Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  Not well, that became clear from the start. Neither Hobby nor Sheridan were prepared to let her go, even in the face of Nicole’s own request for transfer. They had ample evidence she wasn’t in her right mind, they felt, which made them wonder if this entire situation wasn’t some form of mind-control coercion. She had to concede them that point, it was something she’d wondered more than a little herself.

  It was Sheridan who dropped the bombshell, a question that changed the tenor of the room so completely that Nicole had felt compelled to ask for a direct translation. After that, matters got a trifle more complicated, since Kymri had to relay what was said to him, to her, and then her replies back to the two men. The advantage to everyone was that there was suddenly a built-in grace period, allowing them all time to consider what had been said—and what was to be said in response—before actually speaking.

  “I may be missing something,” Ramsey’d said, with a pointed look towards Nicole and then back to Kymri, fixing the Hal in a glare of such naked hostility that hackles immediately twitched on the back of Kymri’s neck, his body stiffening ever so slightly into a fighting posture. This was way beyond a challenge. Though Ramsey’s tone was conversational it was as if he’d reached across the table to punch Kymri in the mouth.

  “You’re telling us,” he continued, “that Major Shea’s condition is a form of psychological discontinuity that occasionally occurs in Hal Speakers who suffer some grave traumatic shock, either physical or psychic in nature.”

  “Yes,” Kymri replied. He knew full well where this was leading, as did Nicole, but there was no way to head it off. She suspected Ramsey also knew the truth; this was to put it on the official record.

  “But it was my understanding, and General Canfield’s as well, that only Marshal Ciari of the Wanderer crew was infected with the Speaker genetic engineering virus.” He paused, but when Kymri made no comment, went on in that same gentle, deadly manner. “Were we mistaken, Kymri?”

  The omission of any honorific was another calculated insult. Any other Hal sitting in Kymri’s place—save perhaps the Liege of his Clan, Shavrin herself—would have been at Ramsey’s throat. These were the kinds of affronts only blood could settle. And Ramsey knew that—Heaven knows I’ve given enough briefings on the subject, Nicole thought, and wondered if this deliberate provocation was another kind of test, Ramsey’s way of taking Kymri’s measure.

  “We did what was necessary, Sheridan-Colonel, for the success of our mission and the survival of both crews,” a hint of emphasis. “My government was informed. As was yours.” A second flash of emphasis, making clear: Don’t lay this on my people, pal, your guys made the exact same decision. “We have nothing to hide,” he finished.

  Nicole couldn’t help herself. To her, his lie was so blatant that she simply had to react. It wasn’t much, a flash of the eyes, a grunt from the bottom of her throat, probably incomprehensible to the two men. Kymri chose not to notice.

  Kymri’s original plan had been to transfer Nicole to the Hal cruiser that had brought him from s’N’dare to Nieuwhome. Hobby flat out refused, a decision seconded by Ramsey. They sent a Courier missile back to Earth, with a full report encrypted for the President and a request for complete instructions to be waiting when the Constitution reached Hal home space. No reply meant no Nicole, both officers making plain that they considered any comments or entreaties she made on the subject totally suspect.

  When they’d arrived in the Hal home system, two days ago, they had their answer, brought out on another starship and hand-delivered by its CO.

  The Constitution was directed to a parking orbit at one of s’N’dare’s two open L-5 points. No one needed to be told that their position placed them within the firing arcs of the two giant stations bracketing them from the neighboring LaGrange loci. They were targeted from the surface as well.

  “The locals don’t seem too pleased to see us,” Hobby remarked idly from his seat on the Bridge.

  Nicole was standing by him, having come to bid farewell before her descent to the surface. She felt as uncomfortable as hell, but she’d made a point of wearing her Air Force flight suit.

  “With respect, Hobby-Captain,” she said, through Hana, “haven’t we given them reason?”

  The starship had downshifted from warp at battle stations, establishing a combat defense radius of a million klicks for the initial approach. Anything coming closer than the Moon’s distance from the Earth would be considered hostile.

