A Prison Unsought (24 page)

Jaim remembered the dispassionate gaze of Admiral Nyberg at
the Aerenarch’s briefing about the hyperwave. Obviously even so small a detail
as exploiting the infighting for living space to cover the sequestration of
critical personnel had not escaped his attention. Jaim knew nothing of the
station’s commander, but was beginning to understand that the man was as much a
master of the political arts as he, Jaim, was of the Ulanshu.
And he’ll need every bit of that talent to
deal with the likes of these doll-faced Douloi.

Haze hid the lake near the Arkadic Enclave from this
distance. Around that lake the competition among the Douloi for high-status
living space seethed; he wondered if Vannis Scefi-Cartano and her friends ever
glanced at the scenery.
No. They look around
to see what those next higher on the rungs are doing.

And for Vannis, that meant Brandon.

When Jaim had asked
about Vannis, Brandon had said,
“We’ll leave the door open once. I owe that
much to my brother, I think.”
What had he meant?

I don’t have to
understand it.
Jaim leaned his head back on the seat, too tired to think.

o0o

Marine Solarch Artorus Vahn gasped as his sparring
partner’s kick glanced off the side of his knee, jolting him with pain. Anger
flashed, he struck back in a whirl of blows, and when his brain caught up he
stood over his partner, the side of his hand at the man’s neck.

Vahn grimaced and straightened up. “Sorry, Reffe,” he said.

Reffe rolled to his feet, mopping with his sleeve at his
bleeding nose. “No problem,” he said thickly, as they all did when someone
landed them on their ass. Especially a superior. “An enemy won’t go as easy.”

They all said that, but Vahn could see the resentment Reffe
tried to hide, and his chagrin worsened. Reffe was an excellent inner perimeter
man, usually part of Roget’s detail; he’d done two watches back to back while
everyone else was cycled through the new training.

Vahn hated himself for his loss of control. Reffe wouldn’t
be human if he wasn’t furious.

The medic drew Reffe aside, and Vahn forced himself to move
away. He took his chagrin (and his own exhaustion) to weapons practice, and
when he came out, he was not surprised to find his watch commander waiting for
him.

“You all right, Artorus?” she
asked.

The use of his first name was meant to signal no punitive
steps, but nothing could make Vahn feel worse than he did. She fell in step
beside him as he headed for the showers.

“Momentary lapse. I’m fine, sir,”
he said. “If Reffe wants to report it, I’ll support his decision.”

The watch commander shook her head. “Said it was accidental.
The vid corroborates, not that I thought it was anything else. Look, you’re all
exhausted. I wish I could give you more personnel, but we’re maxed out.”

“And it’s only going to get worse,”
he said. “Roget and I will work something out. Maybe staggered watches. We all
need to make sure we get downtime.”

“Good man.” She ducked her chin,
walloped his shoulder, and turned away as he hit the door to the bain. But
before it closed, she said, “Speak up if you find yourselves unraveling.”

He saluted, and the door hissed shut on her worried brown
gaze.

He’d promised, and he meant it, but the least he could do
for Reffe was to push his own rec time further back, and take the boring study
watch so that Reffe could get his nose attended to.

A short time later, clean and spruce in a fresh uniform, he
stood at the window of the room the Aerenarch had made his study, dividing his
attention between the Aerenarch busy at the console and the grassy sward outside
where children played, soft lit in “morning” color.

That clump near the trees, their bodies stiff, their peeks
at the sky tentative, were Downsiders. They did not trust the
ground-becoming-sky that is an oneill’s substitute for a horizon.

Those who’d raced straight out to play were Highdwellers.
The ones who ran the longest, as if joy-crazed by the wide horizons, were from
smaller habitats, or even ships. And those who set up a game in a businesslike
fashion had probably been born and raised on a standard oneill, like the
civilian portion of Ares, whose size and maximum population were prescribed by
one of the statutes known as the Jaspran Unalterables.

Vahn sustained a flash of memory, the gardens of Arthelion.

The grim vision of what Dol’jhar must have done to those
gardens caused him to turn physically.

