The Last Hawk Read online

  Tor Books by Catherine Asaro

  THE SAGA OF THE SKOLIAN EMPIRE

  Primary Inversion

  Catch the Lightning

  The Last Hawk

  The Radiant Seas

  Ascendant Sun

  The Quantum Rose

  "Kelric's difficulties . . . exploring the reaches of the interstellar Skolian Empire, are a whole lot of fun to read about. . . . Well-written, entertaining, classic science fiction fun."

  -Cleveland Plain Dealer

  "A smoothly absorbing space opera that mixes high-tech gimmickry with galactic politics and plenty of romance. . . . This one packs in lots of action along with its many romantic interludes and diversions into speculative genetics."

  -Publisher's Weekly

  "This intriguing novel combines hard speculative science with romantic adventure."

  -Library Journal

  "Ms. Asaro reveals fascinating new aspects of her talent with each new book, and readers can always expect something fresh, different, and absolutely wonderful."

  -Romantic Times

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE LAST HAWK

  Copyright © 1997 by Catherine Asaro

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell * Map by Ellisa Mitchell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York. NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates

  ISBN: 0-812-55110-9

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-15568

  First edition: Nov 1997 * First mass market edition: Dec 1998

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  To my daughter, Cathy,

  with love

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to acknowledge the readers who gave me input on this book: Dr. Lynne Deutsch, Dr. Steve Goldhaber, Dr. Margaret Graffe, Dr. Kate Kirby, Dr. Malcolm LeCompte, and Mr. Tim Oey. I give special thanks to the above because they were the first ever to see my fiction and their insights helped me learn to write. My thanks also to Dr. Joan Slonczewski, to Eleanor Wood of Spectrum Literary Agency, to Scovil, Chichak, and Galen, and to the staff at Tor, in particular Tad Dembinski and David G. Hartwell. A loving thanks to my husband, John Kendall Cannizzo, for his care and support.

  Contents

  Map

  Prologue

  BOOK ONE: YEARS 960-966 OF THE MODERN AGE

  I: Dahl

  II: Haka

  III: Bahvla

  BOOK TWO: YEARS 971-976 OF THE MODERN AGE

  IV: Miesa

  V: Varz

  VI: Karn

  Contents (continued)

  Appendix I: The Estates

  Appendix II: Glossary

  Appendix III: The Ruby Dynasty

  Appendix IV: Timeline

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The ship's controls wobbled in and out of focus. Kelric tried to rub his eyes, but his arm refused to respond. The exoskeleton on his pilot's seat had jammed around his body. When he fumbled for the catches, his fingers just scraped over the mesh.

  On his fourth attempt, the exoskeleton opened and he fell forward, sprawling across the weapons grid in the cockpit. The only illumination came from the red warning lights that glowed all over the control panels, bathing the cockpit in a dim crimson radiance that didn't reach its shadowed recesses.

  One green light shone among the red. An engine. One of his inversion engines. It was the only fully functional system on his ship.

  It was also why he still lived.

  "I'm inverted," Kelric mumbled. The same hit that had crippled his Jag fighter had kicked it from the sublight universe into inversion, hurling him away from his attackers before they could blast him into slag.

  The medkit above him hadn't released. He reached for it, but his arm faltered in midair and dropped back onto the grid. Not that it mattered. He needed far more help than a kit could give, more help even than provided by his nanomeds, the tiny cell-repair machines in his body.

  Pain throbbed in his arm, from a bone-deep gash. In the exoskeleton he had been numb, probably because it injected him with an anesthetic. Or perhaps the biomech web in his body had released a drug that blocked pain receptors in his brain. It would give him only so much of the drug, though, before its safety routines cut it off, to prevent an overdose or brain damage.

  Now his arm hurt too much to move. Even if it intended to stay put, though, his ship was going somewhere. At least it had taken him away from the Traders. He had been out alone, on reconnaissance, when the Trader squad caught him. He hoped they all inverted into the gravity well of a star and finished their careers as kindling for the local furnace.

