The thick carpet in the hallway outside Rex's room muffled my footfalls like a wine-red cloud. Real wood paneled the walls, glossy and red-hued. Next to Rex's door, an ivory oval showed a palm-sized relief of a man with the tail of a fish. He was rising up in a spume of water, glistening drops of water spraying about his head and a trident held high in his hand. When I touched the pager, the door chimed like bells heard through sea waves lapping on a shore.
Rex's voice came over a hidden speaker. "Come."
I touched the door and it swung open, revealing a room paneled in that same sinfully luxuriant wood. A carpet covered the floor like burgundy velvet. The only light came from a lamp with a rose-glass shade. Rex sat in the middle of the bed, cross-legged on its wine-red cover, his head bent over his work. He was cleaning his Jumbler. Sections of the gun lay around him, black metal gleaming in the dusky light.
"Planning to shoot someone?" I asked, closing the door.
He glanced up as I crossed the room. "You're the one who insists we clean them so often."
I smiled amiably. "Clean and jumbled." It was how I felt after my shower. I sat on the bed next to him. "I set up a guest account on the Inn's system. We can upload our data on the Traders as soon as Taas and Helda get back from dinner."
Rex nodded, bent over his weapon. He was polishing the ejector that fit into the accelerator dees inside the main body of the gun.
"I expected you to be out with that girl from the bar," I said. "She seemed interested."
He finished the ejector and went to work on the hand grip. "She's young."
"I thought you liked your women that way."
"I guess I'm tired."
I wondered at his mood. He had seemed subdued since we left the bar. It was odd; I would have thought seeing an Aristo would have wound him up. Something else was bothering him. I nudged his mind but he blocked me, keeping his mental doors closed.
"Rex." I laid my hand on the grip of his gun, stopping his movements. "What's wrong?"
He looked up at me for a moment. And then he said, "I'm going to retire."
"What?"
"I've been thinking about it for a while." He exhaled. "Soz, I'll be forty-seven soon. All the other officers from my class at DMA have retired." Neither of us said what he left out: or else died.
"You can't retire." I tried not to remember he had only been a year behind me at the Dieshan Military Academy. "I need you."
He pushed his hand through his graying hair. "I'm not like you. I can't put off getting old. Forty-seven isn't just my age on file; it's how I feel." He shook his head. "I've had enough. I want to go home, have a family, dig in the garden."
"You can have a family now." I was talking too fast. "You don't have to retire. And you can dig holes in the ground wherever you want. I'll get you a special hole digging commission." He wasn't old. He wasn't any older than me. Yes, my genetics gave me a potential lifespan twice the human average. But nowadays most humans lived into their second century. Rex had plenty of time.
He smiled, but it was like this strange mood he had tonight, gentle instead of wild. Then he really went over the cliff. He slid his hand around my neck, drew my head to his, and kissed me.
"Hey." My protest came out muffled again his lips. "What are you doing?"
He pulled back enough too look at me. "Kissing you."
"What for?"
"Well, let me see. Maybe it's a new way of checking the weather."
"Very funny. Why are you acting so strange?"
He spoke quietly. "Soz, I want you to marry me."
He had gone crazy. "You drank too much at the bar."
"I didn't drink anything. We never got our ale."
"I can't marry you. It's against regulations." Good reasons existed for the ban on fraternization. It compromised the ability of the people involved to carry out their duties. It happened anyway, despite regulations, but it often ended in disaster. If I married Rex, no way could I send him into battle. I would spend the whole time obsessing on the fact that he might get hurt. Or worse.
Except he wanted to retire.
"I don't want to retire," I said. I wasn't sure if that were true, but for the moment it would do.
"I'm not asking you to," Rex said.
So. He wasn't giving me an out. I tried to untangle my thoughts. Could I see Rex as a husband? He had been my closest friend for fifteen years, my confidant, someone I relied on. He was like a brother. In fact, I was closer to him than to any in my seemingly endless supply of brothers.
"I don't get it," I said. "What happened to these women you have pining for you all over the galaxy?"