The Aerenarch leaned into his work, utterly focused. Vahn had
stepped within sight of the screen. The Aerenarch once again labored hip-deep
in what appeared to be a multiple semiotic vector problem; he was working in
the new Tenno, a small window indicating the presence of his tutor, probably
one of Warrigal’s staff. The Aerenarch’s hands moved with swift assurance over
the keypads, and the screen rippled, adapting to his input and then evolving
further.

His actions made no sense to Vahn. The Aerenarch, as a young
Krysarch, had been kicked out of the Academy, and now that he was heir, he
would never be commissioned in the Navy. Yet he spent all his free
time—sometimes late into the night, if the increasing demands of social
engagements used up his day—poring over advanced strategy problems and
solutions. Vahn sensed he was looking on long habit.
In fact, the only reason I’m seeing him at it is that Semion is dead.

This was not the Aerenarch’s only secret that caused Vahn to
speculate on his intent. Though ostensibly the telltale inside of Jaim was for the
Aerenarch’s own protection, Vahn knew the real reason was somewhat more
complicated.

Faseult’s orders had been succinct on this point: “When he
is alone with the Rifter, you and only you will listen. Do not record anything
except details concerning his experiences, from the time he left his Enkainion
until he was rescued by Nukiel.”

Vahn suspected it was the mystery concerning the Enkainion
that concerned his superiors most.

His boswell pinged,
and Roget said:
(Jaim’s back.)

(Report?)

(Detention Five, Ivard
and Vi’ya. Training session, and one of them was working the comp. Discriminators
heard nothing. Want a deeper dive?)

Vahn hesitated. It was still a jolt to remember that the
Rifters had known about the hyperwave’s existence before the Navy did. But then
Eusabian had armed Rifters as part of his fleet. Anyway, he knew that Jaim had
not mentioned it to anybody—had not even discussed it with Brandon after they
were both briefed by Nyberg. He reached a decision:
(Not necessary.)

Roget acknowledged and cut the link.

Vahn activated another signal and waited until Keveth on the
outside post had moved to the garden where he could see inside the room. Vahn
watched the Aerenarch, and when he was focused on the left side of his screen,
jeeved noiselessly; he reached the front in time to intercept Jaim, coffee mugs
in his hands. “You’ve been up all night,” he greeted the Rifter. “Coffee?”

Jaim veered and followed, as Vahn had intended.

The kitchen was empty, as Montrose did not favor early hours. Another Rifter. Vahn moved to the urn, cursing
the difficult position the Aerenarch had put them in with this whim of his. A
Rifter bodyguard and another as his chef, the latter a survivor of Timberwell
with a cordial hatred for the Archon Srivashti, perhaps the most powerful
Douloi on Ares. Jaim sat down at the table, his long face tired, his attitude
one of patient waiting.

He knows this is an
interrogation.
Jaim’s willingness to comply might mean anything, but his
falling in with the fiction of a couple of guards taking a coffee break came
down heavily in the credit side.

Jaim said, “Has he been studying all night again?”

Vahn nodded, poured fresh coffee and carried it to the
table. He sat down opposite Jaim. “Seems to be enjoying it.”

It was an opportunity to enlarge on what reasons Jaim saw
behind it, but Jaim just shook his head, the chimes woven into the long
mourning braids hanging down his back tinkling on a minor key.

“Got some R&R?” Vahn asked.

Jaim’s smile was brief. “Visited my shipmates.”

“How’s Ivard recovering?”

“Looks good, sounds good.” Jaim
hesitated, twitched a shoulder in a slight shrug, then offered a piece of
information unasked: “Vi’ya asked me to train him Ulanshu.”

“Expect to ship out together after
we finish with Eusabian?”

Jaim’s brows lifted and he stared into his coffee as if
seeking an answer there. “No,” he said presently. “I don’t know why she asked.”

“But you do it anyway?”

Jaim smiled again. “She was the captain. It’s a habit.”

Vahn said, “Two masters? That’s a lot of work.”

Jaim seemed vaguely surprised, then rubbed his eyes. “Vi’ya
is looking out for Firehead’s welfare,” he said. “That was our name for Ivard.”
Holding out his hand flat a few centimeters above the tabletop, he added,
“Ivard was that small when his sister Greywing brought him to Dis. Greywing
died on our Arthelion run. I think Vi’ya sees herself responsible for him.”

