Still, it was painful. The last shreds of Vadan loyalty were passing from him.
The Emperor had designed to destroy one of the Eighty Worlds.
Zai remembered the catechisms of his childhood. The old relationship between the Emperor and Vada had been formed after the Vadan Founders had fled their ruined previous home. No killing of worlds, the Compact read. And now the sovereign had broken it.
Through his nausea, Zai saw an icon blinking in the lower corner of Nara's folded message. One of Hobbes's telltales, indicating that this message had gone through the adept's hands.
"Damn," he whispered.
He'd assumed that the document was secure. It carried senatorial privilege, with the full protection of the Pale, but the adept's writ had somehow opened it.
Nara Oxham would be found out now. The Emperor would know that she had warned him. The final wave of nausea lasted only a few seconds, then Zai felt ready.
He took the slow, measured breaths of a Vadan warrior. He turned from the blackness of space and strode from the blister, glad to hear the ring of his boots on hard metal.
He was smiling.
Strange, that such danger should lighten his soul. But he felt sure and powerful for the first time in months: All his own shortcomings were buried now, overwhelmed by the crimes of his enemy: the Risen Emperor.
"Hobbes," he signaled.
"Captain?" She sounded half asleep.
"Meet me at Rana Harter's cabin."
"Sir?"
"In five minutes. Bring your weapon."
Executive Officer
Katherie Hobbes fastened the seals of her tunic as she ran.
She stopped around the corner from her goal, and checked the time. She had fifty seconds left. Her eyes scanned the black wool of her uniform, checking for imperfections. She pulled up one sleeve to reveal the flechette pistol. Its ammo meter read full, but Hobbes popped the cover to check the needles with her own eyes.
The darts were nestled in their twin magazines, as perfectly aligned as two ranks of tiny metal soldiers.
She walked briskly and calmly around the corner. Zai awaited her with a grim expression.
"Captain, what is it?"
"We've been betrayed, Hobbes."
Mutiny again? She took a deep breath against panic, drew l$er pistol.
"Not by our crew, Hobbes," her captain said.
She blinked. What was he saying?
"Just hand me that." He pointed at the pistol.
What? she thought. The captain could draw his own weapon from stores. But of course that would raise any number of flags with the politicals aboard the ship. Hobbes handed him the weapon silently.
The captain held the flechette pistol behind his back and opened the door to the dead woman's cabin. Light spilled between Hobbes and Zai into Rana Harter's dim antechamber. The dead Adept Trevim herself was here, kneeling with her back to them, her hands working gestural commands.
"Forgive me, Honored Mother," Zai said.
He shot Trevim with a spray of needles, cutting an X across her heart.
Hobbes gasped, her knees week. This must be a dream, she thought.
"Her symbiant should rise from that," Zai said.
He turned to Hobbes.
"What was she doing?" he demanded.
Hobbes forced herself to concentrate, probing the Lynx's diagnostics. The adept's actions were officially hidden from Navy Al, but there were always indirect signs. The translight grid was cycling out of a transmission.
"It looks as if she sent a message, sir."
"Did I interrupt her?"
Hobbes shook her head. "It's stepping down in an orderly way, Captain. She was finished, and the main entanglement grid shows depletion."
"Home," he said.
She nodded.
"Damn. Shut it down, Hobbes. The whole grid--cut its power."
She swallowed, and signaled the com staff to perform the task. This was one trump card the captain held. The Apparatus might have a writ of authority, but the crew of the Lynx could still disable the frigate's components by hand.
The captain opened the inner door of the antechamber, holding the pistol ready.
"Rana Harter," he called.
Was Zai going to murder the woman? Hobbes wondered. The Adept would reanimate easily from her heart wound, but a shot like that to the head could destroy a risen permanently. The dead woman stepped from the darkness, blinking in the light. She was small, her hair shorn like the Rixwoman's. Though she was shorter than the commando, Hobbes could see how their faces were alike. The Legis authorities believed that Rana had been chosen from the militia's population for her resemblance to Herd, and perhaps for a savant ability to process chaotic data. Hobbes wondered to what uses the compound mind had put Rana's intellect, and what traces captivity had left in the dead woman before her.
"Please come with me, Honored One," Zai said.
Harter nodded quiescently. She had none of the usual hauteur of the dead. Laurent Zai went ahead, with Rana after him. Hobbes brought up the rear, reminding herself that this was real.
They reached the Rixwoman's cell in a few minutes. The gunfire and Adept Trevim's medical monitors had triggered various alarms aboard the ship, but Hobbes had managed to suppress them as far as she knew.
There was a single marine guard, not the familiar Bassiritz, and one of the lower-ranking politicals on station. The man was living, and Captain Zai shot him in the leg, and kicked him in the head as he fell. The aspirant dropped to the floor unconscious.
Zai sternly ordered the startled guard to return to attention.
The private froze in shock for a moment, then obeyed as crisply as if at parade drill. Zai's tone of command was stronger than Hobbes had heard it in some time. The sound thrilled her, however bizarre these proceedings.
Her fingers flickered, moving to quell the new alarms. The remaining politicals must already know that something was happening.
"Shall I get a fire team up here, Captain?"
"Good idea, Hobbes. That fast private, for one."
She nodded, sent commands.
"Secure this area, Private," she ordered the motionless marine.
Hobbes opened the cell, turning the screwlock and bracing one leg to pull out the massive door.
Zai moved to enter first. "The shock collar remote, sir," she called.
"We won't need it."
Hobbes followed him closely, wishing that she had another weapon. Straightjacket or no, the Rix commando could probably kill them both easily. She doubted that a half-expended clip of flechettes would even marginally slow down a Rix soldier.