Not particularly surprised, now, Loreanna forced herself to shrug. “Yes, and . . . ?”
“Yes, and you are to immediately cease your purposeless meanderings all about this vessel, and in particular, in company with that half brother of yours. I do not care for him and trust him less. That to one side, Loreanna, Osprey is far too dangerous a place at present for mere idle recreation, and I—”
“You what?” Setting her cup upon the small table before her, she arose to face him, “Arran, I had meant this to wait upon a time of less difficulty than this, but since you have brought it up yourself, why do you wish me to be cooped up here, when I have helped you before with many a more dangerous task? What ever have I done to make you less confident in my abilities than you were before?”
Arran opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, looked down at the decking, then looked at her again. “I will not lose you, Loreanna, the way I—”
She placed her fists upon her hips. “The way you what, Arran—the way you lost Bretta? We have no idea what happened to Bretta, more is the pity, let alone who may have been responsible for it. I will not permit you to assume the moral weight of the entire galaxy each time something happens that is beyond anyone else’s control. It is . . . it is arrogant and presumptuous of you! And I will not permit you to treat me like a child, which is even more presumptuous!”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘assume the moral weight of the world’?”
Emphatically, she crossed her arms. “Arran Islay, you know just what I mean.”
And indeed he did, surpassing well. Despite what he had always believed to be an overwhelming weight of evidence condemning him, Loreanna had always believed—without a shred of evidence of any kind at all—that he was not to blame for what had befallen the Jendyne cadets. Believing that most of the time Loreanna thought “like a man,” Arran held this to be her single “womanly” lapse of logic. They had talked it all out many years before without reaching any particular accord, and this was the first time it had come back in a long while.
“Loreanna,” he told her, “I am the captain of this vessel, and your husband—”
It was not quite a pout: “Yes, apparently in that order!”
He threw up his hands. “Now what in Ceo’s name does that mean?”
“It means, Captain,” Woulf replied for her, entering the room, “that Loreanna has been lacking those comforts only a man can provide—but for no longer.”
“WHAT?”
Both Arran and Loreanna spoke at once, dumbfounded by what they heard and saw. Woulf, naked from the waist up and bare-footed as well, had come into the sitting room still fastening his trousers. His long dark hair was rumpled and the glazed expression upon his face spoke of secrets between him and his half sister.
“Arran, I—” Loreanna began, feeling her life begin to slip out of her control.
“You filthy rapespawn—” In a perversely detached compartment of his mind, Arran realized that it was the first occasion he had ever said this to anyone he knew it to be literally true of. He raised one of his thrustibles and pointed it at Woulf, as Woulf’s right hand slithered down to the handle of the scabbarded knife upon his belt. The scarlet blossom of Arran’s designator centered upon the younger man’s chest. There was a strange hunger in Woulf’s eyes.
“Captain!” The door slammed open again as Tompkins of the combat watch slammed to a halt. “We’ve got unpleasant company—a sixteen-gunner by the look of her, sniffing about for a trace of us and big enough to finish us in our condition!” Arran glanced back at Woulf, then at Loreanna, as a tortured look flitted across his features. Then he whirled and followed Tompkins out of the door.
“Why—!” Loreanna barely had time to get the syllable out. The last thing she recalled was Woulf’s street-scarred knuckles coming straight at her face.
“Your surmise is entirely correct, my dear half sister,” Woulf informed Loreanna an indeterminate amount of time later. With heroic effort, she swam upward into consciousness as if from the bottom of a murky body of water. The fact was that she had said nothing at all to elicit Woulf’s mocking response. Between the agony in her jaw, the appalling confusion of her slowly returning awareness, and a moldy-smelling kefflar gag he had forced into her mouth before beginning to tie her to the copilot’s chair, she was unable to speak.
She had a distant memory, almost as if in a dream she had had a year ago, of his having half carried and half walked her down the outboard ladderwell from her quarters to the boatdeck—although she could remember little else. Certainly she did not recall his lifting her into this launch. Before she knew it, he had twisted her arms painfully behind the back of the seat and tied her wrists together so tightly she felt her fingers begin to go numb almost at once.
