Ruler of Naught (60 page)

“That may very well be,” said Ng equably, “if a courier
arrives with new orders in time. But the tactical situation in Arthelion may
not leave us time to wait. As you will note, between our initial rendezvous and
this meeting, two more Rifter ships arrived in-system. That means the pace of
reinforcement is speeding up.”

Hayashi saw Bea Doial’s chin lift. His hands were in his
lap; without any visible movement he hit his boswell.

(Euan Macadee saw these two. Could have taken them
both—sloppy.)

They traded smiles, and then Bea sent a fast glance at Galt,
the third captain of Hayashi’ squadron.

But Armenhaut remained apparently unruffled. “Our orders are
plain and quite simple,” he said. “Remain on station.” He opened his hands
towards her and his voice took on the tonalities of voice-of-reason addressing
lack-of-control. “I can sympathize with the desire to win glory, but an attack
on the Mandala makes no sense, not with the forces we presently command.”

The implication was clear to everyone, judging by the
shiftings and downcast eyes of some. Galt flushed. He and Ng were the only
Polloi in the room, but Galt had never learned Margot’s control. Ng merely
softly touched her console, smiling and to all appearances unmoved,.

“Of course,” she said. “But Eusabian is expecting one. We’ll
use that against him.”

The other officer sat back.
You have no idea where this
is going, do you Stygrid?
thought Hayashi.

Ng waved at the conceptual map. “With your permission.”

Armenhaut nodded tightly. Next to him, KepSingh leaned
forward slightly.

Marot tapped at her console, provoking a rippling change in
the Tenno and bringing forward one symbol in particular. “This ‘suneater,’
whatever it is, is key to the whole picture.”

“That hardly does us any good,” drawled Armenhaut. “We don’t
know what it is, or where to find it.”

“That’s not the point. It’s the center of Eusabian’s power
now. But he’s not there, which would seem to make the most strategic sense.
He’s here on Arthelion, which means he’s still mired in the fundamental
Dol’jharian cultural pattern of vengeance.”

“Exactly,” said Armenhaut. “And any attempt to retake
Arthelion will result in a bloodbath.”

“If it looked like it was succeeding, yes. But he won’t expect
us to try to retake it, he’ll expect us to strike directly at him. And that
will blind him to the real goal of our attack: to obtain one of the hyperwaves
and get it to Ares.”

“Captain Ng,” KepSingh said. “Will you show us what you have
in mind?”

“Gladly, Captain KepSingh,” Margot replied, without looking
at Armenhaut’s rigid face.

He’s using her name; this is merit talking to merit here.
We’ve got him.

Ng tabbed a control and the tac-holo shivered to a gods-eye
view of the Arthelion system. As she spoke, subviews budded off of it, echoed
by various displays. “What I propose is this. Our intel, and Eusabian’s
behavior during the last war, make it certain that he’s in the Palace Minor,
guarded by the
Fist of Dol’jhar.
We will pin it there by threat of
Marine landings, with Captain Hayashi’s squadron harassing it. In the meantime,
our three battlecruisers, assisted by our frigates, corvettes, and even
cutters, will go hunting for hyperwave-equipped Rifters.”

KepSingh stared intently at the display. Then his face lit
up. “Of course. Disable a target, and wait to see if anyone shows up to help
from outside the light cone. Elegant, Captain Ng. Elegant.”

Just then a jacketed steward came in, bearing the
magnificent silver coffee service that Margot’s patron had given her when she
was posted to her first ship. All eyes went to it. Ng lifted her fingers, and
the steward set it at the side table, then took up a stance next to it. The
aroma of real coffee filled the room, and Hayashi’s mouth watered.

“Any questions?” Margot said.

Again Stygrid spoke, “It appears to me a recipe for heavy
losses with not much chance of a payoff. Your plan requires immobilizing a
target and allowing it to summon assistance, which you must then hold off long
enough to give the Marines time to board and seize the hyperwave. What if the
enemy decides to destroy the target himself?” He laughed harshly. “In effect,
once we do find a hyperwave-equipped Rifter, we’ll end up defending it against
every enemy ship in the system.”

