Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (12 page)

Who on Delos would send me a note in the middle of the
night? I took the envelope. “Thank you.”

As I walked toward the stairs, I tore open the envelope. The
handwritten note said:
I
must talk to you. Come to dock four in the
harbor.
There was no signature.

Damn. I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted now was to go
run around the harbor. I went back to the front desk, where the clerk nodded
over her book. “Miss?”

She opened her eyes. “Yes?”

I held up the envelope. “Who this come?”

She peered at me. “Pardon me?”

I had never understood why the Allieds asked you to pardon
them when you were the one being indecipherable. “This note,” I said. “Who with
it come?”

“A man. I don’t know who he was.”

“How he look?”

“Black hair. Dark eyes. He sounded Turkish.”

“What Turkish?”

She smiled. “Turkey is a country on Earth.”

Why would an Earth man want me to meet him at a remote dock
in a sea harbor? It was crazy. I should go upstairs and sleep. But there was no
way I could rest now until I found out what he wanted. So I headed outside
again.

It took ten minutes to reach the harbor, which lay in a cove
southeast of the Arcade. Breakers rolled in over reefs of knife-coral whose
spires jutted out of the water, some a few centimeters high, others as tall as
a person, still others soaring into the air for ten or more meters. Sparks
flashed as iridescent insects flew in and out of the coral, building it up with
secretions from their bodies just as the skeletons of sea animals extended the
portions underwater. Glints of phosphorescence jumped in the sea, blues and
greens, purples and pinks, flashes of yellow. The waves frothed around the
spires and splashed high in bursts of spray. Gates and arches and channels had
been cut in the coral, passages that allowed even the largest freighters to
enter the cove.

The moon hung at the horizon like a huge orange portal that
rested on the sea, big enough to swallow a fleet of ships. The smell of salt
was so thick I could almost taste it condensing out of the air onto my lips.
The sweet odor of sealace tickled my nose as well. Fronds of the delicate
plants lay everywhere, speckled with tiny bioluminescent insects, washed up by
the breakers or dragged onto the piers by cargo handlers working on and around
the ships.

Most of the piers were dark now, some empty, others with
ships hunkered in their docks, groaning as the wind pulled at them. Lamps
glared on pier twenty-seven, where a team of handlers loaded cargo onto a
freighter with sails made from fluorescent purple nervoplex. Cranes swung boxes
out over the water and into holds of the ship while the muscled handlers with
their blue caps and red shirts shouted orders to each other.

Pier four was at the far end of the harbor. Darkness
shrouded it, and a silence broken only by the lap-lap of waves against pilings.
I walked under the pier, hidden in the shadows. It was getting cold now, enough
so that I pulled my jacket tight and sealed it up the front. Breakers swirled
around my boots, the water first covering the ground and then withdrawing to
show me a stretch of gem-sand that sparkled blue and gold in the moonlight.

“Sauscony?”

I stopped. A tall figure stood by a piling. He had his
collar turned up and a hood pulled over his head, but I knew him anyway. I
doubted he could have heard me coming, yet he was looking straight at where I
stood hidden.

“Jaibriol?” I asked.

He came over, pushing back his hood. In the shadows, when I
couldn’t see that his eyes were red or that his hair glinted, he looked even
more beautiful than before.

“I had begun to think you wouldn’t come,” he said.

I held up the envelope. “I just got your note. How long have
you been waiting?”

“An hour.”

That long? Why? “The clerk said an Earth man brought it.”

“I came here in the dark so no one would recognize me. Then
I paid a man to take the note.”

“But how did you get out of the mansion without alerting
your guards? Isn’t the cyberlock on?”

“I talked them out of it for another few hours.” Dryly he
added, “I’ve become quite good at it. If Rak isn’t there.” He grimaced. “Rak
always insists on the field. I almost think he enjoys seeing it hurt me.”

“Is Rak the guard who has the two providers?”

“Had,” Jaibriol said. “They ran away.”

I exhaled. “He probably does enjoy seeing it hurt you, even
if he doesn’t consciously acknowledge it. You have to barrier your mind against
him better.”

For a moment he just watched me. Then he spoke. “You tell me
Aristos are sadists. You show me horrors. And Rak’s providers refuse to come
home. I want to disbelieve—” He paused. “But regardless of what you say, my
guard
is not an Aristo.”

