Phoenix in Flames

by Jaleta Clegg

  "Enough about me," I said. "What about you? Tell me about the Academy."

  She shrugged. "It was long. There were instructors who thought I shouldn't be there. And quite a few students."

  "Having Lowell as your sponsor couldn't have helped."

  "His name wasn't the one on the application. Yours was. And you're right, it didn't make it easier. First you were a merchant captain. And then you were an admiral working undercover. And then—" She paused, watching me. "You were engaged to the Speaker's son. Everyone in the Empire knew who you were. I wasn't sure if it helped or hurt at that point."

  "I would have been happy to stay a merchant captain."

  She smiled and reached over to pet the cat. "I know."

  My perspective shifted with her comment. I felt a lot of the anger and bitterness I'd been carrying slip away. Ginni understood.

  "I've been watching you with your puzzle," Ginni said. "You want some help?"

  "I'm not doing so well on my own. It's harder than it looks."

  We spent the next two hours sorting tiny pieces and trying to fit them together. And talking. She was right, it did help.

  I slept late the next morning. I woke feeling better than I had in a long time. I was almost at peace. I headed into the lounge, looking for breakfast, before I bothered to comb my hair.

  Jasyn was at the table, Louie in his chair eating toast. Jasyn looked me over. "I thought you gave up sleeping in your shipsuit."

  "I stayed up late last night and didn't bother to change. I did take my boots off."

  "There's cereal in the pot. It might be cold by now."

  I scooped out what was left and carried it to the table. It was a mix of grains and dried fruit and sugar. Jasyn had made up the recipe. I liked it.

  "Kaka," Louie said when I sat down. He giggled when I glared at him.

  "No kaka," I said sternly.

  "Kaka," he said.

  I spooned up a bite of cereal. A piece of chewed toast landed almost in my bowl.

  "Kaka." Louie laughed.

  "Lohys," Jasyn scolded him. "We do not throw food."

  He ducked his head and giggled again. "Kaka." He picked up another piece of toast.

  I took my bowl of breakfast and went to the cockpit to eat it without being beaned by soggy toast. I couldn't help but smile as Jasyn scolded him.

  Twyla and Ginni were in the cockpit. They both greeted me before resuming their conversation. I sat in the navigator's seat and ate my breakfast while I shamelessly eavesdropped.

  "Did he really say that?" Ginni asked.

  Twyla glanced at me before answering. "Not in so many words," she admitted. "What he really said was—"

  The entire cockpit erupted in shrieking alarms. Every indicator light on the controls blazed red. I was out of the chair and headed for the engine room before my bowl hit the floor. I didn't bother with the stairs, I slid down most of them on my bare feet.

  I skidded to a stop in the engine room. Darus stood in the middle of the walkway, staring blankly at the engine. A high pitched whine buzzed through my head. The air smelled heavily of burning rubber.

  The lights flickered and went out. The whining rose in pitch. I ducked down, counting three bins from the door on the bottom row. The tools I needed should be there, unless Darus had moved them.

  The engine began to pulse. The whole ship shuddered in and out of phase with the hyperspace bubble we traveled in. My stomach lurched, clenching tight. Bile rose in my throat as my hands closed over the wrenches I needed. I forced memories away. I had to focus on the current crisis. I couldn't afford to fall apart, not until later.

  My other hand found the handlight that was supposed to be in the same drawer. I squeezed the switch. A feeble beam of light stabbed across the floor, wavering wildly as I turned to Darus. I shoved a wrench and the handlight at him. I fumbled through a different bin, looking for another handlight.

  "What is it?" Darus asked.

  "The hyperdrive," I shouted over the screaming whine of the engine. I finally found the handlight and flicked it on. "Take your wrench and hold that where it is," I said, pointing with the light into the engine.

  The drive shaft coupling was loose, out of alignment. If it slipped off completely, we were going to die, smeared across light years of normal space. I pointed into the engine, past the quivering length of the drive shaft at the coupling assembly.

