Part 12 (1/2)

”Please,” she said. ”If there is any possibility I can reach the port tomorrow, I must try.” According to the estimates made by her node, days here lasted twenty-eight hours, fourteen of night and fourteen of sunlight. It left her so little time.

”Does Brad know you must meet this s.h.i.+p?” Garlin asked.

”Yes, definitely.”

”Perhaps he will send his silver bird for you.”

”The flyer?”

”He calls it that.” Garlin rubbed his chin. ”You say it is no magic your people have, and Brad says this also, but his flyer is a metal room that floats, having light without candles and warmth without fire. His house is the same. If this is not sorcery, what is it?”

”Technology.”

”I know not technology.”

”Your people must have, once.”

He spread his hands apart, his palms to the ceiling.

Roca gathered he was indicating confusion. ”Have the people here no legends of great machines in times long past?”

”Our myths are of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses.”

”From the sky?”

”Sky. Moons. Suns. Stars.”

She motioned upward. ”Your ancestors came down from the sky just like my people do.”

He smiled wryly. ”Brad does. He tries not to, though.”

”Not to?” Roca wasn't sure what he meant.

Garlin sighed. ”Not to come down from the sky. Always this flyer of his has problems. He has to send for parts.”

Roca didn't like the sound of it. ”How long does that take?”

”He tells the supply s.h.i.+p what he needs. The next one brings his supplies.”

”How long between supply s.h.i.+ps?”

Garlin thought for a moment. ”My friend's son was just born when the last one came. The boy walks now.”

She stared at him, aghast. ”That could bemonths.”

”Can you send a message for someone to come sooner?”

If only.She could do nothing without access to the webs. Two ways existed to communicate across s.p.a.ce: by stars.h.i.+p, which could take days, even months for a remote outpost like this; and through the Kyle web, which was almost instantaneous. But the Allieds had no access to the web; they used it only by arrangement with Imperial s.p.a.ce Command. Brad couldn't swing an arrangement like that on such short notice. Eventually the Allieds would probably pet.i.tion for access here to the Kyle web, but for now, the supply s.h.i.+p was Brad's lifeline to other worlds. Roca didn't miss the irony, that her family created and maintained the Kyle web, yet she had no entry into it when she needed it most. She couldn't even contact the port because she had ditched her wrist comm on Irendela to make it harder for Kurj to find her.

”The s.h.i.+p is my only way to send a message,” she said.

He tilted his head toward the window. ”It snows again.”

”No.” Roca felt as if walls were closing around her. Snow drifted down from the sky, turning the world blue, making it hard to distinguish where the land ended and the air began.

”Even if it stopped this moment,” Garlin said, ”the path down the mountain wouldn't be safe for several days.” The regret in his mind was genuine. ”And I have seen weather such as this before. It will not stop snowing, I don't think, for many days.”

Roca held her hand up to the window, letting flakes gather on her palm. They dusted across the bench and Garlin's legs, light blue powder, so beautiful, so bitter.

Her voice caught. ”I have to try.”

”If you leave here, you will die.” In an unusually gentle voice, he added, ”You must stay. I am sorry.”

Roca stared out at the snow. ”So am I.”

8.

Legacy.

In the observation sphere, Kurj felt as if he touched a piece of his soul, a part he had never truly understood. The sphere curved out from the hull of the Orbiter s.p.a.ce station like a transparent bubble.

s.p.a.ce surrounded him in its infinite beauty, the fire of stars, the spumes of nebula, and the mystery of secrets known only to the cosmos. He stood with his hands resting on a clear railing and gazed at the great void. Despite what many people believed, s.p.a.ce was no more ”empty” than his heart: void was a label others used to define what they couldn't see.

The view stirred his memories of flying a Jag, the exhilaration of joining his mind to the EI brain of his s.h.i.+p, plunging into the magnificent reaches of the Kyle web in another universe. When he accessed that web, he could contact any place in human s.p.a.ce that also linked into it, letting his mind expand throughout the far-flung settlements of humanity.

A memory stabbed him: hurtling through s.p.a.ce with his squadron, his mind submerged in the web, he had sensed another squad. Eight enemy fighters were headed their way. Traders. Six of the pilots were slaves, but with so much Aris...o...b..ood, they were hardly less cruel than their owners. One was an Aristo, his insatiable mind thirsting for the agony of psions. Kurj hadfelthis cruelty, his pleasure in killing, his desire to inflict pain, until finally Kurj vomited. To this day, it made him ill to hear the whir of the miniaturized droids that cleaned a pilot during battle.

But what had horrified him most had been the eighth ”pilot.” The man was a psion, a slave, a provider.

The Traders had bound him into his s.h.i.+p, with two Aristo copilots in control. They used him to locate the telepathic Jag pilots, torturing him to force his compliance. With no training to defend his mind and no natural protections, the provider had been in agony. His screams had reverberated in Kurj's mind, drawing him into a link so intense, Kurj had lost his ident.i.ty, becoming that anguished pilot. Tears had poured down his face. Pulling free of the link had taken a mental wrench so severe, it had forever scarred Kurj's mind.

When Kurj's squad engaged the Traders, he destroyed the s.h.i.+p with the provider first. In that instant he wasn't fighting an enemy, he was freeing a human being from a torment that would have otherwise killed him in a pain greater than Kurj could have imagined if he hadn't lived it. His squad defeated the Traders that day, but in his mind he had kept fighting that battle, along with the hundreds of others like it, ever since.

Kurj pushed away the memories. He became aware he was no longer alone in the observation sphere.

His grandmother had come. Still shaken, he turned to see her several hundred meters distant, sitting in a transparent chair across the rounded chamber, gazing out at s.p.a.ce, a raven-haired sovereign on a crystal throne.

Kurj walked across the sphere, using a transparent path that ran through its center. Lahaylia Selei, the Ruby Pharaoh, wore her hair down today, letting it loop over her chair, arms, torso, and legs, as black as s.p.a.ce but liberally streaked with white. It had grown a long time, over three hundred years; his grandmother was the oldest human being that had ever lived.

He stopped beside her throne and stood looking at the stars, his hands clasped behind his back. It seemed appropriate, in view of the magnificent cosmos, that he kept his uniform simple, with none of the medals, ribbons, or other symbols he had a right to wear. His khaki pants tucked into dark boots and his pullover sweater indicated no sign of his rank except for the single band of a Primary around each of his upper arms.

Lahaylia motioned at the view. ”This is your legacy, Kurj. The stars. Not the wars.h.i.+ps.”

”No?” Anger edged his voice, born of the years he had spent fighting an enemy that was bigger, stronger, and as cold as s.p.a.ce. ”Without those wars.h.i.+ps, none of us will inherit anything.”

”It takes more than s.h.i.+ps.”