Although I wanted to insist no danger existed, I couldn't be certain. However, I had confidence in my models, and they predicted my safety with Eldrin. "My bodyguards will be with us. Dryni, listen. You and I need to present a united front, to the Allieds and Assembly, and for all the people who have risked so much to support us."
He rubbed his palms up and down my arms. "I don't see how my presence will help."
I put my hands on his upper arms and he slid his behind my back. "Your brother Vyrl is a hero. And you're the firstborn son, the head of the family now. If you appear, entreating the Allieds to release your grieving mother, whose husband died in Allied custody, how can the Allieds refuse? They'll look like monsters."
A gleam came into his eyes. "It would make it that much harder, politically, for them to shoot down any racer we send in to Earth."
"That's right. And good gods, you're on a ship called
Havyrl's Valor.
We would be crazy not to take advantage of that."
His grin flashed wickedly. "You have to appear in the broadcast with me."
"Me?" I tried to step back, but he kept his hands around my back, holding me in place. "I hate broadcasts."
"Ah, but Dehya, just look at yourself." He cupped his hand under my chin. "Can you imagine it? On their broadcasts, the Allieds describe Skolia as a massive, truculent, imperialistic empire. Our leaders are blood-thirsty dictators. And then who appears as our leader? You, the Imperial Waif. Lady Vulnerability. You look about as bellicose as a holomovie ingénue."
I crossed my arms and glowered at him. "I am not a waif."
He gave me an innocent look. "We could call you massive, truculent, and blood-thirsty."
I couldn't help but smile. "Maybe not."
A virtual comm appeared on my wrist and beeped. I touched it. "Yes?"
Ragnar's voice crackled. "Shall we return to the Tactics Room?"
"Very well." I glanced at Eldrin. "I will see you soon." Softly I added, "In person."
The mischief glinted in his gaze again. "Try not to depose anyone else before then."
"Deal."
But I couldn't laugh at the joke. Eldrin didn't yet see the full ramifications of what I had done. I thought of Barcala Tikal, the First Councilor of the Assembly.
Former
First Councilor. He and I had known each other for decades. I had supported his bid to head the Assembly ten years ago. But I would soon have to face him as the leader of the faction that deposed him.
I dreaded what we would have to do then.
* * *
ISC recorded the broadcast in the observation bay on
Havyrl's Valor.
Eldrin and I stood together at the rail above the bay while media globes whirred above us, recording the scene from every possible angle. The public relations office on the cruiser would decide what footage to use.
In his speech, Eldrin made a heartfelt appeal for the release of his mother and family. The PR people had him wear his native Lyshriol clothes: blue trousers that clung to his muscled legs, darker knee boots with silver buckles, and a white shirt with long, belled sleeves and a high collar. He hardly looked the way the Allieds described him in their counter-propaganda, as a militant agitator who had seduced the Imperialate's tyrannical Ruby Pharaoh to satisfy his unbridled ambition.
His shirt had beautiful embroidered designs. In the "news" that accompanied the speech, the reporter implied Eldrin's mother had stitched them. In truth, Roca knew zero about embroidery. Her expertise was politics, which was why she had become the Foreign Affairs Assembly Councilor, a position she won by election, not heredity. But the broadcast portrayed her as a rural woman hand-making shirts for her beloved sons. Of course the holocast showed images of her. She made great press, with her gold skin, huge eyes, and angel's face. She had the body of a holomovie goddess and a sensual appeal mixed with innocence. She wore her gold hair piled high on her head, woven with exquisite pearls. Never mind that rustic farmer's wives didn't wear pearls, exquisite or otherwise.
So here was Eldrin, urging the Allieds to let his bereaved mother return to her grieving children and people. The media ran it after a dramatic piece on Lyshriol that showed Allied soldiers hauling big-eyed Lyshrioli children back to their villages. Even knowing the broadcast was choreographed for effect, I still found myself affected by it.
They called Eldrin the King of Skyfall. No such title actually existed. Eldrin had inherited his father's position as Dalvador Bard, but that didn't make him king of anything, let alone an entire planet. The Dalvador Bard served as historian for the province of Dalvador. He recorded the lives of his people in ballads. Although the Bard also had some governing duties, he didn't lead the province. But our PR people thought the King of Skyfall had "rockets," whatever that meant, so my husband became King Eldrin.
They fussed over my clothes too. They wanted me to wear heels, so I didn't look short next to Eldrin. I didn't care, but PR did, so finally I offered to don some black shoes with my black jumpsuit. This went over like compressed neutron matter. The fashion-ware systems analyst, whatever that title meant, didn't think it would project the right image for me to appear in a black catsuit with stiletto heels. I didn't know where she came up with cats, but I told her to do whatever she thought best. Eldrin got a gleam in his eyes when the computer imaged me in the cat outfit, so I decided to keep that one for a private showing.
The outfit they came up with was beyond reason. A long white dress? I never wore such clothes. They tangled around your legs and made you trip. Jumpsuits were more practical. But the fashion-ware person said I should wear the dress, so I wore it. I had to admit, it draped gracefully. It also fit snugly around my torso, giving me a "classic silhouette," whatever that meant. The analyst put a gold chain around my neck. Then she added a gold cord around my hips like the belts worn in images they had dug up of medieval clothes on Earth, with the tasseled ends of the belt hanging down the woman's front and the cord forming a
V
in front of her pelvis. It made me look curvier. The whole business was absurd. I came from a long line of ancient warrior queens, fierce and violent, who had led great armies into battle, owned their men, and towered over everyone. All right, so I didn't tower. But this dress was too much.
