Ruler of Naught (71 page)

He laughed again as the module came to a stop. His own
success had cursed the Avatar worse than any enemy could wish, had he but the
wit to see it.

Then the doors opened, and Gelasaar comprehended how far
short of understanding his victorious enemy fell as the Tarkans pushed him down
a short corridor to the bridge of the
Fist of Dol’jhar
. He knew what was
coming now, and he looked forward to its inevitable denouement.

The bridge of the Avatar’s flagship was quieter than a Navy
battlecruiser’s would have been under the circumstances, and lacking the
tianqi, it reeked of anxiety-tinged sweat. Gelasaar thought he also somehow
tasted the harsh tang of Dol’jharian discipline, perhaps sensing it in the
stances of the men and women moving purposefully about.

The activity on the bridge intensified. The main viewscreen
split into two windows, echoed by others. In each a point of light swelled
rapidly. He strained to understand the rapid-fire Dol’jharian, catching only
fragments. Two destroyers in a fractional-cee attack, no skipmissiles... A
faint rumble came up through his feet, consoles lit up and repeater screens
flared. He strained to hear ...
and something about the Mandala
. A shock
of surprise. An attack on the Mandala? With lances?
Ridiculous. It must be a
ruse.

Then he noticed Anaris standing with a short, dumpy Bori a
few paces behind the captain’s command pod. The young Dol’jharian was engaged
in conversation with the Bori—no doubt his secretary—and hadn’t yet seen him.

The attack ceased. On another screen the lance attack on the
other side of the planet dwindled under an onslaught of missiles from a
destroyer and some other ships. He caught a fragment of a report—organic debris
confirmed—and looked away from the screen, his gut churning with grief.

Then he remembered, and studied the deck plates in front of
his toes until he was certain his expression was rigidly schooled. He knew this
maneuver. Jaspar had used it against the Battersea Demagogues. It was still
known by an acronym—BBQ—whose meaning had been lost. Apparently the
Dol’jharians hadn’t figured out yet what was happening.

Relieved, he studied Anaris, the amusement replaced by
melancholy.
Poor amphibious spirit.
Caught halfway between two worlds
that were nearly poles of the human experience, iron and ice against elegance
and generosity, Anaris was neither Dol’jharian nor Douloi. Not for the first
time the Panarch wondered if his fosterage had done the boy a service, or
scarred him beyond healing.

Boy no longer. Gelasaar remembered the aborted meeting in
the hangar bay before the attack, saw again the pride and certainty of purpose
in Anaris’s countenance.
What did he intend to say to me?

During a lull in the action, Anaris acknowledged him at
last. As Juvaszt stood up with the easy courtesy that the military life demands
for a respected enemy, Gelasaar watched Anaris. Eusabian’s son had always been
hard to read, but the Panarch had long been a careful observer, and he detected
signs of ambivalence, of pride and uncertainty, which would seem to confirm the
polarities of the young man’s spirit.

In Dol’jharian fashion, he’d carefully constructed a set
piece for the meeting in the hangar bay, but now was at a loss for words in
this unplanned meeting. And yet. Gelasaar suspected that the Douloi in him had
seen the failure of Dol’jharian understanding that his, the Panarch’s, presence
on the bridge implied, and was ready to profit from it.

He says nothing. Is he then my enemy or not?

Anaris’s smile widened, and the Panarch recognized irony,
appreciating its sting: Anaris was not going to speak.

Gelasaar looked away, feeling a new wave of grief for his
dead sons. He recalled his insistence that his own people treat Anaris not as a
prisoner, or as a hostage, but as his own sons were treated. The gesture had
been a gift, intended as a bridge. Would it aid or harm his people now?

Perhaps there is a fourth son, safe from the Avatar’s
paliach.
Though Anaris would face dangers of his own.

Gelasaar considered Anaris as the young man watched the
screens.

o0o

Aziza bin’Surat shifted in her pod, monitoring the ceaseless
flow of messages from the Urian relay webbed and bolted to her console on the
bridge of the Rifter destroyer
Deathstorm
, now patrolling the middle
system a light-hour out from Arthelion. Most of them were coded, from the
Dol’jharians to other ships throughout the Thousand Suns, but many were sent en
clair or in various Brotherhood or Syndicate codes, from other Rifter ships.
That seemed to gall the Dol’jharians, but there was little they could do. And
some of the images...

