Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (38 page)

“He’s lost his ship, Baruch. His crew is all he has left. Can’t you ease up a little?”

“He lost his ship. I may have lost twenty-five thousand friends. Tahn still has his life, Lieutenant. And if he wants to keep it, he won’t push me.”

“Kill Tahn, Commander, and his loyal crew will sacrifice everything to destroy you.” Her eyes narrowed threateningly.

The tube halted and the door snicked back. The remaining guards flooded into the hall and nodded their approval, but Jeremiel pulled his pistol and gripped her purple sleeve anyway, pushing her out in front of him, checking the hall himself. Finding it clear, he cautiously released Halloway.

“Walk, Lieutenant. You know the way. I’ll be right here behind you.”

“I’m walking.”

She strode forward and Jeremiel followed, pistol aimed at her back. He doubted she’d try anything foolish, but after seeing Slothen’s malignant face on the monitor, his nerves wouldn’t let him stand anywhere in the open without his pistol in his fist. Had the blue beast been telling the truth about destroying half the Underground fleet? Or was all that a clever lie? In either case, he was in even worse trouble than he’d thought, for if Slothen had lied, he more than suspected problems aboard the
Hoyer.

Jeremiel’s gaze darted defensively over the corridor, noting every soldier they passed, logging each in his memory. He felt like he walked a flaming tightrope over a sea of sharks. Fear knotted his guts, doubts throwing taunts from his subconscious:
You don’t own this ship; this is all a precarious charade of time; one minute it’s yours, the next Tahn’s. And thousands of people are depending on you.

When Halloway reached his cabin door, she asked, “Shall I just walk in, or would you prefer me to wait for you?”

“You can’t get in, Lieutenant.” He moved up beside her and blocked her view, then keyed in his code. He’d programmed the unit himself, allowing no one entry without the appropriate authorization sequence. The door opened.

He bowed slightly and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “After you.”

“Don’t squander gallantry on me. I’m not one of your soft Gamant women.” She strode past him, going to stand in the center of the room.

Jeremiel straightened; haunting visions of Syene’s magnificent muscular body swam out of his memories. A week before she’d died, she’d stood naked before the full-length mirror in his cabin and given herself a critical appraisal. “I guess I’m not in bad shape for being thirty-two.” He remembered shaking his head in disbelief as he braced a hand against the wall over her head. Her deep olive skin had glistened wetly from her shower, accentuating every perfect female curve. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. And vain, too.” Her laugh rang sweetly in his memories, making him long for her. His mind still felt the softness of her touch, the warmth of her body against his.

And half his fleet might be dead? People they’d both known and loved? Unbeknownst to him, his eyes had gone hollow, face twisting miserably. When he looked up, he found Halloway staring probingly at him.

“Seeing ghosts?” she asked.

He strode in, closing the door behind him. “You know where the com terminal is. Get to work. And in case you forget the correct access codes, I’ve printed out the entire cryptography library. It’s there on the corner of the desk.” He pointed to a thick stack of crystal sheets as he strode across the room. Going to the drink dispenser, he ordered a glass of Numonian taza, took it to the table and slumped into a chair. He quietly watched the light refract through the amber liquid to cast geometric designs across the tabletop. Pain and fear stabbed him with dagger-sharp intensity.

Halloway eased into the desk chair and said, “Avel Harper wants you to call him.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Erase the message and get to work.”

Halloway input several commands and waited, staring at the screen. He ignored her, his mind locked on the empty task of calculating how many days it had been since he’d heard Syene call his name.
“Love you,”
she’d whispered, barely audible, her bloodstained chest rising and falling erratically.
“Knew … knew you’d come…. Jere … Jeremiel. Dannon … Tahn. Betrayed… us. He was … was here. Half-hour ago.”

“I’ll kill him, Syene. I swear.”

“Baruch?” Halloway interrupted.

He didn’t look up. Agony slashed his heart.
Stop it. She’s been dead for months.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“What I said earlier—about Gamant women. Sorry. I just felt vulnerable and hostile after what you did to Tahn.”

“What you do or don’t think about Gamants is irrelevant to me, Halloway. I brought you here to do research that my own staff would find extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming.
So, do it.”

But that wasn’t quite true, was it, old boy? Silently, he chastised himself. He could have done the research just as effectively himself, probably more so. In fact, he’d check and recheck every shred of data she gave him. He’d just
wanted
her here.

In a quick motion, he slammed a fist into the com over his table, then programmed it for cabin 1912, calling, “Avel? This is Jeremiel. Are you in?” He swirled his taza, watching the amber liquid shimmer like ocean waves beneath a bright noonday sun.

A pause, then, “Yes, Jeremiel, thanks for getting back to me so quickly.”

“I hope it’s nothing critical, Harper. After staring into Slothen’s eyes, my nerves are humming.”

“No, don’t worry. It’s just that Mikael Calas has been pleading to speak with you. He claims it’s urgent, about something his grandfather told him to tell you.”

Jeremiel frowned curiously. “When? I was the last person to speak with Zadok. Why wouldn’t he have told me—”

“Mikael claims his grandfather spoke to him a few days ago.”

“Zadok’s been dead for months, Avel. You know that.”

“Mikael has gone through a great deal of trauma. You have to understand—”

“Yes, I do understand.” They’d all been through hell, but Mikael’s entire family and world had been brutally torn from him within a few short weeks of each other. “Tell him I’ll arrange a meeting as soon as I can. The stakes have just been upped enormously, Avel. I’ve got to spend all my time on strategy for a few days. Please send him my sincere apologies.”

“I will.”

He kept his voice neutral. “Avel? Any word on Dannon yet?”

“None.”

