Forgotten Suns

by Judith Tarr

  They moved slowly, but their trajectory was not difficult to see. They were aiming toward the shuttle hatch, which was well down along the docking bay.

  If the ship had been a simple mechanical object, they would have had a reasonable chance of breaking in and doing whatever they had in mind. The Ra-Harakhte was neither simple nor mechanical.

  Khalida paused in alerting the ship. There would be no hatch anywhere on its hull, if she warned it to keep the intruders out. If they tried to burn their way in, the ship would react appropriately. There might be something left of them: a drift of ash, a coil of smoke.

  She sent an alert, but not the one that first came to mind. The second message she sent was directed toward Zhao and, after a slight pause, the prisoner in the brig.

  ~~~

  Khalida went armed. So, under duress, did Zhao. MariAntonia went in shackles, without a word or a glance. No protests, either, which Khalida took note of.

  Two and a hostage against fifteen was poor odds, but the two of them had the Ra-Harakhte at their backs. Once they were in the bay, the entrance smoothed behind them, growing back into the body of the ship.

  Ship’s web showed her the vaguely amorphous alien shape oozing toward the hatch. It was an interesting construct: evidently alive, and almost perfectly concealing the humans inside. Someone had been experimenting, or gengineering.

  The latter, she hoped, but considering what MI and the Corps had tried to do to the Ra-Harakhte, she would not have bet on it.

  The hatch opened as the intruder approached. It paused: suspicious, she supposed. The interior was lit like the rest of the ship: bright enough for human eyes, and therefore welcoming.

  She was not visible; a jut of wall just happened to cast a shadow across her and her companions. They were still, Zhao by choice, MariAntonia because the ship had wrapped a pseudopod around her mouth and neck. It could, it made clear, cover her nose if she moved.

  Her eyes were flat, and unafraid. Khalida knew that look. She had nothing to lose.

  That made her even more dangerous. Khalida smiled with honest warmth, and dipped her head: acknowledgment; amusement.

  The ship played its part well, seeming to resist, and forcing the intruders to work to get in. It had shifted pain receptors elsewhere, and hardened the hull, but not to impermeability. This was a trap, after all. Not a fortification.

  The glow of a beam grew slowly near the edge of the usual hatch. Khalida found she had shifted to fighting stance. She drew a breath and settled back to relaxed, casual, but ready to leap.

  It took the beam a good while to cut through, and then the invaders had to pry an opening large enough to admit a human body. Even knowing that the ship allowed this, and felt little more than pressure, as if anesthetized, Khalida grimaced.

  The first intruder thrust her way in with beam rifle at the ready. Her armor seemed to be of generic make without insignia, but there was no effective way to hide the profile. MI. As were the rest who followed her and fanned across the bay, scanning the apparently empty space with helmet cams and rifle barrels.

  The last one in had his rifle slung behind him and a control console in his hand. Khalida recognized the make and shape. Larger versions had been wired into the Ra-Harakhte’s nervous system.

  Size, at this level of technology, was never particularly relevant. She felt the ship shudder underfoot. It recognized the thing, too.

  Khalida recognized the man who held it. It was like a beam in the vitals.

  She held still. Not yet. Not yet.

  She watched the invaders realize they were in a blind pouch, with nothing in it but patches of light and shadow. They circled back to their commander.

  His fingers flicked across the console. A filament shot out of it, aiming toward the ceiling.

  The ceiling pulsed upward. The filament fell short, but snapped up again, stretching higher.

  Khalida shot it down.

  Fifteen beam rifles swung toward her. She stepped into the light. A handful of barrels flickered, charging to fire.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she said.

  “Captain Nasir,” the commander said, as coldly calm as she was trying to seem.

  “Colonel Aviram,” she answered. “You travel fast.”

  “As do you.”

  “I know how I got here. You? More experiments, like the thing you hid behind to get in here?”

  “That would be classified information,” he said.

  While they spoke, she was sharply aware of the two still in shadow. Zhao breathed shallowly, tensely. She could not hear MariAntonia at all, or sense her. But the ship knew she was there.

  The ship inhabited a different zone of consciousness than the humans inside it. Khalida had known that. She had not, until just now, understood it.

  It was important. She had no time to think about it. Aviram and his unit were positioning themselves, with exquisite slowness, to dispose of her and finish slaving the ship all over again—more effectively this time. More completely. Though not with any less pain.

  That was important, too, in a way that churned her stomach. The Corps had always been ugly at the core. MI, not much less. But the pattern here went beyond institutional awfulness. Experimentation on living creatures—humans; sentient aliens. There had been laws against that since before the first spacecraft left Earth’s surface.

  The ship could dispose of these, and the mole who had brought them in. All Khalida had to do was drag Zhao with her through the wall and leave them to it.

  That would have been the rational thing to do. She faced down those fifteen gently flickering barrels and inquired, “Don’t you have orders to vacate this system with all personnel and equipment?”

  Aviram’s stare was perfectly flat. “Who manufactured those? You?”

