The Thrones of Kronos (68 page)

Webs of blue light flickered out from Jheng-Li’s and Amasuri’s
gauntlets and the pucker dilated. The wasps shot through the opening, their
vicious shrieking hum echoing strangely from the Urian material of the walls.
Detonations slapped at them and a tongue of flame erupted through the opening
and was cut off as the two Marines let go and jumped back.

A blank section of the wall opened and a large canister flew
out, exploding into a swarm of wasps, their hum harsher than the Panarchist
antipersonnel weapons, but just as deadly. Amasuri and Jheng-Li dropped. Amasuri’s
diagnostics went flat-line instantly, while Jheng-Li’s suit went dead except
for the arms, which was almost as bad. They left him with a jac and a full
bandolier of wasps and went on.

From there it just got worse. The Tarkans fought like
demons, apparently without fear of death. The corridors became a hell of flame
and smoke punctuated by jac-beams and the hungry scream of wasps and other
antipersonnel devices loosed by both sides.

o0o

Above the Chamber of Kronos, the floor slapped at Anaris’s
feet, and even though he was prepared, the acceleration wrenched his knees and
hips as he was propelled into an opening in the ceiling. He concentrated,
accelerating toward the landing bay, reveling in the effortless sense of power
that pervaded him, the substance of the station answering him like his own
flesh.

As he neared the bay, he could sense the firefight by its
effect on the quantum-plast, especially when the Tarkans and their opponents
used their gauntlet interfaces to wrench the Urian material apart. But he could
also sense a strange resistance, or reluctance, in the quantum-plast, whenever
he neared a surface. He knew Norio was gone, so it must be that other presence,
never identified, that Tat’s worm had tracked.

He descried a bitter struggle ahead, the antagonists easy
enough to identify by the directions in which they thrust.

It was time to bring the Tarkans to his side.

He dropped out of the ceiling behind an armored squad, the
noise of a firefight loud beyond them through the thick smoke. They swiveled
with murderous intent, stopped, amazed and, he saw, afraid.

So Barrodagh did tell
them I am Chorei. All the better.

“I command the karra in this place,” he said. “And they will
deal with the Panarchists.”

He pushed past them, toward the flare of jacs, and heard the
squad leader shout an order. The jacs fell silent. Armored figures stood still
as he strode past.

Anaris stepped around a corner, his kinesthetic awareness of
the station giving him the position of the enemy clearly. With little effort he
cleared the smoke away, revealing himself.

The Marines pressed forward in the smoke until it roiled and
whipped away with startling swiftness, revealing the silhouette of a tall,
powerfully built man, one hand uplifted in a casual gesture.

The man wore no armor, nor was he armed. Bengiat stared
across the intervening meters into a face she recognized as the regicide from
Gehenna: Anaris achreash-Eusabian.

Bring me his head.
Same with his son.

As she raised her hand, Bengiat activated her vid relay,
tying it into one of the general address channels—
the Panarch will want to see this.

She pointed her gauntlet jac.

Anaris gestured, and the walls cannoned together with
irresistible force. Bengiat flew forward, thrown by the closing edges of the
deathtrap Anaris had created. Behind the armored figure he heard the grinding
crunch of armor yielding and several short, panicky screams. Then silence.

He walked forward, trying not to show the effort his TK had
cost him. Through a pounding headache he heard the whine of the Tarkan armor
behind him as they followed, and their awed whispers on general address: “
Anaris rahal-Chorahin, ti-karra empuen.
”
Anaris heir of the Chorei, master of the
karra
.

He looked down at the fallen Marine, ripped open the
faceplate with his mind, and stopped, arrested by unexpected beauty. Blood
leaked from between her perfect lips as she opened her eyes; he felt the impact
of her hate.

Anaris raised his hand—he would exert his TK to pull her
heart out through her mouth, a final act that would indelibly convince the
Tarkans of his power. But the floor twitched under him, knocking him off
balance, and before he could recover himself, a hole opened and swallowed the
Marine. As the hole closed, for the briefest moment it pursed into what looked
like a pair of lips, and he heard a whisper.

This one is mine,
foster child.

