Ruler of Naught (76 page)

But then the clatter of footsteps behind Lokri abruptly
reversed. Lokri risked a glance. The Marine was running full out in the
opposite direction, her weapon drawn.

Grateful for whatever had distracted her, Lokri began walking
again. The two nicks looked his way, and Schoolboy made a typically inane
comment.

Lokri passed them by... and his heart thudded in his ears as
adrenaline burned through him. He’d been walking
away
from the doors!
Was that incense tang he’d noted, like and unlike the scents Jaim and Reth had
used, actually some sort of drug? There had to be other doors not so protected.

He scowled at the two nicks, still standing there like
fools, then started trying every door he came to.

Locked. Locked. Locked.

o0o

Aziza came back to consciousness. For a few nasty seconds
she was unable to orient herself. Then memory flooded back, and the thin, slick
fabric around her resolved into the interior of the rescue bag the Marines had
stuffed her into. One of them had slung her over his back. Aziza squirmed
around, feeling the tug of the synflesh in her wound, until she could see
through the semitransparent dyplast.

Sounds came through the fabric blurrily; she heard the woman
say to her fellow Rifters, “Go. Save yourselves. This ship is going to blow. You
can’t stop it.”

They scrambled to their feet and vanished through the ruined
hatch. The Marines dogged down their visors and turned to a bulkhead.

The lights vanished, then came back in the red of emergency
power. Gravity failed. Aziza heard a sizzling roar, and the creaking of metal
stressed beyond its limits. As the roar grew louder, Aziza twisted, trying to
see over the shoulder of her captor. The rescue bag torqued up, leaving her
suspended upside down, but now she could glimpse a sliver of what was going on
ahead of her.

The roar ceased. Two Marines stepped forward and placed a
number of small objects against the bulkhead. They stepped back; jets of flame
spurted from where the objects were leeched to the metal.

Escaping air screeched as the two Marines triggered their
jacs at the weakened bulkhead. The rescue bag crinkled and expanded. Aziza’s
nose began to bleed as the pressure dropped. Something popped at her feet,
stinging her calves: oxy-poppers. As the crystals released the precious gas,
she took a deep breath and wiped her nose. Everyone knew how a rescue bag
worked. No one ever wanted to use one.

The bulkhead blew out, noisy for a second followed by abrupt
silence. She couldn’t hear anything except the crinkling of the dyplast as the
Marine towed her out of the hole. She stared in astonishment: instead of more
ship, there was only a tangle of wreckage, and then space.

Her captor launched himself away from the ship, small
thrusters flaring at the sides of his armor, aiming for a small ship not far
off. A reddish pulse of light bloomed beyond it. Abruptly the Marine twisted,
putting himself between her and it. Then the ruined bulk of the
Deathstorm
lit up with the reflected light of a distant explosion. Aziza felt her right
foot tingle, the skin burning, and jerked it toward her body. She was in the
middle of a battle in space, with nothing between her and the vacuum but a
plastic bag.

She considered that with a kind of quiet hysteria and did
the only logical thing. She fainted again.

o0o

“Skipmissile impact, aft beta section, aft beta ruptor
off-line and not reporting, fiveskip destabilized... ”

The grim litany of the damage-control officer rose above the
pulse of the ruptors as they fired. Ng scanned the tactical plot and snapped
out the orders for a new ruptor barrage.

“... estimate ten seconds to skip... ”

“Skipmissile charging, forward gamma ruptors in harmonic
cycle, shutdown in fifteen seconds.”

The battering the
Grozniy
was taking from the Rifter
skipmissiles was alarming, but the battlecruiser had a long way to go before it
was no longer a danger to its enemies. The hyperwave was turning out to be
unexpectedly effective in the melee.
Babur Khan
had given up trying to
join the defense of
Deathstorm
, and was fighting for its life against
Rifter destroyers, trying to kill as many as it could before the end that now
seemed inevitable.
Grozniy
had taken some serious hits even though it had
yet to encounter the
Fist of Dol’jhar.
At least she knew who she’d be
fighting on that ship, although she’d rather have heard that Juvaszt had been
purged.

A flare of light erupted on the screen. “Multiple ruptor
hits on
Bloodknife
. Target destroyed.”

