The first Marine through the hatch was met by concentrated jac-fire, which splashed off his blue-gleaming armor in a welter of heat and light. “Hit the faceplate, you stupid blits!” Hreem shrieked as the bulky figure stepped aside and triggered its heavy firejac.
The almost solid beam from the weapon, which was far larger than could be carried without servos, carved a flaming groove across the floor and into the already damaged console where Alluwan had been, undoing with ferocious speed the jury-rigged repairs of only hours ago. Then, as Hreem and his crew watched dumbfounded, it retraced its path back toward the Marine wielding the jac and blew a hole through the deck as the menacing armored figure slowly crumpled to its knees. Several seconds later, the jac exhausted its charge and fell silent, leaving a gaping, molten-edged hole in the deck. The Marine remained kneeling.
In the doorway, the other Marine stood silently, firejac half-raised. No one moved for a moment until, with a snarl of fear and incomprehension, Hreem triggered his jac into the Marine’s faceplate. The refractory dyplast withstood the blast for a moment, as the Marine began to fall backward, so that the plasma beam traced a shallow groove across the faceplate as the heavily armored figure fell onto its back.
Now the bridge was almost silent, save for the hiss and spit of an electrical fire in the twice-ruined console, and the moaning of someone badly burned. Hreem remained kneeling for a time, watching the two Panarchists suspiciously. There was no movement. After a time he got to his feet and walked cautiously out the hatch to the downed Marine—the deck around the other was too hot to approach. The crew muttered approbation as, after a momentary pause, Hreem raised his boot and brought it down heel-first on the Marine’s faceplate. His heel-claw shattered the heat-grayed dyplast and plunged through.
Blood oozed slowly from the ragged wounds inflicted by the tines of the claw on the Marine’s face, which was barely recognizable as male, probably around forty. His eyes, mouth, and pores seeped blood: his face was bright red, as from a savage sunburn, and the sour stink of vomit rose from the open helmet. They must have caught it when the Korion blew. A great heaviness lifted from Hreem’s heart, and the awful, pride-devouring realization of his fear and helplessness vanished, leaving not even a memory. Hreem looked up at the screen as the drone of another missile discharging burred through the bridge. The Marines had failed there, too.
Then he looked around at the ghastly carnage the Marines had made of the crew defending the bridge—blackened corpses tightly melted into heat-constricted armor, with thick redness oozing through cracked flesh. Only a few of the fallen Marines showed jac damage—some of them might even still be alive, though not for long, thought Hreem. With a strangled curse he pointed his firejac into the unconscious Marine’s helmet and triggered it.
A shadow flickered on the edge of Hreem’s vision. He glanced up into Norio’s face. The tempath’s eyes were wide and manic; Hreem saw his own reflection twinned in those shining dark orbs, corpse-lit by the flaring light from within the Marine’s helmet, wreathed in smoke and the sweet stench of vaporizing flesh. It was a terrifying sight, enough to jolt Hreem out of his rage.
Hreem released the trigger and straightened up slowly. In the unnatural quiet, he heard Norio’s breathing, and his soft laugh.
“Satiation, Jala,” Norio whispered, looking around the blast-damaged room, and at the techs writhing in pain or frozen in shock.
None of them would meet the tempath’s hot gaze. Dyasil flinched away when Norio moved, his robes flaring, to bend and touch a dying crewman, tenderly brushing the man’s hair back from his eyes. He squatted on his heels next to the man, waiting. The tempath’s breath hissed between his teeth as the tech finally spasmed and died. When Norio straightened, he sent a considering look at Hreem, then glided off the bridge.
Dyasil licked cracked lips as he shot another assessing look at his captain, and Hreem remembered the Marine’s attack on the computer. Another time Hreem might have handed Dyasil over to Norio for his failure to halt it, but not now. One thing’s for sure; that damned Barcan trog isn’t gonna get to hide in his cabin anymore.
His gaze went to the screens. The price for this is coming out of your hide, Faseult. Out loud: “Dyasil, Erbee—find out what happened on the power deck. Get me a status report ship-wide. Get Riolo working on the computers.” Hreem’s voice was mild, almost drained of emotion, and both techs turned tiredly to their tasks. “Metije, medtechs. Get them out of here.” He waved his firejac at the dead and wounded.
