A Prison Unsought (75 page)

Gelasaar gagged against the stench of roasted flesh as he
reached down to gently close Padraic Carr’s eyes.
You have your peace at last, old friend
.

He picked up the Tarkan’s jac and turned away. It had been
so easy. Panicked shouting erupted from the com; it was Uni. But there had to
be other Dol’jharians on board somewhere.

He remembered the last words spoken as he boarded the
shuttle: “I have not ceased my studies,” he had said to Anaris.

Nor have I.

He whirled around. “Mortan! We’ve got to get to the engine
room, quickly.”

Kree raised the jac he’d taken from the Tarkan, adjusted the
aperture, and motioned them away from the inner lock. “I hope this is only a
computer lockdown,” he said. “If it’s manual . . .” He triggered
a thin thread of plasma, once, twice, three times at widely separated places
around the lock. It hissed open.

The Panarch handed his jac to Caleb. “Guard our rear. All of
you, follow me.”

They pounded into the shuttle.

The ship was small. They reached the engine compartment as
the shuttle grounded with a shuddering thump. The compartment door yielded
quickly, but a bolt of energy lanced out, spattering against the opposite wall.
From inside reverberated an intense whine.

Matilde Ho blanched. “They’ve thrown the engine into
supercrit. We haven’t much time to stop it.”

Kree waved them away from the hatch. Then he crouched down,
motioning Caleb over. “I want you to lie flat, and shoot from the floor at the
firestop in the ceiling. On the count of three.”

He backed away, resetting his jac. “One.”

Caleb began to squirm into position.

“Two.” The others backed away from
the hatch.

“Three.”

Caleb rolled onto his back in the hatchway and shot, upside
down, at the firestop. A thick spray of foam erupted, and then Kree triggered
his jac on wide aperture, converting the spray to scalding steam. A man jumped
to his feet, screaming in agony as he fired his jac wildly. Then he slumped in
charred ruin.

The firestop shut off as the heat source was removed. They
ran in, Kree to the engine console, followed by Matilde. As she tapped
one-handed at the keys, Gelasaar turned to the others. “Caleb, give me your
jac. Go with Yosefina and take the bridge.”

They ran out. He turned back to Matilde, who looked up from
the console at him.

“Well?”

“More than four hours now,” she
said.

o0o

Kaniffer watched Neesach give the manual hatch lock to the
bridge an extra twist, and then turned back to his piloting with a sigh of relief
that stuck in his throat when she gasped.

He followed her gaze to the secondary screen relaying the
image from the lock, and amazement stunned him as the elderly nicks disposed of
the Tarkans in a neatly orchestrated flurry of action.

“No,” he breathed. Neesach rushed
to her console and switched to a view of the engine room as the Panarchists
blew the inner lock and poured through into the ship.

His heart banging against his ribs, Kaniffer brought the
ship down in the clearing he’d chosen, the distraction making the landing
rougher than he’d intended.

The action in the engine room was just as rapid, and terror
thrilled through Kaniffer at the casual competence of the men and women he’d so
calmly dismissed as worn-out politicians.

Neesach was frantically tapping at her console, her
green-dyed fingernails glittering. She looked up, and the hollow feeling in the
pit of his stomach intensified at her hopeless expression. “They’ve got
everything except life support, the plasma cannon, and the outer lock door,”
she reported. “And the hatch here.”

“Everything? Even communications?”

She nodded. “And the engines and the shields. Everything.”

Kaniffer tabbed his console, and the viewscreen slowly
revealed the entire clearing in which the ship had landed. There was no sign of
the Gehennans yet.

Neesach’s screeching laugh sounded like the death agony of
some small animal. “Oh! We still got the external imagers!” The screech altered
to tearing metal. “Let’s figure out some way of pushing the geezers out the
hatch.”

Her sneering emphasis on the word “geezers” griped at
Kaniffer, who was beginning to suspect that they’d been set up.

“You always were one for the
angles,” she continued. “I’ll be real interested to see how you work this one.”
Her screechy voice quivered.

