The Phoenix in Flight (20 page)

Torigan: The Archonic Enclave.

A subdued murmur rose from the crew. The scene had been
recorded from ground level—the Rifters assigned to Torigan had evidently not
had too much trouble landing. But now the Archon’s forces were resisting
strenuously. Across the expanse of a wide public square, its gleaming white
surface now littered with burning vehicles and the anonymous huddled lumps of
fallen combatants, a group of magnificent buildings was the focus of a vicious
firefight. The brilliant threads of lazjacs and the thicker, somewhat blurry
bolts from firejacs converged across the square and were answered in kind. An
occasional blue-white vortex of energy, slow-moving but deadly, marked the
replies of plasmoid cannons. The noise was shatteringly intense. There were no
people visible—the square was no place for fragile human flesh.

In the midst of the buildings loomed a vast geodesic dome,
glittering gold in the hot sunlight, its form shimmering in the heat rising
from the burning wrecks in the square.

“That’s the Mycorium,” commented Dyasil. “I visited it once.
Weird place.”

Hreem waved him to silence as a small shape in the
green-blue sky bulleted past, streaks of missile fire raining down from it on
the defending positions. The last missile hit the dome: the golden shape
crumpled inward in almost slow motion, a strange fog or mist billowing skyward
from its dark interior.

“Stupid blits!” said Hreem in disgust.

Erbee looked confused. “Why’s that?”

The defending fire was falling off rapidly now. Across the
square, men could be seen running toward the attacking Rifters, weaponless,
leaping and twisting bizarrely, their forms strangely blurred.

“That was the fungus collection of the Archonei of Torigan,”
said Dyasil. “Toadstools and all sorts of slimy blunge from all over the
Thousand Suns. Stupid thing to keep in the middle of a city. The Panarch tried
to get her to move it into space.”

“Now they’ll have to use full armor and decon chambers if
they want to get any loot,” Hreem said, guffawing. “The whole city’ll be
armpit-deep in crawling slimes and man-eating mushrooms, or whatever it was the
crazy old bitch kept in there.”

“Pretty close, Cap’n.” Dyasil’s shudder was audible in his
voice. “She used ’em for the Local Justice Option. There’re vids of the
executions.”

On the screen the battle was over. From the fallen bodies of
the defenders blobby columns of multihued slime wavered toward the smoky sky,
like pillars of rotten cheese. The bridge was silent as the scene faded out,
someone leaving hurriedly.

The viewscreen showed space again. Below appeared a planet,
its surface blurred by the energies of an activated Shield. The caption
scrolled up
—Minerva—
causing a buzz of excited comment. This was the
planet reserved exclusively for the Panarchic Academy and its support
population, training center for the Panarch’s military forces.

“This will be good!” said someone.

Erbee’s console bleeped. The lanky Rifter slapped a pad and
looked down at his console. “Cap’n! Emergence pulse... five light-seconds.”

The other Rifters on the bridge scrambled to their
positions.

Hreem slapped the jump pad beside him, feeling the faint
subsonic pulse as the fiveskip blipped briefly. The main screen blanked to a
view of space. The screen shimmered as the computer located the intruder—in the
center, a translucent blue-white sphere of light dissipated against the stars.

Hreem kept his hand poised over the jump pad. “Pili! Give me
shields and lock on targeting. Ready a skipmissile. Erbee. ID?”

A tense moment later: “Incoming, Cap’n. Rift Sodality code:
it’s the
Satansclaw.”

“About time! Cancel that, Pili. Dyasil, general broadcast...”
Hreem caught himself, remembering that the damn hyperwave broadcast to
everybody. Only one-time ciphers would be sure protection against Barrodagh
listening in—
The less that slug knows, the better
—and he hadn’t bothered
setting them up. “... EM-cast: all ships jump to second rendezvous point and
close to within a light-second for EM conference.” Despite practice during the
Lith’s long sequestration, he still wasn’t used to the new communications
terminology the hyperwave made necessary, especially in a fleet where not all
the ships had one.

It took a few minutes to get to the second rendezvous, and
further delay while the ships closed in, but his relief at being well away from
the beacon signal eased Hreem’s impatience, until it became obvious that Tallis
was late again.

At the nav console, Bargun and another tech were bent over
the little screen, still watching Dyasil’s recording, eager anticipation on
their faces.

