Sun of Suns

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CANDESCE BLAZED BENEATH Hayden's feet. Even here hundreds of miles away, the heat from the Sun of Suns was almost intolerable. If he shielded his eyes and looked near the light Hayden could just make out the bright tails of infalling lakes that were boiling away as they approached that point of incandescence "They look like comets," Aubri had said when she first saw them.

Other things moved near Candesce. Ships from all the principal! ties hovered just outside its zone of heat, moving in after sunoff. Among the principalities it was common custom to consign th< coffins of the dead to the Sun of Suns; Hayden imagined that they toe must become comets at the last, never reaching their goal but evaporating back into the stuff of Virga to become places and people again So must his mother have gone when Aerie's new sun exploded. Hi! father would have become compost for some Slipstream farm.

Some of the ships hiding in Candesce's light would be funeral vessels. But some had another purpose.

"What are you doing?" Aubri looped an arm around his waist "You'll burn your eyes out doing that. Come inside."

Hayden had been thinking about the ships that ventured close to Candesce during darkness. They were the harvesters—boats that scrounged the garbage cast out of the Sun of Suns. That garbage was Virga's chief source of sun components. His parents had used fusion-core pieces bought from the principalities to build Aerie's secret sun.

For now, Hayden would not let his speculations run away with him. He let Aubri draw him inside the charcoal-harvester's hut they had found on the outskirts of Leaf's Choir. It perched like an angular bug on the black branch of a tree whose roots lay miles away in darkness. Venera Fanning and Carrier had taken up residence in another harvester's hut some distance away; the bike was hidden there in a ball of sticks. Carrier would not trust Hayden to be its keeper.

He didn't care. It had been strange and wonderful this morning to wake to the first glow of Candesce coming through the one shuttered window of the hut, and find himself wrapped in Aubri's arms and in silence. He had slept with women before; he had never awoken the next morning to find one still with him. So he dwelt in this moment for a long time, breaming slowly and contentedly with her beside him.

The now-familiar hum of the Rook's engines was gone, and not even birdsong signaled dawn here. When Hayden pulled himself over to the window (sleeping Aubri coming along like she was tied to him) he looked out on an astonishing vista. It was as if he were a mite clinging to a giant's hair; for miles in every direction thin black trunks reached toward Candesce from a place of shadow and blackness. The giant's hairs twisted and intertwined as they strained toward the light; many still had branches though the harvesters were systematically stripping them. None had leaves, but life was not completely absent here. Wildflowers nestled in the crooked elbows of branches, and bright green bushes dotted many trunks. Aubri had discovered wild raspberries on this very tree, which might explain why the hut had been positioned here. It was too hot for fish, but a few birds cruised in the distance.

After an hour or two Hayden had started to wonder if there might be a beehive or wasps' nest hidden somewhere nearby, because he'd realized that it wasn't completely silent here. A deep basso thrum filled the air, faint but unwavering. He hadn't heard it last night.

When he mentioned it to Aubri she just shrugged and said, "It's Candesce. Up close it must be like a god singing."

He was in awe of Aubri's knowledge and said so. "You truly know how to control Candesce? You could make it your toy, like a bike?"

She shook her head. "Ride it like a rocket, more like. But Hayden, Candesce was designed before Virga existed. Those designs are still available to anyone willing to leave Virga to find them. I had them with me when I first came here."

That conversation had happened a few hours ago, and had trailed off into kissing and more personal intimations. But her words had stuck with Hayden, growing stranger and stranger the more he thought about them. Now, as they settled in the cooler shadow of the hut, he said, "Why would you have the plans for Candesce with you? Did you already know you were going to visit it?"

She frowned, just slightly, and looked around at the wicker walls. But when she met his gaze again she wore a carefree smile.

"I came here with every piece of information we'd ever collected on Virga," she said. She held up two fingers and pinched them close together. "All that data could be contained in something much smaller than a grain of sand, so why not carry all of it? Of course, when I got here, the memory store was disabled by Candesce's emissions. So I'll have to go on what little I remember when we get there. But I remember enough."

