Read The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances Online
Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General
The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances (13 page)
24
CHAIRMAN MALCOLM STANNIS
King Ben claimed to be exhausted and feeling under the weather—an obvious excuse to avoid talking with Chairman Stannis. No doubt Ben had made himself sick with anxiety, fearing a severe reprimand from the Chairman . . . and with good reason.
But Stannis did not plan to raise his voice, would not shout or threaten. He was past that now. A stern lecture or angry scolding would accomplish nothing. The decision was made.
He arrived at the King’s chambers to find the old man already in bed, probably hiding, but King Ben had no choice but to receive his visitor. Stannis walked in calmly, carrying a tray that held a white porcelain pot of steaming tea and two cups. Not what the King expected at all.
Looking like a startled rabbit, Ben sat up against his pillows. “Malcolm, you brought tea!”
“Chamomile tea.”
“One of my favorites—it’ll calm my stomach.” Surprised but pleased, Ben smiled as Stannis set the tray on a bedside table. “My digestion has been off lately. Too much stress, I suppose.” He swallowed visibly, stroked his long white beard, then looked away. “I thought you might come here to scold me again.” He sounded like a little boy.
Stannis picked up the pot of tea and poured a cup for the King and one for himself. He said in a soft voice, “There’s no need for us to shout at each other, Ben. But you do know I’m upset with you.”
“I know, I know. I get caught up in the moment. There’s just too much to keep track of. I really don’t mean half the things I say.” He waved a hand in the air.
Stannis handed him the cup and picked up his own. “Unfortunately, you aren’t just a babbling old uncle. You are the King, so every word you say means something.”
“I realize that.” King Ben’s voice grew even smaller. “But reaffirming Theron independence was the right thing to do. If they don’t want to join the Hansa, we don’t have any claim on them.” He seemed to be begging the Chairman to understand. The King took a drink of his tea, and his nervous hands made it rattle against the saucer. “The colonists on that generation ship left Earth a century and a half ago, and they always intended to be self-reliant. We can’t renege now.”
“Of course not.” Stannis raised the cup to his lips and sipped the hot tea. “Perfectly understandable.” He swirled the cup around, took another drink. “No one could argue with your logic.”
The King wrapped his hands around his own cup, smiling. With painfully obvious relief, he gulped the tea. “I’m so relieved, Malcolm.” He frowned down at the hot liquid in his cup. “Are you certain this is chamomile?”
“Yes, Ben, I made it myself.” Stannis took a third drink, standing aloof next to the King’s bed.
“It has a strange flavor . . . bitter.”
“It tastes fine to me.” Stannis shrugged. “But then I’ve already taken the antidote.”
Ben’s eyes widened. He looked down at his cup, and his hands started to tremble and convulse. He opened and closed his mouth, but Stannis knew the old man didn’t have anything important to say. King Ben began to choke.
He dropped the cup to the floor, where it shattered on the stone tiles next to the bedside rug. The tea leaked out in an expanding puddle and was absorbed by the fabric of the rug.
Stannis watched and waited. According to his research, the poison was quick and supposedly painless—a last little favor he gave to the King in appreciation for his thirty-three years of service.
Ben dropped back against his pillow, where he continued to spasm and twitch, but he went quiet and motionless within minutes. Stannis waited a while longer just to be sure, then left the royal chambers.
“Sleep well, my King,” he said.
Someone would find the old man soon enough.
25
DOBRO DESIGNATE REKAR’H
They buried Chrysta and the unborn child on a grassy hillside overlooking the colony town that she had helped build.
Chrysta had died in his arms and his heart had died with her, along with his dreams, his plans. Rekar’h had loved her, understood her . . . but he did not understand the rest of these humans, or what drove them. And he certainly did not love them—not after what they had done to her.
Stunned and lost, he tried to take comfort in the
thism,
but the Designate no longer found comfort in anything. He had blocked the rest of the world away.
Their baby was murdered as well—the first successful joining of human and Ildiran. The madman’s weapon blast had burned a hole so large in Chrysta’s abdomen that the medical kithmen could not even tell whether the child would have been a boy or a girl.
Rekar’h hunched over her gravesite on the grassy hill, ignoring the surrounding night. Harsh blazers from the Ildiran settlement and the human colony town washed illumination across the starry sky, shedding enough light that the Designate could huddle alone and stare at the holographic gravestone he had placed there for Chrysta. Normally, the darkness should have made him uneasy, but now his pain drove away any hint of fear.
Chrysta. . .
