Adventures in the Liaden Universe #3
MASTER PILOT VEN’DUCCI sighed and folded his hands on the practice board. By these signs, Er Thom knew himself to be in desperate straits.
“I had heard from captain yos’Galan,” the master said quietly, “that you had achieved a level of skill equal to that of a second class pilot. Perhaps I misunderstood?”
Er Thom inclined his head respectfully. “In fact, sir, I have achieved my second class license.”
The Master’s eyebrows rose, as if in astonishment. “Have you, indeed? Show it, of your kindness.”
Now he was in for it in truth. A short series of keystrokes from the board at which they sat, and Master ven’Ducci could transform the treasured second class license into a mere third class—or into no license at all. such was the power of a master pilot.
Still, it would reflect poorly on his melant’i—and on the melant’i of the Captain his mother—if he were seen to either flinch or hesitate in the face of this order. Er Thom neither flinched nor hesitated, but pulled the card from its slot in the practice board and held it out to his instructor in fingers that were, amazingly, steady.
Master ven’Ducci received the license gravely and subjected it to a leisurely, frowning study, as if he had never seen such a thing before. Er Thom folded his hands forcibly in his lap and set his tongue between his teeth, lest he be tempted to blurt out any of the defenses of his own skill that were rising in his throat.
Halflings defended before they were attacked, and he, Er Thom yos’Galan, was not a halfling. He was a pilot of Korval. Specifically, he was a second class pilot of Korval, the license fairly earned on the same day that Daav his foster-brother, boon comrade and fiercest competitor, received his provisional second class.
Master ven’Ducci finished his inspection and laid the license on the edge of the board.
“How came you by this?” Er Thom took a careful breath, and met the man’s eyes with what he hoped was grave calm.
“I came by it at Solcintra Pilot’s Hall, on Banim-Seconday in the first relumma of the current year.” He had more than one cause to remember the day well, though very nearly a full standard Year had passed. Er Thom licked his lips, hands stringently folded upon his knee.
“Testing that day established me as a second class pilot. Master Hopanik signed the license herself."
‘“Testing that day’,” Master ven’Ducci repeated. “Yes, I see.”
Er Thom felt his face heat, his fingers tightening convulsively. He would be calm, he told himself sternly. He would.
Master ven’Ducci picked up Er Thom’s license and held it in his palm as if weighing it for merit.
“It is sometimes the case,” he said, in the mode of instructor to student, “that the exhilaration of the test itself will call forth heightened response from a candidate. The results of such testings are not invalid so much as misleading. It may well be, young sir, that your proper rating at this time is second class provisional. It is certainly true that your results at these boards, over the time we have been working together, falls significantly short of the results one is accustomed to receive from solid second class pilots.”
Er Thom bit his tongue, refusing to beg. If he was a failure, if he lost his license this moment and spent the rest of his life balancing cargo holds, he was yet the son of Chi yos’Phelium—of Petrella yos’Galan. He would not shame his Line.
“So.” Master ven’Ducci glanced at the license and slid it into the pocket of his vest. Er Thom’s stomach twisted, but he sat still, and, gods willing, showed no distress.
“I will consider the proper course to chart from this circumstance,” the master pilot said. “Attend me here tomorrow at the usual hour.”
“Yes, Master.” Somehow, Er Thom managed to stand, to make his bow and walk, calmly, from the inner bridge.
He was scheduled for dinner this hour, and his mother the Captain had made it plain during his first few days’ service that she rated moody, self-indulgent boys who skipped meals just slightly lower than Port panhandlers too lazy to apply themselves to a job.
Er Thom swallowed and deliberately turned his back on the hall that would eventually lead him to the cafeteria. He could not possibly eat. He swallowed again, blinking back tears.
His license. He has a second class pilot! The tests had not been in error! if only—
If only he could speak to Daav! If only his foster mother, Daav’s true-mother and twin sister to Er Thom’s mother the captain—if only Chi yos’Phelium were here. But, of course, she wasn’t. He had neither seen nor spoken with her since the day he had won the license.
He had always known that his true-mother would one day claim him to serve on Dutiful Passage and learn his life-roles of captain and trader, just as he had always known that Daav would someday leave home to attend scout Academy. He had simply been caught… unprepared… when “one day” became “this day,” and he was suddenly swept into his mother’s orbit, away from everything that was usual and comforting; his one cold joy the new license in his pocket, which proved him a pilot of Korval.
It was no inconsiderable thing to be a pilot of Korval. Indeed, he had learned that it was no small thing to be cabin boy on the clan’s flagship, true-son and heir of Captain and master Trader Yos’Galan. The child of generations of space-goers, Er Thom had adjusted easily to his duties and to ship-life. He had adjusted less easily to the absence of his foster-brother, who had been within his arm’s reach for the sum of both their lives. Er Thom’s earliest memory was of gazing into his brother’s face, watching the black eyes watch him in return.
“Good shift to you, young sir."
Er Thom gasped, jolted out of his misery by the quiet greeting, and hastily bowed—junior to senior—to Mechanic First class Bor Gen pin’Ethil.
“Sir, good shift.”
The mechanic considered him out of wide gray eyes. “One remarks that it is the dinner hour,” he said delicately.
Er Thom gritted his teeth and bowed again. “One also marks the hour,” he said, politely. “However, there is—a book—in one’s quarters…”
“Ah, but of course.” A smile showed briefly. “A cabin boy must always be at study, eh?”
“Just so,” Er Thom said and bowed a third time as the other passed by.
Legs none too steady, Er Thom went on, and very shortly thereafter laid his palm against the plate set into the door of his cabin.
He felt the scan crackle across his skin, then the door slid open. He all but jumped through, the lights coming up to show a stark little cubicle made smaller by the built-in folding desk, which was extended to its fullest, and overladen with books, readers, and clipboards. The slender bed was tucked under the lockers in which the rest of his clothing and possessions were stowed, the bed itself occupied by a long, thin figure dressed in a dark long sleeved shirt, vest and leggings of black space leather, booted feet crossed at the ankle, hands crossed over his belt.
Er Thom stared, not quite daring to believe the rather solid evidence before him.
“Daav?” he breathed.
The black eyes opened, the dark head moved on the pillow, and the familiar, beloved smile infused the sharp-featured face with beauty.
“Hullo, denubia,” he said, swinging his long legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. “What’s amiss?”
Er Thom stared, the skin of his palm still tickling with the after-effect of the scan.
“How,” he demanded, rather faintly, “did you get here?”
“Oh, there’s nothing to that[“Daav told him. “I can show you the trick, if you like.” He tipped his dark head, mischief glinting. “Own that you’re glad to see me, beast, or I shall be inconsolable.”
“Yes, very likely,” Er Thom retorted reflexively, then laughed and threw his arms wide. “In truth, I was just wishing for you extremely,”
“Well, there’s a proper welcome!” Daav rose and flung himself into the embrace with a will. For a moment, they clung, cheek to cheek, arms each about the other. Er Thom stepped back first.
“But, truly, Daav, how did you get here?”
“To the Passage you mean?” He moved his shoulders. “I cast myself at the feet of an elder scout, who was bound for this quadrant.” Mischief glinted again. “Surely you don’t think I walked?”
“But, the Academy…” Er Thom gasped, suddenly struck with a thought almost too horrible to contemplate. “You haven’t—they never rusticated, you?"
“Rusticated me?” Daav looked properly outraged, which of course proved nothing. “Certainly they did not rusticate me! Of all the notions! I suppose you’ve never heard of term break?
“Term…” Er Thom blinked, counting the relumma backward, and sighed. “I never thought of it,” he confessed. “But, surely, our mother…”
“Save her leave, saving only that I find my own way out and back and that I arrive early to my first class at break-end.” Suddenly, Daav stretched, and put a hand on his lean middle. “What’s the nearest hour for a meal, brother? I’m not halfway hungry.”
Well, and that was no surprise. Er Thom sighed and tried to look stern.
“As it happens, I’m scheduled for dinner this hour. Perhaps I can convince the cook to give you a few dry crackers and a glass of water.”
“A feast!” Daav proclaimed gaily, and slid his arm through Er Thom’s, turning them both toward the door. “Come, let us test your powers of persuasion!”
“TOOK YOUR LICENSE?” Daav stared, soup spoon halfway to his mouth. It was his second plate of soup. The first had vanished with an alacrity unusual even by Daav’s standards, and Er Thom suspected that the elder Scout had not been over-generous with rations. “Pray, what profit comes of taking your license?”
Er Thom moved his shoulders and looked down at his plate. He had made some inroads into his own meal—at least he would not be called to book for neglecting his duty to stay healthy.
“Master ven’Ducci feels my proper rating is provisional second,” he told his plate. “One… understands… him to believe that the—the strain of carrying a full second class is… interfering… with one’s studies.”
“Rot,” Daav said comprehensively. “Does he think you’re to finish at second class? We’re both for master, darling—unless you believe our mother will allow us anything less?”
“No, of course not,” Er Thom replied. Chi yos’Phelium had never held shy of telling her sons exactly what she expected them to accomplish on behalf of clan and kin, and neither Er Thom nor Daav could conceive of failing her.
Daav had another sip of soup. “Do you fly live?”
“Live?” Er Thom blinked. “I fly the dummy board on the inner bridge.”
“A second class pilot, practicing at a dummy board?” Daav demanded. “What nonsense!”
“Oh, I suppose you practice live!” Er Thom retorted, stung.
“Of course I do,” his brother answered, with a surprising lack of heat. “It’s required.”
“In fact,” he said after swallowing the last bit of soup, “I sat second board to the elder scout on the trip out. I don’t doubt but I’ll make the same trade with another pilot for the ride back.” He lifted his eyebrows, from which Er Thom deduced that he had allowed his astonishment to show.
“Surely you can’t think that the ever-amiable Lieutenant tel’Iquin would lift extra mass where there was no profit to herself?"
“As I have not had the pleasure of the Lieutenant’s acquaintance—” Er Thom began, and broke off as a shadow fell across the table between them.
“So,” said Captain Petrella yos’Galan, and there was a hard shine in her blue eyes that Er Thom had learned meant the entire opposite of his foster-mother’s twinkle. “Nephew, well I had a beam from your mother my sister, desiring me to expect you. When did you think you would come and register your presence with the Captain?” She inclined her head, in mock courtesy. “Or perhaps you believe the ship will feed you for free?”
“Aunt Petrella, my mother sends her love,” Daav said with a calm Er Thom envied. “I regret that the desire to see my brother caused me to delay making my bow to the Captain.” He smiled one of his sudden, transforming smiles. “And I surely never expected the ship to guest me. I am able and willing to work my passage.”
“You relieve me,” Er Thom’s mother said punctiliously. “And your passage is—?”
“I have ten Standard Days for the ship,” Daav said. “At Venture I will barter for a lift back to Liad.”
“And your mother agrees to this.” She raised a hand. “No, do not speak. I have her beam. My sister assures me that she reposes faith in both your abilities and in your oath to be early to the first class of the new term. The matter is outside my authority. Within my authority, however…” She frowned down at them both.
“Er Thom is not at liberty. He has his studies and his assigned duties, which do not disappear because you have chosen to appear.”
Daav inclined his head. “Nor am I at liberty, as we have both agreed that I shall work my passage.”
Petrella’s lips bent in her pale smile. “So we have. At what work are you able, nephew?”
“I might be of some small service to the cargo master,” Daav said. “I might also be put to use in the mechanics bay or at clerical.” He picked up his mug and had a sip of tea before slanting a quick, black glance at Er Thom and looking back to the Captain. “I can help my brother with his piloting.”
Er Thom felt a jolt. Daav tutor him at piloting? Now, there was turnabout! He felt a glare building, then remembered that Master ven’Ducci held his license hostage and subsided, eyes stinging. Happily, neither his brother nor his mother seemed to have noticed his near display.
“Oh?” Petrella said, with the ironic courtesy that characterized so much of her discourse with her son. “Last I had heard, you held a second class provisional.”
“I now hold a first class provisional,” Daav said, with a remarkable lack of preening. “Of course, one requires flight time.”
“Which one gains,” Er Thom murmured, suddenly enlightened, “by sitting second board to Scout pilots in trade for transport.”
Petrella frowned down at him. “Master ven’Ducci has spoken to me,” she began,
“Master ven’Ducci,” Daav interrupted, against best health, “is an idiot. Come, aunt! Who ties a second class to a dummy board?”
Both of her eyebrows rose and Er Thom held his breath, waiting for one of her blistering scolds to fall upon Daav’s heedless head.
“So, we agree again,” Petrella murmured, and there was something less of irony and somewhat more of courtesy in her voice. “You will be pleased to learn then, both of you, that Master ven’Ducci has been Instructed to use the Captain’s Shuttle for future piloting lessons, beginning tomorrow. I will see to it that your schedules coincide for that lesson, and then—we shall see.” She fixed Daav in her eye. “If I hear aught of mayhem from the master pilot, you will find yourself early indeed for first class, young Daav. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
Respectfully, he inclined his head, but Er Thom saw his eyes dancing in mischief. “Aunt, you do.”
“It is well,” she sighed. “Apply to the first mate for quarters and ship-garb—your brother will show you the way. Your work schedule will be on your screen tomorrow at first hour; pray do not be tardy.” Her gaze shifted. “My son…”
Er Thom raised his face to hers.