  “I’m flattered,” she said, “but I don’t have anything like that level of skill. Not to mention the ability to convince several thousand trained troops and staff that those orders are valid.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Aviram said. “You realize that—whatever he, or it, is—is a threat to everything United Planets stands for.”

  There was no point in pretending to misunderstand. “There is no threat. He doesn’t care what we are or what we represent. All he wants is to get free of us and go on about his business.”

  “Pity he’s wanted for high crimes and misdemeanors, hijacking, hacking, grand theft, abuse and misuse of psi, unregulated psi…”

  “He doesn’t care,” Khalida said again. “Neither do I. I’d wonder how you managed to escape the compulsion to get out. More experiments, I suppose. It doesn’t matter. You can leave now, or I’ll leave you here and let the ship dispose of you.”

  “That would be murder,” Aviram said. His eyes flickered, maybe. The light was not terribly bright, and Khalida was not terribly interested.

  “I have a quarter of million lives on my conscience,” she said. “What’s a few more?”

  There, she thought. That was the key. Not to care. He might order her shot; that was the tightness between her shoulders, though the ship was watching.

  One rifle did pulse, but the beam dissipated in midair. The ship swallowed it—not delighted with the taste, but glad enough of the nourishment.

  “Stand down!” Aviram snapped. “Barrels up. Disengage.”

  MariAntonia darted past Khalida. Zhao plunged in pursuit. Khalida caught him. Crossed beams caught MariAntonia.

  Khalida gagged on the savory scent of roasted flesh. Zhao doubled up with dry heaves.

  “Take that with you when you go,” Khalida said.

  She sounded cold even to herself. Colder by far than she felt.

  Aviram caught the shooters’ glances. They moved in just slowly enough to register reluctance, lifted the charred carcass and carried it through the hatch that had, obligingly, opened in front of them.

  None of them spoke. Not even Aviram.

  He was last to go. When he looked ready to pause, the hatch curved around him and thrust
him firmly out.

  Screens showed him in the bay, staring at a smooth and unmarred hull. He wore no expression at all.

  “She chose that,” Zhao said, still gagging. Tears streamed down his face. “She killed herself.”

  “She had nowhere else to go.” Khalida directed the ship to clear the air; when she took another breath, there was only a hint of roasted flesh left. With the next inhalation, that was gone.

  “We’re not done with Aviram,” Zhao said, “or with U.P. They want us too badly to ever let us go.”

  “Are you planning to stay here?” she asked.

  He frowned. “No. No, I’m not staying. Why would I—”

  “Where we’re going, U.P. has no jurisdiction. It might try to claim us, because we used to belong to it. It won’t be able to hold us. Not without more backup than it could afford, that far out—and with its bases here gutted and its personnel gone, its lines of supply have thinned to vanishing. We’re not safe, Lieutenant, but we’re not in danger, either. We’re as free as we can hope to be.”

  He did not believe her. He was a child of the inner worlds: he had only known the full power of the systems he used to serve.

  He would learn. Or he would die. They all might die, out there, before Rama found what he was hunting.

  Khalida was looking forward to it.

  51

  Aisha could not stop twitching. The performance was today, and then they would all go back to the ship. Everyone was ready—Aisha as much as anyone. There was no reason to fidget and fuss.

  She was still wearing her black robe because it was all she had. The veils and swords were still on Rama’s floor, for all she knew. Which left her without a weapon, except the one inside her head.

  She thought about requisitioning something. She got as far as opening a web connection, but then she stopped. She didn’t know why.

  She asked for something else instead. Clothes—sensible things, and nothing in black. She didn’t know that she’d ever want to wear black again.

  When the Pay Now screen came up, it flashed once and disappeared. She dived after it, and ran into Alexandra’s shimmering, floating icon.

  “My dear,” the rich voice said, “it’s our pleasure.”

  “I can’t,” Aisha said.

  “But you will,” said Alexandra. “It’s not a bribe, if that worries you. You need these. It’s our gift.”

  “Why?”

  Alexandra wasn’t human. She didn’t blink at Aisha’s straight thrust. “You need them. We can give them.”

  “And?”

  “Maybe we wish you well,” Alexandra said. “Maybe we want you to be properly outfitted, wherever you are going.”

  “We don’t know where we’re going.”

  “Yet.” Alexandra’s smile wrapped around her like a warm woolen hug. “Someday we’ll all know. And that will be wonderful.”

  “Or terrible.”

  “Terrible has wonder in it, too,” said Alexandra.

  She slipped out of the link. Aisha felt unexpectedly cold and a little lonely. She shouldn’t trust anybody, especially out here; she knew that. But she really wanted to trust this alien.

  Go with your gut. That was one of Mother’s sayings. It didn’t always work, but Aisha thought it might, this time. She hoped.

  ~~~

  After all that preparation, the performance came up startlingly fast. One minute they were all running around finishing up the last-minute crises. Then everybody crowded into the concert hall in the center of Central, perched on a promontory above Alexandra’s lake.

  The hall was full. So was the feed to the rest of the system. Marta was that famous out here, and people were that curious about her new production.

  Aisha stood backstage, pressed up against a strut while chaos whirled around her. She’d much rather have been high up in the balconies, like being in a starship on the edge of a system, where she could see everything and everybody, and look down on the stage. But unless she learned to fly and not just float above her bed at night, that was much too far away from Rama.