"You're evading my question."
"What do you want to marry me for?"
He looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or growl. "Because I have a fetish for women with the romantic instincts of a cork."
I couldn't help but smile. "Then I guess we're compatible."
"Sauscony, I'm serious about this."
If he was calling me Sauscony, he had to be serious. No one called me Sauscony but my parents. "I would hate it if you left me."
His voice softened. "Why would I do that?"
Could I say it? Sixteen years had passed, enough to dull the pain. "My first husband did."
"I didn't know you had been married more than once."
"Twice." My second husband had died a few years ago, not long after we had married. I couldn't think about that now. Maybe never.
"Why did he leave?" Rex asked.
"It's a boring story. You don't want to hear it."
Rex stroked a curl away from my face. "Tell me."
It was a moment before I answered. "He hated what I did for a living. He was afraid I would die. He asked me to quit."
"I thought you couldn't quit."
I stiffened. "I'm not indentured. I can retire if I want."
"But if you do, don't you lose your position in the Imperator's line of succession?"
I wanted to say so what? I had never asked to be born into the remnant of a dynasty that had ruled a long dead empire. The Ruby Dynasty. The people Tiller had called Rhon, with no idea he was talking to one of them. My brother, Kurj, held the title of Imperator. He commanded Imperial Space Command—and they followed him with such intense loyalty that some observers considered him a de facto military dictator.
"Well, technically," I told him, "you could say Kurj has no heirs. He's my mother's only child by her first husband and he has no children of his own." No legitimate children, anyway.
"I thought he chose you to follow him."
I shifted my weight. "I have seven full brothers and two sisters. He could have chosen choose any of us. Hell, he could have made my mother his heir."
"Your mother?" Rex's grin turned wicked. "No one would fight, then. They'd all be in love, too busy trying to look at her to think about going off to war."
I scowled at him. "Only a man would say that."
He laughed. "I don't know about that. Helda might."
In truth, I couldn't imagine my mother as a war leader. She was a superb diplomat and a lovely ballet dancer, but the military was a foreign language to her.
Before I married anyone, I had to sort out how I felt about my heritage. I brought out my thoughts like a game player setting up a board with three pieces: the Imperator, the Assembly Key, and the Web Key. Or, more popularly, the Fist, Mind, and Heart of Skolia. As Imperator, my half-brother Kurj commanded the military. My aunt, the Assembly Key, served as the liaison from the Assembly to the Rhon. My father was the Key to the Web.
My mother had married my father because he was a Rhon psion. Kurj hated him, this man who had become his stepfather. If I married Rex, what would it be like for him? I wasn't sure that was a fair comparison, though. Rex could handle Imperial intrigues. When my parents met, my father had been living on a primitive world. His people descended from a colony established in the Ruby Empire and isolated for thousands of years after its fall. Marriage to my mother had yanked him from that simple, rural culture into the morass of Skolian politics. In Kurj's unforgiving view of the universe, any children produced by my father were flawed. But unless Kurj ever found a Rhon woman to marry, we were the only suitable candidates for his heir.
"Kurj needs an heir who understands Imperial Space Command," I said.
"You."
"He chose three of us. Me, and the two of my brothers who became Jagernauts."
"Why three? Only one of you can be Imperator."
I gritted my teeth. "That's right."
Rex stared at me. "The one who survives."
My shoulders bunched under my jacket. "Kurj knows I can't stay on active duty forever. I've proven myself for a quarter of a century. But sixteen years ago it was different."
"That was when your husband wanted you to quit?"
I nodded. "It would have meant abdicating any claim I had to become Imperator."
Rex made an incredulous noise. "What the hell did your husband expect when he married an Imperial heir?"
I stared down at my hands. Somehow I said the words. "I got pregnant. I didn't know. I was injured in battle and lost the child." I made myself look at Rex. "Jato—my husband—it tore him apart. He stayed with me until I recovered. Then he left."
