"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 ship?" 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 ship what he needs. The next one brings his supplies."

"How long between supply ships?"

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 starship, 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 ship 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 ship 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 ship, 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 ship, 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 ship 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 warships."

"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 warships, none of us will inherit anything."

"It takes more than ships."

He turned to her, a pharaoh descended from the queens who had ruled a mysterious, ancient empire.

She evoked those matriarchs, with her dark hair, long limbs, and cla.s.sic features. But instead of dark eyes, she had green ones, startling in their vivid hue. The lines around her eyes and white in her hair were the only signs she had lived 322 years. No one knew her potential life span; she was the first human to have had the benefit of age-delaying biotech from the moment of conception. How long could a human live? Early nanomed technology had been crude, but in the 322 years since it had improved.

In those centuries, she had founded an empire.

The people of the Imperialate worshiped her. She was a symbol, their exotic forever-queen. But Kurj sensed the truth: she had grown weary. She pushed herself too hard, working in the Kyle web she had created, centuries ago. Striving to protect her empire, she spent days at a time wired into the great command chair that linked her body to the ever-evolving network. He feared the time was coming when she would give the medics an answer to the question of how long a human could live.

He spoke with atypical gentleness. "You should rest."

Lahaylia glanced at him, her slanted eyes a deeper green than usual today. She spoke in a too quiet voice. "Yes. I should."

The finality of her tone sent a chill up his spine. "I meant sleep." For a race as long-lived as theirs, the concept of death became distant, easy to forget, making it even harder to accept.

"Ah, Kurj." She spoke softly. "I've had a life most people would only dream of. It has been a good one, even with all the struggles and heartache. It is your time now."

A lump seemed to form in his throat. His grandmother was one of the few people he could talk to without barriers. She didn't fear him. It devastated him, knowing he could stop ships, armies, even wars, but not the pa.s.sing of the people he loved. He wanted to tell her what he felt, but he had no words to express such emotions. So he answered simply. "Say no more."

She nodded. They watched the stars wheel past as the Orbiter rotated. After a while she spoke again.

"Is she home yet?"

"No." None of his vast intelligence networks had located his mother. His fear for her had been with him every moment since she vanished. Sometimes he could submerge it in his daily concerns, but it never left his mind.

"She always was a stubborn one," Lahaylia said.

Kurj glanced at her. "My mother?"

"Yes. And I will tell you something else."

"What is that?"

She spoke evenly. "You cannot force her to do what you want. That includes trapping her on Irendela so you can change her votes in a.s.sembly."

Kurj was glad the nanomeds in his body prevented him from flushing. "I would never change the votes of a Councilor."

She just arched her eyebrow. Then she went back to watching the stars wheel past. He didn't try any more denials. They wouldn't fool her.

Eventually she said, "I was born a Trader slave, you know."

Kurj frowned. She spoke casually, as if commenting on the weather instead of dropping a bombsh.e.l.l. It couldn't be true, of course. She couldn't have kept such a well-guarded secret for over three centuries.

Perhaps she was making a terrible joke. But he knew her. She wouldn't joke so about the Traders.

"Grandmother." Kurj waited until she turned to him. "You descend from the queens of the Ruby Empire.

Many doctors have verified your DNA." They constantly examined her, especially as she aged. "You cannot have been a slave."

"Of course I can."

He waited.

Her gaze darkened. "You know of the Rhon project."

"Of course." It was his heredity. Centuries ago, Doctor Hezahr Rhon had isolated the mutations that created Ruby psions, the most powerful empaths and telepaths known. Humans on the world Raylicon had just been regaining s.p.a.ce travel, emerging from five millennia of dark ages. They needed powerful psions. It was the only way to resurrect the ancient machines; the people of the Ruby Empire had developed an arcane discipline combining mathematics, neuroscience, and mysticism. Their machines accessed universes based on thought rather than s.p.a.cetime. But Kurj's ancestors had lost that knowledge; nothing had survived the millennia except three Locks, those mysterious command centers that could create and power a Kyle web. Only a Ruby psion could activate them.

Rhon had pursued two goals: to create and to protect Ruby psions. It was an ancient dilemma; the stronger a psion, the more sensitive their mind, and the more pain they experienced when other people suffered. Rhon had meant to ease the anguish they endured, but that n.o.ble, well-intentioned goal became one of the worst failures in human history. It created the Aristos, a race of anti-empaths with no capacity for compa.s.sion. When an Aristo picked up pain from a psion, it stimulated the Aristo's brain, producing an ecstasy they called "transcendence." Psions projected their pain more; the stronger their minds, the more intense the effect. Aristos brutalized them with obsessive cruelty. They enslaved empaths and telepaths and called them providers.

They craved the Ruby Dynasty beyond all reason.

Now, centuries later, the Aristos ruled the Eubian Concord, an empire built without the inhibition of compa.s.sion. All their subjects, trillions of them, were slaves. Providers made up only a tiny fraction of those populations; most Trader slaves lived comfortable lives as long as they followed the precepts set out by their owners. But none had freedom.

As a Jag pilot, Kurj had defied the Traders. Linked to his ship's EI brain, strengthened by technology that allowed humans to endure immense accelerations, he had become phenomenally versatile in battle.

But Jag pilots had to be psions-and hypersensitizing psions during combat exacted a terrible price. Kurj could never lose the memories of the soldiers he had engaged, not only the Aristos and almost Aristos, but the many slaves who had no choice but to fight, or who nurtured hopes of a better life if only they could distinguish themselves in combat. It was impossible to demonize an enemy when he felt their humanity. He wept with them, screamed with them-and died with them.

Kurj had flown a Jag for eight years, longer than most Jagernauts, and he would never lose the guilt of having outlived so many of his contemporaries. Jag pilots also had a higher suicide rate than personnel in any other branch of the military. He survived by barricading his emotions until he became a fortress no one could breach. He could no longer open his heart, but his defenses made the pain bearable. Almost.

To Lahaylia, he said only, "You were born in the Rhon Project." They had created her using preserved DNA from ancient Ruby Pharaohs.

"Actually," she said, "I wasn't."

"I've seen the records."

"It's true, the history of the Skolian Imperialate has been arranged to explain my birth in such a manner."

She shrugged. "In a sense it is true. Rhon envisioned my birth. But he never succeeded. It is prohibitively difficult to make psions in vitro."

"Prohibitive, yes." It perturbed him to have his view of the universe disrupted this way. "But not impossible. You are living proof."

"The Aristos created me."

Kurj stiffened. "No."

"It is true."

"It cannot be."

She regarded him steadily. "They had no ethical compunctions. None. They tried thousands of times, even millions, and in all those attempts they produced only two viable fetuses, myself and a boy, my mate. We were to be the ultimate providers." A deep rage stirred within her and she let him sense it.

"The boy killed himself when we were teenagers. He preferred death to a life of torture." Her voice grated.

"Nor could he bear to know the Aristos intended to breed our children for the same. He took his own life rather than live that nightmare."

He didn't know where to put these revelations. "You knew the boy?"