He nodded, still thinking about it. Suddenly Aubri grabbed his arm. "Look!"

Buzzing in the doorway was one of those odd little chrome insects that one saw sometimes. Tankers, Aubri had called them. Hayden reached out a hand. "Should I catch it?"

She shook her head. "I don't have my instruments with me, I couldn't study it now."The little tanker spun around and zipped off. A sudden cloud of similar bugs flicked past the window.

"You were right," Hayden said. "They're headed for Candesce."

"Carrying fuel," she said with a nod. "For the Farnsworth Fusors."

THEY FLOATED TOGETHER inside the hut, exhausted after making love, and were silent together. He was acutely aware drat much had gone unspoken between him and Aubri.

At last he turned and laid his hand, gently, on her breastbone. "Does it listen?" he asked her. He had no need to say what it was.

She shrugged. "I need to be careful. But… it doesn't care. Not really. It's just a dumb mechanism."

He thought about that. Then he nodded to the window. "Was this your mission?To visit Candesce?"

She looked him in the eye and said, "No. In fact… it's the opposite. If there's anywhere in Virga where I might find a way to free myself from this…" She tapped her throat. "Then it would be there."

Hayden shook his head in confusion. "You don't need to be careful about telling me that?"

"No. The assassin-bug only cares whether I tell people what my real mission is. It's not able to care about anything else."

"Not even its own life?"

"It's not alive. So, no." She quirked a smile. "Look at it this way: some things trigger it, some don't. That's all."

"So…" He mused. "You think we might find a way to kill it in Candesce?"

"It's why I pushed the Fannings to do this. A selfish reason, maybe." She shrugged, grinning. "But it worked."

He laughed. "Can I help?"

She kissed him. "Just keep guard. I'll do the rest."

"You can help me too," he said seriously. Aubri cocked one eyebrow. "both of us, really," he added. "Aubri… have you actually thought about what you'd do if you got free of that thing? Would you stay, or would you go?"

She hesitated. "Stay," she said finally. "I would stay."

Hayden sighed. He took a moment to compose his thoughts. "I have a reason for going into Candesce too," he told her. He felt his heart lifting as he described his plan to locate sun components in Candesce and return them to Aerie. "I want to finish my parents' work. Light a new sun on the edge of winter, that the people of Aerie can gather around. Let them leave Slipstream and the rest of Merithan behind. Save my people."

It would have sounded like an arrogant, impossible dream to Hayden—had not his mother and father confidently pursued that same dream.

"I'll need an engineer," he said. "You could be invaluable."

"Oh." She looked away. "Is that all you want me for? My engineering skills?"

"No!" He laughed and pulled her to him. "More. I want much more. We could found a new nation together, Aubri. Is that something you could want?"

She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.

"More than anything," she murmured, "I would want that."

THEY BOTH AWOKE with a start. It was the middle of the night, and absolutely black inside the hut. Somewhere, far in the distance, something had screamed.

"Did you hear that?" Hayden asked. He felt rather than saw Aubri's nod. They both listened in perfect stillness for a while; then she relaxed against him.

"Maybe Venera's cohabitation with Carrier is not so chaste as we'd been led to think," she said.

"Ugh," he said. "Don't say that. I—" He stopped, as a long, ululating sound crept through the night to enwrap the hut.

They were both at the window a second later, peering out into the gloom. "That wasn't any person," said Aubri needlessly. There was nothing to see outside the hut, however—nothing at all, an extravagant blackness Hayden couldn't remember encountering even in winter. For a moment he wondered if the hut had somehow slid backward into the depths of Leaf's Choir. How would they know, before they suffocated?

The cry came again, and this time it was accompanied by the sound of branches shattering. The roar built—it seemed that entire trees were being thrown aside by something huge that approached through the darkness. The hut began to shake.

Then as quickly as it began, the roaring ended.

They stayed at the window for a long time, but nothing further happened. After an hour or so, a bobbing flashlight beam meandered up the trunk of the tree, and Carrier and Venera appeared. Both looked grim.

