Ruler of Naught (77 page)

“Skipmissile impact, forward first segment, forward first
ruptor turret not responding, fiveskip destabilized, estimate ten seconds to
skip... ”

“Ruptors fire on heading 135 mark 16, wide barrage, now!”
Juvaszt shouted as he leapt back into his pod.

“Communications, give me clean channels to
Satansclaw
and
Hellmouth
... ”

The shuddering squeal of a ruptor pulse shook his voice into
silence. A gravitational eddy ripped open a bulkhead at the front of the
bridge, spinning a crewman away in a tangle of broken limbs as a console
exploded.

“Multiple ruptor hits, engine two destabilized, fiveskip
still stabilizing... ”

‘Tactical skip when able,” Juvaszt snapped. “Fifteen
light-seconds. He motioned to the luckless communications officer’s second, who
took over on his console, and then to the Tarkans posted by the second aft
hatch. They ran over and hauled the dazed woman away.

The fiveskip pulsed. “Tactical skip executed.”

Anaris glanced at Morrighon, who made a note. If Terresk-jhi
was still alive after the battle, he would intercede for her—another ally would
be useful, especially in communications.

Juvaszt glared around the frozen bridge.

“Communications reestablished with
Satansclaw
and
Hellmouth
,”
reported the second communications officer in the flattest possible voice.

Juvaszt began issuing orders again. Anaris watched,
thoughtful, then noted his own reaction of relief as Damage Control reported
that the section of the ship housing the Panarch and the other prisoners had
escaped injury.

Anaris would consider the implications later. He looked up
at the tactical plot; the Panarchists were taking tremendous losses.

He smiled. On more than one level, the Battle of Arthelion
was going very well.

o0o

Dyarch Bengiat pushed her burden ahead of her into the lock
of the corvette, easing it to the deck as gravity grabbed at it. She looked
thoughtfully at the unconscious woman within.

Woman?
She’s barely more than a girl
. The girl’s
short curly hair was matted down, her olive skin smudged; Bengiat could see a
vein throbbing in the translucent skin of her temple. How’d a child like that
end up with a ship full of blungebags?

Then she shook her head as the inner lock door cycled open.

For all she knew this Aziza could have grown up with the
likes of Qvidyom.

She pushed through the hatch into the corvette and triggered
her comm.

“Sound off, Marys, I need a head count.” Anyway, she had
more important things to worry about now. She looked at Jheng-li, who cradled
the alien machine in his arms. They had what they came for. All that remained
was to get the hell out of the system alive.

o0o

“But, Kyvernat,” Anderic stammered. “There might be a chance
they can get their repairs done... ”

“Do not argue with me, unless you want to be left powerless
to face that Panarchist battlecruiser,” Juvaszt cut in. “Destroy the
Deathstorm
immediately and stand by for further orders. Juvaszt out.” The image
disappeared, leaving stars in its place.

Anderic looked around the bridge, sensing the pressure of
the crew’s attention, even though none of them looked directly at him.
Don’t
they realize I have no choice?

But it made no difference. It wasn’t a matter of logic. Even
as allies of Dol’jhar, Rifters still thought in terms of us versus them, and
the Dol’jharians were more ferociously
them
than even the highest
Douloi.

He remembered the Panarch standing on the bridge of his
enemy’s flagship. He had every reason to hate the nicks, but somehow the
Panarch had looked like someone you could actually talk to, who would actually
listen.

Anderic snorted. He’d talked to Eusabian instead, who would
never hear anything but what he wanted to from the fearful scuttlers around
him.

“Navigation,” he said. “You heard him. Take us in to three
light-seconds. Fire Control, status?”

“Skipmissile charged,” came the answer. Anderic could hear
resentment in the man’s tones.

“Course laid in,” said sho-Imbris.

“Do it.”

The fiveskip hummed. The screen cleared, and stars swung
across it. The screen flickered to a close-up. The
Deathstorm
was a
wreck, great holes punched in its hull where the lances had penetrated, its
missile tube bent and torn, plasma leaking from a rent near the engine room.
Several small ships hovered nearby. Before Anderic could issue an order to
determine if they were rescue ships for their damaged Rifter ally, they began
to vanish, leaving behind the spherical pulses of the fiveskip.

