Kathy Tyers - Firebird 1 - Firebird

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Firebird
Kathy Tyers
To Karen Hancock
CONTENTS
Prelude
1. Wastling
2. Corey
3. VeeRon
4. Sentinel
5. Mari
6. Strike
7. Stalemate
8. Rebel
9. Naetai
10. Surrender
11. MaxSec
12. Protectorate
13. Rattela
14. Ellet
15. Brennen
16. Judgment
17. Return
18. Hunter Height
19. Geis
20. Phoena
21. Firebird
Coda
PRELUDE
Lady Firebird Angelo of Naetai was fifteen years old, and she was trespassing.
With Lord Corey Bowman in her wake, she squeezed and twisted through a narrow, odd-shaped
opening between the outer wall of the palace and the inner partition that curved around the Electoral
Chamber—a passage that would have been expressly off-limits, had anyone else known it existed.
The palace’s builders, seven hundred years before, had been more concerned with appearance than
security. There were many such irregularities of construction, places where the walls did not exactly meet
or where they came together at peculiar angles, which created all sorts of chinks and cracks and blind
passageways in Firebird’s ancient home: excellent places from which to hide or spy on the unsuspecting,
and Firebird had learned a great deal that way over the years.
Palace Security had searched out and sealed all the breaches that gave illegitimate access to the Electoral
Chamber. How the House Guard had missed this one, Firebird didn’t know. Perhaps they had found and
closed it up once, and someone else had reopened it.
That thought made her a little uneasy—that someone else might have had the audacity to spy on this
highest council in the N’Taian Planetary Systems. The fact that she herself was spying was irrelevant. In
three years—if she lived so long—she would have a seat on that council by right of birth. But that a
commoner, or servant, or worse, a foreign agent, might have listened, or could listen in if they knew of
this place…
Once she no longer had use for it, she intended to remind the House Guard of its existence and have
them make sure no others remained. She would not have any council she sat on subject to prying eyes.
Her companion stumbled, adding a soft scuffle to the drone of voices filtering through the partition.
“Corey!” she hissed. “Be quiet!”
Light gleamed into the crawl space ahead through a chink in the inner wall. Beating Corey to the
peephole, Firebird peered through first. In the Chamber, the Queen’s Electorate hosted two
ambassadors from Naetai’s huge neighbor, the Interstellar Federacy. Their arrival this morning at Sae
Angelo Spaceport had been tantalizingly secretive: Firebird had seen the Federate shuttle land herself, but
no one would explain why the delegation had come, and the Electorate had closed this session to
observers.
Both her older sisters, as Electors, were seated at the central section of that table. She glanced first at her
only confidante in the family: Carradee, the blonde Crown Princess, who sat beside the throne of their
mother, Queen Siwann. Carradee’s smile, gently tolerant, confirmed Firebird’s suspicion that the family’s
elder heiress would prefer to ignore the Federacy entirely. No Consort’s chair now separated Carradee
from the stately, silver-haired Siwann. Prince Irion had been dead almost a year, and Firebird’s heart still
wrenched at this evidence of her father’s passing —a hunting accident. So they said, she thought as her
gaze rested on Siwann. The Queen had mourned Irion, but governmental business had continued with
hardly a pause, capably managed as before by the Electors and Siwann—a strong leader who had
already become much more than the traditional Electoral figurehead.
Beyond Carradee sat the middle sister, Princess Phoena, the “beauty of the family.” Though significantly
taller and lighter-haired, Phoena looked nearly enough like Firebird to be her twin. Phoena’s large,
long-lashed dark eyes watched the Federates with intelligent intensity, and her honey-smooth complexion
marked her as Angelo: royalty. She wore the habitual expression of cool, self-conscious grandeur
Firebird despised. Unlike Carradee, who was willing simply to ignore the Federacy, Phoena showed
open hostility. Firebird winced bitterly. That person would represent Naetai into the next century…
Firebird, too, had little use for the Federacy as a political entity, but the thought of so many distant worlds
—so much variety, so much technical knowledge— tortured her curiosity.