"Any ideas?" Carrier asked without preamble. Hayden shook his head.

"Maybe we should stick together tonight," he said. Then, with sudden urgency: "Where's the bike?"

Carrier waved a length of twine Hayden hadn't seen he was holding. It stretched off into the blackness. "I towed it over," he said. "Thought it best." Hayden nodded.

They all crowded into the little hut and sat there looking at one another for a while. "This is ridiculous," Venera said after the uncomfortable interlude had stretched on for fifteen minutes. "We have to do something. Talk, at least."

"I agree," said Aubri.

There was another long silence.

"Let's tell stories," said Venera brightly.

They all stared at her in the feeble glow of the flashlight. "Ghost stories," amended Venera; then she laughed. "Oh, come on. Can you think of a better time to do it?"

Everyone laughed, and a minute later, Hayden found himself relating the story of the black pirate suns, and of me strange monsters reputed to live in winter.

After his turn Venera spoke, and somehow Hayden wasn't surprised when it turned out that she knew lots of such stories, and relished telling them.

In one of Venera's stories, Candesce itself had gone roving one night; the sun had been hungry after shining for so many centuries, and it ate several of the neighboring principalities before being talked out of a further meal by a brash young farm boy. Venera tailored her description to the night's events: the unseen sun passing in majestic noise, a skyscape of sounds, no sign of what had caused its devastation after it returned to its station and lit again.

Aubri clapped her hands when the story ended. "You have hidden talents, Venera!"

The admiral's wife preened, examining her nails with ostentatious care. "I do, don't I?"

"I hope you don't mind my asking, but I've been wondering all along how you managed to convince Chaison to bring you on the expedition." Aubri looked genuinely puzzled. "During our planning sessions he seemed adamant about leaving you behind."

"Ah," said Venera with a smile, "but that was before I blackmailed him."

"Ah—what?" Aubri and Hayden both laughed nervously. Venera waved a hand dismissively.

"Back when he was a student, my Chaison wrote a few seditious pamphlets denouncing the pilot. Nobody knows that, of course—no one who would talk about it." She eyed Carrier, whose face was as wooden as always. "I found out about it from an old drinking companion of his, and I held it over his head to get him to take me along. That's all." She said this in a modest sort of way.

Hayden couldn't resist a grin. "Chaison Fanning… denounced the pilot?"

Carrier, however, was glaring at Venera. "You never told me about this," he said.

She shrugged: "Why should I?"Venera looked at him archly. "In any case, it's your turn, Lyle. Don't you have any ghost stories to share?"

Carrier stammered something, then looked down. After a moment, he met Venera's eye and said, "Ghost stories are for kids. Things that really happened are far more harrowing than any story."

Some line had been crossed, Hayden thought, but Venera didn't seem to have noticed. She pouted at Carrier and said, "For instance?"

"For instance," he grated, "take the story of a man who discovers that his son doesn't have the stomach for the things that need to be done to protect his people. The boy joins the Resistance of a conquered foe, and tries to convince his father to do it too."

Venera arched an eyebrow. "What's so horrible about that?"

Carrier took a deep breath. "The father plays along with it. In the end the Resistance comes to trust the boy, and of course he trusts his father—enough that one day he tells him the location of the new sun his friends are building. And the father," he said with a grim smile, "he does what any loyal man would do. He tells the pilot."

Belatedly, Venera was realizing how angry Carrier was. "Youthful zeal," she said. "They grow out of it."

"Only if they live," said Carrier. "Only if they live."

Aubri shifted, half-reaching out to Carrier. "What happened to your son?" she asked quietly.

"He died when the Aerie bastards blew up their new sun," said Carrier; his voice carried no emotion, no inflection at all. "But you know what? If I had to do it all again, I would. Because a loyal citizen of Slipstream will do nothing against the pilot; will do anything for his nation." Again, he was watching Venera as he said this.