Slowly the bridge came back to normal, as reports came in from the rest of the ship of similar success against the invaders, but when the relief crew came to the bridge, they had to step around Hreem, who stood, firejac still in hand, looking dully around at the wreckage of his ship.
EIGHT
BOOST PLUS 30 SECONDS
... the cat’s remaining eye glared insensately at him as it crouched on his chest, sucking the breath from his lungs. He struggled for air, its claws dug into his chest, but his limbs did not respond to his mind’s frantic commands...
The pressure abated and the mind-battering roar ceased. As his vision cleared, Deralze got a blurry impression of something black whirling away. Then the beast’s yellow eye resolved into a status light on Osri’s console and a mild jar announced the separation of the booster. His chest expanded convulsively in a deep gasp, and the tearing ache in his lungs began to fade.
Where did that come from?
A legend flashed on Osri’s screen: SKIP MINUS 21 SECONDS.
They were in the most vulnerable phase of their boost, on internal power, their acceleration fallen to a mere hundredth of its original value. Were they now a target on some Rifter’s screens? They’d never know, Deralze decided, watching the countdown. Osri stirred restlessly in the command pod but said nothing. Their coms were off.
Ares. Would the news of the Krysarch’s disappearance have reached there yet? Probably. What an irony: as a loyal Panarchist, Deralze had never risen high enough to rate even a visit there; as a prisoner, he would know the place well.
Deralze glanced at Brandon’s profile. The Krysarch was intent on Osri’s screens.
Deralze thought about the flight from Arthelion to Charvann. He had taken care to find a yacht that afforded comforts and diversions, but Brandon had shown little interest in these, and he’d scarcely slept in the palatial cabin.
During the last week, Brandon had holed up on the bridge, studying navigation chips. But that first week, he’d prowled around and around, discharging ten years of pent-up emotions by talking almost without cease about Markham and their Academy days. He went back into their shared past, making Deralze laugh and laugh again as Brandon recounted every joke, trick, and score-off designed by two fertile minds dedicated to having the most fun within constraining circumstances.
It wasn’t difficult to figure out what must have happened. Only Semion would have had the power and reach to ruin his own brother and Markham, but why? And how? Either someone had cheated on tests in their names, or the entire system was rotten right up to the Panarch.
In any case, Deralze had kept the Poets plot to himself, preferring to tell Brandon and Markham both once they safely reached Dis.
Now that they were on their way, Deralze comprehended, with a sickening inward pang, just how little he wanted to go to Ares and just how impossible it was that he should not. Now he would never have that chance to tell them, but his reticence still insured one thing: Brandon could not be implicated in the Poets plot. His having left his Enkainion was going to create enough difficulties on Ares. Deralze wasn’t much on history, but he couldn’t remember ever having heard of a Krysarch running out on an Enkainion hours before it was to begin.
Deralze knew his own future, as a deserter with a warrant against his name issued by the Aerenarch. He’d be wrung inside out, every scrap of knowledge plumbed. Fine. He took full responsibility for his decisions—and his interrogators would hear his own reasons why. But Brandon would not take bla
me for something he was completely ignorant of.
And here was the biggest irony, he thought as the countdown reached the single numbers: if the bomb did go off, the fact that he’d rescued the Krysarch, for whatever reasons, would be enough to keep him from being put up against a wall.
Then the countdown reached zero.
The designers of the little courier had wasted no effort on cushioning the first skip, but the head-bloating sensation was compounded and then overwhelmed by a near-simultaneous blow to the ship. The impact caused Deralze’s suit to go rigid and nearly blacked him out. Through the haze of a near-blinding headache he saw Osri’s console go red. The hum of the fiveskip was coarse and wavering.
Osri wrung his hands and flexed them: they’d been poised above the console and the suit had not altogether cushioned the impact. In front of him a diagnostic window popped up on the screen. Brandon had been staring at it for some time.
