A Prison Unsought (67 page)

She gazed up into the strong-boned face, seeing no vestige
of warmth, of appeal. Her own ardor had vanished, but she said with a fair
attempt at bravado, “I thought you said you liked to pick the time, the place,
and the person?”

The cold amusement narrowing those black eyes hit her like a
blow, and she quailed at last and whirled around, scrabbling for the door pad.

Or tried. The unfamiliar acceleration unbalanced her, making
her slow. He was right behind her. His hand reached past her shoulder and flicked
the lock.

“They’re not ideal.” He caught her bruised wrist in an
unbreakable grip that promised no tenderness and no escape, and those white
teeth bared. “But they are convenient,” he said.

As they awaited Commander Totokili, Lieutenant Commander
Rom-Sanchez observed suppressed amusement in Captain Ng, as though there were a
joke she longed to share but couldn’t. He glanced around, unsure if others in
the Plot Room saw it as well.

Commander Krajno surely did. Although habit enabled him to
keep his face blank, he’d served under Ng too long not to be able to read her
moods. Only the armorer, Navaz, seemed oblivious to the subtle emotional currents
in the room; her life revolved around the cims, the machinery that made the
Grozniy
largely independent of supply
centers.

The presence of a mind-blur on the table before Ng indicated
the seriousness of her summons.
She wants
to make sure that Dol’jharian doesn’t pick up any secrets,
thought
Rom-Sanchez. There was no doubt in his mind that this meeting concerned their
imminent approach to Gehenna, now less than two days away.

Gehenna.
The name
possessed a doomful resonance for them all.

No doubt everyone had looked up the origin of the word, if
they didn’t know it. Rom-Sanchez wished he hadn’t. The illustration, animated
with indecent clarity by some artist who should have known better, had haunted Rom-Sanchez’s
dreams for days: a garbage dump outside the towering walls of some ancient city
on Lost Earth, wreathed in stinking smoke and the flames of decomposing trash
jetting from cracks in the ground, where the bodies of criminals were dumped,
with starveling dogs . . . He shook off the memory. Were there
really places like that in the Thousand Suns?

At the outset of their mission they’d been given the
coordinates of the planet, nothing more. What made it worse was that there was
no other information at all about Gehenna in the Naval databanks, no matter
what your rank or skill at data-diving. None.

The hatch hissed open and Commander Totokili strode in, his tall,
stiff brush of yellow hair from ear to ear jerking in time to his steps. As
soon as the chief engineer had seated himself, Captain Ng reached out
deliberately to tab the mind-blur on. It began to emit a whine at the edge of
hearing.

“This briefing falls under the
protocols of secrecy as outlined in the Articles of War,” she began. Her voice
was measured, laden with a formality contradicted by the faint trace of a smile
deepening the corners of her mouth. “Pursuant to my instructions from Admiral
Nyberg, the
Grozniy
now being
forty-eight hours from Gehenna, I have brought you here to witness the opening
of my sealed orders.”

With an automatic gesture, Commander Krajno pushed the
secure data console on its swivel to the captain. But, instead of entering her
personal ID, Ng pushed the console away and reached into her jacket, bringing
forth a stiff, buff-colored envelope.

She let her smile free at last. “I have always
wanted to do this.”

The others watched in astonished silence as she worked a
finger under the flap. Rom-Sanchez found the crackling of the parchment
envelope mesmerizing, and his back tingled.
It’s
like something out of a historical serial chip.
He had never seen hard-copy
orders before. From the way the others stared, he guessed none of them had,
either.

Finally Ng extracted a single sheet of paper from the
envelope and unfolded it. She looked at it and her eyes widened. For a long
beat she didn’t move. Then, laying the sheet down on the table in front of her,
she began to laugh.

Rom-Sanchez craned his neck to look, but could discern
nothing of the message’s content, except that there was only a single line—in
fact, only four words—indited on the page in a strong, looping hand. Not only
hard copy, but handwritten.

“Brilliant!” she gasped finally.
“Absolutely chatzing brilliant!”

Rom-Sanchez sucked in his breath. He had never heard Ng use
an emphatic vulgarity before. When her eyes encountered his, she laughed even
harder, and his face burned.