“He has Aristo blood,” I said. “Probably more than you do
yourself.”

His anger sparked. “You insult my bloodline without even a
thought of what that means to me.”

I laid my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. But it’s the truth.”

When I touched him, he stiffened. Then he sighed, as if
capitulating, and pulled me into his arms. I was the one who went rigid then.
But feeling him warm and firm against my body was too much. I laid my head
against his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. He bent his head,
searching for my face with an unexpected clumsiness. His prodigious intellect
and Highton manner made him seem older, enough so that I had forgotten he was
hardly more than a teenager, one who had spent his entire life alone.

As soon as he kissed me, I forgot his age. Our minds started
to blend again, an intimacy that made my desire for him flare like fire hitting
oil.

Then an image of Rex flickered in my mind. My longing for
what Jaibriol could give me was irrelevant. I had given Rex a pledge.

I pushed him away. “I’m sorry.”

At first he wouldn’t let go. Finally, when I didn’t respond,
he dropped his arms. “I hope this man Rex appreciates his fortune.”

“I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Stay. Please.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
card. It was a V-script, the written record of a virtual telegram sent to his
computer. “I received this two hours ago. I want you to tell me your version of
what it means.”

I took the card—and froze. Its seal was unmistakable; it
came from his father, Emperor Qox. The heading indicated it had been decoded by
Jaibriol’s console, so it must have been sent in secret. The Emperor had
certainly never meant for an Imperial Jagernaut to see it.

The message was brief: J’briol—I have sent flags to smooth
the situation on Tams. Proceed there to oversee.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again and reread it to
make sure I had understood correctly. A “flag” was a battlecruiser and its
associated warships. “What have you been told this means?”

“Nothing. But I can guess. Smoothing the situation must mean
he plans to intimidate them, maybe fire on the planet.” He spoke freely,
willingly divulging information to an enemy officer without even the guarded
tone I had heard him use with everyone else. “My father wants me there by the
time the action is finished to see firsthand how to deal with a problem like
Tams.” Self-disgust filled his voice. “I am not much of an heir. I think he
means for that to change now.”

“You think Tams is a problem?”

“Yes.”

I clenched my fist, crumpling the V-script. “That ‘problem’
comes from a lot of desperate people terrified of their Highton conquerors.”

“Sauscony.” He took hold of my shoulders. “You see the situation
through your own biases. I know you believe them. But I see it differently.”

I jerked away from him, wondering if I should hate him after
all. “Then see this, Highton.” I crammed the card back into his hand. “We’ve
intercepted these coded messages before. You want to know what ‘smoothing’
means? Those warships are going to destroy the Tams atmosphere.”

“How can you believe such a lie?”

“Lie?” I wanted to shake him. “I’ve
seen
it. Your
father had it done to both CJ4 and Bullseye when the people overthrew their
Aristo lords there.”

His anger flared. “The people of CJ4 destroyed themselves
with chemical warfare. I’ve never heard of Bullseye. Perhaps your propaganda
ministers created it.”

“I don’t need to convince you.” My voice quieted. “Your life
may have been sheltered, but you’re no fool. As soon as you start living among
the Hightons you’ll know the truth. You must already suspect, despite what you
say, or you would have never asked me to come here tonight.”

There was no arrogance in his face, only pain. “If my father
tells me the truth, I must believe you are a monster. I should kill you now
before you have a chance to become Imperator of Skolia. If you tell me the
truth, then my father is a monster and he is the one I should kill.” He spread
his hands. “Kill a person I love? I could never do it. Not my father. Not you.”

I stared at him. “How can you think you love me? You’ve only
known me a few hours.”

“We’ve known each other our entire lives.” He touched my
temple. “We lived them together tonight.”

I shoved his hand away. He was wrong. I could never love the
Trader Emperor’s son. It was a lie.

Jaibriol spoke softly. “It won’t go away, Sauscony. No
matter how much you deny it, we will live with what happened tonight for the
rest of our lives. If I become Emperor and you become Imperator, then we will
have to live with it even as we swear to destroy everything the other values
most.”

“You won’t value what you inherit. You’ll hate everything it
represents. And you’ll live in terror, knowing you’re only a breath away from
becoming its victim.”

“If that is true, then I will change it.”

