The Assembly negotiated but never relented. They finally imprisoned Eldrin, leaving him one choice: do what they wanted or live in solitude. It would have destroyed him. I could have kept fighting, but Eldrin would have suffered. And by then I had begun to love him. Like knew like. In the end their methods worked, because Eldrin and I cared more about what happened to each other than about wrestling with Assembly politics.
But their desperation still backfired. Yes, we soon had the first of the children they wanted. Taquinil. It was he who paid the harshest price.
The minds of Rhon psions differ greatly. My father-in-law had a deep, nuanced power, but also a subtlety that blunter minds within the Rhon lacked. That subtlety manifested in some of his children, including Eldrin. My own mind was delicacy rather than force, taken to the limit psions can tolerate before they become so sensitive they can no longer function. Or at least, we had thought my mind defined that limit.
Until Taquinil.
The Assembly claimed they chose Eldrin as the Ruby consort, rather than Kurj, because Kurj's blunt mental power would have harmed an empath of my sensitivity. Given that Kurj and I had worked together fine for decades, their reasoning was about as credible as saying people couldn't travel in spaceships because starship drives were dangerous. The concept of Kurj and I united had probably terrified the Assembly. The two of us already had influence; the Assembly didn't want it further concentrated in a marriage. In contrast, Eldrin was young and inexperienced, a farm boy lost in the intrigues of Imperialate politics. They thought it made him malleable.
Perhaps it did. But none of that mattered after Taquinil's birth. Our son inherited a heightened empathic capacity from both of us, with disastrous results. His ability ran so deep, he had no capability to block emotions. They poured into his young mind from a complex, often painful universe. Eldrin and I shielded him in his youth, but we couldn't protect him forever. When he left home, his shields shattered— and his mind splintered into many personalities.
Although it took years, Taquinil did reintegrate his mind. The doctors put a biomech web in his body that provided chemicals his brain lacked, the specialized neurotransmitters that let a normal empath "block" emotions. He eventually became an economics professor. People marveled at his genius and accomplishments, but few truly knew the magnitude of what he had achieved.
For years I had hated the Assembly for the hell my son suffered. But Taquinil has always been one of the great joys in my life. He and his father. Despite the anguish, I would never have given up the love we shared.
And now I had lost them both.
* * *
Havyrl's Valor
rotated in space, majestic. The giant spoked cylinder resembled a space habitat. Seeing it, knowing that it symbolized my return to my people, home, and family, I wanted to jump up with anticipation. I couldn't of course; I had to act with the proper decorum. But joy spread through me like warmth from the sun.
After our shuttle docked in the central tube, we went through the usual decontamination chamber, floating in microgravity. Then Vazar and my bodyguards escorted me through a docking ring of the ship. It had a luminous quality, from the subtly glowing white walls of its corridor to the blue light-bars that ran along at waist height. I inhaled fresh, pure air. It had no scent I could discern, but it filled my lungs like a benediction.
We went to an elevator car that would carry us "down" a spoke to the main body of the cruiser. A group waited for us at the car. At first I saw only a cluster of officers in blue. Then we floated closer and I recognized the man in the blue admiral's uniform. He was average height for a Skolian, about six feet tall, with a shock of graying hair. His face had regular, chiseled features. I knew that visage well, so very well. Admiral Jon Casestar. A lump seemed to form in my throat and I wondered if I could speak.
As we came up to his group, the drawn lines of his face transformed into a subdued elation that caught me by surprise. Jon had never been one to show emotion, yet now he watched us with open welcome.
Holding a handgrip, Jon bowed from the waist. "I am at your service, Pharaoh Dyhianna." His voice was roughened with that rare, unexpected emotion.
I barely restrained my undignified urge to throw my arms around him. "It pleases me greatly to see you, Admiral." What an understatement.
He indicated the elevator. "Will you do me the honor of boarding my ship, Pharaoh?"
I smiled. "It would be my pleasure."
The elevator was large, which was good, because we had accumulated many people. As the car descended, our weight increased and a Coriolis force nudged us to the side. By the time we reached the "bottom" of the spoke, the gravity was almost human standard. After so long on Opalite, I felt heavy. Disoriented. I had to recalibrate the way I moved. When the elevator door slid open, I paused, readjusting. Everyone waited.
Painfully aware of them all watching, I walked forward. It unsettled me to have an audience. On the Orbiter I tended to stay isolated. With virtual reality, psiber communications, and holo-projections so common now, it was possible even to attend Assembly sessions on the planet Parthonia without ever leaving the Orbiter. My Evolving Intelligence computer programs dealt with the flood of web messages I received. I spent days at a time in the web and had gone for months without seeing anyone in person except my husband.
The Evolving Intelligences, or EIs, were descendants of AIs, also called McCarthy machines for the genius who coined the term artificial intelligence in Earth's twentieth century. Kurj had once told me that some Assembly councilors wondered if I had died and my EI personas just kept simulating me. The rumor tickled my fancy. In part, I avoided people because my mind was too sensitized to emotions. But the main reason I evaded the Assembly was because I was tired of them trying to control my life.
Strong emotions stirred in the people around me: joy, wonder, relief. I appreciated their welcome, but their awe disconcerted me. The Assembly had long claimed the Ruby Dynasty served as symbols, that the titular nature of our positions was offset by the hope we gave the people of Skolia. I had always taken that with a dose of cynicism, knowing they hoped such words would convince us to quit fighting them. But at times like this I wondered. It was also humbling to remember that if I slipped up, all Skolia would know.
A Firestorm battle cruiser was a starfaring metropolis. We followed silver paths through a city of coppery and gold buildings. On a bronzed balcony circling a distant sky needle, armed guards paced. A magtrain hummed on a glowing rail that curved over the buildings.
