I threw up when we came out of stasis.
Sterilizers in my spacesuit whirred, cleaning the mess. We hurtled into the Dieshan system, plowing through its layers of security by blasting out my clearances. I brought the Jag down on the hospital roof in the middle of the night in a glare of flood lamps. Rex lay in the medcradle, its huge arms buffering him while intravenous threads trailed into his limbs through sockets in his space suit.
As I opened the airlock, people ran across the roof. Within seconds they were loading Rex into an air-stretcher. I went with them, jogging by the stretcher while doctors tried to take readings on me.
It all happened too fast. We were running down a white corridor toward Surgery; then I was in a circular room with white walls, surrounded by meds in white uniforms. One tried to take me into another room. When he wouldn't let go, I rolled him over my hip, and he hit the ground with a resounding thump, his hospital jumpsuit ripping along the seams. Three other meds, two women and a man, grabbed my arms. The one I had thrown climbed to his feet, and a third medwoman tried to press an air syringe against my arm.
"Stop it," I yanked my arm away from her syringe. I had to know what happened to Rex.
"Primary Valdoria, please." The woman with the syringe brushed disarrayed grey curls out of her eyes. "You need medical atten—"
"Put that damned syringe down," I said. "Or I'll have you thrown into prison for attacking an Imperial heir."
The woman blanched and lowered her arm. But that was as far as she relented. When the other meds tried taking me to a chair, I swore at them.
"Sit," the syringe-wielding woman told me. "Relax."
Was she crazy? Rex was dying and this madwoman wanted me to relax? I tried to twist away from the meds, but they kept hold of me.
"Soz." A hand came down heavy on my shoulder.
I turned in the grip of the meds and looked up.
Helda.
I closed my eyes, then opened them again. Saints above and almighty. I hadn't killed them all.
"Did you report?" I asked. I wanted to shed tears, but I couldn't do that in front of these people.
"Ya." She hesitated. "Taas?"
"He didn't respond when I told him to pull out."
"Damn." She exhaled. "I am sorry."
Softly I said, "So am I." Sorry didn't begin to say it.
Helda indicated a curving white sofa against the curving white wall. "You wait with me?"
I nodded, and jerked my arms away from the meds, who finally let go, apparently trusting Helda to keep me from disturbing the peace. So she and I sat on the sofa.
Then we waited.
And waited.
We sat for eight hours. Someone asked if I wanted to watch Rex's operations on a holoscreen. I said no. I didn't think I could bear it. Later someone asked me questions, taking my report. Then they went away. During all those long hours I kept reliving the battle, the moments when I gave Taas his orders, Helda hers. Or Rex. I kept thinking of other scenarios, other commands I could have issued that might have changed the way it ended, given them and Tams a chance to live.
Finally I tried to turn off my mind. But I could still hear the dying scream of that child-pilot in the Solo. Overlaid on his death were my memories of the Aristo warlords who had nearly destroyed us, their lust for my death like a dirty taste in my mouth I could never clean out, never if I tried for a thousand years, no more than I had been able to clean off the crust of that hatred from any other battle I had fought over the last quarter of a century.
About an hour after dawn I finally dozed off. My head fell back against the sofa, but I caught myself and sat up. Then I let it fall back again and closed my eyes.
"Do you want some coffee?" a voice asked.
My eyes snapped open. I knew that voice.
"Primary Valdoria? I brought some coff—"
"Taas!" I jumped to my feet.
Taas grinned and held out a plastic cup filled with that god-awful drink the Allieds had inflicted on our import shops. He was still wearing his space suit. I grabbed him a hug, followed by Helda who nearly knocked him over. His coffee splattered all over the floor.
"Hey." His voice came out muffled against Helda's bosom. "I can't breathe."
She let him go. "It is no good if you die from suffocation now, heh? Not after coming back from the dead."
He blinked. "The dead?"
I laughed unsteadily. "I thought you were dead when you dropped out of the link."
"I got hit by a drone," Taas said. "It knocked me out of our link."