“Did you tell the searchers the Underground’s standing reward is a million notes?”

“I did. But they’ve found absolutely nothing, Jeremiel.”

“Cancel the search parties, then. I’ve concluded he must be dead.”

Jeremiel caught Carey’s fleeting look of interest. He lowered his gaze to the table and smoothed his fingers over the black tabletop.

“But why?” Harper asked. “I don’t understand? What if he’s—”

“See to it immediately, Avel. Baruch out.” He switched off the com.

Halloway turned halfway around in her chair and examined him uncertainly. The light accented the smooth curves of her alabaster face. Why did her eyes affect him so? It was as though she’d decided to let him see through her carefully maintained professional mask and the fragility revealed drew him powerfully.

Be careful. You’re still hurting over Syene. And she’s a Magisterial officer who’d love to use that vulnerability against you.

Impatiently, he demanded, “Finding out anything, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

“I suspect you’re right. What is it?”

She hesitated a long moment, until he felt the quiet like a smothering layer of earth over his face. He looked up, meeting her gaze.

Quietly, she explained, “Apparently units of your Underground organized a series of small-scale rebellions on Abulafia. They attacked Magisterial military installations, killing several thousand soldiers. The Magistrates responded in kind. They—”

“Oh … no.” He propped a trembling fist on the table.

Softly, she continued. “Casualty estimates range as high as twenty thousand. It was a level one attack. The central regions of the planet were destroyed. Survivors ran to the poles. Your fleet, or part of it, tangled briefly with the cruiser
Shamash,
drove it off, then initiated a rescue operation.”

“And the battle Slothen reported?”

“No information in the files. It could be a very recent operation.”

“Or maybe it never happened.”

“Maybe.”

For a brief instant, he felt relief. Maybe Slothen
had
been lying, but if so…. God, oh God.

Memories of the rich farmlands of Abulafia rose strongly. His mind overlaid past images with what those fields must look like now—an ocean of dark brown glass. They’d been communal farms, overrun with laughing children and plodding animals. The last time he’d visited the largest cooperative, a tiny dark-haired boy of five had clung to his pants’ leg as they walked through orchards redolent with blossoms, smiling his love for the great Underground leader who protected them all from the horrors of the Magistrates. Jeremiel squeezed his eyes closed, gut hurting.

“Baruch?”

“Don’t…
Don’t talk to me just now.” Hatred smothered him like a black leaden blanket, the weight of it so great he felt he’d be crushed if he didn’t do something.

Getting blindly to his feet, he slammed a fist into the wall. Throwing all of his weight behind his hands, he did it again and again, imagining each bolt of sound to be a rifle burst, seeing purple-uniformed soldiers die. When he’d killed enough, when the glassy ground ran thick with the enemy’s blood, he dreamed of watching a little dark-haired boy spring back to life, crawling out of a glistening sea of melted rock to run toward him, arms open, laughing.

Finally, the pain in his hands overrode his inner anguish. He dropped aching fists to his sides and stood deathly still, struggling to separate reason from emotion. He forced a deep breath and tipped his chin toward the ceiling.

Carey sat riveted, barely breathing. Baruch looked like a tortured savior, handsome face drenched in sweat. The heavy muscles of his shoulders bulged from contraction, swelling against the fabric of his black jumpsuit.

She glanced back at the com screen, studying the statistics on Abulafia. An agricultural planet, they primarily grew grain crops. A few hardy fruit orchards thrived. Her own parents had labored in fruit orchards. Memories from her childhood swept her up, the sweet scent of Orion peach blossoms in spring wafting through her mind, her mother’s crooked smile. Population of Abulafia: 23,000. Half were children. A paltry number of people for such a large, fertile planet. She scanned the data on production. They must have worked their hearts out. They yielded five times what a similar number of Magisterial workers grossed. And they possessed none of the sophisticated technological advantages.

Baruch made a deep-throated tremulous sound and she scrutinized his clenched fists and ravaged face. For a moment, his eyes came back to her, wide and unsettlingly blue. Hatred seethed in the depths, striking her like a brutal slap. She experienced a flicker of his pain.
Goddamn it.
She hadn’t realized that adopting Pleroma’s vulnerable facade would call forth a response from him that found an echo in her. She laced her fingers, squeezing tightly.

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “There’s nothing you could have done. If you’d been there, the outcome would have been the same.”

He bowed his head to stare at his glass. Violently, he shoved it across the table; it toppled over the edge, smashing into the chair before rolling onto the floor. The look of desolation on his handsome face brushed her like a frigid wind. When he spoke, his voice held such struggle, she had to clamp her own jaw to defend against the tide it stirred in her breast.

“… A bunch of farmers. They were no threat to the government.”

“Slothen sees all rebellions as threats. Giclasians have a narrow view of what constitutes constructive dissent. Gamant dissent rarely falls into the correct parameters.”

He walked slowly across his cabin to stand over her. “And the Underground has split its forces and may be heading for the Lysomian system. What the
hell’s
going on out there?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. Do you want me to search for something else?”

He ground his teeth, nodding. “Yes, run a scan for every scrap of data that’s traversed space concerning Tikkun.”

She swung back around to the console, inputting the correct request sequence—and wondered just why she’d done that.
He would have known if you hadn’t. Sure. Right, that’s why you did it. It has nothing to do with the fact that a part of you masochistically wants to help him.
The screen gleamed with a wave of amber fluctuations.

The com flared:
Access denied.

“What?” she blurted.

Persistently, she tried other routes to access the data. Behind her, she felt Baruch’s fiery eyes on her. Her spine prickled.

Inadmissible authorization code.

“Indeed? Well, this is interesting.”