  "That bolt, there," I shouted at Darus.

  I didn't wait to see what he was going to do. I crawled in and under the engine, squirming through it to find the other side of the bolt. I was twisted through half of the sublight engine before I could reach it. I clamped the handlight between my teeth and used both hands to get my wrench around the end of the bolt.

  "You want me to tighten it?" Darus asked. I could barely see his face past the rotating drive shaft right in front of me.

  I moved the handlight, clamping it to a strut next to me. "No, I want you to hold it right where it is. Don't turn it until I tell you and then only when I tell you."

  "Fine," he grumbled. I barely heard him over the engine.

  "Clark wants to know if you want to do an emergency reentry," Ginni shouted from outside the engine.

  "No!" Darus and I shouted together.

  "If he turns the sublights on, he'll turn her into mincemeat," Darus said.

  "And we'll be stranded, probably for weeks, if we even make it," I added. "The coupling isn't going to hold for an emergency downshift. We might make a normal shift, once. It's going to have to be replaced after that."

  I tightened my end of the bolt a half turn. The drive shaft wobbled wildly. The hyperfield began to fluctuate. The universe felt as if it were turned halfway inside out. My stomach heaved. I fought the bile down.

  "See the notch straight up?" I asked Darus.

  "You want me to turn it to there?"

  "No. There's another notch twenty degrees clockwise. Wait until I tell you, then turn it to that notch." I braced my wrench in place, feeling the wriggling of the drive shaft. "Now!" I shouted when I had it in place.

  I held on with both hands, straining to keep the bolt from moving any farther out of place while Darus struggled to shift it the necessary amount to the right position.

  "Got it!"

  "Now push in until it seats," I said. "It's going to be hot."

  "Now you tell me."

  He swore loud and long while he pushed. I fought to keep my end in place. The whole drive shaft wobbled out of phase with the rest of the engine. I felt it pulling out of my hands. I shifted the wrench and held on with everything I had. A shudder raced over and through me as it passed through the entire ship. Our little bubble of artificial normal space was collapsing. The feeling of being turned inside out pulsed through the ship, chasing after the shudders.

  I knew when Darus got the bolt seated. The wobbling shifted abruptly, steadying into the familiar beat of the engine. The shudders faded. I shifted my wrench to one side.

  "Now turn it slowly until it matches the notch at the top. Don't let it slip back up," I instructed. "Use the flat end of the wrench."

  He pulled his wrench back up. I gritted my teeth and wedged my hands tighter on my wrench. I felt the tugging as he worked the bolt back into alignment. It finally clicked into place.

  "Hold it there," I said. I ratcheted my wrench as fast as I could, tightening the bolt back into place. Pressure built in my ears as it went too far. I eased it back a quarter turn. The pressure dropped. Space returned to normal. Mostly. I still felt an echo from the engine. We were slightly out of phase. There was nothing I could do about it now, not while we were in hyperspace, unless I wanted to kill us all.

  "Lift it slowly," I told Darus. He eased his wrench away from the coupling. It held. I took a deep breath and held it as I slowly worked my wrench loose.

  The engine shuddered once before settling into a steady rhythm. I let the air out of my lungs. I wriggled my way back out of the engine.

  "Should we stop?" Ginni
asked as I crawled out of the engine.

  I shook my head. I was shaking, now that the crisis was over. I couldn't stand. I knew my legs weren't going to hold me up. I crawled away from the engine and sat with my back to the storage bins, facing into the pulsing heart of the engine.

  "We're better off to just keep going," I said. "And hope we haven't been knocked too far off course. Tell Clark to prepare for manual reentry when we get close."

  I closed my eyes as the lights came back on. I carefully put the wrench down beside me, trying to hide the shaking in my hands.

  "Isn't that a bit drastic?" Darus asked.

  I opened my eyes again. The lights were back to normal levels. The smell of burnt engine was fading. I couldn't seem to stop the shaking. Darus took the wrench and the handlight and put them carefully back, exactly where they belonged.

