The Phoenix in Flight (53 page)

Everyone except Vi’ya.
She alone seemed entirely
unaffected by their approach to the heart of the Tetrad Centrum, the densely
interconnected center of the Panarchy, home of the oldest cultures with the
strongest ties to Lost Earth.
I wonder where she comes from?
He couldn’t
place the accent that sometimes flattened her formal diction, and at other
times shaded her consonants with a throaty emphasis. Yet it had a disturbing
familiarity.

Vi’ya tapped at her console and magnified the view again.
The viewscreen shimmered and the image of the battlecruiser rippled as the
enhancement circuits cut in. Then the picture became mercilessly clear,
revealing the blazon on the ship as a stylized red fist clutching a handful of
lightning bolts, surrounded by angular script in a wreath of flames.

Vi’ya spoke softly, her voice almost a hiss. “The
Fist of
Dol’jhar.”

The shock splintered Brandon’s thoughts, and for a moment he
could only stare at the viewscreen. Two voices echoed in his mind
simultaneously, memories separated by years.

My father is the Avatar of Dol, and you would not live a
day on Dol’jhar...

You should ask rather what Eusabian of Dol’jhar wants
with you...

Brandon shut his eyes, remembering the first time he met
Anaris, son of Eusabian, speaking that planet’s name with exactly the same
intonation.

The thought seemed to come from far away:
The captain of
this ship is Dol’jharian.

Inexorably the memories stitched sense together. The Rifter
Hreem had demanded the surrender of Sebastian Omilov in the name of Eusabian of
Dol’jhar, and then destroyed a battlecruiser with a single shot.

Arthelion has fallen.

The sense of shock obliterated memory and present, as if the
ground had opened beneath him, propelling him end over end into free-fall.
Markham
did not know
what
, Deralze? What did you die trying to tell me?

He blinked away the tears that blurred the flagship of his
mother’s murderer hanging in orbit above his home. Fury, anger, loss stripped
away sound and sense, leaving him once again the thirteen-year-old boy whose
mother had been ripped from life by the violent hand of an enemy:
Where is
the justice?

Vi’ya’s voice broke the spell. “That ship was confined to
Dol’jharian orbit by the Treaty of Acheront, was it not?” she asked.

Brandon had to draw air into his lungs before he could
recover the sense of her words, and command brain to think, voice to shape
words, lips to speak them. She was Dol’jharian, that much he knew, but there
was nothing in her tone and her manner of triumph, falsehood, threat, or
intent.

“Yes.” He swallowed, and made a greater effort. “Yes. It...
appears that Charvann was not an isolated action.” He thumbed away the moisture
from his eyes, and forced out the impossible phrase. “Arthelion has fallen.”

Then he forced himself to turn in his pod, and witness the
effect of his words.

Marim’s eyes and mouth rounded. Lokri grinned mirthlessly,
and Ivard looked back and forth between Brandon and the viewscreen, his pasty
skin mottled with emotion.

Vi’ya’s countenance was unreadable, but her body expressed
tension. The tapping of her fingers on her console was the only sound on the
bridge other than the whisper of the tianqi.

“Ivard, confirm,” she said finally, and then keyed the
intercom. “Jaim, engine status?”

“Never been better,” came the reply. “What’re you thinking?”

Jaim had to be watching on a screen slaved to the bridge.
Not
for Rifters the rigid compartmentalization of naval discipline.

Vi’ya gazed across the bridge at Brandon, her eyes narrowed.
“The only thing we can do is wait until our assigned orbit takes us around the
planet from the
Fist
and then blast out.” She paused. “Lokri, can you
tell if the resonance field is up?”

Lokri glanced over at Marim, who turned a thumb up. “We can
set up a low power test with the fiveskip cavity. Check it that way. It’ll take
a few minutes.”

“Do it.”

Brandon turned back to his console, but he didn’t see it.
Again memory replaced the now, this time himself at fourteen, Galen nineteen,
back to visit after his first year away at Talgarth’s university. They were
walking around the fish pools practicing Kelly-sign when several adults
appeared, all dressed in formal clothing. One started talking in an officious
voice with a thick accent.