I stared at him. The only way to knock him out would have been to damage Greenstar so seriously, it couldn't access the Kyle-Mesh. "You made it back here with a crippled computer?"
"It wasn't so bad," Taas said. "I just had to do a few calculations in my head."
In his head? "You must have one incredible brain." But I had known that when I picked him for the squad. "Did you get the EI through to Tams?"
"I did the drop," he said. "I don't know if it helped. I haven't heard any reports yet."
"Soz." Helda touched my arm.
I glanced at her, and she nodded toward the door. I turned to see a doctor approaching. He stopped in front of me. "Primary Valdoria?"
"Yes?" I asked.
"We're done in surgery."
"And?" Tell me he'll live. Tell me he'll be all right.
The doctor pushed his hand through his hair. "He had bruises, broken bones, internal bleeding. None of that was too serious."
But? I felt it hanging in the air. "What about his legs?"
"The problem isn't his legs," the doctor said. "It was the psiphon socket implanted in the lumbar region of his spine. It ripped out of his body, partially transecting his descending neural fibers between the cervical and lumber enlargements."
"Tell me so I can understand."
"The implant cut his spinal cord."
"You can fix it, can't you?"
"Normally we can make even neural cells regenerate by tricking them into thinking they're in an embryonic state." The doctor spoke quietly. "It didn't take with him. Then we tried three operations to link the severed portions with bio-optics. His body rejected them."
This wasn't what I wanted to hear. "But you can fix the damage, right? As soon as he starts responding to treatment?"
He hesitated. "Normally I would say yes. Unfortunately a biomech system as extensive as what you carry in your bodies can lead to unexpected side effects. Secondary Blackstone has had so many injuries to his nervous system already, he's developed a toxic reaction to some of the drugs we use to promote regeneration. If we try anything more with his web, his body may reject the entire system."
I stared at him. "What are you telling me?"
A painful compassion darkened his eyes. "Secondary Blackstone is paralyzed from the waist down. He will probably never regain function of his legs."
"No." It couldn't be. They wanted me to believe Rex had been crippled the day before he resigned? No, it couldn't be.
Helda spoke softly. "When can we see him?"
"He's sleeping now," the doctor said. "We'll let you know as soon as he can have visitors." He glanced back at me. "Primary—"
I knew what was coming. Solicitude. I couldn't bear that. I regarded him implacably. "What?"
"I'm told your ship's log indicates you haven't slept in over fifty hours." He paused. "Preliminary scans indicate you have two broken ribs, multiple bruises, and internal tissue damage from being in stasis too long. You need medical care and sleep."
Sleep? I was too agitated even to sit down. "I'm fine."
"Ma'am, you aren't fine. You're about to collapse." When I started to object, he held up his hand. "We can give you a bed here."
I scowled. "I don't want a bed."
"It would be in your best interest."
A vivid picture from his mind intruded into my thoughts, an image of how I looked to him, like an injured rockdeer, a wild, beautiful animal growling while he tried to coax her to come near enough so he could heal her wounds. The image was so startling I just stood blinking at him. As the Allieds would say, it took the proverbial wind out of my proverbial sails, which was a dumb metaphor given that he saw me as a rockdeer and not a ship.
Maybe I was more exhausted than I thought, too tired even to form coherent thoughts.
"All right," I said. "I'll rest. For a little bit."
The curtains cut out the harsh Dieshan sun, letting in just enough light to keep the room dimly lit. I lay in the pleasing warmth, rising out of sleep, wondering why I felt so sore.
Then I remembered.
It was a bonecrusher. When I slept, my mind relaxed its barriers, sometimes enough to let me pick up things that I blocked when I was awake. At times my dreams even sampled possible futures, the closest I ever came to precognition. The more intense the feelings of the people involved—and the closer I was to them—the more vivid the dream. But all too often intense feelings accompanied misfortune. I hated those dreams. Instead of waking up refreshed, I opened my eyes into misery, knowing that I or someone I loved was now or soon to be hurt. I called the dreams bonecrushers because it felt like they crushed me. Today I was waking up into one.