The Federacy had consolidated most of the human-settled Whorl of the galactic Arm after four centuries
of catastrophe. First Sabba Six-Alpha, a binary off one edge of the Whorl, had evolved into a radiation
emitter so strong all spacefaring civilizations were chased to ground while the surge blew past. Then had
come the invading alien Keepers, seemingly immune to Sabba’s violence.
During those centuries, while civilization deteriorated in the Whorl, Naetai—isolated at the end of the
great galactic Arm—had gladly stood alone; and later, after the Keepers had gone, Naetai had made no
effort to covenant to the Federacy. Proud of their culture, their noble heritage, and their independence,
the N’Taians had no wish to traffic with the Federacy, which they saw as a sort of lowest common
culture trying to reunite the backslid races.
While Firebird cherished the N’Taian values too, she felt certain Naetai could benefit from some
technical advances of the Federacy’s recent expansion. Phoena’s attitude galled her.
Phoena turned aside to share a haughty glance with His Grace, the Duke of Claighbro, Muirnen Rattela,
and Firebird shifted her attention to the five strange men who stood below the U-shaped table. The two
who stood forward wore dress-white tunics and carried themselves with calm authority. One addressed
the Elect in clipped Old Colonial, the common speech of human-settled worlds since the First Expansion.
“… for the mutual protection of all systems within the Federacy,” he said.
Duke Rattela flicked one finger toward the man who had spoken. “It seems to me a rather unreasonable
tax to levy against so isolated and well protected a system as Naetai, Admiral.” Maintaining an indolent
slouch, Rattela eyed the Federates with disdain. Nearing sixty, the Duke had black hair that still showed
no gray, and the thickness of his jowls took up enough slack to mask any wrinkles his anti-aging implants
could not arrest.
Firebird’s glance sprang back to the Federate guests. Behind the ambassadors, an honor guard stood at
attention, two armed men in gray and one in midnight blue.
“Let me look!” insisted Corey from behind her.
Reluctantly, she yielded her observation post. These were men from other worlds—oh, to see the places
they had surely seen! Firebird had just passed her first-level Astronautics exam: a “beginning” course in
superatmospheric piloting, basic slip dynamics, and space medicine. She ached to explore the N’Taian
solar reach, its buffer systems—and beyond, even to the Federacy.
It sounded as if the Federates hoped to establish a trade agreement with Naetai. Yet the N’Taian
Electorate— the real power on Naetai, which her family served as nominal head and as voting
members—was being as obstinately isolationist as ever.
A blazing shame, Firebird reflected, that’s what it was. Naetai should establish relations with the
Federacy—if only out of compassion. The Federates could gain so much culture in the exchange, and
she’d be a sharp trade pilot. Corey could navigate, and his twin brother, Daley, was the best young
mechanic in the Systems…
She smiled fondly at Corey. Still staring through the chink, his face was lit dimly by the fugitive light.
Black-haired and freckled, he was small for sixteen, but he still stood taller than Firebird. His silver-gray
tabard gleamed faintly at the edge of the light: the uniform of Sander Hill Academy, the most exclusive in
Sae Angelo City.
Together as always, they had extended their lunch break to try for a glimpse of this session.
“My turn,” she whispered.
She looked enviously on the Federates. Soon, she promised herself, she and Corey would be flying the
stars too, one way or another. With a shiver of glee, she envisioned herself in a shining deepspace slip
ship, first activating the slip-shields that would turn its component molecules and everything aboard
sideways to real space, and then the drive that would push it through the light barrier into slip-state…
The Federate guard in midnight blue turned abruptly to look straight at her, and she froze in horror. She
had made no sound, she was certain of it! Yet he knew she crouched there, spying. She watched in
fascinated terror as he stepped back from the formation to touch the arm of a red-jacketed Electoral
Policeman. As he whispered in the Redjacket’s ear, she caught a sparkle of gold at the edge of his right
shoulder.
She flung herself away from the wall. “Corey, they saw us! You get out the underway, and I’ll go back
through the palace!”