  An alarm sputtered. Lifting his head, he saw that the green light had turned yellow. The last inversion engine was failing.

  Kelric swallowed. He had to find a place to land. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind.

  Bolt, respond, he thought.

  The computer node in his spine answered. Attending. Its messages traveled along bio-optic threads to his brain, where tiny bio-electrodes in his brain cells converted the signals into neural firing patterns. It worked in reverse as well, letting him "talk" to the node.

  Status of nanomeds, he thought.

  Nanomed series G and H functional but depleted, the node answered. Series O nonfunctional. All other series exhibit decreased function.

  Kelric grimaced. His nanomeds repaired his body. Each med consisted of two parts, a molecule designed for a particular task and a picochip, an atomic computer that operated on quantum transitions. Altogether, the picochips formed a picoweb that told the meds what to do and how to replicate themselves. But it was Bolt, his spinal node, that ran the show. Like the conductor of a symphony, it directed his entire bio-mech web, which consisted of the picoweb, the bio-optics threading his body, and the bio-electrodes in his brain. The system had been integrated into his body fourteen years ago, when he was twenty, the year he received his officer's commission.

  Bolt, he thought. What happened to my biomech web?

  You were linked into the ship's Evolving intelligence brain when we were hit, so your web took a lot of damage. I am making repairs, but the malfunctions are too extensive for me to fully correct. Proceed immediately to an lSC medical facility.

  If he hadn't hurt so much, Kelric would have laughed. Wish I could do that. He swallowed. Can you give me a status report?

  Accessing optical nerve, Bolt answered.

  A display formed in Kelric's mind, with different views of his interior systems. Then the display "jumped" out in front of him so it looked like a ghostly image hanging in the cockpit.

  Posterior tibial artery damaged. Bolt highlighted a diagram of his circulatory system, showing a torn artery leaking blood.

  Kelric exhaled. His best hope to repair himself came from the final component of his internal systems: his Kyle centers. Unlike the biomech web, which had been created for him, he had been born with Kyle mutations, courtesy of his unusual genetics. Microscopic organs in his brain made it possible for his brain waves to interact with those of people nearby, letting him pick up their moods and on rare occasions their thoughts. He could also enhance the output of his own brain and so exert in
creased biofeedback control over his body.

  Kelric concentrated, trying to augment his biofeedback training. He helped speed structural components to the damaged artery, control his blood flow, and bring in nutrients. When he finally surfaced from his trance, he felt steadier, enough so he could sit up, holding his arm against his chest.

  An alarm warned again of the dying engine.

  "Navak," he said. "Take us out of inversion, into sublight space."

  No response came from the navigation-attack node in the ship's Evolving Intelligence brain.

  "Navak," he repeated. "Initiate navigation mode."

  Silence.

  Bolt, give me the ship's emergency menu, he thought.

  Bolt produced a display of emergency psicons, like computer icons but in his mind instead of on a screen. He concentrated on the emergency-shutoff psicon for the inversion engines, the symbol of a running cheetah turning into a crawling snail. Only one of each animal appeared in the display, a reminder that he had only one functional engine. The cheetah was blinking off and on, warning it would soon disappear as well.

  Toggle emergency shutdown, he thought.

  Nothing happened.

  Boll, toggle it!

  A twisting sensation hit Kelric, as if he were being pulled through a Klein bottle, the three-dimensional equivalent of a Möbius strip. The effect intensified with a nauseating mental wrench and then stopped.

  Bolt? he thought.

  We have dropped into normal space, Bolt answered.

  Kelric sagged in his seat, hit with an urge to laugh. Sublight. Safe. He was safe.

  He was also lost. None of his holomaps worked and too many files in the ship's EI were degraded. He couldn't get accurate data. He knew only that he was light-years away from his previous position, drifting in space like interstellar flotsam. What he needed was a beach to wash up on.

