Exodus, page 21
The cloister was near-silent, making their whispers audible. Nor was the pillar quite wide enough to conceal them. There was a flash of scarlet and saffron fabric, typical of the elaborate dresses favored by congregant sisters to show off their wealth and family status.
Thyra kept on walking while a grim smile lifted her lips. The situation was almost identical to the landing run she’d just played out in the simulation—she was close to her apartment door, safe, unsuspecting; the would-be ambushers had assumed she’d be relaxed and unaware. She made her footfalls heavier, making sure they gave off a regular beat on the rust-colored livestone floor so the ambushers could track her position easily. As she covered the last twenty meters, she angled across the floor so she was close to the pillar as she reached it.
When the pillar was directly between her and the others, she marched on the spot for a second, then suddenly charged around the pillar, coming at them from behind as they bustled out into the cloister, expecting to confront her head-on. Thyra opened her hand wide and slapped it on the back of Clavissa’s neck, where the neural pad was exposed. Razara, who was in the lead—of course—was just registering that something was wrong, that their intended victim wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
Thyra’s neuropunch was direct. In her mind, the imagery and associated senses were sharp and bright, powered by raw anger—the mental equivalent of an adrenaline-fueled berserker rage. The searing image was a pride of Awakened tigers she knew from the palace stables: giant snarling beasts, jaws open wide so their heads were just a pit of slavering fangs. The way she embellished them, they had a skin of black scales tipping them into a hideous incarnation of alien otherness. Their size and power were overwhelming as they pounced on Clavissa in some dank cave with no escape. The brutal fantasy hit Clavissa’s unsuspecting brain with a force greater than anything physical. A dozen phobias were triggered out of her subconscious, shocking every muscle rigid except for her vocal cords. She let out a piercing scream.
Thyra continued forward as Clavissa crumpled to the ground, her juddering limbs hammering against the livestone floor. Thyra was smaller than her opponents, but when she crashed into Gianna, there was enough inertia to knock the startled girl to the ground. The impact twisted Thyra, and Razara saw her moment, lashing out with her fist. It connected on the side of Thyra’s left eye. Instinctive retaliation sent Thyra’s hand scything out to land a slap on Razara’s ear. At the same time, she pushed a single, ultra-focused neural impulse hard. There was no induction pad there, but under extreme circumstances an Imperial Celestial’s impulse could penetrate skin and bone to resonate with the delicate filigree of nerve fibers below. The physical slap was amplified by the pulse, sending Razara reeling, clutching at the side of her head.
The punch to her face left Thyra doubling up, on the verge of losing her balance as she and Razara staggered away from each other. She could just make out Romina taking a step forward, moving into a combat crouch. Uncertainty slowed her movements.
“And what is going on here, ladies?” a voice demanded.
Thyra clutched at her eye as she straightened up, trying not to wince, or—worse—cry. Lord Mychall-Calix, one of the court’s administrators, was standing in the cloister looking at them.
“Nothing, sir,” Razara said, shaking her head as if it were covered in something undesirable.
“Nothing?”
“Yes, sir,” Thyra said. “We were just going through our joust drill. It’s fun.”
Lord Mychall-Calix regarded Clavissa, who was still on the ground, gasping for air as if she’d almost drowned. “Fun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It doesn’t look like fun. It looks like injury to me.”
“As our queen’s congregants, we must always conduct ourselves to the maximum in training and practice, sir,” Thyra said. “That’s what all our instructors say. We play at that level, too.”
“Yes,” Razara said. “It’s so we may honor our Now and Forever Queen by demonstrating our devotion to Her is absolute.”
“And you,” he said to Clavissa. “Did one of your sisters neuropunch you? Is that part of the joust?”
“No sir,” she panted. “I am winded from a fall.”
“Humm. You are told repeatedly that using a neuropunch is dangerous; that is why you are explicitly forbidden to use one even in sibling squabbles. You do not honor our queen by lashing out at each other in rage. Your formal qualification trials are the right and proper place to advance yourselves. This kind of basic behavior is something I’d expect from humans. You are Imperial Celestials, and congregant sisters at that. It is a title that can be withdrawn at Her Majesty’s discretion. If I hear of any more conflict among the five of you, I will be forced to mention this episode to Her. Do you understand that, ladies?”
“Yes, sir,” they chorused petulantly, their heads lowered, lips pursed in animosity and resentment.
“Good. Now run along.”
Razara extended an arm and helped pull a still-shivering Clavissa to her feet. Thyra held her hand out to Gianna, smiling with sweet malice. Gianna ignored her and stood up next to her spawn sister. Under Lord Mychall-Calix’s watchful eye, the four ambushers started off down the long cloister. Thyra turned her back to them, inclined her head at Lord Mychall-Calix, and headed for her apartment.
“Four against one, was it?” Lord Mychall-Calix said softly.
Thyra stood perfectly still, facing away from him. “I’ll try and make it fairer for them next time.”