“Change it? Gods, Jaibriol. The structure of your empire is
built, from its foundations up, on the Aristo need for providers. It’s not a
social problem you can correct, or a few evil people you can remove from
office. You can no more stop their need for providers than you can eliminate
their drive to eat or sleep. Try and they’ll crucify you.”

His fist clenched. “You’re wrong.”

I spoke more gently. “I’m sorry for what your life is going
to become. I wish I could change it.”

“I don’t want pity. I want you.”

His longing was so intense I could almost touch it, the ache
of a human being denied human contact his entire life, a child denied love from
the day of his birth. And I wanted him so much it hurt. But if I admitted it
even here, where no one but he and I would ever know, I could never again face
anyone else I loved.

“I can’t stay with you,” I said.

He took a deep breath and spoke in his cold Highton accent. “Then
go.”

Somehow I made myself turn and walk away into the shadows.

I ran back to the inn, calling with my mind to Rex, Helda,
and Taas:
Get up. NOW.
When I strode into the lobby, Rex was running
down the staircase that swept out like the train of a blood-red wedding dress.
I sped past the sleeping clerk and met Rex halfway up the stairs.

“I found out why the Aristo is here.” I paused, out of
breath from running. “He’s Qox’s son.”

Rex stared at me.
“What?”

“The Heir.” Now that I was saying it out loud, I heard how
fantastic it sounded. “That man we saw—he’s the Highton Heir.”

Helda and Taas appeared in the hallway at the top of the
stairs, striding around the corner in time to hear my statement. They made it
down to where I stood with Rex in two seconds.

“His name is Jaibriol,” I said. “Jaibriol Qox.” I looked
around at them. “It’s why Rex and I thought he was familiar. He looks like his
grandfather.”

“How you find all this out?” Helda asked.

“I figured out where he was staying. I broke into his
computer system there. His father sent him a coded message about Tams.”

“You’ve been busy,” Rex said.

I grimaced. “I’ve been arrested, mug shot, lined up with
five clones, questioned by the politest police alive and gone to the hospital
to see two providers who escaped when I crashed Qox’s mansion. They asked the
Allieds for sanctuary.”

“You did all that in one night?” Taas asked.

Helda smiled. “What you need us for, Soz?”

I took a breath. “Because Ur Qox is going to flood out Tams.”

“What does that mean?” Taas asked.

“At Bullseye he did it by converting part of the planet’s
moon into hydrogen. At CJ4 he used an asteroid. They pour the hydrogen into the
atmosphere and use gigantic discharges to make it react with the oxygen there
and produce water.” I grimaced. “It’s going to rain good and hard on Tams. When
it’s over, there won’t be any oxygen left in the atmosphere and the surface
will be flooded.” I thought of the Earth religious texts I had read. No ark was
going to save Tams. When Lucifer impersonated God, nobody survived.

The muscles in Rex’s jaw stiffened. He and I had been with
the battalion that found the remains of CJ4. ISC had kept the record of what we
found under tight security. We didn’t want a panic, as the citizenry of Skolia
realized that if Qox wiped out our precarious defenses he could destroy our
worlds the same way he had done his own.

“When does it happen?” Helda asked.

“He’s sent flags,” I said. “But I don’t think they’re there
yet.”

“We have to send Tams a warning,” Taas said. “Tell them to
evacuate.”

Rex spoke quietly. “Evacuate in what?”

Efficient.
That was the word Rex had used for the
Trader sabotage on Tams that Comtrace had told us about. I hadn’t realized just
how accurate that assessment was. How could Tams evacuate without functioning
ships?

Taas looked from me to Rex. “Even without their factories,
they still must have been trying to rebuild their ship drives.”

“Rebuilding isn’t their biggest problem,” Rex said. “It’s
the Evolving Intelligence pilots on the ships.”

I nodded. “Tams is a mining station. They don’t have the expertise
to program an EI pilot from scratch.”

“We can send them some,” Helda said. “We make them from the
EI’s on our own ships.”

“Yes.” Taas tensed as if readying himself for launch. “We
can put them in robot drones and coordinate their launch from the stand-off
weapons platform in E-sector.”

Rex considered them. “If the drones don’t make it through,
we won’t have time for a second go-around before the Trader flags arrive.”

“The rebels have control of the ground defenses,” Taas said.

“Even so,” Rex said. “The orbital defenses aren’t trifles.
And we have to make it on the first try. Once the flags get there, nothing is
going to get in.”

