The Phoenix in Flight

by Sherwood Smith

  But with everyone so overworked, that would have to wait.

  “Go on,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard the insult.

  “With the resonance and Shield systems destroyed, my first priority is monitoring cis-lunar space and keeping an eye on our so-called allies,” the woman continued, her dark brown gaze cold with dislike. “As for that ship of yours, all we know is that it came down somewhere near you. The discrimination circuits were destroyed by one of the saboteurs and we’re having to inspect the satellite images manually.”

  “Near?” he repeated. “Can you be more specific?”

  She made an impatient gesture. “Somewhere within 150 kilometers of you.” Rifellyn paused, looked away from the screen for a moment at someone Barrodagh couldn’t see. “I’ll notify you as soon as anything turns up. Right now, I’ve got more important things to attend to.”

  The screen blanked and Barrodagh jumped to his feet. Just wait, Rifellyn. The time when I am the most important thing in your life will come. And sooner than you think.

  He paced around his office, the quiet elegance of his surroundings making no impression on him. Not only had that ship filed for landing at a port that pre-attack intelligence had associated with covert Panarchic activity, but it had persisted in approaching the Palace even after its encounter with the Fist. Were they Panarchists or Rifters? No, the question was, what were they after to be landing almost in the midst of Eusabian’s personal security perimeter?

  He realized he was twisting at the Emasculizer on his thumb again and pulled his hand away hastily. No one had yet been found who knew how to remove it.

  His face burned as he remembered Evodh’s sarcastic laughter when he’d asked him to extract the secret from Omilov along with the information about the Heart of Kronos. “Your tusz ni-synarrh is no concern of mine,” he’d said, using an extremely vulgar Dol’jharian term that translated literally as “lonely hand-sex.” Then, compounding the insult, he’d refused Barrodagh permission to watch the gnostor’s transfiguration.

  One of the Panarch’s sons is here. The memory came with a jolt of adrenaline, and he knew it had been triggered by thoughts of the mindripper. How very, very close he had come! Well, he didn’t have to worry about that anymore, but there must be no more surprises.

  Barrodagh sat down again and tapped Ferrasin’s name on his compad.

  The round, sweaty face of the computer tech appeared on the screen. “Yes, senz-lo Barrodagh.”

  “Report your progress.”

  The man struggled with his stutter. “We’ve got the wall consoles accepting queries now. So personnel can access maps. And basic services. Almost anywhere.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Barrodagh snapped. “What about security?”

  Ferrasin swallowed nervously. “The neuraimai have traced most of the security algorithms. But we have not yet tried to p-p-p-penetrate...” Barrodagh forced himself not to close his eyes at the spray of spittle the vid pickup relayed to his console as the man struggled to get the word past his lips. “... the lower chthons. For the actual surveillance data. That would give us the coverage you want. We must proceed slowly. To avoid t-triggering another worm.”

  “It didn’t take you half this time to deal with the sensors here in the Palace and in the detention area,” snapped Barrodagh.

  The tech flushed and the stutter worsened. “That wa-wa-was accomplished manually. Even so, the system c-c-continues its attempts to reestablish the connections. This is much more d-duh-deca—delah, delic-c-c-, hard, but I’m c-confident that—”

  Barrodagh grimaced at the man’s mangled speech, which had gotten worse since the decimation of the conscripts in the garden. Rifellyn is more arrogant and this one more witless. “Call me when you have something more than excuses. And don’t make me call you again.”

  Barrodagh cut the connection and leaned back wearily. His resources were stretched perilously thin, and reinforcements from Dol’jhar were slow to come. The cursed treaty had forbidden them to build ships, and they were dependent on their Rifter allies for transport.

  He reviewed the situation, looking again for any weak spots. The Panarchists who had not evacuated the Mandala during the first phase of the attack, after the decapitation of the government in the Hall of Ivory, were confined to the other three quadrants, with detection systems wired into every exit and adit they could find. There had been no problems there.

