Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (16 page)

Zabo spoke over my radio. “Blackstone has no more air in his
suit tanks or emergency reserve.”

I could see Rex’s face through his helmet, see him gasping.
He propelled himself through the ship and into the accordion, hurtling like a
human missile. He flew into the airlock of my Jag with me close behind him. As
Zabo closed the outer door, Rex hit a side wall of the airlock and went limp.

“Zabo,
air.”
I grabbed Rex, clawing at his spacesuit.
The two of us floated out of the airlock and into the cabin, tumbling out of
control.

Rex’s helmet came off in my hands. As we butted up against
the hull I yanked off my own helmet. I anchored our bodies by wrapping my legs
around the med cradle that was already unfolding from the hull. Grabbing his
head, I pinched his nose with my fingers and breathed into his mouth, a big
breath for his big lungs. We butted up against a bulkhead. Breathe in. Out. In.
Out. Rex, breathe.
Gods, breathe.
In. Out—

“Approaching craft within firing range in forty-five
seconds,” Zabo said.

In. Out—Rex gasped in a huge, shuddering breath. As I let go
of his nose, his eyes opened and he looked up at me, his face pale in the cold
light of the cabin.

“Take care of Rex.” Even as I spoke, the medcradle was enveloping
him in its embrace.

“Thirty-two seconds until drones within range,” Zabo said. “They
are locking on target.”

I sped into the cockpit and slid into the pilot’s seat. The
instant I was plugged into the ship I blasted a thought over the psilink:
Taas
pull out. Now!

No answer.

Drones firing, Zabo thought as acceleration slammed ...

Gasping, I reeled with the aftershock of having been in
stasis too long. Fixing the molecular wavefunction of a human being for extended
periods could be disastrous; when it relaxed, it had to respond to the forces
in its new environment. If that environment had changed too much, the
catastrophic fluctuations of the readjusting system could tear a person apart,
atom by atom.

My molecules managed to stay together, but I felt like hell.
My vision was too bleared for me to read the control panels, but the mindscape
told me what I needed to know: Zabo had accelerated us into inversion and
beyond all in one step, keeping us in stasis the entire time.

Greenzabo, report,
I thought. I waited, then sent out
another thought.
Taas?

No answer.

I am unable to obtain a fix on Green, Zabo thought.

Gold?

No fix, Zabo answered.

I swallowed. Neither Helda nor Taas would have willingly
dropped out of the link. Helda might have landed, but given the damage to her
ship, I knew there was also a good chance that it had collapsed.

How is Rex? I asked.

His life functions are ceasing.

Help him!

He needs more help than I can provide.

NO!
Had all I succeeded in doing with this
desperation run was to kill my squad? No. Not now, not after all we had been
through together.

I took a breath.
Zabo, put us back into stasis.
For
Rex, neither time dilation nor any other relativistic effect made one whit of
difference. All that mattered was how long he was trapped
here
on the
Jag.
Don’t bring us out until we get there.

Neither you nor Commander Blackstone may survive another—

Does Blackstone have any chance of surviving if you don’t
put him in stasis?

No. But you do.

Put us in stasis, Zabo. Then break every transit-time record
ever made getting to the hospital at headquarters.

That was the last thought I was able to form before the coil
activated.

I threw up when we lurched out of stasis. The sterilizers in
my spacesuit whirred as they cleaned up the mess.

We hurtled into the Dieshan system, plowing through the layers
of security by blasting my clearances into the Net. I brought Zabo down on the
hospital roof in the middle of the night, descending in a glare of floodlamps.
Rex lay motionless in the medcradle, its huge arms buffering him while
intravenous threads trailed into his limbs through sockets in his spacesuit.

As I opened the airlock, I saw people running across the
roof toward us. Within seconds they were loading Rex into an air stretcher. I
went with them, jogging next to the stretcher while doctors kept trying to take
readings on me.

It happened too fast. We were running down a glaring white
corridor toward Surgery; then I was in a circular room with white walls, white
ceiling, white floor, a crowd of meds in white uniforms surrounding me. I
struggled against the grip of a medman who held my arms. When he wouldn’t let
go, I bent over and rolled him over my back, using his weight against him. He
hit the ground with a resounding thump, his hospital jumpsuit ripping along the
seams.

The other three meds, two women and a man, took hold of my
arms. The one I had thrown was climbing to his feet now, and a third medwoman
was trying to press an air syringe against my arm.

“No!” I yanked my arm away from her syringe with its knockout
sedative. I had to stay conscious, had to know what happened to Rex.

“Primary Valdoria, please.” The woman with the air syringe brushed
the disarrayed gray curls out of her eyes. “You need medical atten—”

“Put that goddamned syringe down,” I said. “Or I’ll have you
thrown into prison for attacking an Imperial heir.”

The woman blanched, and lowered her arm. But that was as far
as she relented. When the other four meds tried to pull me over to a chair, I
swore at them.

“Sit,” the syringe-wielding woman said. “Try to relax.”

Was she crazy? Rex was dying and this madwoman wanted me to
relax? I tried again to twist away from the meds, but they kept hold of me.

“Soz.” A hand came down heavy on my shoulder.

