Crown Of Fire (18 page)

Tel turned around. To his horror, the golden figure came on, seemingly striding a meter in the air—leaping along pew backs, mowing down guards and spectators with a projectile gun. No one else's weapon seemed to be firing. The intruder wore a cloth-of-gold hooded skinsuit, his face and hands glimmered, and even his eyes gleamed the unnatural shade. Netaians scattered, trampling those who had already fallen.

Midnight blue figures fought the fleeing crowd, trying to reach the gold man with their crystaces. On the sanctum, the Caldwells' bodyguards crouched close to their fallen charges. Zoagrem shouted orders to arriving medical aides.

The golden figure leaped down into the open space in front of the sanctum.

Well, if he's got some way to freeze our blazers
—

Tel drew his dress sword and stepped into his path, determined to buy Firebird two more seconds of life if he could do nothing more. For the second time, he looked down the sights of someone else's weapon—

Then popping noises erupted from several directions. As Paudan charged, the gold man changed course, headed for the south door. Tel lost him in the crowd.

Distant sirens wailed.

Terza watched live tri-D coverage over her father's servo table in the apartment across town. An aerial shot followed an evac van speeding up Port Road toward the Federate base.

She doubted Caldwell was in it. An atmospheric shuttle idled on the roof, ready to transfer Micahel's prisoner to their transport ship.

A tone sounded, indicating the security garage had been breached. Two crewers were downlevel, guarding that entry. Another sat between Terza and her father, while two others readied the shuttle.

She stepped away from the servo table. At any moment, she would see her child's gene-father.

To her horror, she did think of her hypothetical daughter as a child—no morula, no embryo, none of those comfortable, distant terminologies. The cells growing, dividing, and (by now) differentiating inside her were the building blocks of a life.

She wanted to shriek, to deny the change in her soul. Instead, she buried it behind her deepest shields. Few of the unbound ever bonded to any other. Under Testing Director Polar, she'd been taught how to evade pair bonding; otherwise, it was an inevitable consequence of sexual liaison. But Terza had formed a bond of exactly that sort, the kind breakable only by death.

Her father also stood, and he stepped toward the lounge area.

Micahel swaggered through the rear entry alone.

Modabah blocked his son's path.
What happened?
His question, freely broadcast, echoed through Terza's mind.

She's dead,
came the answer,
but I couldn't get to him.
Micahel stalked to the table, took Terza's vacated chair, and sat down.

Dead,
Terza reflected. The woman was gone, and Brennen Caldwell would be half dead with bereavement shock. Evidently he
was
in that evac van, riding beside whatever remained of his mate.

Then would Modabah send Terza onto the base to draw Caldwell out? She dreaded what Talumah might do to her mind, preparing her and protecting her compatriots.

Affiliated News still blared over the tri-D set, playing and replaying key moments from the interrupted ceremony. Micahel fell silent, watching. Terza looked over his shoulder. Modabah rubbed his chin.

The Angelo woman knelt. Close-up, headshot—she blinked once as the tiara was set on her head, then stared forward.

At least she died a princess. Or did she? She'd worn the tiara, but they never made the official proclamation.

As if it mattered now. In slow motion, the projectile tore into her flesh. It seemed to take her several seconds to gasp and tumble out of closeup range. The field widened to show her lying prone, her supporters dropping to their knees.

"See that?" Micahel demanded aloud. "That was a marksman's shot. The explosion killed her. I darted Caldwell, but I couldn't get to him. He won't show himself, won't move, for days or weeks. In that much time, we can easily infiltrate the base and take him. Easily. We'll own the RIA technology and then the Federacy. All that with one shot."

Hearing the defensiveness in his voice, Terza avoided looking at him or their father.

The image played once more. Terza leaned closer, still surprised to see so little blood. The image shifted, showing a scuffle near one of the hall's side doors. She recognized Ard Talumah, costumed as a nobleman, clearing a path for her brother's escape.

"They haven't announced her death," Modabah said gruffly.