As my mind focused, I realized someone was in the room, a presence like an iron blanket on my mind. I turned over to look.
He stood by the bed, a giant man over two meters tall with musculature too heavy to have evolved on a standard gravity world. He looked more metal than human. His skin glinted as if it were gold. Although his eyes were open, inner lids covered them like gold shields, opaque to the world. I knew he could see through them, but to everyone else his eyes were blank spaces. His face would have been handsome if it hadn't been so hard, but nothing softened that visage. He wore a plain uniform, beige trousers and a pullover with no markings, nothing to indicate his identity—except for a gold band on each upper arm wider even than the one that denoted my rank of Primary.
The Imperator had come to see me.
I sat up, wincing as pain shot through my torso. Then I saluted, clenching my hands into fists and crossing them at the wrists, right over left, as I raised them to him.
Kurj inclined his head. Even after so many years, I found it hard to believe we were related. Although we had the same mother, we bore little resemblance to each other; Kurj looked like our grandfather and I like our grandmother. His coloring came from genetic adaptations our grandfather's ancestors had made when they colonized a world with a too-bright sun. The metallic sheen of his skin and hair reflected sunlight, and the inner lids protected his eyes. He was as much machine as human, with biomech even more extensive than mine. His appearance had become a symbol, the Fist of Skolia, the case-hardened emperor with no mortal softness the Traders could exploit.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"All right." I rubbed the restrainer that held my ribs. I had no recollection of anyone putting it there. I had been so keyed up, the doctors had knocked me out with some potion in an air syringe.
Beyond Kurj, the rainbows of a cyberlock rippled on the walls, ceiling, and floor, isolating us within its field. Their colors were more intense than those I had seen around Jaibriol's mansion on Delos. These gave a different warning: Kurj's lock was set to kill.
"The doctors told me about Rex Blackstone," he said.
My attention snapped back to him. "Have you seen him?"
"He's still asleep."
I wanted to ask what else he knew, but I couldn't. Faced with Kurj's impassive metal face, my words dried up and blew away.
So instead I said, "Did Taas's EI drop help?"
"Yes." That one simple word said so much. "By the time our backup units arrived, Qox's flags had flooded the planet. We couldn't get anyone else out alive. But we were able to protect the refugee ships that had escaped and were fleeing the system."
I dreaded the words he hadn't said. "How many died?"
His words dropped like stones. "Two thirds of the population."
Two thirds. Of six hundred million. I wondered what Jaibriol thought of his father now.
"I've also read your report on the Aristo," Kurj said.
That was all. I've read your report. So he knew the truth. Ur Qox had an heir. The devil had reproduced himself.
No wonder the Emperor had never divorced his wife. She had to know her "son" was another woman's child. She probably thought Qox had a Highton mistress. Had he secluded his wife and then shown up with the baby? If she denied Jaibriol, it would have put the Highton Heir under a scrutiny Qox had to avoid. I was surprised he hadn't murdered the Empress. Was Taas right, that Qox actually loved his wife? Or did he just doubt he could get away with killing her? He must have made a devil's bargain with her: keep her silence and she kept her title.
In the past, I had tried to convince myself that the among Aristos, the women were their gentle side. They disdained the military, which meant we rarely had contact with them. But my three weeks on Tarque's Estate had cured me of my notions. The Aristos had no gentle side. The women were as brutal as the men. Nothing, not size, shape, sex, or anything else made a whit of difference.
Kurj was watching me. "The Delos authorities sent us a report about your activities in the Highton's mansion." He raised his eyebrow at me. "Your methods weren't exactly subtle."
"Is that a reprimand, sir?"
"No."
That was no surprise. Kurj had never had much use for subtlety.
"I've arranged for Blackstar squad to receive commendations," Kurj said. "We will broadcast it on the news holos."
So. Make us heroes. I supposed it made sense. It gave ISC a better image. I felt about as heroic as a slug.