  He glared at the console, which tied him to his office as effectively as the brutal gravity of Dol’jhar had. Compad communications were still spotty, and the personnel recognition systems kept coming back online and locking door and lifts. He still wasn’t satisfied with the density of the wired access points in sensitive areas, especially around the detention cells occupied by the Panarch and the remnants of his Privy Council, which he’d ordered stripped to the bare walls to ensure isolation. Until Ferrasin and his techs tamed the computer, security would be thinner than Barrodagh liked.

  Even now, manual access to basic services was enforced by a delicate tampering with the programming that the techs warned him could still come unraveled at any time.

  “You must remember,” Ferrasin had said with his irritating stutter, “that this system has been running in its present form for centuries. It’s an enormously complicated patchwork of algorithms and adaptive systems—so complex and multilayered that I doubt anyone has really understood it for centuries.”

  He had continued with an almost fearful expression on his face. “In fact, if it weren’t for the Ban, I’d say it was conscious.”

  Barrodagh didn’t care about the Ban, no matter how the tech felt about it. He just wanted the system to work, and without problems. Until then, lacking automatic surveillance, he had to post conscripts throughout the Ivory quadrant—in addition to those already backing up the Tarkans guarding the Avatar in the Palace Minor as custom demanded.

  Danathar tapped at his door. It had better be good news. “What now?”

  “The Rifter from the Satansclaw is here.”

  Barrodagh straightened up in his chair and hid his right hand in his lap. With his other hand he picked up a report and began to read it. “Send him in.”

  The door opened to admit a tall, slender man with a vulpine face, dressed in a loose silk shirt and baggy trousers gathered into scuffed boots. The Bori ignored him until he sensed that the Rifter’s nervousness had grown sufficiently.

  “Sit down.” He stared at the man until his gaze fell. “So, Anderic, what is so important that you had to tell me in person?”

  “It’s about Tallis—”

  “I already know what happened over Charvann, fool,” Barrodagh interrupted. “Tallis’s incompetence is the only reason I’ve wasted any time at all on you over the past year, but all you’ve had beside what I get from other sources is lurid tales of low-gee sexual antics and reports of his unflattering comments about me.” He tapped the pages of the report into alignment on edge. “Let me warn you—though it is already too late—that if this is a similar waste of my time—” The Bori reached over and dropped the papers into the disposal slot in the desk. There was a slight flash and a muted hiss as the disposal field vaporized them. “—you will not be returning to the Satansclaw.”

  As Anderic began to speak, Barrodagh held up his left hand. “Let me also tell you not to take too much comfort in the fact that Tallis has not yet returned to the ship. There was some question in the Avatar’s mind about his performance in the affair of the nyr-Arkad’s death. However, my naval liaison interviewed a number of the Satansclaw’s crew and reviewed the records of that encounter. It is his opinion that Tallis handled the ship brilliantly, so even his incompetence is in question.”

  “That’s just it,” blurted Anderic, now sweating freely. “It wasn’t Tallis.”

  Barrodagh raised his eyebrows and stared at the Rifter. “What do you mean, it wasn’t Tallis?”

  An odd expression crossed Anderic’s face; to Barrodagh’s eyes it appeared to be a co
mpound of nausea and fear. The Rifter’s voice was strained.

  “He has a logos installed in the Satansclaw. That’s what was running the ship.”

  “A logos? What is that?”

  Anderic swallowed. “A... a machine intelligence. Like an Adamantine. Banned.”

  The Bori shrugged. Like Dol’jhar, his world had been little affected by the Adamantine Wars. The Ban was merely words to him. Still, it does mean that anyone can run that ship, so Tallis is expendable when and if the need arises.

  “So he has a logos. You don’t imagine that the Lord of Vengeance cares about the Ban, do you?”

  Anderic gaped at him. Evidently it hadn’t occurred to him that observance of the Ban wasn’t universal.

  Barrodagh let him squirm for a while, then relented. The information was worth something, after all.

  “But that might be useful knowledge. You may return to the ship.” Barrodagh began shuffling through the welter of papers and record chips on his desk, indicating that the interview was over, then saw with horror that he’d revealed his right hand with the damnable sphere leeched onto it.

