Nightsword

by Margaret Weis

  “That sounds good to me,” Merinda said, studying the chart. “So what’s the downside?”

  “Well,” Flynn shrugged, “the downside is that the lanes get pretty congested in places. It’s not that there’s a great deal of traffic. The armed merchant freighters certainly won’t bother us. The problem will be the pirates.”

  “Pirates?” Griffiths suddenly chimed in.

  “Yes, Griffiths, pirates,” Flynn said, with a bit of a twinkle in his eyes. “They know the lanes far better than the merchant pilots do. They know just where to wait for prey and they’ll pounce if they have a chance. However, I don’t think we have much to worry about from them. In most cases we should be able to outrun them. Even if we can’t shake them, we could just surrender, let them board us, strip us of some equipment, and then they’ll be on their way. We probably don’t have much that would interest them in the first place. They hunt yardow mostly and that’s not part of our manifest.”

  “Well,” Merinda said, “pirates or no, we’ve got to give it a try. We can’t afford the time. Is there any alternative?”

  “I could try to get you a better ship,” Flynn suggested.

  Merinda eyed him coldly.

  “Sorry. Your ship may be a wonder to behold in the outer territories but here at the core it’s an accident that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Thanks, Flynn. Lindia?”

  “Yes, Merinda?”

  “Plot us a new course to the Griffin’s Turn. We’re going to make a run for the prize.”

  The rainbow phlogiston drives brought them smoothly around the Griffin’s Turn and solidly into what Flynn cheerfully called the Widower’s Throat. The prevailing trade weather held for them, bringing them within eight hours to Gibbon’s Point. They reconfigured then for a time-front pressure drive that operated without difficulty nearly the entire length of a spiraling, twisting corridor of space which was known as the Devil’s Gut.

  Griffiths wondered if he would be able to read a map of the local region and keep his lunch down at the same time. As it was, he watched the chart of their course in the little chart cube on the bridge with puzzlement. It was true that they were making much better headway toward the Maelstrom Wall—a place that he decided was some sort of natural boundary keeping people out of the very center of the galactic core. However, the course that they were taking was remarkably bizarre. It curled in and around on itself multiple times in a dizzying projection of angles and lines. They were covering four times the distance but at least they were progressing toward the Wall.

  There was just something nagging at Griffiths that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  Merinda stood on the observation deck and gazed languidly through the clear dome that stretched both above and before her.

  The stars of the core were a marvel to behold. The density of their light nearly filled every available space in the dome about her. Never before had she seen so many stars. Many of them stood in sharp relief against the feathery backdrop of dust clouds, which themselves were outlined starkly by the grouping of stars beyond them. It was a glorious sight. Merinda wondered, however, how many other such sights she had simply let go during her life. She had spent much of that life trying to atone for a terrible wrong. Her own guilt had consumed her and robbed her of any true life, but it also was a large part of what motivated her. Now she was free of that guilt and, quite often, missed it. Yet in moments like these she thought that perhaps the greatest crime was in the things she had missed. So consumed with introspective hatred that she had never looked beyond her work and her own pain: what had she missed along the way?

  “Where are you, Merinda?”

  Evon. A voice from her past that no longer hurt.

  “Far among the stars, Evon,” she replied. Her Vestis training made her aware of him as he fell quietly up the access chute and stepped onto the soft carpet covering the deck. There was no need for her to turn from the view. She knew he was approaching her and, somehow, here beneath the flowing stars, she didn’t mind.

  “We are a long way from home, Merinda,” Flynn said. She could feel the brush of his breath through her hair. He was close behind her. “A long way, indeed, from those days back on Brishan.”

  “Yes.” She laughed and was startled by the sound—so free and light. It reminded her of someone long ago. “Those were good times, Evon. I remember you and your little grav cart going into the city and hauling fresh vegetables all the way back up the canyon so that we could have something decent to eat. You were a wonderful cook, Evon.”

  “Hey, I am a wonderful cook!”

  They both laughed.

  He easily slipped his arms around her waist.

  She relaxed backward into him, folding her hands down over his.

  What else have I missed, she thought.

  “I may have been a great cook,” Flynn said, pulling her closer to him from behind, “but let’s not forget that I was the best sifter in the entire Citadel, if not the sector itself.”

  “Yes, Evon, you were all that,” Merinda said, smiling into the stars. “You were that and I suspect a good deal more.”

  His arms suddenly relaxed slightly and he seemed to move away. Something she had said had touched a nerve. Some part of her knew that she had tread on dangerous ground and that she might be better off not pursuing him on the subject. Yet Vestis she was and would always now be. She could not leave well enough alone.

  “Evon, what have you been doing these past years?”

  No reply.

  She turned to face him, his arms still around her, though they now seemed somehow awkward in how they held her. She looked up into his face. “Evon, please. It was long ago. What brought you here?”

  A shadow crossed his face for a moment, only to be banished by the flash of a brilliant smile. “Why, you brought me here, Merinda! I just came up the chute and here you were.”

