The Phoenix in Flight (50 page)

Barrodagh issued instructions to the remaining conscripts
for dealing with the cannon and statue, then watched as his orders were carried
out. “Feet first, you fools!” he shouted as they threw their comrade to the
ground about thirty meters ahead of the slowly advancing mower. They hesitated,
as though debating whether to pretend not to hear, then dragged the luckless
man around, roughly crossed his hands and feet, and pinned him to the ground.

The man was moaning continuously now. As the mower reached
his feet it hesitated, and Barrodagh realized it must have some sort of safety
override in it. It began to slip sideways and he shouted, “Don’t let it get
away. Push it!” He motioned another conscript over to the machine.

As she pushed the machine it balked. His fury igniting,
Barrodagh lunged forward and shoved at it, causing it to jink sideways.

The conscripts jumped away and it swerved again as its
sensors discerned a path to freedom. The fairing passed over the front of
Barrodagh’s feet, neatly removing the ends of his boots, leaving his toes
exposed to the cool air. Barrodagh shrieked and skipped away, then fell
sprawling as the mower moved off, chattering contentedly to itself. His feet
felt wet... he looked in horror at them, touched his toes gently, more than
half-convinced that they would fall off. No, he was untouched. The dampness was
from the grass.

As he got to his feet he swept his gaze around the
conscripts, who looked up or away, the woman beside the mower staring downward
with the pursed lips of barely-controlled mirth. He could command them not to
speak of the incident, but he knew they would.

The rage that had burned turned cold. He turned to the two
remaining Tarkans. “Decimate them,” he said, sweeping his hand at the
conscripts. “Leave the one on the ground.”

The Tarkans fired without hesitation, first cutting down
those who raised their weapons in protest, and then the ones who had tried to
flee.

Barrodagh walked over to the conscript crucified on the
lawn. He looked down and smiled. “The price of incompetence.” He looked up at
the Tarkans. “Take this one to the dispensary for treatment. And have a detail
clean up this carrion.”

He watched as the Tarkan roughly yanked the knives out of
the man’s flesh and jerked him to his feet. As the prisoner hobbled away,
Barrodagh watched in satisfaction.

He
will talk, but no one will laugh
.

o0o

Greywing took another dose of painkiller and got up. She
hated sitting in her bunk, not knowing what was going on. She walked by the cabin
Ivard shared with Jaim, but it was empty.

Ivard hated it when she checked on him. He always used to
like it. He once told her he felt safe when she did. But ever since his voice
dropped and he started getting his height, he’d been pushing her away, saying
he could stand on his own—he was full crew—he didn’t need to be guarded like
some baby. So she’d find a reason, if she saw him. Like, if he was on the
bridge logging more practice running nav calculations, she could joke him a
little about how much he must be missing galley slubbing.

She found him in the rec room with some of the other crew.
Lokri was there, and also Brandon Arkad. This was the first time Greywing had
seen the nick out during his rec time.

She paused in the hatch, observing.

“Shall we start?” Lokri said.

Brandon opened his hands.

Ivard was hovering in the background. He gestured to
Greywing, who moved in to join him; he smiled like the old days, when he was a
boy.

“Phalanx,” Ivard whispered.

Of course Lokri was playing Phalanx—now that he had a new
victim to try to cheat.

“Level Two,” Ivard added.

Lokri waved a hand with mocking elegance at one of the
dedicated game consoles, and the two sat down and started it up.

Most people played the difficult three-dimensional strategy
game at Level One, which allowed for time to think through one’s moves. Level
Two added not only hazards but one further dimension: time. Not as many played
that outside of those who gambled for big stakes, usually at expensive clubs.
Level Three was exponentially more difficult. Greywing remembered Markham
saying once that it was as near as one could get to fleet against fleet action
in space.

Didn’t Markham once say he used to play against the Arkad
during his boyhood, while listening to recorded concert music? Maybe that was
in Rifthaven later, she couldn’t remember.

She wondered if Lokri had mentioned to the Arkad that he
frequently took big sums off dedicated Phalanx players at Rifthaven, and
decided he hadn’t. She recognized Lokri’s sudden and uncharacteristic interest
in the Krysarch as speculative, not friendly.

