Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 54

Then he was among the trees, then at the flier. As he climbed inside, Basalt thought, You can't take Cirrus.

What? Why not? Althor fastened her into the copilot's seat, then slid into the pilot's seat.

The IR leashes are up and she's tied to this estate. Right now every single grain of dust on her body has threads extended into her skin. Take her out of range and it will set off a ma.s.sive neural shock throughout her entire body that I can't stop.

Flaming b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Protect her! Althor started the engine. Do for her what you're doing for me.

I'm trying. But I have less connection to her systems.

If we don't leave now, they'll catch us.

Give me twenty seconds.

We don't HAVE twenty seconds. Althor's mind raced. Any moment the flier would explode- Done! Basalt thought. GO.

As the flier leapt into the air, two laser beams crossed below it. Leaves on the ground ignited and trees around the clearing caught fire. When Althor kicked the thrust even higher, acceleration slammed him into his seat. The instant they cleared the woods, he dropped the flier low to the ground and programmed a new destination into the autopilot. Within seconds they were skimming through the mountains, dark and hidden, a stealth hawk running in silence.

Finally he turned to Cirrus. For the first time this night he got a good look at her. She gleamed, her skin a gold sheen dusted with tiny gems, her thigh-length hair spread everywhere in a luminous sparkling cloud, her spectacular body glittering with jewels and little else. He swallowed, absorbing the golden vision. Beautiful hardly began to describe her. How in any ten h.e.l.ls of the Vanished Seas could Vitrex have wanted to hurt her?

Your pulse and blood pressure are too high, Basalt thought.

Never mind. How is Cirrus?

I deactivated the neural threads.

Cirrus stirred. She opened her eyes and looked at him. No recognition showed either on her face or in her mind. No reaction. Nothing.

Basalt! What's wrong with her!

Calm down, Basalt thought.

I am calm. Answer the d.a.m.n question.

She's stunned. It is a logical reaction given she has just been hauled around by people she can't see, shot at, and tossed out a window. I suggest you comfort her.

Oh. Yes. Of course. Althor flushed. It had been decades since he had felt this self-conscious around a lover.

"Cirrus?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

Her emotions stirred, fear bubbling to the surface. "He cut your arm."

Startled, Althor looked down. The projectile from Vitrex's rifle had sliced his biceps. He couldn't even feel the wound. Yet. He had taken worse, though. "I can patch it up with the flier's med supplies. It'll be fine."

"He was there."

"He?"

"Minister Vitrex. I heard him." She sounded calm, but terror simmered in her thoughts. "The dragon."

When Althor picked up from her mind what she meant by dragon, he nearly gagged. Every time he thought he had the measure of the Hightons, they astonished him anew with their capacity for brutality.

"Vitrex can't hurt you now," he said. "He's dead."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Positive."

Grim satisfaction flickered on her face. Then she hesitated. "Who do I belong to now? You?"

That caught him off guard. "Cirrus, listen. No one owns you. You own you." She smelled so good it was fuzzing up his brain. All he could think was how much he wanted to hold her. "But I, uh, I would like-will you stay with me? If you want."

"Stay with you?"

"Yes." He knew they had little chance of escape, but faced with this spectacular woman, the mother of his child, he didn't want to admit it. "We can take care of our son together."

Her smile dawned like a sun. "I would like that."

"Good."

"But where are we going?"

"To the palace." He took a breath. "To find the emperor."

32.

The image of Admiral Barzun on the holoscreen was the only light in the shuttle. Soz was aware of the d-team around and behind her, silent in their berths.

"That you came on Asteroid-this made sense to me," Barzun said. "Your presence on Roca's Pride carried more risk, but it still made sense. You have unique capabilities. Without you there, holding the net when it collapsed, I doubt we would have made it this far. But a drop-down?" He shook his head. "To risk the Imperator in such a manner is neither acceptable nor necessary."

She spoke in a low voice. "Chad, why do you think the web collapsed?"

"ESComm got the Lock and tried to use it."

"They couldn't crash the web with that."

"Then what did?"

"It's me," Soz said. "We talk as if the web is a mesh in a sea, but in some ways it's more like a room. The Triad holds up the walls, and the a.s.sembly Key and I are trying to stand in the same place. We can't do it." She shook her head. "I don't know what drove the final collapse, but if we bring it up again, it's going to kill either Dehya or myself."

He watched her uneasily. "It was my understanding that no way exists to extract a Key from the Triad."

"When the web is up, no. It has too many links into our brains. Ripping them out would kill us."

"We can find a solution," he said. "It isn't enough reason for you to risk your life this way."

"I have other reasons."

"What?"

"I can't say."

Barzun leaned forward. "Then I will say for you. You think you have the best chance of locating your brother. You consider it worth risking your death, particularly since you think you're going to die anyway. It's either that or cause the Pharaoh's death, right? You don't want to repeat Kurj Skolia's history. But you want revenge for his death. You want Jaibriol Qox dead. Well, I have news for you. Those aren't good enough reasons." He made a frustrated noise, as if he were trying to reach her and kept hitting a wall. "We can solve this thing with the Triad."

Although she couldn't deny his summation had validity, the truth was far more complex. But she would let all Skolia believe as he believed, that she went to rescue one brother and avenge the other. It fit with the legends of the Ruby Dynasty, tales of atavistic warrior queens who marauded across the stars. It made no difference that she led a modern, egalitarian military rather than an ancient army of female warriors who owned their men and subjugated worlds. Reality would have little effect on the legends that grew around her final acts as Imperator. Those who knew her better, like Naaj Majda and Dayamar Stone, would question that "truth," comparing it to the pragmatic officer of their experience. But their questions would go unanswered.

