The Phoenix in Flight

by Sherwood Smith

  Was Anaris back again, somewhere in the Mandala?

  Where is my father? And what is my role now?

  Brandon looked down. His fingers had been twisting the Archon’s ring round and round. The jeweled eyes of the sphinxes flashed in the light. The fulfillment of a promise, at the very least.

  He looked back at the screens. In the rear view, the Palace Major was sliding over the horizon. Ahead, the Syncs, brilliantly lit by the sun in their higher vantage, formed a curving arrow of light beckoning them onward as their course took them across the terminator into night.

  o0o

  “Got it,” said Marim with satisfaction. “Right, Lokri?”

  Greywing watched the comtech cast a considering glance over his console, then gave a nod, the mockery for once absent from his expression. The gem in his ear winked with brief crimson flame.

  Greywing’s insides tightened.

  “The resonance field is down.” Marim rubbed her hands. “Once we’re past natural radius, we’re free and clear.”

  Brandon glanced around as if blinded. Greywing sensed he was trying to recover that impenetrable nick shield that the sight of the Fist had so clearly shattered. How were his emotions affecting the captain? She glanced Vi’ya’s way, to discover Vi’ya frowning, her eyes narrowed, as if she was in a room with too much noise.

  Greywing was surprised at her own reaction. She hated the nicks. Why did she feel like someone close had died? “Confirmation. Right?” she said flatly, to get Brandon’s attention.

  He blinked a couple times, then breathed in. She could hear it across the bridge. “Yes.”

  “Maybe there’s some strut-ass reason for it, like showing goodwill or somethin’?” Marim smiled, though with less humor than challenge, Greywing thought. Nobody believed this was going to be a peaceful landing, as they’d been promised before launch.

  “The Panarchists would never leave Arthelion naked like that,” Vi’ya said, “not for any reason, especially not with Eusabian’s battlecruiser in orbit.”

  A bleep from Lokri’s console was followed by a voice. “YST 8740 Maiden’s Dream, new course incoming.”

  “Relay to you, Ivard,” said Lokri.

  When the code squeal cut off, Ivard hesitated, and sent a worried glance at Vi’ya. “They want us to drop to two hundred kilometers, same heading.”

  Vi’ya glanced at the rearview. The Fist of Dol’jhar was a point of light behind them near the limb of the planet below, barely discernible as an ellipse. “Go ahead. That will take the Fist below the horizon all the faster.”

  Ivard tapped out acceptance of the course change, the light from his console emphasizing the roundness of his cheeks, and how much his chin was still a young boy’s. Greywing wished he was back with Norton and the crew of the Sunflame. No. Whatever happened, it was better that they were together.

  Slowly Arthelion grew ever more vast beneath them, vast tesselations of light marking cities on the continent below. It was a few minutes before it became apparent that the battlecruiser was not dropping below the flattening horizon.

  “Lokri, give me visual ranging on the Fist,” Vi’ya said.

  “It’s dropping into a lower orbit, closing in on us. Can’t say how fast without a range pulse.”

  “No. Let them think we haven’t noticed.” The captain turned to Brandon.

  He returned her gaze, his expression completely shuttered. Like the captain’s, only even more so.

  “The enemy of my enemy,” the Krysarch said finally.

  Vi’ya lifted her chin. “So be it.” She tapped at her console, and the fire-control position came to life in front of Brandon. “We’ll see how much Markham managed to teach you, then.”

  She keyed her intercom. “Jaim, I want overload capacity from the engines. We’ll have to get down into the atmosphere as fast as possible, deep enough to dissipate their ruptors so they don’t pulp us right off.”

  She turned to Marim, her fingers racing across the console as she spoke. “I’m going to geeplane us into a negative orbit at maximum power. Cut the gravs now, and if you need to, steal additional power from the shields—they won’t do any good against ruptors anyway.”

  o0o

  A series of warning tones sounded.

  Osri looked up from the refrigeration plates he was laboriously cleaning, and pushed his sticky hair off his forehead. Free-fall? What’s going on now?

  Montrose appeared in the doorway, his face grim. “Get up and go to your cabin.” His voice was flat, with no humor, no exaggerated courtly drawl.

