The Phoenix in Flight

by Sherwood Smith

  Ferrasin raised his hands to slam them down on his console, then halted, hands flexing. These Bori record everything, and never throw anything away. And I built the secure fixed-access point system! Half a minute later he was listening to a playback of the call that Barrodagh had taken just before he left his office.

  He windowed up a map of the Ivory wing, then locked his console and dashed out the door.

  o0o

  Obeying Vi’ya’s hand signal, Lokri popped up and hosed the positions of the Dol’jharian guards with jac fire as the Krysarch scrambled over to a small console set in the wall. The jac bucked in his hands, then died. He ducked back, dropped the weapon, and took up his own again as return fire sizzled over his head into the cabinet in front of him. Back to proper fire discipline.

  A quick glance showed Brandon in the shelter of a bulky refrigeration unit as he began tapping at the keypad, the light from the screen flickering across his face.

  The Arkad was beginning to interest Lokri, a fact that he found intriguing and irritating. He was probably the worst example of useless high-Douloi nick, his insistence on rescuing a damned dog an exercise in arrogance and sentimentality. The fact that Brandon had been a friend of Markham’s was no credit. Lokri had never known anyone more willing to take people as they came.

  And yet... and yet. The first counter to Lokri’s preconceptions had come during the Phalanx games with the Krysarch. He was well known at the tables in the Galadium Club on Rifthaven, but Brandon had destroyed him utterly without apparent effort, even at Level Three. It had taken both him and Marim to defeat him—and despite his accusation, Lokri knew the Krysarch had not cheated. And they had.

  More intriguing, perhaps, was the fact that Brandon’s return to his home rendered him not more assured, but less. He’d wept shamelessly on the bridge when they first identified the battlecruiser, his emotions strong enough to make Vi’ya flinch. And again in the Hall of Ivory. Lokri had never seen a member of a high-ranking Service Family expose his emotions like that—but then, if you were at the top, who dared scorn your weakness?

  He watched as Brandon worked rapidly at the console, a lock of his curly hair falling over one eye, his expression alternating between a wide grin and a frown of concentration.

  One by one the massive food generators came to life, until the kitchen was humming with activity. Lokri could hear harsh whispers from the Dol’jharians trapped in the kitchen with them. Just then another of the Krysarch’s ghost-flickers skittered across a wall and vanished in the shadows of a corner, causing silence among the Dol’jharians.

  The corresponding tightness to Vi’ya’s profile nearly made him laugh. Take the Dol’jharian off Dol’jhar but you can’t take Dol’jhar out of the Dol’jharian, he thought, studiously looking away: keyed up as she was, she might shoot him out of hand if she sensed the direction of his thoughts. And why didn’t she shoot these dogs? Would Brandon cry? Or would he stamp his pretty feet and try to claim nick privilege?

  Ivard was also watching Brandon, a mixture of drug haze and trust evident in his ugly young face. Lokri acknowledged his own disappointment, followed hard by self-mockery. He’d only noticed the boy’s admiration to make fun of it. He supposed it was another sign of his own perversity that he valued nothing that was freely given.

  Greywing. Hard to avoid the image of her sudden crumple, the life fading out of her face. He wished he’d listened to Marim and bedded her, except he couldn’t abide that unswerving honesty. Old anger kindled. How he detested honesty, and loyalty, and all the rest of the bindings of obligation that the weak put on the strong.

  What was taking Brandon so long?

  He wondered what Greywing and Brandon had been talking about, back in the Ivory Hall. Had the little blit been about to drop on her knees and swear fealty? He snorted. If he gets us out of this alive I’ll fall down and kiss his pretty feet myself.

  The little door Brandon had pointed out slid up into the wall.

  The Dol’jharians quieted at the unexpected noise, and a large number of small wheeled bots scurried out. One, slightly larger than the others with a flat basket-like tray on top, stayed next to the hatch. The rest fanned out across the room to the food generators. Some of them extruded long sinuous tubes and nuzzled up to large vat-like generators like puppies at their mother’s teats. Others, equipped with trays and grippers, lined up in front of food generators that were radiating heat that Lokri could feel across the room. When small hatches in these popped open, Lokri sat back in confusion.