“Mother?”
Her lips bent once more in her slight smile, and she reached into her belt, withdrawing a flat rectangle. Er Thom’s hand leapt out, fingers questing, and his mother’s smile, strangely, deepened.
“Not a pilot,” she murmured, perhaps to herself. “What nonsense.” She put the license into his hand and inclined her head.
“Be worthy of it, child of Korval.”
HE SAT SECOND board to Daav, Master ven’Ducci a poised, silent presence in the jump-seat at their backs.
“Systems check,” Daav murmured, hands moving with precision across his board. Er Thom followed his brother’s lead, hands steady and careful, waking that portion of the piloting board which was the responsibility of the co-pilot. Screens lit, toggles glowed, maincomp beeped. The comm unit likewise beeped as information began to flow in from Dutiful Passage. Er Thom fielded the data, translated it, replied and received yet more data.
“The ship wishes us gone, brother,” he said, scarcely noting that he spoke. “We are cleared to leave immediately, if that is the pilot’s pleasure.”
“Nothing more,” Daav answered, and threw him a grin. “We have a course, I see, locked to navcomp,”
Er Thom looked—a two hour run?—then his brother’s voice drew him back to his immediate duty.
“Pray request Dutiful Passage to open the bay door.”
Er Thom flipped the toggle that opened the voice line. “Captain’s Shuttle ready for departure. Request bay door open.”
“Bay door open,” affirmed the cool voice of the pilot on duty at the starship’s main board. “Good lift, pilots.”
Screen One showed the bay door iris; Daav laughed, slapped the toggle, and the shuttle rolled free.
“MUCH IMPROVED,” Master ven’Ducci said, nearly three hours later, as they stood once again in the bay corridor. He bowed, very slightly. “I am encouraged, Pilot yos’Galan.”
Er Thom returned the bow. The lift had been a fine and bewildering thing. The simulations he had been flying were meticulously crafted, but live flight—live flight was different He was still a-tingle with energy, his thoughts as sharp as fabled clutch crystal, standing tall in an exhilaration that persisted despite the full knowledge of having several times bungled his board.
“You will both attend me here tomorrow at the same hour,” the master pilot said, and with another slight bow strode away down the hall. Er Thom stared after him, frowning.
“Trouble, darling?” Daav was fair glittering himself, black eyes wide in his narrow face.
Er Thom drew a deliberate breath, trying to quiet the exuberant pounding of his heart. “Say, rather, puzzlement. I botched things rather badly at the phase-change and yet he makes no mention of it. Had I made an error one-twelfth as grievous on the practice board, he would not have held shy of apprizing me, never fear it! Yet, today, with three ham-witted errors to my tally, he is ‘much encouraged’!”
“Perhaps he means to see if you repeat the errors tomorrow?”
“Repeat them tomorrow?” Er Thom stared. “I should never had made them today! I’ve been working phase equations in my head since Master Robir showed us the forms, when we were eight.”
“Learning curve,” Daav said, linking his arm in Er Thom’s and beginning to stroll down the hall in the master pilot’s wake. “I tremble to tell you how badly I’ve bungled my math at piloting, we were training on sling landings, you see, and I transposed my vectors.”
Er Thom laughed. “Tell me you came in upside down!”
“But of course I came in upside down,” Daav said amiably. “And hung upside down in the sling, like seven sorts of fool, while Master dea’Cort used my situation to lesson the rest of the class on the need to thoroughly check one’s equations.” He sighed and looked briefly mournful, then dropped Er Thom’s arm with a grin.
“Enough telling tales out of piloting class!” he said gaily. “It will no doubt astonish you to learn that I am ravenous. If we hurry, I can wheedle an apple out of the cook before reporting to the cargo master for duty, catch me.”
He was gone, running full speed down the hall.
Er Thom bit back a newly acquired curse and hurtled after.
IT WAS WELL into Fourth Shift and both of them should have been long abed. Instead, they were in the control room at the heart of the Passage. Er Thom was sitting first board. There was no second. Daav was leaving for school on the morrow. He sat, hands folded on his lap, in what would have been the jump-seat in a smaller ship—a passenger on this, their last flight together.
Er Thom’s hands moved across the board with swift surety, no wasted motion, no false moves. His face was intent and his shoulders just a bit rigid, but that was expectable, the sim he was flying being somewhat in advance of his skill level.
The screen flashed a familiar pattern—Daav’s own particular nemesis, as it happened—and he leaned forward, watching as Er Thom adroitly—one might say, casually—fed in the proper course for an avoid, and the simultaneous adjustment to ship’s pressure. Quietly, Daav sighed, leaned back in his chair—and jerked forward the next moment as the screen flared and Er Thom’s elegant choreography degenerated into a near random slap at the Jump button, which was entirely wrong and too late besides.
Using the exercise he had been taught by the scouts, Daav released the tension in his muscles, then put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“A good run, darling. Don’t repine.”
Er Thom looked up, blue eyes flashing a frustration of his own ineptitude that Daav understood all too well.
“It can’t quite be a good run, can it,” he snapped, “when the ship is destroyed around one?”
“Well—no,” Daav admitted. “On the other face, you flew further than I have yet to fly.”
“Truly?” Er Thom looked so startled that Daav laughed.
“Yes, truly, you lout! Remember me, the ten-thumbed junior brother?”
“All too well, thank you!” Er Thom replied with a gratifying flash of brotherly scorn. He sobered almost immediately. “You have changed, you know. Even in so short a time. I—do you find it at all… odd or, or… lonely, to, to—” He floundered.
“Do I find it disquieting to be away from all that was usual in my life, and made to stand singleton before the world, when I have no memory but of being half of the whole we two made between us?” Daav said in a serious and quite adult voice. Er Thom took a breath and met bleak black eyes straightly.
“Yes,” said Daav, “I do.”
“So do I,” Er Thom murmured, relieved, in an odd way, that at least this much had not changed—that he found his brother and himself at one on this matter of importance to them both. “One’s… mother… assures one that these feelings will pass. Do you think—”
The door to the control room opened and Petrella yos’Galan strode within.
“Of course I would find you both here,” she snapped, but Er Thom thought her face was—not entirely—displeased.
“Good shift, Aunt Petrella,” Daav said politely. “Er Thom has just been having a run at the general-flight masters sim.”
Petrella’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, indeed? And how did he fare, I wonder?”
“Poorly enough.” Er Thom spun his chair to face her. “My ship was destroyed two-point-eight minutes into the flight.”
Astonishingly, his mother grinned. “No, do you say so? Well I recall that dicey bit of action! Forty-four times, I lost my ship exactly there. The forty-fifth—well, say I survived another minute.”
“And I,” Daav said mournfully, “am doomed to forever lose my wings at two-point-three.”
“There?” Er Thom turned to stare at him. “But that was a mere nothing!"
“So you say!”
“No, but, Daav, all one need do—”
His brother raised a hand. “Yes, yes, I saw you. Perhaps my wretched fingers will have learned their lesson, now I’ve seen it can be done.” He looked up to Petrella, a wry grin on his face. “Fifty-two times.”
She smiled back. “I will hear that you’ve mastered the whole tape soon enough.”
Daav inclined his head. “Your certainty gives me courage. Aunt Petrella.”
“Now, that, neither of you lacks.” She paused, her sharp blue eyes flashing from Er Thom back to Daav. “We raise Venture within the hour, nephew, and tomorrow is the appointed day of your departure. Exert yourself to comfort one who was ever acknowledged as the timid twin: Are your arrangements in order and satisfactory to yourself? Better—would your mother my sister express her satisfaction with your arrangements?”
Daav raised his hand. “She and I discussed the scheme in detail before I had her aye. Scout Academy provided a list of pilots who might be receptive to allowing a first class provisional to gain flight time as their second—a list Mother studied with some interest before declaring that it would do.”
“So.” Petrella inclined her head, and glanced again to Er Thom.
“I wonder, my son, if you might not do the captain the honor of ferrying scout candidate yos’Phelium to the planet surface tomorrow. I would expect you to stay by him until he has satisfactorily made his contacts, attend to the few small errands you will find listed on your duty screen, and return the Captain’s Shuttle to the ship.”
Er Thom’s breath caught.
“I’m to pilot the Captain’s Shuttle alone? Mother—”
She tipped her head, and he thought he detected the beginning of a twinkle in her stern blue eyes.
“Surely that is a task well within the skill of a second class pilot?”
He smiled. “Yes, captain. It is.”
“Good, that is settled, then.” She turned. At the door, she looked over her shoulder at them. “The hour has perhaps escaped your notice, pilots. I mention—as elder kin and as a master pilot—that flight is much more enjoyable when one is awake at the board.” She inclined her head—“Sleep well”—and was gone.
DAAV WALKED UP to the duty counter, which looked for all the worlds like any counter in any hiring hall one cared to name. Had Er Thom not read the sign as he followed Daav into this place, he would have supposed himself in an office of the Pilot’s Guild, rather than the sector headquarters of the Liaden Scouts.
The man behind the counter glanced up from his book, and registered Daav with one quick Scout glance. The glance lingered a moment on Er Thom, as if the Scout found the appearance into his hall of a halfling in Trader clothes somewhat puzzling.
Daav laid his license on the counter. “One seeks Scout Rod Ern pel’Arot.”
“So?” The Scout appeared amused. “If one is so ill-advised as to seek Scout pel’Arot on Trilsday, then one must be prepared to seek him at the Spinning Wheel.”
Daav inclined his head. “I shall do so. May one inquire the direction of the Spinning Wheel?”
The scout’s amusement was almost palpable.
“Down on the blue median, handy to Terraport.” He moved his shoulders and picked his book up.
“I am informed,” Daav said, which his brother considered nothing more nor less than prevarication, pocketed his license and turned away, Er Thom trailing a respectful two paces behind.
Back on the walkway, Daav paused, face thoughtful. Er Thom looked up the street, down the street, but spied nothing remotely resembling either a blue median or a Terraport.
“Singularly unhelpful, that duty clerk,” he grumbled. His brother looked at him, surprise on his sharp-featured face.
“No, do you say so?” He, too, looked up and down the busy thoroughfare. “Now, I think he told us everything we needed to know, if only we apply—ah.” He moved forward, stepping off the curb, angling through traffic as if the rushing groundcars were mere figments. Er Thom gasped, then ran after, eyes on his brother’s narrow, space-leathered back.
He caught up on the far side of the street, where Daav had paused before a public display-map of Venture Port and near environs.
“Down on the blue median,” Daav murmured, “and handy to Terraport.” He frowned at the flat display, then reached out and pushed the power-up button.
The display flickered and rolled; colors flashed; flat shapes expanded into three dimensions. The bright pictographs of written Trade appeared last, putting names to this or that building or wayfare.
Daav laughed.
“Here we are,” he said, leaning forward and laying his hand wide over a block limned in electric blue. “The blue median, or I’ll eat my leathers.”
Er Thom leaned forward, squinting at the pictograph identifying a red-lined block just the north of Daav’s blue. “Terran Mercantile Association,” he read, and Daav laughed again.
“Terraport.” He turned his grin on Er Thom. “Now, what was so difficult about that?”
“He might have said ‘near the Terran Trade Hall,’” Er Thom pointed out, struggling to keep his lips straight and his face serious.
“Well,” said Daav, with a final, calculating stare at the map, “he might have done so. But then he would not have been a scout.” He moved his shoulders, and sent a diffident black glance to Er Thom. “You have errands to complete for Aunt Petrella, I know, and the blue median does look to be somewhat off your course, shall we part here?”
Er Thom stared. “I am charged foremost with seeing you safely to the end of your arrangements. You heard her say it.” He paused, as another, unwelcome thought intruded. He bit his lip. “Unless you do not wish me with you…"
Daav blinked. “What nonsense is this? of course I want you by me!” He leaned forward, catching Er Thom’s arm in a brother’s warm grip. “Why else did I come all the way from Liad to see you?”
“Ah.” Er Thom glanced aside, blinking, then looked back to his brother and smiled. “Why are we arguing with each other on a public street, then? Let us locate Scout pel’Arot and get you berthed.”
“Very well.” Daav glanced ’round, then pointed toward the east. “This way, I believe.”
THE SPINNING WHEEL was found to be at the end of a short side-way off the main thoroughfare, just half-a-block from the Terran Trade Hall. The Trade pictograph on the corner street sign read “Blueway cul-de-sac 12.” Below that, a board bearing the hand-painted Terran words “Avenue of Dreams” had been nailed to the post. Daav slipped down the slender way, Er Thom at his side.
A thick-shouldered Terran male sat on a stool beside the door to the casino, watching them with interest. He waved his hand as they approached the door.
“Hold it.”
As one, they checked, exchanging a glance. It was Daav who moved a step toward the doorman and inclined his head—proper, as it was Daav’s errand they were come upon.
“Yes?” he said.
The man frowned and jerked his thumb at the casino’s door. “This here’s a gambling hall. No kids allowed, by order of the portmaster.”
“I understand,” Daav said in his slow, careful Terran. “May one know the local definition of ‘kid’?’
