Sun of Suns

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE SCENE WAS an eery repeat of Dentius's call to execution, only now it was Chaison Fanning who perched atop the T-bar and addressed all six of the ships. The vessels were temporarily lashed together into a loose star formation. Their crews sat or stood on their hulls, dark silhouettes casting long shadows from the spotlights that lit Fanning.

The admiral gestured with his bullhorn. "We are a long way from home. We have gone through the trials and tribulations of a minor war, and yet I have not told you why.

"Now, I will tell you why."

A murmur went through the assembly. Hayden Griffin, who sat astride his bike comfortably invisible in the dark air, strained to hear what the crewmen were saying. Resentment battled respect among them, he knew. Fanning was known to have fought gallantly against the pirates, but then he had also let Dentius and his men escape. There were airmen listening now who would always bear the scars of Dentius's torturer.

This had better be good, Hayden thought, knowing that the same thought must be going through everybody else's minds as well.

"Before I explain our mission in full," said the admiral, "I'm going to tell you a story." He held up a hand, face slightly turned away. "This is no cocktail-party anecdote, designed to soften up an audience.

I know you're exhausted.This story is vital to your understanding our purpose. It's a story that concerns pirates, in fact.

"Two hundred years ago, winter was not the quiet place that it is today." If he expected a laugh at this point, Fanning didn't get it. "We've tangled with a modern pirate armada. But Dentius's force is nothing compared to the old ones. Once, pirate navies fought their way into the heart of civilized nations. They plundered suns. Their blades reached all the way to the precincts of Candesce itself. And the greatest of the pirates of that age was Emile Anetene.

"Anetene was a fop. He was an educated man, with refined tastes. Such men become the most savage of killers, and Anetene was the finest at it. He plundered the principalities of Candesce; he terrorized Slipstream's borders; and eventually, he inspired the wrath of the whole world, so that a vast navy was assembled, comprising ships from most of the worlds of Virga. And they hunted him down.

"Now, you might think that it was Anetene's depredations that caused the nations to finally react so. Most people think so; we in the government have always encouraged the impression that it was out of compassion for our set-upon citizens that we hunted Anetene down. But that's not true.

"Anetene stole one particular tiling—a small, seemingly insignificant object. When the heads of Virga's states found out—particularly the principalities of Candesce—they acted instantly. No amount of rapine and slaughter could have galvanized them to do so. One theft did."

Fanning paused. The men were silent now, confused but also curious. The admiral looked away into the darkness, appearing to gather his thoughts. His expression was serious.

"This expedition was undertaken after certain facts came to the admiralty's attention," he said. "We knew all about the threat from Mavery, and you and I know that this threat was never great. We were always able to defend ourselves against the likes of them. But let me ask you something. Their rocket attack on Rush—the one that so surprised us all, and that precipitated the Pilot's order to send out the fleet… many of you were there.You are military men. Did that attack make any sense to you?"

Fanning nodded, as though to himself, and said, "That attack was a deliberate provocation. It was designed to draw us out. But why would Mavery do that?—When we were sure to make mincemeat of their navy in the ensuing battle?"

Now the murmurs started again. "Somebody's with 'em!" someone shouted.

"Exactly.They've got allies.To be precise, they have one ally that intends to join them to crush Slipstream.That ally is Falcon Formation."

Shouts of anger and dismay met this news. Hayden nodded to himself. He remembered now the photographs he had seen in Venera Fanning's hand. A fleet being commissioned.

"Slipstreams very existence is threatened!" shouted Fanning. Hayden leaned forward, his mouth dry. For years he had dreamed of hearing such news—but that it should be the Formation…

"Falcon Formation is our most powerful neighbor," said the admiral. "We've had little to do with them because our long journey of exile has taken us on a tangent course. It's a good thing we never attracted their attention before, even when we were conquering their neighbor Aerie. The Formation is a dark bureaucracy, a super-Confucianist state ruled by a hereditary caste of bloodless clerks. They are fanatics who are determined to one day rule over all of Virga. And they have decided that Slipstream is a prize worthy of their ambitions.

"We might be able to hold off an invasion by the existing Formation fleet. I beseeched the Pilot not to fall for Mavery's diversion. We would need all our ships to thwart an attack by the Formation. But a month ago we learned that Falcon Formation is building a new weapon that they are going to use to crush us."