A quick, grim cheer rang out. That was one less Rifter
destroyer to worry about. Then a shift in the Tenno brought her gaze back to
the viewscreen. Another courier had reported in. The tacponder web that helped
them find ships was still holding the fleet together, but uncertainty was way
up. The clock was smearing as low tac maneuvers boosted ship speeds towards cee
and their relative velocities diverged farther and farther.

The tactical plot resolved into clarity as she integrated
what the new Tenno were indicating.
Armenhaut, you fool.
Stygrid had
started fighting as though the
Fist of Dol’jhar
was truly intent on
taking out
Deathstorm. Flammarion
had charged in, taking tremendous
damage in the process. And now he’d passed up his last chance to withdraw. Had
he even seen it?

“Fiveskip up.”

“Tactical, take us in.”

When the screen cleared from skip, Ng saw that the temporal
fog of battle had finally caught up with her and Armenhaut.
Grozniy
could
only watch.

A wash of pity welled up in her, partly for him, mostly for
his crew. Armenhaut was never stupid, just inexperienced. That, and his inner
conviction that the Panarchy had to prevail because of innate superiority, was a
lethal combination.

But he was not a coward.

Even though she knew it was futile—they were seeing the
action many seconds in the past, at extreme skipmissile range—she snapped out a
new heading, watching the screen intently. “Shoot on acquisition.”

“Tacponder message, relay from
Deathstorm
,” sang out
Ensign Ammant at Communications, absurdly beautiful even under stress, sweat
beading his brow. “The Marines have the FTL comm and are withdrawing in good
order.”

That was good news; but it made all the more bitter the
solemn inevitability of the tragedy unfolding on the viewscreen. Slowly the
Fist
of Dol’jhar
came about on its new heading. A targeting cross sprang up
across its image, overlaid by the skipmissile wake.

“Target acquired, skipmissile away, skipmissile charging.”

The
Flammarion
yawed desperately, trying to bring its
skipmissile to bear on its opponent. The chain-of-pearls trace of a skipmissile
lanced out from the Fist; the Flammarion vanished in a flare of light. When it
dimmed, the ship was still there.

Moments later, the Dol’jharian battlecruiser skipped out,
well ahead of
Grozniy’s
skipmissile. Ng held her breath.

“I think... ” began Commander Krajno, then a billow of
bright plasma shot out of the radiants of the
Flammarion
. Small dots of
light shot away from the stricken ship. Some of its personnel were
escaping—Armenhaut had evidently given the order to abandon ship. Then there
was nothing but an intricately-featured rosette of light fading against the
stars.

Ng shook her head, then straightened up in her pod.
“Navigation, new heading...” she began.

The Marines were still on the
Deathstorm
, their lives
so far bought and paid for by
Flammarion
and many others. She would do
whatever she must to complete the transaction.

o0o

Lieutenant Gristrom tapped at the nav console of the
corvette Bereitte. The little ship responded handily, crabbing closer to the
stricken destroyer less than half a kilometer away. The voice of the Marine
dyarch came through the comm; in different circumstances he’d have fantasized
about the owner of such a voice.

“We’re ready here.”

“Still clear,” said Ensign Appleby, crouching intently at
the another console, set for Siglnt functions. A flare of light washed through
the con from a distant explosion.

“Big one,” she said. “One of theirs, I hope.”

Gristrom ignored her, concentrating on the targeting cursor
for the corvette’s lazplaz. If he was off by as much as a meter he’d fry the
Marines and their prize.

Finally satisfied, he locked in the setting. The
fire-control computer would handle it from here.

“Beam incoming,” he said. A brilliant lance of plasma glared
out, metal puffing away in brilliant coruscations where it hit the destroyer
next to the bridge. He tapped the internal comm.

“Stand by at the locks.”

The lazplaz beam dimmed and ceased, its job done. He glanced
at the viewscreen. Nearby, other corvettes hung in space, waiting for the
Marines. Beyond, another coin of light bloomed in the darkness, now shot
through with new-made nebulae marking the deaths of ships.

“Emergence pulse,” shouted Appleby. “Big one, a cruiser, I
think.”