She forced her attention back to the small windowed image
from the
Fist of Dol’jhar
that her console was echoing to one of the
secondary screens on the bridge. The image was almost surreal: the Panarch of
the Thousand Suns, in a tunic she wouldn’t let a wattle nest in, surrounded by
hulking Dol’jharians on the bridge of his enemy’s flagship. It was like
something out of a serial chip. She wondered how the Panarchists receiving it
via ordinary EM felt.

She knew how her fellow Rifters felt. The volume of messages
had increased dramatically since the Panarch’s image went out over the Urian comm
system. Some were comments and jokes about the Panarch, others were suggestions
on how to wage the battle, aimed at the
Satansclaw
and the two frigates,
or even at Juvaszt on the
Fist
. Any moment she expected that slug Barrodagh to
show up on the comm and threaten them all with various horrid Dol’jharian
punishments if they didn’t shut up.
Lotta good that’ll do.
But she had
to admit, it was getting pretty hard to filter out all the blunge on the
hyperwave—she wondered how the Ur had done it.

Maybe they had eyes and ears all over their bodies, or
something. She snickered, then stifled it as the captain, slouching broodily in
his command pod, shifted irritably, not taking his eyes off the viewscreen.
Something about the Panarchist attack obviously bothered him, but he wasn’t the
sort to confide in his crew, and should anyone be stupid enough to ask, he
might alleviate his boredom by carving ears or other extremities with one of
his knives. Why was he worrying? The nicks’d have to stop now. They wouldn’t shoot
at the Panarch.

When Qvidyom caught her gaze and glared at her, she busied
herself with unnecessary key taps.

“Lipri,” the captain snapped.

The navigator straightened up in his pod.

“Take us to our next position.” Qvidyom didn’t hide his
irritation at the necessity of following that stiff-nackered Juvaszt’s patrol
orders. They had little choice. The Dol’jharians controlled the Urian power
source. Their own reactors were cold and dark—it would take hours or days to
bring them back on-line unless they wanted to risk the Plasma Wager. They’d be
helpless to resist if a ship showed up to carry them off to the rebuilt
mindripper. Obedience was their only choice.

On the viewscreen the long lance of the ship’s missile tube
swung across the starfield as the ship came about. Aziza quashed another
snicker. It was typical of Qvidyom to leave the launcher visible in forward
views. She doubted that the one between his legs worked.

A message from the
Satansclaw
dragged her attention
back to the task at hand, but it was just a status report, noting the
destruction of the last few Marine lances from the second attack. They were
better off than those poor blits, anyway, and obedience had been rewarding, so
far. Aziza began to drift into pleasant memories of their looting of the
Achilenga Highdwellings. Highdwellings were easy: nobody carried firejacs, and
anyway, most of the nicks had abandoned them and fled. It had been like going
shopping, only with no one to take your sunbursts in trade.

Aziza jerked alert as the lights flickered. A low rumble shook
the bridge.

The sensor console bleeped. “Emergence!” Odruith shrieked.
“Big one!”

The captain slapped at the go-pad on his console, but
nothing happened. Glare spilled from the main viewscreen as a beam of plasma so
bright the electronics transformed it to a finger of blackness limned in light
traced a line of destruction along the missile tube, billows of gas and gouts
of flaring metal erupting from its point of contact.

“Damage control!” Qvidyom yelled.

“Engine room not reporting!” Eglerda stabbed at his console.
“We’ve got power, but no drive.”

The beam ceased. Plasma leaked from the wreckage of the
missile tube.

“Skipmissile not charging,” Eglerda continued.

“I can see that, you chatzing nackerbrain!” Qvidyom
screamed, tobacco-stained spittle spraying from his mouth.

“Skip-pulse,” reported the sensors tech. “They’ve skipped
out.” Her voice shook, a mixture of fear and confusion.

“What? Are you sure? What in the name of Prani’s Nine Bronze
Balls is going on?”

Aziza’s brain started working again as the imminence of
death receded a bit. What were the Panarchists up to? Why hadn’t they used
their ruptors, and more bewildering, why hadn’t they followed up? Then a horrid
certainty possessed her: they were going to be boarded.

“Bin’Surat, you stupid chatzrip, stop dreaming and put me
through to Juvaszt on the
Fist
.”