He didn’t reply; he was afraid his voice would sound the
same.

o0o

Londri slid off the back of her
drom
and followed Gath-Boru up to the brow of the hill, ducking low
to avoid sky-lining herself against the growing dawn light. They crawled the
last few feet and she cautiously poked her head up over a low tangle of
oil-brush.

Her heart gave a great thump at the sight of the gleaming
machine crouched in the meadow below.

“Look at all that metal,” the scout
with them breathed, her voice reverent.

“With that in our possession, no
one could stand against the Crater,” Gath-Boru whispered.

The Ironqueen was silent. Now she knew what fallen fortress
the Oracle had meant. And it was truly a means to defy fate, to escape the
world-sized prison they were condemned to.

“It’s more than just metal,” she
whispered, though her throat hurt. She knew that without Stepan’s tutoring, she
would have reacted the way the scout had, seeing the flying machine just as a
valuable lump of metal, or as in Gath-Boru’s eyes, a means to power. “It’s
freedom.”

“It’s been there for almost an hour
now,” said the scout. “They never land that long. I don’t think it can fly
anymore. Tetri said it came down hard, and she saw a landing once.”

“They’ll fix it,” Gath-Boru said.
“We must attack now.”

Londri turned as another figure crawled up beside them,
breathing heavily: Stepan. “Don’t be silly, General,” he said. “They’ve got
weapons that can melt steel like ice.”

“I know that. But you have also
told us, as have other Isolates, that usually those weapons cannot fire below a
certain angle. If we get close enough . . .”

“And blind them with smoke,” added
Londri.

Stepan shook his head. “Maybe, but they have eyes that can
see in total darkness, like the sapper-wyrm that strikes at the heat of a body.
Still, a lot of hot fires, with smoke, might confuse them.”

Londri turned to the scout. “Go back to Oberauken Vre’Ktash
and have him bring up the First and Fourth Artillery. They’re the closest. And
two companies of sappers. Have them gather as much oil-brush as they can . . .”
As she continued with her orders, deploying her forces to hold off the Tasuroi
and deal with the grounded vessel, she peered back at the machine.

The scout sketched a salute and slithered back down the hill
until she could stand up and run back to her drom.

Londri turned to Stepan. “Counselor, I need you to approach
Comori under flag of truce. Tell him he can keep the twins in return for his
help in capturing the sky vessel.”

“Aztlan will be wroth,” said
Stepan.

“Tell Tlaloc he may have one
fertile woman captured from the machine, or two potent men.”

A flicker like distant lightning briefly illuminated the
clearing. Gath-Boru groaned. “The Weathernose promised a clear day. Rain will
bog down the artillery and damp the fires. And it’ll make it even harder to
deal with the Tasuroi: the spore-tox won’t work.”

They looked up. The eastern sky paled, though they saw no
clouds. The flicker repeated, and yet again, not from the horizon, but from
overhead. Londri rolled onto her back and gasped. High above, a new star
flared, not quite as bright as the first, but steady, and around it vast wings
of pale light, trembling on the edge of color, reached out in an immense curve.

Then, for the first time in her life, she understood what
Stepan had taught her about the worlds above, and the vast space through which
the people of the Thousand Suns strode like gods. She was not lying on the
ground, but clinging to a toppling wall, exposed to infinite space as something
approached beside which the whole expanse of her hurtling world was but a clod
of dirt.

A sound pulled her gaze from the heavens, and the vertigo
left her.

Stepan wept quietly, watching the sky as he thumbed the
tears from his eyes.

She touched him; he shook his head.

“Not sorrow, not sorrow,” he choked,
his heart so full he feared it would burst from his chest. “That can be only
one thing, nothing else could generate so much energy.”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Never mind, daughter,” he replied,
absently employing the rare term, reminding her of his origin and knowledge of
things beyond Gehenna.

Stepan knew that this was not the time for the long
explanation. And the situation might be as dangerous as ever, or even more.

But one thing was certain. “Do you remember my telling you
how the Abuffyds mocked me with the secret of Gehenna when they exiled me, the
clever lie that keeps us locked away so securely?”

“Yes.”

“Then rejoice: no matter what the
outcome of this day, the lie is broken forever.”

o0o

When the Panarch reached them, Caleb and Yosefina stood in
front of the bridge hatch, radiating frustration. Both smiled briefly to see
him; all three stood and breathed, aware of grief, excitement that made them
almost giddy, and a sense of unreality that they had managed to come this far.

