A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (4 page)

Loisz frowned. “Lord Casimir? What is this?”

“You sent a pinnace down to Linna —”

“I did no such thing.”

Kiserö touched Ormuz lightly on the arm, and said, “My lord, we can take him into custody.”

“No.” To Loisz, Ormuz said, “Your boat was at Linna aerodrome. It delivered four assassins sent to kill me.”

“Rubbish!” scoffed Loisz. “My pinnace has not left
Arnabyad
since I returned from
Tempest
. Two days ago.”

He turned back to his communications-console and, one-handedly, flicked a series of switches. For one long moment, the tableau held—the captain with his back to them, gazing intently at whatever was displayed upon his the console’s glasses; at the other side of the chamber, the twelve
Vengeful
marines, and before them Ormuz, Varä and Kiserö.

Ormuz saw Loisz’s back stiffen. The point of his sword described a low arc to the deck. He turned slowly about. “It seems you were right about the boat,” he admitted.

“It wasn’t you who ordered it down to the planet?” asked Ormuz.

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“My executive officer, Yamanë.”

“And where is he?” asked Ormuz.

Loisz shook his head. “He hasn’t responded to my earlier order.”

It was clear to Ormuz that Captain Loisz spoke the truth. He seemed both angry that someone had sent his boat down to the aerodrome without his knowledge, and embarrassed that it had been allowed to happen. He sheathed his sword, holding the scabbard at its top and slamming down the hilt with fierceness.

“I suppose,” he said, “we’d better find that damn exec of mine.”

They left the Pilothouse and descended the spiral ramp to the last of the circular chambers. Loisz led the way into the frigate’s officer country, brusquely instructing all those they passed to follow him. The executive officer’s cabin was empty, and his valet had not seen him for over an hour.

By now a small crowd of some thirty or forty people, they gathered along a length of passage way, while Loisz, Ormuz, Varä and Kiserö conferred. “She’s not a big ship,” Loisz said. “He’ll not be hard to find.” He barked out orders to the rateds in gangway, ordering them to search every chamber, nook and cranny aboard the frigate.

And, in no more than twenty minutes, Loisz was proven true. A runner appeared, young and breathless, and informed them the executive officer’s body had been found in a store room on the lower deck.

“Dead?” asked Ormuz, as they hurried towards the room in question.

“No, my lord,” replied the runner. “Not dead. But not moving neither.”

“Like the clones on
Tempest
?” suggested Varä.

There were too many people. The passage was full of figures in blue and figures in green. The frigate’s gangways were not designed for such traffic. To Ormuz it felt like being in the midst of a riot. When they reached the store room, the marines had to force a way for Ormuz, the marquess, Kiserö and Loisz through the rateds gathered outside it.

Ormuz crossed to the body lying on the deck near the back of the room. A man, in his forties, wearing the uniform of an Imperial Navy officer. His eyes were closed, but his cheeks were pink with life.

“He looks familiar,” Ormuz said.

“You’ve met Yamanë before?” asked Loisz. “He stayed aboard
Arnabyad
when I was briefed on
Tempest
.”

No, Ormuz had never met him before. He looked up at Loisz. The five of them stood about the body. No, six. The runner, a girl young enough to appear boyish, had sneaked in with them and stood gawping by Yamanë’s feet.

“The clones,” said Varä. “Only… older.”

The marquess was right. Lieutenant Yamanë was indeed a clone. Previously those they had encountered had all been of a similar age—in their early twenties. Yamanë was two decades older.

How many such, wondered Ormuz, were hidden among the officers and rateds of the Admiral’s fleet?

A pair of narrow arched windows occupied the centre of the starboard bulkhead in the Admiral’s lounge. An armchair, at odds with the layout of the cabin’s other furnishings, sat facing them. The Admiral, it seemed, often sat and gazed out at the stars.

Ormuz could understand the attraction: the heavens were majestic and humbling, an unfathomable black and sprayed across it the stars, hot points of white and red and yellow. Somewhere out there were the worlds of the Empire, Geneza and Shuto and the thousands other worlds ruled by the Emperor. Ormuz crossed the lounge and settled in the armchair. He could see no stars—the windows looked down upon Linna, a nacreous plain of blue. And ships. Hundreds of ships, strung across that luminescent backdrop.

