The Phoenix in Flight by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge Page A

now.
    But first he had to finish the message to Sara, to try to
save the life of the man they both loathed.
    “There’s nothing more I can do. I only hope my message to
Talgarth will indeed get through in time. You must tell Semion, regardless of
what it costs me or you. Too much depends on us now—only he can mobilize the
naval detachment at Narbon with any chance of stopping whatever is intended to
follow his assassination—the deaths of the three heirs must be only a small
part of Dol’jhar’s plan. It’s the only way we can smash Eusabian’s plot before
it starts.”
    He looked down at the holo of Sara on his desk—clear,
sea-green eyes under a crown of ruddy hair, exquisitely formed features, the
curve of her mouth expressive not only of humor, but her innate good nature.
The thought that he would never see her again was agonizing.
    “If I get away, I’ll contact you when I can.” He swallowed
convulsively and tabbed COMMIT .
    Now only two things remained. Cheruld pulled a
newly-addressed ParcelNet package toward him, his stomach lurching again at the
dissonance of its content’s weight and inertia. This box was larger, for he’d
put the Heart of Kronos in an Alhaman puzzle-box, hoping that the time needed
to open it might give the recipient more warning of the strangeness within, and
spare him some small part of the shock Cheruld had felt on first sight of the
little sphere. Fatigue and the inevitable nervous tremor made his fingers
clumsy as he sealed it and then ejected from the console the message chip he’d
prepared with a copy of all the data he’d discovered and a brief note of
explanation.
    This was the one action he could take he felt was sure to succeed.
His old tutor, one of the few people in the Thousand Suns who might know what
to do with the Heart of Kronos, could not, would not, be part of any
conspiracy. Once dispatched into the untraceable intricacy of the automated
ParcelNet system, the artifact would arrive well after whatever was to happen
had happened, and as the old man was long retired from court to his old
university, on a planet well outside the Tetrad Centrum, the Heart would be
safe from whatever convulsions might follow the fulfillment or frustration of
Dol’jhar’s plans.
    Cheruld hissed with vexation as his fingers lost their grip
and the chip dropped into the litter of papers and chips on his desk. Blinking
sweat from his clouding vision, he retrieved the chip and pressed it into the
top of the ParcelNet box, and the memory plastic swallowed it up. He pushed
himself unsteadily to his feet and crossed the room to the monneplat. It took
both of his trembling hands to get the package deposited within it.
    The hatch closed, and Cheruld shuffled back to his desk. He
blinked stupidly at the blurred shape of the complex glyph on the console
screen that represented the hardest work of his life as a noderunner, and the
end of his life as Aegios at Qoholeth.
    He tabbed ACCEPT and the glyph spun into a blur and
disappeared. Within minutes, every trace of his activities since would be
purged from the system, and there would be no way to undo his work.
    He staggered as the remains of the drug shredded his
equilibrium. He fumbled for his valise, and leaned against the door to his
suite, sweat dripping down the sides of his face as he took a last look around,
at the elegance and quiet wealth he would probably never enjoy again. Then he
thumbed the door open and forced himself through.
    o0o
    “Taking a little vacation, Aegios?”
    Cheruld turned abruptly away from the viewport and the
planet below, shock flashing through him, leaving him cold and a little sick.
He hadn’t registered for the shuttle under his real name or title, and he
didn’t know these two men.
    He glanced up and down the corridor, but there was no one
else around. They had chosen their time well. One of them raised his hand and
pointed a dull black tube at his face.
    There was a soft click, and Martin Cheruld had just