  She could feel the pressure of watchers on the web feed, with more coming in the closer they got to showtime. Ship was there, too, more awake than it had been in a while. Watching. Curious. Interested. A little wary.

  There was no telling what would happen once the performance began. Aisha was ready for anything, or nothing. They would all be leaving as soon as it was over—they were packed and ready, and their shuttle was booked.

  Rama had done that, abruptly, this morning. He wasn’t twitching the way Aisha was, but he was done here. If it hadn’t been for his promise, he’d already be gone.

  Aisha stayed as close to him as she could, dressed in the most practical clothes Alexandra had sent her—close enough to riding clothes that she found herself missing her horse.

  She wished she’d kept her swords, too. But she had the web and her brains, and her eyes keeping track of the hall as it filled.

  The musicians trooped down into their bay. The hum and buzz of people moving and settling started to slow down.

  The lights dimmed. Silence fell. Aisha realized she was holding her breath. She let it go.

  She’d seen all the pieces of the performance before, but not together. Not with the sets in place and the lighting all working and the music doing what it was supposed to.

  She had to work to keep from getting caught up in it. To stay alert, and keep watching.

  The beginning was all Marta and the musicians’ guild. Her songs, their music. Those were wonderful, but no one was here just for them. They were waiting for the new piece and the new singer.

  Word was out. People had heard about the traveler with the living ship.

  MI was mostly out of the system, but not quite. There was no telling which agents were still there undercover, or which agency they reported to.

  It might not just be U.P., either. Ship was something different—something valuable. So was Rama, if anyone knew or guessed.

  Everything was quiet on the web. The music wound on. Marta wasn’t making the magic she could make. She was just a beautiful voice, singing beautiful songs.

  She’d deliberately ramped the performance down. Or maybe she was saving it for the second half.

  In the intermission, the shuffle and shift of people had an unusual quality to it. They were holding their breath. Nobody went too far or stayed away too long, even on the web.

  ~~~

  When the lights went out, the hall was absolutely silent. No one so much as breathed.

  Aisha had thought they might dress Rama in something spectacular, but he came out in the same plain black robe he’d worn in rehearsals.

  It was all he needed. His voice seemed so soft, but it filled every corner of the hall, and soared out onto the web, and echoed in the system.

  He could have been his own statue, or a broken shard of a pedestal, or a featureless cylinder like Ship, and it wouldn’t have mattered, once that sound began to pour out of him.

  He was singing to the stars. Marta’s music was only the beginning. When he shifted to Old Language, that was another music altogether. His music. Music from a world only he remembered.

  It was a call. A challenge. I am here. Where have you gone? Show your faces. Lead me onward.

  He put all his power into it. He drew from the sun, and from every starship’s drive and engine in Kom Ombo, and from Ship, which gave even while it fed.

  No one moved, anywhere. The hall and the web were absolutely silent. Absolutely rapt.

  It was a wild, crazy, lethal gamble. If his people had had to destroy every shred of evidence about themselves and their history, filling truespace and subspace with their music, in their language, with his of all voices, was completely insane.

  That was why he did it. He always did the wild thing, the crazy thing.

  When it was the right thing, as far as he could know. It might be completely and hopelessly wrong, but he had to trust that it wasn’t.

  He sang
till his heart must be like to burst, till his bones turned to stellar dust and his veins were laced with fire.

  Finally Aisha saw him clear, without his masks and his grief and his eons-old exhaustion. He was terrifying, but she wasn’t afraid.

  ~~~

  The attack came straight down through the roof and in through every entrance.

  They’d put everything they had into it. The web crashed, taking the lights and most of the life support. System traffic ground to a halt.

  The people in the hall didn’t panic. Aisha noticed that particularly. In the pale blue of the emergency lights, they stayed put. A rumble rolled through the crowd, like a mass growl, but no one attacked the attackers.

  There must have been fifty of them in riot gear with night-vision helmets, running down the aisles and rappelling off the roof. They aimed for the stage.

  Rama stood as still as the audience. Pale gold light shimmered over him. His head was lifted, his eyes following the attackers as they converged on him. He smiled.

  He was the only light in that place. He seemed to glow brighter, the longer the dark lasted.

  Boots thudded on the stage. A bolt flashed off into the rafters. Rama’s voice said in Aisha’s ear, “Stay close. Be quiet.”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin. He held her down with his hand on her shoulder. As far as she could see or feel, they were alone backstage. The musicians and Marta and all the techs and stagehands had disappeared.

  He was there. But she could see—

  —through the one on stage. When she really, deeply looked. The one next to her was solid, warm and breathing.

  More and more invaders crowded the stage. Rama’s fetch stood in a circle of empty space. It flashed a grin, and laughed, and said, “Catch me if you can!”

  It flew straight up, just as the roof directly above came down and the floor of the stage curved to meet it. The snap of beam fire flickered like lightning, most of it inside, a few out: blasting the smooth curved surface that had been a stage and a dome.

  The rumble in the floor swelled to a deep, angry roar. Shadowy figures surged up and over the handful of invaders who’d eluded the trap.