Corey dashed for a cellar hatch as Firebird squeezed hastily back through the narrows, determined to
evade the Redjackets. She’d done it before. Leaving widely spaced tracks in centuries of dust, she ran to
the passage’s end and scaled a wall of irregular stones. Panting as she pulled herself up onto a wooden
crawlway, she groped for the loose board and incautiously flung it aside to peer down into the
public-zone maintenance closet.
It was too bright down there. The hall door stood open, and Firebird found herself looking down into the
hostile eyes of a massive black-haired man in red: the Captain of the Electoral Police, Kelling Friel.
It was too late to hide. He had seen her.
“Come down here, Lady Firebird.”
She lowered herself through the impromptu trapdoor and then stood a moment, collecting her breath and
straightening the tabard on her shoulders. She tried to put dignity in her expression: the Electoral Police
held special authority over the Wastling class, and she had learned years ago that they responded only to
regality.
“Captain.” She nodded a solemn greeting.
“My Lady.” He swept an elegant but muscular hand into the passway, and reluctantly she stepped out
beside him. She felt no guilt for spying, only regret at having been caught.
The palace had become so still that she heard the soft jingling of his decorative sword’s harness as he
marched her through the Chamber’s huge, gold-covered wooden doors. A second Redjacket fell into
step on her other side as they approached the long table. Firebird drew a deep breath and looked up at
her mother.
She knew how precarious her situation was. She was the third child of a noble house, the Queen’s
Wastling, and expendable.
The Wastling tradition, officially known as “heir limitation,” had protected the ten noble families of Naetai
for generations against the breakup of wealthy estates. It dictated that a noble couple could have as many
as four children: two heirs, two Wastlings, the latter produced for insurance that the line would not die
out. When the elder heir married and had a child, the Electorate issued the younger Wastling his Geis
Orders: he was to find death as quickly and as honorably as possible. Outranked, outnumbered, and
watched constantly by the Electoral Police, the young Wastlings had little chance of escaping that fate. As
a third child, Firebird could expect to live until Queen Siwann had two grandchildren, but a Wastling who
made too much trouble could be disposed of early.
For spying now, she might have her Astronautics license suspended, or she could be publicly disciplined.
She shuddered at the memory of what they’d done to her last month, when she’d been caught practicing
on off-limit flight sims: injected her with Tactol, a sensory stimulant that had made every movement
torture for an hour. Legally, however, the Redjackets could do far worse. Even for a relatively slight
offense, a Wastling could be executed.
Firebird tried to look both submissive and innocent, although she felt neither.
Queen Siwann rose from the gilt throne. The golden coronet she wore for Electoral meetings rode
squarely on her coiffed silver hair; with her tailored dress suit of Angelo scarlet, the effect was that of a
formal portrait come to life. “So. You have been spying upon the Electorate, Firebird.”
Firebird was too proud to lie, and too loyal to betray another Wastling—particularly Corey. She said
nothing, glancing side to side at the Redjackets who flanked her, elegant in their long, gold-edged
crimson coats and their black trousers and caps. She felt a perverse desire to kick the both of them.
Through the cascade of her auburn hair, loose over her shoulders, Captain Friel grasped her arm. “Lady
Firebird, answer Her Majesty.”
Firebird glanced cautiously at the Federates, who had stepped aside, waiting to resume their negotiations.
The one who had reported her stood a little apart from the others, as if observing a detail under his
command. Incongruously, he looked the youngest of the three, fine-featured and alert, with light brown
hair of a slightly warm, russet shade. He glanced in her direction, catching her gaze before she could look
away, and the unexpected brilliance of his blue eyes made her catch her breath.
Friel tightened his grip, and she turned her attention back to the situation at hand. Surely, the Electorate
wouldn’t embarrass itself before the Federacy with the disciplining of a Wastling.
“Your Majesty,” she said softly to her mother, lowering her eyes and praying that she had stalled long
enough for Siwann to wish to get on with business—and for Corey to have escaped. “I apologize for
interrupting, and I promise not to observe you again.”
The Queen still stood, visibly considering whether the breach of conduct merited a charge of espionage
or contempt. “You may go to your quarters,” she finally ruled. “But you are confined there for the week,
except for your schooling, to which you will be escorted.” Her voice echoed off the domed ceiling of the
ellipse. “Captain Friel, you will see to it.”