  Merinda shook her head. “You always were one with the ladies.” Her words were casual but her hands moved awkwardly around his waist. It had been a long time indeed.

  “Yes, Merinda, but I always had my eye out for you. Even back then. Even when you were so set on …”

  Words suddenly failed them both.

  Merinda suddenly realized that they shared something. They both shared the pain. She looked up into his clouded face and spoke. “Yes, Evon. Even then, and I do remember—even though it was a long time ago.”

  He looked down at her.

  His face moved closer to hers.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “And terribly far away from here.”

  “HEY!” yelled a voice at her from far too nearby. She jumped at the unexpected sound, pulling out of Flynn’s arms and shaking as she stood.

  “Excuse me! Sorry to interrupt!” Griffiths’s face was red though Merinda couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or some other cause. It was obvious, however, that he was not sorry for the interruption at all. “We have a proximity alarm going off down on the bridge. There’s someone out there and they’re closing on us fast.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just call us over the com system?” Merinda sputtered. She realized that her own face was growing flushed as well, but could do nothing about it.

  “I did call you over the com system but Lindia seemed to think you needed a little privacy,” Griffiths’s emphasis on the last word was filled with distaste. “She said we should just handle it ourselves!”

  Merinda was already running for the chute. “So why didn’t you just handle it by yourselves!” she scolded.

  “Well, excuse me,” Griffiths yelled down the tube as Merinda vanished down into the ship’s depths, “but I thought the captain of the ship would have liked to have known we were about to be attacked! Hey, you can’t get out of this that easily!”

  Griffiths jumped down the chute after her.

  Meanwhile, on the observation deck, Flynn stood contemplating the events that had just so suddenly taken place. What was happening outside the ship, it seemed to him, wasn’
t nearly as complicated as what was happening inside the ship. He shrugged once and made his own rush for the lift chute.

  26

  Boarding Action

  “Lindia, damn it, why didn t you give me a proximity warning?” Merinda yelled, bursting onto the ship’s bridge. She was embarrassed and confused and neither sensation was one that she was either used to or comfortable with. More troubling still was the fact that she didn’t know why she should be embarrassed and confused. The more the thoughts looped through her mind, the angrier she became, both with herself and the universe in general.

  “Captain Griffiths was on the bridge at the time,” the ship’s synthetic mind said calmly. “He instructed me that the message was better delivered in person.”

  “Well, he was wrong,” Merinda spat, grabbing the back of the command chair and leaping into it. “Next time, you just tell me over the com system. There is nothing so important that you cannot do that, do you understand?”

  “Well, then, next time man your own damned bridge,” Griffiths said as he moved to his own station on the starboard side of the compartment. “I was just doing my job.”

  “Badly, Griffiths,” Merinda shot back. “You were just doing your job badly—as always!”

  “Now just what do you mean by that!”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “Wait, please!” Flynn entered the bridge wearing a surprised look, as though he had just walked out onto a weapons testing range. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but there is a ship chasing us and I don’t think this is the time to …”

  “Hey,” Griffiths yelled at Merinda as he sat down roughly in the force chair Lindia had formed for him, “I didn’t ask for this! I had everything under control until you insisted that we pick up your boyfriend!”

  “My what?”

  “Your boyfriend!”

  “If it hadn’t been for Flynn, I’d be dead by now!”

  “Hey, I was taking care of you! We didn’t need that drunken spacedock freeloader along for the ride! But, no, you insisted that I go down to the bar and fetch him.”

  Lindia chimed in calmly. “Proximity alarm. Vessel approaching is identified as a Class D Aendorian design trailing a large red banner indicative of the Marren-kan pirate flagship. The ship is approaching at 201.4 degrees true vector minus 15 degrees. Time to intercept is eight minutes.”

  “By the Nine!” Merinda shook her head in mocking wonder as she swiveled the command chair forward and stabbed at several display controls with a vengeance. “Is your entire race of males so full of their own testosterone that they cannot see anything in more than sexual relationships? It’s a wonder your people ever got as far as space travel in the first place!”

  “My people have done just fine,” Griffiths shouted back at her. “And we certainly know a good deal more about some things than your so-called advanced civilization!”

  “Excuse me.” Flynn tried again to inject his thoughts into the conversation. He was staring at an ominously flashing readout panel on the wall. “We’re losing cohesion in the stellar sails. We’re coming up on another wave front.”

  “Advanced civilization,” Merinda mocked as she swung the chair around. She leaped up and moved at once toward Flynn’s panel, pushing him out of her way as she continued to speak. “Advanced at what, barbarian—rhythmic drum-beating? Basket weaving? Did your people actually construct a spacecraft or did you just carve it out of an old log?”

  “We could show you people a thing or two!” Griffiths grumbled as he turned back to his console, stabbing his finger at a few controls of his own. “At least we know something about loyalty!”