Brandon’s attention was not on the adults, but on the only
object of real interest, the single boy among all those adults. A tall boy
somewhere between Brandon’s and Galen’s ages, dressed entirely in black, with
high black boots and some kind of weapon at his waist. This boy stood
arrogantly, his black eyes unblinking and scornful.

“The hostage...”
Galen had said on an indrawn breath.

The emotions of that day were back, as strong as if Brandon
was again fourteen. He and Galen had been talking about the hostage not two
days before, wondering what it would feel like to be forced to live on some
other planet among your enemies, because of some peace treaty. He stared back
at the Dol’jharian, son of their mother’s murderer, who sneered at them as if
they stank, and his sympathy withered. Yet they’d been strictly ordered to make
this Anaris welcome.

Brandon smothered a laugh at the perfect compromise.
“We’ll
welcome him,”
he whispered to Galen.
“Kelly style.”
And as Galen
grinned and the adults all stared, Brandon danced a perfectly correct Kelly
welcome dance, prancing up to poke at Anaris’s face and stomach.

Galen made a move to join, but halted when the boy yanked
free his knife and slashed at Brandon, who fell back on the grass, astonished
at the boy’s speed. Then he forgot the knife when he saw the boy’s face, which
had changed into something altogether strange.

Eyes distended, face crimson, the boy glared in what they
found out later was an attempt to quell them with a Dol’jharian grimace of fear
and command. At the time, Brandon had yelled,
“He’s
choking
!”

As the adults looked at each other for clues, Galen moved,
faster even than Anaris. With his greater strength he got his arms around the
newcomer and pressed his fist hard against his middle in the lifesaving move
they’d all been taught.

Anaris whooped like a sick crane, then vomited up whatever
he’d eaten last, all over the man with the accent.

Brandon had collapsed, helpless with laughter. Through his
gasps, he heard that voice, cracking with anger, in that accent,
My father
is the Avatar of Dol!

That day had begun years of unrelenting enmity on Anaris’s
part, ending only with the hostage’s departure a year or two ago. Brandon
remembered with ironic bitterness his celebration the night Anaris’s shuttle
had lifted at last from Arthelion, beginning the journey to return the
Dol’jharian to his home planet after nineteen years.
I thought we were rid
of him forever.

Was Anaris back again, somewhere in the Mandala?

Where is my father? And what is my role now?

Brandon looked down. His fingers had been twisting the
Archon’s ring round and round. The jeweled eyes of the sphinxes flashed in the
light.
The fulfillment of a promise, at the very least.

He looked back at the screens. In the rear view, the Palace
Major was sliding over the horizon. Ahead, the Syncs, brilliantly lit by the
sun in their higher vantage, formed a curving arrow of light beckoning them
onward as their course took them across the terminator into night.

o0o

“Got it,” said Marim with satisfaction. “Right, Lokri?”

Greywing watched the comtech cast a considering glance over
his console, then gave a nod, the mockery for once absent from his expression.
The gem in his ear winked with brief crimson flame.

Greywing’s insides tightened.

“The resonance field
is
down.” Marim rubbed her
hands. “Once we’re past natural radius, we’re free and clear.”

Brandon glanced around as if blinded. Greywing sensed he was
trying to recover that impenetrable nick shield that the sight of the
Fist
had so clearly shattered. How were his emotions affecting the captain? She
glanced Vi’ya’s way, to discover Vi’ya frowning, her eyes narrowed, as if she
was in a room with too much noise.

Greywing was surprised at her own reaction. She hated the
nicks. Why did she feel like someone close had died? “Confirmation. Right?” she
said flatly, to get Brandon’s attention.

He blinked a couple times, then breathed in. She could hear
it across the bridge. “Yes.”

“Maybe there’s some strut-ass reason for it, like showing
goodwill or somethin’?” Marim smiled, though with less humor than challenge,
Greywing thought. Nobody believed this was going to be a peaceful landing, as
they’d been promised before launch.

“The Panarchists would never leave Arthelion naked like
that,” Vi’ya said, “not for any reason, especially not with Eusabian’s
battlecruiser in orbit.”

A bleep from Lokri’s console was followed by a voice. “YST
8740
Maiden’s Dream,
new course incoming.”