The grave marker held a shimmering image of her face taken from preservation imagers, and he could see how beautiful she had been: her honey-blond hair, her perfect features, the quirky and somewhat secretive smile that she had whenever she was about to tell him something.
He reached out to touch the grave marker. “I studied your culture, Chrysta, and I think this is what you would have wanted.” He drew a deep breath, felt a shudder go through his chest. “But what
I
wanted was to spend more of my life with you . . . and our child, maybe our children. They could have been the first of new hope for our races, strong and beloved hybrids, the best of both of us.” His voice grew harder. “Now everything will change.”
The murder of Chrysta had sent resounding shockwaves through his psyche, through his heart. None of these others mattered to him.
He would accomplish the Mage-Imperator’s commands in a way that would guarantee results. He did not need to be compassionate or flexible, only to ensure that humans and Ildirans interbred, that their genetics were studied carefully, viable halfbreeds documented and measured; all kiths had to be studied.
It could have been so much easier. . . .
Now, he would see to it that the breedings occurred in an organized and well-documented fashion, with no room for compromise, no room for mercy. The humans, all captives now, would do as he commanded, as the Mage-Imperator commanded. What the
Burton
refugees wanted meant nothing to him anymore. Chrysta Logan was the only human to whom he had felt close, and she was gone. The rest of them were just experimental subjects.
Designate Rekar’h straightened from where he knelt, looking at the lights in the human town. By his order, armed guard kithmen surrounded the perimeter, keeping the humans separated from Ildirans. The once-happy colonists were cowed and most definitely not forgiven. He blamed them all.
Carrying blazers now, Ildiran soldiers walked through the human settlement. They had rounded up all of the
Burton
colonists, marking and tracking them, keeping them contained. Worker kithmen had spent the past two days planting posts, stringing wires and bars, transforming the human settlement from a colony to a camp.
He reached down to touch the holographic image of Chrysta’s face. “I’m sorry for everything that happened,” he whispered, but that was the last glimmer of remorse he allowed himself. The rest of his compassion had been snuffed out along with her life. He did not even consider a middle ground. “This is how it must be.”
When he returned to the camp, the guards had completed their latest perimeter sweep. Survey craft flew overhead, shining down pools of illumination to make sure no human tried to flee. The Dobro Designate would not give them the opportunity to run out into the darkness and hide.
“We have confiscated the last of the human weapons, Designate,” said the chief of the guard kithmen. “We even seized tools that could be used against us.”
“Good. And you have also taken away all personal possessions, all mementos? Remove every last trace.”
From the brightly lit area near the fence, he saw the humans staring at him with wide eyes and frightened expressions. Mothers held their children close.
By the Mage-Imperator’s command, the surge of emphasis that the
thism
had wrapped around him in his greatest weakness of grief, Rekar’h had been altered. Now he saw these captive humans only as healthy breeding subjects. He walked among the
Burton
refugees, unafraid. Seven armed guard kithmen strode beside him.
They had to understand the changed situation. They had to know there was no longer any hope for them. Looking at them, he spoke loudly; the anguish in his heart made his voice raw. “Humans!” Most of them were silent, a few whimpered in dismay, but he had no sympathy. “No one knows you are on Dobro. No one from Earth will ever look for you here. No one. Earth believes your generation ship was lost on its voyage. Your derelict vessel will be towed out to the fringe of the Dobro system, where it will never be found.”
His voice was a ragged whisper, mimicking regret that he did not feel. “Things could have been so much different between our races, but now you and all of your descendants must pay the price for this terrible crime.” Anger roiled from him like the winds of a dry storm. “We could have been friends and allies, but your own violence ripped it from my fingers!”
He glared at a small, dark-skinned human boy, no more than ten years old, who had large brown eyes. For a moment, with a ghost-memory of Chrysta, he let the tiniest glimmer of compassion touch his heart, but the
thism
made him stronger, and he crushed it under the bootheel of other emotions. “Henceforth, you will serve the Mage-Imperator’s interests. All of you are now material for our breeding experiments. You will interbreed with Ildiran kiths as
I
choose. If you do not cooperate, we will use force.”
He had already issued commands for the colonists to be separated into groups of males and females, who would be further categorized according to their racial types, the human version of “kiths,” although their variations were far more subtle. Blood had been drawn from every single person in order to build a catalog of DNA maps.
The people shrank away, unable to believe what he was saying. One man gathered the nerve to argue. “But Dario Ramirez didn’t represent us. We don’t condone what he did to Captain Logan! He was a mutineer, a troublemaker, a—“
Rekar’h pointed to the man who had spoken, as if his fingers were spears. “His actions demonstrate your race’s underlying flaw. No Ildiran would kill an Ildiran! How can we trust any of you? Where there is one, there could be others. Security measures must be imposed.”