  He snapped his gaze up to find Anderic staring at his hand in fascination.

  “Is there more?” he barked, restraining the urge to hide his hand.

  “How did you get an Emasculizer stuck on your hand?” asked the Rifter.

  Now it was Barrodagh’s turn to gape. After a moment he asked, very quietly, “You know what this is?” No one else in the Dol’jharian contingent had ever seen one.

  Anderic nodded, and Barrodagh found himself warming to him—he was the only person the Bori had encountered since the sphere attached itself to him who didn’t appear to find his predicament amusing.

  “Yeah. The captain on a ship I slubbed on when I first skipped out had a collection of things like that.” His face twisted in recollection. “He used to use ’em for punishment.”

  Barrodagh swallowed, almost afraid to ask the next question. “Do you know how to get it off?”

  “Yeah. I figured it out one day when it was my turn for his twisted fun and games.” He came around the desk. “Here.”

  Barrodagh mutely held it out. The Rifter positioned his hands around the sphere with his fingers in a peculiar pattern and pushed inward. There was a muted click and the sphere expanded and fell off his thumb into Anderic’s hands. The Bori flexed his thumb as feeling returned. It appeared unharmed.

  “Do you mind if I keep this?” asked Anderic.

  “No,” said Barrodagh fervently. Then, curious, he asked, “Why did you put up with such a captain? I thought you Rifters prized your freedom from authority.”

  “Ship’s gotta have a captain,” replied Anderic laconically. His success in freeing the Bori’s thumb seemed to have reestablished a sense of equality, and Barrodagh was too relieved to object. “But we didn’t, finally. He tried his little tricks once too often and the crew mutinied.” The Rifter turned the sphere over and over in his hands, looking down at it musingly. “We tied his hands behind his back and stuck that chatzing Emasculizer on his tongue.” He laughed. “And then I triggered the reward circuit. Blunge-sucking thing tried its damnedest to bring him to orgasm—he finally choked to death.”

  Barrodagh shuddered. Omilov wasn’t making it up. He looked at his thumb with a new sense of appreciation.

  “I guess I’d better be going now, senz-lo Barrodagh,” said Anderic.

  The Bori looked at him sharply. “You speak Dol’jharian?”

  “Just a little. I’ve been studying it. Makes sense to be able to talk to the winners, after all.” He grinned. “And I understand you Dol’jharians are really stuck on titles and such, even more than the nicks. It never hurts to get that sort of thing right when you’re talkin’ to the one who pays the tab.”

  This one is much smarter than I gave him credit for. He may be worth some time.

  “That’s a wise attitude, but don’t ever refer to me as Dol’jharian where one of the Pure Blood can hear you. I’m a Bori, and they don’t take kindly to being confused with us.”

  He motioned Anderic back to the chair. “But don’t leave just yet. I’d like you to tell me more about Tallis and the logos. How is it controlled without the crew finding out, and how did you discover it?”

  As Anderic began to explain, not without some reluctance, Barrodagh stroked his thumb covertly below his desk, and weighed the pros and cons of replacing Tallis. But first I must judge the level of this one’s ambitions. He appears intelligent enough not to overreach himself—more so than that fool Y’Marmor—but one can never tell with Rifters.

  He settled back in his chair and began to listen between the Rifter’s words, measuring his character with the skills born of years of service in circumstances where the slightest slip could mean an agonizing death. It didn’t occur to him until later that that was an entirely accurate description of the Rifter environment, too.

  o0o

  Guardsman Remmet stood rigidly in front of the door, his cap at the regulation angle, his firejac held at exactly forty-five degrees across his chest, and tried in vain to stop the churning in his gut. He had been a Tarkan in the personal service of the Avatar for most of his life, hardened by the savage discipline that every Dol’jharian soldier took for granted, but never had he heard sounds anything like those emanating from within the room behind him. The palpable agony in them defeated every effort he made at a ward-trance. His neck muscles tightened at each new scream.

