The Phoenix in Flight (54 page)

His hands ranged across the console many times faster than
before, accelerating as familiarity returned. Markham had been assigned to that
class a full year earlier than most began, but as always, he taught Brandon at
night.
Don’t think about the Tenno, Brandy, just let them move your hands.
You’re not playing Phalanx. Get out of the way and let the glyphs do the work.

It’s just as he said,
Brandon thought,
you never
forget them!

The Tenno Major battle glyphs—tactical ideographs—had been
refined over hundreds of years to cover every possible configuration of
warfare, and since they were built up from simpler conceptual modules, they
could be, and had been, extended to cover new technologies and tactics. A
simplified version—tenno minor—was standard for ship operations, and a slightly
more complex version made Phalanx an
entrez-vous
for naval training. But
the full Tenno conveyed information at near the theoretical maximum predicted
for visual input, using color, form, and movement, forging a link between human
and machine that made the two one.

Brandon could almost feel Markham grinning over his
shoulder, and hear his bantering voice,
Well, Brandy, you’re pinned against
the planet by a battlecruiser that you can’t touch with anything you’ve got...
what do you do now?

“Blind ’em with my brilliance, or baffle them with...”

He broke off when he realized he’d spoken aloud. The crew
stared at him, Vi’ya with her hands poised over her console. Then she tapped,
and the echo window from his console on the main view-screen echoed the glyphs
flickering brightly.

o0o

“What the chatzin’ hell are you doing setting up for L-3
with a battlecruiser chasing us?” yelled Marim.

Greywing stood up so that she could get a better look at the
strange phenomenon glowing on Brandon’s screen. If that was L-3, then she’d
been drinking Vilarian Negus. She could parse out some of the basic forms, but
the glyphs were impossibly complex.

Lokri was staring at Brandon’s hand, his face closed, almost
angry. “So that’s how you did it.”

“
You
cheated!” Marim sounded honestly outraged.

The Arkad made a soft sound, too strained and humorless to
be a laugh. “No. Pulling up the Tenno Major in Phalanx against untrained
opponents would be like bringing a blaster to a pillow fight, which is why it’s
not allowed.”

He gestured at his console. “I had no idea Markham had
installed these.” He paused, then looked confused. “Didn’t you ever notice when
he used them?”

Vi’ya gave her head a slight twist, her dark eyes steady.
“He was working on something... a surprise... when he was killed. He never got
a chance to show anyone.”

“And Jakarr never said anything,” Marim said with a snort of
disgust.

“Probably never found them,” Lokri put in. “I sat at that
console twice when Jakarr was at the other base, and I certainly never saw
them.” His drawl sounded bitter to Greywing, almost resentful.

Jaim’s voice interrupted. “Ready here, Vi’ya. Rigged for
overload conditions. You’ll get up to thirty seconds or so, then you’d better
be ready to stick your arms through the hull and flap ’em like crazy.”

Vi’ya turned back to Brandon. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. I think I can stop any missiles, and there are ways to
cut down the efficiency of the cruiser’s ruptors, this close to the planet.”

She slammed her hand down on the big go-pad, and Arthelion
ballooned in the forward view. There was no sense of acceleration, since the
geeplane affected the entire ship at once, but Greywing knew they were
accelerating toward the planet at better than fifteen gees. Everything depended
on Vi’ya’s skill now. If they entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle they’d
either break up or skip back into space like a rock off a pond.

Behind them the
Fist of Dol’jhar
dwindled and fell
toward the horizon, then began to swell with alarming speed. The Arkad tapped
his console, considered the glyphs, then triggered a staggered cluster of
missiles from the aft launcher.

“What’re you doing?” Marim demanded. “Those dimpy things
won’t even dent a cruiser’s hull metal, even if he left his teslas off.”

“They’ll confuse his sensors and weaken his ruptor beams,”
Vi’ya said tersely. “Watch. And learn.”

Behind them the missiles began their deadly bloom, their
neat coins of blue-white light suddenly shredding as the bone-jarring
squeal-rumble of a ruptor rattled the bridge. Greywing’s teeth clicked together
painfully. Ivard cried out in pain and blood ran out of his mouth.

