Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (9 page)

Lying on his bunk, Kelric stared at the ceiling. He had set the radiance bars to a muted glow, too dim even to penetrate the corner shadows. He didn't want more light, nothing that might add to his tension.
It had been hours since Maccar and his team had taken a shuttle to the
Chrysalis.
No one had heard from them. Several times Kelric found himself on the verge of going to the bridge, where he could use his console to probe the
Chrysalis.
It took a conscious effort to make himself stay put. Maccar was right. He was no longer used to shipboard discipline.
He wished Maccar hadn't stirred up his past. Corey. Gods, he hadn't thought about her in years. Yet another person he had loved who died. Damn it all. He didn't want to remember. He was tired of hurting. He wanted to go home. See his parents. Reaffirm that at least some of the people he loved weren't dead or forbidden to him.
A hum came from the door. Startled, he sat up. Then he got off the bunk and went over to the door. After he checked the security panel, he opened the portal.
Ty Rillwater stood outside, small and round, her yellow hair curling about her rosy-cheeked face. "My greetings, Kelric." She beamed at him. "My relief just came on shift. I thought you might want company, since you're confined to your quarters."
Her cheerful good nature washed over him, easing his tension. "My greetings to you also, Ty. Come in." He motioned to his one chair, near his bunk. As she went over and settled into it, he sat on the edge of the bed, his booted feet planted wide, his elbows resting on his knees.
"Is there any news from Maccar?" he asked.
Ty shook her head. "Nothing yet."
He made a frustrated sound. "They need a better interpreter than the
Corona
's translator." They needed him.
"They'll be all right. Maccar hadn't expected to have a better one." With mock solemnity she added, "Besides, we would never have let him take you to the
Chrysalis.
Your absence would make the bridge a far less aesthetic place."
Kelric smiled. "I'm sure you would survive."
Mischief flashed on her face. "Well, you know, Steil would take us all to task for pining over a work of art."
"I'm a weapons officer, Ty. Not a sculpture."
"I could wax poetic," she offered. Then her smile faded. "But Kelric, none of us wanted you to go the the
Chrysalis.
The risk to you is just too great. You're such a strong empath and you don't hide it well. When I'm near you, I feel like I'm in the sun. It's beautiful." She looked apologetic. "I hope that doesn't sound like I'm making a pass. I'm not. But we all appreciate your being here."
He spoke quietly. "Thank you."
With a grin she added, "So now can I flirt some more?"
Kelric laughed. "You're incorrigible."
Her reply was cut short by the shrill of an alarm from his console. He stood up fast, his enhanced speed toggling on. The console screen cleared to show Captain Maccar, with the interior of the
Corona
's shuttle in the background.
"Garlin and Rillwater, get to the bridge," Maccar said. "We're leaving as soon as the shuttle docks. Emergency status."
"Right away," Kelric answered, as Ty said, "On my way."
They ran through the ship, sailing in huge strides. At the end cap of the cylinder, they went "up" an access tube that stretched from the rim to the center of the cap. Gravity decreased as they climbed, until they were hurtling themselves through the air. They had no weight at all when they reached the cap's center, a spherical cavity a few meters across. Access tubes identical to theirs radiated like spokes out from the cavity in every direction. Air-lock hatches were centered in both the forward and aft bulkheads, the forward hatch leading to the bridge and the aft one to the docking tube that ran down the center of the cylinder.
The aft hatch suddenly clanged open and Maccar propelled himself into the cavity, coming in sideways to Ty and Kelric. Ty heaved open the forward hatch and the three of them entered the air-lock. They waited interminable seconds while it sealed, both the hatch and a molecular membrane that served as a backup. The hatch into the bridge opened, they flew into the hemisphere—
And Kelric froze.
The holos of space were gone. Instead, the huge screens that stretched across the bridge showed a Trader news broadcast. Steil was sitting in the captain's chair, her posture frozen, her gaze fixed on the broadcast.The relief crew were all at their stations, every one staring at the screens. Bigger than life, the images dominated the bridge.
They showed a tall broad-shouldered man with glittering white hair— Lord Corbal Xir, the Aristo next in line to assume the Carnelian Throne. Xir's mother had been a younger sister of Eube Qox, who founded the Trader Empire. Under normal conditions a Xir could never have assumed the throne. The line of succession went through the firstborn Qox of each generation: Eube, Jaibriol I, Ur, and Jaibriol II.
