Diamond Star (34 page)

No wonder he was angry. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" Staver asked. "So many of your people either don't understand or don't care."

Del decided to reveal just a bit. "A Highton Aristo nearly killed my father. He escaped, but he was never the same."

"Gods," Staver said. "I didn't expect
that.
"

Del stepped over a fallen log covered with moss, deep green beneath the high canopy of the forest. "It isn't something we talk about." Such simple words for a pain that went so deep.

"I understand." After a moment, Staver said, "I admit, my idea of locking up the Ruby Dynasty wouldn't solve anything. It's what you Allieds call a 'knee-jerk reaction.' But what would
you
do to protect empaths against the Aristos?"

Del thought of his mother, her eyes blank after the Traders had fried her brain. "Exterminate them," he said flatly. "Every last one. All two-however-many thousand."

"That's strong medicine from an Allied citizen."

Del shook his head, unable to explain. "They're too powerful. It seems hopeless that we'll ever be free of their brutality. I just wish I could
do
something."

"Aye," Staver murmured. "We'd all like to."

Del lowered his mental shields carefully this time, using more nuance so Staver wouldn't detect him. Staver's mood was difficult to read, but his wariness came through. He wondered if he should trust Del. Something to do with . . . what? Providers.

It hit Del in a flash, partly insight and partly empathy. Staver wasn't here just to find Allied talent. His job served as a cover for a very illegal project--he helped providers escape from the Traders, routing their path through Allied territory because it drew less attention.

Del pulled Staver to a stop. "I want to help."

Staver looked at Del's hand on his arm, then at Del. "Excuse me?" He pulled away his arm.

"Whatever you're doing, I want to help."

"What exactly am I 'doing'?"

"You're helping providers," Del said. "Getting them
out
of there."

Staver snorted. "You've an active imagination, young man."

Del couldn't just let it go. This was too important. "All right. You aren't doing anything. But if the anything you aren't doing needs financing, come to me."

Staver spoke kindly. "We all want to do something, son. It's frustrating to feel helpless against their tyranny. But we can't take on the Trader Empire. We're mice running at a huge monolith." He laid his hand on Del's shoulder. "I appreciate the thought, though."

Del frowned at him. "Right." He didn't believe for one moment that Staver didn't know what he was talking about.

Del turned over and stretched his arms. He was so drowsy, half awake and relaxed. His bed felt hard, though.

After a while, he opened his eyes. A woman was seated in a chair next to him, reading a holo-book. A braid hung over her shoulder, brown streaked with grey. She had a round face with laugh lines around her eyes, and she wore a blue shift. She was so unlike the glossy types that surrounded him lately, he wondered why she hadn't stood out more among his guests.

Except . . . what guests? He hadn't been at a party. He and Staver had gone to a cafe in a place called Sausalito. They had drunk herbal tea, whatever that meant.

Del's mind wandered, unable to focus. Cameron had once told him that people cooked with herbs. Anne claimed they were medical. Del had asked Randall, who told him "herbs prickled," a comment Randall clearly found hilarious. He told Del to go
smoke and have fun.
Frustrated, Del had consulted Claude, his EI. After some discussion, they figured out Randall meant "prickle" as in grass, an archaic term for marijuana, and also a play on a word referring to a certain part of the male anatomy.
Smoke and have fun
indeed. Del doubted he had been drinking marijuana tea, but who knew. He remembered zilch about whatever had happened afterward.

He was lying on his back on a stone ledge that jutted out from the wall. A smart-blanket warmed his body.

"Hello?" Del asked.

The woman looked up from her holobook. "Hello."

"Who are you?" Del was surprised how tired he sounded.

"My name is Lydia." She turned off her book. "Are you feeling better?"

"I got sick?" Damn. Maybe he had a reaction to the tea. He didn't remember pain, though, and he wasn't dead. At least, he
hoped
not. This would be a weird afterlife.

"You passed out." She leaned forward and smoothed his hair out of his eyes. "It's amazing. You really look this way."

"What way?" he asked.

"Like Del Arden."

"What an astonishing coincidence," Del said groggily.

She smiled. "I mean, the vids don't enhance your looks."

