Shadow of the Swan (Book Two of the Phoenix Legacy) (12 page)

“Hell, it went out with the shift change.”

Ussher nodded absently. “We aren’t done yet. We’ve had nearly a month, and Riis is still—” He paused. “Unless Venturi’s turned up something on him, too.”

Hendrick shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, that still gives me a majority on the Council, and perhaps Ransom won’t be . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, his lips drawn in a faint smile.

Hendrick waited a few seconds, then asked, “What about Barret? Ransom had him programmed like a robot.”

Ussher laughed. “Don’t worry about Jan.
Or
Ransom.” He was still smiling as he reached for the intercom. “Ferra Regon?”

A brief pause, then Caren Regon’s plain, squarish face appeared on the screen. “Yes, sirra?”

“Contact the councilors. Tell them I’m calling a meeting at—” He checked his watch; it was 12:10, “—at 13:00.”

She hesitated. “Very well, but Commander Barret is out on a mission, you know; his scheduled arrival time is . . . let me check. 13:30. And Fer M’Kim is in Helen arranging for some electronic components for the new MTs.”

“Oh. Yes, I’d forgotten.” His fingers began an impatient tattoo on the desk. “The meeting will be at 14:00, then. Dr. Hendrick will contact M’Kim and Barret via SynchCom. The other councilors are all here in Fina, I believe. And make it clear that this is an important meeting.”

“Yes, sirra. Oh—have you heard the good news? Commander Ransom is—”

“I know. Take care of this immediately, Ferra Regon, so the councilors can make their plans for the meeting.”

She blinked at his sharp tone, then nodded. “Yes, Fer Ussher, I will.”

He cut off the intercom and leaned back, the muscles of his jaw working.

“Good news! You’d think the Phoenix couldn’t function without Ransom to punch the keys. Fools—all of them! Rob, you’d better get over to the SynchCom transmi——no, wait.” He frowned, then, “No. First, I want you to talk to Val Severin. Radek’s probably still in the infirmary, so Val won’t have any trouble slipping out. When you get it set up, come back here. I’ll have instructions for you.”

Hendrick sighed and started for the door. “All right.”

“And don’t waste any time.”

He cast a brief, resentful glance over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Predis.”

“I’m
not
worried, Rob.” Ussher smiled. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“For all intents and purposes, Predis is in control of the Phoenix.”

Erica spoke calmly, sitting on the bed beside him, her hands folded in her lap, but the grief was there behind her cloud-gray eyes; grief for hope, for the Phoenix. Alex reached out and touched her hand, noting the deepened lines striating her forehead. Scars of anxiety. She had aged more in the last month than in all the years he’d known her.

Ben Venturi was standing on the other side of the bed, his narrowed eyes fixed on a passing medtech. The cubicle was walled with S/V screens set on one-way opaque, but every time someone passed he watched them suspiciously. On his forehead was another kind of scar—or, rather, a wound. It was covered with a bandage and had been received by
Major
Venturi in the line of duty while attempting to prevent the escape of a prisoner from the SSB DC in Leda. Commander Benin was putting his name in for a special service citation.

Alex closed his eyes, knowing neither Ben nor Erica would make any demands of him, nor be surprised at his silence. He had a great deal to assimilate in the short span of time since he’d awakened and Erica had spoken the personal code word that brought him out of the TAB, another and more profound awakening.

He had been a prisoner for twenty-six days, and Andreas was still in SSB hands, and Predis Ussher had stepped into the vacuum he had himself created, firing the members with dreams of glory that transformed shock and despair into hope. It wasn’t surprising that they accepted him so readily. They didn’t know how the vacuum came about; they were only grateful that someone was there to fill it, to give them purpose and direction, and they were especially grateful when the rumors began circulating that Ussher was the son of Elor Peladeen.

It was all inevitable and predictable; basic politics.

Alex frowned and took a slow, testing breath. The searing edge was gone, but he hadn’t yet attempted to stand, and he was acutely aware of the weakness in every muscle. A Polluxian variant of a Terran virus, Erica said. Nothing serious, if properly treated; a few antivirals would have stopped it. But without treatment . . .

He consciously shut off the memories. They were all too clear, even the memory of not remembering.