  When Osri hesitated, the big Rifter crossed the floor in a couple of strides, jerked him to his feet, and muscled him to his cabin, ignoring Osri’s expostulations.

  Osri stumbled through the cabin hatch and heard the lock engage behind him. He barely made it to his bunk before the gravitors snapped off. The only reason to cut the gravitors is for repair, or to divert power for something else. There’s no reason for it in a standard approach. Uneasy speculations spun through his mind, centering on images of the attack on Charvann.

  Osri shook his head. This is the Mandala, the center of the Thousand Suns—The sudden jerking of the ship shattered his speculations. Missiles? Then the unmistakable bone-jarring squeal-rumble of a ruptor pulse, thankfully a miss. Now he was afraid, an emotion intensified by the sense of helplessness and ignorance. Anger came to his rescue. What are these chatzing Rifters up to? Then he felt the familiar shudder of reentry, and weight returned. They were aerodynamic, unwelcome guests in the skies over Arthelion. But whom had they just evaded?

  SIX

  Brandon strapped himself into his seat as the gravitors cut out and they went into free-fall. He half listened to Vi’ya’s subsequent orders while he ran the fire console through a wake-up check. Partway through the sequence a small window popped up on his screen and almost immediately vanished, but not before he caught the word personal.

  A personal setting? He ran the program back. Someone had set the console to automatically come up in the default configuration. His eyes stung when he saw the second choice: Alt L’Ranja gehaidin! The motto of Markham’s adoptive family, the branch now expunged from the Ranks of Service.

  He tabbed “Accept.”

  The screen blanked, then lit up with a completely different configuration. Tenno Major! A change rippled through the keypads, colors and tactiles altering and labels adapting to the new configuration. When it settled down, Brandon was staring at a fire-control console equal to anything he had seen at the Academy. His throat hurt. Markham’s last gift.

  His hands ranged across the console many times faster than before, accelerating as familiarity returned. Markham had been assigned to that class a full year earlier than most began, but as always, he taught Brandon at night. Don’t think about the Tenno, Brandy, just let them move your hands. You’re not playing Phalanx. Get out of the way and let the glyphs do the work.

  It’s just as he said, Brandon thought, you never forget them!

  The Tenno Major battle glyphs—tactical ideographs—had been refined over hundreds of years to cover every possible configuration of warfare, and since they were built up from simpler conceptual modules, they could be, and had been, extended to cover new technologies and tactics. A simplified version—tenno minor—was standard for ship operations, and a slightly more complex version made Phalanx an entrez-vous for naval training. But the full Tenno conveyed information at near the theoretical maximum predicted for visual input, using color, form, and movement, forging a link between human and machine that made the two one.

  Brandon could almost feel Markham grinning over his shoulder, and hear his bantering voice, Well, Brandy, you’re pinned against the planet by a battlecruiser that you can’t touch with anything you’ve got... what do you do now?

  “Blind ’em with my brilliance, or baffle them with...”

  He broke off when he realized he’d spoken aloud. The crew stared at him, Vi’ya with her hands poised over her console. Then she tapped,
and the echo window from his console on the main view-screen echoed the glyphs flickering brightly.

  o0o

  “What the chatzin’ hell are you doing setting up for L-3 with a battlecruiser chasing us?” yelled Marim.

  Greywing stood up so that she could get a better look at the strange phenomenon glowing on Brandon’s screen. If that was L-3, then she’d been drinking Vilarian Negus. She could parse out some of the basic forms, but the glyphs were impossibly complex.

  Lokri was staring at Brandon’s hand, his face closed, almost angry. “So that’s how you did it.”

  “You cheated!” Marim sounded honestly outraged.

  The Arkad made a soft sound, too strained and humorless to be a laugh. “No. Pulling up the Tenno Major in Phalanx against untrained opponents would be like bringing a blaster to a pillow fight, which is why it’s not allowed.”

  He gestured at his console. “I had no idea Markham had installed these.” He paused, then looked confused. “Didn’t you ever notice when he used them?”

  Vi’ya gave her head a slight twist, her dark eyes steady. “He was working on something... a surprise... when he was killed. He never got a chance to show anyone.”