"Chad." She watched him from the dark. "Don't fight me."

"I have to. Skolia needs you alive."

She snorted. "Skolia doesn't need more warriors. We need diplomats. People to stand up and say, 'Let's make peace.'"

"We tried that. Didn't work."

"I have to go now." Softly she said, "Give my regards to my family. Tell them I thought of them."

"Soz, come back."

"I can't. Out." Then she closed the link.

She felt the d-team around her, felt their questions. But no one spoke. They knew better than to ask questions. As long as the risk of capture existed, she had no intention of going into more detail than what they needed to complete this mission.

They landed at night, a few kilometers from the palace. Sections of the ethereal residence were in flames, from surgical strikes by the s.h.i.+ps in orbit or the Jags that had come down to harry the ground forces. ISC wasn't trying to destroy the palace, only cripple its defenses. The palace was returning fire, but without web control neither side was having much success fighting off the other.

After landing on a hill behind a bank of tall bushes, they disembarked and moved into the woods at their right. Each Jagernaut called up a tactical map produced by Roca's Pride. Had the web still been up, the map would have been continually updating. But even without that, it was still only a few minutes old.

Soz's biomech web superimposed the map over the terrain like a ghost. Her IR vision showed the area in fiery hues, letting her match landmarks with psicons on the map. A compa.s.s psicon in one corner of her mindscape verified their direction, and she also carried a compa.s.s in her gauntlet, should the mindscape fail.

The woods sloped down to the palace, with rocky ground in front of them and a drop-off to the river on their right. Soz stepped into a hole, grimacing as her ankle twisted. She extricated herself and kept going, stepping over roots. Vines brushed her face and caught on her rifle. She had no doubt the woods looked charming, but they were a pain to walk through.

The d-team moved as a unit. This close together, with their Kyle abilities augmented by neural implants, they formed a psiberlink, twenty-one nodes in all.

Wait, Soz thought.

The team stopped. A security line cut through the woods ahead, highlighted in red on her map. From orbit it had been hard to determine details, but here they could get more. Caser, I need your help.

On my way.

Her mindscape showed a man-shaped icon walking through the woods. As it reached the icon marking her position, the real Caser came up next to her. An expert in both intelligence and security, he was an ace at outfoxing defensive systems.

The line is about 500 centimeters north, Soz thought.

I'm getting a fix on it. Caser probed the line with various signals, using routines he had programmed into himself, drawing on years of experience and his natural apt.i.tude. Then he laid a red line over the map's curve, one closer to their position. It's a sensor and spike biter. The sensor would be sending data to palace security if the web was up. This type usually monitors a cylindrical area about ten centimeters in diameter around the line and also in a vertical plane that extends out of the ground. He highlighted the geometry on the map.

What about the spike biters? Soz asked.

Primitive but lethal. He grimaced. If you cross the line and you aren't broadcasting the correct IR codes, spikes shoot up. You die by impalement.

Can you figure out the IR codes?

This is a well-secured system. It could take an hour.

Too long. Soz considered the curve. How accurate do you think your fix is? Enough to risk a jump?

I'd say yes. About 60 to 80 percent accuracy.

Soz directed her thought to the listening d-team. The spikes have to come through a meter of ground. That gives us time to jump if we use hydraulics. Make your leap long, but don't give up speed for distance. Have your nodes calculate a trajectory and apply it to your hydraulics. She paused. Ready?

Yes. The response came from twenty minds.

All right. Go.

They started running from several hundred meters back and leapt with hydraulic-enhanced grace when they reached the line. Spikes shot out of the ground, shearing up plumes of soil. One missed a Jagernaut by less than two centimeters.

Backing up, Soz released control to her hydraulics. She took off and ran forward, then jumped the line, her legs stretching out in an airborne split. A spike ripped through her sweater. Then she was on the other side, landing with bent legs to cus.h.i.+on the impact. Despite Caser's mental barriers, she "heard" him swear at himself for not making a more accurate estimate of the line's position.

She sent him a mental grin. Keeps us alert.

Caser gave her a dry smile. Aye, that it does.

Within minutes they came on another line. This one had already been triggered, the soil around it churned and torn, with spikes everywhere. And bodies. Both ESComm and ISC soldiers had been caught in the carnage. Soz swallowed, wis.h.i.+ng they had time to bury their dead. Even after so many decades, she had never grown inured to the killing.

Increase kylatine production, she thought. Level four.

Done, her node thought. With kylatine damping their psionic reception, Jagernauts had a better chance of surviving combat. Turning empaths and telepaths into weapons had been condemned by many among the Allieds and Imperialate, even by critics within ISC. It was no coincidence Jagernauts had the highest suicide rate among all ISC personnel. But despite the price she paid in combat for her Kyle-enhanced abilities, Soz would never have given them up. They had saved her life too many times, and more than that, they kept her human in the dehumanizing force of war.

They reached the edge of the forest, which came closer here to the palace than anywhere else. According to the map, 162 meters separated them from the closest section of the palace, visible now, a patio bordered by fluted columns and topped by a dome.

She sent a thought through the link. Remember: I want Qox alive. Understood?

Twenty responses came back. Yes.

All right. Go.

They ran to the palace and gathered under the dome. Soz was picking up other minds now, flickers all around them. Several resolved into people running in their direction. Her team melted into the shadows just before six ESComm soldiers jogged across the patio and disappeared into the night.

Soz sent a private message to her node. Halt kylatine production.

Recommend you continue, her node thought.

I need full probe ability.