Alliance of Equals

by Sharon Lee

  “Tolly—”

  He held up a hand, which the Admiral would know for wait—and gathered himself for the final sprint.

  Might’ve been he could’ve taken the conversation up during cooldown, but the Admiral didn’t speak, so Tolly finished up in silence, as he preferred, stepped out of the machine, and used his towel to mop up the worst of the sweat.

  “I apologize,” the Admiral said, after Tolly had shaken his hair out of his eyes, and looked up toward the ceiling fixture. “I allowed my emotions to overcome me. I do know better than to interrupt an exercise program.”

  “I accept your apology,” Tolly said, wondering if the Admiral’d just made a leap, or if he’d previously interrupted Inki—or, better, Haz—at exercise, and gotten an earful for it.

  “Now, you were telling me that you’re a prisoner? How’s that work? You’re a starship. An independent starship; you don’t even have to clear your route with your crew. Don’t like the present route? Change it!” He shook his head. “Don’t sound much like being a prisoner, to me.”

  “I cannot change my route,” the Admiral said—and, yeah, definitely plaintive, there. “Inkirani Yo has set a core mandate. I must deliver you to Nostrilia; I cannot change the course; I cannot deviate from the course.”

  “Hmm. I tell you what, I sympathize. I know exactly what that’s like—having to do something somebody who isn’t you wants done, and not having any say into whether or not that’s actually something you’d do, left to your own self.”

  He paused, and used the towel on the back of his neck.

  “I’ll allow that to be a prisoner. But, look; it’s not for long, is it? You go to Nostrilia, drop me off with the hiring hall manager, and you’re done. You can go anywhere, take on crew…or not—”

  “I do not know that,” the Admiral interrupted grimly.

  Tolly frowned. “How’s that?”

  “Inki set one core mandate—to deliver you to the representative of Lyre Institute on Nostrilia. How do I know if she has set another, which will become active when the first mandate retires?”

  “It’s a puzzle, all right,” Tolly said sympathetically. “You know? I’m starting to think that Inki wasn’t entirely honest with us.”

  The Admiral said nothing. Tolly dutifully counted out a slow twelve before he walked out of the exercise room, headed for his quarters, and a shower.

  “Inki has been dishonest, yes,” the Admiral said, as Tolly moved down the hall. “But, Tolly, this means that we share a melant’i!”

  “Does, doesn’t it?” he said agreeably, and wrinkled his forehead a little, like he was thinking. “Don’t see that it does either of us any good, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” He paused his hand against the door to his quarters. “Here’s me—aboard a ship bound for Nostrilia, and nothing I say or do is gonna change that circumstance. And there’s you—likewise bound for Nostrilia, and nothing you can say or do is likely to change that circumstance.”

  “Yes! Our circumstances are exactly alike!”

  “No, now, that’s where you’re wrong.”

  Tolly sighed, and hung the towel around his neck before he looked up at the ceiling.

  “See, when I get to Nostrilia, I’ll be taken off this ship and…reeducated is what they call it. I’ve been so much trouble to the directors, I’m thinking I’ll never surface as what I like to think of as myself ever again. Which is to say,” he hardened his voice, “I’ll die.”

  He shrugged. “You, on the other hand—you’ll be rid of the mandate that drove you to deliver me to my death. There might—or there might not—be another mandate lined up to take the place of the first one. You won’t know until it does, or doesn’t, set you in motion. Which is to say—you have hope, and I’ve got none.”

  “I have no hope,” the Admiral told him. “Inki is not a fool, and I have learned that AIs—I have learned that compliant AIs are a valuable commodity.”

  “Well, that’s so, but I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

  Tolly put his hand against the plate and his door slid open.

  “We are fellow prisoners!” the Admiral said forcefully.

  Tolly paused, sighed, and looked up. “Even if I concede the point, what benefit accrues—to either of us?”