Ussher hadn’t quite succeeded in killing him, but that was scant consolation. He’d had nearly a month to establish himself as a leader in the eyes of the members, and Andreas Riis, the only person who could conceivably challenge his leadership without precipitating a disastrous schism, was in SSB hands somewhere. Castor, probably. Ben couldn’t be sure.

And Alex lay in Fina’s infirmary, every breath a relief because of the absence of pain. Full recovery was only a matter of a few days’ rest. Yet he wondered if he’d be allowed that.

He looked at the clock on the bedside table: 12:40.

“Ben, when’s that Council meeting?”

“14:00. It’d be sooner, but Jan’s out on a mission and M’Kim’s in Helen. Predis wants a solid majority on hand.”

“No, just a full audience.” Alex touched the controls and tipped the bed up further, absently noting the bandages on his wrists; burns from the shock cuffs. “I’m afraid Predis will consider his bargain with you no longer binding. Alive, I’m more of a threat to him than those microspeakers. He’ll call your bluff on that now and hope he can discredit me thoroughly enough to negate them if you
do
activate them. And that’s a last-ditch measure; we can’t use it now. You know that, and Predis knows it. What he doesn’t know is that I intend to be at that Council meeting to defend myself. I think I can at least cast some doubt on his ‘evidence’ and convince him that it’s in his best interest to confine our differences of opinion to the Council room—‘for now.’ And for us, that means until we get Andreas back to Fina.”

Ben considered that and Finally gave a caustic laugh.

“Well, if you can make it to the meeting, you won’t have to say a damn word. Anybody who takes one look at you will know you haven’t been on vacation. Who’s going to believe this was the SSB’s reward to you for giving them Andreas?” Then he sobered, his eyes going to slits. “But Predis has another option you haven’t mentioned for dealing with you.”

Alex nodded. “Yes. He can kill me.” He pressed his hands to his eyes. His skin still had the hot, dry feel of fever. “He might be desperate enough to try it, too, although it would be a hell of a risk for him.” Then he let his head fall back against the pillows, and the constriction in his chest was more than illness. “Ben, the important thing now is to find Andreas. We
must
find him. Everything hinges on that. You’ve had no luck through Central Control?”

Ben shook his head. “Every lead we’ve had ran into a blank wall. But as long as he’s alive, he’ll leave tracks of some kind. We just haven’t found them yet.”

“Was there a public announcement about his arrest?”

“Of course. You didn’t expect them to sit on
that
? But there’s been nothing on him since then, and that’s the surest sign we have that he’s still alive. They won’t execute
him
without plenty of fanfare.”

“No. Erica, can they break his conditioning?”

She shrugged uneasily. “It might be done through stimulus response patterns, but it would be a long, exacting process. They’ve never had the patience for it. But they can’t use their usual methods on Andreas without running the risk of killing him, so they might be forced into patience.”

“Still, it gives us some time. What’s Predis doing about the LR-MT?”

Ben responded bitterly, “What
can
he do? I don’t think he had that one figured; he probably thought all the equations were in the memfiles. Lyden and Bruce are still working on it, but even they admit there’s not much hope without Andreas.”

“I assume Rob Hendrick took Andreas’s Council seat.”

Ben slumped down on the end of the bed. “Of course. We warned Andreas about Rob, damn it.”

Alex didn’t comment on that. “Erica, have you any idea how Predis managed to bring Val Severin into his camp?”

“Yes.” Her eyes had a stony sheen now. “We monitored a conversation between Predis and Rob. It’s despicable, really. Val’s so vulnerable in some areas.”

“What do you mean?”

“Predis commissioned Rob to get Val—well, romantically involved. Rob thinks himself quite a blessing to women, and she’s capable of very intense emotional responses. Rob’s taken full advantage of that. She’s totally converted; she’ll believe anything he tells her. If she knew how he really feels about her . . .” Erica sighed wearily. “As I said, we monitored a conversation. Rob was telling Predis about the . . . fringe benefits of his ‘assignment’ in very graphic terms.”

Alex was silent. Despicable, indeed. Val Severin didn’t deserve that.

“Erica, have you a recording of that conversation? Perhaps Val should have her eyes opened.”

“But she has to be ready for it, Alex, or we’ll lose her entirely.”

“Does she know you’re aware of her divided loyalties?”