"Oh." He thought of asking her why would he bother, then changed his mind. Of course Prime-Nova would bother.

"Where's Staver?" Del asked.

"He'll be back." Lydia tilted her head. "Is that your real name? Del Arden?"

"Well, yeah. It's not a pseudonym." With horror, Del felt more words forming:
My full name is Del-Kurj Arden Valdoria Skolia.
He barely stopped himself, and holding back was a struggle. What was wrong with him?

"Staver said you're from a Skolian world," she said.

"Rediscovered world. A stranded Ruby Empire colony."

"Until the Skolians found you."

"Not Skolians," Del mumbled. "Earth. Texans, to be precise."

"Texans!" She chuckled. "What a combination. The ancient, enigmatic Ruby Empire collides with the Lone Star State."

"With the what?"

"Don't worry," she murmured. "It's not important."

Yeah, right. He was starting to see what was going on. Staver had drugged him with a truth serum. It wouldn't work, though. Imperial Space Command had given everyone in Del's family training to deal with interrogation. His siblings in the military even had specialized neurotransmitters in their brains that blocked them from answering certain questions under stress. But gods, what if Staver had given him something his body couldn't handle? Although as far as Del knew, his body wouldn't have a fatal reactions to a truth serum, it wasn't anything he wanted to test.

He had a good guess why Staver gave him a serum. However abhorrent free humanity might find the Aristo practice of keeping providers, it was legal among the Traders. What Staver and his group were doing was illegal on an interstellar scale. They could go to prison for a long time if the Allied authorities caught them. If the Traders caught them, they would be executed, except anyone like Staver who had more value as a provider. Del didn't doubt Staver would prefer the death penalty to a lifetime of slavery and torture.

Of course they wanted to know why Del had offered to help. Nor did he blame them for taking precautions. If they hadn't, he wouldn't trust the security of their organization. But he still didn't like being drugged.

"Del?" Lydia asked. "Are you there?"

"What?" He tried to focus. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You were telling me about your home."

"I was?"

"That it was one of the ancient colonies."

"Oh. Well, yeah. But that's boring." He tried to sit up, then sighed and lay down. His vision blurred.

"You'll feel better in a while," she said.

"I hope so."

"Staver told me your family had a run-in with the Traders."

"My father." Before Del could stop, he said, "And my mother."

She went very still. "What happened?"

The words hurt like broken glass. "An Aristo came to our world. He caught my father. My father tried to escape." The words wrenched out. "He was climbing a cliff. The Aristo shot it. It came down on my father. Pulverized his legs. Blinded him. The Aristo kept him like that for days, barely alive, with no treatment.
Nothing
for the pain." His voice cracked. "My brother Shannon rescued him."

"My God," Lydia said. "Did your father survive?"

"Yes. He--yes. Shannon killed the Aristo." The words tore out of him as if they were ripping his insides. "In retaliation, the Aristo's children kidnapped my mother. Our military eventually pulled her out, but--" He struggled to hold back the soul-parching words. "It took my parents a long time to recover."

"I'm terribly sorry," she said in a soft voice.

Del spoke unevenly. "In the meantime, I took care of the house, the farm, my father's duties as the Dalvador Bard."

Her brow furrowed. "Did you say a bard?"

The words,
The King of Skyfall
hovered on his lips, a specious title the popular media had given his father. But he managed to say only, "He was a historian for our village. They're called bards."

"He's lucky he had you to look after things."

The painful words kept tearing out of him. "After my parents recovered, I took one of the only offworld trips I've ever done. A vacation. I went to Metropoli. And I died there. Great get-well present, Mother and Father. Your idiot son killed himself."

Silence followed his words. Then Lydia said, "You did what?"

"I had a lethal reaction to a drug." Del didn't want to open his eyes and look into her confused face.

"But you're alive."

"They put me in a cryogenic womb."

"Until they could revive you?"

"Yeah, until whenever that happened."

Lydia exhaled. "No one should have to go through all that."

He finally looked at her, accusing with his gaze. "And I never tell that to anyone. What did you do to me?"

She stroked his head, her touch soothing. "It's nothing."