I turned in the grip of the meds and looked up.

Helda.

I closed my eyes, then opened them to make sure it was
really her. I hadn’t killed them all.

“Did you report?” I asked.

“Ya.” She hesitated. “Taas?”

“He didn’t respond when I told him to pull out.”

She exhaled. “I am sorry.”

Softly I said, “So am I.” Sorry didn’t begin to say it.

Helda motioned toward a curving white sofa set up against
one of the curving white walls. “You wait with me?”

I nodded, and yanked my arms away from the meds, who finally
let go. Then I went with Helda and we sat on the sofa. Its nervoplex surface
shifted under my weight, futilely trying to ease the tension in my muscles.

And then we waited.

And waited.

We sat there for eight hours. Someone came and asked me
questions, taking my report. Then they went away again. During all those long
hours I kept reliving the battle, the moments when I gave Taas his orders, or
Rex his. I kept thinking of other scenarios, other commands I could have given
that might have changed the way it ended, given them and Tams a chance to live.

I tried to shut off my brain. But I could still hear the
dying scream from the child-pilot in the Solo. Overlaid on his death were the
minds of the Aristo warlords who had nearly destroyed Zabo, their lust for my
death like a dirty taste in my mouth I could never clean out, not ever, not if
I tried for a thousand years, no more than I had been able to clean off the
crust of that hatred from any other battle I had fought with them over the last
quarter of a century.

It was early in the morning, about an hour after dawn, when
I dozed off. My head fell back against the sofa, but when it hit the nervoplex
surface I caught myself and sat up. Then I let it fall back again and closed my
eyes.

“Do you want some coffee?” a voice asked.

My eyes snapped open. I knew that voice.

“Primary Valdoria? I brought some cof—”

“Taas!”
I jumped up to my feet.

He grinned and held out a plastic cup filled with that
godawful drink the Allieds had inflicted on our import shops. He was still
wearing his spacesuit. I grabbed him a hug, followed by Helda who nearly
knocked him over. His coffee splattered all over us and all over the floor.

“Hey.” His voice came out muffled against Helda’s big bosom.
“I can’t breathe.”

She let him go. “It is no good if you die from suffocation
now, heh? Not after coming back from the dead.”

He blinked. “The dead?”

I laughed unsteadily. “I thought you were dead when you
dropped out of the psilink.”

“I got hit by a drone when I tried to pull out,” Taas said. “That’s
what knocked me out of the link.”

I stared at him. The only way to knock him out would have
been to damage Greenzabo so seriously it couldn’t access the Skol-Net. “You
made it back here with a crippled computer?”

Taas smiled. “It wasn’t so bad. I just had to do a few
calculations in my head.”

In his
head?
“You must have one incredible brain.”
But I had known that when I picked him for the squad. “Did you get the EI
through to Tams?”

He nodded. “I don’t know if it did any good. I haven’t heard
any reports yet.”

“Soz.” Helda touched my arm.

When I glanced at her, she nodded toward the door. I turned
to see a doctor approaching us. He stopped in front of me. “Primary Valdoria?”

I tensed. “Yes?”

“We’re done in Surgery.”

 “And?” Tell me he’ll live, I thought. Tell me he’ll be all
right.

The doctor pushed his hand through his hair. “He had
bruises, broken bones, internal bleeding. None of that was too serious.”

But? I felt it hanging in the air. “What about his legs?”

“The problem isn’t his legs,” the doctor said. “It was the
psiphon socket implanted in the lumbar region of his spine. It ripped out of
his body, partially transecting his descending neural fibers between the
cervical and lumbar enlargements.”

I rubbed my head, as if that would somehow make my brain
work. “Tell me so I can understand.”

“The implant cut his spinal cord.”

“You can fix it, can’t you?”

The doctor exhaled. “Normally we can make even neural cells
regenerate now by tricking them into thinking they’re in an embryonic state. We
tried regenerating the nerves and his spinal cord. But it didn’t work. Then we
tried three different operations to link up the severed portions with
bio-optics. His body rejected them.”

“But you will be able to fix the damage eventually, right?
As soon as he starts responding to treatment?”

He hesitated. “Normally I would say yes. Unfortunately a biomech
system as extensive as the ones you carry in your bodies can have unexpected
side effects. We don’t fully understand it yet. But there have been so many manipulations
and injuries to Secondary Blackstone’s nervous system and biomech web that he’s
developed a toxic reaction to some of the drugs we use to promote regeneration.
And if we try anything more with his web, his body may reject the entire
system, not just our attempts to repair or expand it.”

I stared at him. “What are you telling me?”

He spoke quietly. “Secondary Blackstone is paralyzed from
the waist down. He may never regain function of his legs.”

“No.” It couldn’t be. They wanted me to believe Rex had been
crippled the day before he resigned? And that the biomech web had done it to
him, the symbol of the only thing that stood between us and the Traders?—no, it
couldn’t be.

Helda spoke softly. “When you let us see him?”

The doctor looked up at her. “He’s sleeping now. We’ll let
you know as soon as he’s able to have visitors.” He glanced back at me. “Primary—”

I knew what was coming next. Solicitude. I couldn’t bear
that, not now. I regarded him implacably. “What?”