A targeting cursor bracketed the dying ship.

“Target acquired.”

“Fire,” said Anderic.

Nothing happened.

Anderic looked hopelessly around the bridge, seeing no friendliness
anywhere. He realized that the only thing that would keep him alive from this
point on was the logos, which he hated. With a snarl of self-hatred he brought
his hand down on the firing tab. Three seconds later the
Deathstorm
blew
up, fragments spinning away through a scintillant cloud of dust and glowing
gas.

A short time later, Juvaszt appeared on the viewscreen,
demanding a report.

“The
Deathstorm
is destroyed,” Anderic reported.

Juvaszt said, “Were there any remaining Panarchist ships?”

No ‘good job,’ no acknowledgement of loyalty.
Anderic
stared at the scowling captain, realizing that he hated the Dol’jharians even
more than he did the logos.

He’d seen Panarchist ships leaving before he killed
Deathstorm
.
What would happen if the Dol’jharians thought the hyperwave had been destroyed,
but it hadn’t?

He smiled, knowing Juvaszt would misinterpret it. “They were
all destroyed in the explosion,” he said.

Juvaszt issued new orders, then cut the com. Anderic looked
around the bridge; the atmosphere had changed again. It would be too much to
say that he’d regained his crew’s respect, and certainly not any liking. But he
saw in their grim faces that every one of them agreed with what he’d just done.

o0o

Captain Ng watched again the replay from the courier. As the
remains of the
Deathstorm
faded she tapped her console. The image
vanished.

“That’s it, then. Ammant, any news?”

“Nothing, sir.”

She sighed. The battle was evaporating now. The Navy had
taken too many losses to continue.
Flammarion
,
Barahyrn
, and
Lady
of Taligar
destroyed,
Babur Khan
missing... Her throat tightened.
Falcomare
missing...

And they didn’t know if they had the FTL comm or not. They
could only wait, staying out of the way of the victorious enemy while the slow
pulse of relativistic communications spread through the tacponder net,
invisible to their opponents.

“Emergence pulse,” said Siglnt. The fiveskip burped in an
automatic tactical skip of 2.5 light-seconds. “Corvette, the
Bereitte
.”

“Message incoming.” Ammant put it on the screen before Ng
could respond.

The viewscreen cleared to an image of a very small, very
cramped bridge. A Marine, a dyarch from the insignia on her rumpled jumpsuit,
stood beside a small olive-skinned woman with a bloody nose. But Ng’s gaze
shifted past to the Marine next to them, standing with his hand possessively on
the weirdest piece of—what? Her heart slammed.

The naval lieutenant in the foreground saluted. “Lieutenant
Gristrom reporting, sir, attached
Flammarion
.” He smiled, weary and
proud. “We got it.” And he added grimly, “Paid in full.”

The bridge erupted in cheers, a release of emotion greater
than anything Ng had ever experienced. And rightly so. They’d paid a terrible
price for that red-glowing lump of metal, but now they had the key to the greatest
of the enemy’s two advantages.

They now had a chance.

After a time she became aware of Ammant trying to shout
above the tumult.

“Tacponder update incoming. We’ve found the
Babur Khan
,
it’s in bad shape.”

The noise died away abruptly as people leaped back into
their pods.

“Get on board, Lieutenant,” she said. “We’ve got more to
do.”

Jaim noticed the flame the moment they entered the sacred
place, but he kept his distance.

For a time he observed the small woman whose commanding
presence pointed her out as leader. He saw Ivard briefly come out of his Kelly
fugue when the woman touched him in a ritual pattern. He watched the Eya’a
respond to her as they never had to any other human, and Vi’ya react with
challenge and then retreat. He saw the woman dismiss Brandon, like an erring
child, to another portion of the building.

The woman’s eyes caught his, and he recognized in her the
long practice of a Discipline. Not Ulanshu, he was sure; her body denied that.
But her gaze—completely present, relaxed, without anticipation and yet with
certainty—was one he’d faced many times across the mat.

“You have the freedom of Desrien. Make what use of it you
will.”

