Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 52

Her voice shook. "Why, Xiri?"

Another guard cleared his throat and Cirrus felt his anger. They feared Xirson would cause them all trouble by paying too much attention to her. Xirson swore, then went to his post by the wall.

A moment later, Vitrex stalked into the room, bringing his anger with him. He lay down next to her and began touching her body. "They negotiate like old iron ingots," he muttered.

"You know better than they," she said, even though it wasn't true.

"I want to show you something." Propping himself up on his elbow, he unhooked his palmtop from his belt and flipped it open so the screen lay flat on his palm. When he brushed his thumb through one of the tiny holicons glowing above the border of the screen, a larger holo appeared, an unclothed ten-centimeter-tall Cirrus standing on his palmtop. The image faded into a silver network of lines in the shape of her body.

"Those are your nerves," he said.

"Inside me?"

He nodded. "Do you know how your wrist cuffs work?"

"I don't think so."

Vitrex highlighted a group of lines that ended in the wrists of the image. "Your cuffs extend neural threads into your body. Each thread is specific for a certain nerve. When the cuff sends a pulse through the thread, it stimulates whatever nerve the thread touches."

Cirrus stared at him. She understood now, all too well. She had screamed her throat raw from the effect of those threads.

His voice gentled. "Don't worry, love. I won't activate the cuffs."

She almost closed her eyes with relief. "You are most kind." He wasn't kind, he was a monster, but she could hardly tell him that.

"This gold powder is pretty." He rubbed her arm. "It has nan.o.bots in it, you know. Molecules that hook into your skin. That's why it doesn't come off." He watched her face. "The bots also extend neural threads into your body. I can activate them from my palmtop."

As his meaning sank in, panic swept over Cirrus. The powder covered her entire body. "Minister Vitrex, no. Please."

He spoke in a deceptive voice that would have sounded loving had she not recognized its undercurrent of hungry antic.i.p.ation. "Have you ever heard the Tale of the Fire Prince?" When she shook her head, he said, "The prince descends to the depths of the world. His journey demands more than he thinks he can endure, but in the end he is rewarded for his labors. He ascends to an exaltation he could never have achieved without the trials of his suffering."

"Please," she whispered. "I don't want to be exalted."

"Ah, Cirrus. I'm disappointed in you." He indicated the holicon of a neuron on his palmtop. "This extends the threads into your skin." He flicked his finger through it. "Can you feel that?"

"No." Her voice caught. "Not yet."

He poised his finger over a dragon holicon. In a husky murmur, he said, "This one will stimulate the threads."

A siren suddenly cut through the air, from somewhere far away. Scowling, Vitrex sat up. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

Xirson was reading a display on a screen embedded in his wrist gauntlet. "It's Bunker Base, sir."

"Nexus, attend," Vitrex said. "Why the sirens?"

His computer answered, "It's a general raid warning."

Dropping his palmtop on the bed, Vitrex got up and strode to a console by the wall. "Lieutenant Azez, what is going on?"

A voice snapped into the air. "ISC has invaded Platinum-"

Vitrex waited. "Lieutenant?"

"The palace web is down," Nexus said. "Please try later."

Vitrex activated his wrist comm. "Azez? Are you there?"

"Yes, sir. We've lost the house web."

Vitrex headed for the door, motioning the Razers to accompany him while he spoke into his wrist comm. "Azez, get me a line to Bunker and get me details on the ISC invasion."

"Aye, sir." Azez sounded relieved to have orders.

Then Vitrex left the room, leaving Cirrus alone in the gathering shadows.

At first Althor thought the sirens meant his escape had been discovered. Pressing flat against the corridor wall, he reached out with his Kyle senses and touched the minds in a group of soldiers jogging down a nearby hall. None had thoughts about his escape. Instead he caught an impression of an ISC invasion in Platinum Sector. Then their minds faded, as they moved away from him.

He took off at a jog, letting Basalt choose his path. At times it had him hide in recessed doorways or empty rooms, when he wouldn't have thought to do so. He knew he used to understand how it made such decisions, that he used to make far more complex ones every day, as second in command of ISC. That he operated now only on reflexes and biomech left him with a sense of loss too great to quantify.

He used his mind to detect other minds and so avoid running into people, but his efficiency wasn't 100 percent. Once he came face-to-face with an ESComm pilot as the man stepped out of a lift. Before Althor had a chance to think, his combat libraries accessed his hydraulics and his enhanced reflexes kicked in. He grabbed the pilot's uniform and yanked the soldier off balance, then bent over and rolled him across his back. Althor slammed him down on the floor, on his back, smas.h.i.+ng his skull and breaking his neck and spine.