Lokri sat upright in his pod and slapped the kill key. Ivard
stepped back defensively, as though he were somehow to blame for interrupting
the game. Greywing pressed her lips tight against a comment. She knew her
brother was afraid of the languid comtech, but Ivard had to stand on his own.

Lokri did not even look their way. His gray eyes narrowed as
he studied the Arkad, who just sat and smiled pleasantly. Lokri leaned forward
and without asking, punched in the code for Level Three.

Yes, Greywing had remembered right.
And we also played
Ketzenlach’s fugues
, Markham had said once, laughing as he leaned against
the bulkhead.
We believed that music made our brains faster, for after all,
what is it but patterns in fourspace math?

There was no music playing now, but the Arkad didn’t seem to
need it. His face went distant, his long hands flashing over the keys and tabs
without any hesitation at all.

Greywing caught a sober look from Ivard, and they moved to
his own console, facing away so that their words would not carry.

“Think Lokri’ll cheat?” Ivard whispered.

“He always cheats, him and Marim,” Greywing said. “They do
it just for fun. And to catch you out. Make you look stupid. Why I told you never
play with them.”

She could tell by the way Ivard hunched his scrawny neck
into his shoulders, like a timtwee sucking its eyestalks back into its
carapace, that he’d disregarded her advice while she was stuck in sickbay, and
as a result probably had racked up shifts’ worth of the chores that Marim and
Lokri hated worst. Well, that would teach him if he wouldn’t listen to her.
Either
teach him not to play with them—or teach him how to cheat.

She pressed her lips again, determined not to say anything.
She knew that she and her brother could probably beat either Marim or Lokri
under fair circumstances. In fact, Ivard had beaten Markham once or twice. But
he couldn’t beat Marim or Lokri when they cheated.

Greywing hated cheating in games. In life, everyone cheated
everywhere, all the time. Of course. You expected that. So a game should have
rules, be fair. Or it wasn’t a game, it was just like life.

Lokri lifted his hands, then leaned back in his pod. His
lazy smile carried some surprise. “At least,” he said, rubbing his jaw, “you
can pay attention while you vaporize me.”

Brandon shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I was
remembering...”

“What?” It was a soft croak from Ivard, who almost never
spoke when more than two people were in a room. And Lokri almost always ignored
him.

But the Arkad smiled Ivard’s way. “The first time my brother
Semion played me, when I was, oh, about ten. Savaged me, of course, but...” He
looked up, his brow wrinkling in puzzlement. “I wonder now if it was some kind
of a test.”

Score one on Lokri,
Greywing thought, watching the
thin flush of red along Lokri’s sharp cheekbones.

Of course that shot went right over Ivard’s head. He looked
happy that the Panarchist actually found him worthy to speak to. Ivard took a
small step forward and dared another comment. “You’re good—” He looked up, and
his mouth snapped shut.

A moment later Marim bounced in. “Hey! Who’s playing L-3? I
saw that from the bridge—” She regarded Brandon with interest. “You, Arkad? I
didn’t know brains went with the nacky birth.”

“Then you are a fool as well as ignorant, Marim,” came a new
voice. Montrose wandered in right behind her, a book under his arm. Had
everyone been watching the game on their consoles? Montrose went on pleasantly,
“Forty-odd generations of the habit of command ought to have bred a certain
amount of natural ability into our young guest.”

Marim slapped a console into life. “Play me,” she demanded.
“No, play me’n Lokri here.”

“But you cheat,” Lokri pointed out, so innocently that
Greywing choked on a laugh.

“You do too, blungesniffer,” Marim fired back.

“I’ll play you both,” Brandon said. “I’ve always liked the
game, and it so happens I’ve had little else to do over the last few years.”

Montrose laid his book down. “Ordinarily I’ve little interest
in these games, but this I should enjoy observing.”

Marim plopped down onto her chair and they started again.
Greywing lit her own console and Ivard moved to stand next to her so they could
watch the action. Greywing positioned herself so she could watch the screen and
the players.

