Sun of Suns

CHAPTER SIX

A COLUMN OF ragged clouds twisted like smoke in the night. The shapes wheeled grandly like wary duelists, occasionally testing one another's defenses with half-hearted lightning bolts. Every now and then, a transient corridor of dear air would open to some distant sun through the shuffle of gray shapes that receded for thousands of miles in every direction. Then the flanks of one or another silent combatant would momentarily throw the rest into invisibility as it shone in shades of dusty rose and burgundy.

These were young clouds, the progeny of a mushroom-shaped column of warmer air that had penetrated into Slipstream territory earlier in the day. Being young, these banks and starbursts of mist had just begun to condense. The realm through which they drifted was filled with the remnants of an earlier mass of clouds: its droplets had come together and fused over the hours and days, each collision making fewer and larger drops. Now great spheres of water, some head-sized, some as large as houses, punched through the clouds like slow cannonballs, adding to the chaos of the mixing air.

Wakeful citizens on bikes hovered outside the two towns and a farm that were the only habitation for miles. The sentries kept a watch out for any large mass of water that might loom out of the dark on a collision course with the spinning wheels, or the dark nets of the farm. For one sentry, the only sound was the whirring of the little fan that kept his lantern alive as he waited in silence, cloak drawn around his shoulders to ward off the damp, feet ready on the pedals to kick his bike into motion.

Thus huddled, he at first didn't notice something nose out of a cloud shaped like a bird's head. When he finally spotted it he muttered a curse, because initially it looked like a town-wrecker of a water ball. He reached for his horn with numb fingers, but as he raised the brass horn to his lips he hesitated. The shape no longer appeared rounded, but rather like an extra beak to the diaphanous bird, this one hard and sharp. It was the prow of a ship.

Now that he could see what it was he realized he'd been hearing it for a minute or two already—a distant whine in several keys from its engines. He could also see two spotter bikes weaving in spirals ahead of it. You never knew what might lurk inside a cloud, so the spotters went ahead of the ship to ensure that there were no rocks, water balls, or habitations in the way. On dark nights like this, spotters sometimes found obstacles by running into them. So ships tended to move slowly at night.

They also used headlights to probe the blackness—that was simple prudence. This ship, however, was running dark. As it left the cloud in a whirl of eddied mist, another nose appeared behind it, and another.

The sentry raised the horn again, suddenly fearing an invasion; then he saw the lantern-lit sigil of Slipstream on the hull of the lead vessel. He slowly lowered the horn and clipped it to his saddle. He was a citizen of Aerie; he would not pick a fight with Slipstream tonight. In fact, he would be happy not to be noticed by them at all.

Seven big vessels passed by, all dark except for their running lights. As they disappeared into the black the sentry shivered and turned his attention back to his watch. This would be a story for the morning, perhaps, but he wasn't about to fly over to the other watchers to compare notes. Somehow he felt it better not to speak of these ships while darkness reigned.

HAYDEN HID IN his coffin-sized bunk for as long as possible. He'd spent an uneasy and unpleasant night, but staying here was preferable to climbing out and facing the reality of the situation. He had been shanghaied—pressed into service to the same enemy he was sworn to destroy. It was all some sort of absurd nightmare.

His bunk was at the bottom of a stack in the exercise centrifuge. He felt like a disused book shelved away in a particularly cramped library. He couldn't sit up because the bunk above his was only inches away from his nose. Each time he rolled over the world seemed to turn in the opposite direction—a familiar enough sensation from town living, but magnified by the small size of this wheel. The thing rotated five times a minute but only provided a tenth of a gravity for all that effort. Its axles had creaked monotonously, then on either side of him had snored in different rhythms, and someone had created prodigious amounts of bad smell that hovered in the air for what seemed hours.

Now his bedding was vibrating with footfalls as an endless parade of airmen ran laps around the wheel. The sleeping level had only one narrow aisle between the stacks of bunks, so the runners' feet slammed down inches from Hayden's head. Finally, when someone stumbled and kicked his shelf, he cursed and rolled out into the narrow space between the bunk stacks.