Micahel raised his chin.
What's keeping them?
he wondered without shielding.

Their father sat back down, settling onto the last vacant servo chair. "Official announcements require protocol here. Or she might not be dead."

Micahel laughed.
Not this time.

The security tone sounded again. This time, Ard Talumah slipped through the inner door, clothed in celebratory scarlet. A nobleman's blue sash completed his costume. He touched his forehead in salute and sent,
Congratulations, Micahel.

Your disrupter grid worked,
Micahel sent with a magnanimous sweep of both arms.
I got into position before they closed the hall for security, set up the grid, and stayed behind my own personal shields.

Polar had excellent shields. Obviously, you studied with him. And skin-suit armor looks good on you.
Ard Talumah poured himself a drink. "Look, there you go." He pointed back to the tri-D image.

Terza watched Micahel flee in miniature, saw Federate guards close in at the south door. This time, she spotted Talumah sooner. "Why didn't you just stay up there?" she asked Micahel.

He shrugged. "And miss this?" He stepped closer to the tri-D. "I changed clothing down in the tunnel, and then we separated—blended into the crowd. I looked a Sentinel straight in the eye and ducked a sorry excuse for an epsilon probe. It was almost too easy."

Terza managed to smile.

The replay shifted to real-time. As the evac van vanished into a tunnel on base, an announcer tolled the names of dead Netaians.

She only half listened. On the sanctum steps, there simply had not been enough blood, if that projectile had exploded.

A new face appeared center-screen, the sandy-haired Federate governor. "Not Rogonin." Micahel turned to Talumah. "He must be opening old wine."

"I have an update on Second Commander Firebird Angelo Caldwell's condition," Danton began.

Terza felt Micahel's alarm.
No! An announcement! Tou want to make an announcement!

Modabah glanced his direction and said, "Hush."

Danton hadn't stopped speaking. ". . . lodged in lung tissue, four centimeters from the heart." Another picture replaced Danton's face. Diagnostic imagery of a ruined lung roused Micahel's pride, and he let everyone in the room feel it. He had placed the cartridge perfectly. But—

"Her chest should've exploded," he protested. "You gave me a defective cartridge—"

"Shh," said Modabah and Talumah.

"... Caldwell evidently was able to partially contain the explosion. Again, Lady Firebird Angelo Caldwell has been rushed to Citangelo's Federate military base, where she remains in critical condition. . . ."

"Contain
the explosion?" Talumah demanded.

Terza stared.

Modabah straightened his stooped back, sitting as tall as he could. "Then Caldwell is no ES 32. They falsified college records. Harris must be a Master, too. Or Mattason. They must have linked. And obviously, you missed him with that drug dart."

"It hit his neck. Left side, back." Micahel picked up a writing stylus, broke it in half, then broke each half again. "He couldn't have contained that much physical force. Not even a Master could do that."

"There was something else," said Talumah. "I was less than twenty meters away. Someone did expend energy."

Modabah craned his neck. "Why didn't you say something?"

Talumah raised his glass. "I only now realized it was epsilon power. I thought it was a blast wave from the explosion. I felt it as a physical force. It was huge, enormous."

"The RIA technology?" Modabah suggested. "Shef'th," he swore, "have they already learned to miniaturize it?"

"I don't know." Ard Talumah drained his drink, then yanked off his blue sash.

Modabah steepled his fingers.
We need to get onto that base,
he sub-vocalized slowly,
before Caldwell can get off it.
He turned to the wide-eyed lackey next to Terza.
Get every operative on world here, in this room,
he ordered.
Tomorrow morning, before six hundred.

Then his glance rested on Terza, and she lowered her eyes.

