The Phoenix in Flight (21 page)

But now it was his turn to call the shots. Fate and the Lord
of Vengeance had placed the ultimate weapon in his hands, and like his fellows
in the Rift Sodality whose work he had just watched with delight, Hreem was
eager to unleash it on his persecutors. He knitted his fingers together and
stretched his arms overhead, feeling the last of his anxiety depart. For a
moment the quiet hum of the ship around him was as much a part of him as the
sound of the breath through his nostrils or the subdued murmur of his pulse. He
was the instrument of his own vengeance.

“Dyasil,” he said, “battle stations. Signal the fleet.
Bargun... take us in.” Moments later the bridge shuddered gently as the
fiveskip engaged and the viewscreen blanked as the
Flower of Lith
leapt
out of spacetime toward Charvann.

To its captain’s intense relief, the
Satansclaw
made
the skip to twenty out-and-over without incident, but it seemed to Tallis
Y’Marmor that the
Flower of Lith
jumped out only moments after he
arrived. Fifteen minutes to go.

Tallis watched the wake of the
Lith
dissipate redly
against the stars, then he slumped back in his command chair and picked
nervously at the ornately gilded filigree on his console. His finger rings
glittered in the subdued light of the
Satansclaw’s
bridge. Around him
the monitors sat alertly, some stiffly, resplendent in red uniforms with gold
piping at the seams, a couple of them fidgeting at their consoles.

Hreem’s tongue-lashing was still vivid in his mind.
How
ludicrous, and how typical, of that barbarian to call my ship a chatz-house!
Chatz-house! How would he know? There isn’t one in the Thousand Suns that’ll
let him in—unless he brings his own partner. And then they charge him double
just to clean up the room afterward.

Tallis sniffed fastidiously—the bridge of the
Lith
was
a pretty repulsive sight, all naked metal slopped with gray paint, and, he was
sure, a thin film of grease on everything. He looked around with satisfaction
at the complex inlays and gleaming paneling that made the bridge of the
Satansclaw
such a delight to his eyes. A subtle change in the airflow on the bridge
wafted the scent of sandalwood, bergamot, and
nushia
to him and he
smiled, pleased at the new combination he’d devised for the
tianqi
, so
necessary for keeping the crews’ senses occupied in the otherwise monotonous
confines of a ship in flight.

He inhaled deeply, reassured by remembering that Hreem was
in no position to carry out those threats.
Not when the Lord of Vengeance is
relying on me to bring Gnostor Omilov to Arthelion.

His pleasant reverie about what he could have said to Hreem
was marred by the quiet voice of sho-Imbris, the navigator. “Ten minutes to
skip.”

Tallis’s stomach suddenly insisted that the gravitors were
unstable, but he knew they weren’t. A zap-and-skip raid was one thing—Tallis
was good at that, which was why the Karroo Syndicate had commissioned him in
the
Satansclaw
under their Writ
.
They wanted profits, not damage
reports. But a full-fledged attack on a planet, and with a cruiser in the
system—that was unheard of. He wondered again what Eusabian had offered the
Karroo, to entice them to risk their ships in the Dol’jharian attack.

Tallis found himself hoping that the fiveskip would fail
again, so he’d miss the worst of the battle. Hreem couldn’t blame him...
But
he would.
He’d seen one of Hreem’s “entertainments,” and he knew that the
burly captain needed little or no excuse to stage one. And what Norio could do
to a man’s ego... Tallis shuddered. One’s emotions should be private, not the
instruments of a psychic flaying.

His fingers drummed nervously near the code pads on his
console, then he noticed what he was doing and snatched his hand away.
You’re
not that afraid of the attack,
insisted his interior voice, chattering away
full speed under the lash of his anxiety. A familiar tingle of combined guilt
and anxiety burned through him, mixed with repugnance.
You spent a half-year’s
take on the damned thing, and you’ve never used it.