Unbidden, Kurj's thought entered my mind. Every time you fly a mission, you risk your lives. You know that. Your squad knows. Blackstone knows.
Yes, sir. I kept the rest of my thoughts hidden. What else could I say? Knowing Rex was aware of the dangers didn't help.
"Soz." Kurj's voice gentled. "You deserve the commendations."
A light glowed one of his wrist gauntlets, which covered his lower arm and part of his hand. When he touched the pager, a man's voice came into the room. "A medwoman is here to see you, sir. Her codes cleared security."
"Send her in," Kurj said.
The cyberlock field dimmed, leaving an opening across the room. The wall separated into an oval that stretched from floor to ceiling. Two of Kurj's bodyguards stepped through, both of them Jagernauts. A woman appeared next, a girl really. She walked behind them, her face flushed as she stared at the floor. She was a beauty, with a silky mane of gold hair to her waist. Curls floated around her breathtaking face, which was soft and sweet, golden. She looked like a delicate, younger version of my mother. She didn't have my mother's vibrant quality, though, that glowing self-confidence that drew people like pale moths seeking a night lamp. This girl was more fragile.
Kurj nodded to his guards. "You may go."
After the Jagernauts left, the wall closed and the cyberlock rippled into place, trapping the girl with us. Fear closed around me like glass enclosing an insect. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe—
Block, I thought, and the fear receded. The girl stayed riveted in place, staring at the floor. She couldn't even acknowledge Kurj, an omission that made her a criminal, punishable by prison. Hell, Kurj could give her any sentence he wanted, including execution. No one was going to argue with him. But I had a feeling that wasn't what he had in mind for her at all.
He regarded the girl. "Come here."
At first she didn't move. Then she took a breath and walked forward. She stopped in front of him and knelt, first on one knee, and when he didn't give her permission to rise, on both knees. Her shoulders trembled, making the lace neckline of her white dress slip forward so that her breasts were visible to anyone above the level of her shoulders.
For a while Kurj stood looking at her. Finally he said, "You're the girl I saw tending children in the nursery?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
"What is your name?"
"Charissa Deirdre."
"You have a message for me?"
"Yes, sir." Her voice was soft.
"What is it?"
"Your guard—the biggest one. He said you gave orders. That—I was to inform y-you when—" She took a breath. "When the broadcast you wanted to watch was ready to begin."
"Is it?" Kurj asked.
"Yes. It—it is."
What was the bloody blazes Kurj doing? If he wanted to watch some news program, all he had to do was set my room console to activate when it was about to start. Why order a girl who worked in the nursery to tell him? No, stupid question. I knew why. Some men asked women who interested them to dinner. Kurj had other methods.
"Get up," Kurj said. His voice was even gentle. But it was still a command.
The girl stood, her eyes averted. She was young enough to be his great-granddaughter. Although he looked a fit and muscled forty, he was ninety. He towered over her; the top of her head barely reached the center of his massive chest.
"Look at me," he said.
She raised her large eyes, brown flecked with gold. Bright spots of color showed on her cheeks. Kurj cupped his hand under her chin, stroking her cheek with his thumb. His grip was so large that his fingers covered her right ear lobe and his thumb brushed her left lobe. With his other hand, he touched the comm mesh on his wrist gauntlet.
The voice of his guard came out of the mesh. "Ko, here."
"The girl is ready to leave," Kurj said.
The cyberlock opened and the two Jagernauts reappeared. Kurj ignored them, his gaze on Charissa. She stared at him like a shyback gazelle mesmerized by a hunter's light. Bending his head, he held her chin and kissed her, a long kiss, taking his time. Then he straightened up and glanced at the Jagernauts. "Have her taken to the palace."
"Yes, sir," the larger guard said.
Charissa went with them quietly, looking at neither. When she was gone, I sat on the bed with my fists clenched under the blanket.
Kurj turned back to me. After a moment he said, "You disapprove?"
"You're an empath. You must have felt how scared she was."
He shrugged. "Perhaps."
Perhaps? How could he have stood there, submerged in her fear, and not react?
