Karl Schroeder - Sun of Suns

The Gehellens were weak. It took long seconds for the fact to register with Hayden. As he cut and parried he realized that he outmatched his opponent in both strength and speed and that the same was true in the other duels being fought around him. Gravity was a precious commodity here, metered out unwillingly by the upper classes. These soldiers hadn't trained nearly enough in it.

He sent his opponent down with a slice to the ribs and turned to the next one. For a few seconds there was only the narrow world of slash-and-dodge; then someone screamed his name.

Glancing around, he saw Aubri holding one hand out to him.

She stood next to the window with several others; in one hand she clutched a crimson swath of curtain. Hayden cut madly at the man he fought, then dove back to take Aubri's hand. She pulled them both out the window, and the library, the palace, and the royal town of Gehellen swept up and away at awful speed.

SNARLING BIKES TRAILED banners of vapor through the city. Chaison Fanning expected bullets to strike him any second; he focused on holding on to the corners of the scarlet curtain that fought to leap out of his hands. This close to a town wheel, there was usually a zone of empty air for safety reasons; if only he didn't lose the sheet he might be able to slow down to a reasonable velocity before he plastered himself against some window in the weightless part of the city.

The riveted iron belly of the royal town wheel receded with alarming speed, but he could see no puffs of smoke to signify that his people were being fired upon. In fact, he heard no shots at all now, just the bikes and the juddering of the wind.

One bike slid across the air toward him. Here comes the end, he thought. But as the can-shaped jet closed the last few feet to run parallel with his fall, he saw the Slipstream crest on its side. Its rider leaned over and held out an open palm for him to catch.

Chaison let go of the recalcitrant cloth and grabbed at the offered hand. It took a while to make the catch but before he expected it he was astride the hot metal cylinder, hanging on with white knuckles while he tried to jam his feet into the passenger stirrups.

Everywhere he looked, bikes were picking up falling officers. He even spotted Venera by the color of her clothes as she wrapped her arms around the waist of her rescuer. In the middle distance—between the bikes and the tumbled shapes of the city—six battered cruisers were circling.

He clapped his driver on the shoulder. "The Rook, if you can."

"Yes, sir." The man hunched forward and they took off. "That's a mighty fine dress uniform if I do say so myself."

"One of the things they give you when you get to be admiral," yelled Chaison over the wind.

"Yeah? What else they give you?"

"Headaches!"

with a few seconds to spare, Chaison examined the tactical situation. A navy's worm of bikes, cutters, and strike boats was stitching just beyond the Slipstream ships. And at the naval shipyard, a dozen battleships at least were casting off their moorings. But so far, nobody had fired a shot.

"They're afraid we'll blow up their city," he said. Indeed, the Slip-streamers' rocket racks were all open and aimed, some at the palace. Chaison began to smile.

The bike dropped him off at the familiar hangar; the hatch gang gawked at him as though he'd returned from the dead as they helped him inside. "Senior officers to the bridge as soon as they arrive," he said to them. "Prepare to get under way."

There was no way everyone had made it back on board. If the fight at the docks had gone the way it had looked, a sizeable knot of Slipstreamers might have been left behind when the ships lifted off. This presented Chaison with a bitter decision, and he considered it unhappily as he hand-walked up to the bridge.

"Admiral on the bridge!" He ignored the jubilant cries of the staffers and strapped himself into the command chair. He was sitting thus, glowering, when the wounded and adrenaline-fired officers began straggling in, laughing and shouting and embracing one another. To his astonishment, Travis was with them, pale and clutching his wounded arm, but otherwise intact.

Trailing them all came Ambassador Reiss, who appeared to be in a state of shock.

"Listen!" Chaison hammered the arm of the chair to get everyone's attention. "We have about one minute to make a major decision. We have a choice now. I understand that some of our men are still at the docks and may be scattered through the city if the bikes didn't get to them in time. We can recover all of them if we take a stand here and threaten to blow up the royal palace of Gehellen."

He had their full attention now. "Now, with luck and a little negotiation, we might then secure an escort to the border and escape this nest of traitors. But during all the talking and threatening, the Gehellens will have plenty of time to deploy their ships to best effect. We will have to give up any hope of reaching Leaf's Choir."

"Then they'll have won!" wailed a junior staffer.

"But we'll have our men."

They looked at one another unhappily. "On the other hand," continued Chaison, "if we abandon the stragglers, we can set a course directly for the Choir. The Gehellens will give chase and there may be a running battle, but at top speed the sargasso is only an hour or two away. Once in it we can hide—and hunt for our objective."

The door opened and Aubri Mahallan entered. Her harem pants had ballooned and ripped in the fall, her hair was a mad tangle, and her eyes were red—but she looked calm as she presented Chaison with a leather folder. "Best guess for the location of the treasure, based on the maps we found in the library," she said.

All eyes were on the folder as Chaison opened it. He noticed that, and half-smiled. "It seems," he said, "that we all know what we have to do. Perhaps later we can repatriate our men by offering the Gehellens some of their treasure back. Anyone here want to pledge a tithe to that purpose?"

Everyone shouted "Aye!"—Everyone, that is, except Richard Reiss, who merely hung his head.

"Good," Chaison said with satisfaction. "Make the same offer to the general crew, and get these ships under way! Maximum speed, use rockets to blow any obstacles out of the way—and prepare to lock down for sargasso running!"

In that small space, the cheer was almost deafening.

HAYDEN HELD THE handles next to a porthole and stared out at the dark. Candesce was fading as the Rook and its sisters lofted past the last pendant towers of the city. The mauve-and-rose-colored sky went on forever, its perfect symmetry broken by the glitter of countless home and town lights. The air was dense with rope highways and navigation beacons, vast and diffuse farm nets and weaving flocks of fish and birds. The ships did not slow down for any of these hazards; in fact, they accelerated into the dimming air, recklessly daring fatal collision with stone, water, or tree. The entire home guard of the Gehellen navy came screaming after them with only a little more caution.

Far in the distance, veiled by evening color, a vast black smudge polluted a full thirty degrees of sky. The sargasso of Leaf's Choir ate all the light shone at it, and cast an indigo shadow across hundreds of miles of air. Minor wars had been fought over the significant zone of winter caused by that shadow; among the principalities of Candesce a significant minority favored the idea of towing Leaf's Choir into a final incineration at the central sun. The majority was horrified at the prospect of smothering the Sun of Suns in that much ash, and predicted dire consequences from prolonged darkness, and as the purified residue fountained back up. Arguments about what to do with the Choir had seesawed for centuries.