"Out of the way!" The shark-faced boatswain pushed Hayden as he made to step into the aisle. For the next few minutes he ducked from bunk stack to bunk stack as other airmen made a game of trying to hit him on the way by. Their crude laughter followed him as he scrambled up the ladder to the upper level of the wheel.

Last night the boatswain had made it very clear that on board this ship, Hayden was little more than dead weight. He had gone to bunk with the carpenters as ordered, but they didn't want him around either. He'd found an empty berth in the centrifuge, but clearly he would have to locate some less trafficked part of the ship or he was going to be covered in bruises before the end of the day.

The upper level of the wheel was simply a barrel fifteen feet in diameter. Half of it was taken up with crates, the other half was bare flooring where men with swords were circling one another under the watchful eye of a drill sergeant. Hayden eyed the crates, and finally climbed up on a stack, losing weight with every step. He settled in to watch the fencing technique of the men below.

"You!" He looked down. It was the boatswain again. He was a florid man with a crisp uniform and a shock of carrot-red hair. His eyes protruded when he glared, which was most of the time. Now his lips flapped as he said, "That's delicate equipment, get off it!"

Hayden sighed and hopped from the crates up to the centrifuge's entranceway, at its hub. Surely there must be a quiet spot somewhere.

All the ship's ports were open, it seemed, and a cold wind blew through the interlocking chambers of its interior. Everywhere he looked men were hauling ropes, shifting boxes, or hammering something. He decided that an open cargo door was his best bet and flew over to perch on its inside. A stiff wind flapped past just a foot away but he'd found a pocket of relatively still air. He curled up to look out.

The sun glowed far to aft. It was dim and red with distance; they must be near the border. The clouds they passed threw hazy shadows like fingers pointing the way ahead.

Dotting the sky around him were other ships. He counted six; there might be more on the other side of the vessel, but this was a far cry from the dozens that had left port. As the Rook slowly rotated around its axis he was able to verify that there were only seven ships in this group, counting his own. Where was the rest of the fleet?

They skirted the sides of a cloud-mountain and suddenly the air ahead opened up, clear of obstructions. Hayden blinked in surprise. He faced a deep blue abyss—a span of darkness that ran from infinity below to infinity above, and stretched endlessly to both sides. The Rook was driving straight into winter.

He couldn't understand how he'd come to be here. He'd had the chance to kill Fanning, and he hadn't done it. That made him a coward—but, undeniably, there was also something big going on, something beyond an imminent attack on Mavery. He might be the only spy Aerie had aboard these ships. As he'd tossed and turned last night, he'd kept coming back to the conclusion that it was his duty to find out what he could, and report it back.

"Hey you!" He turned to find himself facing a boy with a ratlike face who wore an airman's uniform several sizes too big for him. "You Griffin?" he asked belligerently. When Hayden nodded, he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the centrifuge. "Yer wanted in the lady's chamber." He smirked.

"Thanks.You can call me Hayden. What's your name?"

"Martor," said the boy suspiciously. "I'm the gopher."

"Good to meet you, Martor. By the way, where can a guy get a meal around here?"

Martor laughed. "You missed it. That was six o'clock. Not that you could have et with us men, anyway. Yer gonna hafta find yer own meals."

"How much to get that arranged for me?"

Martor's eyebrows lifted. He thought about it. "Six. No less."

"Done." Hayden went forward, a little less deferential to the other men now that he had a destination.

It wasn't Venera waiting for him outside the captain's quarters, but the bland Carrier. He stood on the air with his arms crossed, toes pointed daintily. He frowned at Hayden. "You have duties," he said without preamble.

"I, uh—yes?"

"Lady Fanning has secured a bike for our use. This is not a military machine but a fast racer with sidecars. You are to familiarize yourself with it. Three hours a day, no more no less."

