Carnelians (13 page)

Her bodyguards were inside her room, one by the wall, the other near the door. They knelt as he entered.

“Rise,” Jaibriol said. He wanted them paying attention to Tarquine’s safety, not looking at the floor. Right now nothing mattered but the woman lying on her back on the bed under luminous white smart-sheets, her eyes closed, her breathing slow.

Jaibriol went to the bed with Doctor Qoxdaughter and stood gazing at his wife. He touched Tarquine’s cool cheek. Her face look too perfect in repose, like a marble statue.

“Has she shown any sign of change?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Qoxdaughter said. “Her coma remains the same.” She spoke carefully. “It is inspiring that she was able to get pregnant.”

“If that’s your way of saying she shouldn’t be doing this to her body at her age,” Jaibriol answered dryly, “then yes. But she’s the empress.” He didn’t need to tell Qoxdaughter what that meant. The doctor knew he needed an heir. So he said only, “Physically my wife is in her thirties. Essentially.”

Qoxdaughter kept looking at Tarquine. “Essentially.”

“She will live.” He didn’t know who he was trying to convince, himself or the colonel.

“Of course.” Qoxdaughter continued to watch Tarquine. “She is beyond any normal human.”

“Doctor, look at me,” he said.

She raised her gaze. “Sire?”

“You say that because you think you have to.”

Qoxdaughter spoke quietly. “She is a strong woman, your Highness, and I would say that no matter what.”

Jaibriol nodded, though inside he was breaking apart. He had never expected to love an Highton woman, but it had somehow happened, and if Tarquine died, part of him would die as well.

Begin.

Failure.

Retry.

Failure.

Retry.

Failure.

Reinitialize backup of mental files.

Reinitialized.

Begin.

Code begun.

Kelric opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, staring at a silver-white ceiling. Conduits criss-crossed it, glowing white in star designs. Turning his head, he saw his two doctors, Sashia and Drayson, across the room, conferring in low voices. Various monitors around his bed glowed with holos of his brain.

Why am I here?
he thought.

Bolt, the node in his spine, answered.
You died.

What the hell?

If this is hell, it doesn’t fit the claims of various literatures. Though some might consider confinement to a hospital as such.

Not funny, Bolt.

I can’t be humorous. I am a mesh node.
Then it added,
Someone tried to assassinate you, so you were brain dead.

You mean I really did die?

Yes. I’m sorry.

I seem to be quite alive.

Your most recent neural backup was only minutes old. They restarted your brain with it. You’re missing only the last minutes before you died.

Although he knew in theory it was possible to restart the brain from a saved version if they loaded the memory into a living human bring, he had never expected to test the theory.
How did I die?

Someone cracked the War Room mesh and hacked you in Kyle Space.

That’s impossible. Only I have that kind of access to the War Room mesh.

Apparently someone else does, too. Either that, or you assassinated yourself.

What a bizarre thought.
How about you?

I didn’t try to kill you, if that is what you mean.

I mean, are you all right?

I’m running diagnostics. I can’t find anything unusual.

You wouldn’t tell me if you were compromised.
Kelric couldn’t imagine that Bolt, who had been part of his brain for over half a century, would attack him. He didn’t know what he would do if the node was corrupted. Shutting it down would be like cutting out a part of himself.

Have an outside agency run diagnostics on me,
Bolt told him.

They probably already are.
Kelric tried to remember what had happened just before the attack, but nothing came.
Do you have any records of those moments I’ve lost?

I’m missing the time from your last neural backup until they restarted your mind. About two minutes’ worth.

Maybe Dehya can help. She has more monitors in the Kyle than ISC. Hell, she’s PART of the Kyle.

Silence.

Bolt?

I don’t think Pharaoh Dyhianna can help.

Why not?

The assassins got to her, too.

“Hell and damnation!” Kelric sat up in bed, knocking the silver sheet away from his body.

Both Sashia and Drayson spun around, as did every medic and tech in the room, all staring at him, their mouths open.

“Pharaoh Dyhianna,” he barked at them. “Is she alive?”

Sashia blinked. “Yes.” She came over to the bed with Colonel Drayson. “Until about two seconds ago, though, we didn’t know you were.”