And who the hell was I to judge him? I had killed a terrified pilot who was barely more than a child, purposely blocking off my emotional responses so I could destroy his ship.
"If you hadn't killed him," Kurj said, "he would have killed you."
I thought of the Aristos. "So we become what we fight."
"No. We survive."
My voice snapped out. "And survival means raping whoever catches your fancy?"
Kurj's jaw stiffened. "You overstep yourself."
That one. Tarque's image seared my mind. He had made me kneel in front of him and praise him with every noxious title he could think of, promising respite from the pain if I did what he wanted.
Watching me, Kurj raked his hand over his short hair. Then he went to the window and pulled aside the curtains, letting painfully bright sunlight into the room. He stood in its swath, glinting in the glassy sunlight, while he stared out at the casecrete and chrome grounds of the ISC hospital.
Then he said, "You compare me to a Highton?"
I just shook my head. I couldn't talk to him about Tarque.
He turned around. "Did it ever occur to you that I need companionship?"
I stared at him. I didn't know what surprised me more, his admission of loneliness or his method of alleviating it. What kind of companion would Charissa make if she was so traumatized she could barely breathe when she was in the same room with him?
"You want me to court her," Kurj said. "'Woo' her. Coax her." His voice hardened. "I bow to no one. Not Ur Qox, not the Allied President, and not any woman."
Is that how you see love? I thought. As a loss of control? Or are you punishing her for looking like the one woman you most want, the one you can't have? But I didn't let those thoughts out where he could find them. It might be true that I spoke more openly to Kurj than almost anyone else alive. Even so, limits existed on what I could say—or think—in his presence.
Even after all the years I had known him, Kurj remained an enigma to me. He had plenty of good within him. Even kindness. He was a brilliant war leader who inspired fierce loyalty from his officers. But decades of battling the Traders had hardened him, until he could no longer express affection even to a gentle girl like Charissa. I had never found a way to resolve the darker side of this man I called brother.
Across the room, the VR-wall activated, speckled patterns swirling on its surface. A holo formed in front of it, a sleek black puma with red eyes. Its lips drew into a snarl, and its fangs glistened like daggers. Music swelled into the haunting melody of the Trader anthem.
So. Kurj had set the console to activate. He was watching the wall-screen, his arms crossed, his gaze intent on the emblem of his enemy. He had filed Charissa away in his mind and moved on. I couldn't put her out of my thoughts that easily. I kept seeing her frightened face, kept feeling her sinking sensation as she heard Kurj's words: Have her taken to the palace.
Block, I thought. The psicon sputtered in my mind, but the memory stayed strong. My blocker only muted other people's emotions. Deleting my memories was too dangerous; it could inadvertently wipe out other needed information as well.
In front of the screen, the puma stretched a paw forward, its claws extending in a fan of sharpened points as the Trader anthem swelled in a crescendo.
I spoke in a neutral voice. "Who is broadcasting this?"
Kurj continued to watch the puma. "We picked it up from the Traders."
"Emperor Qox is speaking?"
A muscle twitched in his cheek. "Yes."
We were probably getting the transmission even before many of the Trader worlds. To transmit off planet, Qox had to record the broadcast and send it via starship to wherever he wanted it heard. But once we picked it up, we could shoot it over the Kyle-Mesh instantaneously.
The broadcast had to be about Tams. Qox couldn't hide this time. Two hundred million witnesses had survived his latest attempt at genocide. Their testimony would show the lie of his.
The puma shimmered—and we were there, in a great circular hall. Far above our heads, the ceiling arched in a white dome. High-backed benches of white stone formed concentric rings, many rings, filling the room. Cushions softened the seats, pillows the color of blood. Aristos sat here. Ranks and ranks of Aristos. Hundreds. Thousands. They sat side by side, subunits in a machine, all in black, with glittering black hair and ruby eyes.