“Marim!” shouted Vi’ya over the rapidly increasing roar of
atmospheric entry. The little Rifter’s console was sprinkled with red lights,
her fingers blurring on the console.

Brandon triggered another cluster of missiles as a wave of
changes rippled through the glyph display. Another ruptor beam shook the
Telvarna
,
weaker this time.

“Chatz!”
screamed Marim, her usual command of
invective deserting her. “Double chatz!”
she wailed. “The blunge-eating
logos-lovers nackered the fiveskip. It’s down but good.”

The ship
began to quiver, a trembling that rapidly
grew to a jarring, violent shaking. Gee-forces pulled at them as, with a
stuttering roar, the plasma jets cut in and the ship leveled out and stopped
jittering. Weight returned; they were in aerodynamic flight now.

Behind them, the green lances of laser-boosted missiles
reached out from the distant battlecruiser now denied its prey, its ruptors
useless, dissipated by the atmosphere that sustained the
Telvarna.
Brandon
triggered a counter barrage, and light flared behind the racing ship, then
faded. The rearview was dark.

“Altitude twenty-six, mach twenty-two,” Ivard sang out, his
face pale around the blood smears but his hands steady.

Greywing smiled at her little brother in pride.

“Marim, get down to power and give Jaim a hand,” said Vi’ya.
“Let me know how long fiveskip will be down.” Marim scampered out and Vi’ya
motioned Ivard over to her console. “Take over, Firehead. Marim will need some
feedback.”

Ahead pale dawn began to bleach the sky as the
Telvarna
caught
up with the sun. Far below, moonlight glittered off water.

“Arkad. Do you know anything about the Panarchist defense
plans?”

Brandon looked up, his face distracted. “No. I suspect,
given that they have a battlecruiser on interdiction patrol, that all the
defense systems are down—that’s standard practice once a planet is lost. Makes
it easier for any resistance movements.”

“So there’s a chance that no one’s tracking us.”

“A chance. It may vary from place to place.” He paused,
obviously weighing his words, but Marim’s voice halted him before he could go
on.

“Things are chatzed up good down here, Vi’ya, but most of it
can wait, except some of the plasma guides to the radiants, and the fiveskip. That’ll
need at least six hours of work before we can trust it again.”

Vi’ya acknowledged and turned back to Brandon. “You had a
proposal to make.”

“There is one place where the odds are likely to be
considerably better.”

She lifted her brows interrogatively.

Brandon windowed up a relay from Ivard’s console, a chart
showing their present course. “The Palace Major. We were headed to a field less
than 300 kilometers away from it, and we’re not that far off course even now.”

Vi’ya snorted derisively. “Don’t let your homesickness run
away with you. At this point that’s the last place I’d set the
Telvarna
down—it
is now Eusabian’s palace.”

Brandon’s jaw muscles tightened and he looked away, almost a
flinch. But then he looked back, his expression so bland that Greywing wondered
if she’d imagined that first reaction.

“That’s why it’s the last place they would expect you to.
Look, the Mandalic Archipelago covers millions of hectares—even close to the
Palace there are forests that could swallow a ship this size without a trace.
My Royal override will deal with any defense systems that are still up, and if
the household computer is still running, we might even be able to find out
what’s happening.”

He hesitated. “I’d also like a chance to see if any of the
Family are there in need of help. Remember, as far as those security computers
are concerned, I’m
supposed
to be there.” Then he grinned at her, his
blue eyes wide with irony. “Besides, how do you expect to pay for all the work
the ship will need after this?”

Vi’ya frowned slightly, and Greywing wondered what the
captain was reading from him.

“You haven’t anything but the ring on your finger,” she
finally replied. “That will hardly be sufficient.”

“And you call yourself a Rifter. Haven’t you ever dreamed of
looting the Palace of the Panarch of the Thousand Suns?”

Lokri crowed with laughter and Ivard grinned. Marim cackled
over the intercom. “Ya-ha-ha! If you pass this up, Vi’ya, I’ll send your hide
to Hreem myself.”

Vi’ya’s lips quirked, then relaxed in her rare smile. “Give
Ivard the coordinates, then. We accept your invitation.”

