"Councilor Skolia!" The summons came from the band around her wrist.
She spoke into her comm. "What"s the problem?"
"This is Lieutenant Dalero in High Energy. The Impactor data banks are coming back on-line!"
The telop in front of Roca said, "Ma"am, I"m getting another report. Web nodes four and eighteen are activating in Armaments. We"ve also got a power surge in the a.s.sembly chamber that houses console links to the War Room."
"Look," Eldrin said. He pointed at the stardome above them.
Roca looked to where her son pointed. Beads of light were racing along the catwalks that stretched to the Command Chair. A crane swung up to the chair and stopped as if waiting for an Imperator to step out of the empty throne. Below in the amphitheater, static crackled as consoles came on-line. Many voices were coming from speakers now, both human and machine-born, growing in volume as the great sleeping nerve center awoke.
"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" Tikal said into his wrist comm. On the dais around him, the other councilors were also speaking into their comms, more urgently now, receiving reports from their offices. What bits and pieces Roca heard gave the same story; all over the Orbiter, dormant power centers were waking from their slumber.
She looked across the table, past the councilors, to where Dehya stood at the entrance to the Lock corridor. Her sister regarded her, green eyes glazed with the sunset. Their father had called Dehya"s eyes "sunrise eyes," for the sheen of gold and rose hues that s.h.i.+mmered on them, the only trace of his inner lids she had inherited.
Did you do this? Roca asked.
No, Dehya thought. She turned to the Lock corridor. The scintillating columns of light gave it an endless appearance, as if it stretched back into infinity. She spoke in a soft voice that should have carried to no one, given the level of sound in the amphitheater, but that cut through the noise like a knife.
"Look," the Pharaoh said.
They all looked. Roca saw nothing in the corridor. She had an eerie sense then, one that came from Eldrinson, a chill that stepped up her back like icy fingers. Glancing at her husband, she saw him form the words, G.o.ds forgive me.
Tikal suddenly said, "Quiet! Listen."
Voices ebbed into silence as councilors and telops paused to find out what he meant. Then Roca heard it too. The clang of boots. A figure was taking form out of the point of perspective far down the Lock corridor, coming forward from infinity.
One voice continued to speak in the amphitheater. It came from above them, on the holoscreen. A Highton voice. Jaibriol II was standing now, speaking his first words as emperor: On this day, the glory of our ancestors comes full circle. Despite his resonant words, he sounded numb. If Roca hadn"t known better, she would have thought he was drugged.
The clang of boots grew louder. The approaching figure in the Lock corridor looked like a Jagernaut, but Roca wasn"t sure. The pants were right but not the s.h.i.+rt. Whoever it was had mental barriers so strong they hid any hint of ident.i.ty. But within seconds Roca recognized her.
Jaibriol Qox continued to speak, his words echoing through the Hall of Circles, through the War Room, through three empires: So will Eube rise to greater heights than ever before.
The Jagernaut in the corridor came closer, more visible now. She wore the black pants and knee boots of a uniform fifteen years out of date, and a s.h.i.+rt made from fur. The carbine clenched in her fist was an old model, none the less deadly for it. Her hair fell to her hips in a wild mane of curls that swung around her body as she walked. She came without pause, her stride long, her boots ringing on the floor.
Our triumph will be complete, Jaibriol Qox said.
She reached the end of the corridor and stood watching them. On her wrists she wore the ma.s.sive leather-and-metal gauntlets, packed with web tech, that only the Imperator could claim. The archway framed her wild form, lights flas.h.i.+ng and racing around her in spirals. Above her, on the holoscreen, Kryx Quaelen was standing next to his emperor, his arm raised. His voice boomed to the Circles, to the mult.i.tude of peoples spread across the stars: Let it be known! From this day on, the Concord of Eube is reborn.
And in the Lock corridor, Sauscony Lahaylia Valdoria Skolia, Imperator of the Skolian Imperialate, said, "Like h.e.l.l it is."
21.
Soz strode into the Strategy Room just off the amphitheater, surrounded by Inner a.s.sembly councilors, voices swirling around her. She could barely contain the waves of information that beat at her. Her mind was hyperextending through web s.p.a.ce, making link after link after link. How did her father and Dehya endure this madness? How had Kurj organized his mind around this chaos?
Her memories of the past few days tossed like leaves in a whirlpool. The emergency beacon that brought Tailors Needle to Prism, the dismay of the captain and mate when they realized their s.h.i.+p was being hijacked, the lush countryside where she set them down, her children"s tears as they left-it blended into a collage of images tumbling through her mind.
She had come to the Orbiter through a back door set up for the Rhon, one hidden in the web of security that protected the s.p.a.ce habitat. Without the Rhon signature of her brain, she would have been killed within the first second of her approach.