Before any of them could speak or sign, a shaky voice came
over the com. “We’ve got the hatch locked down manually.”

The image revealed a thin-faced man with the bulging jaw
muscles of compulsive bruxism—they gave his face a strange pyramidal look.
“You’ll use up both jacs maybe burning through, and then we’ll zap you.”

Caleb glanced at the Panarch and shrugged, tapping off the
com before he spoke. “He’s right. Unless Kree or Matilde can break through the
computer safeguards, we can’t get into the bridge.”

The Panarch nodded at the com and Caleb switched it back on.

“What is your name?”

“Kaniffer,” the Rifter blurted, his
eyes shifting back and forth. “Lufus Kaniffer.”

“Well, genz Kaniffer, for us there
is little to choose between Gehenna and your ship,” the Panarch said.
“Certainly, if you lift off with us still on board, Anaris will order the
shuttle destroyed. And we control the engines.”

The Rifter stared, a mix of fear, anger, and awe in his
face.

Archetype and Ritual
have a long reach,
Gelasaar thought as the pilot spoke, “But we control the
main lock, and you can’t shut the inner lock anymore. Maybe we’ll just ask the
Gehennans to clear you out.”

“The Gehennans have few metals.
This ship represents unimaginable wealth to them—” The Panarch broke off as the
Rifter jerked his head, facing away from the screen as he conversed with
someone unseen.

Mortan Kree appeared, and whispered, “Matilde reports an
immense energy source approaching the inner system.” He blinked, but the tears
welled and dropped down his weathered face anyway. “I think the Navy’s caught
up with us.”

The Panarch clamped down on his emotions ruthlessly—there
was no way he could know for certain, but joy expanded in his chest.

Finally Kaniffer turned back to the screen, fear widening
his eyes as his jaw muscles bulged.

He thought to turn a
profit from our deaths, and now sees his own approaching. That’s leverage twice
over.

“We will repair the engines,” said
the Panarch, forestalling whatever the Rifter intended to say. “But you will
not lift off until you give us control. As you have seen, there is a
battlecruiser even now approaching Gehenna. If we reach it with your help, I
will give you both your freedom, ships of your own, and a lifetime stipend to
run them. You have my word.” Gelasaar slapped the com off. “We’ll let him think
about it.”

“Fear and greed are strongly
corrosive of the will.” Mortan Kree pressed his palms together.

“So I’m hoping,” said Gelasaar.
“It’s up to Matilde now.” He looked down the corridor toward the lock. “And the
Gehennans.”

“Captain.” Moob’s voice shook. “We
got EM up to gamma flooding in, ionization off the scale, and the Knot’s
flaring up.” She tapped a few keys. “On-screen.”

Emmet Fasthand’s voice broke in panic, “What the
hell
is that?”

Tat looked up at the bridge relay and her breath stopped.
She tapped to a full-screen view of the main bridge display. A glaring point of
light blazed dead center; to either side, vast curving sheets of light reached
out and up. It looked like the headlight of some swift deadly machine speeding
toward them between the walls of an infinite canyon. Tat realized she was
seeing the usually invisible fivespace fracture guarding the Gehenna system as
some incredible source of energy excited it into radiance.

“It’s an asteroid, about four
klicks in diameter, incoming at point-one cee.”

“Asteroid my blungehole,” Fasthand
yelled. “It’s a chatzing battlecruiser, using the chatzing asteroid instead of
its chatzing shields! They’ll be here in less than two hours at that speed!”

Tat’s boswell chimed.
(Tat!
What the hell are you doing?)
Even through the link, Fasthand’s voice
revealed a man on the edge of doing something fatally stupid.

Without answering, Tat stripped off her boz’l, grabbed the
ampule, jabbed it up her nose, and triggered it. The jet of brain-suck felt
like acid, and she shouted with pain. She heard Morrighon’s voice from the
bridge relay as a rising tide of color overwhelmed her; she looked down at her
console screen and then the drug seized her in inescapable claws and the edges
of the display expanded around her as she fell into dataspace.