In the center of the hall, a pillar of crystal rose from the floor almost to the ceiling, refracting and splintering light into sparks of color. The puma crouched in the air behind the pillar. The animal twisted and swelled in size. Its back legs pulled out straight, its body came upright, front legs reached out like arms—and a lean man stood there, two meters high, three meters, four. When he finished morphing, he was five meters tall, sixteen feet, his head just below the domed ceiling. His Highton features were unmistakable, though nothing else made his face remarkable. What set him apart was his presence, an air of undisputed authority.
This was Ur Qox, Emperor of Eube.
The music stopped. Qox spoke in Highton with a powerful voice. "My people, I come before you tonight with great pride. Rejoice! We, the children of Eube, have been chosen. We have an honor never before known, the honor of living in the greatest civilization to grace the great, turning wheel of our galaxy. We shine where darkness once blanketed the stars."
For flaming sake. He went on and on, coming up with ever more grandiose tributes to his empire. He never mentioned Tams. Did he believe he could hide it? I wished he would finish the damn speech. Even seeing him so long after he had recorded it, I felt as if mites burrowed into my skin. Qox, the Hightons, all the Aristos—just their images were enough terrorize us, as if our minds recognized on a subliminal level what they could do to us.
"I come to you tonight with magnificent news," Qox said. "The constant threat we live with, the threat of enslavement by our malevolent enemies, has been dealt a great blow." His expression became firm, that of a leader struggling with righteous anger. "The latest victim of the ruthless Imperial forces is Tams Station, one of the Concord's most vulnerable members. Yesterday the Imperialate attacked the defenseless Tams with no provocation."
What the hell? In the "seat" next to me, Kurj stiffened. All around us, the Aristos clicked the ornate rings on their fingers, click, click, click, like a huge insect rattling with agitation.
Grief tinged Qox's voice. "I speak in great sorrow. Tams lost its population. Yes, my people, four hundred million innocent citizens died at the hands of Imperator Skolia."
I couldn't believe it. He was blaming us. Kurj watched with his shielded eyes, his face a metal mask. But I was an empath, one of his own blood. No matter how well he blocked his anger, I felt it.
Triumph washed over Qox's face. "But our gallant forces drove away the war-mongers! We saved two hundred million of our brave citizens."
I gritted my teeth. This was even worse than I expected.
Pride swelled in Qox's voice. "My people, I cannot take credit for the rescue at Tams. No, that credit goes to a hero like none other you have known, a man whose greatness has only begun to shine, a star rising in Tams' darkest hour." He motioned to someone out of range of the camera. For a dramatic moment he stood alone, waiting, his hand outstretched.
Then Jaibriol appeared at the podium.
Ah, Gods. I clamped a cover over my mind while inside I reeled.
Qox gazed out at the assembled aristocracy of his empire. "This man commanded the mission that saved Tams Station." He laid his hand on Jaibriol's arm. "I present to you Lord J'briol U'jjr Qox. My son. The Highton Heir."
"No," Kurj said.
A collective gasp rose from the Aristos, like a flock of birds startled from their roosting place, rising into the air with a flurry of motion. Their finger cymbals clicked wildly, click-click-click, click-click-click. Jaibriol hardly looked like the same man I had met on Delos. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. He stood next to his father like a dead statue, grim and silent.
Qox described why he had hidden his son's birth; Imperial assassins had been poised to murder the Highton Heir, but now the assassins were dead, killed in a fierce battle with brave Eubian soldiers who defended Jaibriol at great peril to their lives. He finished with another one of his grating tributes to the greatness of himself, his dynasty, the Hightons, and his empire. The entire time Jaibriol stood there, unsmiling, tall and broad-shouldered, the image of his revered ancestors, every bit the perfect hero, the extraordinarily handsome heir to the Qox dynasty. The Traders would worship him.
Mercifully, the broadcast ended and the hall dissolved into the reality of my hospital room. I sat in bed, too demoralized to speak.
"That was surreal," Kurj said. "He blames us for Tams."
"He can't get away with it," I said. "Two hundred million witnesses will say otherwise."
Maybe this son of his will die a miserable death in battle, Kurj thought.
