Raising Caine - eARC by Charles E. Gannon Page A

planets, but to maintain control over oneself. Resolving not to rub at the painful welt on his index finger, where the caustic fluids of the Catalysite had surged greedily into his bloodstream, Shethkador exited the Sensorium.
    Olsirkos was there. Two guards were present also, but hanging well back, out of earshot. “Fearsome Srin,” Olsirkos began, “if you should wish to first take some repose in the—”
    “I have need of information, not rest. It is also necessary that I make an appearance on the bridge. Attend me.” Because, as the ancient axiom has it, “one cannot assert one’s dominion in one’s absence.”
    Without checking to see if Olsirkos was at his heels—for it was the ’vah’s life if he was not—Tlerek Srin Shethkador made swiftly for the bridge.

Chapter Eight
    In the exosphere; V 1581 Four
    Hirkun Morsessar, Tagmator of the Aegis patrol hunter Red Lurker , stared at the visual feed from the bow: swirling, dimly lit whorls and clouds. The violent collage was mostly white, but some of the drifts and plumes were bilious. Others were tinged with ochre. Together, they recalled the miasmas that hung about the Creche worlds’ shabbiest, unventilated pipehouses, all tucked away in grimy urban helot-warrens.
    A sharp bump, followed quickly by a sideways shuddering, reminded Hirkun that, despite appearances, they were actually in the upper reaches of the medium-sized gas giant that occupied the fourth orbit around the star the Aboriginals had labeled Cygnus 2, or V 1518. “Attend to your instruments,” Morsessar warned the pilot. The Autarch-assigned helmsman—a lictor, equal in status to a huscarl but without affiliation to any House—complied as best he could, but the buffeting down-drafts from the port side were patternless. They defied both his and the flight computer’s abilities to predict and stabilize their flight.
    “Apologies, Tagmator.” The hush in the House-less pilot’s voice sounded more like the product of fear than regret.
    This was satisfying and proper. Technically, the maximum disciplinary action available to Hirkun was comparatively limited; lictors were the ward-chattels of the Autarchs themselves, and so could not be harmed too greatly without inviting their masters’ censure and consequent reprimands from one’s own House and Family. But this lictor was sufficiently fearful of Hirkun’s power, even so: one of the few gratifying elements of this accursed observation mission. A misnomer if there ever was one. Just how much observing can one do from inside a gas giant? “Keep your course, helm; you have strayed twelve degrees from our assigned heading. And make our journey smoother. Exercise greater powers of anticipation.”
    “Yes, Tagmator.”
    An impossible feat, of course, but one never maintained dominion by lowering expectations or even making them reasonable. We exceed our limits only when forced to do so , as the Progenitors’ Axioms had it. And since Hirkun’s life and fortunes depended, for now, upon this crew, then it was certainly in his best interests to—
    The iris valve to the small bridge scalloped open: a tall, black-haired woman entered and sank, brooding, into the seat that doubled as the XO’s position and the backup sensor and comm ops station. She did not make eye contact with Hirkun.
    “Problems, Antendant Letlas?”
    “No, Tagmator,” the willowy Antendant answered curtly.
    “Antendant, if you wish a recommendation that will aid your ascent to Intendant-vah, do not trouble your commander with indirect communication. Speak frankly and at once: what troubles you?”
    Letlas sat straighter. “Apologies, Tagmator Morsessar. I am annoyed at myself.”
    That was unexpected. “How so?”
    She glanced at the pilot, the only other person on the bridge. “I am uncertain that my concerns are best shared in this place.”
    Ah. Hirkun turned to the lictor. “Pilot, monitor the Aboriginals’ broadcast frequencies through your helmet. Increase the