The Phoenix in Flight

by Sherwood Smith

  It was easier to aim that fury at this fool of a Krysarch, born to power and privilege, protected from the random injustices that everyone else had to endure... Lokri stood up, needing movement as an outlet for his anger. He slipped another charge into his weapon and holstered it, then picked up one of the guards’ jacs. It took him a moment to locate the charge indicator. Full. He set it to wide aperture.

  “Get him up,” Vi’ya said.

  Lokri hauled Ivard to his feet. Ivard’s pupils were dilated, his face drawn. “Greywing...” he whispered, groping toward his sister.

  “She’s gone, boy,” Lokri said. “We have to get out of here.”

  Ivard choked on a sob and wrenched himself free, showing more strength than Lokri would have imagined the boy had, even when whole. He dropped on his knees beside his fallen sister, and Lokri moved to restrain him, but Vi’ya caught his arm.

  In silence they watched Ivard turn Greywing carefully over, then his fingers plunged into Greywing’s inner pocket, coming up with a handful of fine jewels and a round metallic object covered with blood. Not from the jac-bolt, which had hit the center of her chest, but from the still-healing flesh of her earlier burn.

  Ivard flung aside the jewels and clutched the medallion. Then Vi’ya reached forward and took him by the chin, jerking his head up. “Now we leave. She will be angry if you follow her to the Hall of Ancestors so quickly.”

  Ivard blinked, his eyes wild. Vi’ya slapped him lightly. “Run.”

  They started forward a few steps, Ivard stumbling. Lokri flung out his free arm and pulled the boy’s thin body against him, stopping when Vi’ya paused beside Brandon, who stared at the heavy steel door where the guards had stood.

  “Who were they guarding?” Brandon demanded.

  “Someone sleeping,” Vi’ya said, her eyes squeezed shut, her face contorted with pain. “We cannot stay to find out. It would take too long to burn through.”

  Brandon looked at the door, then down at the dog in his arms. At his knee, the other dog whined. He gave a short nod, and then they started running again. Lokri took as much of the boy’s weight as he could, and to his surprise Ivard slowly managed to gather some strength.

  “Doesn’t hurt—much,” Ivard mumbled. “Cold. But this thing...” He waved his green-banded wrist. “Burning.”

  “Vi’ya shot you with a painkiller,” Lokri said, trying to sound light. In case the boy’s shock broke. “That’ll keep you going until we get back to the ship. But stay out of the front line, eh?”

  Ivard gave him a weak grin just as the sounds of their pursuers drifted up the corridor behind them.

  “Exit?” Vi’ya said.

  Brandon lumbered forward, breathing harshly, the second dog trotting at his heels, muzzle lifted. “Here,” the Krysarch said hoarsely, stopping before a set of double doors. He turned around and pushed backwards through them.

  o0o

  Gelasaar hai-Arkad welcomed the dream, though a distant part of his mind ached at the sharpness of sensory memory: he knew it for a memory, one he visited often. He sat on the sand, the sun warm on his back and glinting in Ilara’s wind-teased hair as she looked out over the bay past the Havroy and the scattering of blossoms floating on the water. He listened as she retold the story of her first visit to Arthelion as a girl, never thinking she would one day live there...

  Ilara brought the boys down to the bay every year for a picnic. She always said it was for them, but Gelasaar knew it was for him: Ilara made over this day each year for them all to be together, away from court, servants, the inexorable weight of thousands of planets and Highdwellings dragging on his psyche... Those picnic memories were now his most precious belongings in a world where he had lost everything else. And so he relived every moment, every detail: Semion a young cadet, trying to hide his impatience... Galen listening intently, hands clasping his knees... Brandon throwing a piece of driftwood for the dogs to chase, their tails flying...

  Voices. Jac-fire?

  Gelasaar started out of sleep, his heart crowding his chest. The door to his cell was thick, but he was sure he heard voices. His ears strained to make out the words. A familiar timbre in one of the voices sent a surge of joy and hope through him.