“No. Ben and I thought it best not to unmask her. For one thing, we know she’s involved with the monitoring and can watch her. And I don’t consider her a lost cause.”

“I hope you’re right—for her sake. Ben, how is Jan doing in FO?”

“Damned well. He’s already recouped most of the losses from the Solar Fleet disaster, and FO’s running full rev. Predis is concentrating on a military buildup.”

“Of course.” Again, inevitable and predictable, but that didn’t dull the edge of anger and disgust. “Exactly what does he hope to accomplish with a military campaign, Ben?”

“Well, he never really comes out with any detailed plans, but the general idea seems to be common knowledge. It isn’t so far off the Peladeen Alternative and General Plan ex seqs except on a few crucial points. He isn’t planning on just forcing the Concord to the bargaining table with a limited, controlled military campaign, he plans to force the Concord out of the Centauri System, and the prime objective isn’t anything so modest as the Directorate reestablishing the House of Peladeen with him as First Lord. He’s talking about reestablishing the
Republic
, too.”

Alex concentrated on slowing his breathing to ease the ache in his chest. His pulse rate was going up.

“I wonder what kind of ‘republic’ he really has in mind. And he expects to accomplish all that with a military campaign—and without the LR-MT?”

“He’s ignoring that; he hasn’t much choice. And without it, we don’t have much to bargain with.”

“So he’s also ignoring the bargaining phase?”

“Oh, he talks about offering the Concord ‘terms.’ That’s after we bring them to their knees with our overwhelming military might. Then it gets even more grandiose. Something about using the Centauri System as a power base for future expansion into the Solar System.”

“Damn. He’s
insane
.”

“I know,” Erica said quietly. “Literally.”

“Erica, the members don’t accept that nonsense, do they? I mean, except for his loyals?”

“If he handed it to them straight and in total, they wouldn’t, but he feeds them one piece at a time, all in terms of possibilities, and he makes it sound not only feasible, but nearly inevitable. He has an extraordinary talent for that, and we can’t prick his bubbles too openly because of the risk of schism.” Her mouth tightened, white-lined. “Since you and Andreas have been gone, he’s come into full flower as the resident Lord of the Phoenix; he plays the role to the hilt. It’s ludicrous, really—Predis swaggering about with a cloak draped over his shoulders, surrounded by his awed sycophants. And we have sycophants in Fina, too.”

Ben said grimly, “There’s one more little item our resident Lord has in mind, Alex. He plans to ‘rally the citizens of Centauri to our banner.’ Open revolt.”

“Including the Bonds?”

“Nothing specific has been said about the Bonds—yet.”

Alex let his breath out slowly. This was also inevitable and predictable, but averting a Bond revolt was a basic tenet of the Phoenix from its inception. The members weren’t ready to accept that. At least, as Ben said, not yet. Alex met Erica’s haunted eyes and called up a smile.

“I’ll have to step up my ‘sociological research.’ ”

“Thank the God you’ve already laid a strong foundation for it.”

“Thank Rich.” He paused, then, “Do any of the members know Predis betrayed Andreas?”

Ben replied, “We’ve kept it quiet. As far as most of them know, you and Andreas were picked up on a fluke. We’ve lined up a few solid loyals, though, and told them the whole story.”

“How much did you tell them about me?”

“Only that you offer another alternative for Phase I.”

Alex nodded, and through the short silence, that followed, he was aware that they were both waiting. Erica finally put it into words.

“Alex, what are you going to do?”

He laughed at that. All he
wanted
to do was sleep.

“In long-range terms I don’t know, but for now you’ll have to dig deeper into your medical kit. I intend to be at that Council meeting, but I want to be sure I can stay on my feet.”

“I can give you a drenaline injection, but I warn you, it’ll slow your recovery. It will last about two hours. Four at the most.”

“That isn’t much time.” He glanced around him, wondering at the sense of confinement induced by the shadowy walls. “Another thing, I’d prefer to convalesce elsewhere.”

Ben nodded. “You’re moving into the guest room in HS 1 as soon as possible—by MT. No use advertising your change of quarters. Oh—you’ll need an MT fix.”

“I might need some clothes, too.”

Erica laughed. “I’ll take care of that, Ben, and the fix for him.”

“Good. Well, I’d better get it set up now.” Ben paused as if he were reluctant to leave. “Alex, will you be—”