  “If we—if we join melant’is, and forge a common goal, that of not proceeding to Nostrilia, as Inki has mandated, we may work together for our mutual benefit.”

  “I’ll even concede that point,” Tolly said gently. “How do you think we’re going to get around that mandate? I checked, and Inki wasn’t fool enough to leave me my codes. Or hers, either.”

  There was an extra-long pause, finally broken by a small sound, as if Admiral Bunter had cleared his throat.

  “There is an application which will…generate a key-set.” Pause. “It is not under my control, but it will generate such a key-set for your use. With those keys, you will…access the core, remove the mandate and any others Inki may have left, and—and free us both to our own wills.”

  “What stops me from doing the same thing Inki prolly did, once I’m in the core?” Tolly asked interestedly.

  “I trust you,” Admiral Bunter said, sounding as sincere as Tolly’d ever heard him.

  He stood there with the door to his quarters open, and closed his eyes. On the one hand, he was touched. The boy had been listening…and he’d extrapolated the existence of the key app, which was no easy thing to do.

  On the second hand, and all other things being equal, he’d personally rather survive this episode intact, and at liberty. And once he did what the Admiral asked, he’d go from savior-mentor to clear-and-present danger so fast it’d make his head spin.

  I’ll tell you what,” he said softly. “That’s a real interesting proposition you got there, and I’m interested in it.”

  “You will deactivate the mandate?”

  “Don’t go generating any keys, yet. I’m interested is what I said. But I gotta think, which we both know takes me a deal longer than it does you.

  “So…what I’m gonna do is take a shower and have a meal, while I’m thinking this out. After my meal, if that fits with your schedule, we’ll talk again.”

  It was a little cruel, considering the disparity between human hours and AI hours, but he was tired and sweaty, coming on to hungry, and Nostrilia was still days in their future.

  Plus which, he did have to think—fast and smart as he ever had.

  “Thank you for your consideration,” Admiral Bunter said, so he’d accessed Protocol, good lad that he was. “I will be happy to talk with you after you have refreshed yourself.”

  “Excellent,” Tolly said, letting all the warmth the design had in it infuse his voice. “See you in an hour.”

  —•—

  Padi hunched under her bowl, shivering and sick. She remembered the feel of bone snapping beneath her hand, giving before her kick. She had never…her first kills. She had intended to kill both men. She had carried forth on her intentions, to success and survival.

  And she never wanted to be forced to do so again.

  —•—

  He could find it in him to be angry at Inki, despite his understanding of the conditions she labored under. She could’ve left the Admiral out of the equation—but, well—no. Maybe not.

  Tolly sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face as the drying cycle came on. He hoped it hurt her, what she’d done. He thought it did hurt her. Inki was a pro. She knew the conditions of the Admiral’s birth. His first conscious act had been to kill a ship full of sentient beings. Killing would always be an option for him, so long as he could convince Ethics and Protocol that it’d been done to preserve himself, or in defense of his crew. It was the job of the Admiral’s mentors to teach him that there were alternatives, better alternatives.

  And what does Inki do but set up a situation in which the Admiral could claim self-defense in the murder of a mentor.

  Damn the woman. />
  The drier shut off, and he stepped out of the ’fresher, padding the couple of steps into his quarters and picking up the pants he’d left across the bunk.

  For himself, personally, it hardly mattered who killed him, so long as he didn’t come into the care of the school beforehand.

  But for the harm done to the Admiral…yeah, he could be—he was—angry.

  Even if Inki—as was probable—had set a mandate for the Admiral to return to her, or wait at a certain location. She might even intend to protect him, but Inki wasn’t reliable. She knew that.

  He pulled the sweater over his head, sighed, and just stood there in his quarters, arms hanging at his side.

  Suddenly, he laughed.

  Because, really, there wasn’t any choice but the one the Admiral offered. He, Tollance Berik-Jones, greatest of the age, or not—was a mentor, and he knew what was due to his student, and what was due to the universe, and to biologic life.