  The Hal home system wasn’t as symmetrical as ours; where Earth and its fellow planets were arranged pretty much along the same dynamic plane, these worlds followed much more varied orbital tracks. In fact, the next planet closest to the sun followed a wildly eccentric path that took it across the plane of the ecliptic at a significant angle. Hobby’s intent was to slingshot Constitution past this world on his way to s’N’dare; that way, if he decided to abort his insertion, they had a potential Runway trajectory that held nothing but clear space.

  The Hal had other ideas. The Constitution was told to follow established vectors and procedures. No threat was made; that hadn’t been necessary. Every sensor on the starship registered the beginnings of their collective response.

  A Hal starship winked out of the warp Shadow close enough to set off every critical proximity alarm on the Bridge, and proceeded to take station in the Constitution’s, path, just beyond Hobby’s defense perimeter and between them and the planet they were aiming for. Thing was, it was traveling a hair slower than its Terrestrial counterpart, so that the Constitution was gradually overtaking it. There was no danger of a collision—unless somebody made the decision to intentionally cause one—but it was only a matter of time before the Hal ship violated Hobby’s directive.

  “Touchy,” noted Hana.

  “Oh, really,” Nicole responded. “How many Hal ships you see gallivanting unescorted around the Sol System, hmnh?”

  “Hobby-Captain,” she told him, as always through Hana, “you can’t do this. They won’t back down in their own front yard, any more than you would!”

  “Major,” he replied, “you have no place on my Bridge. Stand aside, or return to your quarters.”

  The Hal cruiser crossed the line, and Hobby contracted his perimeter. When it crossed again a few hours later, he contracted it again. But he didn’t modify his course.

  “This is insane,” Nicole breathed as she watched a secondary window in the panoramic rooftop display overlay a targeting grid atop the schematic silhouette of the Hal starcraft.

  “Wonder what’s so special about that world,” Hana mused aloud. “The Hal are putting out so much ECM clutter that we haven’t been able to manage even a marginal scan.”

  “From this distance, we wouldn’t get anything worth the effort anyway.”

  “Precisely. So why are they going to so much trouble?”

  “We’re in their face, big time, Hana. They don’t like it. Damn it,” she snarled, mostly to herself, in frustration, “damn it!”

  “New contact in the Sky,” announced Commander Rossmore from his station. “Downshifting out of warp, and blue-shifting to our velocity. IFF flash, with confirmed transponder return; it’s one of ours!”

  That had been the ship from Earth. The Courier matched trajectories and its commander shuttled over to deliver the letters. Handwritten, sealed in wax. With a typed, secondary copy so there would be no misunderstanding whatsoever.

  At last, Hobby called off his game of Chicken and gave the orders to resume a standard approach. He stood down from battle stations and dropped his defense perimeter.

  The Hal ship paced them the whole way, until the Constitution had reached its final “mooring” about s’N’dare.

  The Ambassador was apoplectic, so much so—thanks to a blistering audience at the Foreign Ministry—that he couldn’t bring himself to speak to Hobby. He didn’t even come up from the surface to greet them. He let his Chargé d’Affaires do that.

  She was brusque to the point of brutali
ty, the situation not helped by the fact that her primary allegiance was to the United Nations, while Hobby’s—and the Constitution’s—was to the United States. For once, Nicole was thankful for her ignorance; she just waited as patiently as she could for the noise to subside, on the assumption their attention would turn to her eventually. Hana wasn’t present, they’d agreed on that before-hand and kept their good-byes private; when Nicole left the Bridge as the ship assumed its final station, Hana had gone her own way. Jenny stayed close, looking more nervous by the moment. Nicole empathized; at least she knew the language, the people, the culture. Jenny was jumping blind.

  To Nicole’s amazement—though, when she sat back and considered, she realized it made perfect sense—there was one additional passenger for the surface waiting at the sally port: Amelia Cobri.

  “You’re not getting away from me that easily, Shea-Pilot,” she told Nicole with a superior smirk that was more fitting to the girl Nicole remembered from five years before. She spoke in passable Trade Tongue.