As he stood in the uneasy crowd, heavy shadows cast a veil across the stunned faces, even though bright blazers illuminated the camp. At the far edge of the crowd, he glimpsed a blond-haired woman who turned quickly away; his heart pounded as he pushed forward, thinking that he had seen Chrysta . . . but his eyes were deceiving him. When the blond woman looked back at him, not just in fear but in disgust, the Designate knew he would never see Chrysta again.
He raised his hand blazer high. “By order of my father, the Mage-Imperator, you are genetic fodder. We will have generations to determine your usefulness to the empire.”
His eyes burned, and he knew he was finished. He had had enough. He turned and stalked away from the human breeding camp, left the fences as the guard kithmen hurried to keep up; they pushed the prisoners away so that the Designate’s passage was unhindered.
Without looking back he walked to his brightly lit residence, the beautiful home he had shared with Chrysta . . . which was now empty.
26
SARA BECKER
The clouds of Daym looked placid and calm, deceptively peaceful, as if the planet wanted to erase all evidence of the disaster.
After the destruction of the Redheaded Stepchild, Sara Becker tried to keep the clan survivors together as they waited for rescue. During the first hours of the emergency, Sara had organized the evacuation of the wrecked cloud trawler, following the emergency plans she herself had developed. Corey Kellum never knew half of what she did as ops manager aboard the facility, but he never questioned her abilities. Sara had always been happy to shoulder the administrative responsibility, pulled the clans together, and helped them to be strong and successful.
Now she had to save them all. The
Kanaka
clans had become experts at innovation, doing the impossible. And there was a lot of Impossible to be done.
Nearly a thousand workers and their families had successfully evacuated from the Redheaded Stepchild. Every cargo ship, scout flyer, shuttlecraft had been crowded with people; even levitating supply boxes were pressed into service. Most of the makeshift lifeboats were never meant to carry passengers, certainly not for any length of time, but the doomed cloud trawler gave them no choice. Against all odds, nearly everyone had gotten away . . . except for Corey Kellum and the few dozen engineers who stayed behind as the facility plummeted into the murky depths.
It had been a difficult few hours before the first wave of scrambled rescue craft arrived from Daym’s other two cloud trawlers, but the
Kanaka
clans always pulled together. Sara directed the operations from the cockpit of her own survey skimmer, ordering the retrieval ships to save the people in the levitating cargo boxes first, which had minimal life-support capabilities. After they filled their holds with evacuees, the rescue ships raced back to the nearest cloud trawler, delivered them to waiting relief personnel, then returned to round up another batch of castaways.
The ships retrieved all the lifeboats they could find, then scoured the clouds, dropping deep to find any desperate vessels without locator beacons. As soon as she had caught her breath, Sara refueled a small ship and went back to the disaster site herself. And refueled again, and went back.
They found no sign of Corey Kellum or his last few crewmembers. Though it had been three days, Sara hadn’t given up hope—not entirely. She knew Corey was too tough and resilient to let a mere crashing skymine stop him.
The last rescue crews crisscrossed the cloud decks. Only six hours ago, a ship had found one cargo box that had gotten separated from the rest. Its batteries waning, life support nearly gone, the sealed cargo box with forty-seven people aboard had drifted deeper and deeper, almost out of communication range, but they had been snagged just in time. Though nearly comatose, freezing and suffocating, the survivors had pulled together to conserve every last bit of energy and air, believing someone would save them.
And they had been saved.
But three days . . .
Sara was nothing if not organized. Refusing to give up, she flew the scout craft accompanied by three other searchers in close radio contact, separated widely enough that they could cover more of Daym’s empty skies. Lavender and gray clouds billowed all around them, but Sara saw nothing out of the ordinary. No signal. No wreckage. No sign of any survivors. She kept looking.
Back at the two intact cloud trawlers, some people had suggested withdrawing the search crews, but Sara insisted on continuing the full effort for at least one more day. Refueled ships with fresh crews had been dispatched, and they combed the open skies near the coordinates where the Redheaded Stepchild had sunk.
Still no sign. Nothing.
Sara was needed back at the other two facilities. Someone had to make arrangements for the crew and families that had been evacuated from the destroyed cloud trawler. Though the Daym system was near Ildira, no cargo ships were due to arrive for at least a week. It was going to be crowded for a while, but not intolerable.