“No,” said KepSingh, tapping his own screen. “Only one ship,
to begin with. I agree with Moral Sabotage. The Dol’jharians won’t order Rifter
auxiliaries to destroy one of their ships unless it’s the only way—their morale
is fragile.” He looked back at Ng. “But it will be a bloody business, and
likely a close one, too. Wouldn’t hurt to have a few more ships.”

“Agreed,” said Ng. “And those who’ve been on-station here
will need training in the new Tenno, with which Lieutenant-Commander Rom-Sanchez
here will assist.”

Several heads looked up at that. Rom-Sanchez had already
begun responding to boswelled questions.

“One of our first decisions will be how long we can wait,
balancing our readiness against the ongoing increase in Rifter forces and, of
course, any sign that Eusabian is preparing to leave. Once he’s gone, we’ll
lose our best, perhaps our only chance at holding him to battle long enough to
grab a hyperwave.”

“Captain,” Armenhaut said. “I really must remind you that
this discussion is quite hypothetical. Again, our orders are clear: remain on
station.”

Ng paused to let another murmur die down. Meanwhile, the
steward came forward, placed a china cup at Margot’s elbow, and expertly poured
out a stream of gently steaming brown liquid. The aroma of real, freshly
toasted, ground, and brewed coffee filled the room. Concession? Hayashi
wondered. Much as he wanted coffee, he wondered if Stygrid would read the
sudden offer of refreshment as an attempt to placate.

But then Margot said, “Thank you.”

The steward withdrew to the service table and took up his
stance again.

Hayashi fought fiercely against a bubble of laughter inside.
He heard a muted gasp from Doial, but he refused to look at her.

Margot went on calmly, “Pursuant to section 10, paragraph 19
and following, of the Standing Orders (wartime, undeclared), I hereby declare
the ships assembled here a Provisional Fleet and assume its command.” She
paused to take a delicate sip of coffee and smiled at Armenhaut.

“As Commodore, I choose to interpret ‘station’ in its
broadest sense, and I assure you, Stygrid, that we will remain within its
boundaries.”

And a broadside from Broadside: he’s plasma.
Hayashi
bit his tongue inside his dry mouth and sat back to appreciate Margot’s
unspoken but lethally effective reminder of whose ship they were gathered
on—and who really had the power here.

KepSingh grinned and folded his arms. “It’s good, Ng,” he
said. “Good.”

No one asked him to elucidate. Armenhaut’s neck turned
brick-red.

Margot said, with her sweetest smile, “Would anyone care for
some coffee while we discuss the details?”

“And what do you intend to do if I refuse?” said the Aegios.

Hreem glared at the viewscreen as the man continued.

“We’ve got the teslas up, and soon we’ll have the weapons
systems powered up as well. You have no time left, Rifter.” Ferniar Ozman
laughed, his heavy jowls shaking. “Best you flee now—my engineers tell me the
drives will be the last system back on-line, so we might not even chase you.”

He held up his hand as Hreem made to speak. “Oh, we’ve heard
of your superweapons. But you want a battlecruiser, not a cloud of gas, am I
correct?”

Without waiting for a response, he terminated the
connection.

Hreem swore as the screen flickered back to a view of the
Malachronte Ways, and stalked across the bridge of the
Flower of Lith
.
His crew was silent, eyes down. Norio, standing near the aft hatch, made no
move toward him.

Hreem glared at the viewscreen again. Here, at the inner
edge of the system’s asteroid belt whence came the raw materials for the Ways,
framed in the spidery complexity of construction machinery, the deadly symmetry
of the
Maccabeus
glimmered in the light of the distant sun. Beyond the
battlecruiser the Rifter captain could see other docks with ships abandoned in
various stages of construction, but they held no interest for him.

His eyes ranged greedily over the battlecruiser’s
seven-kilometer statement of invincibility, the contours of the silvery hull
interrupted by the thorns and turrets of projecting weaponry and sensors,
blurred slightly by the faint shimmer of an activated tesla field.

It looks ready to go.
He swore again. Obviously it
wasn’t, quite, or the Aegios would have ordered its weapons turned on the Lith.

“Cap’n? I’m getting faint readings from the cruiser’s ruptor
systems.” Erbee spoke up from the sensor console. “It looks like a low-power
test.”

“That’d mean about twenty hours or so till they bring them
up to full power,” Piliar at Fire Control commented.

Hreem gnawed his thumb as he sat down again, Pili was
ex-Navy, cashiered for something he wouldn’t talk about, but he knew weapons
systems.

