Chapter 39: Etemenos

Ellie stared at the screens displaying the view outside the Reformer. Her eyes were wide, her mouth parted, her attention fixed on the silvery vista that appeared to erupt beyond the destroyer’s hull.

She knew she should look upon the gleaming expanse with horror or hate.

She felt nothing but awe.

Etemenos!

Invisible from outside its world-shields, it unfolded before her eyes like a dream as the Reformer charted its course through the bubble of gravitic distortion.

The capital-world of the Federated Stars was the size of a small gas giant, far larger than any habitable planet, even more so than any other product of human artifice. Concentric rings of superdense metals whirled in a stately dance around its core, a giant astrolabe that was practically a system unto itself. Each of the seven rings could have docked thousands of ships as big as a battlecruiser, to say nothing of the smaller, privately-owned stations on different axes. Each glowed with warning lights and running lights and purely decorative lights, creating the illusion of internal stars offset by the weirdly distorted view of the actual stars through its shields. Some bore the glowing insignia of Oligarchical enclaves, others the Ouroboros of the government, others a dizzying mix of symbols from private holders and sub-Oligarchical companies.

Ellie couldn’t begin to imagine the resources the Astroykos Empire had expended to create the capital-world. Even with nanoassemblers, which she wasn't sure they'd had, it would have taken the mass of a dozen planets. And since it rose from deep space, far enough from any star to allow vessels to emerge from compression tunnels just hours from its surface rather than days or weeks, all that mass had been transported across dozens of pentameters at least.

Jack had always called Etemenos's construction wasteful, and Ellie had never had reason to disagree.

Now she did.

The Reformer glided through a maze of shifting rings and space traffic. Perhaps because of its importance as the Federal Navy flagship, it only had to maneuver to avoid the former. Other ships, even bulk freighters many times the destroyer's size, circled around it. Watching from her quarters, Ellie felt they were moving slowly, but she eventually realized the scale of Etemenos was playing tricks on her. The Reformer moved faster than it had in Wellach's atmosphere, but it still took the better part of an hour to reach the immense silver sphere that was Etemenos's core.

At last, the ship settled into a concave cone that served as one of the core's docking bays. Carefully tuned magnetic fields formed much of the planet-sized sphere's outer structure, showing off the arena where the Etemenos Cup tournament was held and, at the heart of that, a second, smaller metal sphere where the emperors had once held court and the Senate now did.

I wish Jack could see this, Ellie thought. He would at least appreciate the outer layer of Etemenos's core. Thinking about what went on at its heart, Ellie at last recovered her dislike of the place.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the faint hiss of the door to her quarters.

She nearly jumped off the bed. She hadn't seen a human being since being escorted from the bridge after Avalon's battle with the Black Rook two weeks before. She felt sure she'd have died of thirst but for the dispensary in her quarters.

She didn't exactly see a human being now, only the armor of a pair of Federal marines, looking more like miniature mecha than men. One of them pointed to her, then jerked a thumb toward the door.

Ellie offered no protest as they led her through the ship's seemingly endless corridors. She wondered if Avalon had finally deigned to remember she existed, or if some Federal bureaucrat had.

She wondered for the thousandth time if Avalon was even still alive.

It seemed impossible the admiral would have left her completely unattended for weeks after all but waiting on her hand and foot. Whatever his reasons, he'd always treated her like a guest rather than a prisoner.

On the other hand, if he were dead, why would his first officer have left Ellie in her gilded cage instead of putting her in a literal one? Or, for that matter, dumping her out the airlock like the trash most of the Reformer's crew so obviously considered her? Had he simply forgotten her after having her hustled back to her quarters? She couldn't rule out the possibility.

For the thousandth time, she put her questions out of her mind. She gained nothing from dwelling on them, and in any case her answers probably lay wherever the marines were taking her.

That proved to be to an airlock big enough to have swallowed up mecha like the Goslings, if not the entire Mother Goose. Smooth and silent, it slid open on a waiting room hardly bigger than the airlock. "Sit," one of the marines said. Without waiting for a response, they turned on their heels and marched back through the closing airlock.

