The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (8 page)

Next she faced the aural labyrinth, an enclosed maze of tunnels that echoed, making it hard to judge direction. The walls rose higher than her head. Inside, she lost her way

twice and had to backtrack. She kept running, pushing to the limit, and exited the maze on the far side.

Rebounders crashed and bounced ahead of her, a series of gates that operated in complex rhythms, snapping open and slamming closed. She dodged through the clanging portals, but they managed to crash into her body anyway. She didn't fall because they struck from both sides and held her up, but it felt like hell. Gritting her teeth, she kept going. By the time she lurched through the last gate, she was gasping. She stumbled into a white sand trap and leaned over, her hands braced on her knees while she heaved in air.

As her pulse calmed, she straightened up and looked around. Stone was a few paces away, studying his timer. As Soz walked over to him, he glanced up.

"Nine minutes, fifty-two seconds," he said. "Almost the record."

Oh, well. "Almost isn't good enough."

"It is when it's honest." He spoke quietly. 'It's a good time, Soz. Be proud of it."

She had to admit, this result felt far better than when she had shattered the record last time. "Thank you, sir."

For the first time in ages he smiled at her. "Good luck on Roca's Pride."

Soz grinned. "Good name for a ship, eh, sir?"

He chuckled. "That it is."

They headed back then, he to the first-year cadets and she to the dorms. She was almost there when someone fell into step beside her. She glanced up to see a tall fellow with dark hair and eyes, broad shoulders, and devilish good looks, one of the cadets who had been doing calisthenics with Stone's class. He saluted her with a powerful slap of his crossed wrists.

Soz returned the salute. "At ease."

"Thanks." He looked her over.

"Who are you?" Soz asked.

"Rex. Rex Blackstone."

"Well, Rex Blackstone, what do you want?"

He wasn't the least intimidated by her bluntness. "I saw you run the Echo."

Soz shrugged. "It wasn't much."

"Looked like much to me."

Soz was tired, not to mention jittery about leaving Diesha. "You want something, Blackstone?"

"Maybe." He considered her with that appraising gaze of his. "I want to get a look at the wildcat they call the toughest, smartest, worst-behaved cadet at DMA."

Soz gave a startled laugh. "Well, you got your look."

His eyes flashed with a wicked glint. "Remember me, Val-doria. When you're in command of the toughest, smartest, most notorious squadron of the J-Force, I'll be flying with you."

"Is that a challenge?" "Hell, yes."

"All right, you got it," Soz said. "You graduate top of your class and when I'm in command of that squad, I'll tell HQ you're one of mine."

"Deal." He held out his arm, his fist clenched. Soz laid her wrist on top of his, her fist also clenched, searing the pact as Jagernauts had done since the first pilots took to space.

Rex jogged off then, headed to the first-year dorms. Watching him, Soz felt a chill run up her back. She suddenly had a vision of him jogging with her out to a tarmac where four Jag fighters waited. Gray streaked his hair and he wore the gauntlets of a Secondary, the second-highest rank in the J-Force.

She wore those of a Primary.

Soz shook her head. Her imagination was getting ahead of her. She had yet even to graduate.

Eldrin was reading a novel when he heard the noise. He had been struggling with the words, looking them up in the dictionary that came with the holobook. Although he was no longer illiterate, he read slowly. Glyphs for the same words never looked the same to him, though he had come to understand that certain arrangements referred to the same word even when they showed up in different places, in different fonts, even different colors. It had taken him a long time to learn to process those differences. Reading was no longer an exercise in teeth-gritting frustration for him. It was even fun.

He gradually became aware of the rattling. Nothing in the sitting room looked out of place, though. Just empty. The Ruby Palace always seemed that way to him even when he wasn't the only one here. He wished someone would visit. Not that anyone could come without his invitation; so many installations protected the palace, he could live here in peace and quiet even if a horde of maniacs was storming the mountains.