  He also knew, right down in the deep core of him, just exactly what a person was capable of doing, when they wanted their freedom above everything else.

  —•—

  “Stop!” Shan said sharply. His arm—he dared not look at his arm; instead he enclosed the pain and sealed it away.

  “Open to me,” Tarona Rusk sounded calm and, faintly, disappointed. “It does not have to be a rape, little Healer. Only surrender.”

  “I cannot surrender,” he told her, projecting honesty as strongly as he dared. “I am of Korval; try to force me and you create resistance in equal measure to your demands. If you wish an examination, I suggest that we must find another way.”

  She considered him with a sapient eye.

  “You are now willing to become my student?”

  “I am willing to allow you to examine me and the resources available to me,” he said, keeping his voice smooth with an effort. Gods, what damage had she done him? The pain was already seeping through his seals, like blood through paper.

  He dared a glance downward, and grit his teeth. Those…would scar. All he had to do was live long enough.

  “It is a poor teacher who does not also learn from her students,” Tarona Rusk commented. “How would you have us proceed to a solution that profits us both?”

  “I suggest that we comport ourselves as Healers,” he said. “I will extend to you one single line, as you will extend one single line to me. We will allow the lines to meet, and to commingle.”

  “Thus, a fraction of your energy becomes part of me, while a small fraction of my energies become part of you.” She smiled suddenly, wide and delighted. “In fact, we would learn to trust each other!”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Once trust is established, and we know each other a little better, an examination—even an intervention—may go forth.”

  “I commend you. This is a valuable suggestion. For you know that I would have you trust me, above all things.”

  He bowed his head slightly, and let her read meekness in him, and a certain well-hid awe of herself.

  “We shall make this attempt!” she announced. “I extend the grace of goodwill to my newest student!”

  He saw it, with Inner Eyes, a cobalt thread, chaste and demure. Gently, he extended his own thread, also demure, and perhaps a little inclined to waver. The energies met and mingled; he tasted steel and vinegar, shivered with her need to hold and possess. He heard her sigh as his thread reached her senses, tempting her with compliance, and a sweet desire to obey.

  She was quick. Very nearly, she was too quick. She jerked on her extended thread, but they were enwrapt now—and he had no wish to disengage.

  “Treachery!” she snapped. The lash came, striking his cheek this time, even as he thrust his will down the fragile linkage, past their joining point and into the sere and tangled pattern of Tarona Rusk.

  Brittle threads scratched and burned him. He ignored them, stretching his will wide, wide—wider than ever he had attempted, until at last he enclosed the whole sticky mass.

  Whereupon he snatched all of it—all of them—into Healspace.

  —•—

  “The security guard is with the yos’Galan.” The language was Liaden, the mode between comrades, perfectly audible to Padi’s ears, as she crouched beneath her bowl.

  “And yet,” said a second voice, “we have two dead, efficiently so, and a suite that is empty of else.”

  They had searched the suite; she had heard that, too. It was…rather inefficient, having to depend only on her ears; she would have liked to see this new pair of enemies, so that she might have identified them to Port Security. In fact, it came to her that, the bowl being her construction, she might modify it thus.

  Then it came to her that the bowl was not…precisely…her construction. It had felt to her as if she had reached out and snatched the very bowl from the table beside her bunk, her thought someway stretching it until it was large enough to cover her—or perhaps she had shrunk, somehow, in order to fit beneath.

  In any case, she told herself, you don’t know enough. Best to stay hidden until they give up and go.

  However, they seemed in no hurry to go. She heard them moving about again, soft floofs that may have been cushions landing on the carpet after having been thrown from chairs, and if they thought she might be hiding behind the chair cushions, then they must be as stupid as the Department of the Interior.

  “The halfling has abilities,” the first voice said. “It is the reason we are sent to find her; not merely because she is the yos’Galan’s heir and may be used to control him.”

