"It's pretty late for you to worry about that. Chaison and I talked about it months ago. Mahallan's not the only person who knows something of old technologies; we had a professor at the University build this." She reached into her tunic and brought out a simple metal tube. It had a switch on its side and a single glass eye, like a bull's-eye lantern. "When I throw this switch, nothing happens. If Mahallan does her job, I'm told that a light will go on inside the tube when you switch it." She flipped the switch. Nothing happened.
"Does she know about this thing?" asked Carrier. Venera snorted derisively.
"No. Why would I tell her?" Idly, she turned the switch again.This time, the glass eye immediately glowed red. Venera yelped in surprise and let go of the rod, which tumbled slowly in the air between them. "Well," she said. "Well, well, well."
Hayden watched as the two of them hovered over the tube, talking excitedly. Venera's little indicator didn't impress him; he was thinking about his experience with the wish-mirror. The glass panels were scattered throughout this building; he tried to remember the words Aubri had used to light hers.
"Listen," he said, "the bike is full of bullet holes. If somethings broken we need to know now, while there's still time to fix it. I'm not sure this place is going to still be safe for us once the suns start coming back on." Mother and Father had talked a lot about radiation; he remembered that. Even if it remained cool in here throughout the day, it might be lethally radioactive while the suns were operating.
Carrier was nodding. "Go check it out, then."
Hayden took one more look at Aubri. She was perched in midair, staring at the glowing images on the screen. Her face was masklike, expressionless.
Heart pounding, Hayden slipped under a wall and away from the plots of Slipstream.
* * * * *
"WHEN YOU'RE OUT of ideas, just give another order." Chaison Fanning recalled the cynical advice of one of his academy teachers as me helmsman moved to execute his latest command. The expeditionary force was sweeping the air around Sargasso 44 using sophisticated spiral search patterns. He had all the bikes out hunting for contrails. It was all he knew to do. Meanwhile he retained a mask of professional calm, as though he'd expected this and had a plan. He had no plan. There was nothing left but to run for home.
"Bike brigade sixteen reports no sightings, sir," reported the semaphore team. Chaison nodded. There was nothing but gray mist outside the forward portholes. The clouds on the edge of winter were to have been his greatest advantage if he'd succeeded in luring the Falcon Formation ships out of their den. Ironically, that dense pack of wraithlike mists was now obscuring any chance he had of finding where the enemy had gone.
The light outside the portholes was fading: night was coming to Falcon. The Formation synchronized its day and night cycle with Candesce, so the Sun of Suns must be going out now too. If Aubri Mahallan had done her job, in a few minutes the subtle distortions of space-time ringing out from Candesce would cease. This night, technologies long banned in Virga would become possible here again. Radar might now work.
The radar man Mahallan had trained was looking at him expectantly Chaison gave a half-smile. Why not? "Begin radar sweep," he said, chin on his fist. It was nice to know that his voice was still calm, despite his desperate disappointment.
Even now the newly minted Falcon dreadnought might be bearing down on Rush. There was nothing in Slipstream that could stop it. The pilot richly deserved to be deposed—Chaison knew he would get no argument from his men on that score—but Falcon Formation would eat everything if it conquered Slipstream. They had done it before: art would be repainted according to the arbitrary standards of the bureaucracy, literature rewritten to match the ideology of the Collective. Architecture would be chipped away and eventually, even the language itself distorted to match Falcon's vision of a perfect world.
A horrible sick feeling filled Chaison. He wondered if the citizens of Aerie had felt that way when the pilot had uttered his ultimatum to them.
A younger Chaison Fanning would never have considered such a thing.
"It's working!" He shot the radar man an annoyed look. "Sorry, sir. I mean, we have a signal. The screen is clear! Look."