Brandon rose from his console and gave her one of those
flourishing Douloi bows, like they did to each other but never to a common
citizen. His hand pressed over his heart, his other one sweeping back and then
up again.

Vi’ya’s expression smoothed as she turned back to her
console. “Keep your eyes on your screens, Arkad,” she said. “We’re not safe
yet.”

o0o

The lingering light of a long summer evening slanted through
the high clerestory windows in the antechamber to the Phoenix Hall, bringing a
warm glow to wood paneling and woven tapestries. The room was a long, broad
corridor. At regular intervals along the walls were recessed arches backed by
pale amber stone, each with a sunburst mosaic radiating out from it onto the
floor. Within each niche a bust shone in the mellow light from the high
windows, commemorating the rulers of the Arkad dynasty.

The air was aromatic with sandalwood and the warm scents of
polish and wax. At intervals a gentle tone sounded, seemingly from the air
itself, each time a different timbre and pitch. The sound was evocative at
times of bells, at times of hushed and distant voices. It filled the room with
an expectant peace, and a sense of the slow weight of centuries.

Eusabian stood for some time before the bust of Jaspar I,
founder of the dynasty, seeing in it an unmistakable echo of the features of
his defeated enemy. The features were recognizable, though rounded, in Jaspar’s
successor, the Kyriarch Alenora I, his daughter. Eusabian began to pace along
the corridor, pausing at each bust. The familiar features echoed in each
succeeding image, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker.

The style of the statuary evolved as he advanced down the
hall, changing in slow cycles from stark formality through increasing ornament
to mannered excess. Then the styles returned to classical again, yet with
something of the preceding modes remaining. The eyes of the Panarchs and
Kyriarchs seemed to follow him as he passed, reminding him forcibly of Gelasaar
Arkad’s gaze.

About a third of the way down the hall, Eusabian stopped,
rage welling up within him. One of the busts had been rudely vandalized, the
face chipped away jaggedly, the name at its base effaced. Doubtless one of his
worthless Rifter hirelings had done this, striking in childish fashion against
an enemy worthy of a respect the fool could not conceive.
I will have the
guards crucified for this. And when the vandal is found...

The thought died. There were no fragments around the bust,
no stone dust. The pedestal, and the floor beneath it, were clean, gleaming
with polish. He bent closer. The jagged edges of the bust’s ruined face were
softened by age, with a faint patina like that left by the touch of many hands
over many years. Only then did he remember.
The Faceless One.

A faint chill gripped his neck and he stepped back.
This
man’s place in history is gone.
Here was a level of retribution that he had
never conceived, a justice more terrible than any paliach recorded in the long
and bloody history of Dol’jhar.
They have made him as if he never lived.

A movement broke his reverie. Barrodagh waited with two men
in the doorway. He motioned them forward, noting that Barrodagh clutched a
small, silver object in his hands. Something about the way he gripped it looked
odd, and a fierce exultation kindled in the Avatar.
The Heart of Kronos!

When Barrodagh stopped in front of him, Eusabian held out
his hand to receive the key to his kingdom.

Barrodagh gaped at Eusabian in confusion, then the awful
realization hit him.
He thinks it’s the Heart of Kronos.
He jerked his
hand back.
And he doesn’t know any more about the Heart than I did. Why
shouldn’t it swallow my thumb? He won’t hesitate to cut it off!

Fortunately there were no Tarkans present. Barrodagh could
almost feel the zhu’leath each carried slicing through the tendons and bone at
the Avatar’s command.

Eusabian’s face darkened with the flush of rage, the lines
between the corners of his mouth and his nose deepening. “Give it to me.”

Barrodagh held out his hand, conditioned by years of
obedience. Eusabian grasped the sphere and pulled, then twisted. Barrodagh
gasped and half sank to his knees. “Lord, please.” The Dol’jharian’s greater
strength threatened to twist his thumb off. “It’s not the Heart of Kronos.”

The Avatar stared at the sphere, and let it go. “Then why
have you brought it to me?”

The heat of mortification prickled up Barrodagh’s body. “It
swallowed my thumb and no one knows how to get it off.” He heard a snicker
behind him, but he didn’t dare turn around to glare at Tallis.