Tania glanced at Eldrin. "Anything unusual happen yesterday?"
He answered dryly. "Just a bit. Ragnar Bloodmark mutinied and relieved Jon Casestar of command. The Radiance Fleet showed up. Chad Barzun pledged his loyalty to the Ruby Dynasty. Vazar's husband and son arrived."
Tania smiled. "I guess that qualifies as an unusual day."
"Maybe the Radiance Fleet did it," I said. "They've certainly stirred up the rest of us, and we weren't even Trader prisoners."
Darkness came into Eldrin's gaze. "Thank the saints for that."
"Yes." Tania's mood blended many emotions: relief that Eldrin and I were safe; gratitude that the surviving Radiance soldiers hadn't ended up as Trader slaves; fear for the future; and a wary hope. "If yesterday's events triggered your outbreak, it may happen again. Pharaoh Dyhianna shouldn't be alone with you until we understand what happened."
I knew she was right, but it added to the isolation already parching our lives.
Jinn Opsister paused ahead of us. As we stopped, she turned to me. "A message is coming in, ma'am." She indicated her gauntlet comm. "Shall I route it through to you?"
"Yes, please do." Then I thought,
Activate receiver.
My neural nodes responded. Using wireless signals, they sent my message to Jinn's comm, which then sent it to Vazar's computer. That machine communicated with Vazar and sent her response back to Jinn's comm, which relayed it to my nodes. It wasn't telepathy; I had no sense of Vazar's emotions or thoughts, only her words. But it felt similar.
=Dehya, I need to talk to you,= Vazar said. =It's important.=
This isn't a good time. Can it wait?
=I don't think so.=
Vazar wouldn't make such a request without good reason.
Very well. I will come now.
=Can you bring Eldrin also? He needs to hear this.=
I glanced at Eldrin.
Vazar wants to talk to us. She says it is important.
I will come. If these Jagernauts do also
.
I sent a message to Vazar.
We will be there soon.
=Please hurry.=
* * *
Vazar ushered us into her living room. Its holo-panels swirled in washes of color: pale green, blue, ivory. Diffuse, golden light softened the room. The air smelled like a fresh mountain glade. It was soothing. Too soothing. Vazar never decorated her quarters this way, not unless she thought she needed a calming mood. It didn't bode well.
Our bodyguards took positions along the walls, black-uniformed monoliths silhouetted against pale swaths of shifting color. As Eldrin and I exchanged stiff greetings with Vazar, standing awkwardly in the center of the room, Coop and Ryder entered from an inner archway. They greeted us with courtesy, their faces unreadable, so carefully neutral. If I hadn't already been uneasy, that alone would have been enough to alarm me. Both Coop and his son had a cornucopia of moods, but neutral wasn't one of them.
Vazar motioned us to molded armchairs set around a rounded table, all the furniture made with holo-surfaces that were also bestowing us with pleasant washes of color rather than the sharper primary hues Vazar preferred.
Coop and Ryder sat on the sofa across the table. Ryder was losing his shield of neutrality. He had the least experience guarding his thoughts, and his agitation was coming through now. It peppered us like hail. He was a strong psion, rated at nine. Coop was five, Vazar also nine. A child's ability usually tended toward the parent with the lower rating, because psion genes were recessive. But Coop had some of the genes unmatched, which meant he didn't express their traits. Apparently those had paired with Vazar's genes, giving their son a rating closer to his mother.
As we settled into our chairs, the furniture readjusted, trying to make us comfortable. I didn't think any of us relaxed. Ryder's agitation spiked.
"Are you all right?" I asked him.
He regarded me with his large eyes. "Earlier today, they told me what they're about to tell you."
Eldrin spoke quietly. "And that is—?"
Vazar started to answer, but she stopped before any words came out. She started again and stopped again. Finally she said, "I don't know how to do this with finesse. So I'll just say it. I'm not Ryder's mother."
"That's not true!" Ryder thumped the arm of his chair. "You're my mother in every way that matters."
Her face softened. "And you are my son, always."
I glanced at Eldrin. He returned my puzzled gaze and shook his head. To Vazar, I said, "I've seen the DNA records. They say Ryder is your son."
Coop answered. "We set it up that way." He sounded tired. "The uproar about Althor marrying a commoner had already drained us. I had no titles, no rank, no status, nothing. This would have made it even worse, especially since Majda expected Vazar to produce heirs."
"But then who is Ryder's biological mother?" Eldrin asked.
Vazar shifted her weight. "He doesn't have one. Exactly."
"Yes, I do." Ryder's voice rumbled, deeper than Coop's had ever been. "You carried me. You gave birth to me. It was your egg."
"Vaz's egg?" I had a good idea what was coming. "But the nucleus didn't contain her DNA, did it?" I turned to Coop. "You and Althor?"
He flushed, then cleared his throat. "Yes."
"Good gods." I blinked at Ryder. "You're Althor's son."
Eldrin stiffened. "What?"
"He has two fathers," I said.
Eldrin's face turned red. "That's absurd."
"Not with modern biotech," Vazar said.
"I may not know molecular biology," Eldrin retorted. "But I'm not stupid. You need a man and a woman to make a child."
"Not if you splice the genes you want," Coop said. "We used Althor's DNA and mine."
I could see it, to an extent. Ryder's height, his muscular build, and his high psi rating all suggested Althor's heritage. But he had no trace of Althor's metallic gold coloring. And I still thought he looked like Vazar. "You have Majda genes too, don't you?" I asked him.
"A little." He glanced at his mother. "My face? And skin?"
"Yes." Vazar's voice when she spoke to Ryder and Coop had far more warmth than when she spoke to the rest of us. Turning to me, she became businesslike. "I wanted Majda to accept Ryder as my heir. And we didn't want a furor. So we used enough of my DNA to give him a visible Majda heredity."
