The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (32 page)

A hiss came from across the bay. Footsteps entered, boots on the deck. A face appeared above her, a woman with eyes as brilliant and as red as rubies. Her hair hung to her shoulders and shimmered as if it were made from black gems. She was beautiful in an inhuman way. Her mind was a vortex pulling Roca into a nightmare place where no empathy or humanity existed.

She is an Aristo,
Arabesque thought.

The word chilled. Roca instinctively tried to jerk away, but with her arms and legs bound, she couldn't move.

The woman smiled, like ice. "My greetings."

Roca regarded her blankly. "What?"

More footsteps entered the room. A man appeared next to the woman, a male version with the same cold eyes. His hair glittered.

"She seems confused," the woman said. "Good," the man said.

Roca thought she should know these people.

The woman is Vitarex Raziquon's daughter,
her node thought.
The man is her brother Kryx. Raziquon's son.

The man spoke to the woman. "Will you stay?"

The woman inclined her head as if he offered a gracious invitation. "Thank you." She considered Roca the way someone might survey an expensive acquisition. Then she moved away. Her steps receded, followed by a squeak of furniture as she apparendy sat down.

Kryx watched Roca with a pitiless gaze. He took the sheet between his thumb and forefinger and twitched it off her body. Heat spread in her face. She pulled her arms, trying to bring them down, to cover her nakedness.

A cruel smile touched his lips. "You don't like me looking at you? Good."

With growing panic, she struggled to free her arms.

Kryx reached under the table and removed a small cup and a brush. He swirled the brush in the cup, then showed it to her. Iridescent powder covered the bristles. "See this?"

"Yes." Roca couldn't see what he wanted, though.

"While you were in your little coma, we matched this to your DNA." He spread the sparkling powder across her shoulder. "So it will affect only you."

Affect her how? She felt nothing. "What is it?"

He swept the glitter onto her breast and rubbed the palm of his hand over her nipple. It made Roca ill. She struggled again, with no more success than before.

"It is seeded with nanobots," he said.

"What are those?" Her voice sounded slowed. Dull.

Kryx laughed coldly. "I had heard you were intelligent. More Skolian lies, eh?" He went to work on her abdomen. "Nanobots are molecular machines. Hooks on these will fasten to your skin. Only your skin." He spread glitter on her hip bones.

Roca thought she should understand. But she saw only that he wanted to cover her with sparkling dust. After coating her legs and arms, he set the cup and brush back under the table.

"What do you want?" Roca asked, her voice thick.

He watched her with undisguised contempt "You have spent your life making offensive assumptions. You are a provider. A slave. The idea that the Ruby Dynasty should have authority is an abomination to all that is decent. You need to be controlled."

The hell with him. "By what? Glitter?"

"Oh, didn't I mention?" He poised his finger above a panel on his gaundet. "The nanobots extend threads into your body that touch your nerve endings."

Then he tapped the panel.

Pain!

All over her body, nerves caught fire. She screamed, arching her back, but she had nowhere to go, no escape. Unbearable—

Suddenly the agony stopped. Roca gasped, sobbing, her throat raw. The Aristo watched her with a hateful ecstasy. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She had never experienced pain that intense.

"She is exquisite," Kryx murmured.

His sister's voice came from behind them. "Indeed she is." Dryly she added, "But loud. Fix that." :. He took a sponge and a silvery roll out from under the table. To Roca he said, "Open up."

She stared at him with loathing. "What?"

As soon as she opened her mouth, he shoved in the sponge.

Before she could spit it out, he taped her mouth closed. Then he poised his finger above his gauntiet, deliberately letting her see.

No!
Roca fought her panic.
Stop him! Help me!
I can turn you off again,
her node thought.
You will feel nothing.

Kryx moved his finger a hair's breadth above his gaundet.
Turn me off,
Roca answered, frantic.
Fast!
If I do, it will damage your brain so severely, I can never help again—

She didn't hear the rest. Kryx touched his guard and agony wracked her body. The gag muffled her screams but nothing stopped the pain. It went on and on, and encompassed the universe.