As Fanning told the men about the Formation's secret shipyard and the dreadnought being built there, Hayden found himself wracked with conflicting emotions. The prospect of Slipstream being conquered was exhilarating. On the other hand, if Falcon Formation moved in on the conquered territories of Aerie, they would never give them up. Aerie's people would be assimilated into the cold dictatorship of that notorious bureaucracy, and Aerie itself would be erased from the history of Virga.

"… No allies will come to our aid," Fanning was saying. "Therefore, we need a miracle. You, men, are here in winter to provide that miracle.

"The stories they'll tell about you! Each and every one of you will be entered into the roster of Slipstream heroes when our journey is done. For we are on our way to destroy the navy of Falcon Formation!"

A stunned silence greeted these words. Fanning looked around slyly. "Is he mad?That's what you're wondering. How are six ships—and the ghost of a seventh whom we will never forget—how will such a tiny force prevail against the hundred cruisers and carriers of Falcon?

"I will tell you how.

"There exists a weapon that will give us an unassailable tactical advantage over Falcon's ships. It will allow us to maneuver in darkness and fog as though we were in clear and empty air. It will let us fly and bank and turn in utter darkness at two hundred miles an hour, all the while keeping Falcon Formation's ships centered in our crosshairs. We have come to winter to acquire that weapon!"

A babble of protests, shouts of delight, and heated arguments wafted through the dark. Fanning gestured for silence. "Please! I've heard all the objections before. If such a weapon existed, why isn't it being used? Why doesn't Falcon Formation have it?

"The reason," he said more quietly, "has to do with Candesce.

The Sun of Suns emits radiation that interferes with certain types of machine. Radar is one of me devices that won't work within Virga—though it works everywhere else in the universe. Anybody can build a radar set, it's just an electrical device. You've all seen electricity, we use it for lighting and electrolysis. But getting anything but noise out of a radar set, that's another matter, here in Virga.

"But there is a way to make electrical devices work cleanly. The secret was lost two hundred years ago—stolen from the flagship of one of the principalities of Candesce by one of the most legendary figures in history."

Fanning laughed. "Yes. We come back to Emile Anetene. His story is almost mythological—indeed, it wasn't until we visited the tourist city and I saw the map with my own eyes, that I allowed myself to really believe that the legend of the treasure of Anetene is true."

Hayden had to smile at the muted reaction to this. The men had heard too much that was unbelievable already. One more preposterous notion piled on top of the rest made little difference.

That is, it didn't at first. Fanning explained how Emile Anetene had stolen something—a key, though to what he didn't say—and hidden it with the rest of his hoard. He then died in a hail of rockets, cornered by the allied navies of Candesce. Almost from the first there were rumors about the hoard. No one had plundered it, the legend went, because Anetene had left the only map with one of his women—and she had hidden it somewhere no one would ever find it.

"We found the map," said Fanning. "We have it. Within the week, you will be plundering Anetene's hoard." He laughed again briefly. "At this point, you needn't believe my story. Just lend me seven days of service, and we'll all know for sure if the legend is true. And if it is… then the treasure is yours."

"Now that's more like it!" yelled an airman with a broken arm. The others laughed.

"We will return with the treasure and working radar. We will demolish Falcon Formation's secret shipyard and anybody else who gets in our way. We will save Slipstream and you will return to your homes rich as Pilots.

"Anybody object to mat?"

HAYDEN SPUN UP the bike and drifted it to the Rook's open hangar doors. Fanning continued to field questions, though he wouldn't answer any more about how this radar thing was going to work. Many of the men considered his story a ridiculous fabrication, but they agreed that giving him a week to prove it was fair.

Having worked with Aubri Mahallan to build the radar units, Hayden already believed.

After securing his bike he sought her out. The two of them still hadn't spoken properly, and he intended to find out why. Her workshop's door was tightly closed, so he rapped on it smartly. He waited, and when she didn't answer, he rapped again.

"I can keep doing this," he said loudly.

There was a long pause, then the door flew back. Aubri was braced just inside. Her eyes were red. "What?" she snapped.

"Can I come in?"

Silently, and with obvious reluctance, she drew back to allow him to enter. Her workshop was a shambles. The pirates had evidently ransacked it, but surprisingly little was actually broken—or not so surprisingly, he remembered now. Pirates had so little of their own that they prized, rather than destroyed, whatever they could steal of others'.