“I’m told your ship’s log indicates you haven’t slept in
over fifty hours.” He paused. “Preliminary readings indicate you have two
broken ribs, multiple bruises, also internal tissue damage from being in stasis
too long. You need medical attention and sleep.”

Sleep? I was too agitated even to sit down. “I’m fine.”

“Ma’am, you aren’t fine. You’re about to collapse.” When I
started to object, he held up his hand. “We can give you a bed here.”

I scowled. “I don’t want a bed.”

“It would be in your best interest.”

A vivid picture from his mind intruded into my thoughts, an
image of how I looked to him, like an injured rockdeer, a wild, beautiful
animal growling while he tried to coax her to come near enough so he could heal
her wounds. The image was so startling I just stood there blinking at him. As
the Allieds would say, it took the proverbial wind out of my proverbial sails,
which was a dumb metaphor when I considered it, given that he saw me as a
rockdeer and not a ship.

I blew out a gust of air. Maybe I was more exhausted than I
thought, too tired even to form coherent thoughts.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll rest. For a little bit.”

The curtains cut out the worst of the harsh Dieshan sun,
letting in just enough light to keep the room bright. I lay in that pleasing
warmth, rising slowly out of sleep, wondering why I felt so sore.

Then I remembered.

It was a bonecrusher. When I slept, my mind relaxed its barriers,
enough so that sometimes it could take input that I blocked when I was awake.
At times my dreams even sampled possible futures, the closest I ever came to experiencing
precognition. During those dreams I picked up events that were either taking
place or about to happen. The more intense the feelings of the people involved—and
the closer I was to them—the more vivid the dream.

But all too often intense feelings accompanied misfortune. I
hated those dreams. Instead of waking up refreshed I opened my eyes into
misery, knowing that I or someone I loved was now or soon to be hurt. I called
those dreams bonecrushers because it felt like they crushed me. Today I was
waking up into a bonecrusher.

As my mind became more focused, I realized someone else was
in the room, a presence like an iron blanket on my mind. I turned over to look.

My visitor stood by the bed, a giant man over two meters
tall with musculature so heavy it couldn’t have evolved on a world with
standard gravity. He looked more metal than human. His skin glinted as if it
were an alloy of epidermis and gold. Although his eyes were open, inner lids
covered them like a shimmering gold shield, opaque to the world. I knew he
could see perfectly well through them, but to everyone else his eyes were
unreadable blank spaces. His face would have been handsome if it hadn’t been so
hard, but no hint of gentleness softened that masklike visage. He wore a plain uniform,
beige trousers and a sweater with no markings, no adornments, nothing to indicate
his identity—except for a gold band on each upper arm even wider than the band
that denoted my rank of Primary.

The Imperator of Skolia had come to see me.

I sat up, wincing as pain shot through my torso. Then I
saluted, clenching my hands into fists and crossing them at the wrists, right
over left, as I raised them to him.

Kurj inclined his head. Even after knowing him for so many
years, I still found it hard to believe we were related. Although we had the
same mother, we bore almost no resemblance to each other; Kurj looked like our
grandfather and I like our grandmother.

His coloring came from genetic adaptations our grandfather’s
ancestors made when they colonized a world with a too bright sun. The metallic
sheen of his skin and hair reflected sunlight and the inner lids protected the
eyes. His appearance highlighted the truth; he was as much machine as human,
with a biomech system even more extensive than mine. His appearance had become
a symbol, the metallic Fist of Skolia, the case-hardened emperor with no mortal
softness that could be exploited by the Traders.

Kurj watched me with his shielded eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.” I rubbed the restrainer around my torso that held my
ribs in place. I had no recollection of anyone putting it there. Not that I
would, though, now that I thought about it. I had been so keyed up the meds had
finally knocked me out with some potion in an air syringe.

I looked around the room. The rainbows of a cyberlock shimmered
along the walls, the ceiling, the floor, isolating us inside of its field. The
rainbows were more intense than those I had seen around Jaibriol’s mansion on
Delos: Kurj’s cyberlock was keyed to kill.

“The doctors told me about Rex Blackstone,” Kurj said.

My attention snapped to him. “Have you seen him yet?”

“He is still asleep.”

I wanted to ask what else he knew. But I couldn’t get the
question out. Faced with Kurj’s impassive metal face, my words dried up and
blew away.

So instead I said, “Did Taas’s EI drop help?”

“Some.” Kurj’s voice tightened. “By the time our units
arrived, Qox’s flags had finished flooding the planet. We couldn’t get anyone
else off alive. But we were able to protect the refugee ships that had already
made it off planet and were trying to flee the system.”

I dreaded the words he hadn’t said. “How many died?”

He spoke quietly. “Two thirds of the population.”

Two thirds. The words fell like rocks. Two thirds. Six
hundred million people had lived on Tams. I wondered what Jaibriol thought of
his father now.

“I’ve also read your report on the Aristo,” Kurj said.

That was all.
I’ve read your report.
But that meant
he knew the truth. Ur Qox had an heir. The devil had reproduced himself.