"Look at it," said Chaison. The tiny stars that signaled explosions had only been able to keep his attention for so long, despite what imagination and reason had told him must be happening there. His gaze had inevitably drifted forward and eventually he'd realized that framed by the cross-hatch lines of bike contrails was the collected light of nations. Half the sky was awash with luminescence in circles too broad to encompass with out-thrown arms. Then-outer edges faded to dusk and black, their centers shone sky-blue and here and there a sun appeared for seconds at a time. There were a dozen such realms of light in the cluster of nations known as Merithan, but the farthest countries were hidden behind the nearer.

The pearlescent zone of sky next to Mavery was Slipstream—had been Aerie, once. Obscured behind the Rook's hull was multisunned Falcon Formation. Chaison had climbed around the hull several times to look at it.

"The men want to go," said Travis, nodding at the sparkling battle. "They know we have another destination, but they're not happy."

Chaison sighed. "I'm not happy either. The fleet will be cursing my name that I'm not there. All of us—we've probably been branded traitors by now. If we don't bring back the figureheads of Falcon's flagship, the pilot will have me publicly flogged. At the very least."

He made sure his feet were anchored, then stood up into the Rook's headwind. "That's where we go," he yelled, pointing to the vast span of light that was Falcon Formation. "And chances are we'll never see the light of Slipstream again. So enjoy the view while you can.Travis!"

"Come inside, sir!"

He shook his head. "When I'm good and ready. Leave me alone."

Travis retreated, a concerned frown on his face.

Chaison Fanning stood alone on the hull of his ship, feeling alone. Venera wasn't with him for the first time in many months, and he found the ache of missing her far more intense than expected. She was infuriating and inescapable; yet she made him smile as often, as she outraged him.

They hadn't said good-bye as they parted; but the last of her he'd seen was a backward glance as she looked for him and spotted him watching from the hangar doorway. Her eyes had gone wide, and then she'd turned away again.

He smiled, as the wind tore salty droplets from his eyes and cast them into the vortex of the Rook's contrail.

CANDESCE WAS FADING like an ember when the four travelers climbed into their saddles and Hayden lit the fan-jet's burners. Back became down, and they shot away from the threadlike trees of Leaf's Choir, seemingly straight up toward the sun. Hayden turned for a last look at the harvester's hut, and smiled. Then he adjusted the goggles on his nose and opened the throttle.

They weren't leaving a contrail, he'd noticed. That was probably due to the heat of the air near the Sun of Suns; whatever the reason, they would be less noticeable to the Gehellen cruisers that still patrolled the air here.

—Or so he was able to tell himself for the first ten minutes of the flight; then he saw Carrier's hand waving from the opposite side of the bike.

Hayden craned his neck around the metal cylinder and at first saw only the normal traffic of funeral ships and scroungers cautiously edging toward the sun. After a moment he saw what Carrier had spotted: eight sparks of light rising over the black furze of the sargasso. They were the color of the sun, their backdrop the mauve air of dusk.

Carrier leaned past Venera to shout, "Bigger than bikes!" But smaller than commercial vessels; Hayden nodded. These looked like catamarans—twin engined, with both pilot and gunner. They'd be fast, and they could reduce the bike and its riders to splinters in seconds if they got close enough.

Hayden tapped the throttle, feeling for the bike's response. Then he leaned in as close to the hot metal as he dared and kicked in the afterburner. The women on either side of him pressed their noses to the hull as well while the air began to thunder past and Candesce seemed to get perceptibly brighter.

For a few minutes, that is; then the Sun of Suns began to go out.

It didn't do so all at once. In fact, as Hayden squinted past the handlebars he began to make out structure to the radiance ahead. Candesce, he realized with a start, wasn't one sun but rather a cloud of them. He tried to count them, but they were guttering faster than he could keep up. Each one left a fading red spot and, in the eye, a lozenge of retinal overload.

But the heat remained. He could feel it first in the places where the wind didn't penetrate: in the hollow of his throat, along his calfs. As the minutes passed heat piled up against the bike as if they were pressing into a resilient surface made of exhaust and fire. They crossed fifty miles of air and were swaddled in it; a hundred miles and it was becoming hard to breathe. The commercial ships had fallen behind but the catamarans still followed, their gemlike highlights wavering in the rippling air.

Little flashes started to appear in the corner of Hayden's eye. He was alarmed—was he about to pass out?—and then saw the contrails that were sketching across the sky like meridian lines.

Venera waved frantically. When he caught her eye she held up her hand in a gun-shape. He nodded and began slaloming the bike from side to side, gently at first so as not to shake off his passengers—then more and more violently as bullets stitched the air to all sides.

After a minute the gunfire stopped. He glanced back to see their pursuers close, but keeping a decent distance.

Hayden smiled. There was nowhere for him to go—or so those men thought. They believed that if they hung on his tail long enough he would have to give up. After all, there was no place to hide here, and no way to get inside Candesce.

They were in for a surprise.

A LONG WING of shadow swept into winter behind Sargasso 44. The gnarled black fist of burnt forest, its outlines softened by mist, wasn't much to look at after Leaf's Choir, but it was still a respectable three miles across. The Rook and its sisters crept up to the hidden shipyard from its unlit side, their running lights off. Two bikes jetted out of Chaison Fanning's modest flagship to reconnoiter and he waited, not on the bridge but in the hangar, for their return.

Propriety be damned. He glanced at the ticking wall clock, then at his men. Two hours until Falcon's suns dimmed into their night cycle. In two hours the plan would succeed or fail. And everybody knew it, but nobody would speak of it.

They'd installed the radar casting machines in the nose of each ship and tried them. Of course they didn't work—there was only a bright fuzz on the hand-blown cathode ray tubes bolted next to the Rook's pilot station. But as each sister ship turned its own radar on or off, the fuzz had brightened or dimmed. Some sort of invisible energy was in play here. Chaison had been cheered by that tiny hint of future success.

And the men… He looked at them again. They'd been running drills for days now to perfect the art of firing blind according to orders from the bridge. The rocketeers looked confident.

He shook his head and laughed. "Men, I don't mean to be insulting, but you look like pirates." Some were wounded, others had hasty repairs to their uniforms to cover sword and bullet holes. It was the jewelry, though, that set them apart from any other crew Chaison had worked with. As battle approached the men had been sneaking off to their lockers to collect their treasures, as if the talismanic weight of future wealth would keep them alive through the coming battle.

It was so far from regulation that he could validly have any one of them whipped for it. Necklaces might get in the eye, or tangle a hand at a crucial moment.