They looked at me. I knew what decision they were waiting to
hear. Warfare had evolved terrifyingly beyond the abilities of humans to fight
it. Although drones with EI pilots couldn’t match the human mind when it came
to innovation, no human could survive against the near light-speed processing
abilities of a drone or its ability to endure immense accelerations.

Except a Jagernaut.

The enhanced link between our brains and our ships boosted
our minds into the ship’s EL Add to that the advances in stasis technology and
the end result was a weapon with the speed and endurance of a drone and the superior
reasoning capability of the human mind.

“We’re the only squad in this quadrant,” I said.

“When do we leave?” Taas asked.

That was it. No one said a word about our nil chances of success.
They just waited to hear my answer, waited to follow me into a fight we couldn’t
win. Even if we got through to Tams there was no way they could evacuate in
time.

Rex’s thought came to me. If we save only one life, it’s
worth it.

Rex ...
Somehow I hid my thoughts. I had been so
afraid that what had happened tonight would destroy what I felt for him. But as
soon as his thoughts had touched mine I knew our connection was as strong as
ever. This was Rex, who had been with me for years, more than a friend, soon to
be a husband. Now I had to do what I swore would never happen—send the man I
loved into combat. Yes, I had been doing it for years, but I had only acknowledged
the truth of that tonight.

They were all watching me, waiting for orders.

I took a breath. “First we send a report to headquarters.” I
doubted backup could reach Tams in time, but we had to try. “Then we leave.”

It was still hours before sunrise when we jogged out of the
gate at the starport. Our ships waited near the terminal, Jag starships, the
single-pilot craft that gave Jagernauts their name. Technically the spacecraft
were called JG-17 fighters; the name Jag came from “lightning jag,” the
nickname the test pilots gave to the prototype, the JG-1.

The ships stood poised on the tarmac like alabaster works of
art. On the ground, they were elongated, with wings extended; in flight, they
would change according to our needs: spread wings for subsonic speeds; wings
drawn against the body for hypersonic flight; rounder shape to minimize surface
area during interstellar flight; rounded for stealth or for battle. Right now
the hull was smooth, the weapons hidden in protected bays.

I strode next to my Jag, my hand sliding across its surface
like a skater on ice. Its hull was tellerene, a composite material threaded
with microscopic wires made from tubular fullerene molecules. Tellerene was
lightweight, fatigue resistant, and retained its strength even at the high
temperatures of a hypersonic reentry. It was also self-repairing; the dangling
bonds in a broken fullerene molecule reattached themselves, mending the wire.
The hull showed fewer of the pits, grooves, and other damage that came from
traveling in space, a smoothness that was one more factor in optimizing its
performance. Like their pilots, Jags were rare, top-of-the-line technology,
fast and deadly.

I stopped midway between the nose and the tail of the ship.
Had I not already known about the tiny silver prong there, I might have never
located it in the featureless hull. As soon as I pushed my wrist against the
prong, it snicked into the socket there.

Connection,
my spinal node thought.

Verified. The response came from Zabo, the ship’s Evolving
Intelligence.

The airlock sucked open, starting as a tiny circular hole
that widened into a human-size oval so fast its edges shimmered with the motion.
The outer and inner doors opened simultaneously; Zabo had analyzed the
atmosphere out here and found it acceptable.

As I climbed into the cabin the inner hull activated,
glowing with diffuse light. The cabin was small. Equipment filled the free
space and the bulkheads: cocoon seats and a bunk, gear, hand weapons, food
dispenser, waste processor, water line, anything else I needed to survive in
space.

I crossed to the cockpit. When I touched the membrane that
separated it from the cabin, the material dilated the same way the hatch had
opened, like the shutter on a high-speed holocam. Inside the cockpit, I slid
into the pilot’s seat. It folded around me like a glove, releasing its cocoon,
a swath of spun material thick enough to cushion against acceleration but not
too thick to interfere with my movements. Then the exoskeleton snapped into
place, encasing me in a framework of equipment. A visor lowered over my head,
data scrolling across its display.

As soon as the seat registered my weight, the forward holoscreens
switched on, giving a three-dimensional view of the area outside of the ship.
Rex’s ship was to starboard, Taas and Helda’s to port. I could see the
airfields, with their runways and launch pads, stretching out in the distance
across the flat landscape.