Eldrin glanced at his holobook. He was reading about ISC. The Assembly wanted him to learn about the military in case he ever became a Key, a member of the Dyad. As pharaoh, Dehya was the Assembly Key: as Imperator, Kurj was the Military Key. Eldrin wasn't first in line for either title; Soz was Kurj's heir, and Taquinil was Dehya's. The Assembly wanted to name Eldrin as the second heir to the Assembly Key, though, after Taquinil. The title went according to ability as well as heredity. Although he didn't understand the technology of Kyle meshes, he apparently had the mental sensitivity required to create and manipulate them. He was much farther down the line of succession for Imperator, but he was in there somewhere, probably eighth or ninth.

The Assembly Key didn't have to be the Ruby Pharaoh, but Dehya held both titles. The pharaoh's consort didn't assume her royal title on her death; traditionally it went to her oldest daughter. Dehya had defied tradition and made her son her heir, so Taquinil was also first in line for the Ruby Throne. Dehya's second heir was her sister Roca. That did put Eldrin in the line of succession, through his mother rather than his wife, making him third in line for the throne after Taquinil and Roca.

Eldrin felt painfully unqualified for all three titles. He had been a good warrior on Lyshriol, with a sword and bow, but he didn't have the mind for modern warfare. He wasn't a politician, either, though he did attend Assembly sessions. It intrigued him to watch Dehya in that theater of" power. The title of Pharaoh was supposedly titular, but she had forged it into an immense, shadowy power he could barely fathom.

He could work the web, though. For him, more even than for Dehya and Kurj, it came as naturally.

A rattle disturbed the silence.

"What is that?" Eldrin muttered. He put down his book and went to the console across the room. When he touched a fingertip panel, his personal EI spoke in a mellow voice.

"Good evening, Your Majesty."

"My greetings, Etude," Eldrin said. "Did you hear a noise?" "I detect many noises."

"This one was out of place, like a rattle in the walls."

"Ah. Yes, I heard it." Etude paused. "It came from the system that heats these rooms. A conduit is loose. I have sent a mechbot to fix it."

"Good." The problem surprised Eldrin; the bots were obsessive about maintenance, if one could ascribe human attributes to machines. He supposed it was more accurate to say that whoever had designed them was dedicated to ensuring the palace stayed clean and well-organized.

He went to the liquor cabinet and took out the dragon carafe. "Will it take long to fix?"

"About ten minutes." Then Etude said, "Your Majesty, in the past few days you have consumed an amount of alcohol large enough to register as a concern on my medical scanners."

Eldrin picked up a crystal tumbler. "Don't start again." "Again?"

"Bothering me about a drink." He wondered if the same person who programmed the cleaning bots had coded Etude. "Don't you have anything else to do?"

"One of my functions is to protect your health. You consume too much alcohol and take too much medication."

Eldrin tensed. How could it know about the phorine? He used only the syringe he had brought, which had no connection to any mesh in the palace. The syringe belonged to Dehya, which meant if she needed more of the medicine, she wouldn't have it. Alaj could issue her another one, though. She apparently hadn't used the phorine since then, anyway. He doubted she had even noticed the syringe was missing. Sometimes he wondered if she knew he was missing from her life.

"What medications?" he asked warily.

"I don't know. However, judging from your behavior before and after you inject this drug, it has a strong effect"

Eldrin poured himself a glass of whiskey, which he now kept in the carafe instead of wine. "Yes, well, that's why I have to take it."

"Your symptoms indicate either a neurological disease or an addiction. I have no record of any disease."

Eldrin's hand jerked and gold liquid sloshed over his fingers. "Are you calling me an alcoholic?"

"No. Are you?"

"No. I can stop drinking any time I want."

"This may be. However, your situation has triggered alarms in my systems. I should contact the medical authorities, but I have been unable to do so. I'm blocked by a security protocol called Epsilon."

"I know." Eldrin didn't actually understand Epsilon. Taquinil had found it on Dehya's console and said it gave people privacy. Eldrin had the impression the files were games Dehya had left for the boy. He had asked Epsilon to prevent Etude from sending out warnings about his use of the medicine. He didn't know why it worked, but apparently Taquinil was right this Epsilon game did protect his privacy.

He returned the dragon flask to the cabinet. "I have reason to want a drink."

"Perhaps you would tell me this reason?" it said.

Eldrin didn't want to tell it anything. He had developed a taste for alcohol after his marriage. He had been sixteen, well below the legal drinking age among Skolians. But Dehya was gone so much, and she never locked her wine cabinet Confused, angry, and lonely, he had found that alcohol helped.