A shudder of superstitious fear ran through him as he
thought of the mass of circuitry the Barcan technician had buried deep within
the
Satansclaw’s
computers. A
logos—
embodying
the combined
expertise of scores of ship captains, including some of the greatest fighters
who’d ever lived. The names of the captains whose talents the logos held was a
roll call of the Hall of Honor: Ilvarez, Metellus, Tu Chang, Porgruth Minor
among others—they were his to command. Perhaps it would be a good idea to
switch it on and link it to the ship’s sensorium, just to watch his back and
help him with the tactical displays.
It wouldn’t have any trouble at all
dealing with this attack.

And it might not have any trouble at all dealing with me,
either.
Images from the history chips flickered through his mind, the
Horror a thousand years and more ago seeming like yesterday’s news. The
century-long war against the Adamantines—those cold intelligences, embodied in
metal and crystal and unleashed by the Hegemony in a vain quest for domination
of the Exiles—had deeply scarred the psyche of humankind. The Hegemony had lost
control, if indeed they’d ever had it, and at the last had fought side by side
with the Exiles against their own creations. To this day, rumor had it,
remnants of the ancient enemy still lurked in remote corners of the Thousand
Suns—and it was well known that a peerage and unimaginable riches awaited the
person who led the Navy to a hibernating Adamantine. Like most of the people of
the Heart Stars, Tallis no more questioned the Ban than he questioned the
existence of Arthelion and the Emerald Throne.
Thou shalt not duplicate the
human mind.

But Barca lay far outside the Heart Stars, hard up on the
Shiidra Reaches. They had not experienced the Horror, so they didn’t share that
fear. Their Tikeris androids, legal but obscenely close to infringing the Ban,
were infamous throughout the Thousand Suns, as were the fearsome Ogres, used
with such effect against the Shiidra. The Barcan salesman on Rifthaven had been
very persuasive, insisting that the logos wasn’t
really
intelligent, and
glossing over the fact that discovery of it by the authorities would earn
Tallis, at the very least, exile to Gehenna, and in some jurisdictions, an
agonizing death.
And if the crew found out...

The salesman had promised total secrecy as part of the deal,
and he’d had some fascinating simulations of ship-to-ship combat. The logos
could speak to him via pinbeam, and hear his sub-vocalized commands, anywhere
in the ship. No one else could hear it or command it, the Barcan had told him.
And with optional eye implants—Tallis could almost hear the dealer’s unctuous
tones—the logos could display data that no one else could see. The glory would
be his alone. Tallis had been thoroughly sold on the concept, had even
submitted to the surgery on both eyes, visions of glory and riches dancing in
his head, right up until the installers had him switch it on for the final
tests.

Dead brains. Corpse voices.
Tallis shuddered at the
memory. The flat baritone voice, speaking disembodied inside his head, had
given him nightmares for the next month, and he had never dared switch it on
again.

“Five minutes,” said sho-Imbris.

His inner vision began serving up images of the coming
attack. The swirl of ship-to-ship actions would be terrifying in its
randomness, unlike any raid he’d ever dared. And the mere possibility of a
cruiser—Tallis perceived that image viscerally, for he’d been a galley-slub on
the old
Terror
when it was ripped by a cruiser in ambush. There was no
other sound quite like the squeal of a ruptor bolt hitting a hull.

His fear of the logos and the terror of the coming battle
balanced painfully in his mind. He’d have to play back the conversation with
Hreem for the machine—but there was no reason to feel shame. The logos couldn’t
laugh, and probably wouldn’t understand the emotional aspects of the scene.

Tallis sneaked a look around the bridge. No one was
watching. He forced his shaking fingers to touch the code pads in a complex
pattern, and the logos began to wake up. Flickering ghost light, apparent only
to his eyes, darted sector by sector across the tactical screens, testing his
corneal implants. Tallis clenched his teeth, willing himself not to shiver as
the dead baritone led him through the wake-up routine in a technological litany
of question and response.

o0o

No one could fault Pham Anderic, the communications tech, on the
condition of his console, all oiled wood and gleaming metal. He stared at a
particularly well-polished section of metal, watching in fascination as his
captain tensed abruptly. It almost looked like Tallis was having a seizure: his
eyes shifted as if scanning a display, his jaw clenched, and he rocked slightly
in his seat.