“I’m sorry, Commander,” she said,
wiping her eyes. “You look like you’ve just seen your mother do a strip dance.”

Krajno chortled. “All right, Captain. Give.” He held out his
hand, but Ng snatched the paper back and folded it up. Totokili looked
perplexed; Navaz’s attention had finally found something of interest outside of
her sphere, and her gaze ferreted back and forth between Ng and Krajno.

“No, Perthes. I’m enjoying this too
much—and so will you. You must have wondered what the secret of Gehenna is, how
it’s guarded, and, most of all, how the government has kept that information
secret all these years.” She looked around the table at all of them. They
nodded.

“Simple. They never put it into the DataNet. The secret of
Gehenna exists only on paper, and in the memory of a few people in the highest
levels of government.”

“So we’re going in blind,” said
Totokili, looking grim. “I don’t think that’s very funny.” He motioned at the
paper. “There can’t be much information in that.”

“All that’s needed,” Ng replied.
She reached out and pulled the console to her, then tapped rapidly at the keys.

A hologram condensed over the table, its form vaguely
familiar: a shallow hyperbola, with a blue-white sun at its center. The conic
sections were angry red nearest the asymptotes and faded to invisibility as the
distance from the sun increased. Small spheres, and even smaller dots,
indicated planets and asteroids. The latter were thickly scattered throughout
the system.

“System FF,” said Navaz suddenly.
“The Knot.”

Every officer there straightened up, thrown back to their
cadet years: the infamous System FF simulation. It was based on a theoretical
construct involving the possible intersection of a fivespace fracture, left
over from a more energetic period in the universe’s history, and a sun with a
mass greater than 1.4 Standard. The result postulated was a system that could
only be entered in the plane of the ecliptic, and even there, the fiveskip
could be used only in very short skips. It made for a very interesting tactical
situation.

The hologram evolved, zooming in on the fourth planet;
Rom-Sanchez remembered being pinned against that planet in the simulation,
unable to skip out before his opponent blew him to plasma. He wondered what the
others’ experience of the FF simulation had been.

Krajno’s craggy jaw dropped as the import of what he was
seeing finally registered on him. As he opened his mouth to speak, Ng unfolded
the order and held it up for all of them to see. There, inscribed in Admiral
Nyberg’s handwriting, was a single sentence:

“Gehenna is System FF.”

The Plot Room rang with mirth in the sudden release of
tension. Not only were they not going in blind; every officer on the ship was a
veteran of at least one simulated battle in the Gehenna system.

Totokili shook his head in wonder. “So the secret is just
that link—everything else about Gehenna is in the DataNet.”

“Just about,” Ng said. “Admiral
Nyberg told me when he gave me the orders that we would be the first Naval ship
to enter the Gehenna system since its discovery over seven hundred years ago.”

“How do they get the criminals
there?” Krajno asked.

“Evidently there’s a single Family
charged with the responsibility,” Ng replied, tapping at the keys. “They’ve
held it since the reign of Nicolai I.”

In the hologram, the planet rotated, and the point of view
dipped toward the surface. A crater became visible, scale markers indicating
its size: nearly sixteen kilometers across. “If we assume that everything about
the FF simulation is accurate, and Admiral Nyberg’s message certainly implies
that, then that crater is the center of the habitable zone.”

“I always wondered why that
information was specified,” said Navaz. “I assumed it was merely a touch of
verisimilitude.”

“So did we all,” Commander Krajno
added.

‘The point is,” said Ng, all the
humor suddenly gone from her voice, “that we can expect His Majesty to be
landed somewhere within five hundred kilometers of it.” She paused. “If the
Rifter ship makes it through the Knot.”

There was abrupt silence.

“But the Dol’jharians don’t know
about the system. . . .” Krajno’s voice trailed off.

“Would His Majesty tell them?”
Rom-Sanchez asked.

Ng shrugged fractionally.
“I don’t know. The only one who might have a clue is one I can’t confide in,
since he still visits the Rifters from time to time, including the tempath.”