Maybe the Solar Navy would disperse some of the
Kanaka
refugees elsewhere, yet again. Clans could work on different cloud trawlers on other gas giant planets. She hoped the disaster of the Redheaded Stepchild would not make the Ildirans reconsider their offer to let the clans run ekti harvesting operations.
Sara told herself that her people would find a way. The scrappy clan members would seek out any available niche, live in places that others would consider uninhabitable, do tasks that even the lowliest Ildiran kiths did not want to do. “We can always cobble together a solution,” she muttered to herself as she flew along, dredging the optimism from deep within herself.
And like magic, as soon as she said that, she noticed a circular speck against the gauzy cloud banks—something floating.
She signaled the other flyers. “There! I’m detecting something.” She changed course and swooped in. As she approached, she saw that it was an armored sphere, floating at equilibrium. “It’s the control chamber—and there’s a survivor. I see somebody!” A man had emerged from the upper hatch and stood in the open air, waving. He appeared desperate and weak.
Sara dipped her wings as a signal to him, then circled around with hair-fine altitude adjustments, drawing as close as possible. When she used the voice amplifier, her words boomed out into the empty, echoing skies. “Hold on—we’ve got you.” She lowered a ladder from the bottom hatch of the search craft so he could climb aboard. “Is there anyone else?”
Through the voice pickup she barely heard him. “No. Just me . . . only me.” Though he was smeared with soot and grease, his hair bedraggled, his colorful shirt and pants torn, she recognized Corey Kellum. After one look at him, she transmitted to her partner ships as well as the distant cloud trawler, “We’ve snagged one survivor. Looks like we’ll need a medical team.”
The response came, both pleased and surprised. “You
found
one?”
“Yes—and it’s Corey.”
He was jittery and dehydrated, and she had to support him by the arm to drag him aboard. “Come on, let’s get you some water and some calories.” Slumping into a seat, he accepted the water and the energy goo she squeezed into his mouth. He looked weak from exposure, but worse than that—he seemed dazed and shaken to the core. His eyes had a distant, haunted look, and his mouth was partly open, as if an invisible hand had reached inside and torn out all the words that were within him.
“We’ve got you. You’re safe now,” she said in a soothing voice. He met her gaze but seemed to stare right through her. “Don’t you recognize me? It’s Sara—Sara Becker. Can you tell me what happened down there?”
“Terrible things . . .” he said in a low whisper, a private comment, as if he didn’t want anyone else on the planet to hear him. “Monsters . . . deep below.” A flicker of fear like a lightning bolt crossed his face.
Sara threw herself back into the pilot seat and raced toward the nearest cloud trawler. Corey needed medical attention, though he appeared uninjured except for a few scrapes and bruises.
He continued talking in a ragged, awed voice, “And I saw ships down there. Huge ships.” He spoke in an urgent voice, as if he didn’t expect Sara to believe him. “Giant spiked spheres, like nothing I’ve ever seen. Far, far below.” He kept trying to describe things to her that made no sense.
When Sara docked aboard the cloud trawler, a medical team was waiting on the open deck. Sara helped Corey walk away from the scout ship. “Giant spiked spheres,” he said again. “Alien ships. They opened fire.
They
destroyed the skymine . . . killed everyone.”
“You’re safe now, Corey,” she said as the med techs helped him lie on a stretcher. “Just calm down. Rest.” He collapsed as if he simply could not endure any more; he’d held on just long enough to give them that warning.
After the medical team was gone, Sara stood on the edge of the landing deck, looking across the vast ocean of purplish clouds. One of the med techs came up to her, although she didn’t want any company.
“After all that man has been through, it’s no wonder he’s paranoid or mad,” the med tech said. “Maybe he can give us the real story later.”
Sara looked at the med tech. “Corey’s not crazy.”
“You don’t really think he saw anything down there, do you? After so much stress, isolation, explosions, exposure, survivor’s guilt—he’s not thinking clearly right now.”
She gazed into the cloud decks of Daym, the vapor swirls slowly shifted and parted, creating a transient canyon down into deeper layers of clouds. She saw a few ominous lighting strikes, caught a glimpse of shadows down there, like a bruise that spread and then faded. More mysterious flashes, probably static discharges from cloud friction.
Sara shook her head, knowing she was just letting her imagination go wild. In her mind, those placid, majestic skies now carried a sinister edge. Corey Kellum was not a man to tell tall tales, but there was no proof.
The chill breeze picked up. She turned and followed the med tech back into the shelter of the skymine. “I wonder if we might be better off harvesting ekti on other gas giants—if the Ildirans let us.” She drew a deep breath and added, “Maybe we should just leave Daym alone.”