The pilot's death convulsion wrenched through Althor's mind and Althor almost threw up. Somehow he hid the body in a storeroom. He started to run again, then ducked into a rest chamber and barely made it to the sink in time. When his convulsive heaving finished, he cleaned his face, wondering if he had always reacted this way to death. He couldn't remember.

As he was leaving the chamber, a soldier came in. Althor snapped his spine. The man's unvoiced scream reverberated in his mind and Althor staggered, reeling from the mental backlash. He realized then that the neural damper had protected him when he shot the Razers, m.u.f.fling his ability to pick up brain waves. As the damper wore off, his brain became more sensitized.

The soldier's only weapon was a dagger as long as Althor's lower arm, almost a short sword. It hardly ranked as state-of-the-art arms, but he belted it around his waist anyway. He hid the body and took off again, his long legs covering ground.

He heard no alarms. He was supposed to be on his way to the palace, so no one had reason to look for him here. Normally someone would have discovered the bodies by now or detected him running through the base. But none of the consoles he found worked. The web for the entire base was down. In many places the lights were out and he had to use his IR vision. When the sterile halls didn't produce enough heat to register in the IR, he relied on his acoustics, bouncing ultrasonics off the walls.

As he jogged, he planned. If ISC had a force in Platinum Sector, Glory had to be their target. How could they pull off such an invasion? It seemed suicide to Althor. But if they made it to Glory, they would look for him. Locating a person on a planet was straightforward with a good satellite system, but he had no way to predict what would be available if and when ISC arrived. He needed to increase his chances of recovery, but he couldn't think how to do it. He clenched his fist, frustrated by his inability to plan. He knew he used to excel at this, yet now he felt as if he were swinging in the dark.

A thought came to him. Jaibriol Qox. Soz would send people in to get him. Now he had a plan. Go to the palace. Find Qox. First, though, he had to find Cirrus. And his son.

For some reason, Basalt sent him underground. He began to doubt the node's coherence when it directed him to a room crowded with dusty equipment. He slammed his fist against the wall in frustration, then swore, knowing his violence was another sign of his brain damage, like his earlier berserker rage.

When his legs moved again, he almost told Basalt to leave off. But he let it go, to see what happened. He went to a window on the opposite wall, a pane of gla.s.s rather than the gla.s.steel used in most of the complex. It smashed easily under the blow from his fist. He felt nothing when blood ran down his arm from the cuts in his hand; his biomech web produced chemicals that muted his ability to register pain. The anesthetic worked far better for cuts than it had during his interrogations, where it had been like trying to stop a flood with a spoon.

The window was just under the ceiling, but outside it was at ground level. He climbed out into the moon dazzled night of the Jaizire Mountains, beneath the radiance of eight icy-pastel moons. A breeze ruffled his hair as he stood up at his full height, the pulse rifle gripped in one fist and his dagger-sword strapped to his waist.

Althor moved around the building, keeping to the shadows. On his left, a bank of lights came on, flickered, and went off. He evaded human sentries by using his empathic senses. That Bunker Base had mainly people monitoring the area now, with almost no artificial systems, gave another indication of the extensive collapse their web had experienced. But if the organized competence he sensed from the sentries was an indication of Bunker as a whole, it wouldn't be long before someone detected his escape, even with the web down.

The building he had just left was one of several embedded in the mountain, big structures gleaming like gunmetal, with cylindrical towers and convoluted pipes. He came around the front and saw mountains sloping away from the installation. On an unlit airfield about fifty meters to his right, two fliers stood in the dark.

He jogged out onto the field. Basalt, can you guide a flier to Minister Vitrex's estate?

No answer.

Althor rubbed his chin. A flier did no good if he had no idea where to go. His legs kept moving, though, to the second craft. Inside, it had seats for a pilot and copilot and two pa.s.sengers. At first he didn't recall how to operate a flier, but when he sat in the pilot's seat the knowledge started to come back. There wasn't room to taxi, so he lifted straight up. That the thrusters made no sound caught him by surprise. Although some ISC fliers had that stealth capability, he hadn't thought ESComm could do it. This flier suggested their technology was more advanced than ISC knew. Either that, or he had forgotten the information.

The comm crackled. "Arrow-Jay-Gee-Three, this is Bunker Base Tower. You aren't cleared for takeoff."

