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savoring the
slow burn flushing Hreem’s face. Just before he judged the other captain would
lose control, he continued. “The new one is Vi’ya of the Telvarna , and rumor has it that her reward, if she starts up the
Suneater, is to be your heart, on the point of her knife.”
SUNEATER
    As soon as he’d cleared his queue, Barrodagh smiled in
anticipation of activating Ferrasin’s new worms. Now I will see what the Avatar is accessing from the computer , he
thought with satisfaction. And Jesserian’s report already had the right gloss
on it: the accidental triggering of a forgotten defense system by a disobedient
Tarkan squad.
    The satisfaction faded as he followed the noderunner’s
directions on activating the worms. Ferrasin was becoming too independent, and
there was no doubt Jesserian was conspiring with him. But there was little
Barrodagh could do about it until the Suneater was powered up and the
Panarchists destroyed.
    Barrodagh hoped Vi’ya would never wake up from the coma
she’d fallen into after that unexplained power surge in the landing bay,
according to Lysanter most likely induced by the combination of Norio’s death
and the drugs the Tarkans had shot her with.
    They could find other tempaths.
    His anger flared at the thought of drugs. That was the first
of his grievances against Captain Vi’ya. While he’d been dealing with the
disaster in the landing bay, Morrighon must have gone to Norio’s quarters; when
Barrodagh was able to get there, the drugs were gone. How had Morrighon found
out he was using those drugs? It didn’t matter. He could say and do nothing.
    He’d even checked the dispensary on the Rifter ship, but
found nothing. He shivered slightly. Something about the ship had been uncanny;
he’d been glad to leave after also confirming that the computers were
inaccessible without a major cryptographic effort. Perhaps he should put
Ferrasin on that next.
    In the meantime, he had to ration the remainder of the drugs
he’d stolen from Norio before his death, reducing the dosage of the more
effective ones and relying more on the standard pharmacopoeia for now, despite
side effects. So the anger remained, eating at his stomach and pulling at the
muscles of his face.
    But rage’s energy carried him through the petty annoyances
of his daily administrative review, where he vented the last of it on a number
of hapless underlings, ending with Delmantias, the Catennach Bori in charge of
personnel and assignments.
    Barrodagh hated dealing with Delmantias, not because the
Bori was inefficient or disobedient. He would have been spaced long ago if he
were either. But part of his duty, as Delmantias saw it, was to relay the
constant—and increasing—flow of complaints from the underlings about the
station. Before, it was the weird . . . growths, no, extrusions, erupting from
the walls, though many of them ate those growths, now called Ur-fruit.
    But the latest rumor was worse: that the walls could suck in
the unwary, and digest them.
    Every fear the underlings expressed seemed to take root in
Barrodagh’s own psyche, kindling his own horrors, which erupted in his sleep,
exactly like those karra-cursed walls.
    “I have told them I will devalue the work counters of anyone
who repeats that rumor,” Delmantias finished.
    “Wonderful,” Barrodagh said acidly. Delmantias was behind
schedule with the cims, so Barrodagh could afford to indulge himself at his
expense. “Without money for gaming, they’ll sit around in their quarters
waiting for one of the walls to swallow them. Half of them are already jumping
through the doors, despite the fact the recycling room is under guard.”
    “What would you have me do?” Delmantias hid his fury
imperfectly, which was one of the reasons Barrodagh didn’t fear him very much.
    “Take away their food bonuses. Tell them if they can’t trust
the station walls, then they obviously can’t trust what grows on them. The
Ur-fruit will go to those who watch