"Soz," Rex murmured. He tried to put his arms around me, but I held back. I'd always wondered if Kurj knew how much Jato and I had wanted a child. That was another item in my mental file of things not to think about.
"You ought to know I wouldn't leave you," Rex said. "I don't expect you to retire."
I turned the idea over in my mind like a child with a newly minted coin. Kurj couldn't keep me in combat forever. With my rank and experience it made more sense to have me behind a desk, planning strategy. If he killed all his heirs, he wasn't likely to get more of us soon. None of my other siblings were remotely qualified.
Rex was a good man; I'd known that since I first met him. He was a potent telepath, probably the strongest I would ever find. I couldn't spend my life looking for that one in a trillion person whose mind matched my own. The only time I had ever shared my mind with another Rhon psion had been an accident. Once, when my kid brother Kelric had been seven and I sixteen, we went hiking. A storm caught us, pale blue sleet raging from the sky. We took shelter in a spine-cave of the Backbone Mountains. As Kelric and I huddled together for warmth, our minds merged. It lasted only a few hours, the most fulfilling link I had ever made with another human being. It never happened again; that bond was too intimate to share with a brother. But neither of us forgot. After that day, I knew I would search everywhere for a Rhon mate.
Except there weren't any. Despite all the attempts to engineer a Rhon psion—before the ethics boards mercifully put a stop to them—my grandmother had been the only success. In the generations since her birth, on a thousand plus worlds and a billion different peoples, we knew of only two people who had been born naturally, and survived, with the full complement of Rhon genes: my father and my grandfather.
"Soz?" Rex touched my cheek. "Where are you?"
I looked at him, really looked in a way I had never done before. This man had been at my side for fifteen years, gone into combat with me, laughed with me, mourned with me. We had traveled across Skolia, both on duty and off, learning to know each other with an intimacy that had nothing to do with sex. Could I lie with him as wife? The answer was easy, now that I considered it. The only surprise was that it had taken me so long to realize it.
I smiled. "Who else would want me inflicted on him for the rest of his life?"
"What were you planning on inflicting?"
"My sense of humor."
Rex grimaced. "I'll try to endure it."
"Yes."
"Yes?" He tilted his head. "Yes, what?"
"Let's do it."
"Do what?"
"You know. The thing."
"What thing?"
"You know."
He put his hands on either side of my head and mussed up my hair. "Say it."
"You know what I mean."
"Go on." He was laughing.
I scowled at him. "Keep this up and I'll change my mind."
"I don't know, Soz. If you can't say it, how can I believe you'll do it?"
"All right. I'll marry you. Satisfied?"
He stopped grinning and spoke in that strange gentle voice he had used earlier tonight. "Yes."
So. It didn't feel so odd after all. I slid my hand across the black sweater he wore under his jacket. He pulled me down with him on the bed, lying on his back as he wrapped his arms around me.
"I can send my Notification of Intent tonight over the Kyle-Mesh," he said. "I'll give my resignation when we get back to HQ."
Notification of Intent. It was so strange to hear it from Rex. His timing made sense, though. After our rest here, we would return to Headquarters for our new orders. Rex had waited until we were between missions. I could love him now. I never had to send him into battle again.
A beep came from the console. "Damn," Rex muttered. He stretched his arm across the bed and touched a panel on the console. "What?"
Helda's voice came out of the speaker. "Heya, Rex. You know where is Soz?"
"I'm right here," I said. "We'll meet you at my room."
Both Helda and Taas were outside my door when we arrived. Helda gave me an odd look. I couldn't tell what she picked up, but she must have sensed something. It had all changed. I would never see Rex in the same way.
The pager by my door showed a dark-haired woman on the rocky shore of an island. She stood with a quiver of arrows strapped on her back and a curving bow in her hand. I touched the waves on the beach, and a laser played over my finger. It only took an instant to produce an interference pattern from my print and correlate it with the one made by the Inn's computer. Then my door swung open.
After the sensual ambience in Rex's room, mine felt too cool. The walls were blue-green ceramic with frothy accents. A mesh console was built into a roll-top desk by the bed, with labels on in six languages, including Skolian.