  “And Jakarr never said anything,” Marim said with a snort of disgust.

  “Probably never found them,” Lokri put in. “I sat at that console twice when Jakarr was at the other base, and I certainly never saw them.” His drawl sounded bitter to Greywing, almost resentful.

  Jaim’s voice interrupted. “Ready here, Vi’ya. Rigged for overload conditions. You’ll get up to thirty seconds or so, then you’d better be ready to stick your arms through the hull and flap ’em like crazy.”

  Vi’ya turned back to Brandon. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I think I can stop any missiles, and there are ways to cut down the efficiency of the cruiser’s ruptors, this close to the planet.”

  She slammed her hand down on the big go-pad, and Arthelion ballooned in the forward view. There was no sense of acceleration, since the geeplane affected the entire ship at once, but Greywing knew they were accelerating toward the planet at better than fifteen gees. Everything depended on Vi’ya’s skill now. If they entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle they’d either break up or skip back into space like a rock off a pond.

  Behind them the Fist of Dol’jhar dwindled and fell toward the horizon, then began to swell with alarming speed. The Arkad tapped his console, considered the glyphs, then triggered a staggered cluster of missiles from the aft launcher.

  “What’re you doing?” Marim demanded. “Those dimpy things won’t even dent a cruiser’s hull metal, even if he left his teslas off.”

  “They’ll confuse his sensors and weaken his ruptor beams,” Vi’ya said tersely. “Watch. And learn.”

  Behind them the missiles began their deadly bloom, their neat coins of blue-white light suddenly shredding as the bone-jarring squeal-rumble of a ruptor rattled the bridge. Greywing’s teeth clicked together painfully. Ivard cried out in pain and blood ran out of his mouth.

  “Marim!” shouted Vi’ya over the rapidly increasing roar of atmospheric entry. The little Rifter’s console was sprinkled with red lights, her fingers blurring on the console.

  Brandon triggered another cluster of missiles as a wave of changes rippled through the glyph display. Another ruptor beam shook the Telvarna, weaker this time.

  “Chatz!” screamed Marim, her usual command of invective deserting her. “Double chatz!” she wailed. “The blunge-eating logos-lovers nackered the fiveskip. It’s down but good.”

  The ship began to quiver, a trembling that rapidly grew to a jarring, violent shaking. Gee-forces pulled at them as, with a stuttering roar, the plasma jets cut in and the ship leveled out and stopped jittering. Weight returned; they were in aerodynamic flight now.

  Behind them, the green lances of laser-boosted missiles reached out from the distant battlecruiser now denied its prey, its ruptors useless, dissipated by the atmosphere that sustained the Telvarna. Brandon triggered a counter barrage, and light flared behind the racing ship, then faded. The rearview was dark.

  “Altitude twenty-six, mach twenty-two,” Ivard sang out, his face pale around the blood smears but his hands steady.

  Greywing smiled at her little brother in pride.

  “Marim, get down to power and give Jaim a hand,” said Vi’ya. “Let me know how long fiveskip will be down.” Marim scampered out and Vi’ya motioned Ivard over to her console. “Take over, Firehead. Marim will need some feedback.”

  Ahead pale dawn began to bleach the sky as the Telvarna caught up with the sun. Far below, moonlight glittered off water.

  “Arkad. Do you know anything about the Panarchist defense plans?”

  Brandon looked up, his face distracted. “No. I suspect, given that they have a battlecruiser on interdiction patrol, that all the defense systems are down—that’s standard practice once a planet is lost. Makes it easier for any resistance movements.”

  “So there’s a chance that no one’s tracking us.”

  “A chance. It may vary from place to place.” He paused, obviously weighing his words, but Marim’s voice halted him before he could go on.

  “Things are chatzed up good down here, Vi’ya, but most of it can wait, except some of the plasma guides to the radiants, and the fiveskip. That’ll need at least six hours of work before we can trust it again.”

  Vi’ya acknowledged and turned back to Brandon. “You had a proposal to make.”

  “There is one place where the odds are likely to be considerably better.”

