Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 2

"If we do, I want them to know laughter."

Her voice softened. "I too."

His hand searched for her in the dark and brushed through her curls. Lifting her chin, he kissed her, less self-conscious than before, already adapting to her unspoken responses.

As they lay down together, she thought, Activate IR. The cave became visible, radiating heat it had absorbed during the day. Jaibriol was lying on his side with his eyes closed, one arm around her as he unfastened the front of her uniform vest. As he slid his hand over her breast, he opened his eyes and looked straight at her, though for him it was pitch-black.

"You have the advantage over me," he said.

"Advantage?"

"I see you seeing me. In your mind."

"You can pick up that vivid an image?"

"Why does it surprise you?"

"Even the Rhon can't usually do that with each other."

"Turn off your eyes." His fingers brushed her face. "We can see each other this way."

Deactivate IR, she thought. The cave became black again.

The scent of his Rhon pheromones saturated her senses, invoking her Rhon instincts, the inescapable drive to seek her own kind, just as he sought her. On this, their wedding night, they touched each other with hands, bodies, and minds, speaking a language far more eloquent than the stumbling words they had used earlier.

Afterward they fell into a deep sleep, the first either had known for days.

2.

Is it true what they claim, those scholars who read the artifacts of our past? Are we the Lost Children? They say our ancestors were taken from Earth four thousand years before the birth of Christ and stranded on this bitter world. Then I ask this: Why would an unknown race move our progenitors to this land of dying seas and parched deserts, leaving no help, no rationale, nothing but the wreckage of ancient stars.h.i.+ps? Why?

We speak with pride of our ancestors who conquered s.p.a.ce flight while Earth languished in her Stone Age. We glorify the Ruby Empire, which rose in antediluvian splendor five millennia ago. We have no more than whispers for its fall only a scant three centuries later. That it took us another four thousand years to regain the stars; we have no boasts on this either. Yet for all that our empires rose and fell, we the Lost Children of Earth never found our legendary home.

Until that day, in Earth's twenty-first century, when her other children ventured to the stars-and found us already here.

-From The Lost Empire, by Tajjil Bloodstone Kurj Skolia, Imperator of Imperial Skolia, was a large man. At seven feet tall, broad-shouldered and ma.s.sive, he claimed a physique too heavy for Earth. He was descended from Ruby Empire colonists who modified their DNA to survive on a low-gravity world with a bright sun. His gold metallic skin and hair reflected light. His gold irises s.h.i.+mmered. When lowered, his inner eyelids became one-way mirrors that let him see the world but remained opaque to the outside. His was an implacable face, the visage of a metal dictator with s.h.i.+elds for eyes.

He had, himself, ordered other modifications to his body. Fiberoptics networked it, webbing together the nodes in his spine with his brain. High-pressure hydraulics augmented his muscles and skeleton, and a microfusion reactor powered him. But blood still flowed in his veins, the blood of his ancestors, the Ruby Dynasty that had once, long ago, ruled an empire.

At ninety-one years of age, Kurj looked a hale forty. He had commanded Imperial s.p.a.ce Command for fifty-six years. The loyalty of his officers was legendary, his brilliance as a war leader undisputed.

He had a.s.sumed his t.i.tle at his grandfather's death. The Imperial a.s.sembly ruled the death an accident, an unintended tragedy. But legend whispered that Kurj Skolia murdered his grandfather in his unquenchable ambition to achieve a t.i.tle none dared deny him. The a.s.sembly governed modern Skolia now, rather than the Ruby Dynasty, but its councilors trod with care in the presence of this man known as the Fist of Skolia.

He had no wife. No legitimate children. His legacy was further constrained in that his heir had to be Rhon. Only the Rhon were strong enough to power the psiberweb, which was created by machines from the Ruby Empire. Knowledge of how to build those ancient machines had been lost, but a few still operated. They created a psiberweb outside of s.p.a.cetime, unfettered by light speed. It made possible instant communication across any distance.

