Sun of Suns v-1

by Karl Schroeder

  "Get them!" Dentius began hastily clambering down the long pole, his lieutenants behind him. That left Venera and Aubri Mahallan pinned like targets between the ships.

  The deep thrum of engines signaled the appearance of five cylindrical shadows. The Severance, the Tormentor, the Unseen Hand, the Clarity, and the Arrest fell into a star formation around the Rook and its captor. Droning bikes and gunfire filled the air.

  The fires on the nets were going out. At the same time, the ropes connecting them tautened and the helpless men were drawn in until they were pressed against the hull of the Rook.

  Now the pole holding Venera and Mahallan wobbled and began to move. They were being drawn into the Rook, she thought in relief. It was better armored than Dentius's own ship. Moments later she found herself on the bridge with Mahallan, Dentius, and his lieutenants. One of them slammed the metal hatch and the horrible sounds coming from outside dampened somewhat.

  "Wait for it," said Dentius with a nervous chuckle. He pretended to count off seconds on his fingers. Before he reached ten, the sound of gunfire ceased.

  He blew out a sigh of relief. "We've lashed their men to our hull," he said with satisfaction. "The bastards know they can't fire on this ship or they'll hit their own crew. We've got 'em by the balls." He turned to the pilot. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  "If you try to leave they're likely to fire anyway," Venera pointed out. "They'll target the engines."

  Dentius shrugged angrily. "Who cares?" He turned to the boy who'd taken over the semaphore chair. "Send 'em a message. Tell 'em if they fire we'll start shooting the prisoners. The ones we lit up have gone out, right? Maybe they'll take that as a good sign." He rubbed his chin. "All we have to do is make the rendezvous and we're home free."

  Venera felt a languorous wave of spiteful pleasure wash over her. "No, Dentius, you're trapped," she said with a smile. "Just one rocket in the wrong place and this ship is going to explode."

  He had looked away from her and was about to say something to his men. Now Dentius turned, a quizzical look on his face. "What did you say?"

  "You really think I shot the bridge staff because they knew our destination?" She laughed. "They were going to scuttle the ship, Dentius. I stopped them. But after I did that, I armed all the charges myself—and broke off the key in the control box's lock." She pointed.

  Everybody turned to look at the inconspicuous metal panel on the bridge's inside wall. "Once the charges are armed, any kind of disturbance could set them off," she said. "They're supposed to be on a hair trigger."

  A new salvo of gunfire sounded outside. "That would be your men, shooting at the bikes," said Venera. "You know there's going to be return fire."

  One of the pirates was crouched over the control box. "It does appear to be a scuttling panel. Captain," he said. "And there's a key broken off in me lock."

  Dentius swore softly.

  "Close your mouth, you look like a fool," said Venera.

  "Belay that message!" Dentius dove for the semaphore chair. "Tell them we request a ceasefire!"

  "But… but…" Dentius's lieutenants looked at one another; at him; at Venera.

  "Those five ships have no idea how fragile the Rook is right now," Venera pointed out. "And they've just watched their own men be set on fire. Do you really think they're going to be polite?" She shook her head. "It's time to come to terms, gentlemen.You can always threaten to blow us all to smithereens, so your situation's not hopeless. In fact, I'm betting you can escape with your skins and maybe even your own ship. But you'd better start talking fast."

  Dentius's eyes were bulging and his face was bright red. He drew his sword and launched himself toward her.

  She ducked behind the navigator. "You'd better negotiate with my husband, the admiral," she said quickly. "He's, ah, waiting outside. And Dentius, he'll be more inclined to accept your proposal if he knows I'm alive."

  Dentius snarled. Then he turned to the semaphore man. "Send this: 'Request immediate ceasefire. Admiral to negotiate disengagement.' And somebody tell our men to stop firing!"

  He glared down the length of his sword at Venera. "Be as smug as you want right now, lady. But I'm putting a price on your head that'll have every thug and cutthroat in Slipstream after you. I'll see you dead in a year, one way or another."