* * *
—
Her father was in his study area when she arrived back. It was a flattened, bubble-shaped chamber that cantilevered out from the side of the Fellsian wing—one of a hundred providing the occupants with a panoramic view over the city. Thyra always thought the capital looked like parkland that had sprouted tapering white and blue spires. Every one of those stylish structures was surrounded by trees laid out in elaborate patterns that she imagined were symbols that could only ever be read properly from the air. Today, the urban expanse was glistening from a late afternoon monsoon that’d left buildings slick and the forested parks swathed in silky mists.
Bekket was sitting in his favorite chair, a bright orange hemisphere that stood on a single leg. It was surrounded by a curving holographic display of complex mathematical symbols that Thyra didn’t understand. He turned around, his face lifting in concern when he took in her injuries. The hologram blinked out, and he removed his hands from the chair’s contact bulbs.
“Sweetheart, what happened?” he asked as he shoved himself out of the thick cushioning and hurried over to her.
“Bitch swarm,” she mumbled, as she fought back tears.
“Razara again?”
“Yes.”
His arms went around her, which allowed her to rest her head on his chest. The embrace was warm and comforting, and she finally allowed herself to relax. “I knew they were waiting. I was ready for them.”
“Good.”
“I got in a good neuropunch on Clavissa. Sent her to the ground.”
“That’s my girl. But you have to be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have a strong mind, sweetheart. And serious damage to a congregant would disqualify them from being a princess. However, the aggressor could be dismissed from the palace. The court frowns on congregants who inflict excessive damage on their sisters.”
She looked up at him in puzzlement. “But the trials…”
“I know. They, however, are court sanctioned, designed to assess specific abilities in a congregant. There’s a reason for that; the queen and court want to see a demonstration of skill and tactics, not just anger and malice. You have to show you can control yourself in the trial arenas.”
“I’ll try, father. I will.”
“I know. Besides, the trouble with a neuropunch is that it’s really quite crude.” He stroked her hair and smiled down. “Our family isn’t a wealthy and near-decadent Wynid Grand Family, but we do have certain abilities that we pass down through the generations. Ours is an arduous life out on the periphery, and a long time ago we were required to develop fortitude so that we might resume our status. The neural routines to help you in your rise to Queenhost still exist. It goes against Imperial Celestial tradition for a male, even a father, to pass down such gifts from our mothers, but we have been through hell to reach this point: a congregant daughter no less.”
“But…my mind is supposed to be untainted if I am to become the Queenhost. I am only to receive the queen’s gifts. She would know if I had foreign abilities.”
“Ordinarily, yes.”
“But what?” she asked eagerly. Excitement and determination banished all the ache from her slowly swelling bruise. “Please, father. Do you have something that will give me an advantage?”
“As a first step, there is a mental technique to organize your mind. To compartmentalize, if you like. Some of those compartments can be concealed from the queen’s examination of your thoughts. She would never know of the extra knowledge I can give you. Knowledge that is your heritage.”
“Yes!” she hissed. “You’re the best father ever!”
“This is risky, but if we are successful, the next time Helena connects with you to bestow a gift, she will not be able to tell you have places in your head to hide additional knowledge and techniques from her.”
“I will train so hard with you, father. Really I will.”
“Failure will mean the end of us,” he cautioned her. “We will be thrown out of the palace—if we’re lucky.”
“If I have more neural abilities, I will be a better Queenhost. And I won’t let you down. I won’t let our family down.” She pursed her lips in dismay. “I hate the way they call you Oneshot behind your back. It’s so insulting. If I am Queenhost, they will never dare say it ever again.”
“I am so proud that you are my daughter. This might be treason, but I see so much of your grandmother in you.”
“I’m glad.”
His fingers traced the side of her eye, which was starting to throb in earnest. “First, let’s get a skin scarf on that. It should heal up overnight. Can’t have you going to training tomorrow with a bruise.”
“I know. It would be a show of weakness.”
“It would.”
“And a princess is not weak,” she recited dutifully.
“No trial is needed for people to see your strength.”
“And after the scarf is on?” she pleaded.
“We will begin. Then one day soon, you will be queen. Then empress.”
She shook her head at his foolishness. “The timing is all wrong for that, Helena’s host body is still young. And there are a huge number of congregant sisters competing for succession. Razara isn’t even the worst of them.”
“It doesn’t matter how many there are, for it has to be you. You are the hope of the Crown Dominion, Thyra. You are our destiny.”
Chapter Nine
There weren’t many interplanetary ships like the Ilumn. For a start, commercial transport ships operating inside the Kelowan system were mostly Celestial freighters that used fusion-powered ion drives to provide a constant low-gee acceleration. Their cargoes could mass up to a quarter of a million tons and take a couple of months to fly between the two habitable planetary bands.
The Ilumn was a much smaller, faster ship—built and owned by the Enfoes, and designed around a thousand-ton payload capacity in specialist cargo pods. There was also cabin space to carry human passengers. Its fusion ion drive provided a constant one-gee acceleration, so even when Gondiar and Anoosha were on opposite sides of the star, its flight time was eight days.