"Then you
are
his genetic mother," I said.
"A little." Tenderness gentled her expression as she turned to Ryder. "You are a miracle. With all of us psions, we didn't know if it would work, given the genetic complications."
Eldrin made an incredulous noise. "This can't be. It's wrong."
Coop bristled. "It isn't wrong to want a child born out of love."
Eldrin stared at him as if he had lost his mind. "Not out of two
men.
"
I spoke. "Eldrin, your grandmother was created in a Trader lab. Does that make your birth wrong?"
"That's different."
Ryder watched him with large eyes. Blue eyes. Like Coop. "Do you think I'm abnormal, Uncle Eldrin?"
Eldrin looked startled. Then he spoke more quietly. "No. No, I didn't mean that." He paused. "I really am your uncle, aren't I? By blood, I mean." He glanced at Vazar, his gaze darkening. "He has Ruby Dynasty genes. That makes him almost as valuable to the Traders as a Rhon psion."
She answered with difficulty. "That was why Althor had the knowledge about Ryder, Coop, and me set to erase from his brain if the Traders captured him."
Coop spoke in a subdued voice. "It must have worked. The Traders ignored Ryder when they raided the Orbiter."
"That's why you left the Orbiter, isn't it?" I asked. "You feared they might still locate it using their stolen Lock."
"In part," Coop said. When he looked at his wife, the affection on his angelic face could have melted stone. "But it's also true what we said, that we wanted to be with Vaz."
Vazar made a gruff noise, but I knew she wasn't angry. Coop knew it too. His mind warmed like sunlight, luminous and affectionate.
Vazar started to lean toward her husband. Then she seemed to remember the rest of us were there. She turned to me, edgy again. "Before you take this fleet to Earth, you should know you're carrying another member of the Ruby Dynasty."
Well, hell. What could I say? I had an impossible conflict. We didn't dare leave members of the Ruby Dynasty out here with only a few ships to protect them. Normally I wouldn't go to retrieve political prisoners either. But our plans couldn't succeed without my psiberspace links, and we were safer with seventy-five thousand ships than if we stayed behind with only a few. Nor could we risk depleting our fleet by leaving a larger force. But taking Ryder and Coop with us also put them in danger.
No matter what I chose, the Ruby Dynasty would bear the brunt of that decision. However, if Earth continued to hold Roca and the others, all the people of Skolia would suffer the consequences. We needed all of the Rhon if we were to regain our strength; Eldrin and I couldn't do it alone.
I hesitated, hating what I had to say. "I am truly sorry. But we still have to go." All the threads led to Earth— and if we didn't unravel them, they would strangle us.
* * *
Webs of every kind networked the cruiser; nothing was free of them. Most were simple systems with specific purposes. Only a select few consoles had control chairs that allowed a human user to link in as an operator on the ship webs. The captain's command chair was unique in that it could boost his mind straight into the brain of the ship.
Those paled next to the Triad Chairs.
Three battle cruisers orbited Delos now:
Havyrl's Valor, Roca's Pride,
and
Pharaoh's Shield.
Among those powerhouses, only
Roca's Pride
carried a Triad Chair. Most telops couldn't use it without brain damage. Although in theory any member of my family could operate such a chair, only Triad members dared. The fluxes of power were too great even for most of the Rhon.
A Spark racer took us to
Roca's Pride.
I rode with Ragnar and his aides. Eldrin stayed on
Havyrl's Valor
at the recommendation of the doctors, who were investigating what had happened during his nightmare. No one wanted to take risks with either of us. But I did so miss him.
On
Roca's Pride,
we went straight to the Triad Chamber. Its domed ceiling showed a panoramic view of interstellar dust clouds made brilliant with the birth of new stars blazing in blue, yellow, red, and white. Interstellar space in the neighborhood of Delos was hardly the "black void" of poets. But this spectacular view was fake, a holograph. Given that gravity pointed outward from the ship's rotation axis, an actual window to the stars would have been under our feet.
The Triad Chair formed the terminus of a massive robot arm. Rank upon rank of panels surrounded the giant chair, glittering. More controls were embedded in the blocky armrests and hood. I
felt
the chair. Nor was I the only one; an aide in Ragnar's retinue winced and several of my Jagernaut bodyguards paled. One of the strongest psions actually stepped back, his face drawn. But I found the Chair's presence exhilarating, like rushing up a mountain in a ski-racer with its cockpit open and air streaming past your face.
Come to me,
I coaxed.
The great chair descended. Its hum filled the chamber, as if it were purring in its huge, biomechanical heart.
Come.
It moved toward us, conduits glowing green, white, blue. Beads of light ran like linked cars along the massive throne. Its exoskeleton gleamed silver. With a deep-toned hum, it settled in front of me, looming. The lights in the chamber dimmed until only the controls on the Chair and the holo-stars above us gave any illumination.
Ragnar walked to the Chair and stopped by its side, his face lit from beneath by its panels, his gaze covetous. Watching him, I felt even more isolated. I had been separated from the people I wanted to trust: Jon, Vazar, Eldrin, Taquinil. My strongest ally, Ragnar, was an old family friend, yes, but I knew all too well his sharp-edged ambition.
The Triad Chair thundered in my mind:
ATTENDING.
Prepare to commence.
PREPARED.
I settled into the throne. Panels readjusted, forming a cage around my body. I could see my reflection in the robot arms, a slender woman, waif-like, her face dominated by large green eyes, her body bathed in the eerie light from a chair so powerful it became a living entity. The Triad Chair had intelligence, but it was unlike anything we understood. It rarely communicated with humans beyond the barest minimum required to carry out its purpose, and it showed no other interest in us.