He stared, appalled, then collected himself. Perhaps this
was better, despite what it implied. He was not sure he could have remained
conscious after the effort his demonstration would have cost him.

In any case, the Tarkans could not have heard; they would
not know it had not been his act that swallowed up the Marine.

And so it was, he saw as he looked back at them.

They bowed, fear showing through every faceplate, and
awaited his orders.

o0o

It took Morrighon several tries to get to the landing bay.
He drove as rapidly as he dared, looking continually from the schematic on his
compad to the corridors ahead until vertigo threatened to overwhelm him. Smoke
drifted down the corridors; the tang of burning meat made him gag. Twice he
came close to driving directly into firefights. The strange acoustics of the
quantum-plast damped the crack of jac-fire, the horrific buzzing of
antipersonnel devices, and the thump! and crump! of the plasma cannons until he
was almost upon them.

But at last he found his way there by following a trotting
squad of Tarkans doing cleanup after an assault team farther ahead. The landing
bay itself was almost empty, save for Tarkans stationed at all the adits. He
was passed through without comment. As his slamming heart slowed its racketing
pace, he wondered if this was a good sign—or no sign.

On the long drive to the bay, he’d considered his best move,
which was to ignore the corvettes until Anaris arrived. Their guards probably
had orders to report access to Barrodagh—the
Telvarna
was under the heir’s command.

Drawing the runabout directly to the ramp, Morrighon
motioned to one of the guards. Both were faceless in servo-armor, bulking huge
and menacing. Morrighon’s heart raced again.

“The heir wishes this taken aboard the ship and released
into the air system,” Morrighon said, holding up the canister. “I have the ship
schematic in my compad.”

The Tarkan carefully took the compad and held it up to one
of his suit’s data ports. There was a brief flicker of light, then he handed
the compad back, took the canister, and disappeared up the ramp.

This course had been chosen after some inner debate. He
could not let the Tarkans know about the presence of the Kelly unless it was
unavoidable. To be absolutely certain the canister did what it was supposed to,
he ought to have released it into the ship himself, but he remembered the
weirdness of his initial visit to the Columbiad, and though he could not find
any definitive data on the Kelly indicating whether they had psi abilities
along the lines of the Eya’a, he was afraid they would know his intentions and
sabotage him.

After a time the Tarkan returned, bowed, and took up his
position. The other had not moved.

Morrighon watched the last few seconds tick off his chrono
and tried not to run up the ramp. His back crawled, but relief did not attend
his stepping into the ship. The chemical was supposed to have broken down and
dissipated in two minutes. He smelled a slight astringency in the air.

Gripping his jac, he advanced slowly into the crew areas of
the silent ship, activating each door. Room after room revealed emptiness,
until he found them at last.

He would not have known the huge, miscolored lump of what
looked like the bowels of some hideous beast as Kelly, so intertwined were
they. A horrific smell boiled out, clawed at the back of his throat, and he held
his breath. He glanced once at the creatures, still moving slightly, their
famed green streaked with orange and brown and yellow, their ribbons crinkled
and dull, then he shut the door again and sealed it.

Beasts, the Avatar had named them, but the Panarchists had
welcomed them into their polity as sophonts. Morrighon felt a wave of . . .
not regret, but uneasiness, which he thrust away as he retreated to the bridge,
and there he stood, looking around.

How strange was life,
and how quick death.
He was about to take command of the very vessel that
had escaped the Avatar’s vengeance above the Mandala—unless he, too, met a
sudden death.
Which is surer the longer I
stand here,
he thought.

The stink of dying Kelly still reeked in his nostrils. As he
brought the captain’s console to life, he activated the tianqi to filter the
bad air. Then, looking again from compad to console, he set about mastering the
controls that would command this ship: first to activate the external imagers,
and then the weapons console.

And last, to wait.

o0o

Time seemed endless in the rec room. Before long began the
inevitable rocking and weird noises. At first Marim felt that strange warm
feeling, the tickle inside her head, but when Hreem started cursing with a
free-form and artistic command of invective, she was diverted and the sensation
went away again.