But Jaibriol II had died without an heir, leaving only Corbal Xir to assume the title. After four generations of Qox emperors, a Xir would sit on the Carnelian Throne— if age didn't stop him. His contemporaries had all died: Corbal Xir was the eldest Highton, over 130 years old. He was the only Aristo with white hair that Kelric had ever seen. Most Aristos were obsessive about maintaining their youth and appearance, as if their exterior beauty could mask their true nature.
Xir was standing on a dais in the Hall of Circles, the great audience hall in the emperor's palace on the capital planet of Eube. He stood next to the Carnelian Throne, a glittering chair carved from a diamond-snowmarble composite and inlaid with bloodred gems. Rows of sparkling diamond benches with high backs curved around the front of the dais. Aristos sat on them, rank upon rank of icy human perfection, as hard as diamond cogs in a diamond computer, every one with shimmering black hair, ruby eyes, and snowmarble skin. They waited in triumphant silence, watching the dais.
But it was neither Corbal Xir nor the Aristos that riveted Kelric's attention, that brought him to such an abrupt halt, hanging on a cable. What stopped him so utterly was the man who stood next to Xir.
At six foot one, the man was half a head shorter than Xir. Wine-red hair tousled in disarray around his handsome, haggard face. He had large eyes, violet, with dark circles under them. The ripped sleeve of his white shirt revealed bruised skin underneath. His arms were bound behind his back and a diamond slave collar glinted around his neck.
"No," Kelric whispered. He knew that man. Knew him well.
It was his brother Eldrin.

Garlin, to your station!" Maccar shot past Kelric, headed for his command seat, which Steil was already vacating. Kelric propelled himself to his console. The instant he touched his chair, it responded, familiar now with his brain-wave signature. It pulled him into its grasp and folded the exoskeleton around him like a high-tech glove.
Maccar's orders came in rapid-fire bursts. "Steil, jettison our cargo. Anatakala, get us out of here. Rillwater, ignore any orders from the
Chrysalis.
Garlin, don't let them stop us from leaving."
Kelric linked into the
Corona.
A quick check revealed Maccar had already taken payment for his cargo. He could guess what had happened: Maccar and Lady Zarine finished their business before the news of Eldrin's capture broke. By jettisoning his cargo, Maccar fulfilled his delivery contract without staying at the station. Lady Zarine would be irate at having to pick up crates from space, but she couldn't claim a broken contract as an excuse to detain the flotilla.
As Kelric worked, Xir's speech played in his mindscape, as it would soon play across screens throughout settled space, as fast as starships could carry it. Absorbed in his tasks, he caught only parts of the broadcast, but that was enough:
... great deeds of our sterling war heroes, Xir intoned in the Aristo's melodramatic and overly adjectified style.
With unmatched courage, they braved the very halls of corrupt Skolian power, the Orbiter itself, capital of Skolia ... ESComm special forces unit removed the Ruby Pharaoh, and also the spawn produced by her iniquitous union with her own brother's son ... captured her depraved consort ... Eldrin Jarac Valdoria Skolia, firstborn of the Ruby Dynasty ...
Kelric gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the venom that Xir directed against his family. He needed no Aristo propaganda speech to tell him the implications of Eldrin's capture. With Eldrin, the Traders now had a key for their stolen Lock. Eube had gained indisputable advantage. The balance of power had changed. The sooner Maccar got out of Trader territory, the better.
He didn't know which was worse, hearing confirmation that ESComm had killed his aunt and nephew or learning of his brother's capture. As much as he had grieved for Eldrin's death, Kelric couldn't rejoice in seeing him now, knowing what he faced. It had to be tearing his brother apart, especially after having watched his wife and son die.
Come to think of it, though, Xir provided no specifics on how the Pharaoh and her son had died. In fact, no one seemed clear about it, not even the commandos who had supposedly "removed" the Pharaoh and her heir. Removed
how
?
The more he heard, the more Xir's speech puzzled him. It bulged with inaccuracies. The Orbiter wasn't Skolia's capital. That honor went to Selei City on the planet Parthonia. Nor was Eldrin the son of Pharaoh's brother. He was the son of Roca, the Pharaoh's sister. Iniquitous? Dehya and Eldrin had fought the Assembly's manipulations. They lost, and so they married, but they had gentled their difficult situation with a deep, abiding love. Kelric doubted Xir cared about the emotional toll they had paid, but surely he must realize how hypocritical his comments would sound even to his own people. The Aristo lord's dearly departed cousin, Emperor Jaibriol I, had married his own sister, declaring her the only woman with an exalted enough bloodline— his own— to be his wife.