Friel touched his cap in salute to the Queen and took Firebird’s arm.
It could have gone worse, she reflected later. There was little to do outdoors in Sae Angelo’s cold, still
winter, her suite was pleasant enough, and she needed to practice her clairsa. But she would so have
enjoyed hearing what those star travelers had to say.
==========
Seven years passed before Naetai dealt again with the Interstellar Federacy.
CHAPTER 1
Wastling
Maestoso ma non tanto - Majestically, but not too much
==========
“… but the inducer—here—bypasses the third phase of…”
It was no use. Firebird dropped her hand into her lap, leaned away from the banqueting table, and gazed
up at the crystal chandelier of the palace’s formal dining hall, letting her mind wander far from the
Planetary Naval Academy scanbook that glowed on the viewer in front of her. In a week, she must be
able to reproduce that schematic. But this very night, she had to appear for an interview with the Queen.
In seven years, Siwann had consolidated a vigorous rule. Carradee had married, brought her Prince
Daithi into the palace household, and borne him a daughter. And Phoena…
Phoena burst through the swinging doors. “You nearly got yourself taken to see Captain Friel again last
night, Firebird.”
Phoena had not changed the slightest bit.
Firebird watched over her breakfast plate, now emptied of delicacies, as her sister paced the length of
the gleaming wooden table.
“I can’t believe you’d be so stupid.” Phoena took a chair with a red tapestry cushion across from
Firebird and rang for breakfast. Her golden spring gown shone in the morning light, and when Firebird
glanced from Phoena’s sparkling earrings and necklace to the chandelier overhead, she couldn’t help
comparing them.
“Countervoting the entire Electorate?” Phoena snapped. “What’s the matter with you? You know your
place, don’t you?”
Firebird faced her sister squarely. “You know what I think about your irradium project. If I had to do it
again, I’d still vote against the whole Electorate. You’re not building our defenses—you want a threat, a
show of power!”
“So you said.” Phoena buffed her nails on the sleeve of her gown. “We heard you very clearly
yesterday.”
Firebird laid her palms flat on the scanbook viewer. “You got your commendation, didn’t you? By quite
a margin: twenty-six to one.”
“One.” Phoena lifted an eyebrow. “In your position, I think I’d be trying to live a while. You’re lucky the
Redjackets haven’t come for you. Wastlings who counter-vote don’t last. You’re only in there for show,
anyway. For your honor.”
“Yes, honor.” Firebird curled her fingers around the viewer. “I won’t compromise the things I believe in,
not even if it gives me one more day.”
“Wastling,” muttered Phoena. “You should never have a vote on the Electorate to begin with.”
“I’m as much an Angelo as you and Carradee. Carradee at least has a conscience.”
“She voted to attack VeeRon, too.”
“I know—” The swinging of the door past Phoena caught Firebird’s glance and she fell silent, toying with
her cruinn cup, as Carradee pushed through, followed by a palace servant. A deep green robe draped
Carradee’s form, now swollen with a second pregnancy.
“Carrie,” Firebird murmured as the Crown Princess sank into a cushioned chair held by the servant.
“You look exhausted.”
Carradee sighed and splayed her fingers on her belly. “With the little one’s dancing all night, it’s a wonder
I sleep at all. And I’m so worried for you, Firebird. Why must you try so hard to throw away the time
that’s left to you?”
Phoena leaned back in her chair and fixed Firebird with dark eyes.
Easy for Phoena to smirk now, Firebird reflected bitterly, but it hadn’t always been so. Phoena had been
a Wastling too, until Lintess was found smothered. Firebird was three at the time and Phoena six, both
already beginning their indoctrination into acceptance of the “high destiny,” when it happened. A thorough
investigation had implicated the programmer of Lintess’s favorite toy, a lifelike robot snow bear, but, as
with the death of Prince Irion years later, Firebird harbored suspicions honor forbade her to voice.
She watched the scarlet-liveried servant hurry out. “How can you condone the idea of fouling an entire
living world, Carradee?” Firebird spread her hands on the table-top. “Aren’t some things worth standing
against?”