Ellie took in her new surroundings. There were no facilities or decorations, just four long, low couches of reactive gel with circular tables at each end. It seemed oddly plain compared to her image of the capital world-city. Because it was a military facility? In that case, she would have expected screens ready to display strategic updates. Two doors led off from the room. She didn't bother to check them, since even if they weren't locked, she had no idea how to escape or what she would be escaping to. After a quick pace around the room's outskirts, she sighed, stretched and seated herself on one of the couches to wait.

The next several minutes seemed to stretch into hours. Finally, the airlock slid open again. This time, enough marines and navy officers piled out to nearly fill the room, surrounding –

– a sleek, hovering medical chair, in which sat Second Admiral Marcel Avalon.

Ellie couldn't help but gasp.

The medical chair was a mobile version of a typical reactive gel chair, but its covering of nanopaste 'fabric' was more like that of a military-grade flight suit. It extended over Avalon's entire body, replacing his uniform, perhaps having merged with it when the suit's own medical subroutines proved insufficient, and a pseudopod-like extension covered the left side of his face. From the way he sat, Ellie suspected at least his left arm and both legs were injured to the point of uselessness.

Nonetheless, he managed to smile with the visible half of his face. "Ellie."

"Admiral!" Instinctively, she tried to rush to his side and was brought up short by the barrel of a marine's wrist-mounted gun.

"Let her pass," Avalon said. His voice sounded weak and scratchy, but if he'd suffered any serious damage to his lungs or vocal cords, it had already been repaired. Understandably, since soft tissue healed much faster than bone.

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The marine lowered his weapon.

By then, Ellie had enough of her wits about her to remember that this man remained her enemy. She approached his medical chair, but didn't rush to comfort him as she'd been about to. "Are you..." Of course he wasn't alright! She swallowed that cliché and instead said, "I’m glad you're alive."

"And I as well," he said, "although I suspect if Limiters were not sealing off my pain receptors, I might feel differently."

Ellie wasn't sure if she was supposed to laugh at that; from the smattering of nervous chuckles from Avalon's subordinates, she gathered she wasn't the only one.

"Admiral," one of those subordinates said, "perhaps we should inform President Ferrill that you need more time to recover –"

"I have been asleep overlong already, Captain Little," Avalon snapped. Ellie wondered if the harshness in his tone was from his injuries, or if this was the continuation of an argument she'd missed. "I will give my own report."

"Sir," Little said stiffly, saluting and stepping back.

Definitely the continuation of an argument.

One, inevitably, Avalon's subordinate had lost.

"I’ll, um, see that the ship is moved to drydock, sir," Little said.

Avalon tried to nod. The nanopaste extending up his neck restrained him too much, so he was forced to settle for a stiff "Very good, Captain."

Most of the officers returned to the Reformer with Little. The rest, and half the marines, exited through one of the room's doors, leaving Ellie and Avalon with the remaining marines.

"The President will want to meet with me in private, gentlemen," the admiral told the latter, "so you may consider yourselves on early leave."

Ellie could imagine the frown beneath the marine commander's expressionless helmet. "But Admiral –"

"Surely you don’t think I'm in any danger here?"

"The prisoner –"

"She is acting as my assistant," Avalon said. News to Ellie. "And she is not a 'prisoner,' she is a 'guest.'"

The marines hesitated, but, to a man, headed for the doors. Avalon's orders were absolute.

When the door slid shut behind them, Ellie said, "They’re right, you know."

Avalon raised his visible eyebrow.

"In your condition, I could kill you. Or take you hostage and try to get away."

"A prisoner might do so," Avalon allowed.

"I am a prisoner," Ellie snapped. "You probably killed my husband, you certainly tried to kill my daughter, though thank the Principle that was unsuccessful, I’ve been locked in that damned room for weeks. What would you call it?"

Avalon's visible eye widened. "Tried to kill your daughter?"

"What do you call firing a destroyer’s main guns at a transport you thought she was aboard?"

"I never authorized any such action!" Avalon's voice broke, and he coughed harshly. "Dammit. If that’s the case... You’re sure the ship escaped undamaged?"

"Yes," Ellie said. "Your crew apparently weren’t so pleased to hear of Chloe's escape. When I was escorted from the bridge, they were lamenting their misses."