Five hours had passed since the shooting. Brennen stared down at his bond mate's pale face. She lay propped against a large pillow, and a slender tube drained fluid from her chest. Beneath the microfiber blanket he'd raised to cover her, her torso was bruised from neckline to hip. Meds had clamped a regenerative field source over the cauterized new suture that crossed her ribs. Arching from one side of the bed to the other, its green-and-white surface was interrupted only by a control panel and a series of monitor lights. Besides hastening the cardiac muscle's self-repair, it would speed thoracic healing: the torn muscles, the microbreaks in her ribs. She was already well beyond physical danger, but if they hadn't achieved fusion before that dart hit him, she would be dead.

The small bruise on the back of his neck was his only injury. Ultra-dialysis had cleared the dart's dose of blocking drugs from his system even before Mari emerged from reconstructive surgery.

A twisted mass of scorched metal fragments and several grams of spent explosive had been extricated from her chest cavity before the base surgeons repaired her inner wounds. She was expected to recover quickly, but Micahel's slug-thrower and the resultant pandemonium had killed sixteen Netaians. Twenty-eight more lay seriously wounded. According to Uri, a second Shuhr had hidden in the crowd near the south door, dropping his camouflage only when it looked as if his partner might be taken. No one saw them leave the Hall, though Federate and Netaian security—working together, one small miracle in the midst of these failures—had kept the grounds sealed and released spectators in small groups after weapons inspectors cleared them. Grim-faced Sentinels, sensitive to any flicker of epsilon-energy use, backed up the inspectors.

A miniaturized field projector, found smashed in the overhead tracery, was suspected of disrupting all the energy blazers.

How had he gotten in past security?

Brennen exhaled heavily.
Was this the cost of our pride, Holy One?
Sixteen Netaian lives, two Sentinels among the seriously wounded . . .

And empty hands.

He stared down again, assuring himself that Mari was only sleeping off a surgical anesthetic. Her chest rose and fell against the bridgelike field generator. She would have been ripped in two if that dart had hit him one second sooner, preventing their fusion.

In hindsight, maybe he could have penetrated the device and defused it. Maybe he could have spared her some of this. Could have . . . but how?

Standing beside him, Zoagrem shook his head. "That injection series she took yesterday gives us another advantage. Her lungs started regenerating almost instantly after penetration. Pulmonary damage will be minimal."

"But her heart. . ." Brennen trailed off.

He didn't have to drop shields to see Zoagrem's satisfaction. "The cardiac nerves have been replaced. Parts of the right atrium and ventricle temporarily lost contractile ability, but the surgical team had them beating again within the hour." He frowned. "There's been considerable thoracic trauma, though."

Psychic trauma, too, though the Netaian couldn't see that. Brennen had sensed the breaks that smashed across her alpha matrix as fusion energy coursed through her at the moment that should've been her death. Maybe the alpha-matrix trauma was what kept scarring her ayin.

And the assassins had escaped.
Bedim them!
Had Micahel Shirak chosen to dress in gold because of Brennen's fears, or was that just a coincidence?

"She's a fighter," said Zoagrem. "Always has been." The palace med glanced nervously over his shoulder as someone walked down the base infirmary hall. "In a day, we'll have a more specific prognosis. But I wouldn't worry about her long-term chance of recovery."

Not unless the Shuhr penetrated this base! The Federates were absolutely right to fear those people. His own kindred lived under so many restrictions that no one could have guessed—until the Shuhr showed them—what they might have become.

Brennen sensed someone else at the door behind him. He looked around to see the infirmary administrator, a broad-chested man whose cleanly shaved head gleamed under hallway lights. "An announcement must be made," he told Brennen. "Governor Danton insists you approve the wording."

Reading the recall pad, a common media release detailing his Mari's near-death, he shuddered. "Strike this," he said, pointing to a suggestion that he had helped her survive. That must not be publicized. "If I could have helped her, she wouldn't be here. She would be ... with me," he realized. "On a dance floor."

Firebird blinked up at an institutional white ceiling. The upper half of her bed was tilted to make breathing easier, but the humming metal-and-composite arch of medical machinery wedged her down. She could move her arms, but not far. She'd been medically dead for a quarter of an hour.

The Shuhr had almost taken her—and Brennen had recognized the golden face in newsnet broadcasts. Micahel was there, himself. But he'd gotten away!

