Crown Of Fire (27 page)

Someone shouted. He glanced at the overhead arc. A slip zone sprang into existence, entering the system not far from a cluster of asteroids, remnants of the colony's original defense. It showed on the arc of space like a set of concentric circles, dark red brightening to crimson at center, in the western sky.

Even closer in, three small ships—crewed by pilots who obviously knew where those asteroids would be—dropped slip-shields as they decelerated into normal space. "ID incoming," Adiyn shouted. "All of them."

Friend-foe analyzers whirred. New data appeared beside the red circles. "Polovia 85-B light cruiser," called a voice, "Thyrian. Also Thy-rian, Polovia 277 fighter-carrier. Fighter bay opening."

Had Onar Ketaz's fearful illusion been a genuine glimpse of the shebiyl, after all? Uneasy, he demanded, "ID on the other three."

"Believe they're Netaian—" the voice started.

"Three Zed," shouted a static-charged voice over a room speaker. "Who's commanding?"

Adiyn recognized Micahel Shirak's voice. "Netaian fighter," he answered sternly, "this is Three Zed, Juddis Adiyn commanding. Micahel, what are you—"

"Listen to me." Micahel did not lower his voice or slow down. "Firebird Caldwell is in one of those incoming bogeys. She and Caldwell
have
learned to fuse carriers, just like Polar tried to do it. All the rest is only a diversion. Kill her, and Caldwell is helpless—and they can't use fusion against us. That order is from Modabah himself."

Commander-in-chief Ketaz relayed it into his link.

Polar, Adiyn reflected, would have objected. He would've liked to snatch the Angelo woman and conduct experiments—but Polar was dead, maybe at her hands. To Adiyn, her research value was genetic, and he already possessed cells from that strain.

There was also the possibility of recovering samples from her body. It should freeze quickly in space.

"Particle shielding down," announced a voice.

Firebird forced herself to go limp.

Drop point shivered the cruiser.

"Mark," Brennen called.

Firebird released her brake and hurtled forward along the hardened deck, through the collapsing shield barrier, and then out into starry space. Thrust compressed her insides against her spine. In the seconds before her head-up panel lit with route/risk data, she double-checked her position, starboard and aft of Brennen, and locked temporary tracking on the heat of lead pilot Dickin's engines.

For one instant, a spectral calm flooded her. Her husband sat on that gleaming engine at ten hundred low. He lived, and that was reality. His vision was only that—a vision, a glimpse, a chance to face down the worst possible outcome.

That was all the time she had for thinking. "Recovery cycles," she heard inside her helmet. The Zed star's arc shrank, falling behind the near planet's cratered horizon.

Next, she heard, "Firing control overrides."

She preactivated both cycles, then took a firm grasp on stick and throttle, each knurled knob solid and assuring through the life suit's gloves. If she let go of either for ten seconds, the recovery cycle would steer her back to
North Ice
and its pickup crews—or elsewhere, at the remote pilot's discretion. At least she'd be in voice contact with him.

Thrust made every move a struggle, even though she'd regained her strength. She checked energy shields again. Particle and slip both gave steady readouts.

Speckles appeared on her display. Four—five—six Shuhr defenders blinked into existence on one side of the targeted peak. The Shuhr commanders hadn't ordered blackout. Amber lights ringed the colony, presenting a beckoning target.

She recognized that symmetrical mountain.

From a northerly launch point came twelve, thirteen more defenders. Brennen hadn't guessed how many stolen ships Three Zed could command.
There just aren't that many Shuhr,
he'd said.

They would soon know.

"Four mark," said Brennen's voice.

Four minutes since launch? At this speed, anything might happen. She wished she'd had longer to tell Brennen good-bye. Illogically, she wished they were back at Esme's ball. She might never finish that dance with him.

As the cratered surface grew closer, blotting out thousands of stars every second, she realized that last complaint wasn't true. Here and now, she danced with Brennen in a realm where few mortals knew the music.

