Karl Schroeder - Sun of Suns

A lucky shell clipped the Unseen Hand's stern and blew its engines off. Its crew bailed out, flapping away with foot-wings, but the Hand's captain was old, mean-tempered Hieronymous Flosk. He drew a pistol and aimed it at the bridge door. "Any man who tries to leave, dies!" he bellowed. "We're going in! Man your posts, you cowards! Make your lives count for something!"

The Hand still had steering and was doing over a hundred miles an hour. When it lunged out of the cloudbank the dreadnought's gunners had only a few seconds to fire and the one shell that hit bounced off the cruiser's streamlined hull. Then the Unseen Hand slammed into the side of the great ship and exploded.

In a zone of half-mist, where towering banks of cloud interspersed with pockets of clarity, the dreadnought shuddered and sighed to a stop.

"SIR" THE RADAR man sounded puzzled. Chaison looked up from trying to catch the flailing straps of his seat belt. The whole ship was rattling now as their airspeed peeled away planks behind the open wound of the hangar doors. They had to reduce their velocity, but a few bikes and cutters were still pursuing.

The radar man held up his chronometer. "Sir, it's daybreak in Falcon. The radar shouldn't be working anymore, but it's holding steady."

Chaison stared at him. What did this mean? Was Venera giving him a gift of extra time? Or had something gone wrong in Candesce?

He might have radar for as long as he needed it… or it might cut out at any second. It no longer mattered: daylight was here.

The clouds were an abyss of pearl dotted with instants of black—men, burnt-out flares, and wreckage only half-glimpsed as the Rook shot by them. And coalescing out of the writhing whiteness were the iron contours of the dreadnought. The great ship seemed determined to keep a pall of night around itself; it had drawn a cloak of smoke and debris around its hull. With each broadside it let loose, the smoke thickened.

"I bet they never thought of this," Travis said, shaking his head. "Rockets take their exhaust with them when they go. But guns… They're blinding themselves with smoke."

"It's a gift," said Chaison. "Let's take it while it's offered." He moved to the speaking tube. "Are the cutters loaded and ready? Good. Wait until I give the order and then let them fly."

The Rook spiraled around the motionless dreadnought just ahead of cannonades of deadly fire. Chaison stared through the portholes, looking for any vulnerable spot through the wavering lines of tracer rounds that subdivided the air. Enemy bikes shot past, snarling like hornets, and the Rook bucked to some sort of impact.

"Enemy closing from all directions, sir," said the radar man. "It looks like they've got another of ours boxed in too… I think it's the .Arrest. I can't see the Severance, but they're still broadcasting."

"Bring us closer," Chaison told the pilot. He'd seen what he was looking for—a triangular dent, yards wide, in the hull of the dreadnought. The surrounding metal was scored and burnt; something bigger than a rocket had impacted there. He reached for the speaking tube—

—And everything spun and hit at him, walls furniture the men rebounding with the shock of a tremendous explosion. Half-deafened, Chaison shook himself and grabbed for a handhold, abstractly noticing that the bridge doors were twisted, half-ajar. Slew's not going to fix this one, he thought.

He struggled back to the commander's chair. The pilot was unconscious and Travis was shoving him aside to reach the controls. Chaison grabbed the speaking tube and shouted, "Report, report!"

A thin voice on the other end said, "They're dead."

"Who's dead?"

"The… everybody that was in the hangar, sir."

"Is this Martor? What about the cutters?"

"One's intact, sir." There was a pause. "I'll take it out, sir."

Chaison turned away for a moment, unable to speak. "Son," he said, "just aim it and jump clear. Make sure you've got a pair of wings and just get out of there. That's an order."

"Yes, sir."

Travis had the ship under control and was banking tightly to avoid a fusillade of shells from the dreadnought. "Sir, here comes the rest of Falcon," he said tightly. Chaison glanced at the portholes and saw a white sky crowded with ships. Just then a large shape obscured the view: the explosives-laden cutter had soared ahead of the Rook and was curving down toward the iron monstrosity.

Chaison couldn't look away. Tracer rounds and the shocked air of shell fire outlined the cutter; he saw pieces of its armor shattering and flying away. Then it was suddenly not there, and Chaison blinked away afterimages of a flash that must have been visible for miles.

The roar overtook the Rook, shaking the hull and starring another porthole. Chaison simply stared at the absence and coiling serpents of smoke. He felt a crush of grief and for a few moments was paralyzed, unable to think.

But everything rested on his decision. He shook off his feelings and turned to Travis.

"Prepare to scuttle the ship," he said.

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.