I sat at the console and touched the panel marked with the picture of a doorway. "Access my guest account. Then link me into Kyle space."
"Hello, Primary Valdoria." The console spoke in Skolian. "Homer here. Welcome to the Aegean Inn. I am pleased to access your account." After a pause it said, "I'm setting up the Kyle link. Please excuse the delay."
"That's a polite console," Helda said.
I smiled. Allied mesh nodes tended to be friendlier than those on Skolia's massive network. We had chosen this hotel because it equipped its consoles with psiphons, which few Allied establishments bothered to do. I lifted a small panel and took the psiphon out of its cradle. It was a simple model, no more than a transparent prong connected to the console by a thread. When I clicked the prong into the socket on the inside of my wrist, my arm tingled. I knew, logically, that those tingles weren't real, but every time I plugged in a psiphon I felt them.
The words Attempting connection appeared on a small screen in the desk.
"Looks like it's working," Taas said.
"So far." That Homer responded to the psiphon with written instead of verbal replies made me doubt the Allieds had spent much time setting up the system.
I rubbed my hand up and down my arm, a habit I had picked up years ago. Many Jagernauts did it, as if we could feel the biomech in our bodies. It had four parts: fiberoptic threads; sockets in my wrists, spine, neck and ankles; the spinal node; and bio-electrodes. Homer sent signals to the psiphon, which passed them to a thread in my wrist. From there, they traveled along threads to my brain or node. Bio-electrodes in my brain cells translated that input into thought by firing my neurons. If an electrode received a 1, it gave the neuron a brief, tiny shock; if it received a 0, it left the neuron alone. Similarly, they translated my thoughts into binary output. Bioshells coated the electrodes, and neurotrophic chemicals kept them from damaging my brain. My fiberoptic threads sent messages to Homer via the psiphon prong. Given the extensive operations required to implant a biomech web, the years it took to learn its use, and the chance the host body might reject it—not to mention the numerous security clearances—few people had them.
Another message appeared on the screen: Psiphon activated.
"Slow," Helda muttered.
"Allied equipment," Taas said, as if that explained it.
Test, I thought.
The word test appeared under Homer's last message.
Parameters? Homer printed. His responses glowed red on the screen; mine were blue. His message didn't echo in my mind at all.
Verify spinal node link, I thought.
The words verify sibling appeared on the screen.
Rex laughed. "Whose sibling are you verifying?"
"It's not translating right." Run diagnostic on psiphon, I thought.
The words Run diagonal deepening glowed on the screen.
Please restate command, Homer printed.
I tried verbal. "Run a diagnostic on the psiphon."
"Running," Homer said. Then: "I found no problems."
Huh. If the psiphon wasn't the problem, it had to be my biomech web or this console, both of which were more serious. I pulled out the prong and peered at it. A thin layer of dust covered the head. After rolling it between my fingers, cleaning off the dust, I plugged it back in.
Verify spinal node connection, I thought.
Verify spinal node connection appeared on the screen.
Verified, Homer printed. If you provide your account information, I will try to enter you into the Kyle-Mesh.
That isn't necessary. I can do it. I pressed a panel with the Greek letter Ψ.
Denied glowed on the screen.
"Denied?" Taas asked. "What does that mean?"
Homer, I thought. Why can't I enter the psiber gateway?
I can't translate "gateway" in this context, Homer printed.
I want to use the psiber functions of the psiphon. The Kyle functions.
They aren't enabled.
Helda snorted. "Why have psiphons if they don't set them up right?"
"Maybe they don't know how," I said. Homer, can you enable the Kyle functions?
I don't know. What do they do?
The psiphon should boost my mind into psiberspace.
The only translation I have for psiberspace is "hypothetical computer network,"
"Pah," Helda muttered.
Kyle space, then.
Kyle space and psiberspace are the same thing.
Yes. Either way, it exists.
Where? I don't know what it is.