Voices came at her from everywhere, telops humming in her mind, EI brains, people talking. She had no chance to embrace the parents and brother she hadn"t seen for fifteen years. The Orbiter demanded her attention. Didn"t any of them feel it, the intelligence of this giant s.p.a.ce habitat? The Orbiter roared, voracious in its need, striving to awake from a slumber forced on it by the death of its central processing unit.
"How?" Barcala Tikal kept pace with her. "Where have you been? Why now, just when Qox reappears from the dead?"
She stopped in the middle of the Strategy Room and everyone stopped with her. "I"ve been tracking Jaibriol Qox."
"Tracking him where?" Tikal asked.
"On a world with a name I never knew. For fifteen years. We crashed there, on different continents. A few days ago his people found him. I searched out his neutrino transmitter and summoned help." Soz regarded Tikal with a steady gaze. "I want my parents transferred to Earth."
"What?" He looked like a bull that had run into a wall.
"You have all three members of the Triad on the Orbiter." She motioned at where Dehya, Eldrin, and her parents stood watching them from inside the doorway. "In the same flaming room, for G.o.ds" sake. Contact the Allied president. Invoke the protection clause of the Iceland Treaty and have the Allieds transfer my parents to protective custody."
He put up his hand. "I think we need to slow down."
"Send my brother"s widow too," Soz said. Ami stood half-hidden behind Roca, with Judiciary towering on her other side, like a protector. "She can have her baby on Earth. It will be safer there."
"Her what?" That came from Planetary Development, who was standing next to Tikal.
By the wall, Domestic Affairs, the youngest Inner a.s.sembly councilor, bent her head to an ISC telop and spoke in a low enough voice that normally Soz wouldn"t have overheard. But with her mind hypersensitive from her entry into the Triad, the councilor"s voice thundered in her ears.
"Excuse me," Domestic said. "But who is this person?"
"Sauscony Valdoria," the officer said. "Ruby Dynasty."
Almost at the same time, Judiciary spoke to Ami. "Is it true? You carry Kurj Skolia"s child?" When Ami nodded, Judiciary looked up at Soz. "How did you know?"
"Can"t you feel it?" Soz asked. Ami radiated Kyle strength and her baby glowed as well. Aching from the death of her own child, Soz could have no more missed Ami"s pregnancy than she could have missed a nova.
She turned to Protocol, who stood on her left. "We need a Councilor for Foreign Affairs. You"re appointed."
Protocol blinked. "Councilor Roca is Foreign Affairs."
"Councilor Roca is going to Earth," Soz said.
Tikal scowled. "You have no authority to appoint or remove a.s.sembly councilors."
"Right now we need Foreign Affairs," Soz said. "Protocol knows the Inner a.s.sembly. We don"t have time to train someone new." She focused on the councilor. "I need you as Protocol too. I need you to put me through to Jaibriol Qox."
Protocol stared at her. "You want to contact Glory?"
Judiciary came over to them. "You can"t just call up the emperor of Eube."
"Why not?" Soz said.
"It"s not how these things are done."
"It is now."
"Imperator Skolia." Tikal took a breath. "Slow down."
Soz froze at the t.i.tle. Imperator Skolia. Imperator. She couldn"t slow down. The Orbiter demanded her attention. The web demanded. ISC demanded. Her mind was going into overload and she had barely skimmed the outermost edges of the storm.
Soshoni.
The voice cut through the chaos like a rumble of stability. Quiet. Deep.
Father? she asked.
Let us help, he thought.
Soz. That sparkling rill came from Dehya. You need seclusion. Solitude. Time to absorb what is happening to you.
I can"t, Soz thought. I have no time. She spoke to Protocol. "Arrange the call. Do whatever is necessary, but get me a link to Glory."
"I will do what I can." The councilor bowed and then left the Strategy Room.
Soshoni. Her father"s thought rumbled. There is a problem.
She looked at him across the room. Problem?
Dehya answered. Your mind and mine have many similarities. A Triad link with both of us in it may be unstable.
Soz felt as if an abyss had just opened. Would she repeat history, killing another Triad member to become Imperator?
We aren"t as similar as were Kurj and Jarac, Dehya thought. The link is holding.
Soz concentrated on them and the chaos receded. She became more attuned to their minds and those of her mother and brother. She felt their shock at seeing her. She also felt the unease of everyone in the Strategy Room. She had come out of nowhere, and no one knew what she would do.
The a.s.sembly councilors and ISC personnel were all watching her. Turning to Tikal, she spoke in a quieter voice. "How long will it take to arrange pa.s.sage for my parents and my brother"s widow to Earth?"
"Why Earth?"