  "Navak," he said. "Respond."

  Nothing.

  Kelric slid his hand around his waist, searching his lower back. Sockets in his spine, wrists, and ankles let him connect his biomech web to exterior systems, such as the EI brain of his ship. When a connector prong clicked into a socket, it linked his bio-optics to the ship's fiberoptics. The sockets could also act as infrared receivers and transmitters, a less reliable form of communication than a physical link, but better than nothing.

  When he had fallen out of the exoskeleton, its prongs had pulled out of his body. He tried to push one back into his lower spine, but the prong wouldn't stay put.

  Activate infrared receptors, he thought.

  IR nonfunctional, Bolt thought.

  Kelric swore. He was running out of options. Taking a breath, he marshaled his thoughts. With his Kyle enhancements, maybe he could couple the fields of his brain directly to those of the ship's EI brain. It helped that he was inside the ship, essentially on top of the EI; the electrical forces that dominated his brain activity fell off rapidly with distance.

  Concentrating, he tried to kick the EI awake with his mind.

  A ghostly green marble appeared in the air in front of him, casting eerie light over the cockpit. It took him a moment to recognize it as a holomap's crudest default display.

  Kelric exhaled. "Planet," he rasped.

  Navak's audio made a scraping noise.

  He tried again. "Planet."

  Nothing.

  Navak, he thought. You have to respond.

  A sentence formed in the air, green words in Navak's default font. HAV#"%SPOND IS AN UNIDENTIFIABLE COMMAND.

  Relief washed over Kelric. PLANET, he thought, with more intensity. The word appeared under Navak's response.

  PLANET WHAT? Navak printed.

  FIND ME ONE. OR A BASE. SOMEPLACE HABITABLE WE CAN REACH BEFORE ENGINE FOUR DIES.

  SEARCHING, Navak printed.

  Kelric waited.

  And waited.

  Maybe no place was near enough. Or Navak was too damaged to answer. Or the engine couldn't—

  OBJECT 85B5D-E6-JHEO SATISFIES YOUR REQUIREMENTS, Navak printed.

  WHAT IS IT?

  DOES 'IT' REFER TO OBJECT 85BSD-E6-JHEO?

  For pugging sake, Kelric thought. What else would I mean?

  NO DATA EXISTS ON 'PUGGING S %' AS AN OBJECT, Navak printed. HOWEVER, 'PUGGING' APPEARS IN LANGUAGE FILE 4 UNDER PROFANITY. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?

  WHAT I WANT, Kelric thought, IS EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT ON OBJECT 85B5D—he squinted at the screen—E6-JHEO.

  IT IS A PLANET. NAME: COBA. INHABITANTS: HUMAN. STATUS: RESTRICTED.

  Kelric swallowed. Inhabitants. Help. He just might survive this mess after all.

  TAKE SHIP TO COBA, he thought.

  BOOK ONE

  Years 960-966

  of the Modern Age

  1

  First Move: The Golden Ball

  Deha Dahl, the Manager of Dahl Estate, was playing dice. She placed a cube in the structure of balls, pyramids, and polyhedrons on the table. Her opponent, one of her more intrepid Estate aides, wiped sweat from her forehead as she studied the dice.

  While Deha waited for her aide to make her move, she glanced around. They were in the Coral Room, a round chamber twenty paces in diameter. Painted a deep rose near the floor, the walls shaded into lighter coral hues and then into white at the top. Mosaics were inlaid in the domed ceiling high above them The room's three doorways each arched to a point and then curved out in a circle graced with a stained glass window. The doors were solid amberwood. Deha insisted on only the best for these chambers where she played the dice game of Quis with her aides, her peers—and her adversaries.

  Their audience of Estate aides sat in carved chairs around the table. They watched the game in silence, some no doubt wishing they could take the perspiring aide's place and others grateful it wasn't them in this duel of minds. All knew she had called this session to see how her opponent, an aide due a promotion, handled the pressure of playing against a Dice Queen.