“Yes. Some. Oh!” Carradee flinched and grimaced, holding her belly. “I’ll be so glad when this is over.”
Firebird bit her lip.
Phoena seized the opening like a weapon. “Yes. Two weeks, now. There will be some changes made in
the family, won’t there—Firebird?”
Carradee turned pale gray eyes to Phoena in mute reprimand, and Firebird snapped the viewer off. “I’ll
have longer than that. They’ll send me with the invasion force. I’m a good pilot, and I’d love to fly strike.
I would rather die flying than…” She groped for a comparison. The Wastling of another noble family had
gone recently in a suspicious ground-car accident, but her grief was still too fresh to discuss with Phoena.
Lord Rendy had wanted so badly to live, had lived so hard and wild.
Phoena snorted. “All right, Wastling. Waste yourself in a—a TS-whatever-it-is.”
Firebird shook her hair behind her slender shoulders and stood to leave. “I’d better get to class. We
have a speaker today.”
Phoena’s breakfast arrived, carried by a mincing white-haired waiter. As Firebird snatched up the
scanbook and swung out the double doors, Phoena called, “I’ll help them put the black edging on your
portrait.”
Firebird ignored her and stopped in the long private hallway to gather up the rest of her Academy scan
cartridges. Wistfully she shot a look down the gallery, past the spiral-legged tables weighted with
heirlooms, to the formal portrait to which Phoena had referred: she had been sixteen and star-eyed when
it was painted, absorbed in her piloting and her music, years away from the shadow of death under
which, at twenty-two, N’Taian calendar, she now lived. The scarlet velvric gown with white sash and
diadem made her look queenly, but the artist had put a characteristic, mischievous smile between
brave-set chin and proud brown eyes. A scarcely tangible sadness in those painted eyes always haunted
Firebird. Did others see the flaws in the courage she held up to the world, too?
She straightened her brownbuck flight jacket before the jeweled hallway mirror. Well, she thought,
there’s one advantage to dying young: people will remember you as pretty. Humming a defiant
ballad from the Coper Rebellion, she dashed off for the Academy.
If Firebird had been born an heir, she’d have had a hard choice between the Sae Angelo Music
Conservatory and the NPN Academy. She loved flying, though, and had trained long and hard to
develop from a skillful pleasure pilot into a Naval officer.
She almost crashed into Corey in the crowded passway just before the special afternoon session. “Easy,
Firebird.” He stepped back, and his grin faded. “What’s wrong— Phoena again?”
“Of course,” she muttered. “And Her Majesty, tonight.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” He nodded sympathetically and palmed the doorpanel for her.
The briefing room was hushed, and Firebird felt hostile anticipation in the air. She and her classmates had
waited all term to meet the speaker, Vultor Korda, who had come in midwinter from the Federate world
of Thyrica. Korda was one of the Thyrians’ “starbred” telepathic minority, but had turned traitor and
come secretly to Naetai.
As Firebird and Corey slipped into adjacent seats and loaded their viewers, a little man entered, carrying
several scan cartridges himself. Physically, he looked anything but powerful: narrow-shouldered without
muscle, he had too much belly straining the belt of his brown shipboards. His complexion was the fragile
white of the academician or the UV-allergic spacer, and silky brown hair framed his tiny-eyed face.
She had heard rumors of the starbred. Allegedly they descended from the extragalactic Aurian race that
had been devastated by plague, the makkah, half a millennium ago, three centuries after the first cosmic
rays of the Six-Alpha Catastrophe reached Naetai. The makkah had killed many of the Aurian women
and every male, regardless of age. Even the unborn—if male—had not been spared. Many women had
fled the Aurian system for the distant whorl of star systems they called the “Starry Pool,” hoping its
worlds would still be inhabited by the ancient human kind from which they had once come. Thus an
electrostatically shielded ship carrying twenty-seven survivors eventually made planetfall on the
southern-spinward edge of the Whorl, at Thyrica.