“Huh.” The doorkeeper showed his teeth. It was perhaps, Er Thom thought, a smile. “A ‘kid’ is somebody who don’t hold a license or a guild-card.” The teeth showed again. “So, maybe you got a pilot’s license?”
“Indeed.” Daav went forward another step, reaching into his pocket. Er Thom moved, too, and put a hand on his brother’s arm, halting him just outside the range of the man’s Terran-long reach.
The doorkeeper saw the gesture, and laughed—a rusty sound no more cordial than his smile. “Your buddy thinks I’m a chicken-hawk.”
“But of course you are no such thing,” Daav answered calmly and held his license up for the man to see.
The hostile humor faded from the doorkeeper’s face. “First class pilot? How old are you?”
Daav lifted an eyebrow, his face set in haughty lines that reminded Er Thom forcibly of their mother. “Is my age significant? As you see, I hold a valid license. The portmaster’s word is met.”
“You got that,” the man admitted after a moment, and turned a rather more respectful gaze on Er Thom.
“OK, doll. You got a first class card, too?”
“I do not.” He showed his license, gripping it as firmly as he might with the tips of his fingers. The doorman sighed.
“Second class. How old are you?” He held up his big hand. “It don’t make no difference to whether you can go in—your friend’s got that pat. Call it curiosity. I don’t peg Liaden ages too good, but I’m damned if either one of you looks more’n twelve standards.”
Er Thom slipped his card back into its pocket, glanced at Daav and looked back to the doorman.
“I have fourteen Standard Years,” he said courteously.
“And I,” said Daav. “Good day to you.” He moved toward the door, Er Thom at his shoulder, and the doorman let them go.
Inside at last, they paused, blinking at the muddle of noise, lights and people. The spinning wheel was one large, high-ceilinged room; perhaps at some former time it had been a warehouse. The games of chance were strung out across the thickly carpeted floor, each surrounded by a tangle of players in modes of dress from dock worker coveralls to full eveningwear. People were also in motion, drifting between this table and that; still more were busy with the gambling machines lining the back wall.
In the very center of the room was a lighted golden wheel reaching nearly to the ceiling—the device that gave the casino its name. And the cluster of people around that table was equal, Er Thom thought, to the entire crew roster of the Dutiful Passage.
Er Thom’s heart sank. How were they to find one man—one man whom neither had seen before—in this crush? He glanced at his brother’s face and was curiously dismayed to find that even Daav looked daunted.
Er Thom bit his lip. “Perhaps there is a message board?” he suggested, almost certain that there was not. “Or a paging system?”
“Perhaps…” Daav murmured, almost inaudible over the din. “I wonder…”
“You kids looking for somebody?” The woman who asked it was Terran, tall and willowy; elegant in a red shimmersilk dress. Her hair was yellow—very nearly the same shade as Er Thom’s—her eyes a piercing dark brown.
“In fact, we are,” Daav said, making his bow as visitor to host. “We were sent here to find Rod Ern pel’Arot.”
For a moment, the woman hesitated, and Er Thom was about to despair. Abruptly, her face cleared, and she snapped her fingers.
“Is the week half-gone already?” This was apparently a rhetorical question, since she rushed on without giving either of them opportunity to answer. “The Scout, right? I didn’t see him come in, but it’s his day, and he hasn’t missed one since I’ve been hostess. He’ll be upstairs in the card rooms.” She cocked a cogent eye. “You know what he looks like?”
Daav smiled at her. “Like a Liaden?”
The woman laughed. “Sharp, are you? Yes, like a Liaden. A brown-haired Liaden, going gray, with three fingers missing off his left hand.”
Daav bowed. “I am grateful.”
“You’re welcome,” she said cheerfully and pointed across the crowded, noisy room. “You’ll find the lift over in the far corner, there. See where there’s a break in the line of bandits?”
“Yes,” said Daav, politely, Er Thom thought, if without perfect truth.
The woman nodded. “Have a good time—and hope the Scout’s winning today.” She swept off, the red dress swishing against the carpet.
“Well,” said Daav. Er Thom turned to meet his brother’s amused eyes. “Still game for the adventure, darling?”
“How could I beg off now?” Er Thom asked. “I’m all agog to meet this Scout of yours. Especially if he’s winning.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Daav said, moving slowly out onto the main floor. “It might prove more informative to discover him at a loss.”
Frowning, Er Thom followed.
It was rather like wading through a particularly sticky river, crossing that room. Lights flashed beneath the surface of a table where the dice struck, drawing the eye. Horns blared, uncomfortably loud, announcing a winner at a second table, and claiming the attention of all within earshot. The giant golden wheel in the center of the room clack-clack-clacked as it revolved, lights flickering along its edge, the wager marks a bright smear reminiscent of the attenuating light one might glimpse in the second screen in the instant before one’s ship entered Jump.
Er Thom paused, captivated by the effect. Gradually, the great wheel slowed, its attendant noises spiraling downward into subdued clack, clack, clacks, the wager marks discernable as individual symbols once more. Released, Er Thom’s eye fell upon the throng of bettors pressed up against the wheel’s table, and caught sight of a familiar badge on the sleeve of a jacket. He followed the sleeve up and discovered the face of Mechanic First Class Bor Gen pin’Ethil, thralled with anticipation, gray eyes pinned to the progress of the wheel, which clack… clack… clack…CLACKed to a halt, the lights around its edges flickering like a case lot of lightning bolts.
“Yellow Eleven!” someone called out—possibly the keeper of the machine, but Er Thom was watching Mechanic pin’Ethil, and saw his face change from bespelled to horrified.
“House wins!” called the keeper, and Mechanic pin’Ethil’s shoulders sagged within his crew jacket, then firmed. Almost stealthily, he reached into his pocket.
Er Thom went a step forward—and found his arm grabbed.
“There you are!” Daav snapped, bearing him along in his wake with embarrassing ease. “Here I thought you’d been taken by child-stealers between one step and the next, when all that had happened was that you allowed yourself to be caught like a rabbit in a light by that thing!”
“I didn’t—” Er Thom began a hot denial, then swallowed it. After all, it had been the lights that had pulled him to a halt. He had only seen Mechanic pin’Ethil after.
Daav pulled him onward, past the rest of the tables and the row of mechanicals with their attendant players, straight on to the lift-bank. He punched the summons, keeping a firm grip on Er Thom’s arm.
“You may,” Er Thom said, with what dignity he could muster. “Release me.”
“And have you wander off like a kitten after a butterfly and land in some sort of horrid scrape?” his brother inquired. “I think not.”
He was saved from having to answer this not altogether unjust assertion by the arrival of the lift. They stepped inside together, Daav punched the button for the next floor above and released Er Thom’s arm.
“Mind you, stay by me,” he snarled, which really was too much.
Er Thom spun to balance snap with snarl—and stopped.
Daav’s face was pale, his lips pressed into a thin line, his brows drawn tightly together—signs Er Thom recognized all too well. His anger melted and he touched his brother on the sleeve
“I hadn’t meant to frighten you, darling,” he said softly. “I swear I won’t stray from your right hand.”
Daav sighed and glanced away, then looked back and assayed a smile. “Very well, then.” The lift doors slid open, showing a sweetly lit room paneled and carpeted in the first style of elegance, the tables placed with an eye to discretion and art.
Most of the tables were empty. Daav squared his shoulders and left the lift, walking sturdily toward the table where three Terrans in local formal wear played piket with a grizzled man in scout leathers.
Three paces short of the table, at a position equal with the scout’s left shoulder, Daav stopped. Er Thom stood at his side, and recruited himself to wait.
They were fortunate that the round had nearly been done. When it was, the Scout excused himself to his companions, pushed back his chair and stared them both up and down.
“I expect you’re the Dragon cub,” he said at last, and none too courteously.
Out of the side of his eye, Er Thom saw Daav’s face go entirely bland, in an expression at once unfamiliar and chilling, before he bowed to the scout—junior to senior—the timing coolly precise.
“Daav yos’Phelium Clan Korval,” he said, in the High Tongue’s mode of introduction. “Do I address Scout Pilot Rod Ern pel’Arot?”
The Scout inclined his head. “You do. I hear you want a ride back home. Why choose me?”
“One’s instructor had recommended you as a pilot from whom a novice might learn much,” Daav returned, his voice colder, perhaps, than even the High Tongue required.
The Scout cocked his head in what Er Thom read as mock interest. “Now, here’s a puzzle. Who teaches you piloting? Boy.”
Daav drew a deep breath. “I have the honor of receiving instruction from Master dea’Cort.”
Both grizzled brows lifted, and the scout inclined his head this time with something nearer respect. “Well. And dea’Cort sends you to me.” He flicked a glance at Er Thom’s face, then looked back to Daav.
“Baggage?”
“One’s brother, sent as Captain’s escort.”
“Wants to make certain you’re in good hands?” His glance this time was longer; and he spoke directly to Er Thom.
“Well, Trader? Is he in good hands?"
Er Thom frowned, then bowed briefly. “Sir. I hear that my Delm has seen your name on the list provided by Master Pilot dea’Cort, which she then approved. How, then, shall your care of my brother be other than excellent?”
The Scout stared, absolutely still, then gave a shout of laughter and slapped his two-fingered hand on the card table.
“Dragons dice early, I learn! Well said.” He looked back to Daav.
“These gentles and myself have some business to conclude. I will find you in an hour at the main eatery, belowstairs. They serve a tolerable nuncheon. Tell them you’re on the Scout’s ticket.”
Daav bowed, and Er Thom did, too. “One hour, in the main restaurant,” Daav murmured, but the Scout had already turned away, and was reaching for the cards.
THEY PAUSED ON the threshold of the casino’s restaurant and embraced without speaking. Daav raised a hand as they let the hug go, and ran his fingers, feather-light, down Er Thom’s cheek.
“Keep you safe, denubia,” he said, light-voiced, as if he did not stand on the edge of parting from his brother—his second self—twice in one scant lifetime, and grinned with more courage than mischief. “Beware of idiots seeking to chain you to a dummy board.”
Er Thom smiled, matching Daav’s courage, then exceeded it, by taking one step back and raising his hand. “Keep safe, Daav,” he murmured, and spun, perhaps too quickly, on his heel and strode off, alone, across the clattering busyness of the casino.
Daav watched him go—a slender, yellow-haired boy in trading clothes and well-made boots, the sleeve of his jacket bearing Korval’s venerable Tree-and-Dragon—until he lost him among the tall crowd of gamesters. He bit his lip, then, and blinked hard a time or two to clear his eyes, then went into the restaurant and asked for a table overlooking the floor.
SHOULDERS STRINGENTLY level, Er Thom went across the noisy room. He looked neither left nor right—and most especially he did not look back, being wise enough to know that his fragile seemliness would never withstand the sight of Daav standing at the entrance to the restaurant, watching him safely out the door.
Clack… clack… clack—as before, the sound drew the ear as insidiously as the flaring lights pulled the eye. Er Thom allowed himself a glance to the left and up, observing the Wheel as it clack… clack… clacked to the end of its course and was still, dark, but for a single wager-mark.
“Blue Seven!” called the croupier, and flourished his wand across the betting table, collecting the losing wagers in a single, precise sweep.
Er Thom discovered that he had stopped walking and frowned, remembering the formidable list of errands he had yet to accomplish in the high town for his parent. He put one foot forward, but his eye had been caught, precisely as before, by the Tree-and-Dragon sigil on the sleeve of Mechanic Bor Gen pin’Ethil’s jacket. As he watched, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, his shoulders rounded as if he stood under some unbearable weight.
Hesitating, Er Thom tried to reckon the time that had passed since he had first passed the Wheel and its cluster of avid players, and then shook himself, crossly. What business was it of his, how a crewman on leave chose to amuse himself?
Bor Gen pin’Ethil placed his coin on the table, his fingers hovering near, as if he might at any moment snatch it away.
Er Thom frowned again, liking that round-shouldered pose of misery less with every heartbeat. He had been several times over the last months assigned to the repair bays, and more than once to Mechanic pin’Ethil himself. A gentle, sweet-natured man, Bor Gen pin’Ethil, skilled in his work and an able teacher, besides. The man who stood with his neck bent at the base of the wheel was as unlike Mechanic pin’Ethil as—as Chi yos’Phelium was unlike her twin.
Er Thom hesitated, and in that moment the croupier extended his glowing wand to the Wheel. Thick scarlet sparks flared wetly and the wheel began to spin, picking up speed until the rimlights were but a foggy smear against the far indigo ceiling.
Alone among the crowd at the table, Bor Gen pin’Ethil did not gaze, entranced, upward into the seductive flare of light. He looked down, staring, or so Er Thom fancied, at the place where he had set his coin.
Er Thom bit his lip. Clearly, something was wrong, and the mechanic was a crewman. His crewman, if it came to that; he being the yos’Galan present.
Mechanic pin’Ethil is ill, he decided. In such case, his duty as crew-mate and as yos’Galan was plain. He moved a step toward the man who stood, staring bleakly down at the table.
Clack… clack… clack. The Wheel came to rest, rim-lights darkening.
The crowd ’round the table sighed as one, saving only Bor Gen pin’Ethil, staring, steadfast, at his coin.
“Yellow Eleven!” called the man with the wand. “The House wins!”