The collar of the pilot’s seat closed around my neck, its psiphon
plugging into the socket at the base of my brain stem. Zabo’s familiar “voice”
spoke in my mind, androgynous and quiet: Zabo attending.

Acknowledged,
I thought. I needed no other log-on
procedure, no security codes, nothing. Zabo was tuned to my brain; had anyone
else tried to use the Jag without authorization it would have locked up every
system on the ship.

Boosting to psiberspace, Zabo thought.

I entered the Skol-Net as a black wavepacket this time,
rippling across the grid in a hill of darkness. When I passed other glitters,
they showed dimly through the blackness of my packet. A spark appeared next to
me, growing into a second wavepacket, a red one scintillating with fiery glitters.
A gold packet appeared next, followed by a green one.

Redzabo here, Rex thought.

Goldzabo here, Helda thought.

Greenzabo here, Taas thought.

Zabo acknowledging,
I answered. Our four-way exchange
flashed by in a fraction of a second.

A psicon in the shape of a small lock blinked in the corner
of my mental display. As my attention flicked to it, Zabo thought, Security
cloak at full strength. Presence of Zabo Squad undetectable to other users.

Link,
I thought.

Redzabo linked, Zabo answered. Goldzabo linked. Greenzabo
linked.

With the Jags amplifying our connection, I picked up Rex,
Helda, and Taas so well that their thoughts murmured in the background of mine.
When I concentrated on Taas’s voice it increased in volume, resolving into his
mental commands to Greenzabo. I relaxed my concentration and his words receded
back into the murmur. All of their mental displays were there, in the background,
waiting to be called forth if I needed them.

It had taken years of training to discipline my mind so that
I could separate the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feel of that mental
display—what Jagernauts called the mindscape—from my perceptions of my own
environment. I had to retrain my mind so I could think my own thoughts within
that constant background noise. Most psibernauts never managed it, which was
another reason why so few Jag pilots existed.

I rubbed my temples. We paid a price for this link; the
energy required to maintain it, both in terms of our own minds and of our ships’
resources, limited the circle to no more than four Jagernauts. Nor could humans
sustain the intensity of that boosted connection for long. It stripped us of
all privacy, not only from each other but from the onslaught of our enemies’
emotions. But when it worked, the Jag link was a miracle. We could communicate
anywhere, under any conditions, instantaneously.

Ready?
I thought.

Redzabo ready, Rex answered.

Goldzabo ready, Helda answered.

After a moment I thought,
Taas?

Another pause. Then:
Greenzabo ready.

Do you have a problem? I asked.

No. Just took a moment to settle in.

His delay was normal for a new squad member. But in the
situation we were headed for it could be fatal. Under normal circumstances I
would never have expected an untried pilot to fly this mission. But we had no
choice. I just hoped his virgin flight with the squad didn’t end up as his
last.

Coordinate your checks,
I thought. Having each ship
verify the pre-flight tests of the others gave a four-way check of our readiness.
We ran the Jags through their paces: nav, cyber, weapons, com, hydraulics.

Then Zabo thought, Checking inversion engines.

Inversion. It still had the power to fascinate me even after
so many years of familiarity. As Zabo ran through its checks of the engines, my
thoughts followed like a spellbound child. We hadn’t conquered the light
barrier—we had snuck around it. To reach supraluminal velocities should have
meant going through the speed of light, where the mass of a ship became
infinite compared to slower objects, its length shrunk to nothing and its time
stopped. It was impossible. For centuries humans had known that no ship could
travel faster than the speed of light.

For centuries humans had been wrong.

The solution turned out to be simple. At supraluminal
speeds, mass and energy became imaginary, square roots of negative numbers. To
reach the supraluminal universe, all we had to do was add an imaginary part to
our speed. Poof. The singularity at light speed disappeared. A ship went around
light speed like a flycar leaving the road to go around a tree. Except that for
starships, the “road” was the real universe.

Of course doing the math had been a lot easier than making
the engine, or dealing with the bizarre effects of faster than light travel.
But when our ancestors finally succeeded, the way to the stars had opened.

We adopted the word “inversion” from the Allieds because it
so aptly described how the process felt. But it came from a far more esoteric
source. “Inversion” referred to a mathematical correspondence between
superluminal and subluminal space derived by Earth scientists during the mid to
late twentieth century.