Since Osprey’s auxiliaries were racked upon their stern reaction tubes, Loreanna found herself, in effect, lying upon her back, with her legs up in the air, and would remain so until she was taken from the boat, or the vessel she was being tied into was cast off from its moorings and launched into the Deep. It had been interesting earlier this morning. Now it felt to her as if she were being stood upon end inside an oddly appointed coffin, but a coffin nonetheless.
“My assumption is that you surmised that I spotted your overly zealous husband barreling across the maindeck with blood in his eye—dear me, what an appropriately mixed metaphor: ‘barrels of blood.’ I guessed what it was all about—wholly correctly, as it happened—and decided to take whatever advantage I might of the tactics of the moment. And if I do say so myself, as I shouldn’t, I’ve always been rather adept at that sort of spur-of-the-moment improvisation.”
Loreanna said nothing because she could not. She had noticed that his accent and demeanor had begun to change. Now, more than anyone, he sounded like Lia’s foppish messenger. ”Buckets of blood,” indeed! If only she had listened to her own misgivings about him. How could Arran ever forgive her—how could she forgive herself—for falling into the hands of a lunatic like this?
Having apparently made himself satisfied with her bonds, Woulf swung up and safety-strapped himself into the left-hand command seat. He then began working his way through the boat’s lengthy preflight checklist. They were in the same steam launch they had examined earlier this morning—she recognized a desiccated insectoid lying, with its legs straight up, against an upraised edge of the control panel. Woulf was preparing to make his escape into the Deep.
She was being kidnapped! The image of Lia came into her mind again, along with thoughts of her captivity upon Skye during the Black Usurpation, and what the former Islay tutor had endured at the hands of Arran’s corrupted brother, Donol. She promised herself now that her revenge upon Woulf would be no less savage.
“The truly humorous part is that our mighty captain is going to lose you, my dear, because just now he’s busy preparing himself and his crew for fight or flight with regard to a vessel that hasn’t the least intention of bothering with him.”
Woulf held up a small black object in one hand. “A communicator. Just one of the many benefits of stealing one’s science and technology from ten thousand cultures. That ship out there has come at my command, simply to take me home, Loreanna! And unless your husband is more sanguine in his jealousy than I guess him to be, your presence beside me (although it should also have later, more pleasurable consequences) will assure that for a critical moment he won’t blast us into particles as we take our leave of his regrettably bedraggled ship. Of course, I could be wrong. Is he a jealous enough fellow to kill you, too?”
At this point, Loreanna did not care, one way or the other. She gave her captor a sideways glance—all she could manage—that would have killed him had she been able. She would still kill him, when the opportunity arose—or, Ceo help her, make the opportunity, herself, if that seemed to be the only way.
Bad enough that he was doing this to her, whatever this turned out to be, but to leave Arran with an idea they had been . . . had been with each other as a final i
mpression of a wife of fifteen loyal years was beyond her ability to bear it. She had no illusion that she was intended to survive this, but she was sickest at the thought of her husband believing she had let this dirty barbarian bed her, even sicker at the enormity of what he had managed to do in a single consummately evil stroke, to her, to her husband, and by extension, to her five surviving children, who would grow up believing she had betrayed them.
“I suppose . . .” Reading the complex instructions, and flipping switches in response, he kept both eyes upon what he was doing, but continued speaking to his prisoner. “Before we go any further with what I hope and trust will be one of my longer, more interesting, and more intense relationships (I should be able to make you last as long as a week, if I restrain myself sufficiently) I ought to let you know—for the sake of honesty if for nothing else—that you aren’t my sister, Loreanna dear. Although that would hardly stop me from what I’m planning to do with you in any case. I’m not your brother. And that drooling old ruin up there below the quarterdeck certainly is not my sainted mother.”
She looked all of the obvious questions at him.
