Sun of Suns

"Then they'll have won!" wailed a junior staffer.

"But we'll have our men."

They looked at one another unhappily. "On the other hand," continued Chaison, "if we abandon the stragglers, we can set a course directly for the Choir. The Gehellens will give chase and there may be a ru

The door opened and Aubri Mahallan entered. Her harem pants had ballooned and ripped in the fall, her hair was a mad tangle, and her eyes were red—but she looked calm as she presented Chaison with a leather folder. "Best guess for the location of the treasure, based on the maps we found in the library," she said.

All eyes were on the folder as Chaison opened it. He noticed that, and half-smiled. "It seems," he said, "that we all know what we have to do. Perhaps later we can repatriate our men by offering the Gehellens some of their treasure back. Anyone here want to pledge a tithe to that purpose?"

Everyone shouted "Aye!"—Everyone, that is, except Richard Reiss, who merely hung his head.

"Good," Chaison said with satisfaction. "Make the same offer to the general crew, and get these ships under way! Maximum speed, use rockets to blow any obstacles out of the way—and prepare to lock down for sargasso ru

In that small space, the cheer was almost deafening.

HAYDEN HELD THE handles next to a porthole and stared out at the dark. Candesce was fading as the Rook and its sisters lofted past the last pendant towers of the city. The mauve-and-rose-colored sky went on forever, its perfect symmetry broken by the glitter of countless home and town lights. The air was dense with rope highways and navigation beacons, vast and diffuse farm nets and weaving flocks of fish and birds. The ships did not slow down for any of these hazards; in fact, they accelerated into the dimming air, recklessly daring fatal collision with stone, water, or tree. The entire home guard of the Gehellen navy came screaming after them with only a little more caution.

Far in the distance, veiled by evening color, a vast black smudge polluted a full thirty degrees of sky. The sargasso of Leaf's Choir ate all the light shone at it, and cast an indigo shadow across hundreds of miles of air. Minor wars had been fought over the significant zone of winter caused by that shadow; among the principalities of Candesce a significant minority favored the idea of towing Leaf's Choir into a final incineration at the central sun. The majority was horrified at the prospect of smothering the Sun of Suns in that much ash, and predicted dire consequences from prolonged darkness, and as the purified residue fountained back up. Arguments about what to do with the Choir had seesawed for centuries.

No one had ever seriously suggested that the Choir be sent the other way, into the outer volumes of winter. To dispose of the sargasso among barbarians would sully the memory of one of the greatest nations of Candesce.

For all Chaison Farming's intentions, there was no way that the expeditionary force could reach the Choir in only two hours. Darkness and the crowded air slowed them, forced detours and unpredictable maneuvers. Rockets began to appear from behind, red streaks zipping past in ominous silence as any second now an explosion might convulse the Rook; and yet you could only take so much fear. Hayden watched as long as he could, but eventually drowsed, and dreamed confused half-dreams of Aerie, his parents, and the destruction of their half-built sun.

The impressions stayed with him even as he woke to find someone shaking his shoulder. "Armorer wants you," said a crewman. Hayden grunted his thanks and levered himself away from the window. The thrum of the engines continued; apparently they weren't dead yet. But it was impossible to tell where they were or how long this chase would last.

As he made his way through the ship he saw men sealing portholes and cracks with thick gummy tar. Others were hooking hydrogen peroxide tanks to the engines and checking the air distribution hoses, preparing for sargasso ru

It all seemed reassuring, somehow. Without noticing, he had come to think of the Rook as his home—and it was hardly surprising. Hayden hadn't had a home in many years; certainly the various bug-ridden flats and one-room bachelor's nests he'd slept in hadn't counted. He had been alone for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to be among friends. But the atmosphere of the Rook reminded him of Gavin Town. Ironic that it was a ship of the enemy. He passed Martor, who slept strapped to a beam just behind the hangar. The boy looked younger than his fifteen years. A few hours before he had told Hayden about the fight at the Gehellen naval shipyard. The Gehellens had begun offloading the crews along a narrow metal scaffold, a barred cage with troops hanging in the air outside of it. It was a shooting gallery, really, had they all been in it when the shots from the palace had been heard. Luckily there were still men in the ships able to man the rocket racks, and they had blasted the troops who had tried to disengage the cage and sail it away to a nearby blockhouse. Men had spilled into the air and a fierce swordfight erupted. Martor had described this in his usual way, waving his arms and making stabbing motions. But his heart didn't seem in it; he'd known men who had died in this battle and he seemed to be begi

Hayden turned away from the boy, shaking his head. No—these people weren't the enemy, no matter what their homeland had done to his. Aerie deserved its freedom, and Slipstream as a nation deserved to be knocked down. But the people of Slipstream and the people of Aerie deserved equal respect and consideration. They were only human, even the loyal crewmen of the Slipstream navy whom he now counted as friends.

Somehow, he mused, there must be a way to separate the political from the personal. His bitterness over the past years seemed increasingly to have come from not believing that such a tiling was possible.

He passed one other person on his way: the forlorn figure of Richard Reiss curled up next to a porthole, where he watched the skies in mourning for the life of luxury and prestige he had so suddenly lost.

Hayden rapped on the door to Aubri Mahallan's box-shaped workshop. The wooden panel squeaked open an inch, then widened, letting loose a fan of lamplight. He squeezed inside and the silhouetted shape of Aubri shut the door behind him.

And latched it.

"What can I do for you?" He reached out and somehow she had swirled closer and his outstretched fingers slid up her arm and onto her shoulder—which was bare.

He started to snatch his hand back but she held it, and now his fingers strayed onto the smooth soft skin of her pectoral. "You stuck with us through everything," Aubri murmured. "I thought you needed some sort of reward."

With the permission of her fingertips on his wrist, his own fingers slipped further onto the satin slope of her breast. With a simple scissoring motion Aubri reached around his waist with her legs and drew herself to him. His other hand reached down to cup her hip and encountered warm skin.

"Now we must be very, very quiet," she whispered. "Or we'll be the crew's main topic of conversation for days."

"Um," he said; but then she was kissing him, and he was spared having to mink of any clever replies.

SPOTLIT BY SMOKING electric torches, men braced themselves in me hangar doors of the ships and waved flags at the dark silhouettes of their sister vessels. The flags fluttered and buzzed in the fearsome headwind, but the messages that flickered across the rushing air were clear and measured. Encoded status reports, inventories, updates to the chart numbers, all flowed steadily between the members of the force, routine and controlled.