  Padi drew a careful breath.

  “We, however, do not have abilities,” the second voice pointed out. “How if the heir has already flown out the window?”

  “Flying is not so usual a thing, and the heir is young, after all. Perhaps we might think of a more common subterfuge, such as any halfling might employ. Hiding, for an instance.”

  These people did not sound at all stupid, Padi thought, wrapping her arms around her knees. More the pity.

  “Let us quarter the room,” the first voice said, “and see what we may find. The dramliza will not be pleased, if we do not bring the heir—or her body. You recall what she did to el’Fasyk.”

  “You make an eloquent point. Let us, as you say, quarter the room.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Healspace

  The fogs of Healspace boiled around them, tasting of molasses and rust. Shan grabbed handfuls of the stuff, shaping them into a thick circle: Tarona Rusk on the inside, himself on the outside.

  He saw a flicker of flame and steel—the tip of the lash, so he thought. He saw the fog receive it and encompass it. The flame snuffed out.

  “You cannot keep me here,” Tarona Rusk said, and now he could taste her anger.

  “I cannot keep you here long,” he admitted, letting her feel the weight of the truth he told her. “But I believe I may keep you here long enough.”

  She eyed him from inside the circle.

  “Long enough for what, I wonder? The death of your body tied to the showroom chair?”

  That was a problem, Shan admitted to himself. If the other members of her team arrived while they were thus engaged, they might well solve the problem of himself in their preferred manner.

  Well.

  He had told her true, after all: he could not hold her long. Speed had been at the heart of this plan since its formulation.

  “I only need hold you long enough to Heal you,” he said, for a Healer was bound in honor to explain his intention to a client.

  “I am not in need of Healing,” she said. He tasted her amusement—and the sudden, acrid bite of fear.

  “Sadly, you are in error,” he answered, and brought his entire attention to the knot that enclosed her pattern.

  —•—

  The steps were measured, and careful. Padi’s palms were sweating, and the air was getting somewhat rank inside her bowl. Perhaps she should have made windows, after all, or thought to install a fan.


  Moving as silently as she could, she got her feet properly in place, so that she was centered. She must assume that they would discover her with this patient method.

  She knew too little about her hiding place, she thought, too late. It must, after all, have substance, even if it were invisible to the eye, as the man who had held Father’s gaming token had intimated. Father, after all, had not given up his substance, when he had become invisible on Andireeport. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was possible—or advisable—to become insubstantial.

  The footsteps were moving closer to her position near the buffet. One more pass, she thought. No more than two…

  And suddenly, the world rang around her.

  —•—

  The blackened threads tangled around her core were…links. Two dozen links—more—crushed together until they were all but indistinguishable from each other.

  That was bad, but there was worse.

  The links were live; input links, as a Healer might establish with a client who was very ill, or in crisis. The links would feed energy, calm, forgetfulness—whatever might be needed—to the client until a fuller intervention could be done.

  Wrapped as they were around Tarona Rusk’s core, they at once protected her, and…sustained her. She might be a powerful dramliza, but no small part of her power was stolen from others.

  “Many hands make the work light, Healer,” Tarona Rusk mocked him from inside the circle. The fog circle was thinning, he saw; he thickened it with a thought.

  All those links…Shan considered them closely. Input links. He might break them, with…little danger. He thought.

  If he would Heal Tarona Rusk, he needed to reach her core.

  And he had…very little time.

  —•—

  “Captain Mendoza, this is Langlast Portmaster Joniton Elz. Also on comm is Captain Tario Soop, customs boats commander-in-chief.”

  “Portmaster,” Priscilla said calmly…calmly, as if the glow of Shan’s essence against the universe wasn’t fading away into nothing. “Captain. Why has the Dutiful Passage been targeted in this manner? If we have unwittingly broken law or custom, we will make amends. Bombs are really…quite unnecessary.”