Though the "news" was now eight hours old, all three nets were still playing and replaying the shooting from every angle imaginable. Brennen had looked princely, poised. Elegant.

Why hadn't the guards looked up? Or had they, and had Micahel Shirak shielded himself from sight? They now knew Shuhr could blur their faces in an observer's vision. Was that how he got past the exit screening?

The small woman above the tri-D projector fell. A scarlet train wrapped her like a shroud. Blood pooled beneath her. Close-up, freeze frame: It had been a master sniper's shot, missing both collarbone and shoulder blade to penetrate her chest.

Nauseated, she waved off the set. The ragged entry wound in her shoulder burned under a layer of biotape.

She couldn't as easily wave the sniper's image out of her mind. At Trinn Hill, his face had been blackened. This time, it glimmered with gilt.

Firebird groaned, shifting on the pillow. Pain blocks made her restless. So did the notion of lying here while the regen field accelerated her recovery.

But if she checked out of regen therapy, she'd have no chance of being cleared to fly combat at Three Zed—if ever they could get a Shuhr in custody.

Dear Singer,
she sighed,
thank you for taking us out of there alive. Deliver my people from the threat of war.

But, my Lord, will you stop at nothing to keep me from dancing with Brennen?
She sighed, hoping the Singer wouldn't think that irreverent. She'd been taught to be honest in prayer.

She felt dead from hip to neck, due to the pain blocks. She wished she'd struggled up off her knees and challenged First Lord Erwin about that blessing, right there in the sanctum. She nearly had died, with those words almost the last ones she heard. From now on, she would be more outspoken about her faith.

And on the subject of speaking . . . though Firebird had sworn no one would ever use the title, netters were calling her "Princess."

Not for long! They could call her "Commander," if they had to call her anything. Her shallow, half-pretended nonchalance toward that high gilt chair had turned to real aversion. She reached toward a call button, then fell back on her pillow. It hurt to raise her arm.

He'd gotten away. Anna Dabarrah was right—she should've stayed at Hesed with her babies.

Sixteen Netaians were dead. She wanted justice for them, not revenge on the one who had done it. Something inside her had changed ... no, the shift went even deeper. Something had died. Pride, maybe.

Half a dozen more Netaians might die before morning. She could never compensate their families for that loss, not even if she'd inherited the entire Angelo fortune instead of a token allowance.

Near midnight, Brennen squeezed her hand, relieved to find it warmer than before. She scowled and struggled to shift under the humming regen projector.

From a pocket in his wide belt, Brennen pulled the bird-of-prey medallion on its chain, its wings swept back almost to touch each other. One of the surgeons had brought it out to him. He no longer cared if it was gold, silver, or lead.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"You of all people don't need to ask," she muttered.

He did feel her frustration and remorse, and even some of her numbness came through as a vague dampening of sensation. He dropped the medallion on her bedside table, carefully coiling the chain in a spiral.

She added, "I'm sorry. I make a rotten invalid. How soon can I get back in the flight simulator?"

"Not today, Mari." She
must
be fit to fly before they could get to Three Zed—but were all their hopes built on a false assumption? Maybe the Shuhr were genuinely untouchable.

"It could be close, couldn't it?" There was a plaintive note in her voice.

"Your medics have planned a regimen. You've got to stick to it." Regen time, a gradual increase in physical activity, and a return to sim training had all been mapped out, hour by hour. "You need twelve days, minimum." Or she'd be a liability, not an asset, at Three Zed. Assuming those were his orders.

"Like a limpet mine," she declared. "And thank the One for onboard gravidics. Without those, I'd be grounded for good."

"There's one man I want to ground for good." He touched the pocket recorder he'd added to his belt. "Danton sent out some of our currently unemployed infiltrators on surveillance teams. They'll find him. One of the Sentinels at the Hall did let him leave."

"I don't understand. Did the guard remember him later?"