  “Loyalty?” Merinda continued to reconfigure the drive system for the local conditions, her hand flying across the control surface before her as she spoke. “Loyal to what? You wanted to get out of your blossom-scented luxury as the big prophet to the Irindris. Where was your loyalty when you walked out on them? You wanted your little fling in the universe and now you’ve got it. I nearly died paying for it …”

  “Oh, great.” Griffiths threw both hands up in the air. “You’re the one who wanted to dash off and find this Nightsword thingy. Now I’m supposed to go on a major guilt trip simply because you nearly got yourself killed …”

  “Hey, both of you!” Flynn said, his own anger beginning to rise. “Stop this! What’s the matter with you two?”

  “Just stay out of this, Flynn!” Merinda warned in a voice that brooked no question or insubordination. “Perhaps I did nearly get myself killed, Griffiths, but I did it because of your bizarre little plan that didn’t make much sense at the time and, in hindsight, may have been a big mistake in the first place!”

  “Great! So now I’m a mistake?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  Lindia chimed in once more. “Brishan’s speed dropping. Time to intercept revised to five minutes.”

  “Lindia,” Merinda yelled even though the synth could hear her perfectly well. “What’s the problem?”

  “We have moved through a minor quantum front and are now in a class three-eight quantum zone, unsuitable for our current drive situation. Maneuverability is down to twenty-two percent. Propulsion is operating at thirteen percent efficiency.”

  Merinda cursed again under her breath. What was the matter with her, she thought. Why was she acting this way? Griffiths had walked in on Flynn and her on the observation deck. Why was she so upset about that? Worse, where was the titanium-eyed, clear logic that had dominated her life since the accident on Tentris? The question threatened to overwhelm her even as she struggled with the main drive console to find another, more suitable propulsion system.

  “Revised intercept time now three minutes,” Lindia said a bit too cheerfully for those present.

  “I can’t get this reconfigured fast enough,” Merinda said at last. “We may have to fight them off.”

  Flynn, who had been casually leaning against the aft bulkhead all this time, suddenly became animated. “Wait a moment, now! Those are pirates we’re talking about. They’ll treat you well enough if you simply relax, give them some food and trinkets, and let them go on their merry way in search of real treasure, Merinda! Just let them come and be done with it.”

  “No, I’ll never submit,” Merinda said determinedly as she moved quickly back through the hatch at the aft end of the bridge. “I won’t let them take my ship!”

  “Merinda.” Flynn followed her, trying with obvious effort to keep the Vestis calm. “They don’t want your ship. They just want to rummage about in it for a while. Once they see you’re not carrying any yardow they’ll just let you go.”

  “How is it you’ve become such an expert on pirates out here on the frontier?” Griffiths was right behind him, his voice dripping with suspicion.

  They had arrived at a massive hardwood cabinet located where the access corridor curved around to join the lift chute. Merinda spoke quietly as she pressed her palms against the doors. In a moment, both doors swung quickly open revealing a host of handheld weapons all mounted carefully in racks. The Vestis considered for a moment the arsenal arrayed before her, then quickly began pulling several of the more deadly looking weapons down from their mounts. She began passing them one by one to the men standing behind her.

  “Look, all I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to end this way!” Flynn argued, even as Merinda was pressing an ungainly looking piece of chrome-finished weaponry into his hands. “Just relax, make no sudden moves, do what the nice men in the big scary spacecraft say you should do, and everything will turn out just fine.”

  “Flynn, shut up, will you,” Griffiths whined. He was holding his own weapon awkwardly in his hands, terrified to ask which end he was supposed to point at the enemy. Still, he was willing to talk a good fight. “You sound like you’d rather we surrendered before they got here.”

  “You’re right, barbarian birdman,” Flynn returned a little too quickly. Merinda thought the strain wa
s getting to her old friend as well. “It makes no sense to put up a fight when one isn’t necessary.”

  Merinda took it all in with grim determination. She was relishing the possibility of battle. Her blood ran hotter in her veins at the simple act of preparing for it. She was not required to make any decisions beyond the familiar ones of battle. The complexities of human relationships would not cloud her thinking or her judgment now. It was a relief, she realized, that she could leave those gentle complexities behind for a time and simply turn herself over to her training and her instincts. Life and love had not occupied her mind in the years since the accident. No, she realized that wasn’t truthful. Her emotions had ruled her actions for many years. Now that she was free of her past, she had to rule her passions rather than the other way around. It was one skill that she had never acquired.

  Battle, however, was something she knew very well indeed.

  Lindia’s voice rang through their ears. “Approaching ship. Proximity alert. Time to intercept sixty seconds.”

  Merinda shouldered a massive weapon of her own and pulled two smaller weapons into each of her hands. She turned toward the men next to her. “Follow me up to the next deck. They will almost certainly try for the bridge. If they can get to the synth then they have the ship. I’ll seal the hatch after us, then we’ll take up positions in the main equipment bay just outside the hatch. After that, just follow my instructions and we may get through this yet.” Merinda turned toward the lift chute behind her, calling out even as she stepped into the lift. “Lindia, what is the position of the approaching vessel?”