  Then he came fully awake and clamped down on his emotions. No doubt it was another one of Barrodagh’s mind games. One night they had played back a recording of Ilara’s last meeting with Eusabian. His throat clenched at the memory of her dying shriek. Another night he’d heard Semion’s voice, the words cleverly altered to transform whatever the conversation had really been about into loathsome perversions. Sometimes he heard pawings at the door, and the whine of dogs, throwing him back to childhood, and the constant presence of Nemo’s Line. That was somehow the most subtle torture of all, because it was the most immediate and believable.

  He wasn’t even sure that Eusabian knew about these diversions of his aide-de-camp. He had indeed misjudged the depth of Eusabian’s hatred, but nothing in the man’s character indicated a taste for this manner of pointless pettiness.

  The voices ceased. After a moment, Gelasaar rolled over onto his side and tried to summon back the dream of his beloved and his boys, forever young...

  o0o

  Brandon plunged through the double doors into the large, automated kitchen of steel and dyplast, all but a few of the gleaming food generators silent and dark. The Rifters crowded behind him.

  “Wait!” Vi’ya called with low-voiced urgency.

  At the other end of the long room a gray-clad Dol’jharian soldier pushed through another set of double doors, carrying a tray with a carafe and several cups.

  The man gaped at Brandon, then past him at the Rifters.

  He dropped the tray with a crash as a bolt from Vi’ya’s jac caught him in the chest. He fell back through the door, giving them a glimpse of more soldiers before the door swung shut again. From beyond the barrier of the door, Brandon could hear chairs overturning and exclamations in Dol’jharian. From the corridor they’d just quit, he heard more voices.

  Trapped.

  Brandon looked around and spotted the mechwaiter hatch he’d been aiming for since he’d realized where they were under the Palace. He’d intended to send the wounded dog off on a mechwaiter while he and the Rifters continued to the transport tunnel. But now it might be their only means of escape.

  The hatch, a little over a meter high, was in the wall between two bulky refrigeration units. He closed the distance, his arms and shoulders aching with the weight of the dog. Behind him he heard the Rifters diving for cover.

  He laid the dog down—it was nearly unconscious now—and tried the hatch. It was locked. He found Ivard next to him, slumping down woozily. Ivard jerked up and winced when his back touched the wall.

  On the other side of the kitchen,Vi’ya checked the charge on her jac. (Now where?) she asked. Then, (Lokri, cover the far door. I’ll cover the one we came in through.)

  Brandon straightened up. (Ivard, wait here,) he boswelled. Aloud, he said “Plahtz” to the unwounded dog, which promptly dropped to its stomach, head up, ears alert.

  Brandon had ended up on the wrong side of the room. The main kitchen console was on the opposite wall. Before he could move toward it, the double door the Rifters had entered through swung open and a guardsman rolled through on the floor. He came up with his jac poised to fire.

  Nobody moved.

  The dining-room doors burst open and a flurry of jac-bolts sizzled through, followed by several guards. The first guardsman ran for cover, shouting loudly—the others stopped firing—the two sets of attackers had just enough time to recognize one another before Lokri and Vi’ya popped up and began shooting. Lokri had set his stolen jac to wide aperture, which produced a spectacular spray of white-hot metal fragments wherever it hit. Lokri whooped with exhilaration.

  The survivors scattered and took cover with a flurry of return fire, halting when someone shouted from beyond both doors.

  Then silence. In the middle of the floor
a wounded guardsman was moaning and twisting, crawling painfully toward his concealed fellows.

  Brandon took in the tension in Vi’ya’s face, which smoothed when she became aware of his gaze. Insight came: What does violent death feel like to a tempath? He understood why she had set her jac to minimum aperture: it either killed quickly or left a clean wound with minimum burns.

  Ivard’s feverish gaze roamed restlessly over the ceiling, his mouth agape as he breathed fast. Next to him the wounded dog panted. Pain, guilt, rage... Greywing’s arms flying up as she dropped dead... the Ivory Hall: personification of the greater defilement.

  Ivard’s head turned. His eyes met Brandon’s, their expression one of pain-hazed expectancy. The boy was waiting for him to lead them to safety.

  Need. Purpose.

  Another of his worm-shadows flitted across a wall. Vi’ya’s jaw clenched, and from beyond the barriers came a harsh susurrus of Dol’jharian mutterings. That worm is a lot more active than I remember programming it, Brandon thought. It’s almost as though it’s following us.