Bor Gen pin’Ethil picked his coin up and turned away from the table.
The thing was done so deftly that it took Er Thom, with his attention close upon the man, a moment to understand what he had seen. Alas, the croupier’s wand was more observant.
It began to glow a steady and unalarming amber. The croupier raised it high over his head at the same time directing a courteous. “Your pardon, sir. A word with you, please,” at Mechanic pin’Ethil’s back.
The mechanic did not heed the gentle summons, but moved steadily away from the table. Heart in mouth, Er Thom plunged forward, certain now that something was earnestly amiss. Even he, the rawest of halflings, knew that a wager once placed upon the table was sacrosanct. The House had won with Yellow Eleven. Mechanic pin’Ethil’s coin, covering Green Eight, was forfeit, by all the rules of honor and of play.
He needn’t have hurried. The crowd parted for two tall Terrans in formal wear. One reached down and gripped Bor Gen pin’Ethil’s arm, holding him still. The second went to the table, carrying another wand to the croupier.
“Malfunction?” she asked, taking the amber-lit wand with a rueful smile. “Ah, well. A spin on the House for everyone.”
The croupier bowed and bent, reaching into his tray for coins to put into the questing hands of the players. Er Thom turned away in time to see the other Terran urging Mechanic pin’Ethil forward.
The mechanic balked and twisted, trying to break the Terran’s grip. He failed, which could not have been unexpected, and sent a swift, panicked glance about him. Er Thom leapt forward, the man’s eye fell upon him, and his face closed, becoming the calm, courteous face of an elder crewman. Deliberately, he turned back to the man who held him and inclined his head.
“Hold!” Er Thom had reached the mechanic’s side and stared up into the face of the man who held him, and spoke in rapid Trade. “Release him. We will come with you willingly.”
“Certainly, I will,” said Mechanic pin’Ethil. He drew a deep breath, looked calmly into Er Thom’s face, and murmured quickly in Liaden, elder crew to younger. “Halfling, this is not yours. So now, you should not be in this place.”
“These persons will want Balance, will they not?” Er Thom snapped, as if he spoke to Daav, rather than an elder. “Who else from your crewmates is here to support you?”
“No one, gods be praised,” the other returned. He paused before inclining his head. “Your actions do you honor, but you must believe me—you want none of this.”
“What’s the hold-up?” The female Terran was with them, the glowing amber wand cradled in her arm. She glanced over to her mate. “Who’s the kid?”
“I am Er Thom yos’Galan,” he answered, in his slow, careful Terran. “This man,” he used his chin to point at Mechanic pin’Ethil, “is of my crew.”
“He is, is he?” She looked briefly amused, then shook her head and turned on her heel. “People are staring,” she said over her shoulder to the man who held Mechanic pin’Ethil’s arm. “Bring them both.”
“Right.” The man walked after her. Perforce, Mechanic pin’Ethil walked with him, Er Thom keeping pace on his opposite side.
Calmly, the man never loosing his grip on Mechanic pin’Ethil’s arm, they walked through the throng of gaily dressed people. Er Thom searched the faces in the crowd, but saw no one he recognized. Apparently of all the Passage’s off-shift crew, only Bor Gen pin’Ethil found the spinning wheel to his taste.
They passed a knot of Liadens in formal evening wear, the ladies’ jewel-toned dresses echoed in the gemstones worn by their escorts. A flicker of black moved at the edge of Er Thom’s eye and he turned his head to track it, thinking Daav, thinking—but there was no thin, fox-faced boy in scout leather staring at him from the depths of the crowd. Only heedless strangers, intent upon their own pleasure.
Back toward the bandits and the lift bank they went, then turned sharply to the left, went down a short hallway and entered an office, where at last Mechanic pin’Ethil was released by his escort.
Standing beside his crewman, Er Thom heard the door slide closed behind them, looked upon the stern faces of those who awaited them, and wished that he had taken Mechanic pin’Ethil’s hint and run.
The next moment, he was ashamed of himself. Run, and leave a crewmate alone to Balance with strangers? Far better to have a mate at one’s side in such a wise. Though it would, Er Thom allowed, possibly have been more comfort to Mechanic pin’Ethil, had the mate who stood at his side been Petrella yos’Galan herself.
Their female escort laid the amber wand on the desk before the sternest face of all, murmuring respectfully. “Here’s the evidence, Mr. Straudman.”
Mr. Straudman neither acknowledged her nor glanced down at the wand. Instead, he stared at Mechanic pin’Ethil, his eyes cold in his pale face.
“Stealing, Liaden?” he asked, his Trade flat and rapid. “We don’t like to have people stealing from us.”
“I understand,” said Mechanic pin’Ethil, in a calm, if slightly breathless voice. “The error is mine and I will endeavor to repair it.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” the man behind the desk said. “We know just what to do with thieves.” He smiled somewhat, and Er Thom felt his hands curl into fists. He took a breath and moved forward one step. The man who had escorted them here grabbed his arm.
“Stop.”
Er Thom inclined his head. “Very well.” He waited until he was released, then forced himself to meet the cold eyes of the man behind the desk.
“I am Er Thom yos’Galan Clan Korval. This man is a member of the crew of Dutiful Passage. The ship will pay whatever fine is considered just and then we will leave. It is not yours to punish this man, though it is… acknowledged… that Balance is owed.”
Beside him and one step behind, he thought he heard Mechanic pin’Ethil groan.
The man behind the desk blinked, once, He looked to the woman who had carried the wand.
“Dutiful Passage? And Clan Korval?”
“Yes, Mr. Straudman.”
Mr. Straudman was seen to smile again, a habit Er Thom wished he would give over, and leaned forward, almost companionably.
“And your name is yos’Galan, is it? Well, well.” He looked around at the others, some of whom looked less pleased than he—or so Er Thom thought.
“It seems to me we have a profit on the evening,” Mr. Straudman said, and pointed his cold eyes at Bor Gen pin’Ethil. “Maybe we ought to pay you a commission, grease-ape.”
Mechanic pin’Ethil sighed. “Come, sir. Would you dice with the Dragon?”
“Not in a month of bank days,” the Terran replied immediately. But this isn’t dice. This is a simple sale.”
He looked at Er Thom. “How much do you think captain yos’Galan will pay to get you back?”
Er Thom stared, thinking that it was just like his mother’s humor, and his foster mother’s, too—to declare herself well-pleased to be shut of an irritable, irritating boy, and wish the cold-eyed man joy of him.
And perhaps that was the key.
He moved his shoulders, and showed empty, apologetic hands to man behind the desk.
“One has a brother, sir. I fear you would find the price not to your liking.”
The cold-eyed man frowned, and leaned back suddenly in his chair, as if Er Thom had made a particularly clever move in counterchance. Er Thom held his breath, wondering what the man saw.
“So you’re worthless, are you?” Straudman said eventually. “Why don’t we just call Captain yos’Galan and make sure that’s the case before I do anything rash?”
“Because,” said a bland voice behind Er Thom, “you will but irritate the good Captain, friend Straudman, and bring her eye upon the Juntavas. A poor business all around.”
The man behind the desk frowned, his cold gaze leaping beyond Er Thom’s shoulder. “The kid says they won’t buy him back.”
“He tells you nothing but the truth.” Scout Pilot Rod Ern Arot strolled into Er Thom’s view, then went past him to lean against wall by Straudman’s desk. “His brother is the one you want, if you intend to profit by selling dragon-cubs to the Dragon. This one’s the extra.”
“So, now what?” said the man behind the desk, for all the worlds as if the Scout were a trusted advisor.
The Scout moved his shoulders against the wall. “While it is true you are unlikely to profit by selling this boy back to yos’Galan, it is also likely that the presumption of offering him will gain you her attention.” He snapped upright. “Let them go.”
Straudman frowned. “Both of them?”
“A first class mechanic is something the yos’Galan will miss,” the Scout said simply.
For a moment, there was silence, then Straudman nodded and waved a hand at the room in general.
“Get them out of here.”
“I’ll take them,” said Scout pel’Arot. “It’s time I was back at station.” He moved forward, beckoning to Er Thom with his two-fingered hand. “After me, cub, And try not to trip over your own feet.” Which, Er Thom thought, was really uncalled for. Though it was nothing compared to what Daav had to say to him, some few minutes later, at the head of the Avenue of Dreams.
PETRELLA YOS’GALAN sighed gently, and folded her hands atop her desk. In the chair facing her across the desk, Er Thom recruited himself to await her judgment, the echoes of Daav’s thundering scold still ringing in his ears.
In the right hands, silence and stillness were potent tools, as he well knew, his foster mother being past master of both. Whether his true-mother shared that mastery he did not know—though he expected that he was about to learn.
His mother closed her eyes, sighed once more, and opened them.
“Since your cha’leket has exercised duty of kin and spoken to you frankly on the subject of endangering yos’Galan’s heir by choosing to confront the Juntavas planetary administrator in his very office, we needn’t discuss that further.” She paused before inclining her head courteously.
“I will say, first, that your instincts do you honor. Your reported assessment of Mechanic pin’Ethil’s state—that he was unwell—has been verified by the ship’s healer. I am assured that the compulsion to continue play once one has begun, to the cost even of one’s melant’i, may easily be lifted by the Master healers at Solcintra Guildhall. Accordingly, Mechanic pin’Ethil will be sent home for Healing.” She glanced down at her folded hands, then back to his face.
“I will, of course, write to his Delm. It would honor me, if the crewmate who offered him care in his disability would assist me in composing this letter.”
Er Thom blinked. He? Almost, he thought he heard Daav, laughing inside his head: Yes you, idiot, who else.
Hastily, he inclined his head. “I would be honored to assist, ma’am.”
“Good.” Another pause, another long moment’s study of her folded hands.
“All honor to you, also, that you chose to lend Mechanic pin’Ethil your support.” She raised one hand, though Er Thom had said nothing. “I know that you have said that there was no choice open to you in this; that your duty was plain, as the mechanic’s crewmate and as the sole representative of Korval present. However, it must be recalled that you are but a halfling, and it was perhaps not… quite… wise of you to go unarmed into an unknown and possibly dangerous situation.” She smiled, faintly. “I had said we would not repeat the course flown by your cha’leket. Forgive me, that there must be some overlap in approach.”
Er Thom inclined his head. “Daav was plain with me, ma’am; I’m an idiot child, unfit to be left alone.”
Improbably, her smile deepened. “Ah. Well, perhaps our approaches do not overlap so very much, then. I would say to you that those of the Juntavas are at best chancy and at worst deadly. Korval has an… arrangement… with the Juntavas, dating back many years—the appropriate citations from the Diaries will be on your screen at the beginning of your next on-shift. Please read them and be prepared to discuss them with me over Prime meal.” She did not wait for his seated bow of obedience, but swept on.
“For the purpose of this conversation, let us say that the agreement between Korval and the Juntavas is one of mutual avoidance. The Juntavas does not touch Korval ships. Korval does not interfere with Juntavas business. Matters have stood this way, as I have said, for many years.” She frowned over his head, as if she saw something on the opposite wall of her office that displeased her, sighed, and continued.
“The meat of the matter is that, despite this long-standing agreement, despite the fact that the Scouts keep watch—the Juntavas is not a safe host. That the gentleman you… spoke to… would have killed you out of hand is, perhaps, unlikely. For Mechanic pin’Ethil…” She moved her shoulders. “Mechanic pin’Ethil is not of Korval, though he serves on a Korval ship. The Juntavas is clever enough to use that distinction to advantage.”
His horror must have shown on his face, for his mother gave him another of her faint smiles before asking. “Tell me, my son, what would you have done if any of the armed persons in that office had decided to kill Mechanic pin’Ethil?”
Er Thom stared. Visions fluttered through his head, too rapid to scan, and finally he lifted his hands in exasperation. “I—something. I am a pilot of Korval. I would have done—something.”
A small pause.
“Ah, yes,” his mother said softly. “There is a long history of doing… something… among the pilots of Korval.” She smiled at him and in that instant looked the very image of her twin. “I believe we had best accelerate your defense instruction, pilot.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He inclined his head.
“Hah.” She considered him out of abruptly serious blue eyes, once again unmistakably his true-mother. “I would offer—as elder kin, you know—that we have all of us bid farewell to the comforts and the companions of childhood in order to learn our life-trades and begin to shape adult melant’i. I would say that—here is one who recalls the day she watched her sister walk into Scout Academy without her, and who later that same day was shown her quarters onboard the old Dutiful Passage. I assure you that the ache in one’s heart does ease, with time, and with the necessities of daily duty.” She raised her hand stilling his start of denial.
“I do not say that you will cease to love, my child. I merely say—you will become an adult.” She smiled once more, sweet as Daav. “With luck.”
Er Thom grinned, then inclined his head. “I thank you, for the instruction of elder kin.”
“So.” She glanced aside at the clock on her desk. “It is time and past time for you to be abed. Come to me at Prime, and mind you have those entries read.”
“Yes, mother.” He stood, made his bow and moved toward the door.
He was nearly to the door when he heard her speak his name.
“Ma’am?” He turned to find her standing behind her desk, slowly, she bowed the bow of honored esteem—
“Sleep you well, pilot of Korval.”