He shrugged. “As a matter of fact, I happen to be just about eight hundred and fifty years older than Jennivere is. I can explain all of that later, if you like, during—what is the quote, ‘a pause in the day’s recreation’? I don’t think that’s right. It will be such a pleasure to get a deep epidermal lavage and a decent haircut!”
He contemplated the luxury in silence for a moment.
“Although she’s almost certainly your mother. I had her upon the list to be searched for, acquired, and reassembled, you see, more or less to order, naturally wishing every moment of the time that it was Lia Woodgate’s old mum we’d finally stumbled across. Nobody has the faintest idea of who she is, were you aware of that? It made for a rather more oblique approach than I prefer.”
Suddenly Loreanna knew, for no logical reason she would ever be able to put a finger on, if not what had become of her daughter, then at least who was responsible. The necessity of killing him increased geometrically in a mere heartbeat.
“Quite a kick in the old morale for poor dear Arran, don’t you think, the appearance of impropriety that I so quickly and adroitly improvised for you and me, eh? And it almost became a plausible excuse to kill him, too, had my friends not arrived a trifle earlier than I anticipated and interfered with it.”
She wished she could tell him that Arran would have killed him, instead. She had every confidence this was true, having seen him do it, at need, upon occasion.
“Oh, I realize that it’s bad form to gloat,” Woulf went on, “but I beg you to understand, my sweet, that the creatures I labor for, however long they and their predecessors have kept me alive to suit their own peculiar purposes, are scarcely any more human or competent than your poor gibbering old mother, and not good company at all, let me assure you. If anything, they seem to be deteriorating. I haven’t had a decent companion for, oh, a very long time. I desperately need somebody to talk to, and in your case, there’s so much to tell . . .”
He sighed. “Unfortunately, the first order of business is to take you to meet them. I confess I’m not altogether certain of why, although I know they would have preferred the new Monopolitan Ceo. I’m told they have a unique use for you that will not interfere with any pleasures I plan extracting from you, myself.”
Woulf flipped a colorfully striped arming cover and toggled the switch. Beneath them—with respect to the present orientation of the steam launch—a hatch hinged open. The transparent-paned bow of the little auxiliary craft tipped outward until they could just see the §-field before them sparkling faintly. He squeezed the grips of the steering yoke, they were pressed back sharply in their seats, and then they were out and through the field, headed around the asteroid Arran had moored the Osprey to, and toward the awaiting sixteen-gunner.
Woulf laughed and laughed, obscenely.
Loreanna would not cry. No matter what happened to her now, she promised herself that she would not cry. No, not until this rapespawn of a slaver was dead!
He stood upon the quarterdeck, at the newly repaired taffrail, his mouth open.
No one could have been more amazed than Arran when the sixteen-gunner—which he had assumed to be an Oplyte Slaver scout or patrol vessel failed, either to attack the Osprey where she lay hove to for repairs beside her asteroid, or to sprint away as quickly as could be managed, in a panic-inspired search for a more effective sister vessel. Those seemed to him the only likely options; the thought that she might belong to some third party, Arran dismissed almost without thought. Timing alone—just sufficient for the warships that had escaped from him to reach some outpost—was enough to convince him of her identity.
In her primest condition, Arran’s heavily armed, heavily sparred corsair would have vastly overmatched the little single-tiered scout, either in combat or turn of speed. Yet it would be clear to any experienced starship handler—with decent eyes or effective instruments—within a hundred klommes of this place that the Osprey was damaged and virtually helpless, either to fight or run. That other captain out there, without a doubt upon strict and highly unwelcome orders of some kind, had been forced to miss an easy kill—and in ordinary circumstances, commendation and promotion—and was more than likely hopping mad.
And that is precisely what the idiot deserves, Arran thought to himself with a most self-satisfied expression upon his freebooter’s face, for becoming a member of a military hierarchy—and a lower-echelon one at that—instead of simply remaining his own man. Nonetheless, it would be necessary, now that the enemy knew she was here, to move the Osprey just as quickly as could be contrived. If she could achieve any headway at all, one asteroid looking much like another, she could be a million klommes off and well hidden before anyone arrived.