  A hand touched Deha's shoulder. She looked around, surprised to see an aide who wasn't among the group she had selected to view the session.

  The aide bowed "I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. But Captain Hacha thought you would want to know immediately. A craft crashed up in the mountains near Dahl Pass." She paused "It doesn't appear to be from Coba."

  There was a time when Deha would have shipped the bearer of such news off to the setting-sun-asylum for the mentally diminished. No longer. She stood up. "Have Hacha meet me in my office." She glanced at her dice opponent. "We will continue later."

  The aide nodded and started to speak. Then she stopped, her gaze shifting to a point beyond Deha. She stood up and bowed, not to Deha but to someone else. Following her gaze, the rest of Deha's aides stood up, in a flurry of moving chairs, and bowed.

  Deha turned to see who evoked such a reaction from her staff. A retinue had appeared in one of the doorways, soldiers in the uniform of her CityGuard. A girl stood in the center of the group, a gray-eyed child on the verge of womanhood, with fiery hair curling around her face and falling in a thick braid down her back. Tall for her age, she looked like the reincarnation of an incipient warrior queen who had transcended the millennia and stepped from the Old Age into the modern world.

  Deha crossed to the girl and bowed. "Ixpar. What brings you here?"

  Ixpar's face was lit with contained excitement. "I heard about the craft that crashed near Dahl Pass. I came to help the rescue party."

  Deha silently cursed. It would be foolishness to let Ixpar join them. This was no normal child. Ixpar Karn: it meant Ixpar from the Estate of Karn. Of the Twelve Estates, Karn was largest, bigger even than Dahl. It was also the oldest. Its Manager not only ruled Karn; as Minister she stood highest in the hierarchy of the Estates. And she had chosen this girl to be her successor. Someday Ixpar would rule Coba.

  But if she didn't let Ixpar come with them, she risked alienating Karn. The girl was already a force in the flow of power among the Estates Rumor claimed the Minister had been known to place her
young successor's opinions above those of her senior advisers.

  Political prudence won out. "Very well," Deha said. She raised her hand as Ixpar's face lit up. "But I want you stay with my personal escort at all times." She glanced toward the mountains. "We have no idea what crashed up there."

  * * *

  In her guest suite, Ixpar changed into hiking clothes: a sweater, leather pants, and a leather jacket. When she left the suite, she found her escort in the entrance foyer, four tall guards armed with stunners. They accompanied her as she walked through Dahl. Always guards. At times she was tempted to hide or slip away. But she resisted the urge, knowing she was the only one who would find it entertaining.

  Guards or no guards, though, she enjoyed the walk. It was hard to believe the Estate had once been an armed fortress. Its harsh interior had long ago given way to its present beauty, its stone floors softened with carpets and its formerly barred windows replaced by faceted yellow glass. Some corridors formed the perimeter of large halls, set off from them only by widely spaced columns. Just as the ancient-warrior queens of Dahl had ruled from the Estate, so Deha and her staff now used it as their residence.

  They left the Estate and walked through the city. Blue cobblestones paved the streets, which wound among buildings made from pale blue or lavender stone, with turreted roofs. Spires topped the turrets and chains hung from their tips, strung with metal Quis dice. When the wind blew, which was almost always, the chains swung and clinked, sparkling in the sun.

  They passed bright temples dedicated to the sungoddess Savina or the dawn god Sevtar, and saw ball courts filled with exuberant players, men and women laughing in the wind. The day was bright, gusty, and fresh. She wanted to jump. Shout. Get into trouble. Of course she couldn't. But it was still a glorious day.

  Ixpar knew the route to the airfield well; the Minister often brought her to visit Dahl, which had long been an ally of Karn Estate. This time Minister Karn had sent her alone. It was about time. Ixpar felt as if she were straining in a harness, struggling to fly in the currents of power among the Estates.