Brennen settled into awareness of surrounding space, as represented by six tiny screens on his console. Out here the claustrophobia didn't bother him nearly as much as it had in the hangar-bay. . . and no one could call the grand starfield
dark.
He pushed his vision of death deep into memory, where it wouldn't interfere with this mission. In less than a minute he would send a quest-pulse through the RIA apparatus to Firebird's craft, and link, and then would come the energy storm. Then he must strike.

He'd made his peace, first with fear and then with regret. At least he felt assured that the Shuhr would not take him alive.

At eleven hundred high, relative to his heading, several more engines burned to life, up in orbit—stolen Federate ships, activating against his force. His scanners showed two fielding satellites below.

"Six, lead," he directed his transceiver. "Mari, thirty seconds to range. Check pre-engagement on your recovery cycle."

"Pre-engaged," she answered.

"And the remote override." If only he could have done more, to protect her from fielding—

A new voice reverberated through his headset. "Thyrian battle group," it said, "break off. We have a hostage. Phoena Angelo is still here, and she is alive."

Firebird's throat constricted. Brennen had seen Phoena die ... or was that another one of their deceptions?

No, he'd shown her the memory. She flicked a transceiver switch and transmitted privately, "Brenn, she may be alive, but only artificially. There's no hope for her recovery after what they did to her." The equation of right and wrong, justice and mercy, and the moral calculations that allowed this attack at all balanced only when Phoena's chance for survival—mindless—was discounted.

Still, Firebird was glad she wasn't in a Night Flight bomber loaded with incendiaries.
Singer,
she pleaded,
if she's finally about to meet you, show her how vast your mercy is.

Brennen recognized Adiyn's voice. Now that he remembered the geneticist, he realized that Adiyn might be the Sentinels' truest enemy, the strongest and most stable Shuhr leader, skilled at mind tampering and steeped in
keshef—
sorcery
.
He transmitted back, "I am sorry, Mari—"

Then a foreign presence brushed his awareness. Hostile, inquiring, it probed deftly through his epsilon shields for his private fears. It echoed oddly, like multiple presences.

Fielding range! It was a Shuhr team. Quickly, before they could debilitate Mari, he focused to quest-pulse to her.

A missile-lock alarm pierced his attention.

Only part of their fielding attack,
he told himself,
playing on my fears—
-but he also glanced at his screens.

From eight hundred high, three Netaian heavy fighters closed on Day Flight. "Double shields," called Hannes Dickin, at lead.

The Netaian fighters trained their targeting lasers on Dickin, then poured energy into his slip-shields. As the trio passed, Dickin's ship exploded in a globe of debris.

There was no time to think, and grieving had to come later. Brennen activated his RIA unit, plunged into the RIA accord, and probed the lead bogey.

Its pilot must have expected exactly that attack. Like hooks driving into his mind, another presence attached itself to him. He tried to drive it off but couldn't.

Watch-link!

Welcome back, Carabohd.
The words tore into his head.
I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to put yourself at lead. Where is she?

The masquerade was over. Using all the epsilon strength he could muster, Brennen tried disrupting Micahel's consciousness with the sharpest possible probe.

Micahel only plunged deeper.

"There—that one!"

One Thyrian fighter started flashing on Juddis Adiyn's master board, as well as on the arc overhead. There she was, at slot position— the only real risk to them. He activated all communication frequencies, even Federate DeepScan. Let
them
hear this, too.

"All forces, bogey now designated FC on your targeting computer is Firebird Caldwell. Reconfigure targeting priorities. She dies first."

At the instant Firebird heard that, her controls went berserk. She wrenched stick and throttle in all directions. Nothing happened externally, but the nausea of mind-access threaded into her like ethereal tentacles. The fielding team probed deep.

"Activate remote," she transmitted, no longer reluctant. That pilot should be able to pull her back just far enough. As soon as Brennen got off a quest-pulse—

The nausea turned to a stab of pure terror. Out of her console came a hollow, silvery spike, aimed straight for her chest. It drove into her life suit, burrowing deeper to skewer her—

Only the fielding,
she screamed to herself.
It's an illusion!
But they had found her irrational fear.