This time, Brandon clearly had to exert himself. Greywing
figured he’d find Marim to be the more challenging opponent. She was much
faster than Lokri, making decisions that were either brilliant or dangerously
stupid, and whose only common characteristic was recklessness. Lokri as backup
was formidable. Rigorous logic dictated his moves. Brandon went down in defeat,
but it was not a fast game or an easy one—and for once Greywing didn’t think
either of the pair had cheated. Or if they had, Brandon didn’t say anything,
though she was pretty sure by now that he would know.

Montrose clapped his hands in delight. “You know, it might
be worth my time to take a turn, which I haven’t done for at least—”

He was interrupted by a chime from the comlink.

“Galley,” Marim chortled.

Montrose tabbed the key. “What is it, Osri?”

“This sauce. It smells funny.” His voice sounded plaintive.

“I shall come at once.” Montrose lifted his hand from the
console, sighed, and got to his feet. “That young man will never be a cook. He
is worse, even—” He reached forward and touched Ivard’s shoulder. “—than you.”
He went out.

“Now let’s play again,” Marim demanded.

Brandon gave his head a shake. “I’d like to get something to
drink.”

The Krysarch moved in the direction of the dispenser. Ivard
went after, walking in that tight-shouldered, drifting way he had, as if he
expected a gang of rip-thieves to round a corner at any moment. Greywing could
tell by her brother’s nervousness that he was nerving himself to talk to the
Arkad.

She decided to follow. She had to let Ivard find his own
place with the crew, because these were the people they lived and worked with.
She didn’t have to let any nick beat him down, though.

Brandon punched up a mug of caf and wandered out. Ivard
followed after, Greywing behind him. Brandon stopped in the bridge hatch. Vi’ya
sat in the captain’s chair, a half-eaten plate beside her as she worked her
console.

Brandon hesitated, but the captain made a gesture inviting
him to join her.

Ivard moved to the nav console and punched up solo-Phalanx.
Greywing moved to her own console and lit it, but didn’t do anything. She
couldn’t see, but she could hear.

Brandon’s expression was hard to read, but Greywing wondered
if he was annoyed, or maybe unsettled, at the idea of a tempath as he said, “Do
you read everyone’s minds all the time, or do you have to concentrate?”

“I don’t read minds,” Vi’ya said. “I am a tempath, not a
telepath. But it was apparent you wished to speak to me.”

There was a long hesitation. Greywing wondered why. Was he
going to try something? Or was he merely choosing his words? Vi’ya said nothing
during the protracted silence, and Greywing could imagine her watching him
steadily with those eyes so dark it was difficult to distinguish between iris
and pupil. They reminded Greywing of a volcanic lake in winter.

“I wanted to know,” he said finally, “if Markham left any
chips—writing—anything tangible.”

Greywing had expected anything but that. Ivard wasn’t even
pretending to play his game, but then the captain would know he was listening.

“No,” Vi’ya said. “The few personal things, mementos from
his father mostly, I burned.”

“I wish I’d known, I wish I’d known...” The Arkad spoke in a
strained, bitter voice, then stopped. When he spoke again, it was with his
usual polite tone, with the nick cadences that reminded Greywing of Markham. “I
suppose the new leader has to remove all traces of the old in order to transfer
power?”

Her answer was completely unexpected. “So you think he is
gone without a trace?”

“No,” Brandon said, so soft now Greywing could barely hear
him. “I feel him all around me, so much this vessel seems haunted, and he is
never far from my thoughts. I had hoped there was something tangible so I could
either have raised his ghost or laid it to rest.”

“I burned his things because I deemed it proper,” Vi’ya
said. Then she shut down her console, picked up her plate, and left the bridge.

As the
Satansclaw
grew rapidly larger, Barrodagh kept
his hands gripped together, hoping the pilot next to him wouldn’t notice how
tense he was. He hated spaceflight, and he cursed Rifellyn for assigning him a
shuttlecraft so small it had no passenger cabin. Instead of a comfortable cabin
with blanked-out viewscreens, he was trapped in the secondary control pod of a
two-man shuttle with a sickeningly large direct-view dyplast viewport.

Rifellyn knew how much he hated spaceflight. This shuttle
was a deliberate affront, one of the many Rifellyn and her kind had been aiming
at him ever since the arrival at Arthelion.