Arran felt the adrenaline—not all of it generated at the giddy prospect of fighting another ship-to-ship battle—begin to ebb from his bloodstream. Dreading the unfinished personal business that awaited him in his own quarters below, he watched the colors that the other vessel created within the §-field. Gradually, they dwindled with the increasing distance she was almost casually putting between them. Perhaps he was giving the other side too much credit. Perhaps that other captain out there was simply another fool or a coward—like the astonishing eleven, altogether, whom he had been easily able to fight off earlier.
Without entirely being aware of it, Arran initiated the endless series of calculations he deemed necessary to move Osprey in her present disarray. He became aware, abruptly, that Phoebus was soliciting his attention from across the maindeck with a number of broad and ridiculous gestures. Whatever it was disturbing the giant, apparently it was something he felt that he could not yell. Arran nodded back at Phoebus, turned from the taffrail, and glancing round the quarterdeck one final time, stepped down onto the maindeck. The two men met beside the mast, the captain keeping an eye upon the §-field, puzzling out some minor peculiarity he thought that he had seen just before the vessel disappeared.
“Meboy, there’s somethin’ that weird goin’ on.” As if to illustrate the point, Phoebus scratched his head. From ancient acquaintance, Arran knew that the man was seldom confused about anything, and even less inclined to admit it when he was. He forgot everything else he had been thinking about and paid his first mate strict attention. “We seem t’be missin’ one of our boatdeck launches.”
Immediately, a sick thrill of almost mortal terror surged through Arran’s body. Somehow he suddenly knew exactly what was going on. Without so much as a word to his first officer, he pelted across the maindeck toward his own quarters, followed closely by Phoebus, who was rather faster upon his feet than he appeared, only to find the suite of rooms he shared with Loreanna otherwise undisturbed, but devoid of occupants, and wide-open outboard ladderwell hatch leading below—including down to the boatdeck—where the nearest berth lay empty. The deck at the foot of the berthing rack was still warm and damp from
steam.
By now, Phoebus had finally caught up with his captain and begun to ask him questions, all of which Arran ignored as he raced back up the ladderwell again to his quarters, where there remained not a trace of Loreanna to be discovered. He had broken out in a prickly sweat; the sensation he felt in his body, especially in his arms and legs, was akin to that of electric shock or a quickly acting poison. His entire universe seemed to be collapsing about him.
Or perhaps, he thought, it was exploding.
He whirled to face his now thoroughly confused first officer. “Find me Woulf! Tear this ship apart, if you have to, but find me Woulf! I thought I saw some indication in the §-field that our visitor had retrieved something smaller than she was, but the signs were vague and fleeting. I assumed it was some pretty rock they had chanced to discover, or even one of their own steam launches. Now I wonder—and I shall continue to wonder until you find me Woulf!”
“And Loreanna?” Phoebus inquired. “Or oughtn’t I even t’be askin’ such a thing?” Arran looked down at his feet and slowly shook his head. This was the worst day of his life—including the day his father had been murdered—yet he would have given his whole life just to live it over again and make it right.
“If anyone is privileged thus, it is you. Because of Bretta, things have been ill between us. We quarreled. I nearly killed Woulf, and now I wish I had!” Arran cast an eye about the room until it lit upon the dull sheen of some object lying underneath the settee at its front edge. He stooped and scooped it up. Phoebus looked a question at him with his great bushy eyebrows, and almost stood upon tiptoe to see what he held in his hand, but Arran shook him off.
“I beg you, old friend, ask me no more. I require your report of the condition of the vessel, for we must not lose track of the ship that was just here!”
CHAPTER XXXV:
OVERMOMS IN CANDYLAND
He sat upon an outsized mushroom—a cheerful scarlet with huge yellow polka dots the size of his hand—and peeled back the Velcroed flap of the black ballistic nylon case he always carried among his effects. Carefully preserved with him every time he took what he thought of as “the Long Sleep,” its collector’s value as a nine-hundred-year-old antique must be something fabulous by now.
Coordinated Arm 02: Bretta Martyn Page 37