IN HIS YOUTH, fishing had bored the professor even more thoroughly than lessons in manners, though he had more than once made the excuse of fishing a means to escape the overly-watchful eyes of his elders, over fine, he had come to enjoy the sport, most especially on Delgado, where the local game fish ate spiny nettles and hence could be hooked and released with no damage to themselves.
It was an eccentricity his neighbors, his mistress, and his colleagues had come to accept—and to expect. Periodically, the professor would set off for the lake region and return, rejuvenated, laden with tales of the ones that had gotten away and on-scale holograms of the ones that had not.
So it was this morning that he parted comfortably from his mistress, tarrying to share a near-perfect cup of locally-grown coffee with her—the search for the perfect cup and the perfect moment being among her chiefest joys—and with his pack of lures, dangles, weights and rods set off for the up-country lakes.
The car was his other eccentricity—allowed however grudgingly by the collegiate board of trustees, who were, after all, realists. The work of Professor Jen Sar Kiladi was known throughout the cluster and students flocked to him, thus increasing the school’s treasury and its status.
The car was roundly considered a young person’s car. While fast, it was neither shiny nor new; an import that required expensive replacements and a regimen of constant repairs. Its passenger section had room enough for him, occasionally for his mistress, or for his fishing equipment and light camping gear, Not even the board of trustees doubted his ability to drive it, for he ran in the top class of the local moto-cross club and indulged now and then in time-and-place road rallies, where he held an enviable record, indeed.
The local gendarmes liked him: He was both polite and sharp, and had several times assisted in collecting drunk drivers before they could harm someone.
His mistress was smiling from her window. He looked up and waved merrily, precisely as always, then sighed as he opened the car door.
For a moment he sat, absorbing the commonplaces of the day. He adjusted the mirrors, which needed no adjustment, and by habit pushed the trimester. The sun’s first rays slanted through the windshield, endowing his single ring with an instant of silvery fire. He rubbed the worn silver knot absently.
Then, he ran through the Rainbow pattern, for alertness.
The car rumbled to life at a touch of the switch, startling the birds napping in the tree across the street. He pulled out slowly, nodded to the beat cop he passed on the side street, then chose the back road, unmonitored at this hour on an off-week.
He accelerated, exceeding the speed limit in the first few seconds, and checked his mental map. Not long. Not long at all.
HE GRIMACED AS he got out of the car—he’d forgotten to break the drive and now his back ached, just a bit. He’d driven past his favorite fishing ground, perhaps faster there than elsewhere, for there was a lure to doing nothing at all, to huddling inside the carefully constructed persona, to forgetting, well, truly, and for all time, exactly who he was.
The airfield was filled to capacity; mostly local craft—fan-powered—along with a few of the flashy commuter jets the high-born brought in for their fishing trips.
On the far side of the tarmac was a handful of space faring ships, including seven or eight that seemed under constant repair. Among them, painted a motley green-brown, half-hidden with sham repair-plates and external piping, was a ship displaying the garish nameplate L’il Orbit. The professor went to the control room to check in, carrying his cane, which he very nearly needed after the run in the cramped car.
“Might actually lift today!” he told the bleary-eyed counterman with entirely false good cheer.
As always, the man smiled and wished him luck. L’il Orbit hadn’t flown in the ten years he’d been on the morning shift, though the little man came by pretty regular to work and rework the ship’s insides. But, who knew? The ship might actually lift one day. Stranger things had happened. And given that, today was as good a day as any other.
Outside the office, the professor paused, a man no longer young, shorter than the usual run of Terran, with soft, scholar’s hands and level shoulders beneath his holiday jacket, staring across the field to where the starships huddled. A teacher with a hobby, that was all.
An equation rose from his back brain, pure as crystal, irrevocable as blood. Another rose, another—and yet another.
He knew the names of stars and planets and way stations light years away from this place. His hands knew key combinations not to be found on university computers; his eyes knew patterns that ground-huggers might only dream of.
“Pilot.” He heard her whisper plainly; felt her breath against his ear. He knew better than to turn his head.
“Pilot,” Aelliana said again, and half-against his own will he smiled and murmured, “Pilot.”
As a pilot must, he crossed the field to tend his ship. He barely paused during the walk-around, carefully detaching the fake pipe fittings and connections that had marred the beauty of the lines and hidden features best not noticed by prying eyes. The hardest thing was schooling himself to do a proper pilot’s walk-around after so many years of cursory play-acting.
L’il Orbit was a Class A Jumpship, tidy and comfortable, with room for the pilot and co-pilot, if any, plus cargo, or a paying passenger. He dropped automatically into the co-pilot’s chair, slid the ship key into its slot in the dark board, and watched the screen glow to life.
“Huh?” Blue letters formed Terran words against the white ground. “Who’s there?”
He reached to the keyboard. “Get to work!”
“Nothing to do,” the ship protested.
“You’re just lazy,” the man replied.
“Oh, am I?” L’il Orbit returned hotly. “I suppose you know all about lazy!”
Despite having written and sealed this very script long years ago, the man grinned at the ship’s audacity.
“Tell me your name,” he typed.
“First, tell me yours.”
“Professor Jen Sar Kiladi.”
“Oho, the schoolteacher! You don’t happen to know the name of a reliable pilot, do you, professor?”
For an instant, he sat frozen, hands poised over the keyboard. Then, slowly, letter by letter, he typed, “Daav yos’Phelium.”
The ship seemed to sigh then; a fan or two came on, a relay clicked loudly.
The screen cleared; the irreverent chatter replaced by an image of Tree-and-Dragon, which faded to a black screen, against which the Liaden letters stood stark.
“Ride the Luck, Solcintra, Liad. Aelliana Caylon, pilot-owner, Daav yos’Phelium co-pilot, co-owner. There are messages in queue.”
There were? Daav frowned. Er Thom? his heart whispered, and he caught his breath. Dozens of years since he had heard his brother’s voice! The hand he extended to the play button was not entirely steady.
It wasn’t Er Thom, after all.
It was Clonak ter’Meulen, his oldest friend, and most trusted, who’d been part of his team when he had been scout captain and in command such things. The date of receipt was recent, well within the Standard year, in fact within the Standard Month…
“I’m sending this message to the quiet places and the bounce points, on the silent band,” Clonak said, his voice unwontedly serious. I’m betting it’s Aelliana’s ship you’re with, but I never could predict you with certainty…
“Bad times, old friend. First, you must know that Er Thom and Anne are both gone. Nova’s Korval-pernard’i…” Daav thumbed the pause button, staring at the board in blank disbelief.
Er Thom and Anne were gone? His brother, his second self, was dead? Anne—joyful, intelligent, gracious Anne—dead? It wasn’t possible. They were safe on Liad—where his own lifemate had been shot, killed in Solcintra Main Port, deliberately placing herself between the fragging pellet and himself… Daav squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the horrific vision of Aelliana dying, then reached out and cued the recording.
“…Korval-pernard’i. The name of the problem is the Department the Interior; their purpose is to eat the Scouts. Among other things. One of those it swallowed is your heir, and I don’t hide from you that there was hope he’d give them indigestion, which he seems to have done, actually, though not—but who can predict a Scout Commander? Short form is that he’s gone missing, and there’s been the very hell of a hue and cry—and another problem.
“Shadia Ne’Zame may have discovered his location—but the Department’s on the usual bands—monitoring us. Listen to Scout Net, but for the gods’ sweet love don’t attempt to use it!
“Shadia’s due in any time and I’ll send a follow-up when she gets here. You’d scarcely know the place, with all the changes since your training.
“If you’ve got ears for any of us, captain, now is when we need you to hear.” There was a pause, as if Clonak was for once at a loss for words, then:
“Be well, old friend, if you’ve heard me at all…”
It ended.
Daav stared for a moment, then punched the button for the next message.
There was no next message. Days had gone by and Clonak had not followed up.
Daav shifted in his seat, thinking.
Desperate and under the shadow of a pursuing enemy, Clonak had found him. And Clonak had not followed up. Suddenly, it was imperative that Daav be somewhere else.
He flicked forward to the microphone.
“This is L’il Orbit, ground. I think I’ve got the problem fixed now. I’m going to be checking out the whole system in a few minutes, If I get a go, I’ll need you to move me to a hotpad.”
“Hot damn, L’il Orbit, way to go!” The counterman sounded startled, but genuinely pleased. “I’ll get Bugle over there with the tractor in just a couple!”
“Thank you, ground,” Daav said gravely, already reaching for the keyboard.
“Hello,” he typed.
“Go,” said maincomp.
“Complete run: Flight readiness."
“Working.”
So many years. His brother and sister dead. His son in trouble. The son he wasn’t going to be concerned with after all. And somehow the Juntavas was mixed around it.
Scout commander. Daav sighed, scouts were legendary for the trouble they found. The trouble that might attend a Scout Commander did not bear thinking upon.
The ship beeped; lights long dark came green. He touched button after button, longingly. Lovingly.
He could do it. He could.
He had left all those battles behind.
“Ground,” he said into the mike, the Terran words feeling absurdly wide in his throat, “this bird’s in a hurry to try her wings. Everything’s green!”
“Gotcha. We’ll get you over to the hotpad in a few minutes. Bugle’s just got the tractor out of the shed.”
Daav laughed then, and laughed again.
It felt good, just the idea of being in space. Maybe he could talk to some of the pilots he’d been listening to for so long—He grimaced; his back had grabbed.
Right. Easy does it.
And then, recalling the circumstances, he reached to the keyboard once more.
“Hello,” he typed, “weapons check.”
“I’M NOT A COMBAT pilot, either, Shadia. I think we did as well as might expected!”
The gesture in emphasis was all but lost in the dimness of the emergency lighting.
“I swear to you, Clonak—they’ve murdered my ship and if they haven’t killed me I’m going to take them apart piece by piece, and if they have killed me I’ll haunt every last one of them to…”
The muffled voice went suddenly away and the mustached man raised his hand to signal the separation. The woman shrugged and braced her legs harder against the ship’s interior, bringing her Momson cloak back in contact with his as they sat side by side on the decking behind the control seats, using the leverage of their legs to hold them in place in the zero-g.
“We bested them,” the man insisted. “We did, Shadia—since the fact that we’re somewhere argues that their ship isn’t anywhere.”
There was a snort of sorts from within the transparent cloak. “I’m familiar with that equation—my instructor learned it from the Caylon herself! But what could they have been thinking to bring a destroyer against a ship likely to Jump? You don’t have to be a Caylon to know that’s…”
Her gesture broke the contact again and the near vacuum of the ship’s interior refused to carry her words.
Shadia leaned back more firmly against Clonak’s shoulder, the slight crinkle sounding from the cloak not quite hiding his sigh, nor the crinkling from his cloak.
She glanced at him and saw him shaking his head, Terran-style.
“Next shift, Shadia, recall us both to put on a headset. As delightful as these contraptions are, I’d like us to be able to converse as if we weren’t halflings in the first throes of puppy-heart.”
She laughed gently, then quite seriously asked, “So you think we’ll have a next shift, at least? No one on our trail?”
He sighed, this time turning to look her full in the face.
“Shadia, my love, I doubt not that all is confusion at Nev’Lorn, The bat is out of the bag, as they say, and I suspect the invaders have found themselves surprised and disadvantaged.”
He nodded into the dimness, eyes now seeing the situation they’d left behind so suddenly when the Department of Interior attacked them.
“The ship most likely to have followed was closing stupidly when last we saw it—closing into your fire as well as the sphere of the Jump effect of the hysteresis of our maneuvers. They would have been with us within moments, I think, if they had come through with us.”
Clonak gestured as expansively as the Cloak allowed.
“Now—what can I say? we’ve come out of Jump alive, if we’re gentle and lucky the ship may get us somewhere useful. Perhaps we’ll even be able to walk about uncloaked ere long; with hard work and sweat much is possible. You will remember to tell people that you’ve seen me sweat and do hard work when this is over, won’t you, Shadia? When our present situation is resolved—then we will consider the best Balance we might bring against these murderers.”
He sighed visibly, used the hand-sign for “back to work,” with a quick undernote of “sweat, sweat, sweat.”
She smiled and signaled “work, work, work” back at him.
Clonak stretched then, unceremoniously lifting himself off the floor and away from Shadia. Steadying his feet against the ceiling of the vessel he brought his face near hers and touched left arm to left arm through the cloaks.
“Shadia, I must give you one more rather difficult set of orders, I’m afraid. I know my orders haven’t done much good for you lately, but I pray you indulge me once more.”
With his other hand he used the Scout hand-talk, signifying a life-or-death situation.
She nodded toward his hand and he closed his eyes a moment.
“If you find that, against chance, we are brought again into the orbit of the Department of the Interior, if they verge on capturing us—you must shoot me in the head.”
He flicked an ankle, floated accurately to the floor again, belying the cultivated image of old fool, and he looked into her startled, wide eyes.
“Just dead isn’t good enough, Shadia; they’ll have medics and docs. Do you understand? There must be no chance that they can question me. They cannot know what I know, and they cannot know who else might know it."
Clonak tugged gently on her elbow, and she uncurled to stand beside him, stretching herself and near matching his height.
His hand-talk made the motion demanding assent; she responded in query, his in denial… and he leaned toward her until cloaks touched again.