Brennen nodded. "That implies that the Shuhr can cause temporary amnesia, besides their permanent memory blocks."
One more ability we never suspected.
"But we finally have Micahel's alpha-matrix profile. He's detectable now, if he turns up in public."

"And how did he get in?"

"It looks," Brennen said, "as if he'd been in position for some time, possibly in t-sleep. No one sensed him there."

She sighed. "What about your cover? Your epsilon rating, the fusion . . ."

"I think it held. I want to go check, though, if—"

"Please stay." She reached toward his hand, and he saw how the effort made her wince. "I was afraid you would die in there. I can't imagine why he aimed for me instead of you."

But Brennen had been trained to notice deception. He saw it plainly now.

"I can," he said grimly, "and so can you. RIA. They want me alive, just like we want one of them." He reached for her hand. Her proud heart really had been broken—literally—but someone, somewhere, had covered her with prayer. "Promise me you'll rest and not fight the regen arch or demand to watch Rogonin's version of the news."

The sensations radiating from her reminded him of a trapped animal, panicked and unable to stop struggling. She stared straight ahead when she said, "I promise."

He laid a hand on her forehead and stroked her alpha matrix, in the tender way only he could calm her. Eyeing the humming arch, he wished such technology could've repaired his own injuries. Certain tissues, such as cardiac muscle, responded with amazing speed to regen therapy.

But the mind was more than nerve cells and electrical impulses. No physical device could repair what he'd done at Three Zed.

He glared at the bird-of-prey medallion, willing it to rise on the bedside table. The chain barely rustled. Even that effort made his temples ache.

Too tired,
he reminded himself. He, too, needed sleep.

"Please read me an Adoration," she mumbled. "I left my
Mattah
back at our quarters."

He didn't want to wave on a light, and anyway, he'd been meditating on one Adoration for most of the last ten hours, praying that if this truly was the time to strike Three Zed, that divine call would come. " 'The Holy One,' " he quoted, " 'long-suffering and just, will one day release His vengeance. If the wicked will not repent, He will sharpen His sword. He has prepared for himself deadly weapons. . . .' "

Firebird smiled faintly.

Another woman sat up late, watching a rebroadcast. From a bedroom in her father's apartment, Terza Shirak stared into the space over a media block. Her eyes fixed on the small, handsome figure in sapphire blue. He knelt with his eyes closed in concentration, then fell prostrate across the woman who ought to be dead.

She'd give a hundred Federate gilds, a thousand, to know what he'd done. Once, he'd been rated ES 97.
Would his gene-daughter inherit that carrier strength?
Terza wondered. But no Master Sentinel, regardless of potential or training, could have defeated that exploding shell, so well lodged.

This must have been a demonstration of the Sentinels' RIA technology. She wondered when Tallis would announce that.

Sighing, she turned away from the screen.

With that land of power. . .

Alarmed by the thought that whizzed through her mind, she raised her inner shields and trapped it for future consideration. She glanced at her door, then extended a quest-pulse through it.

The others had gone out, undoubtedly assembling their forces. Now they must penetrate a military base. Impossible by nongifted standards, but Terza didn't doubt they would succeed.

She let the thought rise again.

A man with abilities like Caldwell's, assisted by RIA technology, might—might—be able to stand even against her father and brother. Might be able to shelter one woman's attempt to escape from the Shuhr.

There. She'd thought it at last. Escape . . . and she'd called her own people
enemy,
by using the Sentinels' word. In their ancient common tongue,
Shuhr
meant foe, adversary.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Terza gripped the edge of her bunk. Unknown by her consciousness, the urge to escape had grown stronger while she held it down under her inner shields. Stronger, and more complex. To live free on Thyrica, where her daughter might have the casual happiness Terza never knew. . . where she might grow strong in the wind and sun, instead of banks of lights... on a world where the most severe penalty for weakness was the denial of training, not immediate death. . . .

She'd had one friend as a little child. One of the few light-haired youngsters at Cahal, Caira always let Terza choose games and usually let her win. When the first competence evaluations were given, Caira vanished.