‘Bargun!” snapped Hreem. “You got that first jump in-system
plotted?”

“Yeah. If we’re more’ n half a light-second off I’ll eat my
console. But Dward and me want to see some of those spit-and-polish nackers at
the Academy get flamed.”

“If we’re off more than that, you’ll wish I gave you the
choice of eating your console, so cut that chatzing recording off and set up
the jump. Anyway, Neyvla-Khan and his clan don’t take chances—once the Shield’s
down they’ll just stand off in orbit and slag the surface. Only a fool would
land on a planet full of Academy-trained fighters.”

The viewscreen slowly segmented itself into a number of
windows as the captains of the rest of the Rifter ships joined the conference.

Finally, Tallis Y’Marmor’s pop-eyed face appeared, but it
took a few seconds for his eyes to focus on Hreem. Tallis grinned, his larynx
bobbing as he swallowed nervously. Hreem snorted with exasperation—
The
stupid
blit’s still five light-seconds out.

“Sorry I’m late, Hreem,” Tallis began, “but my fiveskip’s
all chatzed up and we’re having trouble finding the problem.”

“Y’Marmor, you blunge-brain,” Hreem yelled, “get yourself in
closer so we can talk without waiting for you to hear us!”

Y’Marmor’s blundering explanation continued for another ten
seconds, while Hreem fumed and the other faces on the screen grinned. “... so
we took...”
He stopped and glared at Hreem. “I just told you, I can’t
control it that fine! We’re coming in under geeplane—it’ll only take a few
minutes.”

“Forget it, Y’Marmor. Just listen and keep your mouth shut.
If you have any questions, ask ’em at the end.”

Hreem shifted his attention to the rest. “All right, you’ve
got some of the details so far. Here’s how we’re gonna handle the attack now
that Tallis is here.” The captains gazed back at him with anticipation.

“First jump is to twenty light-minutes out and over. Then
the
Lith
’ll
jump in just short of the skip barrier and take out
one of the resonators. That’ll leave the way clear for the rest of you to skip
in close to Charvann after the field collapses back to normal radius—wait for
my signal. When you skip in, take out whatever ships you see. Don’t take
prizes—blast ’em all. We don’t want to overlook any naval ships. Remember,
Novograth
and
Satansclaw:
your skipmissiles are hotter than anything the
Navy’s got, but your shields and everything else are the same as ever. The rest
of you don’t have any advantage except surprise, so shoot first! Any questions
so far?”

As soon as he asked the question, Hreem knew what was
coming. Everyone knew the weakness of the fiveskip: get too close to a
planetary-sized gravity well—inside radius—in fivespace, and you ended up
inverted in three dimensions. It was a spectacularly messy fate that was the
subject of many a late-night bilge-banging session. On Charvann, the resonance
field extended radius to second lunar orbit, if Hreem’s attack failed...

Sure enough, one of the captains had to ask. “What if they
get the field back up?”

“Then you’ll end up staring at the inside of your own head!”
snarled Hreem. “They can’t. RiftNet says Charvann doesn’t have a backup. Costs
a lot of money and the stupid blits preferred to spend it on teacup
appreciation or some such blunge for the university instead. Anyway, after we
mop up, the
Novograth
will take on the Shield while
Lith
and
Satansclaw
keep a lookout in case any other Navy ships show up.”

“This might be a good time to remind everyone about
long-ranging, just in case
Korion
is in-system,” interrupted
Esteel
’s
captain, Kherrimun, a younger man who Hreem had once encountered on Rifthaven,
to their mutual dissatisfaction.

Pushy chatzer
. He didn’t want to emphasize that, and
didn’t like being reminded of it himself, but now he had no choice. He wasn’t
about to let Kherrimun take control of the briefing.
I’ll deal with you
later.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to forget how good a cruiser is
at long-ranging.”
But some of ’em will,
he thought disgustedly. Too many
of the ships that Barrodagh had assigned to him were crewed by Rifters too
careful or timid to merit the attention of the Navy’s largest ships, whose
seven-kilometer baseline lent their sensors terrifying precision and range.

