"Your sensor subdrones were pumping everything they could directly into your synesthesia," Hobbes continued. "The information gain was too high for you. And perhaps it was partly my fault, too, Jocim. You'd been pulled out of a hypersleep cycle out of phase, less than an hour before you were hit with the compound mind. Your mind was vulnerable."
He looked up at Hobbes, silently begging her to talk more slowly. "What hit me?"
"Alexander. The Legis compound mind. You had a planet stuffed into your head."
Marx nodded, and rubbed his aching temples. That metaphor felt about right. Then he blinked. He hoped it was a metaphor.
"Again, Hobbes," he pleaded. "Why is there a Rixwoman running loose on our ship?"
"Ah," Hobbes said. "She's a commando, from the Legis attack."
"Oh, a commando. Understandable then, that we would want her in sickbay." Marx vaguely realized that he should be terrified, as if a poisonous snake had been dropped in his lap, but his body wasn't up to producing adrenaline.
"Things have changed, Marx. Not just here, but throughout the Empire. We've had to ally ourselves--or at least cooperate--with the object. With the Rix."
"The Empire and Rix are allied?" Suddenly, three months' sleep didn't seem adequate.
"No, just us, Marx. The Lynx is on its own."
"Wait," the master pilot interrupted. "Who's in command, Hobbes?" He clenched his fists. Had the aborted mutiny finally occurred?
"Captain Zai, of course."
Marx's head swam. The Vadan had committed treason?
"Listen, Marx," Hobbes kept at him. "The Emperor's status is unsure. The dead have called a quorum. The pilgrimage ships are coming into Home from all over the Empire. The sovereign may be removed."
A quorum of the dead? Something from a ten-year-old's civics class. A strictly theoretical possibility. For sixteen hundred years, the Emperor had ruled without a single dissenting vote from among the billions of honored dead. The dead never argued, never even disagreed. For them to consider removal of the sovereign seemed unthinkable.
"Hobbes," he started, waving at her to slow down. His mind fought to locate the questions that would straighten out this strange new world.
"What the hell . . . ?" was all he could manage.
She started to speak, and Marx winced.
Katherie Hobbes shook her head, laughed. "Master Pilot, I think you should rest now."
She took his shoulders, touched him. Things had changed, indeed.
"We've lost so many, Jocim. It's good to have you back," Hobbes whispered.
Marx simply nodded, and leaned back on the sickbed. Suddenly, he was exhausted again.
The ExO left him there, the lights dimming as she exited the private sickbay cabin.
He leaned back, and his mind roiled now, full of questions, confusion, sheer energy. Marx felt as if he'd drunk a pot of coffee after a full day of meetings, his mind tired but buzzing. Deep breaths had only the slightest calming effect. He exercised his fingers, forcing himself to think about how good it would be to fly again.
Then he caught the eyes of the Rixwoman. She was still here-- watching him, observing, as if monitoring a patient, awaiting some expected symptom to evince itself. The dead woman stood beside her, their shoulders just touching with the casual intimacy of old lovers.
Marx locked his gaze onto the Rixwoman's, focusing himself.
Somehow her implacable stare calmed his mind, her violet eyes 331 glowing like meditation candles in the dark cabin. The rhythm of his breathing slowed, and he felt the cycle of the dreamtide again. He heard the ambient sound of the ship, the ever-present hum of engines, air system, and gravity generation. Something was different.
Without releasing the commando's gaze, Marx placed his hand on the side of his bed, palm flat against cool metal. The ship-hum was stronger there. He let the dream phantoms, the reverberations of his fugue, align themselves to the frigate's vibration. Memory and metal conjoined, like the many instruments of an orchestra tuning to a common pitch.
They matched the flicker of the Rixwoman's eyes.
She smiled at Marx. Then the two of them together--yes, they were lovers, he suddenly knew--left him.
And the master pilot understood the deal that the captain had made. He wondered what must be arrayed against them, their lone ship in the deep, to have motivated Zai to let this thing aboard. To have allied his vessel and crew with the Empire's sworn enemy.
Perhaps Laurent Zai didn't even know, didn't understand the extent of its subtle, pervasive occupation. But Marx knew. He had spent a hundred days inside its belly. He could see its signs and hear its music. Like a vortex of wind revealed by the leaves, dirt, and debris it captured, the shape and scope of Alexander were clearly marked.
The Lynx had been taken.
The Rix were here.
TEN YEARS EARLIER (IMPERIAL ABSOLUTE)
Marine Private
Marine Private Second-Class Bassiritz explained it again to his new crewmates: "Just Bassiritz. In the village where I come from, we only have one name."
"Only one name?" Astra shouted above the roaring crowd.
"Better than none at all," Master PrivateTorvel Saman assured him.
"Better than one too many," Astra added. "How many names would be too many?" Bassiritz asked.
"Not how many, but which ones!"
"Retired."
"The late . . ."
"Corporal!"
They laughed at their own jokes and clapped Bassiritz on the back as if he'd made one himself. He didn't completely understand, but didn't press his mates with questions. He was relieved at their good humor, knowing from his travels that in some cultures, a single, unadorned name was a badge of shame, or a mark of servant lineage. But these Lynx marines all had wide experience; they'd seen far stranger things. The crew of the new, experimental warship was drawn from the cream of the Empire. Bassiritz knew that he himself only rated selection due to his high scores as a marksman and close combatant--he was younger and less educated than his squadmates.
The fire team was perched, alongside a hundred or so of their crewmates, on the gantry supporting a huge, false Lynx. The facsimile of their new ship loomed up behind them, two kilometers tall. (But it was not a figment or ghost-sight: The dummy ship was real, physical had begun to realize that no expense was too 333 absurd here on Home. Not for a pageant or party.) Before them, filling the great square before the Emperor's Diamond Palace, was a huge crowd of cheering citizens. An uncountable host, far more people than Bassiritz had ever seen in his life. Not merely in one place, but more than all the people the young private had ever seen, put together. That fact bounded around inside his head, a realization as sovereign as the glittering facets of the palace as it caught the strangely white light of Home's large sun.