He saw Marim skip away, no doubt on the lookout for anything
not nailed down that she could conveniently fit into her pouch, and Lokri,
whose anger at the Panarchists for baring his past had not diminished, looking about
for an exit. Montrose was drawn to the music, which after some discordant hooms
and sqwonks, took on his familiar style. Memory clawed at Jaim: Reth, the
shimmering tones she’d brought from the twelve-tone cymbals, interweaving
bright treble flame with the dark bass of Jaim’s sansa drums.

The memory drew his eyes back to the red flame. He saw Ivard
lying on the floor in front of the altar, two robed forms bending over him,
with the Marine looking on.

He started that way, walking in and out of slanted shafts of
reddish light from the windows overhead. The ruby coloration was due to
patterns in the glass, bringing once-heard words:
The Rouge Gate, whose
aspect is actuality.

Impatiently, he stilled the chatter of his mind as the two
figures disappeared around the altar with Ivard. By the time he reached the
altar, they had vanished.

“Where did they go?” he demanded of the Marine. Her wary
gaze took him in. “You’ll have to ask the High Phanist,” she said finally. “I
didn’t see where they went.”

Jaim looked around helplessly at several doors, but that
would be a fruitless quest. The Marine left him without a word.

So he stood there, not knowing what to do. He had no desire
to speak to the High Phanist, to argue truth and non-truth with a shaman. No
matter what they said, the truth was that Reth was gone. There was no joining
of spirits—despite the years of ritual, despite the unswerving love they had
had for one another...

He tried to shake the images. If anyone should have been
able to bridge the Valley of Mystery, it was Reth. He had never known anyone so
serene, so strong with the Flame.

He glanced again at the red glow in the lamp. Actuality: a
flame existed here, but nothing There. Here, flame burned you.

Nearby Omilov and Osri pored over the artwork. He might as use
up the time by studying the glasswork, having always liked vitrine art.

Turning his back on the flame, he scrutinized the sacred art
of an unfamiliar branch of the Path. The triune imagery, the depictions of a
human suffering a hideous death, made him wonder at first if this might be a
Dol’jharian religion, but outside of the one image of a man being tortured on a
cruciform, there were no demons or other signs of violence. The triune symbols
were overlaid by the more familiar balance of fours: even the building itself
was laid out in a rectangular form.

He glanced up the light slanting in the west windows as the
horizon rose towards the sun, again hearing words:
The Phoenix Gate, whose
aspect is irreversibility.

Appropriate, he thought as he strolled along the northern
wall. Phoenix: the bird that was destroyed in flame and then reborn. Another
splendid fantasy. But fantasy only. Irreversibility: Reth was gone, and she was
not coming back.
Except I shall send Hreem after, that I promise.
The
Ulanshu Path—it also promised irreversibility. The flame of anger burned
steadily for vengeance. That one was no fantasy.

He glanced at the altar. The strong light from above cast
the east end of the building in shadow; the flame was no more than a tiny
gleam. Anger burned brighter than spirit.

Flexing his hands, he walked on.

More art. There were the Omilovs again, probably killing
time in the same way. Only now the old gnostor looked sick, and Osri bewildered
instead of angry. Had the Dreamtime gripped them with unsheathed talons?

All to little purpose—be at peace, he was inclined to tell
them, but of course he did not. His opinion would mean nothing. Schoolboy would
react with scorn, and his father with the bland smoothness of Nick
manners—Douloi. Smooth as ivory—

The Ivory Gate, whose aspect is autonomy.

Now he had it: the Mandala. The nick art treasures had been
kept in the Ivory Hall’s antechamber, and Ivard had looked all this up. Jaim
remembered him talking about it while doped up, just before they reached Dis.

Autonomy. He liked that.

Breathing in the scent of incense, he approached the altar.
The huge rose window at the east end gleamed with muted color. Its shape was
the eternal circle, which corresponded with the last of the Panarchist four:
The
Gate of Aleph-Null, whose aspect is transcendence.

Beauty with no meaning.

He stopped before the altar. But then beauty was beauty—he
could appreciate it for itself; it did not, in the final analysis, have to have
meaning. “Transcendence” simply meant that one could look away from the bone
and grit of everyday life for a short time, and contemplate grace and color and
joy in form, but when the eye turned away, it was gone. As when the body died,
the spirit was gone.