“I know, Shadia, neither of us were raised to be combat pilots. It is thrust upon us both as Scouts and as pilots. My melant’i is exceedingly clear in this. I can tell you only one thing right now—and little enough it is to Balance my order, I know.”
Her hand signaled query again and his flicked the repeated ripple that normally would signify a humorous “all right, all right, already…”
“What I know,” he said into his cloak and through the double crinkly life-skins to her ears, “is the name of the pilot they are afraid of. And having made this one pilot their enemy, they now must be the enemy of us all.”
THE MATH WAS easy enough, if not quite exact, There were a dozen Momson Cloaks per canister; each of the two installed canisters had eleven left. There were two replacement canisters, and a backup. The emergency kit built into each of the conning seats held a pair of individual Cloaks, as well, out of an original eight eights to start there were now five dozen and two to go.
Math is a relentless discipline: It took Shadia down the rest of the path almost automatically. Each Cloak was designed to last an average sized Terran just over 24 hours—Momson Cloaks were, after all, standard issue devices on cruise ships plying the crowded space of the Terran home system—but they were conservatively rated at 30 hours by the Scouts.
Perhaps 40 standard days then, Shadia thought, if usage was equal and none of the units bad, if…
She saw the flutter of a hand at the edge of her vision as Clonak signaled for attention; he leaned forward and they touched shoulders as he spoke:
“Not as bad as all that, Shadia—we’ve got some ship stores too, and the spacesuits themselves, if need be, and there might be a way to…” She glanced at him sharply and he pointed toward her right hand.
“I’m not a wizard, child. You were counting out loud.”
Shadia rolled her eyes. It was true. She’d been waiting for the battery powered gyroscope in the auxiliary star-field scope to stabilize with half her mind and with the other half she’d been doing math on her hand.
She bowed carefully amid a sea-noise of crinkling. “Thank you for your notice,” she said formally, while her free hand chuckled out the sign for “Why me?”
His reply in finger-talk, also with the underlying ripple of a chuckle, was simply “Breath’s duty.” He pulled away, a rough-trimmed wire conduit clutched carefully through the transparent Momson Cloak, and floated toward the open overhead panel, Shadia likewise turned back to her task in progress.
The ship’s tiny forward viewports were automatically sealed by Jump run-up; they were blind unless they could get power back to those motors or use the auxiliary scope to see straight away from the ship.
And now the star-field scope was stable enough to run: Despite Clonak’s protestations, he’d managed to perform wizard’s work on the back-up electrical system and the device was ready to operate. It was not what one might hope to be using to determine one’s position after an interrupted Jump-run, but she’d used less in training.
As she bent to the scope she sighed a breath—and then another. Breath’s Duty, indeed. Every child on Liad was made by stern Delm or fond grandfather to memorize the passage, which had come virtually unchanged through countless revisions of the code, unbidden, portions came to her now, recalled in the awkward rhythms of childish singsong.
“Breath’s duty is to breathe for the clan as the clan allows, Breath’s duty is to breathe the body whole, Breath’s duty is to plan for the clan’s increase, Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told, Breath’s duty is to…”
Carefully, she adjusted the star-field scope. To be useful, she needed to recognize any of the several dozen common Guides—her usual choice was the brilliant blue-white Quarter main giganova—or find a star within disc-view. Disc-view, of course, was optimum. With the auxiliary scope even a basic scan could take a day.
“Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told,” she muttered, and noted the gyroscope’s base setting. There were a lot of degrees of space to cover, and time moved on.
IT WAS L’IL ORBIT and not Ride The Luck that docked at Delgado’s smallest general-flight orbiting docks; and Professor Jen Sar Kiladi it was who made a series of transfers to and from accounts long held in reserve. The shuttle trip to the larger commercial center, as well as the various library connections and downloads, were made by a student invented some years before by the professor; and the tools purchased at the local pawn establishment were paid for, in cash, by a man with a brash Aus-Terran accent and super-thin gloves.
“I’m here to fix your nerligig,” the little man told the morning guy behind the bar.
“Is it broke?” the bartender wondered. The device sat in its place, motionless—but it was always motionless at this time of the day, local ordinance requiring the solemn six Hours of Dawn to match that of the spiritual city Querna on the planet below.
“Repair order!” said the man, vaguely Aus, waving a flimsy in the air and lugging his kit with him. “I’m good, I’m expensive, and I’m on my night differential.”
He looked like one of those semi-retired types; just the kind of guy who’d know how to keep an antique nerligig running.
The bartender shrugged, waved the man and his tools toward the ailing equipment, and poured a legal drink into one glass and its twin into another then gave them both to the customer at the end of the bar.
“Hey, asked for one drink—right?”
“Solemn six, bud! can’t sell youse that much in one glass this time of the day…”
The repairman shook his head, set up his tools, adroitly removed the wachmalog and the bornduggle from the nerligig, and waited patiently for the boss.
The boss was a heavyset Terran, and he traveled today with three guards. He came in looking tired and his guards swept by, checking out the patrons, glancing at the bartender, reconnoitering the restrooms…
It was the boss who saw the nerligig guy, professionally polishing one of the inner gimbag joints.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
The guy glanced at him out of serious dark eyes. “Time to do scheduled maintenance.”
The boss grimaced, but gave the correct reply.
“I don’t need nothing fancy today.”
“Dollar’s greener when you do,” said the man, polishing away.
“’At’s awful old.”
The repairman looked up, eyes steady—
“I only come out at night, you know.”
The boss looked at the bartender, sighed, and watched his guards stand importantly around the bar for a moment.
“You cost me some help today,” he said finally, turning back to the nerligig guy.
The man shrugged.
“Good help is hard to find. Better you know before there’s a life in it.”
The boss sighed again, and waved the repair guy toward his office.
“C’mon back.”
The office was sparely appointed; a working place and not a showplace. Daav took a supple leather chair for himself, nodding at its agreeability. The boss sat in his own chair, rubbed his face with his left hand and gestured at his visitor with his right.
“What’s your pleasure?”
Daav opened his hands slightly with a half-shrug.
“Information. About that message…” The message that shouted the name of Val Con yos’Phelium to all with ears to hear, near-space and far. The message that had shaken him out of his professorial Balancing and brought him into the office of a Juntavas, seeking news.
The boss pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.
“Yeah, I figure every quiet hand in the universe will want to know about that. I think it’s the first time the damned ‘danger tree’ was really used…”
Daav sat quietly, watching the man’s tired face. No effort to hide how he felt—Daav’s greeting, as old as it was, was one recognized by Juntavas on many worlds. The short form was: Help this person, he has a right to it. The person in question might be a retired sector boss, an assassin on the way to or from a run—or the whole charade could simply be a test of loyalty.
“What do you need to know?” asked the boss. “What’s the aim?”
“Everything you know. I am, let us say, a specialist in people. I can hide them and I can find them. As may be required. I’ll need the background as deep as it goes.”
The boss man gave a snort.
“I bet you can hide ’em. Standing in my own front room with a whole bag of equipment like you own the place and my guards probably can’t tell me the color of your hair or what kind of shoes you wear. Damn smooth….” He shook his head in admiration, sighed, and went on, looking straight at Daav.
“Where we are is that there’s been—a change of administration. Some of this is official and some’s not…”
Daav looked on with polite interest, no change on his face.
The boss nodded. “Right. He was asking for it if anyone was, but anyhow, politics aside, we have a Chairman Pro Tem right now, seeing how the Chairman was knifed in his own office by a Clutch turtle.”
Daav leaned forward a bit, cocking his head to one side in respectful query.
“Me too! Not what somebody’d expect. A bomb maybe, poison, even just a quiet step-down ’cause somebody had the best of him after all—but no. A pair of Clutch turtles waltzed into his office, had an argument with him, and took him out.”
The man’s gaze had strayed to his desktop; he looked up, frowning.
“The official thing is—straight from Chair Pro Tem!—that there was a busted deal, resulting from a misunderstanding, and that the former Chairman had made the mistake of threatening a T’carais with a shell-buster.”
“With the result that, in defense of his or her superior, a minion used a knife,” Daav murmured into the short silence.
The boss looked impressed, but Daav continued. “Perhaps better for all concerned: Most turtles would merely have bitten his head off, or crushed his spine…”
The boss blanched, but waved a hand and went on.
“Yeah, well, could have been. Unofficial news is that this turtle crew had come to visit twice; got themselves locked into the Chairman’s office and cut their way out through the blast wall with a knife after busting about a thousand gems, and then he had the nerve to try a fast one. Apparently these turtles are the knife clan or something—famous. And by the time the blood’s cleaned up, the Chairman Pro Tern finds out the fuss is all about two people.”
“That would be the individuals mentioned in the whisper for all worlds…” Daav suggested.
The boss smiled wanly.
“Yes, that’s them. The turtles—this is official!—claim them to be ‘a brother and sister of the Spearmaker’s Den’ who must be returned unharmed or self-declared free and safe.”
Daav looked into the ceiling, momentarily lost in thought. When he looked back, the boss was reaching into a desk drawer for a candy.
“What, may I ask, is the or?”
The boss looked grim.
“The or is that if they don’t turn up safe the Juntavas will be wiped out, starting at the top. This is a promise.”
Daav leaned forward, raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully.
“This is,” he said after a moment, “a very, very serious problem. No one has ever heard of a clutch turtle lying, certainly no one has ever heard of a clutch turtle or clan breaking a promise. Even I might not be able to hide well enough if the Clutch knew me for an enemy.”
The boss snorted again, apparently swallowing his candy whole.
“Right. And so what I have going on, starting about the time you walk out the front door here, is a block-by-block search of every Juntavas holding on Delgado, looking for two of the damnedest trouble-makers you’ve ever heard of.”
Daav, very interested, waved his hand, asking for more information.
“Yeah, OK. One is a First-In Scout Commander! Good, right? Get in the face of somebody who can talk clutch to the clutch and just happens to have saved one from a dragon. You know, a nobody, a pushover. Then the other one is a Merc-turned-bodyguard, lived through Klamath and got on—and off!—Cloud.”
Daav let out a low whistle. “Do you know how many people lived through Klamath?”
The boss shrugged, tapped his desk. “That’s probably in my notes. I got more notes than you can stuff in a garbage can already about this.” He broke, searched his desktop, pulled up a flimsy image-flat, and flipped it, casually and quite accurately, to the man in the chair.
Daav listened with half-an-ear as the boss went on—the while eyes measured the photos of his son and his son’s companion.
“Getting off Klamath earns you a lifetime ‘I’m tough’ badge or something. But—this is where we come in—these two started a firefight, in broad daylight, I guess—between the local Juntavas and the city police in Econsey, back there on Lufkit, just to cover their getaway after they robbed the boyfriend of the local boss’ daughter. Then, they managed to get off-planet while the place was under total lock-down, with everybody from the chief of planetary police down to the nightclub bouncer looking for them, and make a leisurely departure from Prime Station in a Clutch spaceship.”
Daav continued to look interested, slowly shaking his head as he listened, still taking in the no-nonsense, rather ordinary appearance of both of the missing. A master mercenary who had survived Klamath might be just the person to balance a scout commander, he thought.
“Story gets muddled about here,” the boss was continuing, “but somehow the local capo managed to grab them. Then he gets the news he can’t do anything to them. So he sets them off in a spaceship that’s been in some kind of a fight and can’t go nowhere. Word comes down to make sure these two are really in one piece and to hold ’em, pending the Chairman Pro Tem’s personal visit. He goes back…”
Daav didn’t have to fake the laugh.
“What could he have been thinking?” he asked. “To leave a—what was it, First-In Scout Commander?—in a spaceship and expect it not to go away?”
The boss was nodding now and gestured with the piece of candy in his left hand.
“You got it. Exactly how it was. They were gone, the ship was gone and ain’t nobody heard nothing about any of ’em since. So now I got to check Delgado and…”
Daav raised a palm.
“Please,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be overly concerned. You’ll want to do standard checks on passenger lists and such; but the people you are hunting are not likely to hide out on Delgado. Even if they’ve been here, do you think a hardened merc and a First-In Scout are going to set themselves up as shopkeepers or bean-farmers?”
Before the boss could answer Daav stood, demanding a suppleness from his body he did not feel.
“I’ll need the name of the new chairman, copies of whatever transmissions you may have, details of the former location of the missing ship—dupes of your images, as well—and I’ll be on my way. Also, I have some things for you…” He waved toward the back wall of the office and the bar beyond.
“First, the taller of your security guards stole several of your bartender’s tips, and was helping herself to the packaged snacks. That can’t be good for your business.”
The boss snorted. “Just color them gone. Hey, you’re good at what you do—but that don’t mean they shouldn’t have seen you!”
Daav nodded agreeably. “Also, you’ll want to get an explosives expert in here. There’s a small package I disconnected and took out of the nerligig—it looks like it might have been connected about six or seven dozen years ago. It may no longer be dangerous, or it may be unstable. In any case, as I am sure you understand, I hesitate to take it with me.”
The boss rubbed his forehead and nodded.
“We’ll dupe your info for you—and in the meantime I’ll call in a specialist.”
“Thank you,” said Daav and went back to the bar to put his tools away, all the while amazed that a phrase learned so long ago and so far away was still potent enough to make a Juntava jump.