The Aurians’ talents first terrified the Thyrian humans, then impressed them, then won them over. A cure
was developed for the hereditary androcidal effects of the makkah. Proving themselves undeceivable
mediators among those willing to submit to their appraisal, those survivors’ sons and daughters reunited
the first worlds of the Federacy, then stepped back to let others govern.
So the story went.
Before Korda reached the center of the electronic teachboard, he twisted his lean shoulders toward the
array of seats and began to speak. “So, you think Naetai can take VeeRon from the Federacy? Well, I
happen to think you have just a chance to do it.”
At Firebird’s right hand, Corey fingered the edge of his desk terminal. “Slimy,” he whispered.
Firebird nodded uneasily without taking her eyes off Korda. She was already guaranteed a First Major’s
commission on graduation by her class and flight evaluations. Top marks on this special seminar would
win her a commendation, too. But Korda struck her instinctively as the belligerently insecure sort of little
man who compensated for size with meanness. His kind liked to make everyone else look
bad—particularly a woman at the top of her division. She shifted her weight uncomfortably, feeling her
seat shift to compensate.
“I intend to teach you all you can learn about the Federacy’s Thyrian telepaths: Sentinels, the trained
ones are called. As officers, you young incompetents will be more likely to encounter them than your
blazer-bait subordinates will. You won’t find a more self-righteous, exclusive group if you see half the
galaxy. The Sentinels virtually founded the Federacy, you know—not that it trusts them entirely.
Common people fear what they can’t control.” He cut off their exchange of knowing glances. “Yes, I’m
Thyrian too, and starbred: there are Aurians in my background. But I’m no Sentinel. No one tells me
what I can do with my abilities.”
Firebird went rigid. If Korda had such abilities, how much had he influenced the recent decision to attack
VeeRon? She eyed him suspiciously.
A habitual glance at the tiny time lights on her wristband broke her concentration. Korda’s introductory
remarks concerning his own testing and training under Master Sentinels would have fascinated her on any
other day, but tonight she faced her mother.
Queen Siwann had made the appointment months before, which usually didn’t bespeak a matter of
personal warmth. Moments of warmth between them had been so rare that Firebird could recall every
one vividly. Not that she expected affection from a mother she rarely saw and hardly knew, who had
feelings of her own to protect— Siwann couldn’t really afford to involve herself emotionally with her
Wastling child. Firebird knew and understood that.
For centuries, the Wastlings had provided Naetai with daredevil entertainers and Naval officers. Some
were heroes in the history scanbooks, but none lived long enough to have children of their own. That
tradition of limitation, rigorously enforced by their own elder brothers and sisters, ruled their fate. Those
who refused their Geis Orders disappeared—or had fatal accidents, like Lord Rendy Angellson. Firebird
wondered, sometimes, if some who vanished had survived—fled the Naetai Systems and begun new
lives elsewhere. She knew one who had made the attempt: she had helped. Naturally, she had never
heard from him—nor the commoner, a lovely University woman, who had gone with him. Occasionally
she thought of them. Had the Redjackets found and killed them months after Firebird and Corey had
reported them dead in space, or had they vanished effectively enough?
But she had chosen the path of honor, the chance to win herself undying glory by facing that destiny
courageously. If only she were bound for a war to which she could give herself gladly, not a strike on her
sister Phoena’s behalf to help with a project she opposed. And if only Carradee’s second little
princess—the child was bound to be female, for inexplicably, no Angelo had birthed a male heir in five
hundred years—weren’t quite so close to—
When the briefing room went dark, Firebird was startled back to attention. Korda bent momentarily over
the blocky media unit at midboard, then turned back toward the class. “The Sentinels in the Federate
military are the ones of most concern to you, of course. If you think you see one, in battle or otherwise,
shoot first and make sure of your target after he’s dead. You probably won’t get a second chance. Some
of them can levitate your side weapon from the holster. Others have different specialties.”