“Relay to you, Ivard,” said Lokri.

When the code squeal cut off, Ivard hesitated, and sent a
worried glance at Vi’ya. “They want us to drop to two hundred kilometers, same
heading.”

Vi’ya glanced at the rearview. The
Fist of Dol’jhar
was
a point of light behind them near the limb of the planet below, barely
discernible as an ellipse. “Go ahead. That will take the
Fist
below the
horizon all the faster.”

Ivard tapped out acceptance of the course change, the light
from his console emphasizing the roundness of his cheeks, and how much his chin
was still a young boy’s. Greywing wished he was back with Norton and the crew
of the
Sunflame.
No. Whatever happened, it was better that they were
together.

Slowly Arthelion grew ever more vast beneath them, vast tesselations
of light marking cities on the continent below. It was a few minutes
before it became apparent that the battlecruiser was not dropping below the
flattening horizon.

“Lokri, give me visual ranging on the
Fist,”
Vi’ya
said.

“It’s dropping into a lower orbit, closing in on us. Can’t
say how fast without a range pulse.”

“No. Let them think we haven’t noticed.” The captain turned
to Brandon.

He returned her gaze, his expression completely shuttered.
Like the captain’s, only even more so.

“The enemy of my enemy,” the Krysarch said finally.

Vi’ya lifted her chin. “So be it.” She tapped at her
console, and the fire-control position came to life in front of Brandon. “We’ll
see how much Markham managed to teach you, then.”

She keyed her intercom. “Jaim, I want overload capacity from
the engines. We’ll have to get down into the atmosphere as fast as possible,
deep enough to dissipate their ruptors so they don’t pulp us right off.”

She turned to Marim, her fingers racing across the console
as she spoke. “I’m going to geeplane us into a negative orbit at maximum power.
Cut the gravs now, and if you need to, steal additional power from the shields—they
won’t do any good against ruptors anyway.”

o0o

A series of warning tones sounded.

Osri looked up from the refrigeration plates he was
laboriously cleaning, and pushed his sticky hair off his forehead.
Free-fall?
What’s going on now?

Montrose appeared in the doorway, his face grim. “Get up and
go to your cabin.” His voice was flat, with no humor, no exaggerated courtly
drawl.

When Osri hesitated, the big Rifter crossed the floor in a
couple of strides, jerked him to his feet, and muscled him to his cabin,
ignoring Osri’s expostulations.

Osri stumbled through the cabin hatch and heard the lock
engage behind him. He barely made it to his bunk before the gravitors snapped
off.
The only reason to cut the gravitors is for repair, or to divert power
for something else. There’s no reason for it in a standard approach.
Uneasy
speculations spun through his mind, centering on images of the attack on
Charvann.

Osri shook his head.
This is the Mandala, the center of
the Thousand Suns—
The sudden jerking of the ship shattered his
speculations.
Missiles?
Then the unmistakable bone-jarring squeal-rumble
of a ruptor pulse, thankfully a miss. Now he was afraid, an emotion intensified
by the sense of helplessness and ignorance. Anger came to his rescue.
What are
these chatzing Rifters up to?
Then he felt the familiar shudder of reentry,
and weight returned. They were aerodynamic, unwelcome guests in the skies over
Arthelion. But whom had they just evaded?

Brandon strapped himself into his seat as the gravitors cut
out and they went into free-fall. He half listened to Vi’ya’s subsequent orders
while he ran the fire console through a wake-up check. Partway through the
sequence a small window popped up on his screen and almost immediately
vanished, but not before he caught the word
personal
.

A personal setting?
He ran the program back. Someone
had set the console to automatically come up in the default configuration. His
eyes stung when he saw the second choice:
Alt L’Ranja gehaidin!
The
motto of Markham’s adoptive family, the branch now expunged from the Ranks of
Service.

He tabbed “Accept.”

The screen blanked, then lit up with a completely different
configuration.
Tenno Major!
A change rippled through the keypads, colors
and tactiles altering and labels adapting to the new configuration. When it
settled down, Brandon was staring at a fire-control console equal to anything
he had seen at the Academy. His throat hurt.
Markham’s last gift.