"Yes, sir!" So they wanted him to fly? Well, it would be their funeral. "What model is it?"

Carrier waved a hand negligently. "Don't know. Anyway, the rest of your time will be spent assisting the new armorer. We were told," he said with a faintly unpleasant moue, "that you were mechanically minded."

"Well, I tinker with bikes—"

"Good. You are to report to the armorer immediately. That's aft," Carrier added helpfully.

"Okay, but what will I—" Carrier didn't even frown; he just turned his head away almost imperceptibly. Hayden got the message.

A little of the stifling gloom that had settled on him last night lifted as he headed aft, but he was still bewildered at how quickly and thoroughly he'd gotten himself into this situation. If he'd had any sort of courage he'd have killed Fanning yesterday. The fact that he hadn't, and was now effectively working for the enemy, made him feel deeply sick.

"Know where you're going, do you?" said somebody. Hayden looked down to find Martor squinting at him. "It's this way," he continued, pointing past the drooping bellies of a row of fuel tanks.

"Thanks. Hey—when I looked outside earlier, I saw we were headed into winter. What's all that about?"

Martor looked uncomfortable. "Don't know. Nobody's telling us anything, not yet anyway. You saw we split off from the main fleet? Rumor is we're going to come around behind the enemy But that don't make no sense. Enemy's farther into the suns, not out here."

"You mean Mavery?"

"Who else would I mean?"

Martor was trailing Hayden now, shifting his weight and fiddling with his hands, much more like the boy he was than the tough man he tried to be. "Winter's nothing to worry about," said Hayden. "I've been there."

"You have? Is it true that there's capital bugs with suns in their bellies? And whole countries frozen solid, guys about to stick each other with swords when their suns went out and their whole armies covered in ice now?"

"Never saw anything like mat…"

"But how would you know, since it goes on forever?"

"Forever?" Somebody laughed. "I don't think so."

An irregularly shaped box was stapled to the outer hull under a mad web of netting. The box had a perfectly ordinary door in one of its facets. The laughter had come from that direction. It sounded suspiciously like a woman's.

"You're gonna tell me that's the armorer," Hayden whispered to Martor. Martor nodded vigorously. "Thought so."

He stuck his head through the door. There was indeed a woman fitted into the intricate mess like a main cog in a watch. She was opening one of several dozen boxes crammed in around her, and was currently upside down compared to him so that all that registered at first was the halo of writhing brown hair that surrounded her face and the fact that she was dressed entirely in black save for a glimpse of scarlet silk that peeked out below her collar. He rotated politely to match her orientation and stuck out his hand. "I'm Hayden Griffin. I was told to assist you."

Her hand was warm, her grip strong. "Aubri Mahallan. Who told you to assist me?"

"Um, man named Carrier."

"Oh, him." She dismissed the man's entire existence with those two words. Mahallan had a heavy accent, bearing hard on sounds like er and oh. Right side up, she looked as intriguing as she sounded, her skin pale and perfectly unblemished like the most pampered courtier, her eyes wide in a perpetually startled look and overemphasized with black makeup. Her mouth was broad and was always twisting into one or another expression so that a constant parade of impressions flickered across her face. Just now she was pursing her lips and squinting at Hayden. "I suppose I can use you for something. And you!" She aimed her expressive gaze past Hayden at the open door. "This is the fifth time you've blocked my light this morning. Guess I'm going to have to find something for you to do as well."

"Yes, ma'am," came Martor's voice faintly from somewhere outside.

"But I can't have ignorant savages working for me," continued Mahallan as she spun and opened a porthole to let a blast of fresh air into the junk-filled cell. "Winter does not go on forever—or rather, it does, but only in the sense that you could go around the outside of a dinner plate forever. Do you understand?"

"No, sir!" said Martor, still invisible.

"Come in here!" Martor peeked around the doorjamb. Somewhere outside, a gang of airmen was engaged in a swearing contest. "And close the door, will you?" added the armorer. Hayden shifted to let Martor do that, and found himself close enough to Mahallan that he could smell her perspiration.