Maybe. Such a loss would devastate Qox more than Kurj knew, destroying the meticulous plans of two generations of Emperors who sacrificed their godforsaken bloodlines so they could produce a Rhon heir. Qox wouldn't take that risk. Jaibriol would never see combat.
I wondered what the emperor would do if he knew the witnesses to his crimes at Tams existed because his son, the "star rising in Tams's darkest hour," had betrayed his father to an Imperial Heir.
Rex lay on his back with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in a deep, even rhythm. His face looked so thin. So pale. A gold sheet covered most of his body, up to his shoulders and head. The collar of his blue shirt was open at the neck, somehow giving him a vulnerable look, probably because I was used to seeing him in the intimidating leathers of a Jagernaut.
The floater bed stretched around a cushion of air, with a mesh of superconducting rings woven into the fabric to let the mattress respond to every move Rex made, easing his legs here, tightening under his back there. The floater also rocked slightly, as if it were a boat with waves lapping against its sides. Most empaths preferred a floater to nervoplex because its behavior felt inanimate rather than living.
I hesitated, unsure whether to stay or come back when he awoke. As I started to leave, though, a voice spoke behind me. "Soz?"
I turned around, glad to hear his voice, more than I knew how to say. "You're awake."
He watched me with a neutral expression. "Apparently."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine."
Rex, I thought. I'm sorry.
"For what?" he asked. "Saving my life?"
"For getting you—like—" I looked at the outline of his legs under the blankets. "Like this."
"Paralyzed," Rex said. "The word is paralyzed."
I flushed. "I'm sorry."
"Soz, don't." He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and the bed readjusted, trying to ease his tension. "Stop laying this guilt you think you have at my feet. I can't deal with it."
I started to speak, then realized what I was going to do and smiled instead.
"You think that's funny?" Rex asked.
"I was going to apologize for apologizing."
His face relaxed into a smile. "Please don't."
I sat on the bed, settling as the floater accommodated my weight. Then I took his hand. "You'll be all right. You just need time to readjust."
He curled his fingers around mine. "Soz—"
His look made me uneasy. "Yes?"
"I think we should cancel the marriage."
"You don't mean—"
"Don't tell me I don't mean it."
"I don't care if your legs don't move."
"I do."
We can deal with this, I thought.
He kept his mental doors closed. "Whenever I see you—I can't, Soz."
Don't shut me out.
His grip on my hand tightened. Don't you understand?
No! I caught my lower lip with my teeth. You swore you wouldn't walk out on me.
"Walk out?" he demanded. "I can't even walk across the room."
"That doesn't make me love you any less."
He gritted his teeth. "Soz, I can't do the husband thing."
"That could change."
"And if it doesn't?"
"I don't care."
He gave me an incredulous look. "You have the body and drives of a young woman. You will when I'm a doddering old man." A muscle in his face twitched. "I refuse to watch you take lovers."
I stared at him. "You know me better than that!"
"You're a human being. Not a saint."
That certainly wouldn't get an argument from me. But he was wrong about the lovers. "I would never turn from you."
"Damn it, Soz. Will you listen?" He pushed up on his elbow. "I won't be the Imperator's crippled husband."
"I'm not the Imperator."
"It's you who will be Imperator. You need a consort worthy of that position."
"Don't tell me that." I struggled to keep my voice calm. "Even if I do become Imperator someday, it won't make a whit of difference. It doesn't matter to me."
"It matters to me."
Rex. We can work through it.
He lay down and stared at the ceiling. Then, finally, he opened his mind, opened it wide. I felt what it was like for him to lie there helpless, to remember what we had been, to imagine our life now. I felt his anger, his frustration, his pain at the sight of me. I was like a laser cutting him into pieces. I couldn't wish that on any human being, most of all not the man I loved.
"Good-bye, Sauscony," he said.
My voice caught. "Good-bye."
I left his room blindly, unable to see because of the blurring in my eyes.