Despite himself Chaison was intrigued. Aubri Mahallan had made toy versions of the system that showed how things were supposed to look. Now as he unstrapped himself and glided over he saw little glowing smudges on the two green circles of the display, very similar to the ones Mahallan had displayed. She had drilled the bridge staff in the meanings of the various shapes, and so Chaison had no difficulty in recognizing the other ships of the expeditionary force as spindle-shaped lozenges of lighter green. The two screens showed the results from rotating beams that were at right angles to one another. Comparing them, you could roughly guess at the position of objects in three-dimensional space.
The bridge staff were all staring over his shoulder. Chaison ignored them. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at a broad smudge well behind the centerpoint that represented the Rook.
"I believe that's the sargasso, sir."
"Hmm." He stared at the display for a few seconds. "All right then," he said, "if these shapes are us," he pointed, "and that shape is the sargasso," he pointed again, "then what, exactly, is that?"
Right at the edge of the displays, a collection of tiny dots scintillated. One by one they were leaving the screen, which suggested they were moving very quickly.
Chaison and the radar man looked at one another. Then the admiral jumped back to his seat. "All hands! Prepare for maximum acceleration! Recall all bikes! Semaphore team, order all ships to activate their radar! Tell them, if you want to have a place to spend that treasure you're wearing, then follow us now!"
* * * * *
AFTER CHECKING OUT the bike and spending an hour or so repairing it, Hayden drifted back into the corridors of the station. He dithered over whether to look in on Aubri—but she had insisted that only she could find a way to excise the dark thing coiled in her throat. He didn't want to interrupt her in that crucial task. No, he had his own responsibility, and he had best fulfill it.
He found a small room far from the place where Aubri was working. It was dark here, but there was a command mirror on the wall. He strapped himself opposite it and tried to remember the words Aubri had spoken to activate hers.
It took several tries, but soon the rectangle began to glow. "Huh." Hayden couldn't believe he was actually here, in Candesce, doing something no one had ever told him was even possible. Controlling the Sun of Suns itself.
The twisting ballet of Candesce's night machines revealed itself to him and he scanned the air for the things he sought. It seemed like many years since he had played in the half-built sun while his mother ordered construction crews about. Not that long a time, in adult terms. He remembered the day the precious inner components had arrived, shipped at horrendous expense and in secret from the principalities of Candesce. The crates with their exotic stamps and lettering were more interesting to Hayden than their contents, but he-remembered those as well. Now, he examined the interior of Candesce looking for similar mechanisms.
From what he'd seen earlier, Hayden had surmised that the crystalline cylinders were factories of a sort, manufacturing new pieces for the suns. Now as he examined them—the display zooming into fine focus if he wished it to, zooming out again just as easily—he began to understand the logic of the Sun of Suns. Those tiny glittering clouds spiraling into the cylinders, they were the bugs Aubri had called tankers, only here they swarmed by the million. They were bringing in supplies. Inside the cylinders and unfolded metal flowers, the metal foremen and laborers of Candesce forged new wicks for the sun, and when they were done they handed them off to other machines that installed them.
All that Hayden had to do was locate the pieces he wanted and then imagine them being brought here. Park them outside the door, he commanded. With mounting excitement he watched as his orders were obeyed.
No wonder no one was allowed in here! Y
ou could destroy Candesce on a whim from this place; and if Candesce went, so would go all of Virga.
The thought was disturbing. Hayden's excitement soured as he watched the slow parade of machines sidle through the air toward the visitor's center. This was too easy—there was too much power to be had here. It made him wonder what Venera Fanning would do once this episode was over. Or what the Pilot of Slipstream would do if he demanded and received the Candesce key from the Farmings.
After assuring himself that the machines were doing as he'd asked, Hayden left the little room. He flipped over and under walls, around floors, hurrying back to the entrance and his bike.
Double-check the bike to make sure it was flight-worthy. Tie the sun components he'd found into the cargo net and tie it to the back of the bike. And then… rehearse what he was going to say to the others when they saw what he'd acquired.
They would need convincing—particularly Carrier. His plan was to get to the man through his mistress, Venera. If he could convince her that these components were his just payment for his part in this adventure, then maybe she could restrain Carrier.
