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edge that could mean victory.
Jagernauts can succeed where drones alone would fail, Kurj told the assembled council. Both in
space and on-planet.
Jarac s voice rumbled. Settled planets and habitats must remain untouched. I want no civilians hurt.
Kurj gritted teeth. Certainly he intended to protect civilians. But Jarac insisted on too many limitations; it
would curtail the ability of ISC to act as a coherent force. He didn t understand his grandfather. The
Imperialate couldn t survive if it lost its technology, and for that they needed platinum. Without the
Platinum Sectors, Skolia would fall. Kurj had won this time, on the invasion, but what about the next
time? And the time after that?
The day would come when he had to challenge Jarac.
Submerged in the web, Kurj cloaked his identity and became a dark, anonymous figure. His
slum-spiders were following leads on systems buried so deep, he would have never found them with
normal searchers. But he had designed these searchers himself, and they went where respectable spiders
never ventured.
Kurj didn t like what he found.
He had uncovered nothing about Roca Skolia since she vanished, but references to Cya Liessa
abounded. In one cluttered info-shack he listened while two avatars appreciated her dancing.
Never heard of ballet,one said.
Who cares what you call it?the other answered.Take her out of the fucking costume and dance all
night. Now THAT would be art.
Kurj sent a fire-pulse through the net and scorched the info-structure for their shack. It collapsed around
them in a conflagration of error messages.
He followed another lead to an erotica site, where his mother topped the list offemale artists to see
naked. He torched the list and made sure they couldn t rebuild their database there.
In an underground seraglio hidden by illegal psiware, he uncovered a site dedicated to rape scenarios of
celebrities, with VR technology that allowed a user to experience the simulations. His mother was listed
under less well-known gems, along with files of her dancing that had been doctored so she was
wearing nothing but a slave collar.
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Kurj was gripping the arms of his chair so hard, his fingers spasmed. He incinerated the entire site,
bringing down its server and every site linked to it. Then he sent the data to his Intelligence people. They
would take care of it. If the creators of this site had any connection with Roca s disappearance, he would
dismember them with his own hands.
He couldn t take any more after that. He withdrew from the web and slumped at his desk, his head in his
hands. Every day he awoke knowing he had provoked her disappearance. For all of his conflicted
feelings about Roca, he loved her. No matter what her faults, she had been a wonderful mother. If she
had died or worse it would kill him.
Whoever had taken her would pay for their crime.
14
Song of the Heart
The days passed in a blur. Roca slept often, letting her body adapt to the many changes she was
experiencing. She didn t know how much her physiology varied from Eldri s, but given her exhaustion,
she suspected the differences were considerable. Her body was trying to compensate.
Although she could handle the stronger gravity reasonably well now, no longer mistiming her motions or
stumbling, it added to her fatigue. She still managed her dance exercises every morning, wearing leggings
and a sweater against the cold, but she had begun to question whether she could carry their child to term.
She needed more help than they could give her at Windward. Every dawn she awoke praying the
Dalvador army had arrived, and every day she learned the same disheartening news: the siege continued.
Eldri s seizures worsened. At first he had only the mild type where he blanked for a minute or two, then
came back to himself, disoriented but otherwise unaffected. He often knew it was coming by a pain in his
abdomen, though he had trouble describing the feeling, sometimes calling it nausea, other times an ache.
During the episode, his fingers might jerk, but usually he simply sat. She felt his seizure like mental static,
followed by blankness. The frequency of the seizures increased as the siege continued and supplies ran
low.
He tried to hide hisgrand malseizures, but Roca knew: they burned like a fire racing across her mind.
One day she found him arguing with Garlin in his office. As she entered, Eldri stiffened and fell to the
ground, going into one of the worst convulsions she had seen.
Dismayed, Roca dropped to her knees next to him on the rug, whose plush thickness protected his
jerking limbs. Garlin knelt on the other side, but they could do little more but watch, helpless as Eldri
jerked. It was several minutes before he went limp; within moments, he was asleep.
Garlin spoke stonily. You should leave.
No. Roca looked up at him. I shouldn t leave.
He spoke wearily. Lady Roca, he doesn t want you to see.
I live with him. She shook her head. I feel it, Garlin. These big seizures come every six or seven days
now.
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He stiffened, clearly about to deny her words. But then his shoulders sagged. Sometimes every five.
She swallowed. How bad are they?
A minute or two. One went on for much longer. His voice shook. I thought it would never stop, that
he would die from lack of air and the strain on his body.
Roca s voice caught. We must help him.
Somehow. The sorrow in Garlin s voice made her wonder how she could have ever doubted his
motives.
He carried Eldri to his suite and put him to bed with Roca s help. For a while, they both sat vigil, but as
the day grew into evening Garlin had to leave, to tend other matters at Windward. Alone with Eldri, Roca
climbed onto the bed and sat against the headboard. She held him while he slept, his head nestled against
her hip.
And she cried.
Surrender? Garlin stared at Roca. Are you insane?
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