Sun of Suns

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

HAYDEN TIED THE last of the sun components into the cargo net. His hands were shaking. As he fumbled with the cords, he noticed his shadow, hunched and vague, wavering against the gray wall of the visitor's station. He looked over in time to see the metal flowers of Candesce's strange garden closing. Silhouetting one of them was an orange glow that hadn't been there a minute ago.

"Oh no." He finished the knot hastily and climbed back along the cargo net's cables to the open entrance of the station. The bike was tethered there; it too had a shadow—no, two shadows. He looked down and saw that a second sun was opening its glowing eye.

He'd thrown Carrier's body into the open air. His story was going to be that the Gehellens had come back and there'd been a fight at the entrance. The attackers had been driven off but Carrier was killed. He had rehearsed his story over and over during the past hour, while he struggled against the pain of his wounds to fill the nets with sun parts. As he'd done so he'd found himself crying.

He no longer wondered at such tears. As he rehearsed the lie about the Gehellens, Hayden found himself wondering whether he was reluctant to tell the truth to Venera, or Aubri or himself. Either way, he felt no satisfaction at Carrier's death. The only thing he was proud of was his attempt to talk the man out of attacking him.

So in his head he began to rehearse a second story. This one would not be told until he was an old man, if he got things right. It began and ended with, "Carrier was the last man I killed, or ever wanted to kill."

Once inside the station he climbed quickly from strap to strap, heading for the inner chambers. "We have to go!" he called as he went. "Come on, the suns are waking up!"

Nobody answered. What were Venera and Aubri up to? From his own experience with the wish-mirror, he'd seen that once you set something in motion here, you could pretty much ignore it and go on about your business. Aubri shouldn't have had to nurse Candesce after shutting down its defenses against Artificial Nature.

"Aubri! Venera! Where are you? We have to leave, now!"

He heard a thump from somewhere ahead. Hayden ducked under and over walls, passing through several rooms that seemed familiar. Then, as he was gliding across a half-lit room filled with hammocks and rest nooks, he heard a woman's voice growl a single word:

"Bitch!"

More thumps and a gasp from the other side of this wall. Hayden perched there for a moment, blinking, then swung down to climb into the next room. He stopped, straddling the wall.

Aubri Mahallan and Venera Fanning clung to straps on opposite walls. Both women had swords in their hands, and those swords were pointed at one another. Venera's face was twisted into a rictus of fury, muscles jumping in her famous jaw.

"Turn it on!"Venera screamed. "Turn it back on!"

Aubri silently shook her head.

Hayden somersaulted into the room. "What's going on?" He made to join Aubri, but she dove out of his way.

"Stay back," she murmured.

"Stay…? What's going on?" By now, he was too tired and in too much pain to catch her.

Venera pointed to where her special indicator lamp tumbled in midair, its light glowing steadily. "She won't turn it back on.

Candesce's defenses! She was willing to turn them off all right, but she won't bring them back. She's opened the gates to her friends from beyond Virga."

"Aubri?" He stared at her, but she wouldn't return his gaze.

He should have figured this out. He realized now that she had given him enough clues over the past week-—but he'd been so consumed with the idea of finding components for a new Aerie sun that he hadn't thought through the things Aubri had told him. She had told him that she had not been sent to Virga to enter Candesce; but in the same breath she had told him that the assassin-thing coiled inside her was listening for any hint that she might reveal her true mission. Her denial should have tipped him off; but he hadn't been smart enough to see it.

"I'm sorry," she said in a low, shaking voice. "If I turn it back on, I'll the."

"You were sent to bring Artificial Nature to Virga," he said. "That's what you couldn't tell me." She nodded.

Hayden's thoughts were racing. Should he try to stop this? Or should he side with Aubri? "What happens now?" he asked her. "When you let them in… What are you letting in?"

Now she looked at him, her expressive features crumpled into sadness. "A trillion ghosts will come first," she said. "The disembodied AIs and post-humans will flood into Virga, make it their playground. They're hungry for resources. They'll transform every-thing they touch—and everybody. When that transformation happens, your reality will fade away. The walls of Virga will disappear. The suns, the darkness, the towns, and ships… They'll be erased by virtual realms. Glorious beauty, places like Heaven brought into being around every man, woman, and child. Whatever you imagine will come to pass. Everything and anything, except Virga itself. Everything you knew will be gone, replaced by fantasies made real."

Venera shuddered. "We won't survive it," she said.

Aubri shook her head. "Not as you are now," she said. "Whatever your hopes and dreams were, they're obsolete now. You'll need new ones. New reasons to live." Her mouth twisted in grief. "And that's the one thing the system can't make for you."

"No! "Venera launched herself across the room. Before Hayden could reach them the two women were twisting in the air, Venera slashing madly at Aubri who tried to parry. Hayden cried out as he saw Venera's sword slide into the muscle under Aubri's left shoulder.

