The Phoenix in Flight (65 page)

“As I said, we do not know. It is some sort of terror weapon
that explodes the victim’s brains through their eyes, without leaving any burns
or entry wounds.” The kyltasz’s mouth flattened to a white line. That wasn’t
annoyance. That was dread.

Barrodagh’s throat soured. Any weapon that made a
professional Dol’jharian soldier uneasy was one that he never wanted to face.
Then he realized that Jesserian hadn’t mentioned the Gnostor Omilov.

“What about the Panarchist?”

“He has disappeared.”

Barrodagh suppressed a tremor of fear as his hands began to
sweat. Eusabian’s anger was more to be feared than any weapon. “Was there any
indication of the information sought from the prisoner?” Perhaps Evodh had
recorded something before he was killed.

“No. The equipment was totally destroyed by jac-fire.”

They’re going to ransom him.
Barrodagh bit down hard
on his cheek. Useless to assure himself that he’d taken every precaution to
avoid providing data about the Heart of Kronos and its importance—perhaps it
was his very care that had alerted Hreem. Because this had to be an attack
ordered by Hreem. The arrival of this mystery ship at the same time as the
Satansclaw
was no coincidence: they had to have left Charvann’s system at the same time.

“The prisoner may be with the intruders. His life is to be
preserved at all costs. He has information demanded by the Avatar.”

“It shall be done. I am sending in a squad in battle armor
to finish them off. Since the looters appear to have only hand weapons, the
armored squad should be able to overcome them easily without risk to the
prisoner, if he is with them. As you were concerned about the objects they
stole, do you wish to observe?”

This is more than a strike at me. This is the opening in
a deliberate attack. Hreem will use this Omilov to assure obtaining that
battlecruiser... and if the rest of these damned Rifters see a successful
strike at the very heart of the Avatar’s new demesne, there will be no
controlling them.

“Yes. I’ll join you in five minutes. Do not wait for me to
begin the assault, but do not search the bodies until I arrive.”

“Acknowledged.”

Barrodagh grabbed his compad and moved to the outer office.
Anderic looked up from a flickering comic chip in mute question. Was he a part
of the ruse? It was possible, though unlikely. Hreem despised Tallis. Best to
be safe.

“Stay here,” Barrodagh said. “I can’t answer for your life
if you step outside this room.” He turned to Danathar. “If the Avatar calls for
me, relay it to me. I don’t need to hear from anyone else until I return.”

He left the office and directed one of the guards there to lead
him to level one of blue-seven. The man’s face was tight with anxiety, his eyes
flicking restlessly about as he led the Bori down the hall.

What were those Ur-bedamned shadows? If his escort was any
indication, the Dol’jharian soldiers had already decided.

That’s all I need now: rumors of a haunting.

Barrodagh would personally supervise Hreem’s Transfiguration
once these fools were caught.

o0o

As Ferrasin watched, the screen flickered—then resolved
itself into ordered ranks of data.

An exhausted cheer went up.

“We’re in. Let’s s-start a d-dump to our system,” Ferrasin
said, fighting his stuttering tongue. Fatigue and excitement made his speech
even slower than usual. “In c-case we fall out again.”

He consulted another of his consoles, biting his words out
carefully. “The surveillance system is the first priority. Have it ordered by
rank.”

Seconds later he stared in growing amazement at the first
name on the list.
Brandon nyr-Arkad? But he’s dead.

Yet the system showed him in residence as of that evening.
Ferrasin tapped rapidly on the keypad, gaze shifting from window to window, the
computer following in eyes-on mode.

ENTRY AT ADIT ROUGE 2640.
That’s forty kilometers from
the Palace.
A still image windowed up, showing a small gazebo at the edge of
a forest of immense trees. In another window a grid map located it with respect
to the Rouge quadrant. He studied the map, then zoomed in on the ideograph for
the gazebo. It had four stylized eyes on it. His fingers twitched on the keys,
and a window legend materialized.

Imagers. Let’s see if we can get a live picture.

ACCESS DENIED.

He paused. A voice came over his shoulder. “That’s a
top-level override. Any attempt to break it will probably bring the system back
down for good.”

