Analog SFF, November 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He glared at them. “That's why I came here. That's what I'm doing. So what are you doing?"

  Shambles adjusted his glasses and patted down the papers. “Well, Hayden my lad, we're trying to save our country. That would seem like a very different goal from yours, now wouldn't it?"

  “Oh, please,” said Hayden, crossing his arms. “What's to save? Slipstream annexed Aerie ages ago. I don't even remember how it was before that happened. It's ancient history."

  “What you say is very true,” said Shambles with a thoughtful nod. “However, it is also true that, since Slipstream is a migratory nation, it will someday migrate its way out of Aerie. Our concern is with what happens when that occurs."

  Hayden looked at him blankly.

  “Hmm.” Shambles turned in his chair, crossing his legs. “It is a fact of youth that it has no concept of the future. Yet that is what we are here to discuss. The future of Aerie—and your future."

  Hayden snorted.

  “Tell me,” said Shambles, “what is it, fundamentally, that keeps a nation together?"

  Hayden decided to take the bait. “A sun."

  Shambles shook his head. “No. It's formation flying. That is what keeps a nation together. If all your towns and farms and water balls are sailing off in different directions, it hardly matters if you've got a sun of your own, does it? What's essential is that you keep everybody flying on the same heading, maintaining the same altitude and position above the Sun of Suns. Aerie is still doing that—for now. The danger is that the presence of the Slipstream sun in our skies will cause parts of the nation to drift away, leave the formation, and join other countries. Hayden, that is a threat far greater than any police actions or propaganda by Slipstream could be."

  “For ten years now we've been keeping Aerie in formation,” said Miles. “That's what the Resistance does. What possible good would revenge do us? If you kill Fanning, he'll just be replaced."

  “Yes,” said Hayden, “but he'll also be dead."

  Miles sighed. “I brought you here tonight because I hoped we could bring you back into the net. With your position in the Fanning household, you could be invaluable to us—especially now that Slipstream's finally drifted close enough to our neighbors that it's been perceived as a threat. Mavery is moving against Slipstream. Slipstream will edge into Mavery territory in a year or two and at that point they'll find themselves fighting a two-front war, against Mavery and us. Our job is to prepare for that, and to make sure that when the time comes, we either win or convince them to commit all their forces to Mavery, and leave us behind. If we had a spy in the very heart of the admiralty...” His expression was greedy.

  “Aerie is gone,” Hayden said. “When Slipstream leaves they'll take their sun with them. Without a sun, Aerie will freeze in the dark. The people will leave. I've lived in Winter. I know what it's like."

  He shook his head. “I'm only here to do one thing. And after that ... I don't care."

  “But, Hayden my boy,” purred Billy as he put an arm around Hayden's shoulder, “the problem is, we care. It's a worry, you know—the vision of you shooting Fanning and then being caught and tortured. You might talk about us, you see."

  “Oh! No, I—"

  “Now it would be supremely gauche of me to threaten your life at this point,” Billy went on. “After all, as you say, you have your own path to take. That's fine. But if you're not going to join us, then we have one simple request."

  “What's that?"

  “If you're going to kill Fanning up close and personal like, say in the middle of the admiralty itself ... Just make sure you kill yourself too, hmm? As a favor to us, you see."

  Hayden bolted to the trapdoor and flung it up. “You know where to find us if you change your mind,” Shambles called cheerfully.

  “You won't hear from me,” snapped Hayden as he lowered himself down to the invisible ladder. Slamming the trapdoor, he began clumsily backing his way back down to the city, fuming and muttering as he went.

  He was just above the rooftops when a lurid orange flash lit up the sky. A distant grumble like thunder reached his ears. Hayden paused, clinging to the swaying planks, and listened.

  The tearing sound of a jet could be heard fading in the distance. Then another one, growing closer. Funny; he knew all about bikes, but he couldn't identify the type from this one's sound.

  Then something flashed by outside the iron stanchions. He poked his head out between the girders in time to see something bright shoot straight into the lit window of a mansion near the far end of the cylinder. To his amazement, the outer wall of the house seemed to dissolve in flame and the whole roof lifted off.

  Another missile tore past, this one miraculously threading its way through spokes, guy wires, and ladder-ways to exit the other end of the cylinder. Seconds later he heard gunfire, and a distant bloom of light signaled the missile's destruction.

  A head poked out next to his. The wind-burnt homeless man spared Hayden a single glance before gaping at the next missile to appear out of the darkness. Belatedly, sirens were starting up throughout the city, animal voices dopplered weirdly by distance and rotation.

  The new missile hit one of the other spokes. The unfolding red flower lit the stubbled face next to Hayden's, tiny arcs of reflection glinting in the man's eyes.

  Then he heard shouts from above. Miles and the others were coming down. Hayden pulled his head in and clambered the rest of the way down to the street, where people were now running back and forth shouting.

  He felt a momentary surge of exultation. Slipstream was paying at last! He hid his grin; laughing out loud would probably be a bad idea right now.