It's outside spacetime. Information there is transmitted in wavepackets of thought rather than by photons or matter particles.
If it has no spatial location, how can I find it?
It exists everywhere, I thought. The other nodes can receive our input immediately no matter where they're located.
This would require instantaneous transmission across interstellar distances.
That's right.
That violates the laws of spacetime.
I scowled at the friendly but uncooperative console. Kyle space isn't in spacetime.
I cannot access something outside of space and time.
I tried to think of an explanation it would understand. In normal space, if I had two particles and I measured the quantum properties of one, I immediately knew those of the second regardless of its location, even it was across the galaxy. In Kyle space, the "measured" property was thought; as fast as a telepath could form a thought, every user in the star-spanning Kyle-Mesh could receive it.
Neither the Allieds nor the Traders had a Kyle-Mesh. It needed a Rhon telepath to power it, and no member of my family would consent to do that for them. Aristos had no Kyle abilities. Their providers did, at least enough to use if not power a Mesh, but the Traders refused to acknowledge providers could do anything but provide. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if they or the Allieds had tried to create a Mesh and failed. Despite the Allieds' skepticism about psibernetics, they had to realize the Kyle-Mesh allowed my people to survive against the Traders. The Aristo inventories of military personnel and equipment dwarfed ours, but we could outmaneuver, outcommunicate, and outcalculate them. They lumbered; we sailed.
That was why my family, the Ruby Dynasty, held power even in this age of elected leaders. No machine could link into Kyle space. Only a telop—a telepathic operator—could connect to the Mesh. And only a Rhon psion could create or power that vast network. The entire Mesh, with its billions of nodes, needed a Rhon psion to keep it operating, for no other psion was strong enough to survive its force. Without my family, the Mesh wouldn't exist, and without it, Skolia would fall to the Traders.
Homer, try this, I thought. Hail node PS42.mil on the Skolian network. When you get the "Restricted" message, transfer control of this console back to me. Maybe I could find a backdoor our intelligence people had snuck into the Allied systems.
Hailing, Homer thought. Then: Transferring link.
A new thought came into my mind, crisp and cold: Provide identification.
Access my spinal node, I thought. Mod 16, path 0001HA9RS.
Accessed. Clearance verified.
My awareness of the room faded. I floated in an opalescent sea, my mind centered at one node of a glimmering mesh that spread in all directions. Flashes of light sparked as other minds navigated its endless extent. I was a quantum wavepacket, a round hill surrounded by circular ripples that extended into the infinite "lake" of Kyle space, becoming smaller and smaller the farther they were from the peak that defined the center of my identity.
A spark resolved into another wavepacket. It rippled through me without a trace of interference.
Security check, I thought.
All lines secured, PS42 thought. You are undetectable to users with clearance lower than Blue Forty-seven: Level B.
Transfer me to IMIN.
The hill that was me sank into the mesh. I rose up in another section of the grid that glinted like metal. Sparks jumped into focus and then disappeared.
The grid rose in front of me into a cobalt mountain of polished metal. YOU HAVE REACHED A5A.MIL. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF THIS NODE IS PUNISHABLE BY EXECUTION.
Well, that was lovely. My clearance is in M-16.
CLEARANCE VERIFIED. STATE PURPOSE.
To use Comtrace.
The cobalt node shifted me to a white grid in a sea of painfully bright light. Comtrace's response came into my mind like ice. ATTENDING.
Comtrace, access my optic nerve, I thought. Alter my perception to highlight my physical surroundings.
DONE.
My awareness of Kyle space faded into a translucent image that overlaid my view of the room. I saw Rex leaning over to peer at the console. Helda stood next to him, waiting with her massive arms crossed, and Taas was sitting on the bed glancing through the book Tiller had given me. None of my interactions with the Mesh showed on the screen: the printing had stopped with my last response to Homer.
Activate audio, I thought.
"Audio activated," Comtrace said. Although it used Homer's speakers, the icy cadence of its speech was a jarring contrast to Homer's friendly tones.
Taas looked up from the book. "Set up?"