The Admiral’s fleet.
His
fleet.

In serried ranks, they hung against the face of Linna. Line after line of warships. Seven battleships, three battlecruisers, sixteen cruisers. A host of destroyers, frigates, corvettes. Troop-transports, carrying 11,500 soldiers.

He had created this monstrous rebellion, had taken it upon himself to defend an emperor who appeared to feel no need for defence. Why else had the Imperial Throne not responded? Emperor Willim IX sat safe in his palace on Shuto and did nothing.

Instead, his daughter, the Admiral, captain of this renegade battlecruiser,
Vengeful
, fought the Serpent’s conspiracy. For the past six years, she had secretly extracted vows of assistance from many officers of the Imperial Navy. And now they came to her call… because
he
, Casimir Ormuz, had asked her to gather her fleet. To help him.

It was his destiny, the destiny he had reached out for and claimed as his own. His grasp was nothing short of treasonous, but the Admiral had forgiven him. Although a clone, an identical genetic copy, of the Duke of Ahasz, Ormuz had been brought up a proletarian. And for a prole to ape his betters was strictly forbidden. The sentence was swift and severe.

“It shall have to suffice,” the Admiral said.

Startled, Ormuz glanced back over his shoulder. He had not heard her enter. She stood beside the sideboard to the left of the door from the foyer, hands clasped behind her back, brows lowered in thought. Her black insignia-less uniform drank in the warm lighting of the lounge, while her shaven head shone gold. She unclasped her hands and crossed to stand behind Ormuz’s armchair. The leather creaked beneath her hand as she gripped the back.

“I had hoped for more,” she admitted.

“I think we’ve recruited a remarkable number,” Ormusz replied. He still found it hard to credit he had a fleet to command. Or rather, the Admiral had a fleet to command. And she followed him.

“It is the number who would ignore Edkar’s Promise who worry me, Casimir. Do they think so little of it?” She sighed, and ran a hand back over her scalp.

Ormuz turned back to the windows. Another creak of leather sounded by his ear. Reaching up, he put a hand on the Admiral’s, felt its coldness. Her flesh was chill and alabaster smooth. Cold hands, a Shutan peculiarity. Or so she’d told him. He took her word for it: the Admiral was the only member of the Imperial Family Ormuz had met.

He remembered a religious service of two days before. He was not a practicing Chianist himself, having long since decided it had little personal relevance. The Admiral, however, well versed in its creed, and observed its practices. Yet she appeared to have little faith in its mysteries.

The lesson that day had been, as it always was, drawn from the life of an Avatar. According to the
Book of the Sun
, Lord Tadashi had been a reformer. Dismayed at the poor treatment of the lower classes in early Shuti society, he had attempted to improve their situation. But his complaints to the king went unheard—or, at least, they were not acted upon. In desperation, Lord Tadashi hired a famous band of mercenary soldiers, and threatened to unleash them on the city unless various social reforms were enacted. The king refused. Lord Tadashi let loose his hounds of war.

In the subsequent fighting, fully half of the city’s lower classes were killed.

There they were, floating in orbit about Linna, Ormuz’s very own hounds of war.

“Preparations to leave are underway,” the Admiral said.

“You don’t think any more ships will arrive?”

“We cannot afford to wait any longer. Each day, I expect to hear news from Shuto that the Imperial Throne has fallen.”

Ormuz shook his head. “No, we will be there in time.”

Inspector Sliva demar Finesz of the Office of the Procurator Imperial stepped down from the pinnace’s hatch onto a wooden jetty. Below it, she saw the begrimed metal ribs and foul stained sheets of steel that were
Tempest
’s bilges. Though gravity only prevailed while she stood upon the wooden planking, the thought of tumbling from the jetty and falling twenty feet or more turned her stomach. She resolutely directed her gaze forward, and began to march.

Beside her, one of the troop-transport’s pinnaces lay quiescent in its berth. Her own pinnace had been warped across the sterns of the two lowermost of
Tempest
’s six boats. This was the nearest the troop-transport came to a guest berth.

And speaking of guests… where was Captain Rizbeka demar Rinharte? Or even Marine-Captain Garrin demar Kordelasz?