He flipped around a corner and spotted the entrance.
It was open.
Hayden slowed down and cautiously drew his sword. Had the Gehellens somehow managed to force the door? That didn't seem likely; why now, after so many centuries? Or maybe—the thought gave him a chill—maybe now that it was unlocked, anyone could get in here. He hadn't thought of that. Were the Gehellen airmen inside?
Hayden could see the first of the packages he'd ordered bobbing in the darkness outside. Despite his worry, the sight made him smile. He looked around the room. There was the bike, seemingly untouched. There was no one else in sight. He moved carefully toward the door.
Carrier swung in from outside to brace himself on the two sides of the entrance. Night was at his back. "So there you are," he said. "I wondered what exactly you were going to try. Of course, I had no doubt that you'd try something."
"This doesn't concern you," said Hayden.
"A new sun for Aerie does concern me." Carrier drew his sword.
* * * * *
THE ROOK ROARED through blackness with exhilarating recklessness. Chaison imagined statutes and naval regulations fluttering in the ship's wake, centuries of rules about how fast to travel in cloud all broken in an instant. He pushed the Rook to one hundred miles an hour, then two hundred, and watched the dots of the Falcon Formation navy grow into circles, then distinct ship shapes.
The bridge crew were white-faced. Travis perched next to Chaison, his lips drawn thin while his fingers gripped the edge of the chair. Logic said they would run into something at this speed—but of everyone in the bridge, it was the radar man who was now the calmest. "Bear two degrees to port, five south," he would say, or "six degrees starboard right now." The pilot, flying blind, obeyed with frantic sweeps of the wheels.
"Getting secondary signals," said the radar man abruptly. "Just like she said."
"All right." Chaison smiled grimly. "You know what to do."
Falcon's fleet was creeping slowly through an ocean of cloud; nobody could tell how far the mist extended. He didn't need the cloud, of course, it was night anyway. But if they could strand the target vessels of the Falcon fleet in opaque fog they would still be vulnerable when daylight returned.—If the battle still raged at that point.
Meanwhile, he had to deny the enemy all their other assets. "Line up on those bikes," he said. '"Ware our other ships, they'll be doing the same. We're going to scrape the sentries off Falcon's fleet like old scabs."
The engines whined as they accelerated one more notch. There was a sudden dark flicker outside the portholes and then bang! The ship twitched to the impact, but ran on.
Chaison winced. They were running over the Falcon Formation's sentry bikes. As when the Tormentor's bikes had flown ahead to watch for obstacles—unsuccessfully, in that case—the Falcon fleet was feeling its way by sending them ahead and to the sides. Lacking radar, the bikes were its only means of safe travel through darkness and cloud.
Another crash against the hull, and another. On the radar Chaison could see the shapes of Rook's sister ships overtaking the dots of Falcon bikes, which simply vanished as they passed.
Ahead was the huge but indistinct blob that must be the new dreadnought—a weapon of terror no one from Slipstream had ever seen except in blurry photos. Ironically, they were unlikely to see it now. If all went well the men of Slipstream would never make visual contact with the enemy they were destroying.
The Rook swept out and around in a great circle. Chaison was reassured to see no clear air ahead as they came around for another pass. "Prepare to deploy mines," he said.Then, "Brake, brake!" He heard the flutter-chop of the braking sails being thrust out of the hull and then he was nose-down, Travis clinging to the back of the chair as the Rook groaned and began to decelerate. "Engines off!"
In sudden silence save for the rush of wind and the whuffing breath of the braking sails, the Rook slid past the invisible dreadnought and directly into its path.
"Deploy mines! Out out out now now now!"
There was the sound of wind in open hangar doors, and a distant rattle like some monster clearing its throat.
Then thunder.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
A RIBBON OF Hayden's blood twisted in the center of the room, as if blindly trying to find him. Carrier had connected with a slash to his cheek.