  Pies? What the Shiidran Hell is going on here?

  The pies—a loathsome green in color—slid out onto the trays on the little machines. Other bots jostled into place to receive their deliveries, then whirred away to position themselves around the room. Some faced the cabinets sheltering the Dol’jharians. Others took up positions facing each of the doors. More bots emerged from the little hatch and lined up for their turn.

  Lokri turned a mute question to Vi’ya, who shrugged.

  The Dol’jharians were evidently just as confused. Their whispering rose interrogatively, then Lokri heard a command from one of their communicators.

  (Arkad!) Vi’ya said. (Look out.)

  Brandon waved a hand at her, tapped one last set of commands into the console, and then crouched down, holding his firejac ready and motioning them to do the same.

  Music blared from a grille in the wall, a stirring fanfare of brassy trumpets: a sound from the childhood that Lokri had worked hard to forget. Ivard pumped a fist with manic enthusiasm in time to the beat—he obviously knew that damned music.

  Some of the bots with the snake-like nozzles on them spread out, scurrying across the floor and disappearing among the storage cabinets that sheltered the guards, while a number of the tray-carriers elevated pies with their grippers. From behind the cabinets came a series of splattering hisses, followed by cries of pain and rage. The guards leapt up, vainly trying to fend off streams of some steaming viscid liquid that unerringly tracked their faces.

  Clang-whizz-splat. The front rank of tray-carriers jerked, and flung their pies straight at the startled guards. The pies burst against their heads and bodies, transforming them into wildly capering man-shaped piles of green goo. The Dol’jharians howled, dropping their weapons and wiping at their eyes; evidently something in the pie mix stung and burned.

  Ivard dropped his firejac and doubled over, laughing with drug-induced abandon. Next to him the unhurt dog pressed its chin against the floor, its ears flat, its tail tucked under its body. The sedated one didn’t stir.

  Brandon used the cover of the high-velocity pies to dash back across the kitchen, followed by Vi’ya and Lokri.

  Brandon grinned in challenge at Lokri, who saluted him with his jac.

  (Saves ammo, right?) Brandon said.

  (What else did they teach you at your Panarchist Naval Academy?) Lokri replied. (How to field-strip a hypervelocity custard finger? Close-order drill with involuntary throat funnels?)

  Brandon laughed out loud. (I learned this from the Kelly.)

  (Now what, Arkad?) Vi’ya’s boswelled voice was flat.

  (One more thing.) Brandon tapped furiously at the console on the little bot waiting next to the hatch, as the chaos in the kitchen grew. Then bent over and picked up the sedated dog. Placing it on the tray on top of the bot, he tapped the console one more time and the bot headed back into the tunnel past others still emerging.

  Brandon motioned to the other dog. “Gay nakh,” he said, and the dog sprang up and followed the bot. Then Brandon slipped off his bandolier and handed it to Lokri. (The bots will keep this up for a while, here and in surrounding corridors. The hatch will lock when they’re finished, but I suggest you set these up to discourage investigation of this tunnel. Give it fifteen minutes.)

  Outside the kitchen, someone was shouting commands.

  (Let’s go.) Brandon holstered his jac and scrambled into the tunnel on his hands and knees. As Vi’ya helped Ivard through the hatch afte
r him, both kitchen doors banged open.

  Guards in bulky battle armor thundered in, their servos whining loudly. The little tray-carriers facing the doors fired a salvo of pies as nozzled drink dispensers hosed the floor with a thick, curdled-looking grayish fluid that smelled of spoiled cake batter. The pies had no effect on the guards’ momentum, but the slimy goop covered their helmets and effectively blinded them, while the slippery grayish fluid made it impossible for them to stop.

  Lokri backed into the tunnel, alternately slapping petards into place and watching as, with majestic inevitability, the two squads collided with a tremendous crash, like vast beasts helpless in the throes of lust.

  Lokri scrambled after the others into the little service tunnel. There were no more bots coming, but behind him a battalion of bots loaded with pies or full of liquid trundled off to battle. Lokri’s guts had turned to liquid; he was laughing almost too hard to propel himself along the tunnel.

