But he felt control of his body slipping away along with the fixity of purpose that had allowed him to track and respond to his numerous injuries. He saw Nezdeh’s face loom over him and he knew, with dull certainty, that there would be no bargaining.
As her pistol came up level with his forehead, Hirkun reflected that here was the proof of yet another Progenitor Axiom, the one that explained why women should not be sent on field missions:
They are simply too dangerous.
* * *
Nezdeh, late of House Perekmeres, stepped over Hirkun Morsessar’s corpse, fired two rounds into the cowering pilot, and then leveled the weapon at Letlas. “You. Antendant.”
Letlas made the appropriate prostration with reassuring swiftness and enthusiasm. “I hear your words, Agra — no, Berema Nezdeh Kresessek-vah.”
She laughed. “What an inanity. That you style me a Lady of a House for which I am still ostensibly a ’vah, an Aspirant? Your eagerness to flatter leads you to foolishness.”
“I mean to respect, not flatter. But I know not what to call you, Berema.”
Nezdeh considered. “There is merit in that point. Scant merit, but merit still. Look up, Antendant, and tell me: do you wish to live?”
Letlas looked up. Before her mouth opened with the answer, her eyes made it clear. “I wish to live, Berema Nezdeh.”
As if there had been an iota of doubt. “And will you take service with House Perekmeres, as a probationary Antendant?”
Letlas stammered. “With — with House Perekmeres?”
“Is your hearing impaired?”
“But House Perekmeres was Extirpated, Fearsome Berema.”
Ah, she is catching on: she does not know my former rank, but has deduced that I was high enough in the genelines of Perekmeres to warrant the honorific “Fearsome.” She thinks quickly. “Extirpation was inflicted upon us,” Nezdeh said crisply as more of her mutineers entered the bridge. “That does not mean I accept it, any more than I accepted the vile touch of the Kresessek abomutations who hoped to add my geneline to theirs in the old manner. Now, I shall ask it one more time, since your wits seem addled: will you take service with House Perekmeres?”
“I…I will, Fearsome Berema.”
“Excellent. Rise. Now, enter the commander’s access code for the engineering and helm controls.”
“I am but an Antendant, Fearsome Berema.”
As Idrem came to stand beside Nezdeh and the deck jounced through another patch of extended turbulence, she brought her pistol to bear on the Antendant once again. “I have observed the bridge routines and who was present, or not, when various systems were accessed or terminated. The XO naturally has a separate but equal set of command codes, but I slew him ten minutes ago in his quarters. There is one crewmember, often of lower rank, who also has access to the commander’s codes.” She smiled. “I am familiar with these protocols, having captained ships before. You were present at the correct times, and are the correct rank with the correct role. You are the keeper of the codes. I have eliminated all other possibilities. Do not try my patience, Antendant. Enter the overrides.”
Letlas averted her eyes, moved to the blood-and-bone-spattered commander’s console and entered the codes. She looked up. “How may I serve House Perekmeres now, Fearsome Berema?”
“This way,” Nezdeh replied. She raised the pistol and fired two rounds into the Antendant’s chest.
Letlas gasped as awkwardly as she fell, blood pumping out of two craters that bracketed her sternum.
Nezdeh stepped closer to watch the light leave the Antendant’s eyes. “You hesitated. Had you meant to serve Perekmeres, you would have rejoiced in the opportunity to comply immediately, and thereby prove your loyalty.” Letlas was either wheezing for breath or trying to speak, but it did not matter: moments after Nezdeh had pronounced the epitaph of her insufficiency, the Antendant was dead.
Nezdeh looked about the bridge. One cannot dominate from behind a wall of silence, went the axiom of the First Progenitors. She kept faith with their wisdom: “Ulpreln: your hand to the helm. When the bow is steady, don the pilot’s helmet so that you may listen in on the briefing.” She unreeled and spoke into her beltcom as she waved for two of the mutineers to clear the three bodies. “Brenlor Srin Perekmeres?”
Her earbud crackled with the reply. “Here. Do you have dominion, Nezdeh Srina Perekmeres?”
She smiled. “I do. The rest of the crew?”
“Sworn to service or dead.”
“Were any of the uncertain members swayed to our side?”
Brenlor’s pause was pregnant. “Not reliably so.”
Nezdeh closed her eyes: Brenlor was marginally her superior and had a full measure of what she considered House Perekmeres’ most characteristic negative trait: male impulsivity. Which was often expressed through bloodthirsty aggression. “This was necessary, Srin?”
His response had a discernible edge. “It was. Besides, the poison meant to incapacitate the off-duty crew was fatal in three cases.”
Nezdeh glanced at Idrem, who shrugged: “As I warned from the outset, dosing and individual susceptibility were variables beyond our control. The outcome was uncertain, at best.”
She nodded. “Brenlor, we must hold our briefing promptly. The orbital path of the human shift carrier will soon be optimal.”
“Understood. I shall meet you in the ready room.”
Nezdeh glanced behind her at the entry to the small compartment which served as commander’s office and briefing chamber. “We shall be there.” She moved in that direction, turned to the rest of the team that had stormed the bridge. “Follow me.”
* * *
Nezdeh did not move her eyes to observe the faces of the Evolved and the Intendants wedged in tightly around the briefing table: she merely expanded her peripheral awareness so that the edges of her vision were nearly as acute as the focal core. As Brenlor’s assertions of House Perekmeres’ imminent resurgence veered increasingly toward stentorian bombast, she surveyed her assets:
Idrem: indispensable and crafty. Unlike Brenlor, who had fled House Perekmeres’ precincts prior to its Extirpation, Idrem had managed to stage his own apparent death, using vat-grown tissue and blood to leave a forensically convincing residue. He had then taken refuge in the one place that subsequent investigation was unlikely to find him: among the ranks of the Autarchs’ Aegis forces. He had made his supplication in the guise of a huscarl left masterless by the liquidation of a lesser Family from an entirely different House. By the time the Extirpation occurred, he had been wearing the Aegis gray for nearly a month.
Nezdeh did not like admitting it, but Idrem was probably her intellectual equal, possibly her superior. That thought rankled, but also, oddly, titillated. He was not the most athletic or vigorous of the Evolved, but he was also immune to the unremitting need for making dominance displays. The more impetuous of the Evolved males presumed this indicated passivity, and so were ready to dismiss Idrem. But Nezdeh realized the true source of Idrem’s quiet: utter self-assurance in himself and his competence. That made him far more dangerous than most of the boisterous males around him, for he could not be manipulated by his temperament.
Of the other four Evolved, three were young and from Families that were comparatively distant from the progenitorial root of the true House of Perekmeres: first cousins Vranut and Ulpreln Balkether, and an aunt that was their chronological junior, Zurur Deosketer. In a few more generations, their genelines would have become so dilute that their offspring would have had to seek other fortunes. But now, with the blood of the House of Perekmeres wiped from the marble halls of both its greatest and least Hegemons, their fortunes were ascendant: scarcity of a geneline, like any other resource, greatly enhanced its value.