The Phoenix in Flight (36 page)

o0o

Osri’s eyes slowly and painfully focused on the viewscreen,
which showed walls of cloud streaking past with bright red letters overlaid on
them: GRAVITORS 110% NOMINAL, SHIELD 130% NOMINAL. The ship shuddered and
jerked savagely; he could feel the directional dyplast of his suit responding.
The pressure was painful and he was sure he’d be black-and-blue if they
survived.

Then the cloud walls thinned and began to fall away beneath
them. The pressure eased and the overwhelming noise diminished. A few minutes
later the stars returned, and Warlock was beneath instead of around the ship.

As Osri opened his faceplate, Brandon brought his pod back
to the upright position and opened his own faceplate. Osri heard him gulping in
long breaths, then he began to tap hesitantly at the console.

The screen flickered with more messages: FIVESKIP
INOPERATIVE, GEEPLANE 78% NOMINAL. The number flickered and changed: 76%.

The geeplane was failing, overloaded by their flight through
Warlock’s upper atmosphere.

Osri watched the gas giant drop away beneath them; ahead
were the crescent shapes of at least two moons—there was no indication which,
if either, was their destination. His head pounded. He was still upset at the
Krysarch’s disclosure, but propriety demanded an acknowledgment of Brandon’s
success in eluding their Rifter pursuers.

He forced out the words. “I’ve read about that type of
maneuver, but I never thought to experience it. Did you really learn advanced
tactical evasion from Markham vlith-L’Ranja? Where did
he
learn it? You
two were not even in the program for in-system craft, I remember.” Osri
remembered his bitterness at the time that Brandon, who always had everything
given to him merely because of his name, had been secure on the track toward
nominal command of a cruiser—not that he would ever have been permitted
anywhere near real action.

Brandon didn’t turn away from his screen. “You can ask him yourself.
You’ll meet him shortly.”

“Markham vlith-L’Ranja became a Rifter? Of course you would
know that. You were inseparable in breaking all the regulations.”

“So it seems.” Brandon gave a soft, gasping laugh. Then his
voice became grim. “Yes, Markham vlith-L’Ranja, though needless to say, he
doesn’t use the inheritance sur-prefix anymore.”

Distaste mixed with bafflement as Osri thought back ten
years to the events at the Academy, where Osri had been an assistant
instructor. What Brandon was telling him now—that a scion of a Service Family,
even in disgrace, should join with Rifters—was simply incomprehensible. “The
son of the Archon of Lusor, a Rifter. I wouldn’t have thought that even of
him.”

“The
former
Archon of Lusor,” Brandon corrected even
more grimly.

“Lusor. A disgrace and a suicide.” Osri felt himself on
safer ground now. He knew that sorry story well.

Brandon’s voice sharpened. “I suppose you mean that by his
action he has deprived the Panarch of his valuable service, eh?”

“He abandoned duty and honor in that action, whatever the
reasons. It was not a Decree Dechoukaj, after all, but the lesser
ex gratia
regis,
which left him with his estates intact. It was quite merciful.”
Brandon’s face hardened, and Osri felt that he had to justify his statement.
“There
are
scandals from time to time, and not every House feels
impelled to challenge its malefactors under the Dueling Code. That is why the
decretal system exists.”

“You don’t seem to understand just how extensively he was
ruined. In the old, clean terms, his services were no longer required. There
was literally nothing left for him to do. Tared L’Ranja was a man to whom the
word ‘Service’ was more than a synonym for privilege. It would have been better
if Semion had challenged him and invoked House-rights to lethal weaponry. Then
shot him to death.” His voice rasped with rarely shown anger. “Only then Semion
would have been answerable to our father.”

A soft tone from the console interrupted. The screen
displayed an orbit with an unpleasant message overlaid on it: VELOCITY AT
ARRIVAL +7.9 KM/SEC. Brandon’s hand lay limp on the edge of the keypad for a
moment. Even the drugs circulating in Osri’s blood couldn’t suppress the tremor
of fear that those words engendered. They were in a hyperbolic orbit with
insufficient delta-V to land on Dis. The passionless equations of spaceflight
now left them with two alternatives: a quick death on impact, or slow death in
the outer system.