The meaning of the first two messages hit Deralze.
PSEUDO-VELOCITY 5 CEE. CERENKOV SUPPRESSION NIL.
That’s months just to the next system, and the Rifters can see us. We can’t get to Ares that way.
Can’t get to Ares...
Brandon twisted around, his blue eyes lambent in the light from Osri’s console. “Dis,” he said.
Deralze tried to suppress the laugh that forced its way up from his chest. Yet another ironic twist, the gift of a Rifter missile. Markham would be waiting for them.
Deralze smiled at the image of the young Highdweller adopted from nowhere by the Archon of Lusor—his crooked smile, his lanky frame and precise movements expressing an unaffected elegance that his enemies interpreted as the posturing of a dandy, but which was in fact the natural demeanor of a young man more at home in his body than anyone Deralze had ever known. I wonder how his Rifter friends see him?
I wonder how fast he’d get us out of range of that destroyer?...
Osri’s hands were again paused hesitantly above the pads, slowly touching here and there.
Brandon’s fingers drummed spasmodically on his pod arms.
Why was Osri wasting time trying to further diagnose the problem? If they kept moving in a straight line, even the worst ship’s captain could zap them.
Brandon glanced back at Deralze, his expression unreadable. How would Brandon convince Osri Omilov to take the ship to Dis without explaining what the place was? Even though it is the quickest way to Ares.
Deralze’s gut twisted again. He knew what the blank look on Brandon’s face meant. They would indeed see Markham, but they wouldn’t join him. The Krysarch was bound by honor now to reach Ares—bound by the Archon’s ring, stowed behind him in the tiny locker along with the gnostor’s artifact, and the promise he had made when he accepted it.
Would Markham understand? Could he afford to? Deralze considered Hreem the Faithless’s sneering face again. No. Markham would not serve under that one. Deralze felt the stirrings of hope.
Brandon activated his com switch. “They can track us, can’t they?”
Osri responded by opening his channel.
He must have heard the careful neutrality in Brandon’s voice, for he replied with barely a trace of stiffness: “Yes. And our high end’s destabilized. I’m trying to damp it.”
“Perhaps a drunkwalk would be a good idea?” Brandon’s voice was quiet, almost diffident.
Osri’s back stiffened—his pride was too easily touched.
“I think I know what I’m doing,” he said with some asperity. “That would make the engines even more unstable. As it is, any course change would cost us a full three hundred seconds before we could skip.” Osri added with the superiority of the instructor in navigation, where all numbers are pure and simulation is equivalent to experience. “A Rifter is hardly likely to be a good enough navigator to intercept us on the skip, but even a novice could zap us under geeplane alone.”
Brandon’s hands flexed, then he reached over, turned the key to his side, and pulled it out.
“What are you doing?” Osri demanded as his console went dark and Brandon’s lit up. “You’ve logged even fewer hours of realtime flight than I have.”
“Official, yes,” Brandon said as he scanned the console. “Unofficially, with my so-called co-conspirator Markham vlith-L’Ranja, I put in hundreds of hours gaming under every imaginable set of conditions, including exactly this kind of chase, before my brother found out and returned me to waltzing and ribbon-cutting.”
“I was put in command of this ship. It is my responsibility. And I can certainly get us away from some Rifter trash,” Osri retorted in affront.
An abrupt chattering moan rang through the little courier, growing swiftly into a rapid, violent shaking. Deralze’s scalp spasmed in pain, his headache intensifying. Osri’s profile whitened to a degree visible through his faceplate as he gazed at Brandon.
They listened helplessly as the skipmissile overtook them, guided to the booster by the rift in spacetime in their wake. Then the shaking died away—out of range.
Brandon dropped the key into the safe-slot on his side and tapped into a navigation window. As an afterthought, he echoed his screen to Osri’s. Then he popped open his faceplate. Osri opened his a second later, but did not look at Brandon. Instead, he watched the screen intently, as Deralze opened his own faceplate.
“Do you really want to bet our lives on an unknown Rifter’s incompetence?” Brandon asked. “I understand some of them are excellent behind a console. With his probable recharge and detection lags, we should have better than three hundred seconds; and every time we skip, it’ll get harder for him to catch up.”