"Done," I said. "I'm giving it my file on the Aristo." Then I thought, Comtrace, upload the file M-86, D-4427, F-1 from my spinal node.
UPLOADED.
I'm going to detach the psiphon. Keep your end of the link open.
Understood.
I unplugged the prong and handed it to Rex. "Your turn."
It only took him a few seconds to upload his memory of the Aristo into Comtrace. Helda went next and then Taas. When they finished, I linked back in. "Comtrace, produce a visual image of the subject based on our memories of him."
"Working," Comtrace said. A holo formed above a horizontal screen on the desk showing the Aristo we had seen in the bar. He just stood there, about one handspan tall.
"He wasn't that harsh," Rex said.
The console remained quiet, the holo unchanged.
Comtrace, I thought. Respond to voice input from the three units listed in my security file.
Blackstone, Rex: verifying. Bjorstad, Heldagaard: verifying. Moroto, Taas-ko-mar: verifying.
I waited restlessly for it to finish verifying that it could respond to them. Their names was like a microcosm of Skolia. Blackstone was the modern translation of an ancient name from the planet Raylicon. Like Rex, it was pure Raylican, dark and powerful. Helda's was the Skolianized version of an Earth name; her parents were an Allied couple who had immigrated to one of our colonies. Taas's name was a mix: some of his family had come from Skolian colonies and some from a place on Earth called Japan. My name—Valdoria Skolia—was a different sort of mix. Although my maternal grandmother had been born in a genetics lab, her lineage went back to the Ruby Dynasty. My father and maternal grandfather came from rediscovered Skolian colonies.
UNITS VERIFIED, Comtrace thought. RESPONDING TO BLACKSTONE.
The Aristo's features softened, making him look sixteen years old.
"Too young," Taas said. Comtrace aged the man about three years.
"Still too young," Helda said. Comtrace added another three years.
"His hair was a little longer," Helda said. Comtrace added a few inches.
They studied the image. Finally Rex said, "Looks about right." Taas and Helda nodded.
"Comtrace, run an ID check on this image," I said. "Compare it to every file available on the current Highton Aristo caste."
"Working." After a pause Comtrace said, "No record exists that matches this image with sufficient accuracy to provide verifiable identification."
I frowned. "You checked every living Highton?"
"Yes."
"Maybe we don't have files on them all," Taas said.
"We thought we did," I said. "There are only a few hundred Hightons."
"We maybe guessed the wrong caste," Helda said.
It might be possible. Although Hightons were uppermost among the Aristos, two other castes existed, enough to bring their number into several thousand. "Comtrace, what do you estimate is the probability this man is a Highton?"
"Checking."
I glanced at Rex. "Something about that Aristo looks familiar. I can't place it."
Rex nodded. "I thought so too."
When I glanced at Helda and Taas, they both shook their heads. "He has the look of a Highton," Helda said. "That's all I see."
"Run complete," Comtrace said. "Based on your reports of his appearance, mannerisms, speech and retinue, I estimate a ninety-eight percent probability that the man is Highton. Based on your conversation with him, Primary Valdoria, I estimate eight percent."
Rex whistled. "That's bizarre."
"That 8 percent depends on my memory of him," I said. "Maybe it was skewed."
"Given your experiences," Rex said, "I would hardly think you'd see him as less threatening."
Comtrace spoke. "My analysis includes correlation of your reports with previous reports the four of you have made on Aristos, the consistency of those reports with other peoples' reports on the same Aristos, all reports made on Aristos by other officers, the consistency of those reports, and the consistency of your reports on other matters. Based on those calculations, I estimate ninety-one percent accuracy to your observations."
I smiled. "You've been busy."
"Can you figure out why the Aristo is here?" Taas asked.
"I estimate a fifty percent probability he wants an unusual provider," Comtrace said. "Thirty percent he is curious about Delos, nine percent he is spying on the Allieds, and six percent that his ship needed repairs."
"You think he was trying to trick me into going with him?" I asked.