Her attention was fixed on Martor. "Do you believe this world goes on forever in all directions?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Martor with no trace of irony. "Rush came out of Forever, two generations ago, and we attacked the countries here. After we've cut through them all, we're going back to Forever, out the other side of the countries."

"I see we have our work cut out for us," said the armorer with an amused glance at Hayden. "Young man, do you know what a balloon is?"

"A bag for storing gas," said Martor instantly.

"Good. Well, Virga, your world, is a balloon. It is an immensely big balloon, in fact, fully five thousand miles across and orbiting in the outer reaches of the Vega star system. Virga is artificial. Man-made."

"Ma'am, that's very funny," said Martor with a stilted grin.

"It's utterly true, young man. Is it not a fact that your suns are artificial? So, then, why not the rest of the world, too?" Martor looked a little less sure of himself now. "Now, the problem is that even a fusion sun capable of heating and lighting everything out to a distance of several hundred miles is just a tiny spark in a volume this size. Especially when clouds and other obstacles absorb the light so readily. Sixty, eighty, even a hundred suns aren't enough to illuminate the whole interior of Virga. So, we have large volumes of air that are unlit, unheated—volumes of winter."

"I'm with ya," said Martor.

"But these volumes don't go on forever. They end, one way or another, at the lighted precincts of some other nation, or at Candesce if you head straight toward the center of Virga. Or they end at the skin of the world, where icebergs crowd and grind like the gnashing teeth of a god. And your asteroid, Rush, orbits very slowly around the middle of this world, tugged by the almost imperceptible gravity the air creates."

"Now you're having me on," said Martor.

Mahallan sighed extravagantly, but couldn't hide a smile. "Go on. You're taking up my air. You," she said to Hayden, "stick around and help me unpack some of these boxes."

THE SEVEN SHIPS killed their engines a dozen miles into winter. They drifted for a few minutes, then with slow grumbles of their turning engines they slid into a star formation, each one pointing out from a central point. Lines were cast from nose to nose, and the captains of six ships hand-walked across to an open port in the side of the Rook. In all directions, darkness swallowed distance and detail.

When Admiral Fanning entered the Rook's chart room he was pulled up short by the vision of the captains clinging to floor, walls, and ceiling like wasps in a paper nest. They were all identical in their black uniforms, rustling and moving slightly. He could practically hear a subliminal buzz coming from them.

He shook off the impression and glided to his chair by the chart table. "You've all been very patient with our secrecy," he said as the last visiting captain ducked past him to loop a hand through a velvet wall-strap. Now that he thought about it, the idea of these men as wasps seemed more and more apt. They were dangerous, focused—and for the most part, dumb as planks. Perfect for the job he had in mind.

"I'm sure you've had your suspicions about where we're going. I'm equally sure," he said with a smile, "that your crews have been devising all kinds of extravagant ideas of their own." There was a polite smile from the swarm in return.

"Now that we're out of semaphore-range of any potential spies, we can make a general announcement."

"It's about time!" Captain Hieronymous Flosk, the oldest and least patient of the company, leaned into the light from the chart table. The glow made his face a mask of crevasses and pitted plains. "This secrecy is ridiculous," he grated. "We don't have to skulk around hiding from Mavery. Hit them direct, and hard. You'd think that would be obvious," he sniffed.

"Well, you'd be right," said Fanning, "if Mavery were our target."

Several of the captains had been muttering together, but these words shocked them silent. "What do you mean?" asked Flosk, his voice momentarily reduced to a whine. "After the damned sneak attack the other day—"

"Almost certainly not them," said Fanning dryly. "Oh, their munitions, right enough. But Mavery's border dispute with us has been trumped up by a third party—one with deep pockets and spies throughout Slipstream." He took one of the slides his wife had prepared for him and slipped it into the hooded lantern under the chart box. Opening a little door on the side of the lantern, he projected the image onto the wall behind him.