The jetty was deserted, but for herself and her Troop-Sergeant Malak Assaun. And the rateds busy attaching hoses and hawsers to her pinnace. Finesz strode up the ramp from the jetty, toward the entrance to the troop-deck. Still no sign of Rinharte or Kordelasz.

And certainly no Commander Abad mar Mubariz, Baron Mateen.

Finesz had expected the captain to meet her here on the boat-deck. With Finesz’s prisoner. Rinharte was only holding Mubariz as a favour—Finesz had not wanted to leave him on the planet below. The knights sinister had already tried to take him once. She would not allow them a second attempt. She and Mubariz were, after all, more then merely gaoler and inmate…

Was what Mubariz had done so wrong? The Admiral had ordered him under arrest because he spied on her for the Order of the Imperial Seal throughout the years of her mutiny. Finesz admired him for that. He had turned renegade with his captain out of personal loyalty and a recognition she had the right of it. But his deep sense of honour had not allowed him to ignore the fealty he ultimately owed to the Imperial Throne. So he’d reported on her actions, and tried to curb her excesses. (Not entirely with success: the Admiral had frequently resorted to commerce raiding for vital supplies, and people died during her attacks.)

“Where are they?” she asked Assaun.

He said nothing. Finesz hadn’t expected him to.

She sighed, shrugged, and then continued up the ramp to the troop-deck. Assaun marched after her. At the top of the ramp, a pair of large steel doors, half-open, confronted her. Through the gap between them, she could see the barracks blocks—their open sides sheeted with canvas, rolled up in places to reveal neat rows of cots, some of which were occupied by soldiers. Other troopers wandered about the deck, or sat at the trestle-tables before the field-kitchen aft of the blocks.

Finesz looked, but she could see neither Rinharte nor Kordelasz. She turned and peered up the ramp leading to the top-most pair of berths. She looked along the jetties of the middle tier. There were a number of rateds in blue coveralls busy scrubbing and polishing, but no officers.

“Damn the woman,” Finesz muttered. “Command has gone to her head.”

Grumbling under her breath, she entered the troop-deck, turned left and began ascending the ladder leading up the forward bulkhead to the upper deck. If Rinharte was anywhere, it would be on
Tempest
’s bridge.

The moment she stepped through the hatch onto the upper deck, she saw the two she sought walking towards her. She paused for breath, winded from the climb, and then raised a hand —

A figure appeared on the ramp at the far end of the gangway and hurried towards Rinharte and Kordelasz. A naval officer, coltish, slim, with long blonde hair in a queue. Midshipman Maganda,
Tempest
’s acting executive officer. Something seemed urgent.

Maganda caught up with Rinharte and Kordelasz. The captain’s hair, Finesz noticed, was no longer white, but back to its original black. The two officers stopped and turned. The midshipman delivered her news in a breathless rush. Finesz could not hear what was being said, but saw Rinharte’s features turn pale. The three abruptly turned about and began to jog back towards the ramp Maganda had descended.

“What in heavens is going on?” Finesz demanded of no one in particular.

There was little for it. Muttering oaths, Finesz hurried after the three
Tempest
officers. No more than half a dozen paces later, she realised she would never catch Rinharte unless she increased her pace. Annoyed at the indignity of it all—an inspector,
running
—she broke into a quick trot. By the time she reached the ramp, she’d concluded she was not as fit as she’d thought. Assaun, damn him, was not even breathing hard.

Rinharte, Kordelasz and Maganda had stepped off the ramp onto the quarter-deck. Finesz caught up with them in the gangway into which the ramp debouched. They stood by the door to a crew cabin, looking down at a pair of marines sprawled on the decking. From the splay of the marines’ limbs, and Rinharte’s expression of disgust, Finesz realised the men were dead.

What, she wondered, had happened? Had Mubariz escaped?

No. He was an honourable man. He had given his word. He would not break free and murder his guards.

Or could she have misread him so badly?

“We have a problem,” Rinharte snapped at Finesz as she came to a halt. “One of the clones has woken up.”

Finesz felt relief. It was not Mubariz.

In ten cabins aboard
Tempest
, twenty clones lay brain-dead, kept alive in sophisticated sarcophagi. Rinharte had discovered them like that when she, Kordelasz, and a boat-squad of marines had found the troop-transport seemingly abandoned, and boarded it. It appeared likely the clones were—had been—the ship’s crew. But what had happened to them was a mystery.