“What now?” he asked, not hiding his fury. They were
supposed to be heading for Ares. Brandon was ignoring orders for his own
purposes yet again, and there was nothing Osri could do.

Brandon shook his head and windowed up the
Starfarer’s
Handbook
on the screen. A spherical projection of Dis appeared, rotating
slowly. The words
Lao Shang’s Wager
scrolled past, but Osri’s head hurt
so much he couldn’t focus on the rest of it.

Brandon started tapping at his console again. The screen
flashed: GRAVITORS 89% MARGIN, TRACKING
1.5%.
Brandon continued tapping,
and the screen filled with graphs as he set up some kind of multivariate
analysis that Osri’s drug-fuzzed mind couldn’t follow.

To distract himself, Osri reclaimed the moral high ground,
the one thing he was sure of. “The Archon of Lusor had a reputation for
eccentricity, not the least of which was having adopted as his heir a boy from
an utterly obscure background, when there were countless excellent families who
ask nothing more than to adopt their most promising youth into Service.” He
shook his head, and regretted the motion. “I remember actions taken without
counsel—and the Archon’s conversation at Court was often at the borders of
acceptability.”

“Your father was a friend to that maverick.”

Osri said angrily, “You’re not suggesting that my father
retired from active service because of L’Ranja’s disgrace? It may have been at
the same time, but there was no connection. I should know.”

“Would you?”

“I know the reasons he retired, and he never mentioned
L’Ranja’s disgrace to me at all. My father detests scandal. It was not until I
visited my mother on Arthelion that I even learned of it.” Osri stopped, aware
of having intimated that his mother loved scandal—and aware that it was true.
“However distasteful it was, she felt I should know.” He felt the justification
die right out of his lips, so weak it was, but Brandon did not press him.

“How much
do
you know?” Brandon asked, genuine
interest in his voice.

“As much as anyone, which is very little. Aerenarch Semion,
in honor of the L’Ranja name, had not wanted it discussed. Apparently L’Ranja
had confronted the Aerenarch, leveled accusations,
threatened
him.”

“Concerning?”

“Concerning his son’s dishonorable expulsion from the
Academy.” This discussion was getting nowhere, thought Osri, and Brandon’s
feigned ignorance was beginning to annoy him. He looked away from one of the
moons swelling slowly in the screen. “What is the point of these questions,
Your Highness? You seem to be implying that Aerenarch Semion was somehow at
fault by refusing to challenge the madman!”

Osri was shocked when Brandon answered his rhetorical
sarcasm with a simple “Yes.”

“You’re joking,” Osri snapped. “And, if I may add,
Your
Highness,
very offensive I find it.” He heard a movement behind him—slight,
just a shifting, but he was reminded of the big, grim-faced bodyguard who had
accompanied Brandon. Had this man, too, been somehow suborned? Osri winced,
wondering if the entire universe had gone mad.

Brandon tapped a few moments more at his console. He flexed
his fingers, then keyed the big go-pad. The navigation overlay froze.

He regarded Osri. “Do you really believe I’m joking?” There
was no humor at all in his expression; his eyes were disturbingly like his
father’s. The forced disadvantage of this irritated Osri the more. “I can
assure you I’m not, no more than I was when I was forced to watch my friend
Markham stand before the convened Academy to be formally cashiered on
trumped-up charges. Because you know the official reasons were trumped up.
Wargaming without an instructor got you grounded, not expelled—everybody did
it—and they knew everybody did it, they expected everyone to do it, once you’d
passed your flight quals. Yet I was forbidden to speak because I was implicated
in the part that no one spoke openly about, though everyone did behind their
hands: the matter of cheating on tests.”

Osri studied Brandon, seriously unsettled. His deep respect
for the Arkad name, for the almost legendary, much-loved Panarch Gelasaar as
well as for his austere, hardworking heir, had been outraged by the events of
ten years past, as he understood them. He’d always found it easy to believe
that Brandon would cheat on tests, not necessarily because he was a habitual
liar, but because he never seemed to take anything seriously. Ever.

He would not bring up the matter of the tests, which had
been sealed by no less a person than Admiral Carr, who took orders directly
from the Panarch, so he fell back on the part he was sure of. “Because someone
in your position is honor-bound to live by the rules, not to flagrantly break
them,” he began, then became aware of the course Brandon had locked in.

