The Thrones of Kronos (76 page)

Tallis looked up at one of the screens in time to see a
piece of the asteroid they’d destroyed hit the missile tube square on. It
crumpled up like a drinking straw and then exploded into shards about halfway
down its length, a blob of plasma drooling out of it like an unsuccessful
ejaculation as the charging skipmissile dissipated. A terrifying shriek, like a
man in extremis, erupted in his ears. He slapped frantically at the comlink
from the logos, trying to shut it down, but the scream continued from the
bridge speakers.

“Chatz!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “DC! What’s
happening? Shut that chatzing noise down!”

“Missile tube destroyed, skipmissile—” the DC monitor began.
He was unhurt, but his voice was wooden with shock.

“I can see that, you chatzing nullwit!” Tallis shouted. “Why
doesn’t that fiveskip work?”

The shrieking cut off.

“Fiveskip operational,” Damage Control said resentfully.

Tallis gobbled at him for a second or two longer, smacked
his hand over his face, then shouted, “Navigation, get us out of here!”

The stars slewed across the screen, then vanished as the
fiveskip engaged. The Dol’jharians would eventually shut them down, but he
intended to be far away by then. That might give them enough time to start the
spin reactors. No matter who won the battle, the
Satansclaw
and its crew were heading home for Rifthaven.

“Lennart, what about the chatzing logos?” Tallis demanded,
belatedly realizing he’d spoken out loud. Not that it mattered.

“Don’t know. Didn’t get the final command, but it’s not
active.” She looked up at him. “The ship is yours, Captain.” Then she looked
around at the carnage on the bridge, and a hysterical giggle erupted from her.
“Such as it is, with its nacker shot off.” She started laughing harder, a high,
breathy keen. “That’s what happened to Ruonn. And I think the shock wiped out
the logos, too.”

“You think this is funny?” Tallis shouted so loud he
strained his throat, then he choked on the smell of burning blood and flesh.
Moans rose around him as a medic moved from console to console, ministering to
the wounded.

She sobered abruptly. “No.” Kira took a long, shuddering
breath. “But we’re alive.”

“Yeah. We’re alive. Great.” He slumped back in his command
pod. That was something, wasn’t it?

Nobody said anything as they slowly picked themselves up,
and resumed their stations, with many glances at the screens.

o0o

“Radiant efficiency twenty-five-point-five percent and
falling. Final engine shutdown in twenty minutes.”

The litany of disaster from Damage Control ceased, but
Nukiel hardly noticed, trying to wrap himself around the tearing internal pain
the whiplash of the failing gravitors had dealt him. They’d positioned
themselves squarely in the path of the hurtling asteroid cloud, trusting their
stronger shields to protect them from instant annihilation, and preventing the
destroyer from detecting them until it was too late. The
Satansclaw
had been unable to skip to safety: since it was oriented
dead on the
Mbwa Kali
to fire the
killing blow, any skip would merely have carried it further into the asteroid
reef, or into the cruiser itself. That had been the only risk, but the Rifters
had refused suicide.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Mandros?” It was Efriq’s
voice. He forced himself to straighten up, swallowing against the iron taste in
his mouth. He looked up at the tactical screen: there was no hope for the ship.
The shields over the radiants, always the weakest point, had failed under the
impact of a random concentration of fractional-cee debris.

“I’ll be AyKay,” he said. “Long enough.” He tabbed his
console, and the klaxons started the harsh alternating wail that no spacer ever
wanted to hear: Abandon Ship.

Efriq made to help him from the pod, but Nukiel waved him
away, instead motioning a medic over. “Give me something for pain,” he
commanded, “but not to fog my mind.”

The corpsman complied silently, spray-jecting something cool
into his wrist. Relief was swift, if only partial. When he had control of his
voice again, he tabbed the general address. “This is the captain speaking. I
need volunteers from the ruptor crews for life-pod acceleration. We’re too
close to the edge of the energy sink and moving too fast for their engines.”

Nukiel swallowed again. The pain had flared up even with so
brief a speech and the effort of letting no pain into his voice.

“Efriq,” he said, “take charge of the evacuation.” It was a
relief to speak in a whisper.