The silence that followed was long and awkward. Aubri tried to salvage the mood by telling a humorous anecdote about her brief days in Rush, but her delivery was wooden and it fell flat.

The damage had been done; all they could do now was sit in silence and wait for dawn. This was just fine as far as Hayden was concerned; he didn't want to talk anymore. He just sat in the corner, nursing his shock.

The man he had sworn to kill sat next to him. For the moment, nothing else mattered.

But then a curious thing happened. As the hours dragged on, Hayden's anger lessened. When Candesce finally ignited in a stuttering dawn Hayden even allowed himself to exchange a wondering glance with Carrier as they gazed out at a vast gash that had opened up in the miles-long trunks of the dead forest.

"It's like some monster was grazing on the trees," said Aubri.

"Capital bug?" asked Carrier, but clearly he didn't believe it. Capital bugs were big, the way clouds were big, but they were not strong. Whatever had done this could eat whole cities.

"Candesce, walking," said Venera smugly. They all laughed, and the tension of the night broke.

Later, he watched Carrier and Venera fly back to their hut. Hayden felt curiously light, as if some huge responsibility had been lifted from his shoulders. Lyle Carrier was just a man, after all, and a sad one at that.

What had drained his anger? He wondered about that for a while, seeing Aubri, and Candesce burning at the center of the sky,there was really no doubt. Somehow in the past weeks Hayden had learned to look past yesterday and today. It was the possibility of a future that had changed him.

Maybe he could fulfill his promise to Chaison Fanning after all.

A SWARM OF bikes spiraled through winter. Each flyer had a large magnesium lamp mounted in front of his saddle and great spears of light pierced the gloom as they searched for safe passage. Behind them, recklessly fast, came the expeditionary force itself. Dew beaded on the sleek hulls of the ships and tumbled away in their wakes. Their contrails could have been followed by anyone who cared to pursue them; but the Gehellen navy had given up at the border. The chase had been half-hearted anyway, since the Slipstream ships had gone many miles under cover of night before they were spotted.

Giant multi limbed clouds reared out of the black, too big to circumnavigate. The bikers' flight leader leaned down to let off a sounding rocket and watched as its yellow eye receded into the mist. If it hit anything it would explode in a shower of phosphorous. He watched the contours of the cloud intently, heedless of the icy air tumbling past his limbs. After a moment he waved an all-clear and underscored the rocket's contrail with his own.

Some miles behind the bikes, Chaison Fanning climbed out a side hatch of the Rook and hooked his feet through a ring on the hull. He stared out across a hundred miles of cloud-dotted air at the hint of silver in the darkness that identified Mavery's sun. Faint flickers and flashes lit the sky far up and to one side of that silver area.

It could just be a lightning storm—but the colors were wrong. Some of those pinpricks were red, some vivid orange. The light came from the border between Mavery and winter. It was too far away for Chaison to hear the explosions, of course—but the battle must be huge, and fierce. He should be there.

After a while Travis clambered through the hatch with a blanket fluttering in his good hand. "Begging your pardon, Admiral, sir, but you'll freeze out here," he shouted as he tried to drape the blanket one-handed over Chaison's shoulders.

"Look at it," said Chaison. The tiny stars that signaled explosions had only been able to keep his attention for so long, despite what imagination and reason had told him must be happening there. His gaze had inevitably drifted forward and eventually he'd realized that framed by the cross-hatch lines of bike contrails was the collected light of nations. Half the sky was awash with luminescence in circles too broad to encompass with out-thrown arms. Then-outer edges faded to dusk and black, their centers shone sky-blue and here and there a sun appeared for seconds at a time. There were a dozen such realms of light in the cluster of nations known as Merithan, but the farthest countries were hidden behind the nearer.

The pearlescent zone of sky next to Mavery was Slipstream—had been Aerie, once. Obscured behind the Rook's hull was multisunned Falcon Formation. Chaison had climbed around the hull several times to look at it.

"The men want to go," said Travis, nodding at the sparkling battle. "They know we have another destination, but they're not happy."