“Any of you get lazy after we mop up the locals, and decide
to stop drunkwalking, cruiser’ll target you from way out, then jump in on top
of you... no warning.” From ten light-minutes out, a cruiser could take its
time targeting a distant fleet, then jump in close, correct and fire long
before the emergence pulse from its targeting position arrived to warn its
victims. Only random changes in velocity offered any protection for a targeted
ship—the more often, the better.

Warned by the expressions on some of their faces, Hreem went
on quickly, directing their attention back to more pleasant anticipations.

“But
Korion
’s probably not even in-system. They got a
lot of planets on their patrol. And if it is—” Hreem smiled broadly. “—well,
are they ever gonna be surprised, finding out what an Alpha Class can do with
an Urian relay in its powerdeck!”

The other captains laughed—all except Tallis, who hadn’t
heard the remark yet. His lack of reaction made him look even stupider than
usual.

“After the Shield collapses, we land—you’ve already got your
assignments.”

“What kind of defenses are we going to encounter on the way
down?” interrupted the captain of the
Novograth
, a woman with a plump,
rosy face who looked like someone’s grandmother until you noticed the deadness
of her eyes. Hreem knew nothing about her aside from her entry in the RiftNet
Pandoxicon—he hadn’t bothered to read the rest of the dossier Riolo had put
together
.
Her speech was precise, almost prissy, which had irritated
Hreem the first time he talked to her, and even more now.

“None, if they’re smart. They know there’s no defense
against dirty nukes in atmosphere.” The rules of war involving planetary
defense were ancient and rarely violated: civilian populations were too
effective as hostages to make resistance to a landing practical once the Shield
fell.

“But listen close...”
Hreem leaned forward for
emphasis. “You’ve all seen the vid from that chatzer Barrodagh. There’s gonna
be no looting until after we find this Omilov blungebag—and everything in his
house is gonna be under guard. That’s Tallis’s assignment, and anybody who
crosses me up on this gets an all-expenses-paid vacation under the personal
guidance of Dol’jhar’s torturer... after Norio finishes with you. You got
that?” By the expressions on their faces, Hreem judged the threat sufficient.
Just to make sure, he stretched ostentatiously in his pod, extending the
heel-claws of his boots with a minatory click and then relaxing.

“Right. Afterward, Charvann’s ours. Have fun. But don’t any
of you get trigger-happy and shoot up the Node or any of the Syncs, either—all
the Highdwellings are mine. Any more questions?”

There were none and he dismissed them—”Except you, Y’Marmor.
We’ve got some talking to do.”

The last of the other faces had just winked out when the
pop-eyed Rifter captain reacted, and the light-speed delay irritated Hreem
afresh.

“It’s not my fault,” whined Tallis. “It’s that blit O’Pappan
and his refit crew on Rifthaven, selling me substandard parts.”

“Blow it out your blungehole, Y’Marmor—he sells you what you
pay him for. If you’d put more money into the guts of the
Satansclaw
and
less into all those chatzy decorations—like that screaming horror you call a
cabin. With all those paintings of fat bitches and that curlicue furniture that
makes you feel like you’re sitting on somebody’s face... it’s like a cross
between a chatz-house and a corpse-painter’s waiting room...”
Hreem’s
disgust left him wordless for a moment. The rest of the crew on the bridge were
silent, but Hreem could feel their grins.

“Forget all that, Y’Marmor. I don’t know why Eusabian picked
you to handle this Omilov blit, and if I had any say in the matter you wouldn’t
be part of my command, but you’re here, and if you chatz up this attack I’ll
let Norio play with you for a while, and then send you off to that Evodh
chatzer for a guided tour of his mindripper. Now, how much longer are you gonna
need to get your fiveskip working right?”

Hreem’s threats and obvious anger cut Tallis’s usually
interminable self-serving explanations to a barely tolerable minimum, and got
results. An hour after the
Satansclaw
signed off, Dyasil reported that
Y’Marmor had messaged his readiness.

“He sounded kind of unhappy, Cap’n,” the tech said with a
wry smile, “though I can’t imagine why.”

Hreem laughed and dismissed the matter, excitement rising in
him now that the attack was about to begin. Though he was enormously successful
by Rifter standards, Hreem had always been on the run. Few Rifters in the
jacking trade ever lived long enough to relax and enjoy their loot, and the
more successful they were, the more likely was a fatal encounter with the
Navy—not to mention the deadly envy of fellow Rifters.