To look at, the Ilumn was a hundred fifty meters of mismatched modules stretched along a central spine of girders. The whole collection was wrapped up in a chaotic tangle of pipes and cables. There were two clumps of reaction mass tanks. At the forward end, a stack of toroids embraced the primary life support section to provide extra shielding from radiation, while aft, mirror-bright spheres formed a ring around the spine, where they were sandwiched between the Ilumn’s five fusion generators and the ion drive tubes. Thermal radiators protruded randomly from dozens of modules and equipment bays down the length of the ship, like biomech wings that had never quite formed correctly.
Its captain, Sooyn Enfoe, had spent twenty years flying between the system’s habitable planets, but even she’d never flown out to Kinnox before.
“Flight time is seventeen days,” she told Finn as he came on board.
“Thank you for taking us,” he replied.
She shrugged. “You’re paying, and Gyvoy said this is an incredibly important flight, for all of us.”
“Some more than others,” Josias said.
Sooyn’s round face studied him. Even though the Ilumn spent plenty of time under acceleration, more time was spent in zero gee between flights. Not even the physio-stabilizer drugs she took could prevent the tissue bloat that came from liquids pooling in her head when the ship was docked. And the same drugs that kept her bones dense and heart strong also gave her skin a faint gray mottling. “He said you came here on an arkship? From Sol? Really?”
Josias grinned at her. “Certainly did.”
“Huh. Well, we’ll see.”
As they were the only passengers, Finn, Ellie, and Josias had the pick of cabins. Finn consulted the ship’s layout diagram on his lnc patch and set off down the central passageway, a cylindrical tube along the heart of the life support section. It was only used when the ship was in free fall, so it was lined with thin beige fabric padding that carried the stains that came from several decades of operations. Those same decades had also seen the passageway used to run additional hoses and cables during its innumerable refurbishments and expansion modifications, constricting its width, and making the cushioning irrelevant. Spaceships were costly prizes to humans in the Centauri Cluster. Once built, they were maintained for as long as possible, and the Enfoes had been flying the Ilumn for a hundred ten years. Finn doubted there was much of the original structure or equipment left; everything was replaced when it reached the end of its lifetime. The new components could be fabricated by human astroengineering factories, or the owners would use salvaged Remnant Era tech—both of which led to intense compatibility issues with the existing machinery, requiring yet another layer of customized integration devices and software. Standardization was not a Traveler modus operandi.
“Maintenance must be a nightmare,” Ellie muttered as she slithered gracefully around a sharp-edged mechanism of pipes and whirring motors that protruded out into the passageway.
“All spaceships are expensive to run,” Finn replied. “It doesn’t matter if it’s an interplanetary like this one, or a starship.”
“But nothing is the same. The Ilumn can’t possibly carry enough spares; the stores compartment would be the same size as the ship.”
He shrugged—a mistake in free fall. He caught hold of a pipe bracket and used it to steady himself again. “There’s a lot of Remnant Era tech in here, which uses ultrabonded material. It lasts forever—kind of. And onboard human systems can be disassembled at a molecular level and reprinted. The structural elements are different, of course. Anything directly exposed to space, that material gets vacuum ablated and radiation worn and thermal stressed. They have to be completely replaced when their vacuum fatigue life is reached.”
“Okay, I get that. We had to refabricate everything on the Diligent. There were nine mineral refining stops during the voyage, when asteroids were mined for their elements. And water. Mining comets is a lot more dangerous than extracting ore or carbon from a solid asteroid. Comets are more volatile than you think.” Her mouth quirked in regret. “We lost people. Mum, actually.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was only four weeks old, so this is my normal. I’m used to it. And the ice she helped extract was what got us here. She was successful.”
“She certainly was,” Josias said.
Ellie let a finger slide over a braid of data cables that were wrapped around a grill. “So how come this is just an interplanetary ship, not a starship? I thought you said the Gates of Heaven are a lot closer to the habitable planets than Kinnox. It should be easier for the Ilumn to reach them.”
“Oh, the Ilumn can reach the Gates of Heaven no problem; they’re only one-point-eight AUs out from the second habitable band. But that’s not the problem.”
“What is?” Josias asked sharply.
“Any ship that enters the Gate is accelerated up to point-nine-nine-nine lightspeed. Then it flies along the pathway—a line of quintessence—until it approaches the Gate of Heaven at the other end, which slows it back down so when it arrives its orbital velocity matches the Gate exactly.”
“So why can’t the Ilumn go through a Gate?”
“Acceleration,” Finn told him. “The Gate accelerates a ship up to relativistic velocity in less than a minute. That’s over half a million gees. Nothing physical can withstand that, not without help. So the Elohim developed what they call a ZPZ generator, a zero-point zone framing effector. It locks every atom in the ship and its passengers into place. That way the whole structure can withstand the acceleration force. It takes a phenomenal amount of energy, but the generator pulls that out of the quintessence line, the same way that the acceleration mechanism does.”
Ellie was staring at him in fascination. “Half a million gees? That’s insane!”