"I just wanted to see whether you were all right," he said after a long and awkward silence. Aubri shrugged, and finally nodded.

"Why did you come back after the battle?" she said in a subdued voice. "To make sure you were right?—About the Rook being taken?"

"I was hoping it wasn't."

"Or maybe you didn't come back at all," she continued. She wasn't watching him, but was nervously organizing the debris in the room. "Maybe you were on your way to the station when Mar-tor figured out you'd abandoned us all. And that's why he knocked you out."

Anxious, but unwilling to back out now, Hayden shrugged. "Think what you will. I wasn't wrong, was I? The Rook lost the battle. The ship was boarded. If it hadn't been for Venera's quick thinking…"

"She's as savage as the pirates," said Aubri with a rueful smile. "I've never seen such ugliness as I saw here. Brutality… You people are animals."

"I couldn't agree more." She looked at him in surprise. "If the world needed saving it wouldn't be worth doing it," said Hayden. "Everything worthwhile ends up getting stolen by someone evil. You hate the pirates who tried to take the Rook and its people? Well, some pirates are so powerful they get to call themselves by other names. Names like 'Pilot of Slipstream.' What's Slipstream if not the biggest pirate armada in the world? So big that they don't capture and plunder ships, but whole nations."

"What are you talking about?"

He sighed. "Do you know anything about the people you're working for?"

Aubri narrowed her eyes, searching his face. "This is some sort of justification for why you wanted to abandon your friends, isn't it? They're bad people, so you're justified in only being in it for yourself, is that it?"

Angry now, he said, "I tried to save you. There's nothing for me out there. I haven't got a future. I just drought it might be worth saving the life of somebody who did have one."

"Then you picked the wrong person to save."

It took a few seconds for her words to register with Hayden. "W-what did you say?"

Aubri sighed heavily. "Listen, I don't need this right now. And I don't need your help at the moment, assistant. You know our machines are ready." She put her hand in the center of his chest and pushed. Confused and angry, Hayden let himself sail out the door.

Slew the carpenter had watched his exit and now smiled. "They're all trouble, kid. Take my word for it, that's as good as you're gonna get from her."

"Shut up." But Slew just laughed at him, and Hayden, ears burning, retreated to the hangar again.

FINDING ITSELF IN a stray beam of sunlight from distant Candesce, the capital bug shrugged awake. It unfolded its six legs and stretched them ineffectually into the cold air. There was nothing to grab on to for a hundred miles in any direction, but it didn't care much; it lived on stray flotsam and jetsam and could hibernate for months at a time. The heat of a sun could waken it, though, and as it felt the distant rays of Candesce it spread its diaphanous wings, and began to hum.

"Batten the hatches!" The Rook's new boatswain leaped from one side of the vessel to the other, following his own, order. The lads in the hangar were hastily dogging the doors as well; but it did little good. The world-shattering drone of the capital bug wormed its way into every nook and cranny of the ship. The crewmen cursed and clapped their hands over their ears, but the buzz seemed to resonate all the more inside their skulls. One by one, across the ship, the windup lantern flames flickered in the choppy air and went out.

Hayden had been asleep on his bedroll in the ship's centrifuge. He was used to all its noises now, and even the thunder from test firings and target practice couldn't wake him. But the sound of the capital bug had him instantly alert.

As he exited the now-shaking wheel he saw Travis's face floating in the solitary illumination of the last opened porthole. "Will you look at that!" said the officer—or at least, those were the words his mouth shaped. Hayden couldn't have heard him from six inches away.

Over the past few days Hayden had discovered that Travis liked or at least respected him. The feeling was mutual; the man didn't treat the presence of civilians on his ship as a threat to his authority. So Hayden didn't worry that he was tempting fate by putting his head next to Travis's and looking out the porthole.

Dots of cloud patterned the air around the capital bug, throwing small lozenges of shadow on the vast, distance-blue curve of its abdomen. That flank was all Hayden could really see at the moment; any details about the rest of the beast faded into darkness or blue to either side. Cruising up and down the vast wall of flesh were flocks of birds or fish, apparently immune to the drone that could kill any man who came too close. Closer to the Rook—only a few miles away—a number of large black spheres turned lazily in the sudden sunlight. These were surrounded by wreaths of yellowish mist and swarming dots.

The buzzing stopped, leaving a ringing silence that was, in its own way, just as painful as the noise.