The viewscreen flickered to full magnification. Gristrom
stared at the silvery hull looming a few hundred kilometers away, the red fist
clutching thunderbolts bold on its side.

They were already dead, he thought. He wondered what a
ruptor felt like.

“Ruptors, fire at will,” said Juvaszt. “First target ships
closest to
Deathstorm
.” On the screens, Panarchist corvettes and cutters
began to disintegrate.

He glanced at the main tactical screen again to reassure
himself. Yes, the last remaining Panarchist battlecruiser—finally identified as
Grozniy
—was still locked in battle with
Satansclaw
,
Hellmouth
, and
Bloodknife
.

The ID had been a shock. He had to kill that ship. After
what Margot Ng had done against the Avatar at Acheront, Eusabian would not
forgive the man who let her escape death. He’d kill the rescue ships and trap
the Marines on
Deathstorm
, then join the battle against
Grozniy
and...

The main tactical screen jerked and froze. Multiple screens
smeared into unintelligibility. The hyperwave discriminators had finally
overloaded.

“Communications!” Juvaszt shouted even as Terresk-jhi
stabbed frantically at her console, and sat back as an image appeared on the
main screen.

Juvaszt’s jaw dropped. The entire bridge crew stared.

Anaris blinked, but the image on the main viewscreen was
still there. Incredibly still there: two naked women, one small and spare, one
tall and spectacular, writhed on the deck of a ship in a tangle of limbs, their
tongues following streaks of some viscous dark liquid across each other’s body,
while a one-eyed man looked on, clutching his bulging crotch and whimpering. In
Dol’jharian terms it was unspeakably depraved.

Static crackled. “Whip me, beat me, make me speak
Dol’jharian,” a voice said lasciviously, while others moaned and panted in the
background.

“Hey, Juvaszt, send that to the Panarchists! They’ll be so
busy flipping their nackers you can blow ‘em away easy,” shouted another.

Anaris understood now: the Rifters throughout the Thousand
Suns were all watching the battle in total safety, adding to the entertainment
by baiting their Dol’jharian masters.

After a heartbeat of frozen astonishment Juvaszt leaped from
his pod and strode over to the communications console, knocking Terresk-jhi to
the deck. He stood over her, his mouth working, but he couldn’t find words.

The unknown Rifter onlookers, however, could.

“Jump her, Juvaszt!”

“Ooh, Dol’jharian sex! I love it! Hurt me, you beast!”

“
Juvaszt kim Karusch-na bo-synarrach, gri tusz ni-synarrh
perro-ti!
“

Anaris bit his lip against a fierce desire to laugh. The
unknown Rifter had an excellent command of Dol’jharian, and had concocted
perhaps the worst insult imaginable, equating Juvaszt’s performance in the
conquest-rituals of mating with solitary sex.

Juvaszt raised his fists as if to slam them down on the
console.

o0o

“Target identified, nine light-seconds, 62 mark 19, coming
about.”

“Skipmissile charged.”

“Fire on acquisition,” said Ng.

The
Fist of Dol’jhar
hung near the ruined Rifter
destroyer, dwarfing the little corvettes swarming around it. As she watched,
several of them puffed into dust and glares of light.

“A little bit of target practice, the chatzer,” said Krajno,
his teeth gritted.

“That’s odd,” Ng commented. “You’d almost think he’d lost
track of us.”

“Target acquired, skipmissile away.” With all the dust and
debris from the battle its impact would be severely diminished.
But then, so
will that of the enemy’s skipmissiles.

“Navigation, new heading, 30 mark 10, skip ten
light-seconds, tac-level five. Weapons, fire all bearing ruptors on emergence.”

The
Grozniy
came about, the fiveskip snarled, ceased.
The ruptors pulsed even as the viewscreen revealed the target’s shields still
flaring from the skipmissile impact. “Ruptor hits on
Fist of Dol’jhar
.
Target coming about... ” The fiveskip snarled again as the edge of a ruptor
pulse shuddered through the ship.

They’d bought the rescue ships a little more time. Ng issued
new orders to continue the attack.

o0o

A soundless blow jolted the ship. The gravitors hiccupped,
and Anaris’s stomach lurched as the lights flickered.