The Aerenarch.
Rom-Sanchez remembered the briefing they’d
received from the exiled Dol’jharian gnostor about the Rifter tempath.
“In
combination with the Eya’a, she has transcended tempathy and can read
conceptual thought—true telepathy. We do not know her limits.”

Navaz spoke. “Is that really a consideration anymore?”

“What?” Totokili burst out as Ng
regarded the armorer in silence, brows raised.

Navaz pointed at the hologram. “The strength of that
secret—its simplicity—is also its weakness. Once we enter the Gehenna system,
especially if we fight a ship-to-ship action with a Rifter destroyer, everyone
on the ship will know that Gehenna is System FF.”

“That’s why no Naval ship has ever
visited it!” Rom-Sanchez exclaimed.

“Then Gehenna will no longer be
protected by secrecy,” said Ng. “You’re right. I won’t go into action without a
fully informed crew. You never know who may be called upon to make a command
decision.”

She straightened up. “So I might as well start at the top.
Genz, we will convene at . . . oh eight hundred tomorrow to plan
our approach.”

Navaz scowled at her hands as they filed into the corridor.

Totokili said to her, “Problem?”

“We couldn’t rescue the Panarch at
Arthelion, but now we will,” she said slowly.

“Because we’re under orders,”
Rom-Sanchez put in.

Navaz gave him a distracted glance. “AyKay, the Aerenarch
ordered the rescue. It’s his duty. But . . . what if the Panarch
decided it was his duty to not tell the Rifters about the Knot?”

“They’ll be dead,” Totokili said,
snapping his blunt fingers. “But we’ll see it.”

That much of their mission would be standard procedure: on emergence,
check the tacponders for traces. They could then observe the Rifter destroyer
entering the system by standing out from the Gehenna system a distance equal to
the time elapsed between its arrival and theirs.

Krajno grunted softly. “As for the Panarch’s ‘duty’—how he
might perceive it, and how he might react—why do you think she’s briefing the
Aerenarch alone?”

o0o

Margot Ng was amused
at the way her heartbeat accelerated when the middy on duty sent word of the
Aerenarch’s arrival at the Plot room. It was the first time she had ever been
alone with the young man around whom such a storm of controversy had thundered.

Young?
she thought as Brandon vlith-Arkad walked in, and
she scrutinized him. A pair of intelligent blue eyes met hers in a brief, assessing
glance that held no hint of the callow arrogance of youth. The bland contours
of childhood had long since been planed from the refined face that presented
such a formidably amiable front. Years of control rendered his countenance
perfectly balanced. The toll the struggle on Ares must have taken on him showed
only in the tightness of muscle across his brow and the hint of exhaustion
marking the skin beneath his eyes.
He can’t be much more than a decade younger
than me.

The novosti had done a perfect job of maintaining the
illusion of his eternal youth—with all its damaging implication of callowness
and irresponsibility.

“Your Highness.” She made a formal
courtesy. “Please, will you sit down?”

They went on with the ritually prescribed exchange of
niceties. She tried to make her part sound as sincere as she could. After all,
he had willingly deferred all his prerogatives—he’d come to her, and at once,
instead of requiring her to transfer all her data up to the cabin hastily
fitted out as the royal suite and then making her wait upon his convenience.
As his eldest brother would have done to an
upstart Polloi.

And then it was time for the real business. She glanced at
the steward who had finished pouring out coffee, and he silently withdrew.

As soon as the door closed, she leaned forward. “How much do
you know about Gehenna, Your Highness?”

“Nothing,” Brandon replied with
cooperative readiness.

“As much as any of us had, then,”
she said, and then held out the parchment paper. “The sealed orders from
Admiral Nyberg.”

She sat back and
watched his expression go from surprise to recognition, to enjoyment—and then
to comprehension.

He knows that the
secret is lost, whether for good or ill. I don’t have to risk offense with
speech.
How could the Panarch have condoned what had happened to his youngest
son? Was he too overworked, too distant from his sons after losing his wife—or
did he wish, in some way, to preserve the past by regarding Brandon as a youth?

She gave herself a quick mental shake. Fascinating as it was
to speculate about the human beings behind the high titles, this was not the
time or place. Brandon’s remarkably acute perceptions made such speculation
dangerous.