Hayden's lover, the Rook's armorer, tumbled backward streaming blood.

He screamed and jumped, too late, as Venera cursed and kicked off from Aubri's limp body. Venera reached a corner and ducked around the offset panels with one wide-eyed look back at Hayden.

He wrapped his arms around Aubri and turned so his own back took their impact on the far wall. She was jerking in his grasp, twists of blood reaching out of her with each breath.

"I'm—sorry," she gasped. "I was too afraid."

"Hush," he said, smoothing back her hair. "It's not your fault. It's theirs for making you and then condemning you for being who you are."

She closed her eyes and whimpered. "Hush," he said again, holding her close.

"No." She pushed against him. "No! Let me go. Get me to the, the command mirror." She pointed at a glassy rectangle on the ceiling.

"Stay still."

"No. Let—" She writhed in his arms, turning to glare at him.

"Let me beat them."

THE BRIDGE WAS full of drifting grit and the stench of smoke. Deafening explosions rattled the beams; all the portholes had shattered. Chaison clung to the arms of his chair and glared out into gleaming sunlight as the Rook came apart around him.

"Ready, sir!"Travis was holding onto a pipe with his toes, one-armed as he was with his hand in a sling; his free hand was poised over the scuttling console.

Chaison felt infinitely weary. It wasn't as though it mattered whether Falcon Formation got its hands on the radar sets. There wasn't anything they could do with them. Assuming, of course, that Aubri Mahallan did her job. The idea that she might not seemed distantly worrying, but he couldn't bring himself to focus on abstractions. Instead, he frowned past the jagged glass rimming the porthole, at the obstinately solid silhouette of the dreadnought that was even now turning to aim its biggest guns at the Rook.

MI wanted, he thought with an ironic smile, was to get rid of that thing.

As the dreadnought turned it exposed the dented portion of hull where something had collided with it. Sunlight angled around the dark hull and Chaison saw that the ship's armor had split at the bottom of that dent; there was a three-sided hole there.

"Wait a second, Travis," he said. Chaison frowned, then reached for the speaking tube.

"Rocket batteries one and two, are you there?" he shouted.

"Y-yes, sir. What do you want us to do, sir?"

"Don't bail out," he said. "You'll be shot to pieces in open air. I have a plan. Load the racks and get ready."

"Sir!"

He turned to Travis, who was watching him with a raised eyebrow. The radar man and the semaphore team were also staring. "Get to the helm," he told Travis. "We've still got power. We're going to ram her."

"Ah. I see." Travis looked faintly disappointed. Chaison had to laugh.

"No, you don't see," he said. "We're going to ram her there." He pointed. Travis began to smile.

The Rook ducked out of the path of the big guns, angling up and shooting straight at the line of Falcon Formation battleships that was bearing down on her. They were momentarily safe since the ships would not want to miss Rook and hit the dreadnought.

The Rook groaned as Travis spun them around and lined up on the dreadnought. "They're going to get at least one good shot at us sir," he said.

Chaison shrugged. "Have you got a better idea?"

Travis didn't answer, but merely pushed the control levers for ward. Chaison heard the distant engines whine toward full power.

"If you do want to bail out," he said to the semaphore team and the radar man, "now would be the time to do it."

Nobody moved.

"All right men."

Holed, dripping splinters and chunks of armor, the Rook accelerated for the last time. The air it crossed was layered with smoke and debris, the bodies of men and unexploded ordnance. Chaison watched it all pass in disgust. How pointless. He wasn't sure whether i was Falcon's invasion that he meant, or his own attempt to stop it.

"Brace for impact!" He strapped himself in and spun the chair around. It was designed to handle collisions like this; the Rook, like her sister ships, had a substantial ram on her prow. She was never in tended to ram something as big as a town, though. This whole gambit might just provide a good laugh to the Falconers, if Rook simply splatted against the dreadnought's skin like a bug on a porthole.

He closed his eyes, and thought of the home he would never see again.

The impact, when it came, was surprisingly gentle. A vast grinding sound filled Chaison's ears and the ship shuddered and bucked.

Then it eased to a stop. In the swaying light of the gas lamp, he met Travis's eyes and grinned.

"Let's see where we are." The portholes were blocked by wreckage. Both men jumped over to the bridge doors and Travis flung them open. Chaison gasped at what he saw.

The Rook was holed in dozens of places. Its interior was in shambles, with dead,men and parts of men, tangled coils of rope, broken bulkheads, and spars thrusting every which way. Way down past where the hangar had been, streams of sunlight made bluish shafts across the space. Nearer, the holes in the hull revealed only darkness.

"We're jammed inside it," Travis said wonderingly. "More than halfway."