So she perched on a console, wrapping her arms around her
legs and waiting for Hreem to get bored enough to do something about breaking
them out. For a time Hreem was diverted by watching the grays force some of the
Bori to clean the food mess on the floor. Three Bori who had obviously tasted too
much psychoactive Ur-fruit had fouled themselves, and Hreem guffawed as two
grays kicked them into a corner, where they huddled, keening. But they didn’t
resist, or even move, so the grays withdrew to the far side of the room.

Hreem was soon bored with watching the laboring Bori, then a
powerful shock rocked the chamber, followed by a softer, duller crump! Marim
couldn’t imagine what it was, but the color drained from Hreem’s face.

“Lances,” he whispered. “Got to . . .” He
stalked to the warmer, dialed up some caf, sipped at it twice, then hurled the
hot liquid onto one of the mewling Bori in the corner.

“Shut yer yap, you chatzing nullwit.” All but one fell
silent. Hreem stared menacingly at the moaning Bori, who rocked back and forth
in pain.

The alarm died. Hreem spat in disgust and walked over to the
door, which remained closed. “You know how to open this chatzer?”

Marim eyes the fistula above the door; she’d seen how it
worked. “Yeah. But so what? There’s an Ogre outside.”

“Maybe. You want to just sit here, wait for the Marines to
break in and kill us all?”

She shrugged, went over to the warmers, and grabbed a
serving spoon. At her direction, Hreem dragged a table over next to the door.
Marim was aware of the Bori and grays watching. She was surprised when the
latter said nothing to stop them. Then Hreem lifted her up onto the table, and
she enjoyed the strength of his hands on her waist.

She jabbed the spoon into the fistula and wrenched around.

The door snapped open, revealing the insane face of an Ogre.

She yanked the spoon out and the door snapped shut. “See, I
told you so.”

“Open it again,” Hreem commanded. She sighed and once more
jabbed the spoon in. The door exploded open. This time she held the spoon in
the fistula. It quivered in her hands, as though the quantum-plast was trying
to spit it out.

The Ogre didn’t move, but she noticed Hreem was careful not
to set even so much as one foot outside the chamber. He looked at the machine
for a long moment, then went over to the wall where the mind-rizzed Bori
crouched. He yanked the moaning one to his feet and dragged him toward the
door. The moaning crescendoed to a shriek and the man struggled furiously,
helpless against the Rifter’s greater size and strength.

“What’re you doing?” Marim gasped.

Hreem didn’t reply. Approaching the door, he thrust the Bori
out. As soon as the man’s foot touched the deck outside the door, the Ogre
moved with shocking suddenness. It lunged forward, its arms outstretched as
though beginning a swan dive, and then brought them together with blurring
speed. With a horrible crunch the Bori’s skull exploded in a spray of scarlet
custard; the headless body jerked and slumped to the deck.

Hreem jumped back, cursing, blood and brains now mixing with
the stew crusting his clothing. Marim jerked the spoon out and the door snapped
shut. She stared fearfully at the pucker, but nothing happened. The room was
now completely silent.

“You knew that would happen,” she said to Hreem.

“Had to be sure. But he’s meat, anyway. We all are if we
don’t get out of—”

The door snapped open again, and the Ogre glided in, the
whine-thump of its progress a dreadful counterpoint to the screams of panic.
Marim fell backward off the table, rolling on one shoulder to absorb the
impact. Hreem sprang backward and threw the nearest Bori at the machine, which
smashed her head as the pucker crashed shut again.

Open the door
.
Marim began to crawl toward it. The Ogre did not pause in its brutal, murderous
progress: even as it crushed two grays together in a dreadful, crackling
explosion of bones and viscera, its head swiveled and a needle of plasma lanced
out of a dilated port, splattering off the quantum-plast overhead. She pulled
back, forcing herself to think.
No panic.
Think. Think or die. Sanctus Hicura! Logos-kissing Dol’jharians set the
machines to scare us to death—all this ripping and smashing, not the clean kill
of a jac.
She peeked at Hreem. His face was pale, ridged with terror.
Marim’s perceptions seemed revved up, like the time she’d played Suraki in the
habitat and almost fell to her death.