CABIN PRESSURE WAS at one-tenth normal, which should have been counted as good; it signified that Clonak’s work was paying off.
Alas, Shadia did not much feel like cheering. She sat lightly webbed to the command chair, patiently doing hours of work by hand and eye that an online computer might do in a blink.
Clonak had left her to the recognition search while he worked on what he called “housekeeping.” Housekeeping entailed using a small bubble-bottle to find the worst of the leaks and then seal them with the quick-patch sit.
As for her work, so far she had only three possibles and one probable. Dust in the outer fringes of the Nev’Lorn cluster made some of the IDs difficult and she’d not yet found a near opaque patch or two that might also help her…
“Shadia?”
The sound reached her, distorted and distant.
Clonak stood behind her, almost an arm’s length away, beckoning her toward a portable monitor hooked to a test-kit. With his other hand he seemed to be fighting a control.
Indeed, the air pressure was building ever so slightly.
Noting her spot, she locked the star-field scope; by the time she got to him he was using both hands on the control. He yelled at her again through the sack-like Cloak; she could barely hear him.
“Please tell me what you see. I’m not sure this will work for long!”
What she saw, besides Clonak wrestling with a wire-filled metal tube, was devastation. The grainy monitor was showing her what would normally be her Screen Five, inspection view.
“The rear portside airfoils are gone,” she yelled, schooling her voice to the give the information as dispassionately as possible. “There is damage into the hull; I can see a nozzle—likely it’s one of the wing nitrogen thrusters, still attached to a hose—moving as if it is leaking.”
Clonak shrugged, did something else with his shoulder, and the image shifted a bit toward the body of the ship.
Shadia blinked, disoriented. The ship didn’t have a—oh.
“The ventral foil has been blown forward and twisted—shredded. The…”
The image went blank as Clonak’s hands slipped on the tube; the Cloak vibrated with the buzz of his curse.
Shadia continued describing what she had seen.
“There’s no sign of any working airfoil components. There are indications of other structural damage. I can’t tell you about the in-system engines—the view was blocked by the ventral fin.”
Clonak sat down hard.
“That view was blocked by the ventral? Might be something left to work with if we can get some more power going…” His last few words were lost as he stared at the blank screen.
“Clonak, I have a feeling that the ship is—bent.” Shadia bent close and said it again, this time touching Cloaks shoulder to shoulder.
“Well,” he sighed. “That explains why we can’t budge the hatch.”
They both were silent for a moment; Shadia was glad for the slim comfort offered by touching someone else, even through the plastic.
The ship’s spine had taken some of the heat of the attack and the ship was out of true. The rear compartment—including the autodoc, the sleeping alcove, and about 60 percent of the food, was accessible only if they could force the hatch against the bend of the ship.
“We have to assume,” Clonak said suddenly, “that we’re not airworthy past the hatch; obviously we won’t want to be trying any kind of atmospheric descent if we have a choice—Might be missing some hull, too.”
He straightened a bit, leaned in to her and said, “Look again. I’ll see if I can force this to scan the other side!"
Her fingers answered yes, and Clonak began twisting the cable yet again. The image reappeared and then swung suddenly, showing an oddly unflawed stretch of ship’s hull and beyond it the fluted shapes of several nozzles poking out from the blast skirts.
Beyond that was a brightness; three points of light; reddish, bluish, whitish. A local three star cluster—
“The Trio!” she said, but then there was another light, making her blink
“Stop!” she yelled, the noise over loud in her ears.
Clonak let go and the image went away. Shadia stood staring at the blank screen, seeing the stars as they had been.
“We’re still in-system,” she said, putting her arm against his. “If the Trio and Nev’Lorn Primary are lined up…”
“We’re somewhat north of the ecliptic,” Clonak concluded, “with Nev’Lorn headquarters safely on the other side of the sun.”
THE IMAGE OF his son—and of his son’s partner—lay on the pilot’s seat along with the rest of the information provided by the Juntavas. Daav tried to imagine the boy—a pilot of the first water, no doubt; a Scout able to command the respect of a Clutch chieftain, who held the loyalty—and perhaps the love—of the very Hero of Klamath…
His imagination failed him, despite the recording furnished by the Juntavas boss.
The boy’s voice was firm, quiet and respectful; the information he gave regarding the last known location of his vessel only slightly less useful than a star map. The voice of Miri Robertson was also firm; unafraid, despite the message she’d clearly imparted: All is not as it seems here.
Yet, despite the image, the recording, and the records, his imagination failed him. Somehow, he thought he had given over the concept of heir, of blood-child. Certainly, he should have been well-schooled by his sojourn on the highly civilized world of Delgado, where the length of all liaisons were governed by the woman and where the decision to have or not to have a child was one the father might routinely be unaware of—witness his mistress’s daughter, now blessedly off-planet and in pursuit of her own life.
Daav picked up the flimsy, staring at the comely golden face and the vivid green eyes. A Korval face, certain enough, yet—there was something else. With a pang, he understood a portion of it: the boy, whoever he was, and however he had gotten into the scrape announced to the universe at large, was a breathing portion of Aelliana. Daav projected her face, her hands, her voice at the image of their son, but that did no better for him—what he saw was Aelliana.
The boy was only a boy to him, for all they shared genes and kin.
Daav sighed and laid the picture back on the pilot’s chair. Whoever the boy was, elder kin should surely have taught him to stay away from the Juntavas. He should have been given the Diary entries to read. Er Thom knew—who better? Er Thom should have—but Er Thom was gone.
And in the end the duty had not been done, the tale had not been told, and here was the result. Briefly he wondered what other duties he’d left undone…
He’d have to find Clonak. Clonak had later news. Clonak would know what needed done, now.
He sighed then, rewebbed himself, scanned the boards, checked the coords he already keyed in from some recess of his mind, and punched the Jump button.
THEY’D SLEPT FITFULLY in the unnaturally silent craft, each sitting a half-watch in a Scout’s Nap. What noises were, were confined to the Momson Cloaks and their wearers. The Cloaks had a tendency to crinkle when one moved, and though the upper shoulder placement of the air-pack made wonderful sense when standing, it required some adjustment to sleep semi-curled in the command chairs in order not to disturb the airflow.
The wake-up meals were cold trail-packs, laboriously introduced into the Cloaks through the ingenious triple pocket system, a sort of see-through plastic airlock. Since the Cloaks were basically plastic bags with a few rudimentary “hand spots” the process was awkward, even for two people.
First the trail-packs were located and then held in place with lightweight clamps. Then the outer pocket was opened, with one person pulling lightly on the outer tab and the one inside the Cloak grasping the side wall of the pocket firmly and pulling back. The pocket walls separated, and the resultant bulge had a lip-like seal that was pressed until it opened. The trail-pack went into the newly opened pocket, and the outside was resealed.
The second pocket had a seal at what Shadia thought of as the bottom; by bunching the pocket up from inside it could be made to open, and the trail-pack was moved into that part of the pocket, and that seal to the outside pocket pressed tightly; now there were two seals between vacuum and food. The inner seal, finally, was opened—puffing up the part of the pocket with the trail-pack in it—and finally the food was safely inside the Cloak.
Crumbs being a potential problem, the food bars were handled gingerly and the water squeezed carefully from its bulb.
While she ate, Shadia chewed on the problem of their exact location, with regard to Nev’Lorn ’quarters—and potential rescue.
While knowing that they’d not left the Nev’Lorn system was definitely useful, the camera-monitor wasn’t the tool for finding out where they were or, more importantly, where they were headed. It was impossible to guess how much of their intrinsic velocity and flight energy might have been transferred to the attacking destroyer, and they had nearly as much chance of being in a tight, highly elliptical orbit as they did in being on the outward leg of a hyperbolic orbit that would throw them out of the system, never to return.
Thus, shortly after breaking her fast, Shadia realigned the gyroscope for the auxiliary instruments and changed her search pattern with the star-field scope. Now that she knew which end was up her job had gone from that of a hopeful pastime to an immediately useful necessity. What they might do about where they were was another matter.
On the other side of the chamber, Clonak busied himself with another semi-disassembled piece of hardware, periodically professing himself or any number of other objects, deities, and people damned, stupid, absurd, or useless.
That she could hear these footnotes to progress clearly proved that the pressure in the ship was slowly rising, in part a result of the action of the layered osmotic membranes that made up much of structure of the Momson Cloak. The finely tuned membranes purposefully released certain amounts of carbon dioxide and hydrogen while retaining some moisture; heavier users might complain of the suit “sloshing” as the moisture reservoirs filled. Far from breathable, the external atmosphere made the Cloaks a little easier to move around in.
The increased pressure also made Shadia aware of an occasional twittering sound she couldn’t place. Twice she glanced up to Clonak, hard at work but doing nothing that looked to make such a noise.
The third time she looked up, Clonak had also raised his head. He caught Shadia’s eye and smiled ruefully.
“Not rodents, Shadia, with little rat feet. More likely we have micro-sand, scrubbing the hull down to a fine polish. This system has a fine collection of unfinished planets to choose from, I’m afraid.”
“Though actually,” he continued, “that’s not all bad. If the wrong people are looking for us we’re better off here than an hour off Nev’Lorn.”
“Should we use the monitor to—”
“I’ve thought of that, but really, the best use of resources is to continue with what we’re doing. I may yet get a computer up and running and you may yet find us a safe harbor.”
There were several distinct pings and another scrabble of dust on the hull then and Shadia bent back to her charting with a will.
DAAV WOKE WITH a start, certain someone had called his name. About him the ship purred a quiet purr of circulators and the twin boards were green at every mark. The Jump-clock showed he had enough time for breakfast and exercise before he arrived back in normal space. No matter what might befall, he’d be better prepared if he kept now to routine.
He’d been to three systems so far without touching ground at any. Izviet, Natterling, and Chantor were all minor trade ports, ports that usually sported a small training contingent of Scouts making use of the nearby space.
At Izviet a ship a few years out of mode coming from a port rarely heard from was barely gossip, still he’d had the ship come in as L’il Orbit, maintaining his professorship as well. The cycle was off—there were no scouts training near the spectacular multi-mooned and multi-ringed gas giant Cruchov. Natterling’s usual band of ecologists-in-training were out of session; the wondrous planet Stall with its surface outcroppings of pure timonium had no company. By the time he’d hit Chantor he’d had a lot of news to digest, but there were no cadets practicing basic single-ship in that place, as he had.
Among the news chattered most widely were the rumors attending the Juntavas and their danger-tree broadcast. Some felt it was trap, aimed at netting the Juntavas. Others explored news-pits and libraries and invented great empires of intrigue: one of these stated that the missing man now ruled a system as a Juntavas boss; another said the merc hero had bagged herself a rich one; yet another swore the pair of them had turned pirate and were staging raids against the Scouts.
What was missing in all three places was the back-net chat he would have found in an instant in the old days. In the places he would normally have found Scouts he found nothing but notes, signs, recordings: on temporary assignment, on vacation, will return, in emergency please contact—Worse, at Chantor’s orbiting waystation Number 9, in an otherwise dusty maildrop he’d maintained since his training days, was a triple-sealed note with all the earmarks of a demand for payment from a very testy correspondent. The return address meant nothing to him but the message had chilled him to the very bone.
“Plan B is Now in Effect,” it said in neat, handwritten, Liaden characters.
No signature. He recognized the handwriting, familiar to him from his former life, when he had been Delm Korval and this man had taken hand-notes of his orders. Dea’gauss. He felt a relief so intense that tears rose to his eyes. Dea’gauss was alive. Or had been. He blinked and looked again at the note. The date was not as recent as Clonak’s news.
Plan B: Korval was in grave danger. He drew a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in his ear: “Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not caused this?”
The intership chatter had been tense with other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing spaceships, Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.
Daav had debated destinations. Lytaxin—world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be avoided with Plan B in effect!
He sat to board, finally, and having thought Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This was a destination only for scouts and the adventuresome curious; there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.
“Well,” Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the ship its office.
Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they arrived at Nev’Lorn.
SHADIA REACHED TO the canister overhead, pulling the red knob that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the old.
Now she reached for the blade on her belt and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly, stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.
She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the space dust on the hull.
Over in the corner, Clonak ter’Meulen, supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a scout issue spacesuit, breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had replaced his Cloak nearly a standard hour before and now sat immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward keeping the electronics intact.
More or less conversationally—the atmosphere in the ship having gotten up to near 20 per cent of normal—he bellowed inside his Cloak.
“Shadia, I hadn’t realized you’d spent so much time around Low Port…”
She almost laughed and did manage to snort.
“Doubtless, I hurt your ears…”
“Well, at least you’ve hurt my feelings.”
She looked at him quizzically.
Clonak glanced away from his work, moving his hand inside the Cloak to pull out a bit of paper towel and mop his brow before continuing.
“I clearly heard you ask whose, ahhh…. whose idea the Cloaks were. Very nearly they are mine!”
Shadia blinked.
“Are you Momson, then?”
“Me, Momson? Not a bit of that, at all.” Clonak continued, still busily taking the suit apart. “Momson is some legendary Terran inventor, I gather. No, but the Cloaks—they’ve only been on Scout ships for about 25 years. But then, I guess you could blame Daav yos’Phelium, too, for having the bad judgement to need a Cloak when he didn’t have one…”
“But I thought the nameplate says that some Terran foundation gave us the money to start installation….”