Chaison sighed. "I'm not happy either. The fleet will be cursing my name that I'm not there. All of us—we've probably been branded traitors by now. If we don't bring back the figureheads of Falcon's flagship, the pilot will have me publicly flogged. At the very least."

He made sure his feet were anchored, then stood up into the Rook's headwind. "That's where we go," he yelled, pointing to the vast span of light that was Falcon Formation. "And chances are we'll never see the light of Slipstream again. So enjoy the view while you can.Travis!"

"Come inside, sir!"

He shook his head. "When I'm good and ready. Leave me alone."

Travis retreated, a concerned frown on his face.

Chaison Fanning stood alone on the hull of his ship, feeling alone. Venera wasn't with him for the first time in many months, and he found the ache of missing her far more intense than expected. She was infuriating and inescapable; yet she made him smile as often, as she outraged him.

They hadn't said good-bye as they parted; but the last of her he'd seen was a backward glance as she looked for him and spotted him watching from the hangar doorway. Her eyes had gone wide, and then she'd turned away again.

He smiled, as the wind tore salty droplets from his eyes and cast them into the vortex of the Rook's contrail.

CANDESCE WAS FADING like an ember when the four travelers climbed into their saddles and Hayden lit the fan-jet's burners. Back became down, and they shot away from the threadlike trees of Leaf's Choir, seemingly straight up toward the sun. Hayden turned for a last look at the harvester's hut, and smiled. Then he adjusted the goggles on his nose and opened the throttle.

They weren't leaving a contrail, he'd noticed. That was probably due to the heat of the air near the Sun of Suns; whatever the reason, they would be less noticeable to the Gehellen cruisers that still patrolled the air here.

—Or so he was able to tell himself for the first ten minutes of the flight; then he saw Carrier's hand waving from the opposite side of the bike.

Hayden craned his neck around the metal cylinder and at first saw only the normal traffic of funeral ships and scroungers cautiously edging toward the sun. After a moment he saw what Carrier had spotted: eight sparks of light rising over the black furze of the sargasso. They were the color of the sun, their backdrop the mauve air of dusk.

Carrier leaned past Venera to shout, "Bigger than bikes!" But smaller than commercial vessels; Hayden nodded. These looked like catamarans—twin engined, with both pilot and gunner. They'd be fast, and they could reduce the bike and its riders to splinters in seconds if they got close enough.

Hayden tapped the throttle, feeling for the bike's response. Then he leaned in as close to the hot metal as he dared and kicked in the afterburner. The women on either side of him pressed their noses to the hull as well while the air began to thunder past and Candesce seemed to get perceptibly brighter.

For a few minutes, that is; then the Sun of Suns began to go out.

It didn't do so all at once. In fact, as Hayden squinted past the handlebars he began to make out structure to the radiance ahead. Candesce, he realized with a start, wasn't one sun but rather a cloud of them. He tried to count them, but they were guttering faster than he could keep up. Each one left a fading red spot and, in the eye, a lozenge of retinal overload.

But the heat remained. He could feel it first in the places where the wind didn't penetrate: in the hollow of his throat, along his calfs. As the minutes passed heat piled up against the bike as if they were pressing into a resilient surface made of exhaust and fire. They crossed fifty miles of air and were swaddled in it; a hundred miles and it was becoming hard to breathe. The commercial ships had fallen behind but the catamarans still followed, their gemlike highlights wavering in the rippling air.

Little flashes started to appear in the corner of Hayden's eye. He was alarmed—was he about to pass out?—and then saw the contrails that were sketching across the sky like meridian lines.

Venera waved frantically. When he caught her eye she held up her hand in a gun-shape. He nodded and began slaloming the bike from side to side, gently at first so as not to shake off his passengers—then more and more violently as bullets stitched the air to all sides.

After a minute the gunfire stopped. He glanced back to see their pursuers close, but keeping a decent distance.

Hayden smiled. There was nowhere for him to go—or so those men thought. They believed that if they hung on his tail long enough he would have to give up. After all, there was no place to hide here, and no way to get inside Candesce.