  (Ideas?) Vi’ya’s voice came.

  (This hatch opens on a bot tunnel for supply delivery and remote food service,) he replied. (If I can get it open, we can get out from between these squads and back on our way to the transport tunnel.)

  (We won’t be able to move very fast in there,) Vi’ya objected.

  (We’ll need a diversion.)

  Ivard was plucking fretfully at the Kelly ribbon embedded in his wrist. Brandon realized whose ribbon it had to be. The Archon.

  Fueled by fatigue and adrenaline, memory seized him: his first meeting with Lheri, Mho, and Curlizho as a boy, his fascination with the eccentric (to humans), ebullient sophonts, and later, the wonderful series of record chips venerated by the Kelly. Some were so old they were monochrome, of a venerable art form practiced since before the Exile. The ancients had called it by a name he couldn’t recall—it sounded like some sort of hand weapon for a martial art—and but Galen and Brandon had loved it.

  And I can use it now, he thought, assurance singing through his nerves. It was an utterly appropriate weapon against the Archon’s killers.

  He did not know he was grinning, he could only feel the sting of tears, until Lokri spoke in his inner ear from across the room. (We could all use a laugh right about now.)

  (I think I can arrange a suitable entertainment to keep our Dol’jharian friends occupied,) Brandon replied. (Cover me.)

  o0o

  Barrodagh’s comm chimed again. “What is it now?”

  “This is Kyltasz Jesserian. We have the intruders cornered in a service kitchen near the detention area. We took a number of casualties, including the two Tarkans guarding the Panarch.”

  Barrodagh jerked upright in his chair, horror seizing him. Had he misjudged the aim of the intruders? Had the looting been a diversion? Maybe it was a Panarchist rescue attempt. “Is the Panarch secure?”

  “Yes, I have now posted squads at either end of the Green Corridor, and am sending more to support the conscript forces that have trapped the intruders. The other high-rank Panarchists are secure. The intruders appear to have had no interest in them.”

  “Then what is their goal?” Barrodagh only realized he’d spoken aloud when the kyltasz hesitated. Barrodagh could sense unease in his scarred features. Is he seeing the shadows, too?

  “Senz-lo Evodh, his assistant, and their Tarkan guard are also dead,” Jesserian continued. “They were killed by an unknown weapon of great power.”

  “What kind of weapon?” Barrodagh demanded.

  Annoyance tightened Jesserian’s hard mouth. Barrodagh reminded himself that despite the soldier’s acceptance of him as a professional equal, he was still dealing with a Dol’jharian noble. He molded his face into an expression of respectful interest.

  “As I said, we do not know. It is some sort of terror weapon that explodes the victim’s brains through their eyes, without leaving any burns or entry wounds.” The kyltasz’s mouth flattened to a white line. That wasn’t annoyance. That was dread.

  Barrodagh’s throat soured. Any weapon that made a professional Dol’jharian soldier uneasy was one that he never wanted to face. Then he realized that Jesserian hadn’t mentioned the Gnostor Omilov.

  “What about the Panarchist?”

  “He has disappeared.”

  Barrodagh suppressed a tremor of fear as his hands began to sweat. Eusabian’s anger was more to be feared than any weapon. “Was there any indication of the information sought from the prisoner?” Perhaps Evodh had recorded something before he was killed.

  “No. The equipment was totally destroyed by jac-fire.”

  They’re going to ransom him. Barrodagh bit down hard on his cheek. Useless to assure himself that he’d taken every precaution to avoid providing data about the Heart of Kronos and its importance—perhaps it was his very care that had alerted Hreem. Because this had to be an attack ordered by Hreem. The arrival of this mystery ship at the same time as the Satansclaw was no coincidence: they had to have left Charvann’s system at the same time.

  “The prisoner may be with the intruders. His life is to be preserved at all costs. He has information demanded by the Avatar.”

  “It shall be done. I am sending in a squad in battle armor to finish them off. Since the looters appear to have only hand weapons, the armored squad should be able to overcome them easily without risk to the prisoner, if he is with them. As you were concerned about the objects they stole, do you wish to observe?”