As we walked, Jon spoke quietly. "Your appearance will encourage our crew. We have had a problem with morale."
"Here on the cruiser?" I asked. "Or more generally?"
"Everywhere. The war created chaos." He paused, the length of his silence revealing his disquiet. Then he said, "We still don't know why the web collapsed. And we lost the Third Lock."
Foreboding rose in me. I had thought perhaps Taquinil and I caused the collapse when we went into psiberspace, but the Traders could have done it by trying to use the Third Lock. It took a Rhon psion to create and maintain a psiberweb. We were keys for the Locks. If the Traders had tried it with telops less powerful than the Rhon, it could have wreaked havoc and killed the telops.
Now they had both a Lock and Eldrin. They could build their own web.
Damn.
The Locks were our history. Six thousand years ago a race of beings had moved Stone Age humans from Earth to the planet Raylicon, then vanished. The bewildered humans developed star traveland built the Ruby Empire. But it collapsed, followed by five millennia of dark ages. When the Raylican people, my ancestors, finally returned to the stars, they found ruins of the Ruby Empire, including the Locks. Those machines baffled our scientists. The ancients had mixed mysticism, science, and mathematics in ways we had yet to unravel. This much we knew: the Locks were portals into Kyle space. Three survived: one in the Orbiter, which we had found abandoned in space; a second in ruins on Raylicon; and a third as a small space station. To protect the Third Lock, ISC had created Onyx Platform, a city of space habitats. But something happened during the war, I didn't know what, only that the Traders captured the Third Lock. They used it to locate the elusive First Lock on the Orbiter, my home. Then they sent commandos after my family.
"What happened to Onyx Platform?" I asked.
"We lost all twenty-three space habitats." Jon cracked his knuckles, one of his rare mannerisms that revealed tension. He wasn't truly a granite monolith; he just kept his emotions to himself. "Admiral Tahota was in command. She and her volunteers rigged antimatter fuel containers throughout the stations. Seven billion bottles."
"Rigged? You mean they fixed the bottles to go unstable?"
Jon nodded. "When the Traders converged on Onyx, the bottles collapsed— and dumped seven hundred billion kilograms of antimatter plasma." He regarded me steadily. "It blew the entire complex."
His words felt like a punch to the stomach. "Two
billion
people lived at Onyx."
"Tahota evacuated them. Refugees from Onyx are pouring into settlements all over space." Grim satisfaction showed on his face. "Tahota and her volunteers didn't die in vain, Your Highness. To break Onyx, the Traders had to send the bulk of their fleet. When Onyx blew, it took the entire invasion force. It broke the Trader military. Pulverized it."
I absorbed that. Tahota had been one of Kurj's top officers and closest friends. If anyone could successfully evacuate Onyx during a battle, it was she. But losing her was another blow. I grasped at a shred of hope. "Are you sure the Traders have the Third Lock? Maybe it was destroyed too."
A shadow came over his face. "Tahota had to let it go. The evacuation hadn't yet finished."
I tried to hold in my disappointment. "How could the Traders miss seven billion bottles collapsing at the same time?" The "bottles" were actually containment fields. The invaders should have detected that many of them going unstable.
The corner of his mouth quirked up, which for him was a sign of great approval. "Tahota used the same trick the Radiance Fleet used to hide its ships. Her people hid the unstable bottles in stable ones."
Memories sparked in my mind: the fuel bottle trick had been Soz's idea. Jon Casestar had headed the project. If we could store antimatter fuel in containment fields that twisted out of this universe, why not ships? It had taken several years to make it work, but in the end they had succeeded. That was how the Radiance Fleet penetrated Trader space; most of its ships were lurking in giant fuel bottles. It was also why our bluff at Opalite worked; the Traders knew we could hide ships.
"What happened with the Radiance Fleet?" I asked.
His expression lightened. The change wouldn't have been much for most people, but for him it made a notable difference. "The invasion destroyed the Trader capital, Your Highness. We crippled their government. Even worse— for them— their emperor died without an heir."
My pulse leapt. Worse, indeed. The Trader emperor served a more important role to his people than the Ruby Dynasty did to ours. For one thing, he actually ruled. No elected Assembly for them; they found the concept ludicrous. They had a caste structure even within their aristocracy. The Aristos considered their emperor the embodiment of their supposed superiority. Without him or his heir, they lost not only their leader, but the symbol that defined their identity. Well, good. It would weaken them.
However, I could tell Jon had left out something. I considered him. "If the Trader government and military is in such trouble, why don't we finish what we started and liberate the worlds they've conquered?" It would free trillions of slaves. We couldn't offer them better lives in a material sense; they already enjoyed prosperity. It was how the Aristos kept so many people subjugated. But we could give them freedom.
Jon cleared his throat. "We have a problem."
"Yes?"
"We lost most of the Radiance Fleet."
I stared at him. "That included almost
all
of our forces."
"Yes." He didn't try to soft-pedal it. "We don't have the military strength to overthrow them. Nor do they have the strength to conquer us."
A stalemate. Wars weren't supposed to end that way. "I suppose they claim they won."
"Of course. As do we." He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his face drawn. "The truth? I think they're exhausted. No one wants more fighting. But now that they have a Lock and Key, they won't stop."
I suddenly wanted to sit down. "That means we're going to war again."
"Whenever they get organized." He sounded drained. "Your death was the final blow. The morale of our people went so low that some groups began talking about surrender to the Traders." An uncharacteristic bitterness edged his voice. "
Surrender.
After we have fought for centuries to remain free."
"But I'm not dead."
