’jharians
would be waiting.

Worse, even if they got a signal, there would be two minutes
in which they would be committed, too close to abort and avoid smashing into
the Suneater if the signaling interface was destroyed.

He had no doubt the same thoughts occupied the mind of every
other Marine on board, for there was no comment.

It seemed hours later that Anheles said, “Interface
reporting.” Then, “Interface destroyed.”

The same antiphony went on, ceaseless, to the abort point.
And then beyond. Apparently Meliarch Rhapulo had decided that the interfaces
were falling thickly enough that the odds favored them. If he was wrong, they’d
never know it: at least death would come fast.

The litany continued right up until Rhapulo sang out the
traditional refrain: “AyKay. Time to shut your face or suck vacuum, Mary.
Prepare for gees.”

Brandon dogged his faceplate shut as the equally traditional
replies rang out around him. He heard no hesitation in those jocular sallies,
though he sensed the adrenaline surges beneath the words: yes, there was fear,
but it had been honed into the urge to act.

The Marines used their fear as fuel.

Just one more of the
institutions that I took for granted,
he thought. Then the impact sequence
triggered, hammering him with brutal deceleration just short of the human
limit, and thought dissolved along with the overloaded engines carrying them
toward the nuclear detonation that would destroy them or take them through the
Suneater’s hull.

o0o

Romarnan’s daydream splintered when an actinic glare lit
up the surface around him. A minute ring of light grew swiftly overhead. At the
same moment, a quantum interface hit the Suneater surface not three meters in
front of him. He felt the impact, and saw it mold itself to the reddish
material. Reflexively he moved toward it as webs of bluish light flickering out
around it into the substance of the Maw.

A shadow fell across it. Romarnan looked up. A Tarkan raised
his jac to flame the interface. Years of oppression and helplessness roared up
the Bori’s spine into his head, filling him with a fearless rage. He knew that
the Tarkan would easily throw him aside if he attacked directly, and in any
case they were both dead, as only seconds remained before the lance hit.

But there was something he could do.

Rage gave way to singing joy when, for the first time in his
life, he struck against the overlords. Laughing out loud, Romarnan threw
himself across the interface. He felt a moment’s searing pain in his back,
followed instantly by the beginning of a light so bright he saw it through the
back of his head . . .

o0o

Sedry’s ears rang as
a trumpet pealed, agonizingly loud, shaking the stones around her. A bright light
kindled overhead, throwing the sarsen stones into bold relief, their runic
engravings acid-sharp. Shadows swept up and past her as a bright star fell from
heaven, arcing down—

A sword of light
sprouted from the ground before her, thrilling with a hum of power. She heard
the cry of the Phoenix. Echoing it in a shout of triumph, Sedry seized the
sword, swung it high overhead, and brought it down. The earth convulsed and
split open in a jagged crack. The widening chasm raced across the plain to open
beneath the feet of the horror looming over the Unity, and the monster plunged
from sight.

o0o

Welcome, Child of
the Vortex.

Terror and revulsion flooded Vi’ya when she recognized the
impulse of a new emotion for her, one she was unprepared to face.

Reverence.

She felt a pulse of reassurance from Sedry, and with it a
framework for her perceptions. Tears stung her eyes as she looked up at the
winged figure, bound by chains to the dusty ground.

Negation flowed from the presence.
No god, but fellow prisoner.

The chains bound them both in the path of the destroying
waters. Around her the song of the Chorei rang out afresh, wordless, prepotent.

And familiar. Once again she saw a beloved profile, the blue
eyes intent, every line of his body focused on the music he had ordered in celebration
of one they had both loved, prefaced by the numinous chords of the Manya
Cadena, symbolic of the chains of experience they could never shed.

Nor should they want to, she perceived in a blaze of
illumination, for they were not chains of bondage, but the links that build a
life. And as she looked up into the face of the presence, Vi’ya understood that
reverence was the true response to whatever evoked the highest and the best
within her.

She heard an echo from Sedry’s mind: “But the greatest of
these is love.”

Light blazed over the Isle of the Chorei, and unbelieving
joy seized her.

Brandon?
But it
was no question, for she knew his presence as the final star fell blazing from
heaven.

Earthquake roared around her. Careless of the looming death
behind, she stepped forward and sundered the chains with effortless strength.

The clamor of bright wings filled Vi’ya’s mind, power
fountained up within her and every member of the Unity, bringing their several
and individual gifts to peak effectiveness. Driven by that superlative potency,
the awareness of the Unity expanded violently, a detonating wavefront of consciousness
that encompassed space and time and the tiny flames of human minds snuffed out
in battle far out in space.

For Vi’ya, the Unity flew apart like quicksilver, and the
Chamber of Kronos snapped into focus around her, but somehow brighter and
clearer, as though she were truly seeing for the first time.

o0o

Hate filled Barrodagh’s mind as a strange structure began
to take shape above the Throne.

It sucked at Barrodagh’s eyes, luring them to follow in
directions they were not designed for. Barrodagh forced his entire body to turn
as Lysanter sprang into action, tabbing furiously at his console.

“Lord, the instruments have gone nonlinear. We can no longer
interpret the readings.”

