Inherit the Stars (15 page)

“As you wish, Rector,” Stiego replied, and Dunaar exited the chamber. Near the end of the corridor, two Proselytes opened a doorway. Inside, Bredine sat on the floor, eating gruel with her hands. Her cryopod waited nearby. Dunaar motioned to the Proselytes, who yanked Bredine to her feet.

He gouged a finger into her right breast. “Tell me again what this shows you about Queen Terredyn Narbas.” Dunaar touched Bredine's head with the Scepter. “Before I enter cryostasis.”

With a gasp, Bredine went limp, and the Proselytes held her up by her armpits. Her eyes moved beneath closed lids.

“Colony ship. Sixteen thousand in stasis.” Bredine's voice lost the broken, chaotic phrasings she usually spoke in. Whenever she decoded a datacore, it seemed a different woman spoke.

“Yes?” Dunaar asked.

“The Rectifier. He stands in his yellow suit, watching. It is his responsibility to maintain the Handlers so all are cared for.” Bredine's eyes fluttered.

Dunaar tried to imagine what she must be seeing: a huge starship filled with cryopods, with one man protecting all. Even in ancient, prefeudal times, a Rectifier ensured the Vim's children achieved their destiny. A Rector, as the position came to be known, knew what was best for all.

“And where does the ship come from?” Dunaar asked in a whisper.

Bredine pursed her lips. “Meh Sat. Yellow, warm light.”

Dunaar caressed her forehead. “Do you still see Terredyn Narbas coming to the Cetturo Arm from that system?”

“Yes. She leaves a world of inferno, her ship afire. It crashes on a world of deep blue oceans.”

His hand traveled down her neck and nestled between her breasts. “What did she flee from?”

“She fled the enemies that are still waiting for us. Beyond the blackest void.”

Thank the Vim. Some new information this time. Dunaar leaned into Bredine, his bulk making the Proselytes brace themselves. Sweat from his face trickled onto hers.

“You mean the Aldaakians? This information will prove them as enemies of the Vim once and for all.” He sucked the flesh of Bredine's neck between his teeth.

“Not Aldaakians. They are . . . they . . .” Bredine's voice faltered. “The pain . . .”

“More,” he breathed into her ear, and rubbed her crotch. “Who are they?”

“The pain!” she screamed.

Dunaar shoved the end of the Scepter into her mouth and clutched her throat. “How can this dead queen still haunt us? Tell me, bitch! Tell me!” He pulled the Scepter from her mouth and pressed it under her chin.

Trembling, Bredine's eyes fluttered again. “Hmm? Rector, Rector. Don't turn void black. Yes?”

The return of her normal voice made Dunaar step back and slap her. Blood flew from her busted lip. He slammed the Scepter into her right side. Wheezing, she vomited up gruel. Dunaar rapped her across the knees
with the Scepter as sweat poured down his back, over the bridge of his nose.

Her green stare remained fixed on him.

“You will reveal the rest later. Place her in cryo,” Dunaar said.

Stomping back to his chamber, Dunaar's anger gave way to a new idea: Kivita could read the Scepter for him instead, before he turned her over to Zhhl.

The Scepter felt warm in his grasp. The means mattered little.

Still in her two-piece underwear, Kivita gaped at Tejuit Seven's massive curvature outside the bridge viewport. She'd visited the Tejuit system only once, as an eight-year-old with her father. Those memories seemed to stare back at her from the gas giant's blue, green, and pink storms.

She studied the console's readout scan, just like she'd done so many years ago. One-hundred and three thousand miles in diameter. A seventy-eight-hour day, coupled with an 8,053-day year. The numbers, the scale, the galactic majesty—they still amazed her, like they did then.

“I've been looking, Father, but I don't know if I've found it yet,” she whispered.

Kivita studied the console readout again. It was Charter Year 11,414, and . . . wait a second.

Tejuit was fourteen light years from Haldon and six from Ecrol. For
Terredyn Narbas
, six light years meant a two-year journey. Her pod's life monitor claimed she'd been in cryostasis for only eight months.

Those strange coordinates she'd entered had cut her trip by two-thirds.

A fresh tingle at her scalp sent a wave of nausea over Kivita. Who or what was giving her this information? The code to open Shekelor's starship, the code to unlock
Aldaar
's clamp, and now coordinates that defied time and space. Kivita covered her mouth and gripped her stomach. What was happening to her? Could anybody help, or—?

Oh, shit.

She'd forgotten about the Sarrhdtuu beacon aboard her ship! Trembling in the cold air, Kivita hunched over the computer console.

She did a wideband scan. The usual merchant and refugee traffic occupied the system, and a gathering of Tannocci vessels orbited the other side of the planet. Kivita set the proximity alarm to full, which would warn her of any approaching craft. Holding her breath, she performed a quick check of
Terredyn Narbas
's systems.