  Hayden walked through the chaos for a few minutes. No more missiles appeared, but fire fighting crews were battling their way through the mob and fights were breaking out. All lights were on and somewhere engines were throbbing. He felt a pull to the right and creaking, groaning sounds echoed through the street as his weight diminished. The hit on that spoke must have spooked the gravity department.

  His feet had unconsciously led him towards the docks. When he realized where he was, he frowned. He should just go home—ride this out. But where would Fanning be just now? This attack meant that the fleet would be mobilized. For all he knew, the admiral might be aboard his flagship already, and then Hayden would never get a chance at him.

  With a curse he ran for the docks, where he had parked his bike.

  * * * *

  4

  At the docks the master was screaming, “No civilian craft, no civilian craft!” at a hundred panicked men crowding the doors. Hayden showed the security guard his pass to the Fanning estate and the grim-faced man reluctantly let him by. Once through the press of people he leaped on the back of his jet and kicked it into life. He dropped into turbulent air and the wail of attack sirens.

  The sky was a storm of vehicles. Hayden had to twist and turn to avoid colliding with flocks of police cutters and ambulances. He kept his speed way down and held up his pass as he shot through narrow check-point gaps in ship-catcher nets that hadn't been there an hour before. In the distance other nets were slowly unfurling, distance making them appear like gray stains spreading in water.

  Hayden never tired of flying between the cylinders of Rush at night. Even in this emergency, he found himself turning his head to watch the running lights of Quartet 2, Cylinder 1 as it showed him its black underside and, after he passed it, a crescent-shaped vision of glowing city windows and rooftops inside. The air was normally full of lanterns showing where invisible cables and stations waited in the dark; the lights were doubling, tripling now as he flew. To complicate matters, it looked as though a lightning storm was moving in: the sky below him was lit with intermittent flickers of white.

  He was coming up underneath the admiralty cylinder when bright radiance slapped his shadow against the town's spinning metal hull. He nearly missed the entrance slot in surprise: they'd turned the sun on, seven hours early!

  After he'd hook
ed his bike to its crane and climbed off, he saw that this wasn't a normal dawn cycle. The skies visible through the arched windows of the dock were still a deep indigo. There must be some sort of spotlight feature to the sun that he'd never heard of before; Rush was pinioned in a beam of daylight but the rest of the world was a cave of night.

  Another pilot was standing by the windows. “Now I believe it happened,” he muttered under his breath. Hayden frowned and hurried out of the dock and up the stairs.

  He could hear the tumult in the Fanning household before he even opened the servant's door. Inside, the kitchen staff were running back and forth piling cutlery in boxes, searching for anything with the Fanning monogram on it.

  “What's going on?” Hayden asked mildly, sitting down at the large table beside the stove.

  “They're going to war,” said a maid on her way past. At that moment the chief butler swept into the kitchen and immediately spotted Hayden. “Griffin! Get into uniform. We're going to need you."

  “Yes, sir."

  He felt a pulse of resentment, but as he turned to go to the cloakroom, Lynelle, another of the maids, passed close by and whispered, “This throws all my well-laid plans to waste."

  “—Uh, what?” He turned to look at her as she leaned in the kitchen doorway. She was pretty, he hadn't failed to notice that. But maybe he'd failed to notice her noticing him.

  “I was going to throw a little party at my place on our shift's off-day. And I was going to invite you when I saw you tonight.” She shrugged sourly. “Can't do it now."

  “I—I guess not.” He backed away.

  She followed. “Was it really an attack by Mavery?” she asked.

  “I don't know. Listen, I ... I have to get ready for work."

  “Oh. All right, see you.” He knew she was watching him walk away; his ears burned.

  Hayden had been careful to cultivate a respectful attitude since being hired. In truth, he hated it when the other servants were nice to him. How could good people, in all conscience, work for a monster? It seemed perverse and incomprehensible to him. He went to his locker in the men's cloak room and donned the livery of the Fanning household, quashing his usual nightmare about being spotted by some old acquaintance while wearing these colors. Once he was dressed, he sat down on the dressing bench for a moment to gather his courage.

  Obviously, he would never get a better chance than this—if Fanning was home. Chances were he was in the admiralty office or the palace right now. But Hayden would have to assume otherwise, and do what so far he had not had a chance to do: venture unescorted into the Fanning's living quarters. He checked that the knife in the back of his belt was accessible, then stood up.

  His hands were trembling. With a curse he strode out of the cloak room and made for the stairs. Somebody shouted after him, but he ignored them. Let them think he had business upstairs—well, it was true anyway.

  He was feeling lightheaded. The lamps in their amber sconces throwing rings of light on the ceiling; the looming portraits of ancestral Fannings glaring at him from all sides; the distant shouting and clanging, all lent an unreal atmosphere to the night. Hayden passed several people on the stairs, one of whom was an admiralty attache; they all ignored him. As he reached the landing to the second floor, he heard muttering sounds coming from the admiral's office. So Fanning was here after all.

  But not alone. Hayden paused outside the door, which was ajar. Fanning was talking to someone in low, clipped tones. It came to Hayden that this was exactly where Miles and the other Resistance members would have wanted him to be, had he agreed to join their cause. For a moment the wild thought came to him that he might be able to kill Fanning and escape, and that if so, he could pull a double coup if he returned to Miles with strategic information. So he listened.