Travis grinned. "That's a real capital bug, isn't it?" It sounded like he was on the other end of one of ale ship's speaking tubes.

Hayden nodded, digging in his ears and then checking his fingertips for blood. "Good thing we weren't any closer," he shouted.

"What're those things?" Travis pointed at the town-sized spheres of black in the middle distance.

"Bug shit," said Hayden. "You don't want to go near it. Great for growing mushrooms, though."

"I can't believe anything that huge could be alive."

"They're mostly empty space. A big balloon, like the world itself I guess. The bugs even have their own forests and lakes and stuff inside them, or so they say."

Travis gave one last wistful look out the porthole, then turned away to attend to his duties. Hayden stayed where he was as up and down the Rook then threw open the rest of the portholes. The heat of Candesce was very faint, but it was sunlight on his face, and its very presence was vastly soothing.

"Don't get too comfortable," said a voice next to him. Hayden turned, blinking, to find Lyle Carrier hovering in the shadows.

"What?"

"I know you think you've made friends in high places," said Carrier, nodding at Travis's retreating feet. "But it's not really that they trust you, you know. They're happy to smile and chat with you because they know I'm watching you."

Hayden scowled at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's a lot of unanswered questions about you, boy," Carrier said, his mouth pursed in a by now familiar moue of distaste. "And what answers you have given just don't add up. You see," he leaned in close, "I know you're up to something, and Venera knows I know. She has every confidence that I'll find out what it is. So she and your other betters are happy to indulge you for the moment. They know you're well taken care of."

Hayden stared back at him. It had taken him a long time to get Carrier's proper measure. He regretted not sizing the man up properly right at the beginning. Carrier was a killer; but Hayden wasn't afraid of him.

He cocked his head to one side. "You mean you've spent all this time skulking around watching me and formulating hypotheses on your own? And you never once thought to just ask?"

The slightest tremor passed over Carrier's left eyelid. It was enough discomposure to make Hayden smile.

"What are you up to, then?" said Carrier.

"None of your business," snapped Hayden. He turned back to the view.

"So that's the way you want to do it," murmured Carrier. "All right. Later, Griffin."

Hayden didn't hear him leave, but he refused to turn his head to check. For one thing, the sight outside was beautiful: the light from Candesce wasn't fading, if anything it was brightening, and no wonder for that was where the Rook and its sister ships were going.

But also, he didn't want Carrier to see his face right now. Carrier would have seen that Hayden knew he was now marked for death. You didn't insult a man like Lyle Carrier and get away with it.

So be it. Right now he needed an enemy he could hate unreservedly. His feelings about Admiral Fanning were too mixed to be satisfying. Carrier… that was another matter.

Hayden watched the Rook's sister ships skirting the precincts of the gargantuan capital bug. They set their prows in the direction of the Sun of Suns, and as the air continued to be clear and fortunately lighted, they all opened up their throttles and arrowed toward Candesce.

TWO DAYS LATER, and the way ahead was bathed in perpetual light. First one, then two, then four suns peeked out from behind the perpetual cloudbanks of winter. At first each was little more man an orange smear on the sky, its light diffused and filtered by hundreds of miles of air, water, and dust. Over the hours they sharpened, becoming in time tiny pinpricks of actinic light embedded in discs and arcs of silver and green which were the collective reflection of thousands upon thousands of individual houses, towns, forests, lakes, and farms.

Gridde, the ancient chart-master, emerged from his velvet-lined chamber to hold up prisms to the light of these suns. He examined the miniature rainbows so created and consulted tables in a huge book that he had carried strapped to his back for so long that it had permanently dented the shoulder of his jacket. Then he pointed at each of the suns in turn and said, "The Nation of Tracoune, the Principality of Kester, the March Collective of the Hero Reeve and, er, what was the other damn one… that one's the Upstart Breakaway Republic of Canso."

The crewmen who had gathered to watch this procedure nodded and muttered sagely to one another. Few had heard of any of these nations, and none had heard of all of them. They were halfway around the world from Slipstream and its neighbors. More importantly, these were countries that steered their way through the intermediate airs of Virga, hundreds of miles above the principalities of Candesce but hundreds more below the layers flown by Aerie and other familiar places. Between were layers of winter—dark, cold, and choppy air that had proven over the centuries to be unlucky for the founding of nations.