Anderic checked the screens, but they showed only a
featureless starfield, overlaid by ship traces. What was going on? Now Tallis’s
throat contracted.
He’s talking to himself!
This intense interior
conversation lasted some time.

“Navigation.” Tallis’s voice broke the tense silence on the
bridge.

“One hundred twenty-eight seconds, sir.”

“I know.” Tallis’s voice was tight, with an undertone of
strain. “Recalculate. Drop us in as close to the Node as you can and orient me.
Sensors.”

Next to Anderic, Oolger swiveled around as Tallis continued.
“Immediately on emergence, look for targets close to the Node or another Sync,
so we can fight with our back to something they won’t want to hit.”

Oolger turned back to his console and began setting up a
pattern for emergence. Tallis had no new commands for Anderic, so the tech
could listen as Tallis rebriefed the other monitors for emergence. It was a
performance totally at odds with the captain’s usual behavior. Tallis was an
agonizingly painstaking planner without a trace of inspiration, and he never,
never
changed his plans like this.

As Anderic watched, the conviction grew that there was
definitely something going on that could be manipulated to good advantage, with
a little inside information from Luri.

Ah, Luri. Anderic’s nacker stirred; the memory of her soft
abundance unfocused his eyes for a time, until the ship shuddered into skip.

o0o

Omilov gazed at the portrait of the Kyriarch Ilara, lost in
memory.

The reading lamp sensed his lack of movement and turned
itself out, and he drowsed a little, but the night was passing all too slowly,
and the turmoil of his thoughts defeated the effects of the dreamberry tea.
When he roused, Kilelis was already descending toward the western hills. In its
faint light, the statues dotting the moonlight-black expanse of the lawn
outside the study windows seemed poised on the edge of movement.

He stood up and stretched. As the light sprang back on, his
reflection blotted out the outside world in the window. He studied his
appearance for a moment: tall, tending to corpulence, though less so in the
face than elsewhere, with wiry, gray-shot black hair lying close to his skull,
and the pendulous fleshy earlobes that marked the Omilov line as far back as
images had been recorded. From where he stood the reading lamp shone up into
his face, throwing the shadows of his bushy eyebrows up across his high
forehead, giving him a menacing look that made a smile quirk the edge of his
mouth. He turned away, pulling his lounge coat tighter around him. Perhaps a
walk on the terrace in the fresh night air would calm his thoughts.

He paused at the terrace door to override the lights, which
would otherwise go on automatically, and realized the override was already
engaged. He eased the door open to find a slender male figure standing some
distance away, gazing out over the grounds of the estate toward the darkened
eastern horizon.

His slippers made a faint gritty noise on the paving,
warning the solitary figure that he had company. He recognized Brandon’s
profile, side-lit against the stars.

The young man did not turn around as Omilov came up beside
him, and they stood in companionable silence for a time. The night air was
cool. A vagrant breeze teased at Omilov’s neck and he drew his collar tighter.

But Omilov finally decided he must speak. “You said you left
before the ritual, Brandon. I must ask you why.” He hesitated, then added, “It
would be best that I know before your family’s retainers arrive to discuss this
with us all.”

Brandon faced him. “No one knows I’m here. We arrived as
private citizens of a Highdweller community—Deralze saw to that. And we will
shortly be gone again, if you fear that Semion has somehow managed to follow
us.”

Omilov raised a hand, but Brandon forestalled him as he
moved away from the rail. “Sebastian, how long have you known my father?”

Omilov wondered what was behind the question—Brandon knew
the answer very well. “Almost thirty-five years.” But if you respect someone,
you don’t get information without giving; he offered something that Brandon
might not know. “I was a rogate in the xenoarchaeology department of the
Concilium Exterioris at the time. We first met after a rather unusual situation
I found myself in on a planet outside the Thousand Suns.”

Brandon glanced his way. “You never mentioned that before.”

Omilov chuckled. “You were a very inquisitive boy. The best
way of dealing with your incessant questions was to make sure you didn’t know
what to ask about.” His mood sobered, oppressed by the inescapable truth:
Brandon had abandoned his Enkainion, and in coming here, had implicated Omilov.
No matter what he thought.