“Worked you over good, didn't I, girl?”

Those wild maneuvers over Umiracan had scorched
Terredyn Narbas
's starboard sensor couplings. A port-side braking thruster lacked full power, and surface abrasions now pitted the iron-polymer hull. The pirates' fluxers had destabilized the aft gravity generator.
Terredyn Narbas
still functioned, but she might be stranded in the void the next time she needed to escape.

She glanced at the pouch on the console, wondering if the gem was worth all this trouble.

Kivita pulled the Juxj Star from the pouch and lay in her hammock. At her touch, the gem glowed from within. She tried peering through it, as if mere sight could reveal its secrets.

“Just what the hell are . . . ?”

Her eyes shut as the vision of the cryopod ship came
back.
Albino figures in gray suits watched over the cryopods. Traces of hair covered their heads, and their eyes had a light blue tint.

They resembled Aldaakians.

A dull, frigid ache entered her brain.

The scene changed. The growth tubes filled with hirsute creatures she'd seen before now sat empty. Their contents had splashed onto the floor, the tubes smashed. Some of the creatures stumbled around, their bodies covered in wet fur. Thick manes flowed, damp and stringy over their shoulders.

“Ascali,” she mumbled. The ache grew into a consistent throb in her temples.

Coordinates clicked through her mind, as if she keyed them into a jump console. They seemed impossible, even foolish: directions to the ship she'd just seen, eighty light years outside the Cetturo Arm.

An icy, burning sensation whipped across her temples, and Kivita dropped the gem. The pain subsided. Was it playing with her? Chest heaving, she scratched her head.

The gem stopped glowing.

“What are you really meant for?” she asked the Juxj Star. In its crimson surface her face looked pinched and shadowed.

She rose from the hammock and entered her galley. Unlike Sar's well-stocked one, hers consisted of a small, square oven, hot-wave disk, and grimy dry-disher. A crate filled with preserved foodstuffs stood nearby, along with three Susuron water drums. Kivita took two protein slabs and dried sugar reeds from the crate and warmed them on the hot-wave disk.

Soon, she gulped down the salty slabs and sticky-
sweet reeds, then drank water mixed with Bellerion turtle-egg spice. Just something to settle her stomach and fuel her body. All the while, she stared at the Juxj Star. Sure, it hurt like hell to use it, but the things it revealed . . . almost like she were there in person.

It glowed again.

“All right. Show me more, then.” She picked it up. A burning cold gripped her skull.

Her mind beheld another cryopod transport and its coordinates, thirty-three light years beyond the Terresin Expanse. Rows of pods with black-armored figures filled the interior. The image changed to a sticklike vessel with one end shielded by a giant panel of shimmering material. Somehow she knew the ship measured eight miles in length, and possessed a power output greater than all the Inheritor fleets combined.

Its coordinates, nearly five hundred light years from the Cetturo Arm, drove an icy dagger into her mind. Kivita cried out and dropped the gem. The Juxj Star rolled along the galley floor into her living quarters. Kivita cursed and ran after it.

The images and coordinates ruled her thoughts.
Blueprints for the Aldaakian shuttle she'd seen. Alternate phased fusion-dump settings, allowing faster light-jump speeds. Schematics for an energy-saving cryostasis router that cut power consumption by thirty percent.
Every new piece of knowledge further seared her brain.

“Stop!” she yelled, though whether to her racing thoughts or the rolling gem, she wasn't sure.

She finally snatched the Juxj Star before it rolled into the hammock's corner. As her fingers traced over the gem, a new image coalesced in her mind.
An oblong ship, with a polished hull and yellow-lit viewports. A
name formed through the dreamlike relay of information: Narbas.

Hissing between clenched teeth, she tried to hold the image in her mind while controlling the pain. Second by aching second passed. Her jaw numbed from the agony. Finally she loosed a chest-wrenching sob and let the image go.

After tossing the gem into the hammock, Kivita paced the floor. Though her toes, hands, and nose grew chill from
Terredyn Narbas
's low heating, she still didn't grab a bodyglove. She wanted the vacuum cold to seep into her, wake her up from this crazy shit.

She scratched her hair again, bit her lip. Shifted her underwear on her hips. “There's no way this is real.”

Kivita hurried back to the bridge. Tejuit Seven's gargantuan presence, along with the undeniable time lapse listed on the life monitor, confirmed what she'd refused to accept.

Somehow, the Juxj Star had informed her of coordinates to reach this system from Ecrol, in the seldom-traveled Terresin Expanse, in one-third the time. Coordinates entered during a stressful moment.

She'd entered a wormhole rift, decreasing the distance. An interstellar shortcut. Kivita had heard of such cosmic anomalies, but to think of one from thin air made her shudder. Inheritor dogma claimed that knowledge remained a blessing of the Vim, and was not to be tampered with by the unworthy. The fact that she of all people had gleaned this strange data exposed such beliefs as lies.