"Wait!" Hayden backed away. The man's first lunge had taken him by surprise, but he had his own sword out now. Yes, it would be satisfying to counterattack Carrier, who had killed his family; so much more satisfying to change his mind.
"You still have a chance to save yourself," said Hayden as Carrier braced himself for another leap.
"Save myself?" Carrier laughed. "I'm the better swordsman by far!"
"That's not what I mean. I'm talking about your son."
Carrier's face went ashen white. "Wh—"
"You betrayed him! Betrayed him and had him killed. And it eats away at you. Your life has been barren since that moment, hasn't it? Anyone can see it in the way you walk, hear it in the tone of your voice. I just didn't know why, until the other night."
"My life's not your concern," grated Carrier. "Look to your own."
"You don't believe there's any way you could make up for what you did to him. I'm saying there is. Can you even imagine such a tiling anymore? There is."
Carrier visibly fought to control himself. "No."
"How would your son feel if he knew that, in the end, you took back your choice?—That you let his project succeed?"
Now Carrier was silent, his eyes wide.
"Slipstream will leave Aerie in a few years. Why not leave a viable nation behind? That was all he wanted. Let me bring back the pieces of a new sun for my people; it won't be ready in time to be a threat to you. Why not? Your son's spirit will be reborn in that light. You'll have him back in that way. It's not too late."
Carrier lowered his sword, his face eloquently puzzled at a possibility he'd never even considered.Then, gradually, Hayden saw his features harden again, as if in the end his guilt were all he was really comfortable with.
"Nice try!" he shouted, and then he leaped again.
* * * * *
FOUR SLIPSTREAM CRUISERS glided silently through the dark. Horns and gunshots sounded in discontinuous bedlam, but in the impenetrable night it was impossible to put direction or distance to any of the sounds.
The courses of the cruisers began to diverge; observers on one ship watched the other silhouettes flicker and fade into the clouds. Now odd objects began twirling past, momentarily flame-lit: men, their limbs akimbo; smouldering flinders; the crumpled rings of military bikes. They shot by the ships with frightening speed, yet it was not they that moved, but the ships.
An order went out: brake! The cruiser strained and shook as the shuttlecock vanes of the braking sails tumbled into the airstream.
Next cam
e the hardest thing. It was drilled into the minds and reflexes of naval gunnery teams never to fire a rocket blindly. Once loosed, ordnance just kept on going and in any military engagement in populated air, shots that missed the enemy would eventually hit another friendly ship—or civilians.
For weeks Admiral Fanning had tried to undo this training. Now the rocket teams waited tensely for the order, uneasily watching each other, the walls, the rocket racks—anything but the depthless black outside the square firing ports. When the order came it was a shock, however expected it had been. "Ten degrees by forty-three!" barked the officer at the speaking tube. The team cranked the racks around and up. "Fire!"
Sere lines of orange light leapt into the mist—five, ten, fifteen in less than a second. Backwashing fumes billowed over the team. Used to this, nobody coughed or moved. Mist swallowed the contrails.
The cruiser's engines whined into life; it was already turning by the time chattering bangs indicated a hit. By the time the enemy triangulated on the incoming rockets' contrails and fired back, the Rook would be gone.
Chaison Fanning looked up from the radar screens. Travis was staring at the glowing green circles, shaking his head minutely and! muttering. Chaison caught his eye and smiled.
"Look at them all," said the officer. Travis had circles under his eyes; evidently his injured arm was giving him trouble but he hadn't complained, probably hadn't even noticed.
Look at them all. The navy of Falcon Formation spread away into indeterminacy in all directions; knots, clusters, and clouds of ships of j all sizes and designations. The Rook was weaving recklessly through them at two hundred miles an hour, a falcon among pigeons. The enemy would see the glow of the cruiser's engines for seconds at a time as it lunged out of nothing and before they could train their J weapons on it, it would be gone again.
"Admiral, sir!" He glanced back to see the boy Martor saluting him from the doorway. "Sir, we've had to restrain Slew."
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