They were in for a surprise.

A LONG WING of shadow swept into winter behind Sargasso 44. The gnarled black fist of burnt forest, its outlines softened by mist, wasn't much to look at after Leaf's Choir, but it was still a respectable three miles across. The Rook and its sisters crept up to the hidden shipyard from its unlit side, their running lights off. Two bikes jetted out of Chaison Fanning's modest flagship to reconnoiter and he waited, not on the bridge but in the hangar, for their return.

Propriety be damned. He glanced at the ticking wall clock, then at his men. Two hours until Falcon's suns dimmed into their night cycle. In two hours the plan would succeed or fail. And everybody knew it, but nobody would speak of it.

They'd installed the radar casting machines in the nose of each ship and tried them. Of course they didn't work—there was only a bright fuzz on the hand-blown cathode ray tubes bolted next to the Rook's pilot station. But as each sister ship turned its own radar on or off, the fuzz had brightened or dimmed. Some sort of invisible energy was in play here. Chaison had been cheered by that tiny hint of future success.

And the men… He looked at them again. They'd been running drills for days now to perfect the art of firing blind according to orders from the bridge. The rocketeers looked confident.

He shook his head and laughed. "Men, I don't mean to be insulting, but you look like pirates." Some were wounded, others had hasty repairs to their uniforms to cover sword and bullet holes. It was the jewelry, though, that set them apart from any other crew Chaison had worked with. As battle approached the men had been sneaking off to their lockers to collect their treasures, as if the talismanic weight of future wealth would keep them alive through the coming battle.

It was so far from regulation that he could validly have any one of them whipped for it. Necklaces might get in the eye, or tangle a hand at a crucial moment.

Nobody was going to be disciplined, and they all knew it. Perversely, knowing they knew it pleased Chaison. He felt an affection for this crew he hadn't known for any other he'd worked with.

The bikes' contrails hit the side of the sargasso and vanished. Sargasso 44 was too small and old to have retained a toxic interior, especially with transport ships coming and going and all the industry happening inside it. Chaison had nonetheless insisted that the men on the bikes wear sargasso suits. It would be a fine irony if they were knocked out by fumes and sailed their bikes right into the shipyard.

"Now we wait," said Travis. Chaison shot him an amused look.

"We've been reduced to cliches, have we?" he said.

Travis stammered something but Chaison waved a hand in dismissal. "Don't mind me," he said. "I'm feeling free for the first time in weeks."

"Yes, sir." Then Travis pointed. "Sir? Look."

The bikes were returning already. Falcon's shipyard must lie closer to the sargasso's surface than he'd thought.

"All right." Chaison clapped his hands briskly. "Let's see where we stand."

HAYDEN HAD SEEN clouds bigger than these rising spires, but nothing else, not even the icebergs at Virga's skin could compare. On the outskirts of Candesce long arcing stanchions connected many glittering transparent spines, which soared into the surrounding air like the threads of the jellyfish that hid in winter clouds. These spines were miles long but they were not anchored to a single solid mass. Candesce, he was surprised to see, was not a thing, but a region. Hundreds of objects of all shapes and sizes gleamed within the sphere of air sketched by the giant spires. Candesce was an engine open to the outside world.

So what was Venera's key intended to unlock? They glided in between the outreaching arms at a sedate pace. The enemy catamarans were hanging back, confident in being able to catch the bike and curious to see what Hayden would do. The moment was strangely peaceful, or would have been if not for the savage heat that radiated from those needles of crystal.

"Are they glass?" he wondered aloud. Beside him, Aubri shook her head.

"Diamond," she said. "Re-radiators."

As they passed the spires dim orange glows from the dormant suns revealed traceries of intricate detail farther in: ribs and arching threads of cable, mirrored orbs the size of towns, and long meandering catwalk cages. with all the suns lit, internal reflection and refraction must double and redouble until it was impossible to separate real from mirage. Drowned in light, Candesce would disappear as a physical object. These spars and wires were like the crude ghost of something else that had no form. That something had left, for now—perhaps stalking the distant air to devour a principality or two. But it would return to its den come morning, and then this diamond and iron would give over to a greater reality, one made of light. Any person foolish enough to be here would disappear as well.