Vahn nodded. Sipped. Said, “I understand they offered her
employment, and she refused.”

Jaim shrugged again, this time more obviously. “Won’t wear
telltales.”

Vahn thought about Detention Five’s current population,
people not classifiable as either citizens or capital-crime criminals, who the
higher-ups deemed could not be let loose without monitoring.
Especially now.
“Those telltales are
simply that, to monitor where one goes. For most it will be a temporary
measure, a necessary one given the circumstances.”

Jaim flicked his fingers up. “Understood.” He hesitated,
then said, “You’d have to know her background.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to say. Vahn wondered what he
would say if he found out that he had a far more subtle—and more
powerful—transmitter planted in him.

“She’s Dol’jharian,” Vahn prompted.
“Escaped from the planet young, is what Nukiel’s techs found out under the
noetic questioning. There’s a relation?”

Jaim grinned mirthlessly, taking in Vahn’s casual words, and
what they meant. By admitting that they had questioned Vi’ya under noesis, Vahn
was as much as confessing that Jaim had also undergone the same. He would
consider what this admission meant later, but now: “If you knew much about
Dol’jhar, you’d see it. Slaves have old-fashioned trackers planted in their
shoulder blades, soon’s they’re sold. Big metal lump, like this.” He indicated
a knuckle. “Her first act when she escaped the quarry—she wasn’t much older
than Firehead—was to dig it out of her own back with a stolen table knife. Said
she’d never bear another, and she keeps her word.”

Vahn winced in sympathy. Instinct prompted him to trust Jaim
(who had reacted sensibly to the Vahn’s technically illegal sharing of noetic
information), but duty forced him to remain neutral. Too much was at stake.
I can’t trust you wholly, but I can let you
know that it would be best if we were on the same side.

“You’ll need to get some sleep,” he said, finishing his
coffee and getting to his feet. He put his cup in the recycler, then turned
back. “Unfortunately I have some news that might make it hard to rack up the Z’s.
Want it now, or wait?”

“Let me guess—someone wants our guts for a trophy?” Jaim
indicated himself and tipped his head toward Brandon.

“Already tried. Found it right before you two got in from
that Archonei’s earlier this evening.”

“It?”

“Helix. On a personal invitation. Clone cells in the tianqi
monitors caught it.”

Vahn was gratified by Jaim’s reaction of unequivocal
revulsion. He hadn’t been sure if Rifters shared the civilized abhorrence of
the Voudun genetic poison, cultivated from cloned cells taken from the intended
victim and affecting only that person. Rare as it was, only the death of the
sensitized clone cells in the tianqi substrates—an expensive precaution that
Vahn had ordered as part of the routine security for handling physical mail—had
revealed the presence of the poison. It only took a few cells, from under a
fingernail brushed lightly against the victim’s skin, or a couple of hairs, to
supply enough of the victim’s genome to clone the poison.

And now all his team was going through another crash course
in new protocols for poison detection on the move.

Jaim’s face became
thoughtful. “The invitation might have passed through many hands on its way to
the Arkadic Enclave.”

So he understands, Vahn thought.
Like Vahn, Jaim had
immediately dismissed the issuer of the invitation from his suspicions. No one
would be that stupid.
Of course, that might be just what we’re intended to
think.

“Right,” Vahn replied.

Jaim grunted and rubbed his fingers from eye sockets to jaw.
“Dol’jhar?”

Vahn smiled ruefully. “I’d like to think so, but it’s just
as likely to be plotters in the government with an eye to their own advantage
should the heir die or, better, be disabled. Forensics hasn’t analyzed the
poison yet, so we don’t know which was intended.”

Jaim stared sightlessly into his coffee, and Vahn wondered
if he understood how complicated the situation really was. Finally Jaim said,
“Arkad know?”

The name, bare of titles, jarred Vahn; his reaction was
mixed. During his days under the former Aerenarch Semion, the old saying was,
you could be flogged for relaxing protocols even in your sleep. But the new
Aerenarch’s orders had been clear: no protocol enforcement when they were alone
in the enclave. “Not yet,” he said.

Jaim gave that mirthless smile again. “My job, right?”

Vahn opened his hands. “I may not address him until
summoned, or in an emergency.”

Jaim swallowed his coffee, got up, and went out.