Before Althor could put together a response, a voice said, "I filed a flight plan, Bunker. You tower boys approved it."

Althor blinked. According to the comm in front of him, the flier's computer had just spoken. Holding the craft at a hover above the airfield, he scanned the controls. A flickering b.u.t.ton indicated the computer was receiving IR signals from within the flier. But how? He was the only possible source. His biomech sockets could handle IR, but they were plugged into his slave cuffs and collar, which controlled them, except for the socket in his lower spine, which Vitrex's people had deactivated.

"We've no record of your flight plan," Bunker said.

The computer answered, sounding for all the world like a frazzled pilot. "I was supposed to take this load of DNA samples to the Vitrex estate."

"Arrow-Jay-Gee-Three, land immediately," Bunker said. "Under no circ.u.m-wait. Stand by." After a pause, the traffic controller said, "Sorry. Your authorization is in the system. It's a flaming mess down here. You better get going. You're half an hour behind schedule."

"On my way," the flier said. "Switching out."

With his hand on the stick, Althor watched the comm go dark. The stick moved on its own and the flier veered to the east.

After they had flown for several moments, he said, "That was amazing."

His arm moved again, this time to click his wrist cuff into a panel in the arm of the chair. A "voice" he hadn't heard in over a year thought, Althor?

He swallowed, hit by a sudden intensity of emotion. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought he was going to shed some tears. I thought you were broken, Basalt.

I can't "break," his node answered.

You know what I mean.

I am damaged, it admitted. Right now I'm using the flier's computer to talk to you. I'm also downloading codes from it to help rebuild our interface.

Good. Having Basalt back relieved Althor more than he knew how to say. He had missed the EI. This reunion made him feel as if he were becoming whole again. How did you get that fake s.h.i.+pment manifest into the Bunker web?

I didn't. This flier is scheduled and programmed to make that run.

How do you know?

I contacted it, using IR signals.

That answer bothered him, though he couldn't place why. Where is the real pilot?

You killed him a few minutes ago.

Oh. Althor s.h.i.+fted in his seat. Had death always bothered him this much? He couldn't ask. He didn't want to know if he had been a calloused killer. Was that you talking to the tower?

Yes. I sent a signal through the picoweb in your cuffs to the flier's computer.

Now he caught what had bothered him earlier. Why can you control my slave restraints now, when you couldn't before?

I don't really have control now, either, Basalt thought. But the web collapse cut off all IR signals in this area, so I can act in their absence. Even the IR leashes are down. I'm trying to gain control of the picowebs in your cuffs and collar before it all comes back up.

IR leashes?

If an Aristo wants a slave "leashed," he or she registers you with the Bureau of Recovery, which a.s.signs you a signature. If you leave the area flooded by the IR signals specific to your signature, your collar notifies your owner and immobilizes you.

Althor didn't like the sound of it. Immobilizes how?

Drugs. Electric shock. Neural threads.

"G.o.ds," he muttered. Ingenious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

We do have a problem, Basalt thought. Your leash is set for Bunker and the Qox palaces. If you are outside those regions when the leashes come back, you will be in a lot of trouble.

Can you do anything?

I'm trying to deactivate the leash, but so far it hasn't worked.

Can you fool its trigger instead?

In what sense?

Make it think it's receiving the right signal when it isn't.

Basalt paused. I may be able to do that.

The comm crackled. "Arrow, you are entering Vitrex airs.p.a.ce. Land immediately or we will shoot."

"Shoot?" Basalt gave a remarkable impression of a startled pilot. "Hey, I'm just delivering lab supplies to Doctor Azer."

"We're downloading your ID." After a pause, the voice spoke in a friendlier tone. "Arrow-Jay-Gee-Three, go ahead. We're having a h.e.l.l of a time with our web here."

"Sure." Basalt sounded relieved. "It's wild out there, with the webs cras.h.i.+ng."

The traffic controller grunted his agreement. "I can't get any messages out."

"Glad I'm not the only one," Basalt said.

"Eventually they'll get the webs up," the controller said.

"It's taking too d.a.m.n long," Basalt grumbled. "My wife will steam me in a sewer."

Althor stared at the comm. What the h.e.l.l was Basalt doing, making small talk with a Eubian air traffic controller?

The controller chuckled. "If she's anywhere on this continent she has the same problem."

"She's not," Basalt said. "She's on duty in Kuraysia, in Rakajan Sector."

"I can probably link you through to her."

Basalt perked up. "Hey. Thanks."