"Not likely. Your military status was obvious. To believe you would be deceived by such a trick would require a naiveté unlikely for an Aristo."
"What do you think is the chance he told the truth, that he just wanted a date with me?"
"Essentially zero." Comtrace paused. "If he is searching for providers, however, I calculate a ninety-three percent probability he was practicing on you."
It sounded plausible. Except I didn't believe it. I had no justification for my doubt, but it persisted just the same.
Rex leaned over the console. "Why such a low probability for his being a spy?"
"It is considered beneath a Highton to engage in covert operations," Comtrace said. "Unless those operations relate directly to the acquisition of power. However, given the close proximity of Delos to Tams Station and the current crisis on Tams, it is conceivable that a Highton might come here to discover if the Allieds have any connection to the situation."
So. It was ironic that Tams, a small mining station, had come to prominence. Six hundred million people lived there, descendents of an ancient Raylican colony that had doggedly struggled to keep their independence from all of us, Skolian, Trader, and Allied alike. Fifteen years ago the Traders had claimed the planet. They managed to manipulate the political situation so any response on our part would put us in violation of our tenuous treaties with them. At least, any overt response.
"Comtrace, what is your latest information on Tams?" I asked.
"IMIN reports indicate the rebels have captured the planet's ground based defenses."
It didn't surprise me. Although we couldn't offer aid openly, we had other means. It wasn't luck that the civilian leaders of the Tams rebellion had captured and held the sophisticated Eubian military installations on their planet.
"How have the Aristos responded?" I asked.
"Their saboteurs destroyed the Red Hills factories," Comtrace said. "Also the warehouses in the Sandrise, Docker, and Metalworks districts. They gutted the stardrives and Evolving Intelligence pilots of all space worthy ships in both Tams starports."
Rex swore under his breath. "That's too damn effective."
"Why?" Taas asked. "What are the Red Hills factories?"
"They were the only factories on the planet equipped to build replacement parts for starship drives," I said. "The warehouses are where completed parts were stored."
"If the rebels control the planetary defenses," Helda said, "they can bring in ships with new EI's and engine parts."
"Not if the Traders control the orbital defenses," Rex said. "They and the rebels may be at a standoff."
"Comtrace," I said, "what is the official Trader position on the situation?"
"That the uprising no longer exists," Comtrace said.
Helda spoke dryly. "Why do I have no surprise at this?"
"A recording of Ur Qox's last speech is available," Comtrace said. "Shall I display?"
I had no desire to see the Trader Emperor give a speech. His name was actually U'jjr Qox, but we pronounced it Ur Cox. The apostrophe indicated he was a Highton. The highest Highton. Regardless of how I felt about the him, though, we needed to know what he had to say.
"Yes," I said. "Display the recording."
The mystery Aristo disappeared, replaced by a lean man at a crystal podium. He was in his late forties, with shimmering black hair and red eyes. His Highton accent chilled. Tarque had also been Highton, with that same unremitting arrogance in his voice, that same look of it in his too-perfect face.
Qox spent most of the speech lauding the Trader army. He painted the rebels as less than human and the Trader soldiers as heroes. The speech didn't contain a whit of useful information. He went on and on, invoking the glory of his empire and the Aristos and himself and his father's purportedly esteemed name.
"At least his father's dead," Rex muttered.
At least. The previous Emperor had been even worse. J'briol Qox, the man we called Jaibriol, had conquered nearly a thousand worlds. And he had hated my family. Gods, he hated us. It infuriated him that we, the ultimate providers, not only lived free from his power but had the audacity to build a civilization rivaling his own.
In English, Jaibriol translated into Gabriel. The Allieds, however, used our spelling and the soft "J." I once asked a receptionist in an Earth embassy why they avoided their own translation. She told me the name Gabriel came from one of their holy books, that he was an archangel whose name meant "God is my strength." She thought Jaibriol Qox should have been called Lucifer instead, after the fallen angel who had sunk from heaven to hell. It made a lot of sense to me.
"At least this Qox has a redeeming quality," Taas said.