When it finally stopped, Roca shook with anguished, muffled sobs.
Turn me off Now.

Councilor, listen!
her node thought.
People are looking for you in Kyle space. If I stop your neural processes, they won't find you. You will never be free of this insanity. You will either die or be his provider forever. But if you hold out a little longer, the searchers may find you.

I cant bear it.
She was crying inside as well as out.
Turn me off.

It will destroy your only hope of escape.
A lifetime of this. Roca would rather die.
Can you bear staying conscious for even a few more minutes?

Tears rolled from her eyes.
I will try.

Soz was tracking the ESComm invasion when the mental quake hit her. In the virtual simulation, she was in the War Room command chair; in reality, she sat in the Triad Chair on the cruiser. When the quake hit, the War Room simulation distorted. Vertigo rolled through Soz, and she felt as if she were going into shock.

"Cadet Valdoria!" Devon Majda's voice snapped over the comm in her ear. It echoed, but at least the Chair was giving her the transmission. Sometimes it either couldn't or wouldn't let her communicate with the cruiser.

"Your stats just jumped," Devon said. "Your pulse is too high and your brain waves went off the scale."

I'm all right.
Soz thought her response, and the Chair sent it to Devon's station on the bridge as words.
Something happened in Kyle Space.

"What was it?" Devon asked.

I don't know—
Soz broke off as another quake rocked through her. Bile rose in her throat. It was all she could do to hold down the acid in her stomach.

Soshoni?
the Bard asked.

Father, is that you? Are you all right? What happened?

The War Room wavered around her and disintegrated into blue mist. A figure took form, a man, but he seemed more slender than her father and not as tall.

Soz mentally stumbled in the mist.
Shannon?

she hurts
. Shannon sounded agonized,
you must help her.

Soz barely understood him. His "voice" came with even more chimes and lilt than native Trillian. He had an accent, one reminiscent of ancient ballads about the Blue Dales, a dialect that had died when the Blue Dale Archers vanished. Yet now it saturated his thoughts.

Who, Shannon?
she asked.
Who hurts?

Her father answered, frantic.
Your mother! It Is a sword slicing me to pieces.

Soz extended her mind further into the mist and tried to sense what they had found, but she couldn't shed her fatigue. She had spent too many days in the Chair, kept alive by a machine.

Another quake hit.

This time, with her attention focused, Soz felt it. Agony blazed as if her nerves were on fire. She gasped and went rigid. Were they doing this to her mother? Fury swept through her and turned the mist red. She hurtled her mind forward, through fog the color of an Aristo's eyes, straight to the epicenter of the quakes. Shannon flew at her side, shadowy, half formed, more thought than boy. Beyond him, almost invisible, more figures ran, many people, ethereal here in the red mists.

Red.

The color of rage. Her father's rage.

It surrounded diem, everywhere. That was why she hadn't seen him before. He was the mist. He was the Kyle. The blue had turned red with the wrath of a man who had known and loved one woman in his life, the mother of his ten children. His fury saturated the universe.

They converged on the epicenter. Mist whirled around this place of pain like a vortex. Another quake came, Roca's agony, and the Bard roared in fury.

Roca could take no more. Kryx inflicted the pain again and again, and each time it stopped, he fondled her body, until she thought she would choke with horror and disgust His gaze seemed to expand until it filled her universe, turning everything red, nothing but carnelian shadows. He leaned over her, his eyes glazed with ecstasy—and hit the panel on his gauntlet.

Roca couldn't scream any more. Agony wracked her body and she thought she would shatter.
Make it stop!
she pleaded with her node.
I dont care if I die. Turn it off. End this.

Mother!
Soz's thought broke through the pain.
Mother, give me your hand! Reach for me.

Roca knew then she had truly gone insane. The brain damage had destroyed her memories, intellect, personality, but nothing could make her forget her family. Except they couldn't be here.

Roca! The Bard's voice thundered. Reach oat with your mind!