“I know that,” he grumbled. Moments later he cursed loudly
as the screen dissolved into garbage.

“I told you,” said the tech.

“I didn’t do anything,” shouted Ferrasin, his stutter
momentarily overwhelmed by his anger.

Then the pieces fit together.
That ship. He must have come
in on that ship.
He tabbed the com button. “Get me senz-lo Barrodagh.”

When the aloof voice of Barrodagh’s secretary answered, he
stuttered, “I’ve g-g-got to speak to the
senx-lo.”

“Senz-lo Barrodagh is not here. He has left instructions to
put no one save the Avatar through.”

“But—” Ferrasin heard the whine in his own voice as he
struggled desperately to get the words out. “But I’ve got critical information
for him.”

“The senx-lo has left instructions to put no one save the
Avatar through,” Danathar said scornfully. He was the one who’d made loud
comments about how the Dol’jharians exposed cretins and cripples at birth,
which was why the Panarchists had lost a war before it had even started.

Ferrasin sucked in a breath, and consciously tried to still
his quivering tongue, but anger warred with anxiety to report the news. “Then
t-t-t-tell me wh-whuh. Where he is—”

“The senx-lo has left instructions to put no one save the
Avatar through.”

This is too important—maybe he’ll pass the information
along himself.
He tried to explain what he’d found, but his frustration and
anger overwhelmed coherent speech. “The sh-sh-sh—” He stopped and tried again,
though by now his entire body quivered like his tongue. “The K-k-k-kr-kr. . .”

“If you’re finished playing with your lips, I have other
tasks to attend to.” The secretary said in disgust and cut the connection.

Ferrasin raised his hands to slam them down on his console,
then halted, hands flexing.
These Bori record everything, and never throw
anything away
.
And I built the secure fixed-access point system!
Half
a minute later he was listening to a playback of the call that Barrodagh had
taken just before he left his office.

He windowed up a map of the Ivory wing, then locked his
console and dashed out the door.

o0o

Obeying Vi’ya’s hand signal, Lokri popped up and hosed the
positions of the Dol’jharian guards with jac fire as the Krysarch scrambled
over to a small console set in the wall. The jac bucked in his hands, then
died. He ducked back, dropped the weapon, and took up his own again as return
fire sizzled over his head into the cabinet in front of him. Back to proper
fire discipline.

A quick glance showed Brandon in the shelter of a bulky
refrigeration unit as he began tapping at the keypad, the light from the screen
flickering across his face.

The Arkad was beginning to interest Lokri, a fact that he
found intriguing and irritating. He was probably the worst example of useless
high-Douloi nick, his insistence on rescuing a damned dog an exercise in arrogance
and sentimentality. The fact that Brandon had been a friend of Markham’s was no
credit. Lokri had never known anyone more willing to take people as they came.

And yet... and yet. The first counter to Lokri’s
preconceptions had come during the Phalanx games with the Krysarch. He was well
known at the tables in the Galadium Club on Rifthaven, but Brandon had
destroyed him utterly without apparent effort, even at Level Three. It had
taken both him and Marim to defeat him—and despite his accusation, Lokri knew
the Krysarch had not cheated. And they had.

More intriguing, perhaps, was the fact that Brandon’s return
to his home rendered him not more assured, but less. He’d wept shamelessly on
the bridge when they first identified the battlecruiser, his emotions strong
enough to make Vi’ya flinch. And again in the Hall of Ivory. Lokri had never
seen a member of a high-ranking Service Family expose his emotions like
that—but then, if you were at the top, who dared scorn your weakness?

He watched as Brandon worked rapidly at the console, a lock
of his curly hair falling over one eye, his expression alternating between a
wide grin and a frown of concentration.

One by one the massive food generators came to life, until
the kitchen was humming with activity. Lokri could hear harsh whispers from the
Dol’jharians trapped in the kitchen with them. Just then another of the
Krysarch’s ghost-flickers skittered across a wall and vanished in the shadows
of a corner, causing silence among the Dol’jharians.

