The Thrones of Kronos (55 page)

The thought had
distracted her too long.

Fear bit hard into her
nerves when she looked up and saw the diffusers falling away upwards. She was
too low.

Flinging her body into
a braking maneuver, she tried to calculate a vector that would bring her back
up, into the lower gee regions the wings were designed for.

I didn’t mean to come
so low, she thought, as if apologizing to somebody in authority who’d caught
her. But nobody had—except the laws of physics.

The servos keened,
something snapped at her left, and her body went into a spin as fragments of
the broken wing spun away, accelerating toward the surface far below.

The reality shocked
her. “Nooo,” she screamed. “Nanna, get me! Stop me!”

“Marim,” came the
sobbing cry far behind, the cry of the helpless.

I don’t want this end,
Marim thought in despair and horror. Why can’t I stop it? The rules always have
workarounds if you’re smart. Always—

Speed ripped at her,
and death loomed in shadowy pain ahead.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I
didn’t mean it—” she screamed, endlessly, as the habitat rotated beneath her.
She fell and fell, the useless broken wings flapping around her for kilometer
after kilometer until the inner hull rushed up to smash her—

The sudden cessation of pleasure was worse than any pain
Marim had ever endured. Blurrily she became aware that something had dumped her
onto the floor. Her flesh was chilled. Then a vicious impact on her solar
plexus doubled her up in pain. She rolled around, trying to catch her breath as
more blows caught her.

Hreem shouted hoarsely.

The blows stopped. Marim’s skin prickled with fear as an
angry Tarkan face loomed over her. The woman was breathing hard, but not,
apparently, from exertion.

“I don’t give Shiidra-piss what Lysanter or that twisty
Barrodagh slug want, it’s mine!” shouted Hreem.

Another Tarkan backhanded Hreem viciously, knocking him
sprawling across the bed. The Tarkan pulled on gloves, bent over, and tore the
shestek away from Hreem’s groin. The Rifter screamed.

Emotions whiplashed by shock, Marim giggled at expression on
the Dol’jharian’s face—lips drawn back in disgust and fear—as he gripped the
shestek, which was frantically thrashing about like a gaffed fish. The man
fought the thing into its case, and the two left without a word.

Marim pulled herself up and fell across Hreem. The
white-light orgasms of the shestek, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, had
not exhausted her. In fact she was more aroused than she’d ever been in her
life, but Hreem was in no shape to satisfy her. He seemed undamaged, at least
physically, but nothing Marim could do was able to stimulate him.

She finally figured that Hreem needed wild stimulation to
enjoy sex; having it forcibly taken away by the Tarkans had utterly unmanned
him.

So that’s what those
twisty vids of Norio’s were for.

Well, she’d always known they’d come in handy, which was why
she’d nabbed them in the first place.

“What’re you doing?” Hreem’s voice was thick with emotion.

“Got something might help.” She rummaged through her
scattered clothing and pulled out the chips, slotting the weirdest one—spiders
and heights, and the skinny man tied to a chair—into the console.

“Those’re Norio’s collection,” Hreem slurred.

“Here,” Marim said, and offered him more Black Negus. “Which
one is the best one?”

Hreem blinked, and began to giggle inanely. “I remember that
one . . . You shoulda seen his face when he tried to jack me,
and surprise . . .”

Hreem’s laughter gained, becoming boisterous. Marim knelt
beside the bed, laughing with him, and judged to a nicety when the time was
right to reach for him. A thrill ran through her when he began to groan softly.

He didn’t need that shestek. She could give him just as much
fun, yes she could.
Turn me down, Ivard,
see what you missed. And you, Lokri, after all we were to each other . . .

So the gang doesn’t
need me? Well, I don’t need them.

o0o

For three days, Lokri watched Marim alternately sulk and
smirk. It meant she was up to something, and sure enough, rec room gossip revealed
that she was going off with Hreem the Faithless.

That third time she returned late after an obvious
assignation, he confronted her, only to get back the sharp retort, “Yeah, what
of it? When’s it become your business who I bunny with?”

Since then, Marim had been gone more and more often, and for
longer times.

“Vi’ya says it’s merely the lure of the forbidden.”

That was Jaim, wincing as he sat up. That meant he’d noticed
Lokri’s glares as she walked out the door.