Soz motioned for an officer standing near the wall. Her node identified him as Lieutenant Coalson, an expert on orbital defense systems, but that data was fifteen years out of date. He wore a major"s uniform now.
Coalson came forward and saluted her. "Ma"am."
"What centers are currently as well defended as Earth?" Soz asked.
He gave her the five she already knew: Parthonia, Diesha, Lyshriol, Glory, and Platinum Sector. Parthonia was the capitol planet of the Imperialiate, Diesha was ISC headquarters, Lyshriol was home to most of Soz"s family, Glory was the Eubian capital, and Platinum Sector was the nerve "center" of ESComm, its equipment and personnel dispersed throughout a huge volume of s.p.a.ce.
Soz considered the options. "I would rather they went to Earth," she told Tikal. "If hostilities between Eube and Skolia increase, ESComm will focus on the Imperialate. They haven"t the resources to go after both us and Earth."
"It"s a good point." Standing on Soz"s right, the Inner a.s.sembly Councilor of Finance, a civilian, was reading a display on his cyberarm. "Our markets are plunging, as Imperialate centers receive Emperor Qox"s broadcast. The Allieds are less affected."
"Qox sounded like a robot," Planetary Development said.
Dryly Judiciary said, "Maybe he is."
"On the Carnelian Throne?" Tikal snorted. "Not with this obsession of theirs for "perfect" bloodlines."
As the others debated, Soz listened. She motioned over staff officers from the War Room, and they all migrated to the Strategy Table, an oval made from the same translucent composite as the columns in the Lock corridor. Lights from the reactivating web flashed within it, chasing each other like trains of glowing beads across gold, copper, bra.s.s, silver, and platinum components, like the gleaming innards of an antique clock.
Using screens in the table, they brought up ISC records for her: troop deployments, bases, weapons, reports, manifests, logs, and more. The longer she spent leaning over the table with them, the more she realized how many gaps her fifteen years" absence had created in her knowledge of ISC.
Sometime during that session Dehya vanished. Soz felt her in the web, felt Dehya"s mental dance as the web tried to incorporate its new Military Key in places already occupied by its a.s.sembly Key. Again and again Dehya s.h.i.+fted Soz, rebraiding the strands that wove the Triad together. Her touch was light, ethereal, whispers over the water, but beneath that delicacy ran cables of steel. Soz"s father was a sea of infinite depth and extent, supporting the web.
Then Protocol returned. As Soz straightened up, surrounded by her advisers, Protocol bowed to her. "I have a line to the Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the Palace Protocol Division on Glory. They should be online in about a minute. Do you have instructions?"
Soz almost grimaced. Her years on Prism had mercifully let her forget the convolutions of bureaucracy. The Traders were masters at it, but it was by no means confined to them. The Imperialate had an Office for the Councilor of Foreign Affairs within the a.s.sembly Protocol Division and an Office of the Councilor for Protocol within the a.s.sembly Foreign Affairs Division.
She indicated a holoscreen on the wall. "If you can switch the link to this room, I"ll talk to them here."
Tikal straightened up from a manifest he had been discussing with Coalson. "Not to their Ministry."
"Why not?" Soz asked.
Quietly he said, "You are the Imperator. You talk only to Emperor Qox."
Emperor Qox. Preprogrammed routines in Soz"s node kicked in, activating neural firing patterns in her brain that simulated a calm response. Somehow she presented an unruffled exterior, hiding her surge of emotion. She had no illusions. If her marriage to Jaibriol and the reasons for it became known, it would create an interstellar crisis of a magnitude neither he nor she was likely to survive. And then what of their children?
She nodded to Protocol. "Let me know when the emperor is on-line."
"Yes, ma"am." Protocol bowed and left again.
Soz nodded to the other councilors. "If you need me, I"ll be in the Solitude Room."
Tikal bowed. "As you wish."
When Soz walked to the doorway, two Jagernauts fell into step with her. She stopped, looking from one to the other, a man and a woman, both huge, looming over her. Then she turned to Tikal.
"Your bodyguards," he said.
She wanted to refuse. She disliked having people follow her around and had managed to avoid it for most of her life. But technically she answered to Tikal. The situation with Kurj and the First Councilor had never been clear, but she knew Tikal had walked with care around the Fist of Skolia. Soz had yet to establish her relations.h.i.+p with the a.s.sembly and knew her choices now were important to their perception of her. Balking at a logical precaution, however much she disliked it, would serve no useful purpose. So she left the room flanked by the two giants.
During the walk to the Solitude Room, Soz remained silent. When they reached the chamber, she said, "Wait outside," to the Jagernauts.
The woman spoke. "We have orders to remain with you at all times, Imperator Skolia."
Soz considered her. "What squad are you attached to?"