The corresponding tightness to Vi’ya’s profile nearly made
him laugh.
Take the Dol’jharian off Dol’jhar but you can’t take Dol’jhar out
of the Dol’jharian,
he thought, studiously looking away: keyed up as she
was, she might shoot him out of hand if she sensed the direction of his
thoughts. And why didn’t she shoot these dogs? Would Brandon cry? Or would he
stamp his pretty feet and try to claim nick privilege?

Ivard was also watching Brandon, a mixture of drug haze and
trust evident in his ugly young face. Lokri acknowledged his own
disappointment, followed hard by self-mockery. He’d only noticed the boy’s
admiration to make fun of it. He supposed it was another sign of his own
perversity that he valued nothing that was freely given.

Greywing. Hard to avoid the image of her sudden crumple, the
life fading out of her face. He wished he’d listened to Marim and bedded her,
except he couldn’t abide that unswerving honesty. Old anger kindled.
How
he detested honesty, and loyalty, and all the rest of the bindings of
obligation that the weak put on the strong.

What was taking Brandon so long?

He wondered what Greywing and Brandon had been talking
about, back in the Ivory Hall. Had the little blit been about to drop on her
knees and swear fealty? He snorted.
If he gets us out of this alive I’ll
fall down and kiss his pretty feet myself.

The little door Brandon had pointed out slid up into the
wall.

The Dol’jharians quieted at the unexpected noise, and a
large number of small wheeled bots scurried out. One, slightly larger than the
others with a flat basket-like tray on top, stayed next to the hatch. The rest
fanned out across the room to the food generators. Some of them extruded long
sinuous tubes and nuzzled up to large vat-like generators like puppies at their
mother’s teats. Others, equipped with trays and grippers, lined up in front of
food generators that were radiating heat that Lokri could feel across the room.
When small hatches in these popped open, Lokri sat back in confusion.

Pies? What the Shiidran Hell is going on here?

The pies—a loathsome green in color—slid out onto the trays
on the little machines. Other bots jostled into place to receive their
deliveries, then whirred away to position themselves around the room. Some
faced the cabinets sheltering the Dol’jharians. Others took up positions facing
each of the doors. More bots emerged from the little hatch and lined up for
their turn.

Lokri turned a mute question to Vi’ya, who shrugged.

The Dol’jharians were evidently just as confused. Their
whispering rose interrogatively, then Lokri heard a command from one of their
communicators.

(Arkad!)
Vi’ya said.
(Look out.)

Brandon waved a hand at her, tapped one last set of commands
into the console, and then crouched down, holding his firejac ready and
motioning them to do the same.

Music blared from a grille in the wall, a stirring fanfare
of brassy trumpets: a sound from the childhood that Lokri had worked hard to
forget. Ivard pumped a fist with manic enthusiasm in time to the beat—he
obviously knew that damned music.

Some of the bots with the snake-like nozzles on them spread
out, scurrying across the floor and disappearing among the storage cabinets
that sheltered the guards, while a number of the tray-carriers elevated pies
with their grippers. From behind the cabinets came a series of splattering
hisses, followed by cries of pain and rage. The guards leapt up, vainly trying
to fend off streams of some steaming viscid liquid that unerringly tracked
their faces.

Clang-whizz-splat.
The front rank of tray-carriers
jerked, and flung their pies straight at the startled guards. The pies burst
against their heads and bodies, transforming them into wildly capering
man-shaped piles of green goo. The Dol’jharians howled, dropping their weapons
and wiping at their eyes; evidently something in the pie mix stung and burned.

Ivard dropped his firejac and doubled over, laughing with
drug-induced abandon. Next to him the unhurt dog pressed its chin against the
floor, its ears flat, its tail tucked under its body. The sedated one didn’t
stir.

Brandon used the cover of the high-velocity pies to dash
back across the kitchen, followed by Vi’ya and Lokri.

Brandon grinned in challenge at Lokri, who saluted him with
his jac.

(Saves ammo, right?)
Brandon said.

(What else did they teach you at your Panarchist Naval
Academy?)
Lokri replied.
(How to field-strip a hypervelocity custard
finger? Close-order drill with involuntary throat funnels?)

Brandon laughed out loud.
(I learned this from the
Kelly.)

(Now what, Arkad?)
Vi’ya’s boswelled voice was flat.