The Rifter's Covenant by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge Page A

bargain. Hreem liked
contemplating that, and—sensing his emotions—Norio hoped that if that were to
be Riolo’s fate, he would make it back to the Lith before the collar killed him. The rest of the crew might enjoy
watching his death throes on a vid, but to Norio, that would be as tasteless as
a verbal description of a fine meal, and Hreem would feel cheated.
    The fiveskip
blipped again, changing the Lith’s position randomly to avoid giving the Barcans a fix on them. Hreem’s tension
peaked, then relaxed as Metije reported, “Fiveskip holding, Captain.” The
frequent short skips were hard on the engines.
    The captain
grimaced at the viewscreen as it cleared from skip. The Lith was a few thousand kilometers outside the orbit of the
outermost moon of Barca, which hung gibbous to one side of the screen. The moon
vanished as the stars skewed across the screen, stopping with a needle of light
dead center, the real focus of the Rifter captain’s emotions.
    As if summoned by
his regard, Dyasil’s console bleeped.
    “Signal incoming
from Scorpion .”
    “ Scorpion ?” Hreem repeated.
    Dyasil’s
shoulderblades worked under his thin shirt. “New destroyer. But it’s him.”
    Hreem’s mouth quirked,
and Norio’s nerves flashed in echo of Hreem’s flash of amusement. The crew had
learned not to mention Neyvla-khan’s name around him, especially since his
arrival here at Barrodagh’s orders had locked them into a paralyzing three-way
balance of terror, with the heavy weapons the Barcans claimed to have on the
moons balancing the two Rifter fleets.
    “That stinking slug
Barrodagh,” Hreem had said to him the previous night as they lay together in
the aftermath of passion. “I wonder if Eusabian’d trade him for the Ogres?”
Norio shivered deliciously at the thought: there was so much he could do with
the Bori, survivor of years of political struggle on Dol’jhar. What a feast of
emotions his downfall would be!
    Hreem started to
speak, but Erbee interrupted.
    “Cap’n, Scorpion’s accelerating. I think he’s
heading lower.”
    Trying to get the
inside orbit, of course. And no doubt worried about the shuttle . The situation in circum-Barcan space
was enormously complicated, especially with the moons now approaching opposition.
The two opposing Rifter fleets constantly maneuvered for lower orbits between
the two moons, outside the resonance field that interdicted fiveskip. In those
orbits, ships passed between the outer moon and the planet more often, where
the Barcans would have to put the Shield up before firing at them from either
moon. That would give ample warning of their intentions—both the fleets feared
an alliance between Barca and their rival.
    Worse than that was
the growing doubt that there were such weapons; but neither Hreem nor
Neyvla-khan could afford to put that to the test. The result was a tension that
increasingly blanketed all other emotions on the Lith , making Norio twitchy.
    “Put him on,
Dyasil,” said Hreem.
    The screen blinked,
and there was Hreem’s deadly enemy, Khamhat Neyvla-khan. Hreem’s jaw muscles
bulged at the unctuous smile already on the other man’s face. Norio breathed in
Hreem’s hatred, an emotion heightened, he knew, by the other’s neat,
close-trimmed beard and pale, narrow face that gave him the appearance of an
aristocratic ascetic.
    Neyvla-khan had not
waited for the cee-lag of the tight-beam—neither of them wanted Barrodagh
listening in on their conversations via hyperwave, coded or not. “Brother
Hreem. I thought we had agreed to take no actions without consultation.”
    “Brother Shiidra-Suck,”
Hreem muttered. Neyvla-khan’s use of Sodality formality merely underscored the
long-standing feud between them. Hreem forced an equally false smile. “We
agreed to take no offensive action, pending the Barcan negotiations with
Dol’jhar. Unfortunately one of my crew was a fugitive from Barcan justice, and
I judged it wise to surrender him as they