Avalon breathed a ragged sigh of relief. "Heads will roll for that –"

"Stop lying to me," Ellie said. She slumped onto one of the couches and buried her face in her hands. "Even if you don’t, the Senate wants Chloe dead."

"That isn’t true," Avalon said. "I swear it. President Ferrill will swear it, too, when we see her."

"We?" Ellie looked up. "I thought you planned on a private meeting."

"I wanted to talk to you," Avalon said. "And to have the President talk to you. We must lay to rest these baseless fears. Baseless? Perhaps not – not if my own men violate their orders so egregiously." Something seemed to occur to Avalon, and his frown deepened. His eyes flicked to the wall behind which the Reformer loomed.

"What’s wrong?"

"It’s nothing," he said. Too quickly.

He's lying, Ellie thought. Possibly to himself.

Trouble was, she couldn't begin to guess what he was lying about. The Senate’s commitment to Chloe’s safety? Or something to do with the fight at the battlecruiser?

She tried to remember the details of the battle. Avalon had coordinated it from his mecha until he got caught up in his dogfight with Stephan Kyrillos. If he’d kept trying to run a fleet action and fight a duel, he’d have surely been killed, as, it seemed, he almost had been. The Reformer hadn't fired on the Kyrillos transport until after the dogfight began in earnest.

Did that mean Avalon meant what he said about keeping Chloe safe?

Or did it mean they hadn’t had a shot at the transport until he was out of contact?

For that matter, the Reformer hadn’t started firing at the Black Rook until the dogfight began. Had Avalon ordered that? Too many voices shouted through her memories. The Reformer's bridge was a loud place to be in a fight, especially for a felid.

"How were you hurt?" Ellie asked.

"Kyrillos struck me with a telekinetic blast," Avalon said. "Crushed most of my cockpit, but, fortunately, only most."

And the blast from the Reformer that was the last I saw of you? Ellie didn't say what she was thinking, mostly because from Avalon's troubled expression, he'd already considered the possibility that his injuries were neither Stephan Kyrillos's doing nor an accident.

Avalon was, after all, the one who'd told her of the competing factions in the Federal Senate. He might want to believe he’d left them behind when he left Etemenos, but had he? Could he?

Ellie thought of Avalon’s crew. Of their loyalty to him, yes, but also of their cruelty to her. If Avalon wasn't lying about his and President Rhetta Ferrill's position, surely such men would want to thwart her.

Captain Little, the first officer? One of the battery controllers who guided the ship's weapons? An individual gunner?

It wasn't hard for her to see one or all of them as a would-be assassin.

If one of Avalon’s men had wanted to assassinate him, though, why not do so when he was surely near death? Perhaps he was right about the cause of his injuries, perhaps the Reformer’s medical staff weren't in on the plot, or perhaps there had simply been no plausible way to deny responsibility once Avalon was brought aboard.

She asked. "You've been unconscious all this time?"

"You heard Captain Little. I should technically have waited for the sickbay to heal me completely before waking. Talking and moving around makes the process more difficult."

"Then why are you talking? You don’t owe me that, surely?"

"I owe you this and more," Avalon said. "As you say, your husband is likely dead because I attacked the Algreil arcology on Wellach, and now I have endangering your daughter on my conscience."

"You weren’t the one who gave that order."

"My men, my ship – my responsibility." His right fist balled and rose as if to slam against the arm of the medical chair. It fell back, and he slumped.

Ellie rose and went to his side. "You’re right about owing more than you can give, Admiral," she said quietly, "but I still don’t want you to give more than you have."

"Thank you, Ellie," he said.

"Are you going to rest now?"

"I can’t. Debts aside, I have my report to give. Will you escort me to the President’s office? I am, as you can see, somewhat lacking in mobility."

To the president of the Federal Senate. Ellie suppressed a gulp. As much as she hated the senate, the thought of meeting its head in person left her feeling weak-kneed. Despite Avalon’s supposed lack of mobility, she knew his medical chair was self-propelled. She didn't have to go.

But Avalon had promised that President Ferrill would allay her fears about the Senate's plans for Chloe.

If anyone could convince her of that, if she could breathe easier knowing the greatest power in human space didn't want her daughter dead...

Even if it wasn’t true, at least Ellie might be able to sleep at night.

"Of course, Admiral," she said.