They married him to Deyha, literally at gunpoint, and then left him on his own to deal with the impossible.

So he drank.

When he had first come to the Orbiter, Eldrin had seen a specialist a military doctor who helped him deal with his "post-traumatic stress" from combat Those sessions had been an oasis in the midst of his confusion. On Lyshriol, people treated him as a hero, but he knew the truth. He had committed murder. He killed two men with his sword and

another in hand-to-hand combat. His people called him a man of courage and honor, but he felt like slime. Going to a counselor had helped. But after the Assembly forced him to marry Dehya, he stopped seeing the specialist. He hadn't wanted to talk to anyone. He had just plain hated himself.

Somehow, incredibly, he and Dehya had found their way to each other. They formed the bonds only Rhon psions could know. They were alike far more than he could have imagined. She understood his painful sensitivity to emotions because she was the same way. She and Taquinil became gems in a life that otherwise bewildered him.

Eldrin hadn't drunk as much then, but since coming here, he often sought the solace of alcohol. He felt ripped in two by this separation from his family. He took a swallow of whiskey, and it spread warmth through his body. He didn't need phorine yet; although the euphoria had faded, he felt no symptoms of his illness. Whenever he stopped taking it, his head ached, worse and worse, until he went into convulsions. He knew he should go to a doctor, but he hated to admit his weakness, and the doctors would reprimand him for using medicine without supervision. They might even take it away. No. He was strong enough to deal with this on his own. He would manage. Somehow.

To Etude, he said only, "I'm lonely." It was easier to admit that to an EI than to a living person.

"I may be able to help," it said.

"Really?" Eldrin doubted it, but he thought it charming the EI offered assistance. "How?"

"Imperator Skolia is en route to the palace. He should be landing here soon."

"Kurj is coming home?"

"It appears so. Will that help your loneliness?"

"Yes, actually, it will." Kurj had been staying down in the city, in the skyscraper where he had his office, in daily strategy sessions with his top officers. Eldrin hadn't expected to see him at the palace at all.

"When will he arrive?" Eldrin asked.

"Within the hour," Etude said.

"I'm glad." He finished his whiskey, savoring the haze of

warmth it created. But he poured no more. Perhaps Etude was right, he depended on it too much. He made a resolution: he would stop the alcohol and phorine both.

He would manage.

Somehow.

5

The My Palace

They're claiming the attack came from pirates," Kurj said. "Rogue marauders." Even in the spacious living room where he and Eldrin had retired, he looked huge. He sat on a brocaded couch, his booted legs stretched across the gold carpet, creasing the pile. His hands were folded around a steaming mug of kava laced with rum.

Eldrin sat across from him in an armchair, one with those annoying cushions that kept trying to make him relax. He was glad to see Kurj, but his brother's news disquieted him. "The emperor claims the ships that attacked Onyx acted without authorization?" "It seems so." Sarcasm saturated Kurj's voice. The steam from Eldrin's drink wafted over his face. He didn't take a swallow. The kava had rum in it and he meant to keep his pledge. No more alcohol. It would be mortifying to tell Kurj why he had made such a resolution, though, so he kept holding the mug.

"It's absurd," Eldrin said. "First they expect us to believe a hard-line emperor with years of experience didn't know one of his top people had infiltrated a major ISC system and attacked my family? Now we're supposed to accept that eleven ESComm ships went rogue and committed an act of war? How stupid does he think we are?"

Kurj took a swallow of kava. "Qox is playing a game—a vicious, calculated game. If we attack in response to the Onyx affair, he will claim we started the war."

"It's obviously a false claim."

"False, yes. Obvious? To us, yes. To the Allied Worlds of Earth? Maybe not." Kurj rubbed his eyes with no attempt to hide his fatigue. He rarely relaxed his defenses and let anyone sense his emotions. Eldrin was one of the few people who saw the human side of his daunting half-brother. It had taken Eldrin years to realize how the rest of humanity viewed Kurj, because the Imperator tended to ease up with him.

"It wouldn't take much to put off the Allieds," Kurj said. "They already don't trust us."