Karl Schroeder - Pirate Sun: Book Three of Virga

ONE THING I can guarantee, said Venera Fanning. There has never been a prison break like this one.

The barrel-shaped tugboat was so old that moss had spread continents over its hull, and tufts of grass jutted from its seams like hairs from an old mans chin. The powerful drone of the vessels engines, as its small crew tested them, put a lie to any impression that it was feeble, however. In fact the bone-rattling noise of the test quickly drove Venera and her small group away from the drydock framework that enclosed the tug. Venera turned away from it and squinted past the light of Slipstreams sun. The city of Rush spread across half the sky, its gaily bannered habitat cylinders turning majestically among wisps of cloud. It was midday and the air was full of airships, winged human forms, and here and there cavorting dolphins.

One figure had detached itself from the orderly streams of flying people, and was approaching. Venera saw that it was a member of her private spy network, a nondescript young man dressed in flying leathers, his toeless shoes pushing down on the stirrups that drove the mechanical wings strapped to his back. He hove to and she admired the sheen of sweat on his shoulders as he saluted. Heres the latest photos. He proffered a thick envelope; Venera took it, forgetting about him instantly, and tore it open.

Her fingers rose of their own accord to touch the scar on her jaw as she looked at what the pictures revealed: the planes and corners of a stone prison that hovered alone in cloudy skies. Not one building, but six or seven that had been lashed together over the decades, the blocky, boulderlike edifice hung half-wreathed in its own fog bank. The blocks, spheres, and triangles of the Falcon New Prison were of various architectural styles and colors, literally thrown together and hybridized with clumsy wooden bridges and rope-and-chain lashings into one cancerous monster whose only common element was that all its windows were barred.

With no gravity to flatten it, the composite prison was stable enough; storms were rare on the edge of civilization and there were no obstacles for the place to run into in its endless drift. The New Prison was a child of neglect, a forgotten mote on the fringe of the vast cloud of workers dormitories, collective farms, and planned cities that was Falcon Formation. Most of the cargo delivered here was on a one-way journey.

Venera intended to make an unscheduled pickup.

She took a deep breath and smiled up at the courier. Ask them if theyre ready, she ordered. Theres no time to lose.

Master Diamandis also sent these. He handed her another envelope. This one contained dossiers, but she only glanced at them briefly.

Ill deal with them when we get back. I want to see this.

At that moment the tugs engines coughed and wound down. Venera spun in midair, a lithe movement born from a lifetime spent moving from freefall to gravity and back again. She glared at the crew, who were boiling out of the suddenly smoking vessel. Now what have you done?

Itll work! The chief engineer was practically wringing his hands as he flew around the curve of the ship. Like any sensible person he was afraid of Veneras wrath; she decided to show some restraint and merely shrugged to hide her disappointment. Ill be back in two hours, she said. See that its ready to fly by then.

THESE ARE THE players. Garth Diamandis laid out photos like playing cards across the tabletop. They sat under gravity, in a set of apartments Venera had rented (under the name of Amandera Thrace-Guiles) in one of Rushs more upscale town wheels. Garth, an aging dandy who had recently become Veneras closest friend and confidante, rearranged two pictures to overlap. Martin Shambles is a key member of the Aerie resistance. Your friend Hayden Griffin apparently knows him.

Thats no surprise, Venera muttered. The nation of Slipstream spread in all six directions from its capital, this city; yet the thousands of cubic kilometers of farmland and township lit by Slipstreams sun had once been owned by a rival nation, Aerie. Slipstream had destroyed Aeries sun, conquered the country, and assimilated its peopleso naturally there were resisters. Griffin himself had been one when Venera had first met him.

Since Griffins reappearance and subsequent second disappearance, Shambles has been funneling supplies and money to a location in one of the sunless countries, Diamandis went on. If thats where Griffin took the sun-making devices he acquired in the sun of suns

Then thats where Aeries new sun is being constructed, said Venera. She sat back. Huh! That boy never ceases to amaze me. He was a good driver back when I employed him. Seems hes making an even better hero.

If Aerie could build and light a new fusion sun for itself, its people might be able to free themselves from bondage to Slipstream. Venera had married into Slipstreams nobility, but that didnt mean she had any loyalty to her new home. After recent events, in fact, her loyalties went in quite the opposite direction.

So The deliciously intricate plot she had been gestating for weeks had taken a satisfying turn. Granted the standoff between the admiralty and the palace, we already have two major players playing chess with one anothers nerves.

Three players, if you count the rioters, said Diamandis.

Four, when you add in Aeries various nonaligned malcontents. She held up several fingers. Then five, if you add in Hayden Griffin and Shambless people. All of their interests converging rapidly. I wonder when that new sun will be ready?

And then prompted Diamandis; he smiled in that way that had melted so many young ladies hearts in his youth.

Then theres us, said Venera. All these contending forces are winding each other tighter and tighter. Rioters in the city, the admiralty and the palace facing off against one another, and then this Aerie conspiracy. What they all need is a spark to set off the powder keg.

She and Diamandis grinned at one another across the table. Then Venera rose, strode to the window, and twitched aside the heavy velvet curtain. She looked out over a sweep of rooftops that curved up in the distance, gradually becoming vertical. Many of the roofs were painted or shingled in patterns; when you lived on the inside surface of a cylinder, your roof was the most visible feature of your house, and Rushs citizens took pride in their houses.

Venera wasnt seeing the colorful vista. A new Aerie sun! she said, shaking her head. This is exactly what we need. Garth, I want you to find out when its going to be ready. Well synchronize our own plans with theirsestablish a liaison, without revealing who we are.

Venera opened the window and leaned out; the rotational winds immediately lofted her black hair around her head like the wings of a raven. She closed her eyes at the freshness, feeling satisfied for the first time in many days. Shed been branded a fugitive in Slipstream, had been hiding in these few rooms since her return, but she was about to remedy that situation. A great trap was being set, and all she needed now was the trigger.

There was a discrete knock on the door. Its ready, said a servant. Venera sat up with a jerk and swept the photos off the table.

Come on!

It was satisfying, being just one mote of thousands crowding the citys airways, yet knowing that even the rioters who had burned the Grand Market in Cylinder Two were less a danger to the city than she. Venera watched out the bullet-shaped taxis window as all the myriad details of the citys weightless neighborhoods flew by: food vendors and craftsmen selling their wares from inside wicker ballsa veritable cloud of these balls making up the farmers market; big nets full of produce (a galaxy of cabbages here, a trove of engine parts there) being towed by straining jets or tethered albatross flocks; a quivering ball of water thirty feet across where some day laborers had stripped off their shirts and were dunking their heads and shoulders, laughing like little boys. All these details outlined in hard-edged brilliance by Slipstreams nearby sun.