The psiberweb gave Imperial s.p.a.ce Command, the Skolian military, an unmatched speed in communications. It was why they survived against the Traders. So Kurj needed Rhon heirs to ensure the web's survival. He chose three of his half siblings: Althor, a Jagernaut Secondary; Kelric, a Tertiary who later died in battle; and Soz, a Primary, equivalent to an admiral.

Soz.

Kurj stood at the wall of dichromesh gla.s.s in his office and looked at HeadQuarters City far below. Laid out in squares and angles, the city formed a precise metropolis. Chrome, metal, ceramoplex: it gleamed under the red sky and splintering hot sun of Diesha.

Soz will someday stand here. For three months he had maintained that hope. For three months he had waited for her to reappear with Jaibriol Qox as her prisoner. But now his operatives had found the s.h.i.+ps. As wreckage. That inescapable fact registered in his files.

Soz was dead.

Kurj stared at his city, his hands clasped behind his back. She had been his first choice among his heirs. He had only one living candidate now, his half brother Althor, his second rather than first choice, but still a fine candidate. Soon Kurj would make the announcement. Althor would follow him as Imperator.

A, he thought, summoning the primary node in his spine.

Attending, A answered.

Explain, Kurj thought. Why am I unable to stop dwelling on the death of Sauscony Valdoria when such serves no useful purpose?

a.n.a.lysis complete, A answered.

Already?

Yes. You are grieving.

Kurj looked at the pale wash of sky above HeadQuarters City. It achieves no useful result. End process.

It is a necessary process. It will stop when you have made peace with her death.

Peace is not in my nature.

I can delete your memories of her. However, she is embedded in your processors, files, and neural patterns. Removing her will delete data crucial to your optimal function.

No deletions. Kurj didn't want to forget his sister.

Suggestion, node C thought.

Yes?

Work, C thought. Occupying your mind with tasks will decrease the amount of time it spends in attempts to calculate models that would have led to your sister's continued existence.

Very well. Kurj turned from the window. His office took up the top floor of the skyneedle known as Spire A. His desk extended the length of the room, a slab of dichromesh gla.s.s studded by web units and supported by gla.s.s columns embedded with more equipment, a mechanically beautiful array designed from precious metals and ceramoplex. He settled into one of the control chairs and sat back while its exoskeleton folded around his body, clicking p.r.o.ngs into sockets in his spine.

Activate Kyle gate, he thought.

His office web responded. Activated.

A psicon appeared in his mind, the symbol from an old language. Greek. As a descendant of Earth's Lost Children, Kurj found himself fascinated by those ancients from Earth and their legends. Antigone. Agamemnon. Oedipus.

The psicon vanished, replaced by his mindscape, an ordered mesh that extended in all directions. Just as a Fourier transform took a time-dependent function into frequency s.p.a.ce, so the gate transformed his mind from s.p.a.cetime into psibers.p.a.ce.

Kurj interacted with machine intelligences using the synthetic nodes and fiberoptics implanted in his body; he interacted with other telepaths using organic bodies in his brain. As he entered the web, his Kyle Afferent Body picked up signals sent by other telepaths and routed them to the para neural structures in his cortex, which translated them into the thoughts of the other users. The paras also translated and conveyed his thoughts to his Kyle Efferent Body, which sent them into the web. Without psiberweb amplification, he could still pick up and send thoughts to a limited extent, but it depended on fields produced by the brain, in particular Coulomb effects, which meant he had to be near the people he interacted with. In the web, spatial location became irrelevant.

Clearance verified. That came from the Evolving Intelligence in the computer that monitored security in his office.

Dusk icon, Kurj thought. He became a dark figure cloaked in shadows.

So he strode across the grid, pa.s.sing through psiware that waved like filaments in the glimmering atmosphere. One flicked his leg, as often happened near a node where his telops were working on ISC business.

Kurj stopped. He distrusted subtle events like psiware fronds flicking his leg. The Rhon powerlink that created the web was a Triad: himself, his stepfather Eldrinson, and his mother's sister Dehya. When it came to Dehya, he took nothing for granted. Where he was force, she was subtlety; where he radiated power, she created nuances. And he didn't trust nuances.

Kurj knelt to study the filament. It waved innocuously, like seaweed.