Venera and Carrier had raised their heads to stare too. Hayden breathed in little sips; the heat was making him dizzy. "Where?" he asked Aubri with renewed urgency.

She scanned the unlikely bauble of the Sun of Suns. "There." Where she pointed, a dark rectangle lay silhouetted by one of the suns. It was nestled against the diamond point at the base of one of the spines. "That should… should be the visitor's center."

Hayden barked a laugh and instantly regretted it as the air seared his throat. "Another tourist station?" But Aubri shook her head.

"This one"—-she gasped spasmodically—"is for education and maintenance. No remote control. No tourists."

"Nobody waiting for us, I hope."

She shook her head. Hayden fired up the bike and they shot through the glittering clouds of machine and cable. Now, though, he heard the sound of other engines. The Gehellen catamarans were closing in.

He guided them down the curve of the spire, alert for anything familiar. The rectangle ahead slowly resolved into a boxy structure about thirty meters on a side, made of some white substance. The crystal spike pierced its side, and next to that spot was a small square on the box. Hayden blinked in the wavering air; was it real? Yes, it was there: a door.

Sleek blue spindles eased into sight on either side of the bike: the catamarans. They were like streamlined rockets with outrider jet engines and a cockpit on either side. Both cockpits had heavy machine guns mounted next to them; two of these now swiveled to aim at Hayden's bike. One of the Gehellens gestured for him to turn around.

He waved yes, and kept going.

The square door was only yards away when one of the Gehellens fired a warning shot. The bullet pinged off the diamond wall. Hayden took his hands off the bike's handles and raised them in surrender, while at the same time gripping the bike with his knees to steer it.

Another warning shot and this time Hayden looked down to see a puncture in the bike's cowling, inches from Aubri's face.

He reached to cut out the bike's engine and saw Carrier lean casually around the bike. There was a bang! loud in the sudden absence of engine noise, and then Carrier was off the bike and spinning in midair and firing again.

both machine gunners were dead, with identical holes in the center of their foreheads. Carrier was yanking Venera off her saddle; he aimed her at the black outline of the door and pushed himself the other way into open air. Hayden yelled a warning and saw that Aubri was drifting off her own saddle, unconscious. Quickly he took one foot out of its stirrup and lunged for Carrier. They locked hands and he pulled the larger man back just as both catamarans rolled over—trailing spirals of blood—to expose their pilots, and the pilots' machine guns.

Venera had found an indentation in the wall and jammed in the white cylinder she'd been guarding. both catamaran pilots opened up and bullets flew-—sloppily as the recoil moved the gun platforms. A bullet hit Carrier's pistol and it shattered in his hand. He drew back, cursing.

Hayden grabbed Aubri's shirt with one hand and with the other, the bright edge of a suddenly opening door in the diamond wall. He hauled Aubri and the bike into dazzling light to the ear-shattering accompaniment of machine gunfire.

The sound cut off abruptly as the door shut and four humans and a bike tumbled onward into light.

"NOTHING? NOTHING AT all?" Chaison felt sick. The two bike pilots weren't looking much better; the crew had formed a half-dome around them, and were looking stricken as well.

"It's abandoned, sir. Shut down, except for one or two huts that look like security buildings. All the ships are gone—except the tugs, but…"

"They weren't just out of sight, hidden somewhere else in the sargasso?"

The two men looked at one another.They made identical shrugs. "Nowhere to put them, sir. We looked. Sir… sir, they're gone."

Gone. A Falcon Formation dreadnought and a fleet of new warships were on their way to Slipstream. Maybe they were there already. And Chaison Fanning had taken seven ships that might have helped defend his home, and frittered them away in a useless quest for an advantage that had now proven chimerical. He had lost.

"Sir? What do we do now?"

Chaison Fanning had no answer.