"Gridde told me it's because there's cyclones, jet streams," Martor said later. "Things drift apart too easy. I guess if they didn't there'd be no winter, just suns and countries packed from one end of the world to me other." He smiled wistfully. "Imagine that."

"Hmmpf." For lack of anything better to do, Hayden was polishing the racing bike for the tenth time. Now he looked at Martor with a sour expression. "There's too much junk floating around in civilized spaces. You can't take a bike above sixty miles an hour with-out getting somebody's discarded chamber pot in the forehead—or worse, the loose contents of one. Plus there's police every five miles waiting to ticket anybody who opens up their throttle. Far be it that you should rattle the windows of some rich man's house."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," said Martor.

"That's 'cause you haven't got enough bike time in yet. When you own your own someday you'll curse the density of civilized spaces."

Over the next few days Hayden's dim assessment of civilization was confirmed: the expeditionary force made little headway through increasingly populated air. Habitation began on the lowest level with basement spiders who wove long scarves of web that attracted flecks of soil and trash, gradually growing into rafts the size of dinner tables on which myriad other creatures thrived. The webs tangled in the Rook's vanes and had to be swept off with brooms. Birds, fish, and insects, most thumbnail-sized but some big as boats wove and ducked around the mats. As the light of the suns brightened the mats were seen to be festooned with grass and wildflowers. In the distance the watchmen began to spot trees and farms. And everywhere, now, there was ship traffic.

Most of the local suns followed the diurnal rhythm of Candesce, otherwise there would be no darkness here at all. Some renegades did use their own time scales, for historical or political reasons. The result was that the nights here were more glorious than any Hayden had known. The air and clouds deepened to azure tinged with shades of turquoise, mauve, and peach, and in this twilight a thousand town and house beacons glimmered. Hayden overheard Aubri say something about "the stars" as she gazed at the view from the Rook's hangar. He didn't approach her to find out what she meant.

Nor were there any fights or loud arguments among the men. A spell of grace had settled over the ships, all the more precious because they knew it wouldn't last. For a few days they were just airmen, entering strange and wonderful skies.

They didn't approach any of these suns; their destination lay farther in. The six cruisers threaded their way between border beacons, staying in international air as they approached the shell of civilization enshrouding the Sun of Suns. The principalities of Candesce became visible as a vast haze that curved away to all sides—the misty outline of a bubble hundreds of miles in radius with Candesce at its center.

The man-tended suns of the outlying nations fell behind as Candesce's radiance grew. Here were dense forests like gargantuan heads of broccoli, each dozens of miles in extent. There were equally big lakes, some shaped by scaffolding into lens shapes that focused the light of Candesce into town-sized zones of incandescence for industry or waste control. The air began to smell hot and rich with life.

This was the most ancient part of inhabited Virga. Candesce had been here since the founding of the world, and some of the nations now visible had existed almost as long. The crew traded stories of fabled places and legends, of town wheels made of solid gold and forests as big as nations. The air was speckled with ships in all directions, and now they even spotted flying humans, intrepid individuals using leg-powered wings mounted on their backs, like angels, to travel between towns and houses. Ship traffic became constrained by beacon lanes and the six Slipstream ships dutifully kept within their boundaries.

Finally Gridde emerged from his cell again and went to perch like some ragged black bird on a hangar door. He measured the angles between Candesce and the suns they had passed, and eventually nodded. "Gehellen," he announced, "lies two days journey that way." He pointed toward a part of the crescent of haze surrounding Candesce that looked to Hayden like any other part. As he folded himself back into the ship Hayden overheard him mutter to Admiral Fanning, "It's there that you'll find Leaf's Choir."

Two days later, the Rook and its sister ships stopped at a border beacon. The beacon itself was a wrought-iron and glass ball forty feet in diameter. Since it was day, its fires were banked, but the air smelled of kerosene for miles around. The lane markers had funneled all ship traffic into a choke-point here; all travelers had to pass near the rocket racks of an ancient, moss-encrusted fortress built of stone in a crude cube shape. Tethered to this were four baroque, heavily carven cruisers flying banners Hayden had never seen before.

As the Slipstream vessels arrived, a squadron of bikes exited the fortress and moved to surround them.The cruiser's engines coughed into life and they began to edge forward, blocking the way. And deep within the shadowed stones of the fortress itself, the noses of rockets slid into view.

"So," said Slew the carpenter, who was sitting with Hayden in the hangar, "welcome to Gehellen."