Access location. He sank down, into a bare room with gray walls. Torpedo, he thought, calling one of his search-and-destroy routines.

Attending, Torpedo rumbled.

Apply key codes.

Done. Large keys appeared, hanging from a rack on the wall, each representing a different security routine. No hidden locks found at this location.

Go deeper into the web, Kurj thought.

The walls peeled away as Torpedo searched. Each time it stripped down a wall, the debris disappeared, swept away by macros Kurj had created to keep the web well-ordered.

No locks detected, Torpedo thought.

Upload the filament under a.n.a.lysis, Kurj thought.

The ceiling above him misted and the filament fell through, dangling in the air. The disruption of the room's symmetry aggravated Kurj. He resisted the urge to eject the filament; if Dehya had created it, she might intend for it to evoke exactly that reaction. She knew him too well.

Isolate filament code from its environment, he thought.

The filament dropped to the floor. When Kurj crouched down to take it, the code came alive and whisked out of his hands. It sped up the wall, but the ceiling had solidified, controlled by his security routines. The filament whipped across it, slid down the other wall, and disappeared into a seam where the wall met the floor.

Go get it, Torpedo, Kurj thought.

Code captured. It is corrupting itself.

Bring back what's left.

A gla.s.s box appeared on the floor. The filament inside dissolved in erratic sparkles until only glitter winked on the bottom of the box.

a.n.a.lysis of code, Kurj thought.

It is a monitor to track your web activity.

Kurj snorted. Mail Server attend.

Server 36 answered. Attending.

Send the following to a.s.sembly Key Selei: "I ate your spy, Dehya." End.

Mail sent. Reply received.

That was fast.

The response came from an automated routine in Selei's mail server. It says: "My spies proliferate. I call them hydra. If you cut down one, two more grow in its place."

So. Dehya was playing on his penchant for Earth mythology, using the battle of Hercules and the hydra. Every time Hercules cut off one head, two more appeared. He defeated the hydra by having the stumps cauterized before they grew new heads.

Send reply, Kurj thought. "Hydras are easy to scorch." End.

Message sent.

Any reply?

None.

Kurj grinned. Close memory location.

He rose out of the room, and its ceiling re-formed under his feet. Filaments of web code waved around its edges.

Torpedo, he thought. Search out and destroy any psiware produced by the corrupted code.

Procedure implemented.

Good. Kurj continued across the web, surrounded by its glittering atmosphere. Each speck of "glitter" specified the process of a user. His Watchers ran continual security checks without need of his attention, but from time to time he examined a speck at random, to gain a sense of web activities. Today he turned up little worth his time: three telops in a quarrel, a private group meditating together via psibers.p.a.ce, and someone checking flight times at a starport.

One nodule resolved into a pet.i.tion written by a colonist on a fringe world. He was protesting an ISC order to disband the colony's Union of Web a.n.a.lysts. Kurj deleted the pet.i.tion even as the man was writing it and ordered a monitor to remove any rewrites. The UWA created disorder by agitating for privileges reserved to ISC. And Kurj disliked disorder.

A sparkle danced in front of him. Attention.

Expand, Kurj thought.

It grew into a s.h.i.+mmer that engulfed the web. When it cleared, Kurj was standing in Selei City on the planet Parthonia, capital of the Imperialate. A boulevard stretched in front of him, bordered by wrywillows, with stately houses set far back from the street and a lavender sky overhead.

What is the purpose of this representation? Kurj asked.

The sparkle reappeared. An advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Imperial Ballet triggered security monitor 484.

Show me the advertis.e.m.e.nt.

The street moved past him as if he were traveling in one of the open teardrop cars popular in Selei City. He came into view of Ascendance Hall, home to the Imperial Ballet. A mural on its facade glistened in a holographic display of dancers, along with performance dates and times.

The mural's most striking aspect was a dancer in a diaphanous blue dress. Her skin, eyes, and hair gleamed gold. Hip-length curls streamed out when she whirled and leapt, then swirled around her when she paused. A sweet smile curved in her angel's face. She had the body of an erotic holomovie actress rather than the more angular form of most dancers.