  This is more than a strike at me. This is the opening in a deliberate attack. Hreem will use this Omilov to assure obtaining that battlecruiser... and if the rest of these damned Rifters see a successful strike at the very heart of the Avatar’s new demesne, there will be no controlling them.

  “Yes. I’ll join you in five minutes. Do not wait for me to begin the assault, but do not search the bodies until I arrive.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Barrodagh grabbed his compad and moved to the outer office. Anderic looked up from a flickering comic chip in mute question. Was he a part of the ruse? It was possible, though unlikely. Hreem despised Tallis. Best to be safe.

  “Stay here,” Barrodagh said. “I can’t answer for your life if you step outside this room.” He turned to Danathar. “If the Avatar calls for me, relay it to me. I don’t need to hear from anyone else until I return.”

  He left the office and directed one of the guards there to lead him to level one of blue-seven. The man’s face was tight with anxiety, his eyes flicking restlessly about as he led the Bori down the hall.

  What were those Ur-bedamned shadows? If his escort was any indication, the Dol’jharian soldiers had already decided.

  That’s all I need now: rumors of a haunting.

  Barrodagh would personally supervise Hreem’s Transfiguration once these fools were caught.

  o0o

  As Ferrasin watched, the screen flickered—then resolved itself into ordered ranks of data.

  An exhausted cheer went up.

  “We’re in. Let’s s-start a d-dump to our system,” Ferrasin said, fighting his stuttering tongue. Fatigue and excitement made his speech even slower than usual. “In c-case we fall out again.”

  He consulted another of his consoles, biting his words out carefully. “The surveillance system is the first priority. Have it ordered by rank.”

  Seconds later he stared in growing amazement at the first name on the list. Brandon nyr-Arkad? But he’s dead.

  Yet the system showed him in residence as of that evening. Ferrasin tapped rapidly on the keypad, gaze shifting from window to window, the computer following in eyes-on mode.

  ENTRY AT ADIT ROUGE 2640. That’s forty kilometers from the Palace. A still image windowed up, showing a small gazebo at the edge of a forest of immense trees. In another window a grid map located it with respect to the Rouge quadrant. He studied the map, then zoomed in on the ideograph for the gazebo. It had four stylized eyes on it. His finger
s twitched on the keys, and a window legend materialized.

  Imagers. Let’s see if we can get a live picture.

  ACCESS DENIED.

  He paused. A voice came over his shoulder. “That’s a top-level override. Any attempt to break it will probably bring the system back down for good.”

  “I know that,” he grumbled. Moments later he cursed loudly as the screen dissolved into garbage.

  “I told you,” said the tech.

  “I didn’t do anything,” shouted Ferrasin, his stutter momentarily overwhelmed by his anger.

  Then the pieces fit together. That ship. He must have come in on that ship. He tabbed the com button. “Get me senz-lo Barrodagh.”

  When the aloof voice of Barrodagh’s secretary answered, he stuttered, “I’ve g-g-got to speak to the senx-lo.”

  “Senz-lo Barrodagh is not here. He has left instructions to put no one save the Avatar through.”

  “But—” Ferrasin heard the whine in his own voice as he struggled desperately to get the words out. “But I’ve got critical information for him.”

  “The senx-lo has left instructions to put no one save the Avatar through,” Danathar said scornfully. He was the one who’d made loud comments about how the Dol’jharians exposed cretins and cripples at birth, which was why the Panarchists had lost a war before it had even started.

  Ferrasin sucked in a breath, and consciously tried to still his quivering tongue, but anger warred with anxiety to report the news. “Then t-t-t-tell me wh-whuh. Where he is—”

  “The senx-lo has left instructions to put no one save the Avatar through.”

  This is too important—maybe he’ll pass the information along himself. He tried to explain what he’d found, but his frustration and anger overwhelmed coherent speech. “The sh-sh-sh—” He stopped and tried again, though by now his entire body quivered like his tongue. “The K-k-k-kr-kr. . .”

  “If you’re finished playing with your lips, I have other tasks to attend to.” The secretary said in disgust and cut the connection.