Lokri was too tired to care. “Vi’ya ought to know,” he said.

That came out sounding more acid then he felt, and Jaim
grimaced.

Lokri sighed; Montrose leaned over the console and activated
the override that Sedry had recently installed. For a short time they could
talk, and Barrodagh’s log would record random eating noises.

All three glanced at the refrigerated chamber where Vi’ya
and Ivard were in rapport with the Eya’a.

Jaim said, “Anaris never killed one of us.”

“Yet.”

The silence was reflective, and Lokri sighed again, trying
to shed his tension. “It’s not Marim’s bunking with that blunge-bag Hreem.
Well, yes it is, but only partly. I’m worried that she’s going to talk herself
into thinking herself a victim, which will make it easy to shift allegiance.”

Jaim shook his head. “She’s known us for years. I can’t
believe she’d throw away our lives so easily.”

You don’t know her
like I do,
Lokri thought. He was reluctant to voice his reservations—as if
doing so would infuse them with reality. He hoped he was wrong. Marim was his
bond sister, and as much as he was able to love anyone he loved her.
It’s this station,
he thought.
Warping us all. At least if she’s bunnying
with Hreem she can’t be getting into trouble.

The inner door opened, and Vi’ya stepped in. Ivard ducked
around her with unconscious grace, and sat cross-legged on his bed, his fingers
absently tender as he caressed the big cliff cat snoozing there.

Who’s to say I am not
more warped than any of us?
Lokri thought, resisting the impulse to sit
beside Ivard and caress him with deliberate tenderness.

As long as he’d known Ivard and Greywing, the two redheads
had looked at him with a kind of puppyish admiration—the sister with longing as
well.
I’ve never been able to value what
is freely given. Until now.
It had been Ivard who reached for him, and not
he for Ivard, that remarkable day when the entire station seemed to be
convulsed in the throes of sexual excess. Experienced and jaded as he was,
Lokri had never had an encounter like that; he likened it to falling into a
star.

Since then Ivard treated him with the friendliest, kindest
absence, and it was Lokri who was halfway to falling in love. It didn’t help
that Ivard had somehow, in half a year, metamorphosed from a sidling, ugly
little blit into a beautiful, and not-quite-human, young man.

More-than-human.

Aching with stress, Tat forced tired muscles into a lunge
past the still, silent Ogre stationed outside the Bori mess hall. She dove
straight for the caf dispenser. With the warm mug in her hands she closed her
eyes and slurped up several sips. The heat made her cough.

A snort of laughter nearly made her choke.

“Just what I had in mind.” It was Romarnan, the handsome
tech stuck on a work crew.

“Doubles for you, too?”

“Quantum interfaces,” he said in a soft whisper, grimacing
as he drew a cup of caf and set it on his tray. “Thought nothing was worse than
Recycling until they made us go external, looking for Panarchist quantum
interfaces on the surface in case they do actually launch something at us. Not
that they tell us that much.”

He cast a tense glance around the half-empty room, and Tat
did as well. Everyone looked tired. The Catennach at the best table by the
stasis clamps bent over their compads; no one dared sit near enough to listen
to their conversation, and they didn’t seem interested in anyone else’s.

“Station—or something—tries to trap us when we go in or
out,” he murmured. “Two of us sucked into walls. Like that.” He flicked his
tongue out and in, sipped at his caf, and grimaced. “Then—if we live through
that—there’s another shift, for Barrodagh and his stasis clamps.”

Tat tabbed the warmer. There was a bowl of the eternal stew
with dry brown bread next to it. “He’s not alone.”

Lysanter had her frantic, trying to balance the
computational demands of the stasis clamps against the needs of his research. It
was a measure of his unease that he was allowing an increasingly larger
diversion as time went on. What would it be like after Vi’ya’s next attempt?

“Speaking of the slug,” Romarnan murmured, “who’s going to
get passes when they do activate those chatzing Ogre-things?”

“Only he and the Avatar and Lysanter have them now,” she
whispered. “Don’t know when anyone else will. Or if.”

Tat and Romarnan exchanged grim looks while he tabbed the
warmer. Click, chunk, there was the bowl and bread; she was certain it was the
same amount right down to the milligram.