Chaison nodded. "That's what I had in mind." He clambered through the wreckage, heading for the rocketeers who huddled next to their bent racks. "Ready to fire, men?" They stared at him.

Chaison laughed recklessly. "Come on!" he shouted. "This is the stuff of legends! We're going to rake this bastard of a ship with a barrage that'll tear it to pieces—-and we're going to do it from the inside!"

Still they hesitated—and then a loud voice burst out, "What are you waiting for?"

It was Slew, smoke-stained and trailing a broken chain from his wrist as he flew up from the aft. Beside him, helping him maneuver past the wreckage, was Ambassador Reiss. Both men had swords in their hands; both looked grimly determined.

"You heard the admiral!" yelled Slew. The men looked at each other, then leaped to their posts. Already Chaison could hear gunshots, and just behind Slew soldiers in Falcon Formation uniforms began pushing their way through gaps in the hull. The irate crew. Well, they were too late.

"Reiss, Slew, behind you. You men^fire!"

The port and starboard racks unleashed their rockets and the Rook's hull tried to collapse as everything outside blew up. Some of the rockets must have found their way down long passageways, exploding hundreds of yards away. Some didn't get ten feet. But the dreadnought had never been designed to withstand this kind of attack. As the rocketeers cleared their tubes and made to load another round, the Rook was hammered by new explosions, much bigger man those they had caused. Now the hull really was collapsing, Travis grabbing at a stanchion, Reiss and Slew's faces lit with surprise and all of them disappearing into bright sunlight as the ship sheared in two and the sky filled with gouts of smoke and flying darkness.

Somehow, Chaison had caught a rope and found himself dangling over the infinite airs of Virga, watching while the aft half of the dreadnought fell away and wrenched itself to pieces with explosion after explosion. Mesmerized, he didn't look away from the sight until he felt the rope being tugged from the other end. He glanced up.

The shattered half-hull of the Rook still stuck out of the fore half of the dreadnought, right at the spot where the great ship had been torn in two. Smoke billowed out of the forward section but it hadn't exploded. Three Falcon airmen were hauling in the rope Chaison held, murder in their eyes. Of the rest of his crew, there was no sign.

"Gentlemen," Chaison said as he held out his hand, "meet the man who beat you."

VENERA WATCHED HAYDEN Griffin weep. A fluttering sense of disquiet plucked at her; she fought against it fiercely.

Aubri Mahallan moved feebly in the young man's arms, gesturing at the command mirror in front of which they floated. Venera clutched her sword in sweating hands and wondered why Lyle had not shown up yet.

The indicator light for Candesce's defenses still spun lazily in the air. Without fanfare, it suddenly went out.Venera frowned at it. Had its little battery died, or… She looked at Aubri Mahallan.

The woman's limbs drifted free now, and her head slowly tilted forward. Griffin gave one last wracking sob and then spun to look at the command mirror. It was a rectangle of white light now, all details washed away by the awakening suns.

Griffin turned again, and now he looked straight at Venera. Despite herself, she flinched from his glare. But all he said was, "We have to go."

The words made no sense at all; Venera could barely believe she'd heard them. "I killed your woman," she said. "If I come near you, you'll kill me."

"No," he said.

She sneered. "Oh? Where's Lyle?" Griffin looked away, and Venera's heart sank. "He's not coming, is he? You boys finally settled your little dispute, whatever it was?"

He gathered Mahallan's body in his arms again, and kicked off toward an open corner. "What choice did I have?" she called out after him. "You know what she tried to do!"

"Shut up," he said without looking back. "Just shut up."

Venera was furious and, yes, scared; but she wasn't going to back down. Not to this servant. "So strand me, or shoot me," she cried. "I did what I had to do."

Now, just before disappearing around the corner, he did look back. He looked sad, and puzzled. "Venera, I'm not going to kill you," he said. "There's room on the bike. Come with me."

"That would mean trusting you," she said.

"Yes."

Venera laughed, and hunkered down a little more in the shadows. "I've never done that in my life," she said. "I'm not about to start now."

"Suit yourself," he said with broken weariness. Then he was gone.

Venera remained where she was for long seconds. Outside, Candesce was rousing itself to full power. She couldn't feel the rain of invisible particles that Mahallan had said would flood this place during the day, but she imagined them like virulent poison seeping through the walls. Even if the heat didn't kill her…

But trust a man whose lover she had just killed? The idea was in- sane. Trust Griffin? Trust anyone? There were fools who did it and survived somehow. She could not be so lucky, she knew.

Venera fingered her jaw angrily. She would the here, miserable, abandoned.