  She shrugged out of the navigator's grip. "It'll be just like life back home, then," she said insouciantly. "But I wouldn't count on you living to put out that contract. Not once your own men are done with you."

  There was silence after that, and then the outside hatch was opened and one of the lieutenants went out to fetch Admiral Chaison Fanning.

  * * * * *

  SLEW, THE HEAD carpenter, nodded in greeting as Hayden eased the bike into the hangar. The man was standing with the hatch gang, who all waved. One of them even grinned at Hayden.

  Come to think of it, there hadn't been the usual delay in getting the hatch opened when he returned from his search run.

  What was all that about?

  Hayden was bone weary, having logged ten hours in the air at his own insistence. All the Rook's bikes were out looking for the pirates; so far there had been no sign of them. Dentius and his mates had made a clean getaway, having negotiated a small head start as part of their terms of disengagement. None of the other ships had been seen either; Travis's theory was that they had a hideout somewhere among the icebergs.

  Venera's racing bike was riddled with bullet holes and made an odd whisting noise now when it ran. It hadn't lost any performance, though. The thing was developing enough character that Hayden was beginning to think he should give it a name.

  "Here, let me." One of the hatch gang whose name he didn't know reached out to help him hook the bike to its winch-arm. Hayden blinked at him in surprise.

  "Thanks." He didn't know what else to say, so he ducked his head at the gang and left the hangar. Sick bay was at the back of the ship; he went that way.

  A small mob of airmen, silhouettes in the lantern light, crowded around the angular box that was the sick bay. Somebody must have died, Hayden drought—and in a sudden rush of anxiety he elbowed his way through the crowd.

  But no, he heard Martor's voice well before he got to the door. The boy was awake and talking. Not just talking: his voice wove up and down in pitch and volume, like a master storyteller's.

  "… So we's got this bag of mines, now, see. And Hayden sez, 'Let's take 'em and blow those icebergs!' So there we are weaving our way in and out of the rest of the mines, voom voom, and we're in the clouds. And sure as itches, there's this great awful wall of ice comes at us out of the mist. Got this little tiny neck holding it to the wall of the world and Hayden sez, 'Let her rip!' so I do. Boom—ow! Oh, that smarts."

  "In my report," came the surgeon's dry voice, "I shall state that Master Martor died of an excess of hand gestures."

  "Yeah," somebody shouted over the laughter, "tone down the jumping about, boy. I want to hear how this ends."

  Hayden paused at the doorway, uncertain of whether to go in. He didn't like that Martor had been talking about him, although that might explain why the hatch gang had been so polite just now.

  Suddenly worried about what the boy had been saying, he tapped the man in the doorway on the shoulder. "Well, here he is, the man hisself," said the airman as he shifted to let Hayden past. He glided into the sick bay and grabbed the back of a cot to stop himself.

  Wounded men tiled the floor, walls, and ceiling of the place. Nearly all of them were awake and apparently listening to Martor, who had pride of place, propped like some parody of a doorman by the entrance to the surgery.

  "Hayden, I was just telling the guys how we blew the icebergs and saved the fleet!" Martor's ferret like face was twisted into a quite uncharacteristic smile. "The pirates flew right into 'em, blam blam blam!" He laughed and immediately winced. "And then," he said to the general crowd, "he sez, 'Now let's go back and save the Rook!' Just the two of us, can you imagine? But he—"
r />   "I did no such thing," Hayden said sternly. "I wanted to get the hell out of there."

  "But Hayden," stage-whispered Martor. His eyes darted at the listening men. "Tell 'em how we attacked the pirates, huh?"

  Hayden crossed his arms and gave his best adult's frown at Martor. "I don't remember us attacking the pirates, because after we saw that the Rook had been taken, this little snake rapped me over the head with a rocket when I tried to fly him away to safety."

  He couldn't have said what he expected, but Hayden was vastly surprised as the assembled men broke into peals of laughter.

  Someone clapped him on the shoulder. "Ah, Martor, I wondered just how far your lying instinct would take you this time," said one of the officers. "Too bad you had a witness this time."