It was impossible. But Roca reached anyway.

Suddenly blue surrounded her in a mist, cradling her in its embrace. It filled the universe. She heard Kryx shouting, heard his fury, but it was receding. The pain, mercifully, had stopped.

A woman's authoritative voice spiked through the eerie fog. "Cadet Valdoria! This is Imperator Majda. You need to keep the comm lines active. We're losing your signal."

What the hell?
Roca thought.

Soz answered.
I'm coordinating them, ma'am.

"Are you having trouble?" Majda asked. "We're getting a ten-second delay in your responses."

Roca's thoughts spread over her daughter's like a glaze, and data from Soz's augmented brain flooded her mind: ISC and ESComm forces would engage each other as soon as their respective fleets dropped out of inversion. At relativistic speeds, ten seconds were an eternity. Entire batdes could be won or lost in that time. Those seconds could mean the difference between triumph and defeat for the ISC forces defending Skolia.

We're freeing my mother from the Traders,
Soz said, her thoughts accelerated.
I cant let her go. That's what is causing the delay.

"Valdoria, concentrate!" Majda answered. "We get one chance, Cadet. One. If we come out in the wrong place or at the wrong time, we haven't a hope of defeating ESComm."

*Hold her, Soz,
the Bard said. Hold your mother.

Eldrin?
Roca asked. The blue mist curled around her. He was the mist, the ocean of fog, everywhere and everytime.

A chant drifted through the fog, eerie and distant, rich with chimes, lilting, hypnotic:

sing your heart. sing so high.

sing high.

sing low.

sing of endless seas.

endless seas of blue.

forever beautiful.

forever blue.

"Valdoria, respond!" Majda said. "Link the damn ships!"
Father,
Soz thought desperately.
Take Mother.

The Bard's voice surrounded her.
Roca, come to me.

Roca reached out—and she had nothing to grasp. She didn't remember this place, but from her daughter's mind, she knew it was impossible to move a physical body through Kyle space, a universe of thoughts. Mass, space, and time

didn't exist here. It was painfully clear to Soz: they would have to transform her body into a thought analog, like a Fourier transform took a time-dependent function into one dependent on energy. Even if it were possible, the energy required would be immense.

Eldri...
Roca knew she was on the Trader ship, that her family was only shielding her mind so her brain couldn't register the pain. Her link to them slipped—

Roca, come back!
Eldrinson cried.

Roca wanted to, but she couldn't. She was losing them—

A new thought formed around them.

It existed everywhere, filled with nuanced power and the knowledge gained from decades of operating in this universe. Where the rest of them were struggling to define themselves, this mind existed with ease—and a finessed power that had no equal.

No equal.

None other like it existed.

hold her
, the Ruby Pharaoh thought.

The mist took form and shape, resolving into a vivid sky and ocean, all with incredible detail. The mist coalesced onto Roca's body, covering her in a shift from shoulder to knee.

Dehya!
Soz thought.

Gods almighty,
Eldrinson thought.

The song of the Blue Dale archers swelled:

sing of endless seas.

endless seas of blue.

forever blue.

Imperator Majda's voice thundered around them, not truly in Kyle space, but transmitted by the web. She spoke in real time rather than the accelerated mode used by Eldrinson, Soz, Shannon, and Roca in their enhanced link.

"Cadet Valdoria, respond!"

Soz never had a chance to answer her. Another voice spoke, overriding her in this place and resonating everywhere.

*five more seconds, Jazida,
Dehya thought.
Give us five more

seconds.* The Chair translated her response into words and transmitted them to Majda's comm on the Orbiter.

"Pharaoh Dyhianna!" Majda shouted. "You're alive!"

It would seem so.

"Where are your

In the Triad Chair at Safelanding.
Dehya thought.

To her credit, Majda barely missed a heartbeat despite her shock. ''Five seconds. No more. Any longer and we could lose our window of attack."

Take my wife home,
Eldrinson thought to Shannon and the Archers.
We have only five seconds.