Next came sounds—screeching voices, instruments discordant and out of tune . . . and a vivid memory.

. . . Flailing frantically, she struggled against a much larger Phoena, who stood with both arms wrapped around Firebird's waist. Firebird had to be ... three, four years old? A seemingly huge young man, dressed in natrusilk and velvette, grabbed for her flailing arms. His free hand held two injectors. . . .

Ignoring a host of needles and spikes now driving up out of her front and side panels, she managed a turn. She stretched out through the RIA unit and felt Brennen's ship, still in range. She tried to steady herself on his presence, blocking out everything her lying senses could shriek at her—the piercing, the cacophony.
Now,
she pleaded. He must quest-pulse, must initiate fusion.

It's no use.
The leering young heir's lips moved, an ethereal face floating midcockpit.
You are about to die. But you can end it quickly, and suffer less.

They must have found out about her odd epsilon carrier—

The voice dropped in pitch.
Yes. You are a freak, a mutant. Now that we know you, we can destroy you.
More needle-sharp illusions threaded through her life suit, burning in from all angles. More tone clusters of half and quarter and third steps whanged into her mind, exploding like sonic warheads, a hideous crescendo.

She tried reciting an Adoration, the way Brennen had beaten his new fears, but she could concentrate only on the metal horrors impaling her, pumping vile substances into her body. They were right. . . they would destroy her . . . poison her . . . deafen her. . . .

No! They would not! She felt her ship decelerate. She prayed that was the remote pilot, vectoring her out of fielding range.

Where was Brennen's quest pulse?

They had her, and Brennen saw nothing else. Decelerating, her fighter started to drop toward the planet's surface. Her remote-pilot connection was plainly defunct, overridden by the fielding team.

Now his fears pounced out of hiding—now, when he was most tempted to rely only on his abilities and not on his deeper anchor. He struggled against the watch-link. He knew who sat at the controls of that Netaian heavy-fighter. Micahel kept up a running attack, sending deeper and more vicious probes, distracting him. He could not focus a quest-pulse.

On his threat board, Micahel's heavy-fighter gleamed momentarily. Micahel was arming a missile.

Brennen gripped his stick, keyed over from ground-attack to dog-fighting mode, and fired off a laser volley. It went wide. Micahel's missile streaked away, locked on Firebird's decelerating Light-Five.

The stabbing cut off, and he sensed his enemy's glee.
Watch, Cara-bohd. Watch her die.

Finally free to go to quest-pulse, he saw nothing but one accelerating missile. He launched a pair of decoys, but an instant later, he comprehended the geometry of the situation. The decoys would fall short. She couldn't escape.

Now, Holy One. Now I see.

He fired all his remaining missiles at Micahel, lightening his ship. Then he shoved his throttle full-forward.

Firebird clenched her eyes shut, trying not to see the horrors she plainly felt. Through her RIA unit, she sensed Brennen getting closer again.

Maybe he couldn't quest-pulse. Their fielding team might have gotten a stronger lock on him. Surely Terza didn't know everything about their defenses.

She slitted one eye open. Beyond the silvery web of illusion, Shuhr fighters converged on her fore screen. Squadron mates' calls to Brennen echoed in her ears.

Her missile-lock alarm wailed. She wrenched her stick aside, evading. Through the RIA system, she sensed another strong presence.
Micahel?
she challenged him.

Greetings to you as well, Lady Firebird. Hail and farewell.

Brennen had meant to reach out for her, then strike. For some reason, he couldn't.

But Firebird had learned to quest-pulse. Letting her hands and feet control the fighter, she turned inward. This time, she resisted the impulse to shut her eyes and concentrate. Through doubled vision, she saw two worlds. She flailed along her lichen-painted wall even as the missile appeared on her aft screen, glowing red-orange. She held to her inner course and breached the wall. She thrust energy at it and focused her little energy surge. Then she fed that energy into the RIA system and directed it toward Brennen's presence.

Fusion!

Now, Brennen! Strike!

Light washed out her eyesight. It was an illusion, the onset of psychic shock. She flailed for her stick and seized it, but it didn't respond— and the cabin's interior seemed to be dimming. She was losing all sense of Brennen's location.