Even if Xir didn't see the sloppiness of his own propaganda, it was odd he would make so make so many awkward mistakes. Although outwardly the Aristo lord displayed triumph, Kelric had an empath's natural ability to read people. He saw what Xir tried to hide: Beneath his self-aggrandizing speech, the Aristo was tired. Drained. If Kelric hadn't known better, he would have thought Xir felt no triumph at all.
Was Corbal Xir experiencing the same dismay that would sweep settled space as the news spread? Humanity was exhausted, worn out from a debilitating war that had broken two empires. Incredibly, the Radiance War had also given birth to hope. Without their war machines or psiberweb, Skolia and Eube would be forced to the negotiation table, perhaps making possible a peace that had eluded them for centuries.
Now that had changed.
Maccar's ships accelerated away from the
Chrysalis,
building up the speed to invert. As Kelric set up his Kyle links with the flotilla, he also monitored space all around them— and so he saw the frigates emerge from the station's hub.
Captain,
he thought.
We're being followed.
He focused on the vessels. They appeared civilian. Their appearance lied. Submerged deep in his mindscape, he registered the contained power of their weapons— Annihilators, Impactors, smart-dust, tau cannons— all hidden behind their masquerade as innocuous ships out for a jaunt.
"Anatakala, how soon can we invert?" Maccar asked.
"We'll have enough speed in eighty-one seconds," she said.
Kelric swore. Space combat went at relativistic speeds. Energies flared and died in microseconds. Time dilated and length contracted. In that quickened universe, eighty-one seconds was eternity.
Their proximity to the
Chrysalis
gave them some protection; the Traders wouldn't start a battle when Maccar could fire on a habitat with millions of people. But the flotilla ships were speeding up at a precipitous rate, snapping in and out of quasis to protect their fragile humans from the crushing accelerations. The
Chrysalis
soon fell behind, visible only on Kelric's mindscape, long gone from visual range.
The Eubian ships gained on them, reaching for the flotilla in a grasping formation, like a claw. With grim certainty, Kelric realized they would be within firing range before the flotilla inverted.
Then he felt a mind.
He recognized that mental signature. Knew it. Hated it. He suddenly had the sense of standing on a precipice above a mental abyss. An Aristo colonel commanded one of the pursuing ships, a warlord intent on capture and destruction.
Kelric toggled into high-speed combat mode, where his communication with the
Corona
came in symbols and numbers rather than words. It denoted Eubian frigates by EF and Maccar's by MF. The console boosted his Kyle senses into a heightened state he could endure for only a few minutes. That was all he would need.
Fragmented thoughts from the Trader ships swept around him like a jumbled whirlpool. His mindscape organized the chaos, filtered the data, and sent the result to his mind, all in microseconds. Then he knew. ESComm personnel crewed the Trader ships. They meant to destroy the flotilla and take the
Corona.
He wanted to hate them. But they were human. Taskmakers. They had families, homes, dreams, fears. Most were loyal to the Aristos who owned them. If they served well, they reaped the benefits of the richest civilization in human history. Disobedience or too many failures dropped them into lower levels of the slave hierarchies, where people became cogs in the machinery of servitude with no more value than robots.
It made no difference that he couldn't hate them: he had to defend the flotilla. But he now knew the people he intended to kill. Turning empaths into weapons was a recipe for psychological ruin. The heightened mental abilities of Jagernauts made them relentlessly effective, but it could also destroy them. It wasn't coincidence most Jagernauts left active duty at an age far younger than other ISC officers.
He could have shielded his mind. Bolt "talked" to his brain via fiberoptic threads. Electrodes in his neurons received the message in binary: 1 meant fire the neuron and 0 meant do nothing. Buffers scaled the firing if necessary, for a neuron that went off at less than 100 percent strength. Bio-shells coated the electrodes and neurotrophic nanomeds prevented damage. If he used the system to turn off certain brain structures, he would no longer detect any mental activity except his own. But he rarely used the shield in combat. He couldn't risk turning off part of his brain during a battle.
Right now he needed every edge. The ESComm vessels were about to fire. As they came within range, he thought,
Whip A4.