As they turned away, she said in a low voice, “Food always
dung and crusties, or just here?”

Romarnan grinned, then snuck another look around. “At home,
there are ways to get good grub. But it costs.”

Home? Oh. Imagine
that, “home” had to be Dol’jhar. Horrible!

As they set their trays down, Romarnan breathed, “Rumor is,
you’ve been on the Riftskip.”

Tat nodded cautiously.

He closed his eyes and sighed. “My dream since I was small.”

What could she say? Best to be honest—and careful. “Will
remember.”

That appeared to be enough. He flashed her a grin that made
her go hot inside.

The door opened, and a cluster of Bori walked in. Two walked
slowly, as if in pain, and one had a collarbone sling: healing victims from the
recent Karusch-na Rahali.

Tat chewed her lip, wondering how the Bori protection group
had failed. And where. “I’m just glad it’s over,” she muttered, thinking of the
bruised, lacerated faces of some of the Dol’jharians. Even Tarkans. Except that
the sudden way it had ended—like pulling out a chip—was somehow even more
creepy than the impassive expressions on those marked-up faces.

Romarnan’s lips curled. “That’s part of Darranagh’s crowd.”

Tat looked up in surprise and disgust. “Mean, gossip about
them’s true? They do Karusch-na biznai on each other?”

Romarnan shrugged. “Lots of Bori do it. Bet they even speak
Dol’jharian under the sheets.”

Tat snickered, then frowned at her spoon. “Darranagh’s
kitchen staff. Somehow makes this gunk taste even worse.”

Romarnan grinned. “Don’t dare add anything to the food,
perverts or not. Automatic chem checks before it even goes out.”

“What, so can’t sneak some flavor in by Ur-fruit?”

Romarnan shrugged. “Always been that way. Catennach used to
use poison a lot, to gain position. Sometimes other chem is administered by
food. Antivirals, like that. Dunno. Even asking kitchen staff about that is big
trouble.”

Tat sighed, spooning the last of the food into her mouth. It
did not gain in flavor as it cooled off. She knew she needed the nourishment. She
was always tired.

The door opened again, and two Bori entered. Tat recognized
Farniol, Morrighon’s secretary. Farniol glanced Tat’s way, sending her pulse
racing. This time in fear.

Romarnan’s mouth tightened—he’d noticed the tension in
Farniol’s face as well. What fresh hell was this?

With an eye to the busy Catennach, Tat adjusted her position
so she could see Farniol as she got her food. When the secretary turned away,
her body hid one hand from the Catennach side of the room. Under the tray,
Farniol’s fingers tapped in the
Check log
sign.

She and Romarnan finished quickly and left, going in
different directions.

At her console, she pulled up her secure log and ran
Farniol’s message through decryption. Then she sat back and stared with
fascinated horror at the vid of a big, hairy man on his back humping away at
the air with a huge pinkish thing attached to his groin. Tat looked again at
the header at the bottom of the vid. This had come from Barrodagh’s logs. Did
he like watching this blunge? More important, why’d Farniol tag it?

She recognized the man, of course: Hreem the Faithless. Tat
hated the thought of one of the worst jackers in the Riftskip being on the
station, as if things weren’t bad enough. There were certain names every Rifter
knew: Neyvla-khan; Hreem the Faithless; Aroga Blackheart; Robwizer vonHolle;
Esheilagh of Nayardhe. Tat had only seen Hreem twice, both times wandering
around with Marim from the
Telvarna
Rifters, who was supposed to be his enemy.

A strange shadow in the ceiling above the man’s writhing
body made Tat reach forward to adjust the resolution control, then she stopped.
The shadow rapidly resolved into a weird bulge that opened. A human skeleton
erupted from it and fell on Hreem, who screamed and threw it violently across
the chamber.

Horror gripped her. Hreem thought the skeleton was that of
Norio Danali—the tempath before Vi’ya.

And the station itself had forced it out.

After a blip, an even more terrifying sight: a group of
grays in a room, and as they watched in shock, one of them was propelled by
hands erupting from floor and walls right into the wall. The sounds made her
throat lurch in nausea.

At the end, she took several breaths to still her stirring
guts, and when she looked up, she jumped when she saw Morrighon watching over
her shoulder. That’s what exhaustion did—caused you to betray yourself.