A Prison Unsought (77 page)

They searched the rest of the crew just as efficiently; then
the senior Tarkan returned to the hatch. Anaris achreash’Eusabian strode onto
the bridge, followed by Morrighon, whose eyes sought Lar out.

Lar shrank back.
Oh,
Tatriman, what have you done?

Morrighon walked to Creote’s console and pushed him out of
his pod.

Creote scrambled away like a spider and retreated to a far
bulkhead. Seating himself in his place, Morrighon tapped at the keys. A squeal
of code was followed by the flickering light of a high-speed playback.

He planted a spy trap,
independent of the ship’s computer.

After a beat, Morrighon looked up. “They launched repeaters,
lord, spooled with a message to the cruiser about the shuttle and the Panarch.”

“Can you cancel them?” Anaris
asked.

Morrighon touched a key. “Self-destruct signal dispatched.”
He touched another key; Creote’s recorded voice suddenly filled the bridge. “. . . on
the planet’s surface at latitude 33.7, longitude 358.9, according to System FF
simulation coordinates. We are leaving the system—”

The message stopped abruptly.

“ . . .latitude 33.7, longitude . . .”
Another message cut short. Morrighon cut the com; no need to listen to the messages
cut off as the destruct signal reached the fleeing repeaters one by one.

“They will not hear it, lord,” said
Morrighon, staring at Fasthand with a gloating smile. “The ion storm will obscure
the signals until the destruct message catches up with the last repeater.”

“Good.” Anaris took a step toward
Fasthand. “They would not have let you go in any case. You know the secret of
Gehenna.” He smiled coldly. “So you will fight or die.”

Somehow, to Larghior’s astonishment, Emmet Fasthand found it
in himself to reply, “Fight and die, you mean.”

Anaris merely stared at him, then raised his hand. As one of
the Tarkans came forward, Fasthand gobbled quickly, “We’ll fight, we’ll fight.”

“Then bring this ship about,”
Anaris replied. “You will have one slight advantage.”

Fasthand looked at him blankly.

“They will try to disable and board
you, to find out where the Panarch was landed. You will be under no such
restraint.”

Lar found Morrighon standing next to his pod.

“Take me to your cousin, Larghior
Alac-lu-Ombric.” Anaris’s secretary must have seen the mute refusal in his
face, for he added in a low voice, “No harm will come to you and yours; I have
already sent for your brother. This ship will shortly be destroyed in battle.
Do you not wish to live?”

Lar nodded, confused and unable to stir. Then, at an
impatient gesture from Morrighon, he got up from his console and followed him
off the bridge.

Matilde Ho slid tiredly down the wall and squatted on the
deck plates. She’d done what she could to undo the damage inflicted on the ship
by the Dol’jharian saboteur. Now it was up to the self-repair algorithms to
finish and give them enough power to lift off.

BOOM. Another reverberation shook the ship, echoing up
through her aching joints, through her healing arm and into her eyeballs.
They’d had to tune the shields down to conserve power. The Gehennans had
brought up heavy catapults and were throwing half-ton rocks at them.

Rocks! It’s like
something out of a surreal history chip.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, as if
to push the pain back, and let a bubble of laughter well up inside. It sounded
more like a sob when it emerged.

She was unaware of Gelasaar standing over her, looking down
at her worriedly when her wounded arm dropped. He reached down and touched her
lightly on the knee; she glanced up at his blue eyes, reading the concern
there.

She forced a smile to cracked lips. The heat from the fires
set by the Gehennans around the ship was slowly seeping in.

“I’ll do.” She gestured. “Ironic,
isn’t it? Out in space, rocks are the primary hazard to a ship, too.”

He smiled back, a hint of the old mischief there, recalling
his young days when they first met. “Look what I found.” He brandished a small
dusty bottle of liquor dark with age. “Some Rifter’s private stash is my
guess.”

Matilde leaned forward, then gasped. “Napoléone!”

“And it’s a century old, if the
label can be believed,” the Panarch said, pointing. “Shall we?”

Matilde laughed as the shuttle rocked under another
concussion. “Why not?”

With an air of ceremony the Panarch eased the cork out, and
then after a toast to their unknown benefactor, took a sip. His eyes closed,
and he smiled. “Perfect.”