"This," he said, "is a secret shipyard of Falcon Formation. One of, uh, our spies took this photo less than a week ago." Several of the captains rotated in place to try to find a better view of the picture. Fanning glanced back to verify that he'd chosen the correct slide: it was Venera's picture of the giant warship.

"The dreadnought you see in the deep background is fifteen hundred feet long," he announced. Again, the captains went still. "Nothing like it has ever flown in Virga. It's big enough to be a carrier for midsized hunter sloops, as well as a substantial assault force. We believe she will be the flagship of a fleet aimed at Slipstream. We have learned that they are using the dispute with Mavery as a ruse to draw our forces away from Rush. Once our fleet is entangled in Mavery, they will move in and take the city." He didn't have to add that Rush was Slipstream. Take one and you had the other.

There was a long silence. Then Flosk said, "Who's this 'we' who believes all of this crap? You and the Pilot?"

"The Pilot, yes," Fanning lied. "He is well aware of our nation's failings in the espionage area. He's taken steps—hence the pictures." He changed the slide for another that showed the shipyard itself. "That's the strategic situation. I'm sure you can appreciate how important it's been to keep our knowledge of the situation secret."

"Wait," said someone. "You mean we're going to attack Falcon?"

"Suicide," someone else mumbled.

"Clearly we need any advantage we can get," said Fanning with a reluctant nod. "Your ships were either designed as winter ships or have been refitted as part of a winter fleet. These upgrades have been going on for some years, since my predecessor discerned a need for such a fleet."

"But these are hardly the best winter ships," objected Flosk. "The new ones are off with the force that's heading to Mavery."

"Naturally. Mavery and Falcon will notice if our finest winter ships don't show up for the border dispute. Your ships—and I hate to put this indelicately, gentlemen—are the inconspicuous ones. Not very powerful, not very important. Nonetheless, they are all rigged for operations in cold, darkness, and low-oxygen conditions. They will be sufficient."

He closed the cover on the projector and restored the light to the chart box. "This is the local constellation of nations," he said. "We are here. Falcon is there." The chart box contained dense clouds of colored sparks, each hue representing a different nation. The nations coiled around and pressed against one another in intricate contact, like the internal organs of some creature of light. "The chief nations of Merithan all follow the rise and fall of the Merithan Five Hadley cell that's powered by heat from the Sun of Suns, which is below the table in this view. Rush Asteroid is largely unaffected by the air currents and continues to follow its orbit around Candesce, at something less than walking speed. As you can see, Rush will soon leave Aerie and migrate into Mavery's territory. But after mat…" He turned the box to show a mass of glittering green stars that took up much of one side of the box. "After that we will, by force of celestial mechanics, have to pass through Falcon."

Three suns—diamonds among emeralds—gleamed within the broad dazzle of green.

"Now, here is the location of the secret shipyard we discovered." He flipped a lever in the base of the map box. All the little pinpricks of light dimmed save for one amethyst that lit up deep inside Falcon territory.

The captains broke into a babble of complaint. Flosk burst out laughing. "How are we expected to get to that spot without fighting our way through the whole of Falcon?"

"Simple," said Fanning. "The location of the shipyard is secret because it's in an underpopulated area—a volume filled with sargassos. It's really at the terminus of a long tongue of winter that extends hundreds of miles into Falcon. The sargassos shade this volume and much of it is oxygen-poor. A wilderness. We're going to circle all the way around the Merithan constellation and sneak in through this alley of dead air."

"… And raid the shipyard," said somebody. There were nods all around.

"Well, it's bold," said Flosk grudgingly. "Still suicidal. But then we're not too many ships. Slipstream can afford to lose us."

"I have no intention of sacrificing us," said Fanning.

"But how are we going to survive and get home again?"

"That's a part of the plan that has to remain secret for now," said the admiral. "But what it means in the short term is that, before we circle around through winter, we have to make a… a detour."