Osri did not answer.
Brandon’s fingers were clumsy on the pads at first. Deralze remembered his unerring speed on the Academy simulator tactiles—the complex patterns of texture and temperature they furnished sped up a pilot’s adaptation to a new board. But despite the handicap imposed by his gloves, his fingers started tapping out remembered patterns.
“Pseudo-drunkwalk,” he said.
Deralze nodded, though Brandon could not see him. The Krysarch slapped the go button, and the ship lurched slightly. On the screen stars swirled into being as the skipfield died. The starfield slewed rapidly across the screen as the little courier pitched about to a new course.
Then they waited as the geeplane took them off their course at ten gravities. A window on the screen displayed the crazy-quilt graphics of an unstable engine, slowly shaking itself into the relative neatness that would indicate a safe skip. With occasional glances at this pattern, Brandon continued to tap at the console with increasing sureness.
Osri watched in silence. Orbital plots flickered colorfully on the screen as the computer optimized Brandon’s courses. Osri blinked, and shook his head slowly. Deralze felt his own guts crawl and successfully interpreted Osri’s reaction. The constant course changes were beginning to make Osri sick as the starfield slewed randomly across the screen.
Brandon glanced up one more time, and just then the stars swirled into blackness. Deralze winced at the skull-bloating transition. Brandon hesitated before continuing his plots.
A few seconds later the ship rattled again, more briefly than before. Brandon glanced up, his expression pained. “He’s better than I expected,” he whispered.
“What are you doing?” Osri demanded. “Your drunkwalk is taking us off our course toward that gas giant!” His gloved finger pointed at the graphic neatly labeled “Warlock,” the largest planet of the Charvann system, which ordinarily any sensible pilot would avoid, especially on the skip. “What do you expect to buy with this maneuver? Why are you heading for Warlock?”
Lurch. Slew. Osri looked away from the screen, and Deralze tightened his insides, trying to steel himself for the next skip.
Brandon replied without taking his eyes from the screen. “Not Warlock. A good friend of mine lives on Dis. Took over an abandoned hydrocarbon mine.” That much Deralze had told him—but Brandon did not reveal that to Osri. “I was on
my way there when I stopped to see your father.” His tone was abstracted. The intervals between the orbits presented by the computer were growing longer. Suddenly an overlay popped up: NO ORBIT. Brandon rested his hands on the console edge, motionless for a time.
“Dis! There are no polities of any size on Dis,” Osri exclaimed. “The system is clearly coded uninhabitable—why would anyone choose to live there?”
His profile jerked toward Brandon, expressive of outrage. Deralze recalled the words spoken by the Archon back in the defense room:... the usual reminder to our local Rifters... and knew that Osri had just remembered them as well.
“Yes. He’s a Rifter—he relies on people thinking just that.”
“Rifter?” Osri’s voice shook, which seemed to increase his fury. “We’re running for our lives from a gang of Rifters, and you...” Osri gulped for air. “Why not just turn around and surrender?”
Brandon’s voice expressed only abstracted mildness as he worked his display. “Do you really think they’d let us?” he asked.
With a lurch that seemed worse than before, the courier skipped out again. The flickering orbital plots painted the Krysarch’s face in a medley of colors. Deralze could not read his expression as the changing light now highlighted, now obscured his profile. A wash of golden light recalled the profiles on a thousand years of coinage, then a flood of greenish gray shone proleptic of death.
Deralze looked away grimly. They’d been snatched twice from annihilation. Is it possible that we are here to a purpose? he thought, his senses oddly heightened as he watched Brandon’s profile despite the increasing physical discomfort in his body. Brandon’s hands were sure and swift on the keys.
The viewscreen blossomed with a gout of light and a jarring shudder the next time they emerged from skip. “That was close,” Brandon commented, not pausing in his manipulations of the nav console. “I’ve done this kind of thing before in wargames, as I said. That captain has, too, or else he’s really fast. I wonder where he learned his trade?”
The Phoenix in Flight Page 24