So they sat there, side by side, rank forgotten, all forms
of ritual abandoned, and passed the bottle back and forth while outside the
crash and boom of primitive missiles provided a demented counterpoint.

Matilde cherished the burn of the alcohol down her throat,
the warmth in her chest, the glow in her head. Gelasaar longed for the sensory
blanket that liquor might confer, but his thoughts stubbornly arrowed up beyond
the atmosphere to that brilliance in the sky.

At first they conversed little, beyond toasts: Padraic,
Teodric, and other fallen comrades; Eusabian’s downfall.

Then Matilde’s mind ranged outward. “To Brandon,” she said.
“Wherever he is.” She drank deeply and passed the bottle.

Gelasaar lifted the bottle toward the sky. “To Brandon.” And
drank.

A semblance of ritual had returned. It was inevitable—too
much a part of their identity, of the meaning of their lives.

Matilde bit her numbing lips, wondering if now—at last—had
come the time to speak. During these hours of relative freedom they had all
talked, tongues more unguarded than ever before. Past mistakes reexamined,
Semion and his likely future as Panarch considered; Gelasaar seemed to have
relinquished the role of Panarch, and in his retrospection regarded his past actions
with the dispassionate scrutiny of distance.

But one subject he had not brought up and the others had
stayed clear of: Brandon, the third son and now heir, who was alive only
because he had unaccountably left his own Enkainion minutes before it was to
have begun.

How to discuss it? Semion at least had played out his games
within the rules, and by some factions he’d been hailed as a fine prospect for
a ruler, one who had the Thousand-Year Peace at heart. Brandon’s unexplained
action had no precedent, would have been seen as an insult to the highest in
the land—one made, moreover, as publicly as was possible.

Matilde said carefully, “Do you think he’s out there?”

Gelasaar smiled ruefully. “I have faith he might be.” He
passed the bottle back, then went on, his gaze pensive, “I believe this: if
he’s alive, he’s out there on that inrushing daystar. In spite of
circumstances. Because of circumstances.” He lifted his chin, looking upward at
the curve of the bulkhead. “We never had enough time together. But duty, as I
perceived it, required me to spend that time with Anaris.”

“Did Brandon resent you for that?”
Matilde began to put together a logic chain of images—jealousy—resentment. But
the Panarch shook his head, and they vanished.

“He knew. What I could not tell him
was how impossible it was for me to come between my sons. What I could not show
him was how much effort I expended to make certain he had what he needed. I
observed him from afar, and since this attack I believe I have, in some
measure, come to know him a little in the last weeks—as our ancestors came to
know something of the invisible particles of their physics by observing where
they had been, where they ought to be, where they were not, and their effects
on what was observable. I have followed my son’s shadow through my
conversations with Anaris, and through our own discussions.”

Matilde sipped, fighting the burn of tears.
I’ve drunk too much,
she thought.
I’m maudlin with memory and regret.
And
she cursed herself for having brought up a subject that could only cause pain.

But Gelasaar’s eyes and hands exhibited no trace of regret
as he lifted the bottle. “To Brandon,” he said. “And faith.”

And with a gesture of deliberate benediction he drank off
the rest of the bottle, then threw it against the opposite bulkhead to smash
into shards.

The course of the fleeing Rifter ship took it inward, into
less trashy space, and so the chase accelerated.

Gehenna had dwindled and vanished in the glare of the
system’s primary, now behind them, when the asteroid sheltering them from the
onrushing junk of the Gehenna system suddenly flared so bright that the screens
blanked. It came back to reveal a grinding mass of rubble held in the tractors,
the pieces oscillating wildly. Ng’s heart hammered, but she kept her eyes
steady on the screens, her breathing controlled.

“Skipmissile impact,”
Sub-Lieutenant Wychyrski at SigInt sang out; the bridge cadence was too
well-drilled for her to abandon, but she knew she was too loud.

“Weapons, release the asteroid
rubble. Now.” Ng’s voice remained cool and even.

The ship lurched as the tractors shut down, and the rocks
onscreen started to spread and tumble slowly.

“Navigation, come about twenty
degrees mark zero, now!” Ng’s hands tightened on her pod arms. The Rifters had
turned to fight sooner than she had expected. “Tactical, probable range of
enemy skipmissile.”