  "But it's true about the icebergs," Hayden said quietly. "At least—we did blow them. I can't vouch for whatever else he might have worked into the tale."

  "Like the emergency stop at the whorehouse?" someone asked.

  "Or the sword fight with the hundred pirates on bikes?"

  "Or the—"

  "I never said that stuff!" Martor tried to get out of his bed, grimaced, and let the elastic sheet flatten him back against the wall.

  "This has gone too far!" shouted the surgeon. "The lad really is going to bust a kidney if you all keep this up. Out! Out! That goes for you too," he said, waggling a finger at Hayden.

  Hayden couldn't suppress his grin. "Since I know you're not dead, I'll be on my way," he said to Martor. "But no more lies about me, you hear?"

  "Yes, sir," said the boy sullenly.

  Hayden headed for Aubri Mahallan's little workshop. All around him the ship was abuzz with talk. He knew this, he'd seen it before after the few one-sided fights he'd been in when he was a pirate himself. The trauma of the battle and captivity had to be exorcised somehow; there were some fights, the settling of scores, but mostly, the airmen were exchanging their stories. In the process they were building a whole mythology around the battle.

  It seemed that Hayden had unwittingly placed himself at the heart of the myth.

  He nodded at another airman who had casually saluted him on the way past, and knocked on the door to Mahallan's wooden cube. There was no answer.

  Was she hiding? Hay den hadn't talked to her since the battle. He had only seen her, looking starkly grim and pale, her hair a rat's-nest and her fingernails chewed to the quick. She had avoided his eyes. He was worried about what might have been done to her by the pirates, but so far that part of the incident had not been worked into any shipboard stories.

  "She ain't there," said the airman who had saluted him. Hayden turned, eyebrow raised.

  "Up at the bow, talking to the lady," said the airman. Venera Fanning was another hero of the day; her quick thinking in palming Captain Sembry's key when the pirates burst into the bridge and killed everyone had ultimately saved the Rook. A craftsman was apparently on the bridge right now, delicately teasing the broken key out of the lock to the scuttling panel.

  "Lucky thing the admiral gave a good account of himself in the fight," someone had said earlier, "else we'd all be saluting his wife instead of him."

  "Well go on," said the airman now. "They'll be wanting you anyway. We're arriving at that weird tourist city, and Mrs. Fanning wants to visit it."

  * * * * *

  ADMIRAL CHAISON FANNING felt very small in this place. He didn't like the sensation at all.

  The tourist "station" was really a city that dwarfed any place he'd seen—or even heard of—in Virga. It spread for miles across the ceiling of Virga, a glittering chandelier of towers like fiery icicles, globular dwellings hanging from long tethers, and vast spinning cylinders, each one three or four times the size of the towns of Rush. It was to the axis of one of these cylinders that the Rook had gone, under Aubri Mahallan's instruction. Now Chaison walked the streets of a city that seemed more delirium dream than reality.

  Some cunning of artifice had hidden the shape of the town; it didn't appear to be rolled up and spun, as it really was. Above Chaison was an endless sky of blue, and the city's confectionery towers were laid out on a seemingly flat surface. The streets converged in perspective until they blurred into the hectic detail of buildings, people, and floating unrecognizable glowing things. Signs, some of those—but more were mobile, and some, he'd noticed, could speak. The people were just as bizarre. They were dressed—when dressed at all—in sloppy imitations of Virga's fashions. They came in all sizes and skin tones, including unlikely shades like blue and vermilion. They crowded the streets in their millions, gabbling and waving their hands at faint squares of flickering light that buzzed around their heads like bees. Images flashed across these squares like heat lightning and everywhere there was a chaos of noise.

  He and Venera had to hurry to keep up with Aubri Mahallan, who stalked through the crowd with her head down and her shoulders hunched. The strange gatekeeper who had met the Rook at the docks had insisted that no more than two natives accompany her. "Take no pictures," he had said in a sibilant accent while smaller versions of himself—identical right down to the clothes—perched on his shoulder or ran laughing down the hall behind him. "Take no items, leave anything you want."