  Remmet was not an imaginative man, but he could still feel the glance senx-lo Evodh had raked him with less than an hour before as he arrived to begin the transfiguration of the Panarchist. The look from the pesz mas’hadni had penetrated to every bone and tendon of his body, as if noting every vulnerable point of the fragile flesh before him and then dismissing it as unworthy of his efforts.

  He’d thought at first he would enjoy the slow destruction of one of these weak, degenerate nicks whom they had defeated so easily. But the enjoyment had dulled soon to an anxious kind of tedium, escalating slowly to this skull-scraping aural torment that had nothing to do with the honorable risks of battle.

  With all his soul he prayed to Dol in his incarnation as the Lord of Vengeance that he would never suffer the attentions of the tall man with the karra-patterns lacquered on his domed skull. He fought in vain against the part of his mind that insisted on imagining the torments whose effects he was hearing. The worst was that he had no idea what they were. Then, as a particularly horrible and liquid shriek from within scraped his ears, he stiffened his spine and concentrated on the painting on the wall across the corridor from him. His watch would be over in three hours. Those would be the longest hours of his life.

  NINE

  The character of the corridors was changing: narrower, less elegant. The lower ceilings made Montrose feel cramped. The fire doors came at irregular intervals, usually with steps up or down. There had been no sign of dogs for a while, and very few access hatches.

  “Damn! This place is big,” Lokri muttered, quickening his pace.

  “It’s a palace,” Montrose said, easily keeping pace with his long strides. “It’s supposed to be big.”

  On his other side Ivard chortled, his cheeks hectically flushed. He seemed to be happy, though. Montrose smiled at Ivard, hoping that the flush was excitement and exertion, and not mounting fever from the Kelly ribbon on his arm. “Enjoying it, are you, Firehead?”

  “This is like a chip,” Ivard exclaimed. “Better!” He raised his jac and sighted along it as he ran. “Hope we find some o’ those Dol’jharians.”

  “No you don’t,” Greywing said, thumping his arm as she paced alongside him. “Vacuumskull.”

  “Well, I hope we find some dogs, anyway.” He looked at Brandon. “Will we?” His voice definitely betrayed a febrile edge.

  Brandon glanced at Montrose. “They almost never come into this area.”

  “Why not?” Ivard looked around. “I know! Maybe they see spooks. Old Hegemonist spooks
, or the people they killed down here.” Greywing looked as though she were about to speak, then grimaced and pounded on, gaze downward.

  The Krysarch changed pace, trotting next to Montrose. “Can you do anything about that Kelly ribbon?”

  Montrose shook his head. “Certainly none of the meds in our sortie packs will help,” he said softly. “And even back in my surgery on the Telvarna...” He frowned. “All of the ribbon-melds discussed in my chip on Kelly biology date from the era of Third Contact. There were no successful excisions, but of course there were no Kelly physicians available until the Act of Comity ended hostilities.”

  “So it’s poisoning him?” Brandon said. “He looks feverish.”

  “Yes,” Montrose admitted. “And even if I were to take his arm off, the ribbon’s genome has likely already diffused through his body at the cellular level. It wouldn’t make any difference—except, perhaps, another ribbon would fashion itself out of his flesh elsewhere.”

  “We need to find him a Kelly physician,” Brandon muttered as he scanned an adjacent corridor.

  We? Montrose saw the captain’s dark gaze reflecting the same question.

  “No. Down this way.” Brandon veered abruptly, and the others changed direction. “If they’ve got prisoners, this is where they’d be kept. . .” He raced ahead.

  Montrose slowed to a trot. Vi’ya loped next to him, glancing toward the Eya’a, who drifted forward at a surprisingly quick pace.

  “If he does find any of his family?” the physician asked.

  Vi’ya’s lip curled. “Semion vlith-Arkad would come aboard my ship only as a prisoner.”

  “Would?” Montrose asked. “You don’t think we’ll find anyone. But you let him search?”

  “He will lead us back to the ship,” she stated. “I could not find it on my own.”