A life-size holographic image appeared over the block, rotating slowly, of a handsome black-haired
woman who apparently stood taller than half the men in the class. “This is Captain Ellet Kinsman. She’s
stationed at Caroli—which governs VeeRon, by the way—and rising fast in the ranks. We rate the
starbred on the Aurian Scale, according to how strongly the psionic genes that give rise to the projectable
epsilon carrier wave are expressed in them. Kinsman comes from a strong family. Seventy-five Aurian
Scale out of a rough hundred, which means she can do over half the tricks the pure-blooded Aurians
could. You don’t want to get near a person like that. Militarily, she’s not much threat to you yet. She will
be, when she gets some rank and experience. Memorize the face, if you have half a memory. Don’t
forget her.”
Firebird was already memorizing as he spoke. The woman resembled her first flight trainer, Commodore
Cheitt, except Kinsman’s features were femininely softened, and her uniform was blue-black with no
insignia save a golden star. She had seen that uniform before.
The image blurred and faded. Next she saw a man, older, also black-haired. “Admiral Blair Kinsman is
her cousin. Based on Varga. The throwback of the family, about a twenty-five Aurian Scale—I think he
can nudge a few electrons along a wire, if he’s not too…”
Distracted by half a memory, Firebird missed several sentences. Where had she seen that uniform? She
prided herself on being able to identify Federate service insignia, but this must be a rare one. Ah! The
honor guard who had spotted her, that day she had spied on the Electorate with Corey for the last
time—he had worn it.
“Now, this is Trouble.” Blair Kinsman disappeared in a cloud of static. A younger man’s figure
materialized in his place, and Firebird almost gasped aloud. The guard himself! In this image he looked
less incongruously young, but it could be no other—of average height, slender and well proportioned;
straight chin, fine cheekbones, and hair the light, rich brown of burnished letawood. The image’s eyes
were lost in shadow, but she had not forgotten that flash of blue.
“This is Lieutenant General Brennen Caldwell. He’s stationed at Regional Headquarters, Alta, but as a
member of the Special Operations Task Force or S.O.”—he scratched the initials onto the
teachboard—“he has no permanent base or unit. Don’t even get close enough to recognize him. Aurian
Scale ninety-seven—they haven’t had one so high in a hundred years. See the Master’s star on the
shoulder? Eight points, not four. Supposedly he’s the first Sentinel the Federacy has considered for real
rank— the Sentinels pretend reluctance to accept authority, but the situation is more complex than that.”
Korda paused dramatically. “Much more complex. The S.O. people rotate between the defense fleet
and special intelligence assignments. Often they’re sent on jobs that others have tried and failed.”
Then, this was the man, now a Lieutenant General. The slowly rotating hologram did not do him justice,
she thought. But the notion of a telepath at the heart of the N’Taian government, spying on them even for
a day, sent a chill of horror down her spine.
“He’s cute,” whispered Lady Delia Stele to no one in particular.
Korda’s explosive reaction startled them all. “If that’s all you can think about, Stele, get out of here. Out!
My time is too valuable to waste on giggly Wastlings that anybody can play with and no one will ever
marry.”
Delia’s face, so prettily circled in blond hair, was a study in humiliation. The hostility in the room swelled
nearly to exploding. Vultor Korda brought the lights back up and swung out his arms. “Go ahead and
hate me. I can feel it. But I’ll be alive next year and most of you will be dead. Come back tomorrow and
I’ll show you something that could give you another week or two.” He dove for the exit.
When Firebird saw that Delia was being consoled by several girls (and, bless his heart, Daley Bowman),
she slipped out into the passway and headed home. For all his sliminess, Vultor Korda had given her a
good deal to think about. It roiled in her mind during dinner, which she took alone in her suite.
After calling her personal girl Dunna to remove the leavings, she retreated to her music room. A slender,
triangular case lay on the carpet below the studio’s small window; carefully, she drew out her clairsa by
摘要：

FirebirdKathyTyersToKarenHancockCONTENTSPrelude1.Wastling2.Corey3.VeeRon4.Sentinel5.Mari6.Strike7.Stalemate8.Rebel9.Naetai10.Surrender11.MaxSec12.Protectorate13.Rattela14.Ellet15.Brennen16.Judgment17.Return18.HunterHeight19.Geis20.Phoena21.FirebirdCodaPRELUDELadyFirebirdAngeloofNaetaiwasfifteenyears...

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