  Can’t blame me for trying, Nicole thought in reply, but said, “Do you have permission, Amelia Cobri-Child, or do you simply assume—as always—that no one will dare stop you?”

  Amy actually laughed, in genuine amusement, which Nicole found disconcerting.

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Shea-Pilot,” she said, “even though it’s still pretty lame.” She directed a superior sneer at Jenny. “Dumped one slant shadow for a younger model, I see.”

  Jenny knew a cut when she heard one, and had enough Trade to catch the reference, but said absolutely nothing.

  “Actually,” Nicole used the most neutral phrasing and tone, taking care not to reveal how angry Amy’d made her, “Flight Lieutenant Coy is here under orders. As am I.” What’s your excuse, kid?

  Again, Nicole found herself taken aback, when Amy looked suddenly abashed, as if realizing how cruel she’d been.

  “Raqella asked me to come,” she said in a small voice, the closest Nicole sensed she would ever come to an outright apology.

  “You took good care of him,” Nicole acknowledged. In fact, Amy hadn’t left his side during the whole of his convalescence.

  “Someone had to,” Amy said. “Ship staff didn’t have a clue and Ch’ghan couldn’t be bothered.”

  “You knew how to treat him?” Nicole was curious, although she was pretty sure of the answer. Amy confirmed it.

  “I had access to briefing disks.”

  “Whose?”

  The smile this time was pure triumph.

  “All of ’em.”

  “Even mine?”

  “Early on,” Amy confessed. “If the data went into any form of Network, I got a copy. Until the last couple’a years, when Ciari began having the disks hand-shipped; that’s when I was frozen out. Didn’t much mind by then, he was spiraling way off his loop. Sad case.”

  “Too esoteric for you?”

  Amy looked up at her with that eerie assessing directness so reminiscent of her father.

  “Straight translation is useless without the cultural context,” she said. “I had the words; without the social and anthropological referents, I hadn’t a clue what they meant.”

  “Pity. I have the referents, those damn letters are still a mystery.”

  Which wasn’t altogether true, of course; it merely meant that Nicole was still in the process of puzzling them out.

  A Constitution shuttle carried them from the starship to Agarast’ya, the station ahead of them. The Hal took over from there.

  Nicole was on the ground, and in her residence, in time to view a moderately spectacular sunset.

  She thought she’d be more impressed, but it didn’t measure up to the moments stored in her memory. Didn’t even come close.

  The first thing she’d done on arrival was place a call to Ben Ciari, fuming when she got his VoiceMail. She demanded to know where he was. At dusk, the Hal Majordomo arrived with the answer, and she decided to lose her temper.

  She was no longer in her flight suit; she’d ditched that outfit the moment she was alone in her suite. She’d called Ciari from the bath, luxuriating in a tub that was longer than she was and which held enough water to allow her to float. When company rang at the door, assuming it was him, she pulled on a caftanlike robe that managed to be as artfully suggestive as it was dauntingly modest. The room was candlelit, with drinks on ice and hors d’oeuvres set on the coffee table. For effect, Nicole had donned her own pendant silver earring, Hal silver wrapped around afireheart crystal, emblematic of her place in Shavrin’s Household. It was the first thing the Hal saw when she ushered him inside and to Nicole’s eyes, the Majordomo immediately looked a step removed from sick. The Terran Chargé was with him, presenting nowhere near as hostile a front as she had earlier aboard the Constitution.

  “What do you mean,” Nicole repeated, after a command to the house computer to increase the level of interior illumination. As the system obliged, she snuffed out the candles with short, sharp puffs of air, each a punctuation to her anger. “Marshal Ciari’s disappeared?”

  The Chargé struggled with workmanlike Trade Tongue.

  “Gone missing, yes,” she said, “we believe so.”

  “Aren’t you sure?” Her face was to the Terran woman, but her focus was on the Hal.

  “It’s difficult to say. He’s been spending so much time alone, buried in the Archives, roaming the countryside. He’d be out of touch for days at a time, as though he’d set himself the task of exploring the entire planet all by himself.”