  "We've come to recover a work of art loaned to one of your museums two hundred years ago," Venera had said. "It's ours, not yours."

  He'd raised an eyebrow while one of his smaller selves stuck out its tongue. "Take it up with the museum," he'd said. "Not my area of concern."

  Chaison quickened his pace until he was walking abreast of Mahallan. She still looked drawn and grim. He cast about for something to say, finally deciding to directly confront her most likely complaint. "I had to let the pirates go," he said. "We might have reneged on our bargain and blown them up as they left, but then they might have gotten a rocket or two into the Rook at the same time."

  After a few moments she looked over at him, an expression of distaste on her face.

  "Is that why?" she asked. "Because you were afraid they'd blow up the Rook?"

  "It's a sufficient reason," he said. "But no, that's not all. We did make an agreement. And while my entire crew and all of my officers howled for revenge, I am bound as a gentleman to keep my word. Even more importantly man that, I just had no desire to cause any more deaths this week."

  Mahallan mulled this over, but the dark expression on her face had not lifted. "Are you happy to be back among your own people?" he asked her.

  "No."

  The silence drew out. Clearly companionable solicitations were not going to work. "Well, you've seen the ships of the fleet in a real engagement," he said after a while. "If your opinion about the usefulness of your devices has changed at all, I hope you'll tell me."

  Mahallan glared at him. "Is that all it was to you? An 'engagement'? Something to be picked apart afterward, analyzed and stuffed for future consideration?"

  Her anger didn't impress Chaison. "As a matter of fact, it's a requirement of my position that I view it that way. Why? Because understanding everything that happened is the only way that I can hope to save more lives next time we're forced to fight. And saving lives is my job, Lady Mahallan. I bend every effort to achieve military objectives with the least possible loss of life. That is why we are in this city, walking these streets, isn't it?"

  She stopped and pointed down a shadowed and empty side street. "There.The entrance to the Museum of Virgan Cultures storage depot." Then she took off down the narrow way at a renewed pace.

  "I—I'm sorry you had to be part of that, Ms. Mahallan," he said before she could get out of earshot. "The incident has been hard on us all."

  "Don't bother," said Venera cheerfully as she took him by the arm and sauntered after Mahallan. "She's bitter. People enjoy being bitter. It gives them license to act childishly."

  "Aren't you the philosopher," he said with a laugh. "Are you unscathed by, ah, recent events?"

  "I wouldn't say mat," she said, glancing down.

  "Denti
us didn't touch you, did he? I know you told me not when we were negotiating with him, but you knew I'd have run him through if I thought he had."

  She looked him in the eye. "He didn't lay a finger on me."

  "I didn't want you to come," he said. "Things like this happen. This is no society outing, Venera."

  "I coped."

  At the end of the street was a reassuringly real-looking door. Mahallan was waiting impatiently for them in the shadows.

  "Admiral and Lady Fanning, this is Maximilian Thrace, the curator of the museum," she said in a voice that had suddenly gone sweet.

  Beside her hovered a ghost. That, at least, was Chaison's impression of the apparition; he could see right through it. Thrace bore many resemblances to a human being, but there was no color to him, only stark white and shades of gray. His head was disproportionately large and he had huge eyes. "Max is a Chinese Room persona from a very old and respected game-church," Mahallan whispered. Chaison nodded politely.

  He bowed to the vision. As he was straightening, Venera said, "We've come to recover an artifact you've had on display here for a long time. It's called the…" She turned to Chaison, one eyebrow eloquently raised.

  "The Winding Tree of Fate," he said with a smile. "It's important to a small but influential group of artists hi Slipstream, our home. Our documents show that it was placed on loan here, two centuries ago."

  Thrace's frown was magnificently overdone, a great downturning of the mouth that distorted his whole jaw. "You wish us to return all representations, versions, models, simulations, and copies of the piece? That could be difficult, it will require viral legislation that could take months—" Mahallan was shaking her head.

  "We just want the original."

  Thrace's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "The what?"