He shoved away her hand. "Like hell it isn't. You just ripped out very private pieces of my life."

A man walked out of the shadows behind Lydia. Staver. "We had to be sure," he said. "We gave you teracore."

Del recognized the name. "A truth drug."

"That's right." Staver took a chair by the wall, brought it over, and sat in it backward, resting his arms on the top. "That sounds horrific, what your family went through."

"Shannon was only fourteen," Del said. "He had never hurt anyone in his life. But he killed the Aristo."

"Tell me about him," Staver said.

"I don't want to."

"Why?" Staver asked. "Does he have something to hide?"

"Of course not," Del said, irritated. "He was gentle. I didn't think he was even capable of rage. But he found our father." He exhaled. "My little brother committed murder that night."

Staver stared at him. "How could a boy kill such a powerful lord?"

Del really, really didn't want to talk. But he couldn't stop. "The Aristo couldn't bring in weapons or shields without alerting our defenses. He barely got himself in." His voice hardened. "Vitrex didn't reckon with the fury of a boy who saw his father crushed."

"Vitrex?" Staver asked.

"The Aristo."

"How did he know your world had empaths?"

"Well, that's the priceless question everyone wants answered, isn't it?" Del said bitterly. Everyone in three empires knew the Ruby Dynasty lived on Skyfall. Exactly how Vitrex had infiltrated their defenses, they didn't know. Shannon had killed him before they could find out.

"Del?" Staver asked. "What is it?"

"Nothing." Del sat up slowly, his head swimming and his sight blurred. "Don't ask me any more. It hurts too much." He swung his legs over the edge of the ledge and regarded Staver. "Do you believe me now? I want to help you."

"I have no idea why you think we're doing anything that would require help," Staver said.

"Why would you have drugged me otherwise?" Then Del said, "And it was in your mind."

Staver shook his head. "You couldn't have probed my mind without my knowing. I'm an eight point four on the Kyle scale."

His confidence didn't surprise Del. That was a phenomenal rating. It meant Staver was such a powerful empath, he was rarer than one in a hundred million people. The scale didn't even go up much past ten, or one in ten billion.

"That's impressive," Del said--and dropped his shields, not slightly as he had done in the forest, but all the way. Then he politely "knocked" at Staver's mind.
Hello.

Staver's eyes widened.
Gods, man!

Del raised his shields again. He had made his point.

"That was
incredible,
" Staver said.

Lydia looked from Del to Staver. "What just happened?"

Staver exhaled. "A tidal wave hit me and said, 'Hello.' "

"I didn't hear anything," she said.

"Are you a psion?" Del asked. When she shook her head, he spoke with an openness that didn't come naturally to him. "Staver reacted that way because he's such a strong psion. So we could set up a two-way link. But it's difficult to maintain that kind of mental intensity with another person even for short periods of time."

Lydia didn't look surprised, which made Del suspect she was used to working with psions.

"What is your Kyle rating?" Staver asked him.

"I'm not sure," Del said. Which was true. It was impossible to measure ratings for the Ruby Dynasty. The sum total of all humanity wasn't enough to determine how many Ruby psions occurred naturally in human populations. His family had ratings higher than fourteen, which meant they were rarer than one in one hundred trillion, and all humanity numbered no more than several trillion. The only reason more Rubies existed was because the Assembly had deliberately bred them, heirs and spares to keep the Kyle-mesh powered.

Del only said, "My rating is above nine."

"It doesn't surprise me." Staver considered him. "Suppose, for the sake of argument, we could help providers. Why would you join us? You know what would happen if the Traders caught you."

"I wouldn't go into their space. But I can offer you financial help." Del's gaze never wavered. "In the millions." For something like this, if Staver checked out, Del would gladly use his dynastic accounts.

Lydia's mouth opened. Then she caught herself and closed it. Staver had more success in acting impassive, but his astonishment trickled past even his formidable shields. What Del had offered didn't come their way often. To put it mildly.

"I wish we were helping providers," Staver said. "That we had this sort of 'underground railroad.' Except we are talking about escape across the stars. The Star Road, eh? If we had one, your offer would have been much appreciated."