  The sounds of the food fight diminished behind them: amplified roars of rage from the armored guards mixed with the sizzle of jac-bolts, splattering hisses from the nozzle machines, and the clang-whizz-splat of the pie-flingers.

  A few minutes later they emerged into a large junction where the ceiling was of normal height. They stood up, Brandon and Ivard whooping. Even Vi’ya smiled, though she never ceased scanning walls and shadows. Brandon waved at the squad of little machines that had accompanied them as they disappeared down the other three tunnels. (Flank attack.) The bot with the dog was already gone.

  Brandon motioned them to a ladder that passed from a hole in the ceiling through one in the floor. They climbed down, Vi’ya supporting Ivard from beneath. The boy was fading, his complexion pasty where it wasn’t mottled with fever.

  Another corridor, another closet, yet one more ladder down, the transport station at last. They piled into the waiting carrier and slid off down the tunnel.

  Lokri studied Brandon’s profile as the carrier sped back toward the Telvarna.

  You knew how to pick them, didn’t you, Markham?

  o0o

  Montrose reached the station under the gazebo, and slapped the up key on the pillar.

  On the surface the wind was growing in strength. Yet the shrubs and trees near the gazebo weren’t stirring.

  He spun around, almost falling as Omilov’s weight shifted, and saw a plasma cannon on a ground-effect platform swerve off a pathway and begin skimming quietly toward the opening in the forest where the Telvarna lay, its barrel swiveling toward the ship concealed in the darkness.

  He slapped his boz’l. “RED ALERT! PLASMA CANNON, ZERO DEGREES, GROUND LEVEL!”

  o0o

  Osri jerked his head up, bruising his forehead against the plasma guide, as a soft paw reached out and tapped his cheek.

  “Oh, Telos,” he muttered. “Get out of here, you abominable bag of fur.” The only response was the rumbling, saw-edged sound he’d learned meant contentment in the big cat.

  “What’d you say, Schoolboy?” came Marim’s cheerful voice.

  Osri gritted his teeth. “I said that this guide appears undamaged.”

  “Wave monitor says otherwise. Give it a bang at 24-17.”

  Osri looked up at the metallic pipe overhead and squinted at the age-dulled label on it: 24-8. He sighed with frustration. By rights the little Rifter woman ought to be squirming along in the cramped crawl space abaft the engines, tuning the guides that channeled waste heat to the radiants. She was the smallest of them, after all.

  He levered himself forward with his elbows and heels, fighting not to let his sense of confinement erupt into full-blown claustrophobia. A claw reached out and snagged his hair, and he banged his head again.

  Osri cursed and struck out at the cat with the tuning hammer in his right hand, and flushed with anger as he missed and hit something else with a resounding clang.

  “Watch yerself, Schoolboy,” Marim shouted. “Put a dent in the wrong place and you’ll be in there another hour.”

  “My skills would be better applied on the skip cavity,” Osri snapped as he struggled toward the location she’d given him. “I was trained at the Academy in—”

  “Yeah,” Marim interrupted. “Day I let a nick anywhere near the fiveskip, that’s the day Vi’ya plays ring-around-the-spin-axis with my guts as the guide rope.”

  “How’s it coming?” Jaim’s laconic voice was blurred with fatigue.

  “Eh. How’s the fiveskip?”

  Osri struggled to bend himself around a particularly tight corner. 24-15. Almost there. Then he froze.

  “. . . Palace. The loot oughta be the score of all time.” Marim’s voice was sharp with resentment. “Those nicks been collectin’ things for hundreds of years, and the Krysarch said he knows where all the best stuff is. And here we’re stuck.”

  Loot? Palace? Osri’s head jerked in protest, and he smacked his forehead on a coupling. She had to be saying it to annoy him.

  Except that he had seen them arming, the Krysarch among them, which they wouldn’t do unless they trusted him. And Marim had said something about saving “some of the take.”

  He thought back to the ship’s actions over Arthelion. Evasive action, definitely. Had Brandon identified himself to the authorities, only to be told to surrender himself for trial? It would be no more than he deserves.

  But if so, he had obviously refused, and the Telvarna had attempted to flee. That was the free-fall, diverting all power to the engines. And the authorities would go to almost any lengths to avoid killing a Krysarch of the House Royal, no matter how debased.