Terza's stomach fluttered. She hadn't eaten in hours. She reached for a tin of fruit biscuits she'd stashed beside her bed.

When they sent her to the base, they would watch-link her mind in such a way that she could bring others inside the link, so Modabah or Talumah could observe and control her. She didn't dare wonder if her inner shields might give her some defense against that strategy.

Adiyn had said that they wanted the child she carried—for breeding stock. He'd talked mockingly about creating antimessiahs, using Caldwell's genes.

Terza couldn't move openly, but for his own child's sake, Brennen Caldwell might help her escape. That had been compassion she'd seen in him . . . plain, raw grief... as he knelt above his fallen bond mate.

A bond mate Terza never would be, but her child carried his essence in every cell.

She shut her eyes and cursed pregnancy hormones.

Well past midnight, Brennen lay awake on a cot that base staff had wedged into Firebird's room. Shel had only left this door when Brennen lay down and Uri took over.

She
would
recover, he reminded himself. He'd sent reassuring coded messages to Dabarrah and Carradee via the first messenger ship leaving Netaia. For the first time, though, he doubted the wisdom of bringing her to Three Zed. They hadn't taken a prisoner yet. The strike might be delayed indefinitely. He had to hope so, for her sake.

On the other hand, every day they delayed gave the Shuhr more time to attack other worlds—and get RIA technology.

At least Danton's watchers in low-common neighborhoods were sending good news. For the moment, Citangelo's people had united in concern and in anger that the same Shuhr who cratered Sunton had struck in Citangelo. They were in no mood to throw off the electors. For the moment, they were blaming neither Firebird nor the Sentinels for drawing an attack. Some were even demanding a stronger Federate presence.

One newsnet report, though, quoted rumors that Firebird had died, and the Federacy was covering up. Brennen guessed that was an attempt to draw her out into a vulnerable position, so Micahel Shirak might try again.

Not here,
Brennen vowed.
Holy One, salvage this situation. You can use even our mistakes for a greater good.

This base could withstand a siege by conventional weaponry, but not for long. How long could it hold back the Shuhr?

At least none of the most disquieting reports would reach her. Dan-ton's people had scrambled Codex on her set.

He shifted on his cot, unwilling to look away. When he closed his eyes, he saw her crimson blood. She slept restlessly, but at least she slept.

So this was His Grace the Regent, Muirnen Rogonin.

A dim winter's sunrise filtered into the sovereign's day office through its east window. As Terza followed Talumah and Micahel down three carpeted steps onto an inlaid wooden floor, she wondered if he depended on props, such as the five translucent world globes suspended over this sunken floor, or the elevated platform on which his desk stood, to command respect. He was neither attractive nor wise-eyed, and though his vanity implant created a youthful illusion, overconsumption was his obvious weakness.

With Firebird gone from the palace, the ten-plus epsilon presences had also vanished. Muirnen Rogonin would never know that his rival's presence had protected him—briefly—from his real enemies. Today marked the end of his volitional independence.

Micahel walked across an inlaid sun, complete with solar prominences, that had been created in some gold-grained wood. He stepped up to desk level and reintroduced himself and Talumah, then presented Terza.

On cue, she stepped forward. "I bring my father's greeting," she said, as ordered. "He is Modabah Shirak, hereditary head of all the unbound starbred."

In Rogonin's terms, that made her royalty. He raised his head. "What is your title, then, as his daughter?"

"No title is necessary."

"Then I am to call you. . . ?"

"Terza. Terza Shirak."

He glanced at Micahel. "Are you ..." He flicked a finger back and forth. "Related?"

"Distantly," Micahel answered, and Terza spotted disdain in the narrowing of his eyes.

Disquieted, she looked away.

"Very well, Terza," said the regent. "Sit down. Tell me more."

One of his attendants pushed a chair away from the wall at one end of the platform, and she sat down across from him. A minute ago, he'd been openly suspicious. Now he meant to flatter her.