The captain’s insult jerked Aziza out of a fearful vision of
Arkadic Marines, invulnerable in battle armor, rampaging through the ship. The
Panarchist attack was failing, with the Panarch as hostage, but it was too late
for the
Deathstorm
. She patched in the channel with trembling fingers,
hoping it wasn’t also too late for the
Deathstorm’s
crew.

o0o

To the unassisted eye the naval staging point looked empty.
Only the small circles drawn by the computer around otherwise undistinguished
points of light enabled Metellus Hayashi to detect the other two destroyers of
his squadron preparing for the third attack on the
Fist of Dol’jhar
. The
three frigates were doing a good job of distracting the Rifter destroyer and
the two frigates that had joined it. But
Satansclaw
was definitely
fighting better than expected, despite its forced proximity to the planet and
the vulnerable Highdwellings—now the property of Eusabian of Dol’jhar, Moral
Sabotage had noted.

It was
Falcomare’s
turn to deliver the mock lances,
while
Lady of Taligar
and
Barahyrn
slashed at the enemy
battlecruiser.

“Look at this, Captain,” said Mbezawi at Siglnt. “Got a
great shot of the
Fist
during the last pass.” He tapped at his console
as Hayashi nodded. “Couldn’t have done better with a skipmissile.”

A window bloomed on the viewscreen, revealing a close-up of
the aft-portion of the Dol’jharian battlecruiser, shifting rapidly in
perspective. There was a low whistle from someone on the bridge; Hayashi smiled
broadly. They’d hit one of the ship’s hangar bays; a notorious weak spot, it
was now a glowing pit lined with snarls of metal, glowing puffs of gas and dust
billowing from it at random intervals. The image flickered out.

“Good work, Ushkaten,” said Hayashi. The weapons officer
beamed. “‘Zawi, pass that image along to the armory, with my compliments.”

The lieutenant turned back to his console, but as he started
tapping at it his motions froze. He stared at his screen for a moment, eyes
wide with horror.

“Captain,” he said, all the triumph gone, “you’d better take
a look at this. There’s a broadcast from the
Fist of Dol’jhar
. From the
bridge.”

“What, is he asking for terms?” said Hayashi, but the joke
fell flat as a grim atmosphere gripped the bridge. “Put it on-screen.”

The starfield on the viewscreen was replaced by the
Fist
’s
bridge. Hayashi recognized the Dol’jharian uniforms. He and his crew were
possibly the first naval personnel in twenty years to see such a view. Then
came the shock of recognition.

“Telos protect us,” someone whispered as Gelasaar hai-Arkad,
forty-seventh of his line, holder of Hayashi’s oath and that of every person on
the Falcomare, gazed gravely at them from between two enormous Tarkan guards.

Despite the fact that he knew this was a one-way link,
Hayashi almost saluted, so commanding was the man’s presence. “Communications,”
he said, not taking his eyes from the screen, “signal
Barahyrn
and
Lady
of Taligar
. Hold position.”

There was movement in the image; as the other destroyers
acknowledged, Hayashi felt certain that this was not a recorded loop, but an
ongoing broadcast, a window onto the bridge of the
Fist of Dol’jhar
from
minutes in the past. And then he smiled as he realized the message implicit in
the Panarch’s stance, a message the Dol’jharians had no chance of intercepting.
It was a command no less compelling for being unspoken.

A harsh laugh escaped Hayashi, throat-scraping and bitter.
“Those Telos-damned fools,” he said. “They’re trying to bind us with our oath
of fealty. What does a Dol’jharian know of loyalty? They understand only fear.”
He tipped his chin at the image. “You know what he expects of us.”

He turned away from the viewscreen, seeing understanding and
grim agreement in his crew. “Communications, raise
Barahyrn
and
Lady
of Taligar
. Conference.”

Ensign Mellieur tapped at her console. Two windows popped up
on-screen, revealing Doial and Galt. Hayashi could see the same mix of anger
and resolution in their faces that he was feeling, and wondered how even a
Dol’jharian could so misread an enemy.

“The captain of the
Fist of Dol’jhar
has made a
terrible mistake,” he said. “I propose we explain it to him.” He paused,
tapping up a tactical plot and echoing it to both of them, as a snort of
laughter escaped from Captain Doial.