After I put on the white heels they gave me, which the dress hid, the PR fiends put me next to Eldrin in his King-of-Skyfall clothes. When it came time for me to speak, I conveniently "forgot" the speech the PR team had written. I just spoke the truth, in my own words: I didn't want war, I wanted to live in harmony with Earth and the rest of humanity. I wanted to reunite my family and begin the talks that would give all our peoples a new era of peace.
It was a dream I had always cherished, even fearing it was an unreal bubble of hope too high to reach, too fragile to hold.
29
Lightning and Sun
The Allieds said no.
I shouldn't have been surprised, given how they had steadfastly evaded our inquiries, requests, and veiled demands that they return Roca and the others. But I had still hoped. Even on Earth, the outcry grew in volume, fueled by the broadcast Eldrin and I had made, and those from Lyshriol. Over the next few days, as express messenger ships ferried the news, it reached other star systems and the Allieds came under an increasing barrage of censure for their perceived intransigence.
Finally I gave the go ahead for Jinn Opsister to send a racer to Earth. By then we had a substantial portion of our fleet in orbit around Earth, accompanied by an escort of Earth's ships. We constantly reiterated to them how we didn't want trouble, and they constantly reiterated their agreement, but we all knew everyone was in full combat readiness.
We decided to send the racer in a fuel bottle made from containment fields and rotate it back into normal space in the atmosphere. It could be a suicide mission, given how little we knew about how the fields for such a large bottle would behave near a planet. Yet when we asked for volunteers, hundreds offered. Jinn Opsister put together a crack team: two Jagernauts, including herself; an army major with experience in on-planet operations; a special operations expert from the Fleet; and five Advance Services Corps commandos.
I also went, in telepresence.
The techs strapped, plugged, and fastened me into the Triad Chair. Both Ragnar and Chad watched. None of us had forgotten what happened last time. I didn't have to stay in as long this time, and I only had to maintain a link with one ship, but I knew the siren call of freedom would come. I would never be free of its lure.
This time when I submerged into Kyle space, it had form. The silver mist still swirled, but it had thinned, part of it having condensed into a silver mesh. So far it supported only a few nodes. I wove another strand and threaded it into the racer, which waited in its docking bay.
Lightning attend,
I thought.
Attending, the racer answered.
Communications between
Lightning
and
Roca's Pride
whispered in the background of my mind. The racer prepared to launch— and we were off! I lost contact with most of its systems when it rotated into the fuel bottle, but I still had the psiberspace link.
Jinn, How are you all in there?
I asked.
Everything looks good,
she answered.
The racer shot toward Earth, hidden in a space where charges took on both real and imaginary parts. What that meant this close to a planet, we weren't sure. I thought it unlikely the racer could go through solid matter even when it was only partially real. Imaginary numbers behaved like waves, which meant the ship might interact like a wave with an object in real space. When ships stored antimatter in fuel bottles, the bottles always experienced a loss of fuel, as interference effects caused the antiparticles to annihilate particles. Energy produced by the annihilations went into Haver-Klein space, so it didn't endanger people. But when we rotated the fuel out of the bottle, we had less than when we put it in. The effects increased in an atmosphere. Of course, a ship wasn't antimatter; with the proper shielding, it could travel in an atmosphere. We should be all right as long as we didn't try to go through anything solid. But I still worried.
Secondary Opsister,
I asked.
What is the status of your ship?
Staaaaablllllle.
Her words rippled like liquid.
I sent out tendrils of thought, forming extra links to
Lightning. Opsister, you're wavering.
Caaaaannnn't staaaabaaaliiiize.
Her words phased in and out of my mind.
I added a filter to compensate for the effect, so I could understand her words better.
Secondary, what do you see?
Some odd effects here,
she answered.
The ship is rippling.
I didn't like it.
If you come out now, you have almost no chance of reaching the surface undetected. The Allieds might shoot you down. If you stay in the bottle, your ship will lose coherence. You may not be able to come out.
Jinn's answer was indecipherable, even with my filters. It gave me an impression, though: disintegration.
Opsister, rotate back into normal space! Don't wait any longer.
Nothing.
Jinn, now!
The racer rippled back into existence like liquid metal taking solid form. It was far down in the atmosphere and plunging ever closer to Earth.
An Allied voice crackled over Jinn's comm. "What the hell is
that?"
"Imperial racer, identify yourself!" a second voice snapped out.
"You are violating the EuroConfed airspace," another voice said, hard and crisp. "Send your ID codes immediately."
I jumped from
Lightning
to
Roca's Pride.
The cruiser's bridge formed around me, a swirl of colors that rapidly took on definition. Silver tinted the scene, a reminder I was actually still in Kyle space.
"Can their satellites hit
Lightning
?" Chad was speaking into the comm on his command chair.
"They could hit the racer with any of fourteen systems," a voice said.
I spoke. "Any of those could have fired by now." My words also came out of Chad's comm, on a different channel.
Chad looked around. "Pharaoh Dyhianna? Where are you?"
"In the Triad Chair."
"Are you still linked to the racer?"
"Yes." I switched nodes and the display changed; I was in the racer, submerged in the flux of communication between Jinn and the ship. I jumped back to the bridge on
Roca's Pride.
"All its systems are green."
A new voice came out of Chad's comm. "Admiral Barzun, this is Lieutenant Garr. I have General MacLane from the Allied battle cruiser
Tricia Andreque
on four."
"Got it." Chad switched to channel four. "Barzun here."