PROBABLE MAXIMUM GEE EXCEEDS HULL RATING. A blinking overlay
indicated that the Krysarch had locked out the medical circuits.

“What are you doing?” Osri gasped. He was fed up with his
helplessness, outraged by the Krysarch’s denial of virtually all Panarchic
norms of conduct, and enraged by his inability to do anything to influence
events. Now it appeared that Brandon was intent on a spectacular suicide. “Why
don’t you signal your Rifter friends to pick us up on the way past, instead of
digging us a grave at eight kicks?”

Brandon grimaced. “At the speed we whipped through Warlock’s
atmosphere, it was all the teslas could do to protect the integrity of the
hull. One of the things that got shaved off was the directional antenna. We
could broadcast a distress call, but do you really want to take a chance on who
else might be listening? That destroyer chasing us had one hell of a captain,
who may have figured out what we’re up to. Our only choice is another ablative
braking maneuver.” His mouth quirked ruefully. “Although I will admit this is a
lot dicier. If we make it, I think I’ll finally have gotten one up on Markham.”

“But how are you going to shed eight kicks? Dis is too small
to have enough atmosphere for that, and its gee-well certainly won’t do more
than warp our course slightly at this velocity.”

Brandon snorted a short, humorless laugh. “I’m betting on
Lao Shang’s Wager. It’s a long smear of hydrocarbon ice that’s been welling up
near the equator for centuries, volcanic in origin, if you can call anything
that cold volcanic. Because it’s continuously extruding and evaporating, it
supposedly stays pretty smooth.” He stretched in his pod and raised a hand to
his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose. He dropped his hand and
continued. “According to the
Handbook,
Lao Shang was a KaoLai adventurer
about three hundred fifty years ago, when they were still mining on Dis, who
bet that he could skate its length. That’s what we’re going to do—we’ll trade
hull metal for velocity and hope the geeplane and the gravitors last long
enough to keep us from being pulped.”

Osri squinted at the screen, trying to decipher their course
through a haze of pain. It looked as if they had just enough reserve
maneuvering power to come in parallel to the Wager, which was in a long, narrow
triangular valley. If it
was
smooth, they might indeed survive—at least,
if they managed to stop before the end, where it narrowed and vanished in a
jumble of hills. “What happened to Lao Shang? Did he make it?”

“Supposedly nobody knows. He never showed up to collect, and
they never found any trace of him. Of course it could be they never looked.”

The painkillers had stripped him of his inhibitions. He
surrendered to painful laughter, hearing the hysteria in his own voice as he
choked out a response. “There’s no chance of that happening to us. If we don’t
make it, we’ll leave traces for half a thousand kilometers. They’ll probably
rename it Arkad’s Jigsaw Puzzle when they try to put the pieces back together.”

“Then I suggest we enjoy our last hours of physical
integrity,” Brandon retorted as he levered his pod down. “I’m going to set my
trancer for sixteen hours. I suggest you do the same.” He closed his faceplate
without waiting for an answer.

Osri hesitated, but then came the sound of Deralze closing
his own faceplate. Was the click and hiss louder than necessary?

Sleep, Osri decided. Sixteen hours of induced trance, even
if those were his last sixteen hours, were better than sixteen hours of
grinding anxiety.

o0o

The defense room was much quieter; the Shield monitors had
been evacuated, their usefulness at an end. The Archonic Enclave was the last
site of resistance, and only a necessary minimum of personnel remained,
monitoring internal defense systems to make the final assault of the Rifter
invaders as costly as possible. No opposition had been offered to their landing
when the Shield had been lowered—the Archon had no wish to subject his people
to nuclear bombardment in exchange for a few Rifter vessels.
“We can do more
damage to them here hand-to-hand and leave the noncombatants out of it,”
he
had said.

Omilov had refused evacuation; there was no place for him to
go, since, as incredible as it seemed, he was the object of this invasion. He
sat on the control dais with the Archon and Bikara along with a number of
guards, clutching the unfamiliar weight of a firejac to his chest as he tried
to imagine the flight of his son and the Krysarch to safety.