Open space filled the Imperator's huge office. The room had no rugs, no ornaments, almost no furniture. Three of its walls were neither glass nor metal, but a surface intermediate between the two. They glowed with gold silhouettes of desert scenes from our grandfather's home world. Fifty-five years ago, this had been our grandfather's office. That was before Kurj—accidentally or not—killed him.
I wondered how our mother dealt with it, knowing her firstborn son had killed her father. The Assembly had ruled it an accident. In reading the transcripts of their deliberations, I was never sure whether they came to that conclusion because they believed it or because they feared Kurj's power. This much was clear: the passions ripping apart my family—my grandfather's death, my mother's terrified flight from Kurj, her secret marriage to my father—threatened the survival of the Imperialate. If the Rhon destroyed itself, the Kyle-Mesh would collapse, and without it, Skolia would fall to the Trader's superior military like eggs dropping on the ground. The Assembly did what they felt necessary to ensure the survival of the tempestuous family that kept the mesh alive.
My mother never spoke about her father's death. Had Kurj murdered him? Perhaps only he knew the truth. However my mother felt about it, she loved Kurj. Gods only knew why, but she did.
Kurj sat watching me from his chair. His desk stretched the length of the room, a thick sheet of glass with controls imbedded in its surface and in the columns that supported it. The wall behind him was a window as thick as a fist, its glass polarized to mute the biting glare of the Dieshan sun. The office took up the top floor of a reflective tower in the metropolis of Headquarters City. Beyond the window, a landscape of rectangles stretched out, all towers and soaring buildings, glass and steel and Luminex. A flyer appeared from behind a nearby tower, banking in a smooth arc. Sunlight reflected off its glossy black body. A silver insignia glittered on its nose with the letters ISC inscribed inside a triangle, which was inscribed inside an exploding sun.
The window had no drapes. Kurj used it as a tool. He set its polarization to mute the glare, but only enough so it wasn't blinding. I stood at attention in front of his desk trying not to squint. Even with my enhanced optic nerves, my eyes refused to focus on both the brilliant cityscape outside and Kurj's shadowed face. He was a dark silhouette, his face unreadable.
"You'll stay on the world Forshires Hold," Kurj was saying. "I want you to train JMI cadets."
I didn't want these new orders. I had no desire to train cadets at Jacob's Military Institute. "Permission to speak, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"I'd like to take Blackstar Squadron out again."
Kurj continued to watch me. His mind pressed on mine like a weight. I didn't care. I just wanted to go out and fight and fight until every Trader had suffered, the way Tams had suffered, the way every provider suffered. The way Rex suffered. I wanted to go out and pulverize the bastards.
"So you want another combat assignment," Kurj said.
"Yes, sir."
"You want to fight Traders."
"Yes, sir."
"Kill them."
"Yes, sir."
He regarded me steadily. "I once had this same conversation with Rex Blackstone."
That threw me off balance. "Why?"
Kurj got up and went to the window. He stood with his back to me, his hands clasped behind him as he stared over the city. His city. His planet. His empire.
"It was when you two came back from Tams Station," he said. "After you had been Kryx Tarque's provider."
I stiffened. Kurj knew what had happened from my reports, but I had never spoken about it to him. I didn't intend to start now.
"You think I want revenge for what happened to Rex," I said.
"Don't you?"
"Well, why not?"
"Revenge lust clouds the mind."
"My mind is fine."
"Blackstone said the same thing."
"This isn't the same."
"No, it isn't." Kurj turned to me. "I need you functioning. In sound body. In sound mind."
"You're looking for problems that don't exist."
Kurj didn't answer. He didn't even move. He just watched me with his metal face.
Warning, my node thought. External probe conducting search.
Let him look. It was true no other telepath had Kurj's raw power. But it was like his physical strength; blunt. He had none of the finesse needed to uncover what I had hidden from him.
He stood for a long time, unmoving. Finally he said, "I'll leave the combat option open. But right now I need you at JMI. I need a good trainer there."
"Yes, sir." I knew better than to push. But behind my barriers, hidden within the fortress of ice that surrounded my emotions, I thought, I'm coming back. Too much is unfinished.