It had been easier than attacking Charvann, up until now.
His forces had quickly blown away the Malachronte defense. But with the Archon
gone—he’d been on Arthelion when it fell—there was no one with sufficient
authority to order Ozman to surrender.

Faced by Ozman’s obduracy, he had only two choices. He could
blast the cruiser into atoms, or he could flee. What he couldn’t do, as long as
that chatzing Aegios held the ship, was force his way on board.

At least the Dol’jharians haven’t shown up yet.
Once
they did, there would be no way to explain away his failure to the Lord of
Vengeance. A brief pang of anxiety gripped him.

Then the Rifter captain felt the pressure of two strong,
narrow hands on his shoulders, probing for the shakrian points.

“Chatzing nick,” Hreem growled. “He’d laugh out his
blungehole if I just had him here.” He flicked the heel-claws on his boots out,
scoring the deck plates.

“No, Jala. I think he is courageous, and no doubt possesses
other virtues as well.” The tempath gave a soft sigh. “At least, the Douloi
call them virtues, but you and I... we can call them weaknesses.”

Hreem didn’t have to turn to know how Norio looked: that
tone meant eyes half-closed, teeth showing in a malicious smile.

“For instance, as one in the Ranks of Service, he is trained
to place a high value on human life.” The tempath laughed softly. “It would be
so very delightful to see how he balances his oath of fealty against... say,
fifty thousand lives.”

The maximum population of a Highdwelling.
And there are
hundreds of them in the system.

The enormity of what Norio was suggesting made Hreem waver.
In the long history of the Rift Sodality, very few ships had ever targeted a
sync, and the bloody fates of the perpetrators under Local Justice were
legendary. What Norio was suggesting was orders of magnitude beyond anything
he’d done so far in his long and bloody career. He looked back at the
battlecruiser, and the familiar image of himself on its bridge possessed him
wholly.

“And the novosti will be so very eager to share the
spectacle with all of Malachronte system,” Norio added.

Hreem laughed. Norio was right. The newsfeeds would do most
of the job for him: the battlecruiser was as good as his. And if he timed it
right, he could be back here laughing at Ozman’s reaction as he watched the
news from the syncs in real time.

o0o

Norio savored the novosti’s fear as the man stepped onto the
bridge of the
Lith
, his larynx bobbing as he subvocalized his commentary
through his boswell. The man surveyed the bridge, the ajna on his forehead
reflecting the status lights on the consoles as the semi-living lens adjusted
its focus. The tempath wished he could feel the emotions of the billion-plus
viewers the device was relaying its images to.
Like falling into the sun,
embraced by the cleansing flames...

He shook off the mood as the novosti approached Hreem. The
captain lounged in his command pod, casually picking his nails with a dagger,
but Norio could feel his excitement, a fascinating compound of anger, lust,
and—Norio laughed silently—stage fright.

The bridge was silent. Riolo, the Barcan computer tech who
was rarely on the bridge, nervously hitched up the belt supporting his absurd
codpiece as the newsman’s gaze swept across him.

“Stop that. Now.” Hreem pointed with his knife at the man’s
throat.

The novosti stammered, “S-stop what?”

“If you’re going to talk, do it so we can hear you.” Hreem
started flipping the dagger in the air, catching it by the blade. The novosti’s
eyes followed it; Norio enjoyed the way his anxiety pulsed in time to the
weapon’s glittering course. “Well, genz Bertranus, you’re the lucky chatzer
that won the draw. So ask your questions.”

“If you please, genz chaka-Jalashalal, I need... ”

“Just call me Captain.” Hreem was smiling broadly, his
emotions now approximating those of a cat toying with its prey. The skin on
Norio’s arms tingled with pleasure.

“Captain, I need to finish setting the background for my
viewers, if you please.”

Hreem waved one hand negligently. “I please.”

The man’s eyes focused on distance. “Yes, I’m ready to
continue,” he said, apparently speaking to his relay on the ship that had
brought him to the
Flower of Lith
. Then he began, picking up from where
he had been interrupted.

“Following the defeat of the system defense forces, the
attackers turned their attention to the Malachronte Ways, leaving the planet
untouched behind its Shield, sparing it the fate reported by the swelling tide
of refugees from other systems.