Helda snorted. "His only redeeming quality would be to fill a coffin."
"He has no heir," Taas said. "Twenty-five years of marriage and no children."
"You would think he would divorce the Empress for a more fertile wife," Rex said.
"Why?" Taas said. "All the Hightons need are her eggs and his sperm to make a baby."
"They are not allowed divorce anyway," Helda said.
"Actually, he could divorce her if she's refusing him an heir," I said. "Deliberate infertility is grounds for dissolving the royal marriage. The only grounds, in fact, except for adultery."
"You think he actually loves her?" Taas asked.
"Am I wearing a ballet tutu?" Helda asked.
Rex smirked at her. "I'd like to see that. A pink tutu."
Helda crossed her arms, her bulky muscles rippling under her regulation pullover. "Pah."
I smiled at the image in my mind of Helda in pink. "He needs a Highton as his heir." Hightons were fanatical about keeping their bloodlines "unpolluted." No child could be recognized as part of their caste unless numerous genetic tests verified his parentage. Of course the Qox line had to be the purest of all. If Ur Qox didn't soon produce an acceptable heir, he risked losing his claim to the throne.
"At least our people don't have to worry about that," Taas said.
"We don't?" I asked.
"I mean, the Assembly is elected," he said. "It doesn't depend on heritage."
"Not the Assembly, no," I said. "The Kyle-Mesh does." At his puzzled look, I added, "Imperial heirs have to be Rhon psions." I couldn't help but notice Rex as I spoke. Why was he so pale, as if I had punched him in the gut? Surely he knew our children would never be in the line of succession.
Rex spoke carefully. "I had never realized bloodline was so important to the Imperial family."
I wanted to kick myself. I had become too comfortable with him, assuming he knew me better than he had reason to. Why should he be aware of something so personal? My family guarded our privacy, all the more so given how much our lives fascinated the rest of the universe.
Block Moroto and Bjorstad, I thought. As my awareness of Helda and Taas receded, I tried to reach Rex. He blocked me.
"It isn't that way," I said. "We need to widen our gene pool. Too many dangerous recessives are tied to the Rhon genes. But if we cut them out, it removes what makes us Rhon."
"What I don't get," Taas said, "is why—"
Helda interrupted. "I just remember, Taas. We didn't close our accounts after we check mesh-mail in my room."
Taas glanced at her. "Yes, we did."
"No, I think we forget. We better make sure."
He frowned at her. But then he said, "Oh, all right."
After they left the room, I smiled wanly at Rex. "Subtlety was never her strong point."
"We've worked in a Kyle link for years," he said. "It's natural she would pick up on tension."
"Rex, I'm sorry." I unplugged the psiphon and stood up next to him.
"I presumed." His voice was flat. "I aspired to a station above mine."
"I can't think of any man more worthy to be my consort."
His emotions broke through his barriers: anger and shame mixed together. "Yet our children aren't worthy of the Skolia name?"
"Of course they are! But the Imperial family has to be Rhon." The room felt so quiet, muted by the thick walls and carpet. "It's the only way we can keep the Kyle-Mesh alive. If my family doesn't do it, who will? The Allieds? Ur Qox would eat them for breakfast. If we ever lose the Mesh, the Aristos will douse us like a bell over a candle."
"No, our children won't be able to power the Mesh," Rex said. "What the flaming hell does that have to do with their ability to lead?"
"They'll still be heirs to the Ruby Throne. It's only the Triad they can't join. Without full Rhon access to the Mesh, that access would kill them." I spoke more softly. "Our children won't be Rhon, but they will be empaths, powerful ones. That's all the more reason to keep the Rhon strong. If Skolia falls to the Traders, then you, me, any children we have—we'll all become providers."
A muscle under his eye twitched. "We won't let it happen."
"No. We won't."
He was still blocking me, though not as much as before. I didn't push. I wanted things to be right with him, for it to work out where my other two tries at marriage had failed. "Rex. I'm sorry."
"I should go sleep," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
And then he left.