  “You allowed this?” Nicole demanded of the Hal.

  “He is a Speaker, Shea-Pilot.”

  I’m living with the residual effects of the virus, she reminded herself, he had it full force. And remembered the two of them grappling in the airlock of Shavrin’s starship, Ciari desperate to hurl himself into the battle, to avenge the souls of the slain Hal, she just as determined to stop him. The Hal had done their best to counteract the effects of the virus, with him as with her, but a significant residue remained with Ciari. Most strongly evident in his carriage and manner, the way he presented his physical being. The son of a bitch had broken her heart with envy, he’d become so graceful. Now, she saw the same moves in herself and feared the day when that would fade and leave her the way she was.

  He’s known from the start how the Hal relate to Speakers, she thought further, that was one of the reasons he was assigned here, to give us as comprehensive a view as possible of their society. He was our means of looking at them from the inside-out. But he had an agenda of his own. He knew he wouldn’t be challenged, by either side.

  “Have you considered hostile action,” she asked. “My test vehicle was attacked in near Earth space; perhaps Ciari-Marshal was similarly assaulted here?”

  The Chargé turned a querying look on the Majordomo, who assured both women that the matter was being looked into.

  Nicole shifted to High Tongue.

  “Why are you lying?” she demanded.

  “Because, daughter, I told him to.”

  All eyes save Nicole’s went immediately to the doorway, and the new arrival. Nicole deliberately took a breath to compose herself, and another and another, before making a slow pivot—just as she had so many years before, floating in zero gravity, on the Range Guide’s command deck—towards her foster mother, the Clan Lord Shavrin.

  She hadn’t changed much. A head shorter than Nicole, and slighter in the body, yet possessed of such an innate presence that she seemed the young woman’s equal and far more. She carried herself as someone who’d earned the right and responsibility of command, with a calm self-assurance that Nicole had seen before only in Judith Canfield. Shavrin’s base coat was silver, patterned in indigo, with markings of stark, pure simplicity. She wore her hair longer than Nicole remembered from their first encounter—somehow that hadn’t registered as effectively on the holos she’d seen since—and dressed far more elegantly. The gown was formal, creating an impres
sion of power and authority that would be noticed immediately from across a ballroom. Or a Council Chamber. Her eyes were dark and hooded. Shavrin was keeping her true thoughts close to herself.

  The Majordomo made a formal obeisance, echoed by a bow from the Chargé. Their gestures made Nicole stand all the straighter.

  There was a brief exchange between the two diplomats and they attempted as graceful an exit as could be quickly managed. Neither woman paid the slightest attention.

  They stood like samurai, awaiting the signal to draw swords, knowing the cue would destroy them both.

  Shavrin finally broke the silence.

  “Do you know what you have done?”

  “I know what you’ve done,” Nicole replied with equal deliberation.

  Shavrin looked suddenly away, and Nicole caught the flash of an earring from her left ear. A pendant fireheart that a second, closer look revealed was a twin for her own. Shavrin caught the glance and her hand twitched in a gesture of acknowledgment.

  “Yes,” she said, “they are a set. From my mother to me, from her mother to her, and so on, it’s said to the birth of our line. A fair piece, I’ll grant, but probably not that far. One stone during life, the other after.”

  “Why?” was all Nicole could bring herself to say, in a ghost of a voice that was hardly there. “Do you mean for me to take your place?”

  “Would matters were so simple.” Shavrin crossed the room in big commanding strides, taking charge of the space the way she did any situation, and poured herself a drink. Custom and etiquette required that she ask Nicole’s permission; that she didn’t was a measure of how upset she was.

  “You are comfortable here,” Shavrin asked belatedly. “Your needs have been attended to?”

  “Hard to say, Mother-Lord,” and Nicole saw Shavrin bristle at the intimate honorific, “since my first request was to see Ben Ciari. He’s gone Harach’t’nyn, hasn’t he?”

  “As shall you, youngling,” answered a new voice, and Nicole didn’t attempt to hide her annoyance at how easily people seemed able to intrude upon her privacy.