“Mandros—”

Nukiel could hear the pain in his friend’s voice.

“Go, Leontois. The High Phanist said over Desrien that the
Goddess had no message for me. Then. Now I’ve heard Her voice.”

“Fifteen minutes to energy sink,” Navigation reported.

“Go,” said Nukiel. “I can handle communications, and there
isn’t anything else left. That’s an order.”

Efriq nodded and straightened up. Silently he saluted, then
turned away, rasping out orders. No words were necessary; they’d served
together over ten years.

The bridge emptied swiftly, leaving Nukiel surrounded by a
silence broken only by the whisper of the tianqi. It seemed to be forming words
just below perception. He watched the screens as the life-pods shot away;
finally the corvettes erupted from the landing bays, their engines strong
enough to carry away those in the ruptor crews who’d volunteered as requested.
He was glad they’d made it.

A minute later the ship’s power failed as it crossed into
the strange energy field surrounding the Suneater, which soaked up all power
over a distance of one hundred meters—the main reactors were three kilometers
from the bridge. The emergency lights sprang on, but the screens went dead, for
the bridge was too far inside the ship for any signal now to reach it from the
sensors.

It didn’t matter. Nukiel’s memory of the face of the Goddess
as Destroyer was so vivid it still seemed the screens were live.

Mandros Nukiel let himself slump back in the command pod, on
the bridge of a ship now manned only by the dead, and waited for the Goddess to
claim him.

“Supernova? What about the Suneater?” Juvaszt asked.

“We do not know, Kyvernat,” the science officer replied in a
flat voice, his gaze diffuse. “However, since this is its function, it will
probably survive.”

But no one will be
able to escape after the wavefront reaches the station.

The officer was unable to estimate how long this would take
when Juvaszt inquired, so the kyvernat merely commanded continued monitoring.

“Communications,” he began, then cursed as the asteroid they
were fighting toward vanished in a burst of reddish light. The Panarchists
would have seen the neutrino burst as well, and this was the only logical
response. Through the haze of depravity jiggling on the comm-screen, the Rifter
ships reported, one by one, the launch of the other asteroids. Now there was a
far more immediate threat to the Suneater, but there was nothing he could do
about that.

However, he could now concentrate his forces on wiping out
the Panarchists, battle group by battle group rather than having to disperse
them against many targets. Of course, they’d try the same, but with only one
hyperwave, they’d be virtually helpless against his superior communications. At
least, it seemed, the Rifters were not responding to the amnesty offers: no
surprise, given their actions in the Thousand Suns during the paliach.

He began issuing his orders, gathering his fleet for a
series of killing blows, while a tactical screen slowly displayed the computer
analysis of the asteroids’ trajectories. The Avatar’s forces had done better
than he expected. Only three were guaranteed to hit the station, the earliest
little more than two hours from now.

“Communications, notify Chur-Mellikath on the Suneater of
the supernova and the asteroids, and update him every five minutes on ETA.”

But it took almost five minutes to get through the hash the
Panarchist jamming was making of the hyperwave, for every time Communications
managed to find an algorithm to clean it up, the Panarchists changed their
signal. And it was getting worse.

At that rate, the last update he sent would be useless: it
would arrive at the Suneater after the first asteroid strike. Well, there was
nothing further he could do. It was up to Chur-Mellikath to use the time
wisely. Out here, he had ships to kill.

o0o

Vi’ya could not shield herself from awareness of the
Presence. The walls of her mind, hitherto so fiercely guarded, seemed to be
dissolving, taking with them her sense of physical position—both place and
time. At least there was no communication from it. The awareness manifested
itself in a sense of tremendous harmonics, a chordal progression that evoked
the slow turning of the galaxy around the tumultuous energies at its center.
She was not afraid of it, but of herself. If she turned that way, she might
sink forever in the inexorable rhythm that encompassed all Totality.

Her own sense of self had blurred, but Brandon’s presence by
her side shone sharp and bright, tying her to the physical world. She had only
to keep her eyes open and to listen to his armored step, and she retained her
hold on her human identity.