Take them down, Brenn
—
I'll wait for you in His country!

Surrounded by her own energy storm, she felt the shudder and tumble of impact, felt blazing heat wrap around her and burn deep. As she flew against her flight harness, Micahel Shirak laughed. A second impact blasted beneath her, pushing her seat into her thighs.

Had she gone EV? She focused on the outer world again. To her shock, she still plunged toward the light-rimmed city, strapped into her own Light-Five. On her aft screen, the remains of another Thyrian fighter tumbled wildly.

Those sensations had been Brennen's, not hers! She'd caught them through RIA, through fusion, and the pair bond itself. What had he done? Had he accelerated into the vector between Micahel's ship and her own—and taken the missile meant for her?

Strike, Mari.
His words came through the RIA link, overlaid with the same kind of fielding-induced terror.
Take it down, take it down!

Then
he
was EV! Aghast, she squeezed her eyes shut. A shrieking, howling gale surrounded her point of consciousness, but she found she could hold her turn. Her knotted, twisted epsilon carrier flared with unaccustomed energy. To grip it was holding fire. She wrenched energy through the breach in her inner wall and dove back out into the visualized energy storm for her splayed-finger RIA arrays.

A surging sense of hugeness meant she had reactivated RIA. Instantly, she flung energy—guided the storm—and rode with it toward Brennen and the circling Netaian craft. In her senses, the attacker gleamed with black lightning.

Micahel Shirak watched the biggest piece of Caldwell's ship tumble toward a cluster of asteroids. He savored Firebird's terror . . . and Caldwell's, as Three Zed's fielding team lashed out to shred the Sentinel's sanity and quench his life. Micahel's cockpit glimmered under battle-red striplights.

They both had only moments to live . . . and he'd done it himself. He had destroyed the last adult Carabohd, spinning off in his pitiful EV suit—and now he would take down the freak bond mate. Linked to her through their vaunted RIA system and his own watch-link on the dying Sentinel, Micahel thrust outward to batter her with epsilon power. His hands worked stick and throttle, vectoring closer. He armed another missile for the
coup de grace.

He
tore into her alpha matrix. His abhorrent otherness gagged her. She fled the cruel spikes and screaming disharmonies, drawing his presence inward. The pursuing storm swirled in, blasting her stony wall to rubble. As Shirak thrust through her mind, she clung to her twisted, flaming carrier, far less painful than the fielding attack. She felt him dive for its deadly darkness, evil drawn to evil.

Micahel's crimson cockpit lights turned black and burst into flame. Black fire surrounded him, hungering to consume him. . . .

Black
fire? A part of him, only a glimmer, refused to believe. . . . Gouts of flame licked into him, singing audibly, whizzing and whining, exulting in suffering and death. . . .

He fought the blackness and its searing pain. No one had ever breached his defenses like this. He struggled inside his own shields, trying to loose himself from Firebird Angelo.

The mutation! Was
this
what
killed Dru Polar?

Before he could fire his second missile, his alpha matrix ripped. Streaks of blinding light drove from all angles into his center of inner vision. His epsilon carrier ruptured, flinging energy out against the blinding streaks. At the back of his head, down his spine, and then through every nerve of his body, ganglions withered in fiery heat.

He plummeted toward the planet.

Brennen flew wildly toward open space, curled by his inflated EV suit into a fetal tuck. The blast that blew him from the ship had distracted him from his turn. He'd lost fusion energy, and Micahel still held him in watch-link. He sensed Mari's fall into her own flaming darkness as the Shuhr fielding team amplified that heat to scalding torment. Gasping, he plunged down inside himself. He had only one defense against fear: his own focused dependence.

Mighty One, destroy my enemies.

In you is truth, and life forever
—

The watch-link dissolved in a burst of agony as Micahel lost consciousness, but the fielding techs kept on pressing their attack. No human mind could endure this.

Three Zed's surface spun crazily. His enemies amplified that sensation, too. Bile rose in his throat.