“Skipmissile charged,” said Tulin
at the main weapons console while Rom-Sanchez calculated, confirming per SOP
that the
Grozniy
’s main weapon was
ready.

But we can’t use it,
thought Ng.
We need them alive.

The port shields flared as the ship’s turn exposed them to
the tenth-cee system dust.

“Twenty degrees mark zero,”
Lieutenant Mzinga sang out.

“Probably max range for enemy,
eleven light-seconds; we’re limited to about six.”

“Skip fifteen light-seconds, now!”
Ng commanded. “SigInt, slave a console to monitor the Knot,” she continued as
the fiveskip burped. “Put Ensign Grigorian on it.”

“Port shields at one hundred ten
and climbing,” Damage Control reported.

“Navigation, bring us about to
starboard 180 mark zero and take us down to point-oh-one cee at tac-level
five.”

The engines groaned as they came about, the starboard
shields glaring even brighter than the other side had as the massive ship
presented its side to the rocks and ice hitting it at 31,000 kilometers per
second.

Ng flicked a glance at her right. The Aerenarch stood
motionless, hands behind his back, his gaze moving rapidly. He was following
the action without difficulty; she risked a glance at Sebastian Omilov. His
sweat-lined brow puckered in confusion.

“Starboard shields at one hundred
twenty and rising,” sang Damage Control. “Estimate fifteen seconds life for aft
shields over radiants.”

“Probable ruptor range twenty-five
light-seconds, max,” Rom-Sanchez added.

After a time measured in heartbeats and damp-palmed
anticipation the fiveskip engaged again, harsher. When they emerged, the
shields were dim, flaring here and there as small rocks hit them.

“Emergence at point-oh-one cee.”

“Tactical skip, now, tac-level
one.”

“Captain,” Rom-Sanchez said
urgently as the fiveskip burped. “The Knot.”

“I know, Commander,” she replied,
“but we won’t have to worry about that if they hit us square on with one of
those hopped-up skipmissiles.” She raised her voice. “SigInt, find that
destroyer.”

“Search initiated, Captain. The
Knot’s been excited pretty fiercely—still a lot of ionization. Long EM’s pretty
much out. And the system’s dirty as hell. Sir.” Wychyrski reddened.

A wire-frame model of the Knot popped up on one of the
subsidiary screens, simulating the computer’s best guess at the lines of force
within the complex fracture in space-time. The hyperbola vibrated subtly,
shimmying waves running through the force lines.

“It’s flattening out, sir,” said
Grigorian, his voice thick. He cleared his throat. “We’ve lost about seven
percent of our leeway by the last maneuvers—and the skipmissile didn’t help
things any.”

“No help for it,” replied Ng. “SigInt,
where is he?”

Wychyrski stabbed at her console. “Got him. Forty-seven mark
zero, plus 15 light-seconds, course 25 mark zero, plus point-oh-two cee
relative.” She squinted at the display. “I think he’s coming about to port.”

“He’s still zeroing on the
asteroid,” Krajno muttered.

“He’ll figure that out soon
enough,” said Ng. She glanced at the god’s-eye of the
Grozniy
. “Weapons, ruptor barrage, half-power, forward beta and
gamma, aft beta, medium spread, forty-seven, forty-five, forty-three.” They
couldn’t use full power—they had to take the Rifter ship intact to find where
they’d landed the Panarch.

She raised her voice for the entire bridge. “We’re going on
System FF protocol. You can all assume mark zero for all courses unless I
command otherwise. The Knot will force us to fight this battle in two
dimensions.”

She paused, allowing them a brief reaction. Amusement flared
inside her as one or two glances were sidled the Aerenarch’s way, as if to
gauge his reaction. But she knew by now that he would show no reaction.

“Weapons, fire ruptors,” she said,
and her crew returned their focus to their tasks.

The gentle vibration of the ruptors formed a counterpoint to
Ng’s thoughts as she continued issuing orders. With a perverse delight, she
recognized that she was fighting a battle with largely the same limitations as
had faced Nelson, confined to the two-dimensional surface of Lost Earth’s
watery skin.

But against Eusabian’s
skipmissiles, the
Grozniy
is far more
fragile than Britain’s “wooden walls.”

She dismissed the thought and turned her full attention to
the battle. Winning it was only one more step in this endeavor.