The information revealed to her had been gathered by someone, though whether it remained current was unknown. Even if she could travel the five hundred light
years to that massive ship, it might not be there then, if it was even there now. Though Kivita had never believed in the Vim as gods, no other race came to mind that could have assembled this data.

“Let's try something, then.” She picked up the Juxj Star with both hands. “Okay, show me where the closest, richest salvage is.” Kivita closed her eyes and waited.

A schematic for a deep-crust mining machine came to mind.

“Oh, c'mon. Give me something I can use.” She thought of an uncharted paradise world yet to be discovered in the Cetturo Arm. Maybe even a planet she could claim as her own.

Data on adapting Ascali jiir trees to various terrestrial environments drifted through her thoughts, with a renewed headache for her trouble.

“Shit. Okay, maybe . . . yeah.” Kivita concentrated on the secrets of Sarrhdtuu beam weaponry, something everyone in the Cetturo Arm would want. The concepts of critical thought from some unpronounceable philosopher entered her thoughts instead.

She gave up trying to force information from the Juxj Star. Before setting it back down, though, Kivita thought of her mother. The way Rhyer had spoken of her: strong-willed, brave, with great love for her baby daughter.

Rhyer had never told Kivita her mother's name. Whenever she'd asked, he'd grown silent or changed the subject.

The same image appeared in her mind of an oblong ship, similar to current Inheritor designs. Crushed port thrusters; dented hull. Flickering viewports. So opposite of what she'd seen before. In the dark void behind it, a huge, gray-green crescent shape closed in. A Sarrhdtuu vessel.

A new wave of agony spread across her temples, but Kivita grunted and continued.

The image shifted, with humans being interrogated on board the Sarrhdtuu ship. Green jelly bodies and slimy coils lashed out at the captives.

These new images combined with her dreams, the ones she'd seen since touching the Vim datacore near Xeh's Crown. Now the faraway nebulae she'd dreamt of lay three hundred light years away. A Cradle. The word still remained mysterious.

Kivita secured the gem back in the pouch and took a quick bath in the mist ionizer. Her device saved more water than Sar's. Thinking of him made her heart thud in her chest. Even though he'd been so cold on Umiracan, she missed him. Had he been a pirate, or had he planned on using her?

Her salvaging career in Inheritor Space was over. The Sarrhdtuu wanted her, and their reach was long. The Aldaakians probably wanted her, too. Looking all around her living quarters, a lump rose in Kivita's throat.

Who was she now? Where would she go? What could she do?

She dressed in a maroon bodyglove, black leather chaps, and the same polyboots. A gold-meld cuirass hugged her breasts and stomach. Kivita strapped on a shortsword, a slim Tahe knife, and a purple half cape. She needed to look tough but clean if she planned to deal with Tejuit's merchants.

Last, she attached the pouch with the gem to her belt, and looped the strap three times to ensure it wouldn't come away.

Later, as she flew into Tejuit Seven's gravity well, Kivita frowned at the starships orbiting the equator.
Refugees who refused to obey the Inheritor Charter, or ones who'd fled after the Inheritors conquered their worlds. Some claimed ancestry back to the feudal kingdoms centuries ago. Those aristocrats had become known as the Tannocci, with their own small armies and fleets. United, for the time being, against Inheritor aggression. Maybe they would help her.

Cylindrical Tannocci ships orbited in tandem with oblong Inheritor craft. The curved, graceful vessels of Naxan merchants had magnetized their airlocks to create hive ships of fifty vessels and more. Bulbous, saucer-shaped craft from Bons Sutar stayed close together, housing renegades, merchants, or refugees.

Had Sar been right? Did the Juxj Star contain information so priceless it would be worth more than a thousand of these ships? Kivita's mouth went dry, and she urged the manuals forward.

Tejuit Seven's swirling hydrogen and methane storms caught the sun's rays and bathed the bridge in indigo, lime, and rose shades. Kivita flew past four small asteroids and a tiny cratered moon caught in the planet's orbit. Good; she still could maneuver despite the damage she couldn't fix yet.

“Here we go, girl.” Kivita nudged
Terredyn Narbas
alongside a Naxan hive ship with a gleaming silver hull. Some spacers claimed the Naxans blasted their starship hulls with sand from their homeworld to achieve that characteristic polish.

An automated greeting crackled over the console speaker, but Kivita thumbed a button to accept Naxan trade regulations so she could board. Three seconds later, a code sequenced with her beacon, clearing her to dock with the shining vessel.

The Naxan hive ship played host to dozens of human craft and even a few Aldaakian shuttles. After orbiting it three times, Kivita finally found an unoccupied airlock on the ship's underside.
Terredyn Narbas
shuddered a moment while she magnetized its port-side airlock with the Naxan one.

“Yeah, here we go,” she repeated in a whisper.