“Right you are. The Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation. But I’m afraid that’s my fault. They have a wonderful archive—at least equal to the open Scout collections—and I was looking for quick solutions. Headquarters was already moving me into this pilot support track I’ve ended up in, you see, and dea’Cort himself set me on them.”
“When it turned out that we didn’t need anything all that esoteric, really, the research librarian was pleased to hand me over to the so-called Implementation Office and they had me walking around in one of these things inside a day. I brought a dozen dozen back for testing and barely a relumma after I had posted off my thank-you note, Headquarters sent me off on a secret mission—to pick up a shipload of these things, complete with dispenser canisters.”
“Secret mission?” Shadia snorted. “They didn’t want other Scouts to know you were getting all the plush flights?”
Clonak chuckled briefly at his work.
“Actually, it was far more sinister than that. There’s always a faction in the Council of Clans that wants to shut funding for the Scouts off, or reduce it. Some of them don’t want us doing anything that might benefit Terrans, or they want us to charge for our work, or be turned into pet courier pilots for the High Houses. The idea that we might somehow be in debt to a Terran foundation had to be kept super mum,”
Shadia heard the crinkle of the Momson Cloak about her as she shook her head Terran-style and then flipped the hand signal roughly translating as “stupidly assessing the situation, them, as dogs might.”
One-handed Clonak replied with “Affirm that twice.”
Before Shadia could turn back to her work Clonak stretched himself, permitting his legs to float higher than his head, and held up a series of electronic modules linked by tiny flat cables. At the end of the cables were several tiny power units.
“Shadia, what you see here is the work of a genius.”
“Of course,” she said politely.
Clonak ignored her. “It’s too bad that I nearly destroyed it getting It out of the suit. I can see several more modifications I’ll need to make, and then a box-lot of paperwork once we are joyfully returned to Headquarters….”
Shadia sighed. “What is it?”
“A working transceiver set, of course! What else could it be? Now all we need to do is decide what we might safely say, on what frequency, and how often, for the right people to hear and fetch us away from this lovely idyll of shared pleasure.” He moved a shoulder and his feet sank deckward. “I believe we will need your location report by the end of the shift, and since I’m essentially done with this I’m available to act as your clerk.”
RIDE THE LUCK broke into normal space and reported that all was well. Three breaths after, the position report center screen was replaced by a tile of alarms and warnings as the meteor shields went up a notch and the Scout’s private hailing frequency was crowded by messages and fragments:
“… and Jumped out before I could cross-hair him; he definitely took out dea’Ladd!”
“… was destroyed. Have adequate munitions to continue search pattern…”
Daav’s hands touched the switches which armed Ride the Luck, brought the scans online…
“… have returned fire and am hit. Breath’s duty—notify my clan of our enemy—I have three hours of air, heavy pursuit and no Jump left. Tell Grenada I forgive the counterchance debts. Notify my clan of Balance due these…”
Scans showed debris in orbits that should have been clean, and warnaways at Nev’Lorn itself.
Into a battle had come Ride the Luck, Tree-and-Dragon broadcasting on all ID ports. No way to tell immediately how old some of the incoming messages might be—
Daav thumbed a switch. “Daav yos’Phelium, Scout Reserve Captain, co-pilot of packet boat Ride the Luck, requesting berthing information or assignment. Repeat…”
Before he was finished the second iteration he heard a cry of “Korval!” over the open line, and, fainter, “The Caylon’s ship!”
The chatter built and by then Ride the Luck had cataloged a dozen objects of note, including two closing tangentially.
On commercial frequency—responding to the ID no doubt—came:
“Freighter Luck, you are to stand by for boarding by the Department of the Interior; you are under our weapons! Repeat—”
On the Scout frequency: “Luck, Courier 12 here, I have you on my scans. I’m at breath’s duty, pilot! I have one salvo left before I’m gone, Get away and tell clan Kia the name of their enemy…”
Kia was a Korval trading partner.
Ride the Luck’s ranging computer showed the two potential targets and attendant radio frequencies; Daav touched the guidestick and clicked the red circle over one of them. The circle faded to yellow.
Still nothing from Nev’Lorn base.
“Give me my commission, dammit! Are you asleep!” Daav’s finger danced over the board: now he had the ship that had broadcast the duty message identified, and the one that had ordered him to stand by for boarding.
Again the commercial frequency—“Freighter Luck, you are under arrest by the Department of The Interior. You are to agree to boarding or we will open fire.”
As if to punctuate their demand, the Department’s ship fired a beam at courier 12, raking the little vessel from stem to stern. And, finally:
“Ride the Luck, this is Nev’Lorn headquarters, captain yos’Phelium, you are on roster for berth 56A. You are authorized to aid and assist in transit…”
“I have conflicting orders,” Daav spoke into the mike, both channels open.
The circle on the ranging computer showed orange now.
“This system is under direct supervision of the Department of the Interior,” came back the message rather quickly—they were closing fast. “Nev’Lorn Headquarters has been disbanded and is outlawed. Your decision or we fire, pilot!”
Nev’Lorn, five light seconds more distant, sent again; “Captain you have a berth waiting…”
“Department,” Daav said quietly into the mike, “I am taking your orders under advisement. You have the range on me, I’m afraid.”
The image of Courier 12 seemed to blossom then, as the pilot launched his remaining missiles at the oncoming Department ship. Eight or ten scattered, began maneuvering.
The target circle went dull red.
“Department, please advise best course?” Daav demanded.
That ship, busily lashing out with particle beams at the oncoming missiles, did not reply. The static of those blasts would have torn the transmission out the ether in any case.
The target circle grew a flashing green ring around a bright red center.
With a sigh, scout captain Daav yos’Phelium clutched the guide-stick and punched the fire button. And again. And again. And again and again until Ride the Luck complained about overload and the expanding gases were far too thin to contain survivors.
EVEN CLONAK’S GENIAL optimism wasn’t sufficient to approve of the ration situation by the time end of shift had come and gone six times, postponed by the simple fact that they still had been unable to achieve complete orbital elements. Between observations and calculations they’d managed to get the test circuit live to the in-system engines and they’d determined that at least a dozen thruster pairs were operable. They might actually be able to go somewhere—if only they knew where to point.
Thanks to the Cloaks the air supply was good for another 30 days. Food was another matter, since most of it was in storage lockers—if they still existed—in the sealed portion of the ship. They were stretching the interval between meals a little longer each time. At full rations they had food for six days; at their current rate they had fourteen.
“YOU HAPPENED BY at a fortunate time, Captain,” Acting Scout Commander sig’Radia was saying to him. “Not only did you rid us of the last of that infestation, but improved morale merely by appearing, Tree-and-Dragon shouting from your name-points, hard on the heels of rumors that Korval is… vanished.”
Daav gave her a grave smile. “Korval’s luck. May we all walk wary.”
She was a woman of about his own age, he estimated, though he did not know her. Obviously, though, she had heard tales of Korval’s luck, for she inclined her head formally and murmured, “May it rest peaceful.”
“How did this come to pass? An open attack on a scout base by Liadens?”
Scout Commander turned in her chair and pulled a stack of hard-copy messages from under a jar full of firegems.
“Some of it is here,” she said, handing him the stack. She seemed about to speak further, but the comm buzzed then; a Healer had been found for the Kia pilot Daav had rescued from the courier boat.
He gave his attention to the messages in his hand. Slowly, a picture built of suspicious activity, followed by conflicting orders and commands from Scout Headquarters and the Council of Clans, muddied by people going missing and a strange epidemic of Scouts being requisitioned—with the assistance of some faction or another within the council itself—for the mysterious Department of the Interior. Amid it all, a familiar name surfaced.
The commander finished her call and Daav held out the page.
“You may blame Clonak ter’Meulen on my fortuitous arrival—he having sent for me. May I see him? His business was urgent, I gather.”
She looked away from his face, then handed him another, much smaller, stack of pages. He took them and began leafing through, listening as she murmured. “The Department of the Interior had him targeted. He went down to meet a Scout just in from the garbage run—Shadia Ne’Zame. That’s when the battle began. They fired on her ship and…”
Daav looked up, face bland. Commander sig’Radia shrugged, Terran-style.
“The Department had a warship in-system—say destroyer class. They claimed it was a training vessel. They went after Ne’zame’s ship, fired on her. By then, we were fighting here as well—open firefights and hand-to-hand between us and the Department people here for training.” She showed him empty palms. “Ne’zame’s ship was hit at least once, returned fire, got some licks in. The Department’s ship was closing when she Jumped.”
Daav closed his eyes.
“The only wreckage we have is from the destroyer,” the commander continued. “There’s one piece that might be from a Scout ship—but there was other action in that section, and we can’t be certain. The destroyer was more than split open—it was shredded—no survivors. If it hadn’t been, Nev’Lorn would have been in the hands of the Department of the Interior in truth, when you came in.”
Daav opened his eyes. “No word? No infrared beacons? Nothing odd on the off-channels? Clonak is—resourceful. If they went into Little Jump…”
Her eyes lit. “Yes, we thought of that. Late, you understand, but we’ve had tasks in queue ahead. In any case, the chief astrogator gave us this.” She turned the monitor on her desk around to face him, touched a button, and a series of familiar equations built, altered by several factors.
Daav blinked—and again, as the numbers slid out of focus. As if from a distance, he heard his own voice ask, courteously, “Of your kindness, may I use the keyboard? Thank you.”
Then his hands were on the keyboard. The equation on the screen—changed—in ways both subtle and definitive. He heard his voice again, lecturing:
“The equations are only as good as the assumptions, of course. However, the basic math is sound. This factor here will have been much higher, for example, if weapons were being fired—missiles underway in particular would have altered the mass-balance of the system dynamically—
The equations danced in his head and on the screen, apart from, but accessible to himself. Moments later, when the acting commander played back the records she had of the encounter, Daav felt an unworldly elation, and watched again as his hands flew along the keypad, elucidating a second, more potent, equation.
That done, there was a pause. He heard Aelliana sigh into his ear and found that his body was his own once more.
He looked up from the monitor to meet the scout commander’s astonished eyes. She looked away from him, to the construct on the screen, then back to his face.
“Are you,” she began. Daav raised his hand.
“Pilot Caylon finds this a very worthy project, commander. You will understand that Clonak is her comrade, as well.” He sighed and looked at the screen. The equation was—compelling, the sort of thing a pilot could make use of. He pointed.
“Your astrogator is to be commended. As you see, we have several congruencies here. This one in particular, which relies on the orbits assumed by the destroyer’s fragments, gives us a probability cloud…”
The hands on the keyboard were his own this time, the schematic he built from his own store of knowledge.
“Very nearly we have two search bands,” he murmured; “one south and one north of the ecliptic, which of course are expanding as we speak. Clonak…Clonak is a very stubborn man.” He glanced up, meeting the commander’s speculative eyes.
“If there is someone you may dispatch to the south, I will search north of the ecliptic.” He smiled, wryly. “We may yet retrieve your Scouts from holiday.”
“Are you ready, Clonak?"
“I am, Shadia.”
“Your authorization?”
“The ship is yours.”
“As you say.”
They’d managed to turn the ship and align it. The idea was simple. They were going to fire what in-system engines they had to decrease the size of their orbit and bring it closer to the more traveled ways of the system. The first time they’d tried, nothing happened, and Clonak had spent another two days tracing wires as Shadia refined the orbit-numbers.
The other necessity was manning the radio, making certain that ship kept an antenna-side to the primary. They were on a round-the-clock talk-and-listen, and would be until—
One of the more raspy bits of space debris in some time distracted them; it sounded almost as if it were rolling along the side of the hull. There was a ping then, and another.
“If we’re in cloud of debris—”
“It doesn’t sound too bad,” Clonak was saying untruthfully, just as a full-sized clank rang the hull. Then came more of the scratching sound, almost as if the hull were being sandpapered or—
“Well,” Clonak said softly, and then, again. “Well.” He moved to the battery-powered monitor and waved his hand at the other scout. “Come along, Shadia. Let’s have a look!”
They crowded round the battery-powered monitor and Clonak once more turned it on and twisted the wiring until a connection was made.
The view was altered strangely with a motley green-brown object…
Belatedly, Shadia grabbed for the gimmicked suit radio and turned it on—
“Please prepare to abandon ship. This is Daav yos’Phelium and Ride the Luck. If Scout ter’Meulen is aboard, it would be kind in him to answer—one’s lifemate is concerned for his health.”
The hull rang, then, as if Ride the Luck had smacked them proper.
“Breath’s duty, but you’ve the luck,” Daav yos’Phelium continued conversationally. “The hull is twisted into the engine back here… If I do not receive within the next two Standard Minutes an answer of some sort from the resident pilots, I shall have no choice but to force the hatch. Mark. Don’t disappoint me, I beg. You can have no idea of how often I’ve dreamed of forcing open the hatch of a—”
Here, the pilot’s mannerly voice was drowned out by Clonak hammering the hull with one of his discarded pieces of piping.
It was Shadia who thumbed the microphone on the makeshift radio and spoke: “We’re here, Pilot. Thank you.”