  She lifted her brows interrogatively.

  Brandon windowed up a relay from Ivard’s console, a chart showing their present course. “The Palace Major. We were headed to a field less than 300 kilometers away from it, and we’re not that far off course even now.”

  Vi’ya snorted derisively. “Don’t let your homesickness run away with you. At this point that’s the last place I’d set the Telvarna down—it is now Eusabian’s palace.”

  Brandon’s jaw muscles tightened and he looked away, almost a flinch. But then he looked back, his expression so bland that Greywing wondered if she’d imagined that first reaction.

  “That’s why it’s the last place they would expect you to. Look, the Mandalic Archipelago covers millions of hectares—even close to the Palace there are forests that could swallow a ship this size without a trace. My Royal override will deal with any defense systems that are still up, and if the household computer is still running, we might even be able to find out what’s happening.”

  He hesitated. “I’d also like a chance to see if any of the Family are there in need of help. Remember, as far as those security computers are concerned, I’m supposed to be there.” Then he grinned at her, his blue eyes wide with irony. “Besides, how do you expect to pay for all the work the ship will need after this?”

  Vi’ya frowned slightly, and Greywing wondered what the captain was reading from him.

  “You haven’t anything but the ring on your finger,” she finally replied. “That will hardly be sufficient.”

  “And you call yourself a Rifter. Haven’t you ever dreamed of looting the Palace of the Panarch of the Thousand Suns?”

  Lokri crowed with laughter and Ivard grinned. Marim cackled over the intercom. “Ya-ha-ha! If you pass this up, Vi’ya, I’ll send your hide to Hreem myself.”

  Vi’ya’s lips quirked, then relaxed in her rare smile. “Give Ivard the coordinates, then. We accept your invitation.”

  Brandon rose from his console and gave her one of those flourishing Douloi bows, like they did to each other but never to a common citizen. His hand pressed over his heart, his other one sweeping back and then up again.

  Vi’ya’s expression smoothed as she turned back to her console. “Keep your eyes on your screens, Arkad,” she said. “We’re not safe yet.”

  o0o

  ARTHELION

  The lingering light of a long summer evening slanted t
hrough the high clerestory windows in the antechamber to the Phoenix Hall, bringing a warm glow to wood paneling and woven tapestries. The room was a long, broad corridor. At regular intervals along the walls were recessed arches backed by pale amber stone, each with a sunburst mosaic radiating out from it onto the floor. Within each niche a bust shone in the mellow light from the high windows, commemorating the rulers of the Arkad dynasty.

  The air was aromatic with sandalwood and the warm scents of polish and wax. At intervals a gentle tone sounded, seemingly from the air itself, each time a different timbre and pitch. The sound was evocative at times of bells, at times of hushed and distant voices. It filled the room with an expectant peace, and a sense of the slow weight of centuries.

  Eusabian stood for some time before the bust of Jaspar I, founder of the dynasty, seeing in it an unmistakable echo of the features of his defeated enemy. The features were recognizable, though rounded, in Jaspar’s successor, the Kyriarch Alenora I, his daughter. Eusabian began to pace along the corridor, pausing at each bust. The familiar features echoed in each succeeding image, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker.

  The style of the statuary evolved as he advanced down the hall, changing in slow cycles from stark formality through increasing ornament to mannered excess. Then the styles returned to classical again, yet with something of the preceding modes remaining. The eyes of the Panarchs and Kyriarchs seemed to follow him as he passed, reminding him forcibly of Gelasaar Arkad’s gaze.

  About a third of the way down the hall, Eusabian stopped, rage welling up within him. One of the busts had been rudely vandalized, the face chipped away jaggedly, the name at its base effaced. Doubtless one of his worthless Rifter hirelings had done this, striking in childish fashion against an enemy worthy of a respect the fool could not conceive. I will have the guards crucified for this. And when the vandal is found...

  The thought died. There were no fragments around the bust, no stone dust. The pedestal, and the floor beneath it, were clean, gleaming with polish. He bent closer. The jagged edges of the bust’s ruined face were softened by age, with a faint patina like that left by the touch of many hands over many years. Only then did he remember. The Faceless One.