  “...Won't accept any of it. He's getting way too trusting in his old age.” Hayden recognized Fanning's voice, which he had only ever heard from behind closed doors. Was the admiral talking to only one person, or was there a full-blown staff meeting going on in there? Hayden couldn't find an angle where he could look around the door without being seen.

  “But our orders are clear,” said another man. “We're to take the Second Fleet into Mavery and deal with them now."

  “We don't need the Second Fleet to eradicate Mavery,” said Fanning contemptuously. “And the old man knows that. He's afraid that the First Families are going to side with me and order the fleet to investigate this buildup of ships in the sargasso. If he moves us all into Mavery we can't do that."

  “He doesn't believe the sargasso fleet's a threat?"

  “He doesn't believe it's real.” Hayden heard papers shuffling. “So. Here are your orders."

  There was a pause, then Hayden heard a sharp intake of breath from the other man. “You can't mean this!"

  “I can. We'll deal with Mavery, like the old man wants. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit in the air occupying a second-rate province while somebody else moves in full force against Rush."

  “But—but by the time we do this—"

  “The sargasso fleet's not ready. That's clear from the photos. And we won't be able to put Mavery down right away; it'll take a minimum of two months before we're inextricably engaged with them, and whoever's behind this knows to wait for that to happen. We have the time."

  The other muttered under his breath, then seemed to catch himself. “Sir. It's audacious, Admiral, but ... I can see the logic of it."

  “Good. Well, go to it, Captain. I'll join you when I've completed preparations here."

  Hayden just had time to close the door of the linen closet as a captain of the navy in full dress attire strode out of Fanning's office and down the stairs.

  As soon as he was gone, Hayden was out and sidling up to the door to the office. There was no one but Fanning in there now, he was sure of it. His mouth was dry, and his pulse pounding in his ears as he steeled himself for what he had to do. In all likelihood he wouldn't survive the night, but he had a debt to pay.

  Taking a deep breath, he reached for the doorknob.

  “There you are!"

  He snatched his hand back as if it had been burned, and turned to find Venera Fanning standing at the head of the stairs. She had a hand on one cocked hip, and was glaring at him in her usual withering way. She was dressed in traveling attire, complete with trousers and a backpack thrown over her shoulder.

  “I'm going to need a good driver,” she said as she stalked up to him. “You're the only one I know who can handle himself outside of an air carriage."

  “Uh—thank you, ma'am?"

  “Wait here.” She swept past him and into the office, leaving the door wide open. This gave Hayden his first glimpse of Fanning's office; it was not what he'd expected. The place was a mess. All four walls were crammed with bookshelves of differing pedigree. Books swelled out of the shelves and sheets of paper stuck out between the volumes like the white leaves of some literary ivy. More papers stood in precarious stacks on the floor, all leaning left to accommodate the coriolis tilt of the town's artificial gravity. The admiral himself was reclining in his chair, one foot propped up next to the table's only lamp. He scowled up at Venera as she walked in.

  “This is low even for you,” he said as he tossed a sheaf of papers onto the desk.

  “Oh, come now,” she replied levelly. “I'm just asserting my prerogative as a wife, to be with her husband."

  “Wives don't travel on ships of the line, especially when they're going into battle!” As if to emphasize his words, a flash of lightning lit the sky outside the office's one narrow window. At least, Hayden hoped it was lightning.

  “I admit I underestimated you, Venera,” continued Fanning. “No—actually, I misunderstood you. This intelligence network you created, it's...” He shook his head. “Beyond the pale. Why? What's it for? And why are you so insistent on joining the expeditionary force that you're willing to blackmail your own husband to guarantee that I'll say yes?"

  “I did it a
ll for us,” she said sweetly as she came around the desk to lean over him. Venera smoothed the hair away from Fanning's forehead. “For our advantage. It's the way we do things back home, that's all."

  “But why come along? This will be dangerous, and you'll be leaving the capital just when it would be most advantageous for you to remain here as my eyes and ears. It's a contradiction, Venera."

  “I know you hate mysteries,” she said. “That's what makes you good at your job. But I'm afraid this particular mystery will have to remain unsolved for a while. You'll see—if all works out as I hope. For now, you'll just have to trust me."

  He laughed. “That's the funniest thing you've said in a long time. Well, all right then, pack your things and get down to the docks. We'll be sailing tonight."

  “Under cover of darkness?” She smiled. “You do some of your best work then, you know."

  Fanning just sighed and shook his head.

  Venera returned to the hallway, and taking Hayden's arm, drew him away from the office and towards the stairs. He let her do it. “I'm going to send a man around to your flat,” she said to Hayden. “Tell him what to collect for you. You're not to leave the house today; wait for me by the main doors at six o'clock tonight, or your contract is terminated. Is that understood?"

  “But what's—"

  She waved a hand imperiously, indicating that he should retreat down the stairs.

  She stood between him and the man he'd come to murder.

  “Well?” she said. Venera seemed to see him for the first time; a muscle in her jaw flexed, causing the star-shaped scar there to squirm. “What are you waiting for?"