  "So I was wrong, and you were right, about emergencies," he said.

  I didn't say anything. I held my hands together, squeezing until my knuckles were white. I was still shaking inside.

  "It's our best bet," I said after a long pause, answering his earlier question. "It isn't that hard. We wait until the normal alarm sounds and then we start scanning for a gravity well. We get a good lock and we do a manual reentry."

  "Because if we're too far out when the automatic kicks in, we're smeared across space," Darus said. "Even I know that much. We need to be close enough to the gravity well at the end. And the drive shaft being kicked out of alignment may have shifted us just enough to miss it."

  I didn't bother to tell him he was right. He knew it already. He was silent for a long minute, watching me as I pretended to watch the engine. He finally sighed and sat down beside me.

  "Did you ever do that before?" he asked.

  "Once, in a simulation. The instructor was trying to kill us to prove a point. He didn't count on me trying something that suicidal. It would have worked except the idiot in command decided to abort. The emergency reentry killed all of us when the engine exploded. I was very glad it was only a simulation."

  "Nice to know the Academy hasn't changed much over the years," Darus said.

  I couldn't stop shaking.

  Darus watched me for another long minute. "That isn't what's really bothering you, is it."

  "Not the engine failure, no." The whole feeling of being halfway inside out was all too familiar. It brought back too many bad memories.

  "Then what? And don't tell me you don't want to talk about it."

  "You're afraid I'm going to get into a situation like that and freeze on you."

  "Not that, you won't fall apart until afterwards. I know you too well."

  "Then let me forget my memories by myself."

  "Dace."

  "I don't want to remember," I said in a little voice.

  He didn't answer. He just sat next to me, waiting.

  "The Trythians had a skip drive," I said after a very long silence. "Instead of breaking completely through into hyperspace, they skipped along the interface. It felt like that, over and over. For days at a time. We spent that time locked in a single room. They didn't bother to feed us. It wouldn't have done any good." I wiped my hands over my face, remembering too much. I could almost taste the smell of that tiny room when we finally ended the journey. I swallowed repeatedly until the taste of vomit faded.

  "And at the end of the journey, what?"

  "The slave masters on Vallius came from Trythia." I rubbed my hands together trying to ease the shaking. "Vallius was easy compared to Trythia."

  He winced. He'd spent years as a slave on Vallius. He shook his head.

  "They left you your will, Darus. The Trythians took everything away from me. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew exactly how to break me."

  "But they didn't," Darus said.

  "They did. They turned me into a pet animal. I wasn't a person anymore." I didn't want to remember. I didn't want to talk about it. I couldn't stop myself. The words poured out. "They destroyed me. They beat me, tortured me into submission, until I was happy to do whatever they told me to do. The scars aren't all on my back. They knew how to destroy my mind and my will. They only gave me back to myself when it suited their twisted purposes. They used me, all of them. I was only a pawn in their sick power games."

  "What about Tivor?" Darus asked when I stopped.

  "What about it?" I asked, my voice harsh.

  "What happened there?"

  "I found the rest of my heritage." I spread my hands out, splaying my fingers until the tendons stood out starkly. "I found my grandmother. And my grandfather's people. I was a wolf for a while. They saved me. I can almost remember it, but it seems like a very strange dream." I knotted my hands into fists. "I remember touching other minds, trading thoughts faster than words, knowing exactly how everyone around me felt every second of every day. It drove me insane. Especially when the Hrissia'noru on the planet sent me away. They deliberately tried to destroy me. They were hoping I would go crazy and take everyone around me down the same path to madness. Paltronis kept me together. Barely."

  I waited for his next question. It didn't come.

  "Aren't you going to ask about Vance now?"

  "I don't think I want to know the truth about him." Darus stood. "You're right, Dace. You need time to find your own answers. If you want help, though." He stopped, awkward and unsure.

  "I'm sorry, Darus," I whispered. I couldn't share the pain I lived with, I didn't want anyone else to have to live with my memories.

  He patted my shoulder.