The Avatar turned his head, his hands still on the dirazh’u.
“What do you mean?”

Lysanter shook his head. “Lord, without the instruments, we
have no hope of controlling the Suneater. It is following its own programming
now.”

The deck heaved under Barrodagh’s feet; he barely kept his
balance. The howling stopped, leaving a ringing silence.

His compad flickered, drawing his attention. Triggered by
the activity of the stasis clamps, to which Ferrasin’s worm had linked it, it
delivered an image that brought bile spurting into the Bori’s mouth as a figure
of horror, talons and eyes and clutching hands, erupted screaming from the
outer surface of the Suneater, blood boiling away from it as the vacuum sucked
its unnatural life away.

Barrodagh’s compad flickered again, revealing an even more
terrifying sight: the bow of a Marine lance blowing off, disgorging its cargo
of heavily armored figures. One of them raised a jac and pointed it—and then
Eusabian’s strong hand ripped the device from the Bori’s grip.

Eusabian stared grimly at the image just as the screen
flared, washing his face with lurid light, accentuating the lines rage had
graven in his face. The Avatar flung down the compad, which shattered on the
deck, and pointed at Vi’ya. “Kill her!”

Anaris forced the extrusion of a ledge, backed by an opening
into a corridor beneath the Chamber of Kronos, sensed Vi’ya pluck the knowledge
from his mind and leap from the Throne to dive into the well.

Barrodagh watched as the Ogres swiveled their heads and
ports snapped open among the sensory bulbs and clusters of their awful faces.

Anaris gestured, and the deck convulsed under the machines,
unbalancing them as beams of plasma speared out of the ports, searing past Vi’ya
and the Eya’a.

Eusabian stared at his son, who smiled back at him.

If I had a moment
more, I could take your skull now.
But the Ogres would leave him no time,
so he grinned at his father, sending a mental promise of vengeance—knowing that
though the Avatar could not hear it, he would see it in his eyes.

Barrodagh hoped he would never see such a smile aimed at
him.

“Ogres!” Eusabian shouted, arresting their motion up the
mound of the Throne. He pointed at Anaris. “Kill him!”

Again the beams shot out, but the floor telescoped up under
Anaris’s feet, vaulting him into an opening hole in the ceiling, which cinched
shut behind him.

Two Tarkans pounded into the chamber, jacs ready.

“Lord,” the senior of them addressed the Avatar. “Lances
have penetrated the station in two places. Altasz Chur-Mellikath is directing
the fight against the Marines advancing on the landing bay; he has diverted
many Ogres as backup, and rioting has broken out among the confined service
personnel—”

The litany of disaster continued. Barrodagh stared,
sickened, at the shattered compad. He was cut off from his sources now.

The Tarkan shuttered to a halt, and the Bori looked up. Fear
tingled along his spine as he saw the prachan, the fear-face, distorting the
Avatar’s face. He had never seen Eusabian use it before, for his absolute power
had made it unnecessary.

Eusabian pulled the dirazh’u taut, as if strangling someone.
The knots vanished, the silken cord hummed with tension. “Kill them.” His voice
was harsh. “Unleash the Ogres.”

The Tarkan hesitated. “The grays also, Lord? True Men as
well as Bori?”

Eusabian looked over at the Throne, now glowing brightly under
the weird, unsettling shapes of light above it. A distant explosion rocked the
deck underfoot.

“Kill them all. Dol will know his own.”

Dyarch Ehyana Bengiat pointed at the imager and triggered
her gauntlet jac. A thread of fire lanced out and shattered the device as a
wave of triskels scuttled past her and her squad. She shuddered. The little
three-legged Ogre-killers were operating in autonomous mode; the Kelly didn’t
share humanity’s abhorrence of even semi-intelligent machines.

The deck jolted underfoot, and a weird booming howl
resounded from the red-glowing walls.

Meliarch Anheles’s voice came over the general channel. “We
lost
Stiletto
. Their interface was
destroyed right before impact.”

Bengiat cursed quietly, not only for her friends dead in a
fiery instant but for the loss of a third of their effectiveness. If they
couldn’t secure the landing bay, there’d be no means of retreat. And if the
high admiral ordered the asteroids in, no one would get off the station alive.

Anheles gave no time for mourning, and in response to his
orders she deployed her squads. “Sniller, take the vermin forward on point.
Jheng-Li and Amasuri, you take foggers and wasps . . .”

The Marines moved out as she continued her dispositions. For
a minute or so they encountered nothing; then, without warning, a pucker in the
wall dilated and the thick beam of a heavy, self-mobile jac ripped out,
spinning Sniller around and scoring a white-hot groove across her armor. The
pucker snapped shut.

“Tov, il-Dasc! Grab that door and pull it open on my mark.
Fog it now. Wasps fire on my mark,” Bengiat shouted, checking Sniller’s
diagnostics as the Marines deployed.

“I’m AyKay.” Sniller’s voice was husky. “Bit of a burn.”

More than just a burn,
but the med’ll keep her going
. She slapped Sniller’s armor as the corridor
filled with absorptive smoke. “AyKay, but join squad three for mop-up. You’re
in no shape for point.” She switched back to the squad channel. “Three, two,
one, mark!”