He didn’t have time for that. “Where is Dehya?” Kelric swung his legs out from under the sheet. He was wearing a sleep shirt and trousers made from a silvery tech-mesh. His clothes were probably monitoring his vital signs and talking to his doctors.

Sashia made an exasperated noise. “Commander Skolia, stay put! You were just
dead.
”

“I’m fine.”

“How did you know about the pharaoh?” Sashia asked.

“Bolt told me.”

“Bolt?” Drayson asked crisply. “That refers to your one of your spinal nodes, doesn’t it?”

I’m not “one,”
Bolt objected.
I’m the PRIMARY node.

Kelric held back his smile. “That’s right,” he told Drayson.

Tell him I need a check,
Bolt reminded him.

Kelric spoke to Drayson and Sashia. “Have you run diagnostics on my internal nodes?”

“We’ve tried,” Drayson said. “We can’t gain access.”

Bolt?
Kelric thought.
Let them in.

Sorry, yes, I’m fixing it. The failsafe security protections kicked in when you died. They shouldn’t have any problem now.

“Try again,” Kelric told Drayson.

“Good.” The doctor went to work, tapping panels on his wrist comm.

“How much did Bolt tell you about what happened?” Sashia asked Kelric.

“Nothing. It doesn’t remember.” Kelric frowned at them. “What happened to Dehya?”

Drayson glanced up. “We aren’t sure. An attack in psiberspace, same as with you. But you had only been in a few minutes. She’d been working for hours, in a lot deeper.”

Kelric felt as if he were filling with pressure. “Meaning what? Will she live?”

“We think so,” Sashia said.

“You
think.
” Kelric clenched the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you know?”

“The question isn’t her life,” Sashia said. “We can keep her breathing.” She hesitated. “We can’t get her out of Kyle space.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Just turn off the machines. It’s her thoughts that are there, not her body.”

“If we aren’t careful, it could cause her brain damage.”

“She can’t stay there.” Kelric knew Dehya sometimes longed to lose herself in the Kyle, to seek its refuge against a universe where she was so sensitive an empath, she had to isolate herself to survive. “She can’t,” he repeated. “Skolia needs her.”
He
needed her.

“We have a team of Rajindias working on her case,” Sashia said.

He nodded, trying to relax his shoulders. The House of Rajindia, an ancient noble line, had a talent that all their inbreeding had strengthened. They trained biomech adepts, the neurological specialists who treated psions. If anyone could help Dehya, they were the ones.

Kelric slid off the bed. Considering his recent condition, he felt remarkably healthy. He must not have been dead for long. “I need some real clothes.”

Drayson cleared his throat. “Sir, I don’t think it’s wise for you to be up so soon.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m no longer dead,” Kelric deadpanned.

Sashia scowled at him. “Very funny.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry.” So much for his sparkling wit.

Drayson looked from Sashia to Kelric. From the colonel’s mind, Kelric gathered he didn’t know which was more startling, that Kelric had made a joke or that Sashia was so relaxed in her response. Kelric thought perhaps he needed to work on his demeanor around people. True, he couldn’t have his officers treating him with Sashia’s casual attitude, but neither did he want people to think he was more machine than human. His emotions ran deep and strong; he just didn’t know how to express them.

He said only, “What do you know about who tried to kill us? How did they reach both Dyhianna and myself?” It was a security nightmare.

Colonel Drayson raked his hand through his bristly grey hair. “We think the Traders are using providers to crack our security.”

It was a very real threat, but Kelric doubted it accounted for this situation. “Their providers are psions, it’s true. But they aren’t strong enough to access our military web at that level.” As far as he knew, the Traders had only one such psion, Jaibriol Qox. Kelric felt him as a distant presence in the Triad. If Jaibriol had tried to affect the Triad this way, Kelric and Dehya would know. They would feel it, and he sensed nothing of the kind. The three of them were distantly connected, but even if Jaibriol had died, it wouldn’t cause what had happened to Kelric and Dehya.

Colonel Drayson spoke uneasily. “Almost no one has the necessary access to compromise our security the way it happened.”