  He left me alone in the engine room, with the lingering aroma of burnt rubber to remind me how close we'd come to dying.

  I sat on the floor until the shaking finally subsided. I used every trick I knew to try to lock the memories back where they belonged. I was only partially successful.

  Darus must have said something to the others. No one pried when I finally came up from the engine room. They carried on as if everything were normal. It was almost painful to watch. No one said anything when I locked myself back in my cabin.

  Chapter 8

  I lay on my bunk. I found myself staring at the ceiling, remembering things I didn't want to remember. Tayvis' face haunted me most. But what I'd told Clark earlier was true. It was over. There was too much pain. Nothing could ever make things right between us again. I had to let him go. I didn't know how.

  I waited until my stomach protested missing lunch. I wasn't sure I could face the rest of them. I didn't know how to make them understand. I couldn't hide in my cabin forever, though.

  They were sitting around the table when I came out. Louie was asleep in Jasyn's lap. He was the only one not watching me. No one was talking. They all looked tired and scared. I resisted the urge to duck back into my cabin. I was too hungry. I crossed the lounge and opened a cabinet.

  The silence waited for me. I took my time fixing myself a hot drink. My appetite shrank with each lingering moment of silence. I stirred the powdered mix into the hot water, turning around to lean against the counter. They were watching me, as if I were a bomb waiting to explode. I did my best to ignore it.

  "We almost bought it that time," Beryn finally said.

  I didn't bother to answer. The engine vibrations felt almost normal now.

  "What happened?" Jasyn asked me. "Darus said the coupling on the drive shaft came loose. With the time the two of you spend crawling over the engine, how could it possibly happen?"

  They were looking at me for the answer. Beryn was the one who answered.

  "We made too many long jumps recently. Pushing the engines that hard really wears on the drive shaft."

  "It isn't something you mess with," I said, "unless you're hyperdrive certified and know how to align the shaft. Those bolts are supposed to stay put."

  "Then why didn't they?" Jasyn asked.

  "Too many long jumps," Beryn said again. "Even for the Patrol class engines we've got, you have to admit Tebros to Shangrila in under ten days was fast."

&n
bsp; "Ten days?" I said. "I'm impressed."

  The silence fell again, thick and heavy with unspoken words. I sipped my drink.

  "Do you want lunch?" Ginni finally asked me. "We made some sandwiches earlier."

  "Thanks," I answered.

  "So what happens when we get to Tireo?" Twyla asked.

  "We do a manual reentry," I said. "The drive shaft should hold for that. There's a chance we've been bumped off course."

  "We should know in about two more days," Jasyn said.

  "There's also a chance that the coupling will disintegrate when we downshift," I said. "The engine room should contain the explosion." I regretted saying anything as I watched their faces pale, all except Clark. He knew what our chances really were. He'd flown for the Patrol. "It will probably take out the sublight engines, unless we're really lucky."

  "Is it any worse than flying that Exploration ship?" Jasyn asked me. She was with me and Tayvis and Jerimon when we used the old ship to escape Serrimonia. The engines had fallen apart during our flight. We'd come pretty close to dying, stranded in a dead ship.

  "We're a lot better off this time," I said. "The only tricky part will be making the jump back to normal space. After that, if we survive in one piece, we should be home free."

  "Tireo has a full shipyard available," Clark said. "But if the sublights still work, there isn't any reason we can't just land. How long would it take you to realign the drive shaft and replace the coupling?" he asked me.

  I shook my head. "That's way beyond my abilities."

  "I think we own several maintenance yards there," Jasyn said. "There should be a Gypsy connection at least. Getting a certified engineer in here to repair the drive won't be too hard."

  "Except we might have to admit who we are," Clark said.

  "It's so nice to know I'm not the only paranoid person anymore," I said.

  There was dead silence for a few seconds.

  "Was that a joke?" Beryn asked.

  "Only if you want it to be," I answered.

  Ginni held out a sandwich. I took it and tried to smile. It came out crooked.