When the bullet hit her and she lay moaning on the stone she had waited—waited for someone to come to her, to discover her in pain. She had waited for the cries of distress, the solicitations of her rescuers. Nobody came. There was no rescue for Venera Fanning. So in the end she had crawled, herself, unassisted, through the corridors and into the Admiralty. At the last second she had fainted, before knowing whether the ones who found her had cared enough to hold her as Griffin had held Mahallan, whether they wiped her drying tears and murmured that she would be all right. When Chaison tried, much later, it was too late.

Venera spat a curse, and uncoiled from her defensive knot. As quietly as she could, she crept after Hayden Griffin through the dimming rooms of the station.

HEAT AND INTOLERABLE light met Hayden at the entrance. The bike's handlebars were almost too hot to touch and he had to squint and grope for a loop of cable to wrap around Aubri. He didn't have enough to tie her to the saddle, so he looked around for another solution. Put her in the cargo nets? Maybe—if he could get to them. The heat scored his face whenever he turned toward the suns; the very air was attacking his mouth and lungs.

He wasn't sure he could jump over to the nets and get back before the heat took him.

You've lost her already. Like he'd lost everyone else in his life. He should be used to this by now.

Heartsick, he gave her body the slightest of shoves, and she slipped through his fingers—waist, shoulders, finally one trailing hand smoothing .his before the moment of separation. She seemed to be turning to look at him, face calm and lips parted as if to tell him it would be all right, while past her shoulder the mechanical flowers of Candesce curled behind their mirrored petals. As the eyes of the suns opened all around, Aubri Mahallan vanished into light.

Hayden turned and climbed onto the bike.

He spun up the fan and the burner started immediately. As the jet's whine escalated he clung to familiar routines, listening to it, judging the health of the machine. He jiggled it with his knees, estimating how much fuel was left. Hayden knew his machines, and this one still had some life in it. A few refuelings and it would get him back to Rush, he was sure of it.

And men… He fingered the pockets of his jacket, which were full of jewels and coins from the treasure of Anetene. He probably had enough to hire the artisans he'd need. The core components of Aerie's new sun were already in his possession. He might not even need the help of the Resistance to get it built.

Unsmiling, he opened the throttle and began to move away from the visitor's station. There was a lurch as the cable tautened and the nets fell in line behind the bike. That cargo would slow him down, of course.

He might meet the Gehellens on the way out.—What if they got into the visitor's center? Better close the door. He glanced back, and saw that the entrance to the visitor's station was already shut. Crouched beside it in a hurricane of radiance was Venera Fanning.

The cargo net was passing her, just a few yards away. Her eyes met his; there was no appeal in her gaze, just defiance. Hayden nodded once, then deliberately turned back to his piloting. After a moment he felt a slight jerk translate up the cable and through the bike as Venera caught and clung to the passing net.

He opened the throttle and the bike accelerated, but slowly, too slowly as the inferno of dawn welled out from the heart of Candesce. He imagined he could hear the familiar low hiss of the Sun of Suns, even over the scream of the bike. In minutes it became impossible to see; then he could no longer breathe except in shallow gasps; and then he started to tear at his clothing as it burned him wherever it touched. All the while, the air rushed past faster and faster. Before he completely lost his senses he stopped himself from throwing away his jacket and shirt. The light burned his bare skin as much as their touch had.

Gradually the agony abated. Candesce was reaching out to ignite hundreds of miles of air, but he was escaping it, barely.

Squinting ahead, he could see many long fingers of shadow reaching past him. Catamarans or bikes? He turned his head, trying to make out what they were.

Everywhere, the sky was full of shrouded human bodies, all gliding silently in toward Candesce. Joining Aubri. The faint specks of a hundred funeral ships receded into the distance, returning to their ports after unloading their cargoes.

When he was finally able to regain his flapping shirt and jacket, and look around himself, Hayden found that he had no idea where he was. Originally they had planned to navigate by keeping Leaf's Choir in view. They would head for one of Gehellen's neighbors, and from there return to Slipstream. Hayden could be going in the opposite direction now, for all he knew.

It didn't matter. He would find his way, eventually. He couldn't imagine spending the days and nights without Aubri beside him; it seemed impossible that he had done so before. But he had to try. He had responsibilities now.

A few minutes later he felt another vibration through the cable. He looked back, shielding his eyes with one hand.

Venera Fanning made a black cross against the Sun of Suns as she launched herself into the air. They were doing a good sixty or seventy miles an hour at that moment; she swept her arms ahead of her in a diving posture and arrowed away, clothes fluttering.

With luck she would make it to the principalities of Candesce. Though he wished achingly that it could be Aubri silhouetted in exuberance against that light, he hoped Venera would survive and find her way home.

Hay den turned back to his own task. He was done with fighting, done with brooding over the past. His nation and his life had been in shambles for too many years; it was time to rebuild.

He had too much to do to waste his time on resentment.

He settled into the bike's saddle, and opened the throttle wide.