  So a carefully aimed ruptor had smashed their drive and forced them down. The Mandala was probably the only place Brandon had a chance of pulling off an escape: rumor had it that all Royals possessed override codes to the Mandalic defenses.

  And to get the Rifters’ help— Osri shook his head again. It was too hard to credit, despite the way it hung together. There had to be another explanation. Marim and Jaim were baiting him. They had no love for the Douloi—nicks, as they called them.

  He found the label he was looking for, and under Marim’s relayed directions, banged a series of small dents into the wave guide, retuning it so that it could carry an intensely hot thread of plasma from the engines to the radiants without overheating.

  He’d reviewed chips about the effectiveness of ruptors, but now he had a visceral understanding of just how much damage they could do, even if they didn’t pull a ship apart. Their rapidly alternating gee fields made a hash of the finely tuned innards of a ship’s engines and fiveskip.

  Marim finally pronounced herself satisfied and Osri painfully edged back the way he’d come. Back in the engine room proper, he pulled himself to his feet, suppressing a groan as his cramped muscles protested. Marim and Jaim had their heads together over a control console as they discussed some problem, the little Rifter sitting perched on a console with one leg propped across the knee of the other.

  Osri’s eyes were drawn to the black at the bottoms of her feet. Light reflecting off them showed what he had assumed was dirt was actually microfilaments. He winced, fighting revulsion. She had obviously been gennated.

  Osri stretched his cramped back, then jerked his leg away as the ship’s cat rubbed up against him. He looked down into the glacial-blue eyes, which were slitted with pleasure at his attention.

  Osri looked away. On another console, a security scan of the ship’s surroundings played lazily, switching from view to view. Marim stepped toward him and gave him a swat on the arm.

  Osri caught a whiff of some kind of flower scent mingled with heat-sweat, and he stepped back, turning his head. He could smell them both.

  “We got more for you, Schoolboy,” Marim said with a laugh, clearly misinterpreting his response to the offensiveness of the Rifters’ proximity. “But that’s the worst of it. Next we’ll—”

  The security console blared with Montrose’s voice, colored by the odd tonality that indicated a boswell relay.

  �
��RED ALERT! PLASMA CANNON, ZERO DEGREES, GROUND LEVEL!”

  Marim cursed violently and leapt to the console while Jaim spun around, a jac materializing in his hand. “Don’t move, nick. Now lie down on the deck and put your hands behind your head.”

  A little confused by the contradictory instructions, and frightened by the sudden intensity shown by the normally easygoing engineer, Osri hesitated. Under Marim’s hands, the console came to life, the screen displaying a mobile plasma cannon emblazoned with the Sun and Phoenix, its barrel coming to bear on the Telvarna. The screen flared even as Marim slammed her hand down on the console.

  “Chatz!” she shrieked as the ship rocked. “For’rd cannon’s not responding. Chatzing blunges got us.” Her fingers raced across the console. “And the teslas are still off-line,” she wailed.

  The Telvarna was defenseless.

  On the screen, the mobile cannon rocked back, its defensive fields flaring. Then its barrel came to bear again and it raced toward the ship.

  His face twisted with frustration and rage, Jaim strode forward and slammed the barrel of his jac into Osri’s head, knocking him to the floor. He raised the weapon, and Osri realized that when the cannon fired on the Telvarna again, his life would end.

  ELEVEN

  Montrose watched as a blue-white bolt of plasma reached out from the cannon and was answered simultaneously from within the forest. The cannon’s shield flared and it slewed and drifted backward for a moment, then it swiveled back for another shot. A bright, flickering glow marked the position of the Telvarna, but no further bolts from its cannon. Montrose groaned. The ship had taken a hit.

  The mobile cannon skimmed across the grass toward the Telvarna. The Eya’a faintly shrilled the high, eerie note they only used when frying someone’s brains. Montrose heard faint screams before the cannon veered and hit a tree. The impact apparently damaged its ground-effect skirt. It fell to the ground with a momentary snarl as the fans dug into the duff beneath the tree. The engines cut out and it rocked to a halt.