At first the squad made good time, and soon they were back
in communications range of the Marines attacking the landing bay. Meliarch
Rhapulo was now in command. Casualties had been high. Brandon put the squad
channel through the voice relay on his armor so Vi’ya could hear, too.

“Doubt they know about Eusabian,” Rhapulo said over the
comlink. “Soon’s Anaris knows he’s in command, he’s gone.”

“‘May not be that simple,” Brandon said. “The Dol’jharians
don’t think like we do about the succession. It’s got to be a face-to-face transfer
of power—one winning and one dying.”

“Maybe so,” Rhapulo replied, “but not, I’d bet, when there’s
several billion tons of near-cee rock heading for them. When we finally tapped
into the hyperwave, we found that the asteroids are already on their way, ETA
one hundred nine minutes. They’re really taking a beating out there.”

He paused, as if giving Brandon and the Marines time to
absorb the news.

Or perhaps, Vi’ya thought, it was a measure of Brandon’s
increasing dominion, despite his deference to the meliarch. Even through her
fatigue, she could feel the allegiance of the Marines around them. He would
have to formally assume control at some point, or their fighting efficiency
would suffer.

Rhapulo continued, “There’s worse, though longer term.
Supernova.”

Even through the haze Vi’ya could feel the shock of that
bald statement.

“But we won’t have to worry about that for a while, and the
asteroids’ll get here first, anyway. In the meantime, seeing that nobody’s got
control of this hellhole now, it’s time to get out. I’ve got two squads in
position to slap bulkhead punches on the corvettes to cripple them. We’ve got a
nark into the landing bay, but I’m holding off until we’re sure the Kelly can
hold the
Telvarna
against the
Tarkans.”

Brandon looked at Vi’ya, who shook her head. “I can’t reach
the Kelly or Ivard.”

“Is this something to worry about?” Brandon asked her.

She said, “I don’t know. I assume not. The station’s . . .
presence . . . interferes with our connection, I suspect. But
Jaim had orders to make for
Telvarna
if we lost contact.”

Rhapulo said, “Unless they’ve found armor and weapons, they
won’t be able to get into the bay. Securing that is our next objective. Gwyn,
take the squad and link up with Daschya’s squad. That’ll give us a
three-pronged assault.” A twittering burst of data followed his voice.

“Can you locate your crew if we don’t see them?” Brandon
asked. “Area around the bay is huge, with countless adits.”

“I will ask the Eya’a to sort for their patterns,” Vi’ya
said. “But I need to be stationary to do it.”

Rhapulo overheard. “We can’t let it slow us down. If we
don’t take the landing bay, none of us will get off this station.”

o0o

Anaris dropped out of the ceiling behind Chur-Mellikath,
who was conferring with two subordinates. In the distance, a hollow boom
resounded; moments later the deck thumped.

The Tarkan commander turned, his armor whining. “Lord, we
thought you lost, and we have lost contact with the Avatar. Juvaszt has
reported the launch of several asteroids against the station, as well as the
impending explosion of the companion star sometime afterward. The ETA of the
earliest asteroid is less than one hundred minutes now and the enemy is
pressing hard toward the landing bay.”

Anaris’s mind raced through the implications of Chur-Mellikath’s
words. The supernova he dismissed, since the asteroids would strike first—time
enough to deal with it when they had escaped this place. The most pressing
concern was the tone of Chur-Mellikath’s report, which was almost one of
reproach.
My command of the karra, as
they see it, is far from traditional. He wonders if my resolution of the
succession struggle might be as far from the norms.

He did not respond to the implied question.
Let them wonder about the Avatar while I
regain control of the situation.

“Have the arrays been destroyed?”

“Yes, lord.”

So I don’t have to
worry about Brandon’s haunt anymore.
The failsafe nature of the station’s
DataNet would keep communication going, but the stasis clamps would have only
local control.

“It is good. Show me your dispositions.”

Chur-Mellikath bowed and obeyed, but Anaris knew he would
have to handle him carefully.

When the commander was finished, Anaris let his mind expand
outward, reestablishing his kinesthetic sense of the station. He noted a small
group of armored personnel approaching from the direction of the Chamber of
Kronos. Might they have Vi’ya with them?