Kelric understood what he left unspoken. Almost no one—except the Joint Commanders of ISC. He had a truly unpleasant array of options for the assassin: Bolt had tried to kill him, ESComm had an unusually high-level provider, or one of Kelric’s top commanders had betrayed him.

Sashia spoke carefully. “Admiral Barzun was in the War Room when it happened.”

Kelric shook his head. “Chad doesn’t have a high enough Kyle rating.” However, two of ISC’s Joint Commanders could operate on that level: Brant Tapperhaven and Naaj Majda.

Brant commanded the Jagernaut Force, or J-Force, the wild card of ISC: fighter pilots, spies, commandos. Kelric related well to him; they were both Jagernauts, they both had a taciturn nature, and they shared a similar outlook on life.

Naaj Majda was on the other end of the spectrum; she commanded the Pharaoh’s Army, the oldest and most conservative branch of ISC. The iron-grey matriarch came down on a hard line against the Traders and despised the peace treaty. Naaj also held a civilian title as queen of the most powerful noble House. With a history stretching back to the Ruby Empire, the House of Majda was an orthodox matriarchy where women owned their men and kept them in seclusion. To further complicate matters, Kelric had married Naaj’s older sister Corey decades ago, a union arranged for political reasons. Given that he was a fighter pilot, Corey had hardly expected him to follow the sexist roles of an ancient empire. But she had died only a few years after they married, assassinated by the Traders, leaving a substantial portion of the Majda assets to Kelric.

In the chaos after the last war, Naaj had become acting Imperator. She hadn’t liked it when Kelric returned to claim his title after being gone and presumed dead for eighteen years. She lost a great deal of power and also the Majda assets he owned but hadn’t properly dispensed of before his supposed death, on top of which he was a male warlord, which drastically violated her antediluvian view of men. She had plenty of reason to want him gone.

And yet . . .

Whoever had tried to assassinate Kelric had also acted against Dehya. Whatever problems Naaj had with him, she would never attack the Ruby Pharaoh. The loyalty of the army to the woman who sat on the Ruby Throne was legendary. It went back five thousand years, and Naaj was no exception. She would die rather than see Dehya harmed.

Who else? Admiral Ragnar Bloodmark certainly had reason to resent Kelric. Ragnar was better qualified than Chad Barzun to command the Imperial Fleet. Kelric had chosen Chad because he trusted him more. Kelric also remembered Ragnar’s reaction to the Assembly vote on the peace treaty. When the vote had finished, with 78 percent in favor of the treaty, Ragnar’s face had contorted into a snarl. It lasted only the briefest instant, but Kelric had seen. Nor had he forgotten the attack that had nearly killed him and Jaibriol Qox during their treaty negotiations. Someone had discovered their hidden meeting on Earth, and Ragnar was one of the few people with the intelligence, the savvy, and the security clearance needed to find that secret.

However, Kelric didn’t believe Ragnar would harm Dehya. He suspected the admiral coveted her, or more to the point, he coveted the throne of the Ruby Consort. Hell, if she hadn’t already been married, Ragnar would probably be courting her.

Kelric hated this. He wanted better options than doubting people he had known all his life. Until they knew who had masterminded the assassination attempts, no one was above suspicion.

X: Fires of Vengeance

X
Fires of Vengeance

“I’ve never been in the sky.” Aliana was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, gazing out the flyer’s windshield. Her shoulder brushed Red’s elbow. He was sitting between her chair and Tide’s pilot’s seat, straddling a control panel. Tide hadn’t asked him to move, which surprised Aliana; even she could see it would make Tide’s piloting easier if he had access to the panel Red had commandeered instead of Tide having to use the auxiliary panel in the pilot’s chair. Red was so enraptured with the view, though, she couldn’t have asked him to move, either.

The ocean flashed beneath them, sparkling in the pristine morning light. The sun rested huge and molten on the horizon where the sea met the dawning sky. Above them, the sky was lightening from the deep purple of night into the pale stone-blue of day.

“It’s so pretty,” Aliana said.

“You’ve never flown before?” Tide asked.

“Not once.” She felt provincial. “Before Red and I stowed away, I’d never been more than a few blocks from that cesspool where my stepfather lives.” Aliana shuddered. “I swear, sometimes I thought he hated me more than anything else alive. Am I really such drek?”